Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown

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MERRY CHRISTMAS, CHARLIE BROWN

Molly is standing in her room drying her hair. She’s glad to be going out because her roommate Liberty is at work, and she is all alone in the house with Liberty’s new knives.

Liberty’s gourmet set of task-specific blades is lovely. There are paring knives, carving knives, serrated bread cutters, tomato corers, small and large butchers’ cleavers, all arranged in a wooden block on the kitchen counter. Their smooth black handles stick up in a perfect graduated row, cascading from largest to smallest. It is the Saturday before Christmas, and Liberty will be gone all day cooking at the Royal Café. Maybe she’ll pull overtime.

Molly has been careful not to let anyone know, to wear long sleeves, but of late when she is by herself with a knife in her hand, she has taken to dragging it across her wrists and the insides of her forearms. She usually uses the Exactos from the studio at school. She is an architecture student and she’s at studio a lot to finish her models and drawings. It’s a hard master’s program and she works late at night. It’s easy to be alone. Sometimes she gently scratches the skin over her heart, or she holds the glittering blade behind her head and with it traces her spine between her shoulder blades. Sometimes she breaks the firm, satiny surface of her skin and sometimes she doesn’t. So far, that is as far as it has gone. But in the last week or so she has wanted to keep going, to draw all over her body, elaborate patterns of flowing lines, spirals and curlicues, detailed, feathery designs like the ones Jack Frost carves on windowpanes. In her mind’s eye she sees the silver knife dragging along her thigh, leaving indelibly in its wake a beautiful curling vine. And deeper, of course, she is always tempted to go deeper, to hit and unleash the gush of red. That would make the thready wounds even more real, and she would be one step closer to eternal relaxation, to sleep.

Someday, Molly thinks, looking in the mirror and holding the blow dryer under her hair, I’ll slice my face and then people will see. I won’t be able to help it. She imagines the drops of blood like tears rolling down her clear cheeks. Then, she thinks, they’ll know all about it. Then they’ll lock me up.

Still looking at herself, she buries her hands in her hair, her fingertips spread out around the crown of her head. Before she knows she is doing it she has sunk her nails into her scalp. Horrified, she snatches her hands away from herself and cries out as though she has seen a spider. But within her fear she feels a soft relief, as though a waterfall of tension has been released from her temples. What is it? she mouths to the mirror. What is wrong? It is opaque to her, but she knows it’s there, formless, behind the mirror, behind her own mind’s front door.

There is no more than the usual traumatic childhood to cause this, Molly thinks to herself, no more than the mundane dysfunction of a hundred thousand other children of this century. Or, she wonders, is what is happening to her genetic, like hemophilia, the disease that makes small boys bleed forever? Or perhaps like multiple sclerosis, lying dormant, striking viciously in young adulthood?

“No.” She says it aloud. Molly does not accept that anything about her could be particularly dramatic. She has never felt destined for either greatness or tragedy, and she thinks she would sense it in her bones somehow if she were. But she does not understand why God or fate or whatever has chosen her from among all her peers, some far more qualified, to manifest her world’s gasps of exhaustion and sadness and abandonment. It’s not that she wants this lot to fall to anyone else — she’s pleased to spare other people pain — but she does wish it didn’t have to fall to her. Suffering is universal, she knows. But she also knows that no one will see her new habit from her point of view.

“I’m scared,” she says to the mirror, “of what they’ll think.” How gradual, she wonders, is madness? What are the symptoms and where are the lines? Her sanity is the only home she has.

She hurries to get out of the house and among people before another urge to lacerate wells up within her. The world is so full of sharp objects.

She’s meeting Sam tonight. Sam is an old boyfriend. Molly likes keeping up with old boyfriends. It makes her feel like a good person to recognize the value and sweetness of men who, for one reason or another, couldn’t stay with her.

The night is cold but dry and Molly is warm enough in her jeans and big turtleneck and ripped sweater. The Touch, the bar where she’s meeting Sam, is right across from the old movie house and next door to a florist, on a block of University that’s full of record stores and bakeries and newsstands. Sunflowers, Christmas roses, holly and mistletoe spill out of the buckets beneath the florist’s awning, and over them drift the carols from the tough old weathered radio by the cash register. “Hark, the herald angels sing! Glory to the newborn king. Peace on Earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled.” Everything is strung with tasteful white lights and this is calming to Molly, the warm glow of the tiny bulbs against the dark blue of the sky.

