Bah! Humbug! Read online

  Wow, then every cookie would taste like heaven!

  BOB: Oh, a wonderful pudding that was!

  MRS. CRATCHIT: Well, that’s a weight off my mind. I confess I had had my doubts about the quantity of flour.

  DICKENS: Everybody had something to say about it, but nobody said or thought it was at all a small pudding for a large family. It would have been flat heresy to do so. Any Cratchit would have blushed to hint at such a thing. At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the hearth swept, and the fire made up. Then all the Cratchit family drew round the hearth, while the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and cracked noisily.

  BOB: A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!

  EVERYONE: God bless us all!

  TINY TIM: God bless us, every one!

  At that, a little boy down in the front called out, “God bless us, every one!” right after Tiny Tim said it, and everyone laughed. The boy was the brother of the boy playing Tiny Tim, and like Eva had spent a long time helping his brother with the lines. Miss Cavani had said to them all in the early days of rehearsals, “Doing a play like this reaches out into the lives of the whole community,” and when she said that, she reached out with her hands and arms as if she herself could reach into the houses and homes of them all.

  SCROOGE: Spirit, tell me if Tiny Tim will live.

  GHOST: I see an empty seat, in the poor chimney corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved. If these shadows remain unaltered by the future, the child will die.

  SCROOGE: No, no, oh, no, kind Spirit! Say he will be spared.

  GHOST: If these shadows remain unaltered by the future, what then? If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.

  DICKENS: Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words quoted by the Spirit, and was overcome with penitence and grief.

  As the car rolled along the highway, Ray thought back to the boy he was, with his dream of the trucks. He recalled lying in bed making the world simple. Everyone would live in a house with a front and back yard. He hated watching TV when they did all those charity things where TV stars tried to sing famous songs, and they would cut to the star standing next to a kid dying somewhere. That dying child wasn’t my fault, he’d think, and with a magic sweep, one of his trucks would clear it all away. And, yes, everyone would live in a house with a back and front yard.

  Was I really that boy? Did I have that streak inside me? He felt a flush of embarrassment creep up the right-hand side of his neck. I was! I was that boy. I did think that stuff. Why is this night getting so complicated?

  BOB: Mr. Scrooge! I’ll give you Mr. Scrooge, the Founder of the Feast!

  MRS. CRATCHIT: The Founder of the Feast indeed! I wish he were here. I’d give him a piece of my mind to feast upon, and I hope he’d have a good appetite for it.

  BOB: My dear, the children — Christmas Day.

  MRS. CRATCHIT: It should be Christmas Day, I am sure, on which one drinks the health of such an odious, stingy, hard, unfeeling man as Mr. Scrooge. You know he is, Robert! Nobody knows it better than you do, poor fellow!

  BOB: My dear — Christmas Day.

  MRS. CRATCHIT: I’ll drink his health for your sake and the Day’s, not for his. Long life to him. A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! He’ll be very merry and very happy, I have no doubt!

  DICKENS: Scrooge was the ogre of the family. The mention of his name cast a dark shadow on the party, which was not dispelled for a full five minutes. After it had passed away, they were ten times merrier than before, from the mere relief of Scrooge the Baleful being done with.

  BOB: I have my eye on a job for you, Peter, which would bring in full five-and-sixpence weekly.

  YOUNG CRATCHIT: Peter? A man of business?

  PETER: I don’t see what’s so funny about that . . .

  MARTHA: Oh, but children, work is nothing like your pretend fun and games . . .

  DICKENS: Martha, who was a poor apprentice at a milliner’s, then told them what kind of work she had to do, and how many hours she worked at a stretch, and how she meant to lie a-bed tomorrow morning for a good long rest, tomorrow being a holiday she passed at home. And bye and bye they had a song from Tiny Tim, who had a plaintive little voice, and sang it very well indeed. There was nothing of high mark in all of this. They were not a handsome family; they were not well dressed. But they were happy, grateful, pleased with one another, and contented with the time, and when they faded, and looked happier yet in the bright sprinklings of the Spirit’s torch at parting, Scrooge had his eye upon them, and especially on Tiny Tim, until the last.

