a million lights, a

a million lights, a million stories
here, charles tries once again to spend christmas with his mother. he wakes up, chooses the shirt hanging at the back of his closet, the button down an aunt gave him that he never wears. his car won’t start in the snappingly cold air. never mind, he tries again. he arrives at his mother’s shingled cape cod home and spends exactly three hours and seventeen minutes there, according to the swinging-tail cat clock with the shifty eyes. they eat dry turkey. his mother oscillates between nagging and silence. she looks older. he leaves at the stroke of five.
the streets are quiet, resignation palpable in this forgotten town his mother lives and will die in. there’s a bar, a shack drooping at the edge of the farm route. he stops there. there are two cars, only two other loners, perched at the edge of the bar. the bar is simply called mike’s. charles slumps into the bar stool like molasses settling and orders a beer. when the shaggy redheaded girl at the other end of the bar looks up and gives him a weak smile, he figures, what the hell. he walks over, sits down next to her, and says with a laugh, “hey, merry christmas.”
****
here, sherry knows peter is coming to her house for christmas, because mom invited peter’s parents. mom is humming some cheesy christmas song in the kitchen, obsessing over the gravy. sherry leans forward carefully over mom’s vanity mirror, carefully destroying her mother’s eyeliner pencil by giving herself heavy-lidded eyes. she tilts her head and sucks her cheeks in and thinks, if you squint the right way, she looks a little like angelina jolie. except, you know, thirteen with brown hair. nevermind. he’ll like it.
but when she opens the door to let the macallisters in, peter doesn’t even notice her deliberately torn black tee and jean skirt. nor does he even glance at her coup de grace – eight hole doc maartens. all through dinner, sherry throws what she assumes are “come-hither” glances at peter and his long black hair, but he just pushes the cranberry sauce around and snorts derisively every time his dad talks about his job.
it’s only at the end of the evening, when she’s standing on the back deck. that he comes outside, having stolen a coors light from the fridge, and nods upward in her direction. “nice shoes.” that’s what he says. she knows not to smile – she just shrugs. he walks over to her, his breath hanging in the air like mist. she tosses her bangs out of her eyes, trying to control her shaking hands behind her back. one side of his mouth turns up into a grin. and then peter macallister says, “merry christmas.”
****
here, catherine is at home, her crepe-paper hands carefully dusting the fireplace before her son and grandchildren descend on the house and the piled-up presents. her hands only just betray a slight tremor of the disease that will claim her in five years.
but the hands are still capable enough to pick up the picture frame of john, who left her in this world three years ago. she’s a tough bird, our catherine, not given to tracing lines in the faces of loved ones. but she gives herself this, and stares at his once-young face and says, “merry christmas.”
****
here, in front of a convenience store. a young boy, golden locks framing his round face, brown eyes peering out from under his wooly cap, is being dragged along the sidewalk by a mother furious that she forgot to buy enough eggs. little ryan chooses this moment, in front of the sleeping derelict, to use the powers of a four-year-old’s body weight to stop the forward projectory of his harried mother. he stares at the sleeping man. looks at his mother. looks at the man. and says studiously, “merry christmas.”
****
here, a twenty two year old soldier from kentucky looks into the unfeeling void of a CNN camera lens and talks, pretending it’s his family’s eyes and smiles, “merry christmas!”
****
here, a grown daughter spends christmas with two parents, in two houses, for the first time. she then gets drunk with her best friend and cries, wailing with hiccups, “merry christmas.”
****
here, a pastor looks out over his congregation and thinks their lives might feel just a little bit better because the choir sounds so angelic today. to the flock he wishes, “merry christmas.”
****
here, a woman kisses her pudgy husband and means it, even though yesterday she yelled at him about the plumbing in the basement. she says, “merry christmas.”
****
here, a man usually too busy and important to talk to the harried, drawn woman at his deli, remembers as he’s leaving, and yells back, “merry christmas!”
****
here, there’s always a little bit of magic and a little bit of sorrow. here, it’s christmas.