  Eva knew enough about herself to know that she loved dramas: real-life or in stories, small or large, silly or serious. Before Harry came home with the play and they started rehearsing at home, she didn’t know the story of A Christmas Carol. Even though she had loved playing the parts to help Harry, seeing it up onstage in the lights, with the makeup and the masks, with the arrival of the ghosts, first of Marley, then of Christmas Past, and now of the Present . . . it was all like a powerful magic. In a way, this was like the YouTube of the past. The Ghosts could in their own way bring up scenes and show them to Scrooge. She remembered how she loved finding the singing cat.

  NEPHEW: Ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha!

  DICKENS: If you should happen, by any unlikely chance, to know a man more blest with a laugh than Scrooge’s nephew, all I can say is, I should like to know him too. Introduce him to me, and I’ll cultivate his acquaintance.

  NEPHEW’S WIFE: Ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha, ha!

  NEPHEW: He said that Christmas was a humbug, as I live! He believed it too!

  NEPHEW’S WIFE: More shame on him, Fred!

  NEPHEW: He’s a comical old fellow, that’s the truth, and not so pleasant as he might be. However, his offenses carry their own punishment, and I have nothing to say against him.

  NEPHEW’S WIFE: I’m sure he is very rich, Fred. At least you always tell me so.

  NEPHEW: What of that, my dear! His wealth is of no use to him. He doesn’t do any good with it. He doesn’t make himself comfortable with it. He hasn’t the satisfaction of thinking — ha, ha, ha! — that he is ever going to benefit us with it.

  NEPHEW’S WIFE: I have no patience with him.

  NEPHEW: Oh, I have! I am sorry for him; I couldn’t be angry with him if I tried. Who suffers by his ill whims? Himself, always. Here, he takes it into his head to dislike us, and he won’t come and dine with us. What’s the consequence? He doesn’t lose much of a dinner.

  NEPHEW’S WIFE: Indeed, I think he loses a very good dinner.

  NEPHEW: Well! I’m very glad to hear it. I was only going to say, I mean to give him the same chance every year, whether he likes it or not, for I pity him. He may complain about Christmas till he dies, but he can’t help thinking better of it if he finds me going there, in good temper, year after year, and saying, “Uncle Scrooge, how are you?”

  Ahead on the road, Ray’s headlights picked out the sign: one way toward home, the other toward Harry’s school. In his head, Ray heard François say to him, Go back. Go to the show.

  At a slight touch of the wheel, the car would go that route. That’s all it would take.

  But then the thought of his laptop flicking open, the cursor finding the file, the file opening up, the data he needed to send to Mumbai traveling thousands of miles in a few seconds, was enough to make Ray turn the wheel toward home.

  No, Ray said to himself, and his hands tightened on the steering wheel, I don’t have to do what François or anyone else tells me to. I’m me. This is not about making my mind up about something right in the here and now. This is about the bigger picture. I can see that bigger picture, and I’m sticking with it.

  He felt himself nod, as if there were another Ray right there with him in the car and that Ray was agreeing with Ray.

  Nod. Yes, Ray.

  DICKENS: It was a game called Yes and No, where Scrooge’s nephew had to think of something, and the rest must find
out what; he only answering to their questions yes or no.

  PARTYGOER: An animal?

  NEPHEW: Yes.

  PARTYGOER: A live animal?

  NEPHEW: Yes.

  PARTYGOER: Is it an agreeable animal?

  NEPHEW: No.

  PARTYGOER: A savage animal!

  NEPHEW: Yes.

  PARTYGOER: An animal that grunts and growls sometimes?

  NEPHEW: Yes.

  PARTYGOER: Does it talk sometimes?

  NEPHEW: Yes.

  PARTYGOER: Does it live in a menagerie?

  NEPHEW: No.

  PARTYGOER: Is it ever killed in the market?

  NEPHEW: No.

  PARTYGOER: Does this animal live in London, and walk about the streets?

  NEPHEW: Yes.

  PARTYGOER: Is it a horse?

  NEPHEW: No.

  PARTYGOER: Is it an ass?

  NEPHEW: Er . . . no.

  There was a pause. Miss Cavani had told them, “Never be afraid of waiting. Give them time to guess.”

  The nephew waited. Sure enough, first a snigger and then a laugh, and a giggle from Eva.

  Miss Cavani was right.

  PARTYGOER: I have found it out! I know what it is, Fred! I know what it is!

  NEPHEW: What is it?

  PARTYGOER: It’s your Uncle Scro-o-o-o-oge!

  DICKENS: Which it certainly was.

  NEPHEW: A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to the old man, whatever he is! He wouldn’t take it from me, but may he have it, nevertheless. To Uncle Scrooge!

  EVERYONE: Uncle Scrooge!

  DICKENS: Scrooge had become so light of heart that he would have toasted the company in return, and thanked them, if the Ghost had given him time. But he and the Spirit were again upon their travels.

  Much they saw, and far they went, and many homes they visited, but always with a happy end. The Spirit stood beside sickbeds, and they were cheerful; on foreign lands, and they were close at home; by struggling men, and they were patient in their greater hope; by poverty, and it was rich. In almshouse, hospital, and jail, in misery’s every refuge. It was a long night, if it was only a night. For the Ghost had grown older, clearly older.

  SCROOGE: Are spirits’ lives so short?

  GHOST: My life upon this globe, is very brief. It ends tonight.

  SCROOGE: Tonight?

  GHOST: Tonight at midnight. Hark! The time is drawing near.

  (The chimes ring twelve.)

  As the bells rang out, Eva leaned toward her mother. “Some people are poor now, you know.”

  Lisa nodded.

  “We’re not poor.”

  “No,” Lisa agreed.

  They both watched their Scrooge hurry off the stage.

  “He’s so good,” Eva said with a sigh. Seeing Harry act so well and so convincingly seemed to make her happy and sad at the same time. Happy that the play they had rehearsed in the kitchen, in the bedroom, in the car even, was now coming alive and the auditorium of people watching were loving it so much; sad that Dad wasn’t here to see it and feel it. On the occasions he did join in with things, he seemed to enjoy himself so much: that time they played Who Am I? and he couldn’t guess that the bit of paper stuck to his forehead said “A caveman.” Even when Harry goofed about, thumping his chest, shouting “Hoo! Hoo!” as some nutty hint, Dad had said, “A gorilla!”

  He loved playing that, didn’t he? Eva thought. Imagine, by the time Harry is a man and I’m a woman, Dad will sit at home counting on his fingers how many times he was actually with us all having that kind of crazy laughing and goofing around. It was so rare, it would really be possible to count the number of times on his fingers!

  Back in the Green Room, there was a crisis. The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come was having a breathing problem. Serena, the girl who played him, had asthma.

  “Back. Stand back!” Miss Cavani shouted. “For goodness’ sake, let her breathe.”

  She snapped her fingers — it was one of her less than likable qualities —“Inhaler!”

  Everyone started to hunt for Serena’s inhaler. Actors, makeup people, the two boys in charge of props, everyone was turning things over — chains, rubber chickens, umbrellas, bonnets, jugs, and handbags were being moved, tipped up, pushed, pulled. There was a mighty rummaging in the pockets of jackets, coats, and pants. Serena was gasping, and Miss Cavani was flapping a towel to flush fresh cool air through the classroom window.

  “Serena’s mother. I saw her earlier. She’s by the aisle near the front. She might have a spare, George. Purple coat.”

  George dashed off, hoping that there weren’t many women by the aisle near the front wearing purple coats.

  Harry came out of the bubble he was in, thinking of himself, of Dad, of Scrooge, and watched for a second as it seemed as if the whole cast turned into a hive of bees, tumbling over one another to help Serena.

  As he looked across to Miss Cavani staying calm but active by the open window, he remembered how in the very first rehearsal she had told them that when you do a play, it’s not like the rest of school where you might end up trying to do better than someone else. When you do a play, she said, everyone has to help everyone else. If someone gets something wrong, it makes the whole thing not-as-good-as-it-could-be. So we don’t thank God that we’re better than the person who’s got something wrong, and we don’t sneer at the person getting it wrong. We help them. That way everything gets better.

  As Harry shook one of the shawls lying in a heap by one of the baskets, he felt something drop onto his foot. The inhaler! He hurried over to Serena and Miss Cavani.

  The crisis was over.

  Ray clicked open the door of the house and headed for his study. Surely he had left the laptop there . . . unless someone had fetched it for Eva . . . The study was at the end of the passage, and as he hurried toward it, he had the sensation that he was more alone at this moment than he had ever been before. It was a sensation more eerie than if he had been told that he was about to go where people had heard the voices of the dead; more eerie than the night in the woods one time when he was young, hearing a hurried rushing in the bushes behind him. This wasn’t the eeriness of something “out there” but the eeriness of being alone. Totally alone. After all, the rest of the family was indeed somewhere else. Enjoying themselves without him.

  He reached the door of his study and the glass panels in the door looked back at him. He peeped in, half expecting to see himself in there.

  Instead, he saw his room looking as if he had just left it. Room Without Ray. On the floor by his desk were his shoes, the creases on the leather uppers marked by feet no longer in the shoes. On his desk, a pen that he had not yet put back in the penholder that Lisa had bought him before they were married. It lay on the desk where he had dropped it, just before coming downstairs reluctantly, irately, angrily, when he finally agreed to go to the show.

  Room Without Ray spread a cold feeling around Ray’s neck. What if the reason he wasn’t there was that . . . he wasn’t here? What did he even mean thinking that? He knew. He meant, what if something had happened to him . . . say, in the car, an accident, out on the highway, say . . . like, say, what happened to poor old Kwame? A crash . . . or if he had swerved off the road . . . This is what his study would look like: Room Without Ray.

  And would anyone really care? Ray’s study at the end of the hall . . . big deal. And Eva would have his laptop, why not? And Lisa could have the penholder, why not? And Harry, what would Harry have? The table and chair? Why not? Would they care? Would it matter to them that he wasn’t here anymore?

  Of course it would matter to them, he said to himself, still peering into the Room Without Ray. But hey, it was the fact that he was even asking the question that was the problem. What sort of dad was he, that he was even wondering for one millionth of a second whether his own family would care that he wasn’t here anymore?

  He pushed open the door to Room Without Ray. Did it feel better that it was now Room With Ray?


  SCROOGE: I am in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come?

  DICKENS: The Spirit answered not, but pointed onward with its hand.

  SCROOGE: You are about to show me shadows of the things that have not happened, but will happen in the time before us? Is that so, Spirit? Ghost of the Future! I fear you more than any specter I have seen. But as I know your purpose is to do me good, and as I hope to live to be another man from what I was, I am prepared to stay with you, and do it with a thankful heart. Will you not speak to me?

  Of all the lines in the play, “I hope to live to be another man from what I was” was the one that Harry had most wanted Dad to hear. As he said it, just like the many times he had said it in rehearsal, he had heard his own tone of voice creeping toward being Dad’s voice. Not because he had ever heard Dad say anything like that. It came out that way because it was what he wanted to hear Dad say. Or something like it. He wanted Dad to give some inkling, some hint, that there was another way to live.

  But then, even more than wanting Dad to hear him say that line, he had wanted Dad to see the next scene.

  But he won’t. He’s not here.

  With a great effort of mind, Harry took the anger he felt that Dad wasn’t out there in the dark of the audience, and pushed it and squeezed it into Scrooge’s fear and anxiety.

  DICKENS: It gave no reply. The hand was pointed straight before them.

  SCROOGE: Lead on! Lead on! The night is waning fast, and it is precious time to me, I know. Lead on, Spirit!

  DICKENS: They scarcely seemed to enter the city, for the city rather seemed to spring up about them. But there they were, in the heart of it: at the Royal Exchange, amongst the merchants.

  STOUT MAN: No, I don’t know much about it, either way. I only know he’s dead.