She gets to The Touch first, sits down, and waits a few minutes. Then there’s a hand on her shoulder and Sammy’s there, all six feet and coppery chestnut hair and square jaw of him. There’s a hug, a kiss on the cheek, a smile. He’s such a guy, she thinks. Just a plain old guy. Being with him is like being in the kitchen of a familiar house, knowing where everything is.

She watches him with real affection while he orders his Buffalo wings. When he looks at the menu and then up at Molly, she flashes back to the way he looked up at her months and months ago, when she was arched over him and her knees were pinning his hips beneath her. While she smiles at him over the table she’s thinking about the first time. They started kissing at seven at night and finally did it at four-thirty the next morning. Molly saw the digital clock next to his bed.

She played those hours over in her head for days, shivering with memory. Now she shivers again remembering the time he rolled off her whispering, “Jesus Christ, girl, Jesus Christ,” and the time she cried when she came beneath him. She remembers the soft fuzz of his chest against her back, the precision of his movements. And she remembers his mouth, with the softest lips she has ever felt, and her own mouth, too. Now Molly thinks of all the places on Sam’s body where her mouth has been, this mouth that is now chatting aimlessly at him.

“What’s up?” she says. She wiggles her toes in her shoes even though he can’t see them because it makes her feel cute and he likes her cute.

He talks about grad school, his new apartment, his dog. Then he clears his throat and says, “I’m in kind of a relationship right now. I met somebody.”

Molly checks his expression. It’s awkward, not self-satisfied. He thought she should know. Well, that’s okay then.

“That’s fine, that’s great,” she says. “I’m happy for you. I hope it works out.”

His face opens up, although he’s flustered. Sammy, the guy who does what he ought to do despite how awkward it makes him feel, like some arcane man of real honor. “Thank you,” he says. Molly reaches for his hand, grabs it, and says, “It’s fine. We had a good time together. It’s okay.” She’s still thinking of his mouth.

“That’s a very nice thing to say,” he fumbles. It’s the most effusive thing he can manage. She’s so proud of him for it. For a second she considers asking him, Do you remember? Do you remember the first time? You were never awkward or uptight when we were doing that. But she doesn’t ask; she knows it would disturb this delicate thread of comfort that is stretched between them.

“Okay, so enough me,” he says. “You. What’s going on?”

Now what can I say? she thinks. If I’m all alone and no one’s watching, she could say, I’ll get this idea. It will surface like a bright little silver fish quietly nosing up through the crevices in my brain. I can ignore it and it will pass. But it will come back.

She has learned that. It will always come back, like Jason in Halloween VII. It won’t go away completely until something is done about it. A tension grows between doing it and not doing it. There are two marble pillars: slicing and not slicing. And between them is a single strand of dental floss, and it winds tighter and tighter around the pillars, thinner and thinner, stretching until it frays and almost breaks, and finally the strain is unbearable, and Molly has to snip it at one end or the other, to get some kind of relief, so she cuts.

Sam orders micro-brewery beer for both of them and as they talk, part of Molly’s brain is far away, trying to figure out this attraction she has to cold, silver edges, why she needs to press them against the translucent skin of her wrists. She understands why medieval doctors thought that leeches would cure illness; if she were to apply them selectively, in the ancient way, maybe they would suck from her body the poisoned element that courses through her. Maybe they would give her relief, let her rest.

She will die of this, this thing that more and more frequently rises and swells within her until it bursts, this thing that eggs her on to cut, that will not leave her in peace until she has drawn blood. She wonders if this is how cancer patients feel when they realize that this disease and no other will be the one to kill them. There is terror, yes, but also the calm of finally knowing.

What would it be like to be Sammy instead? To worry about telling an old girlfriend about a new girlfriend, instead of about being left alone with a set of knives?

Molly tries her hardest to be lively over her beer. She doesn’t want Sam to worry that she’s upset about the girlfriend. She wants him to be relaxed and content. But soon she can’t help feeling quiet. She tells him she’s tired from getting all of her projects in on time. Which is true, she has spent a lot of time at the studio this winter. The order and precision of the architectural models, their elegant structure and the way their joints fit together, seem to calm her. In the last few days, though, she has rushed through her work there, afraid of getting caught with the Exactos. She says she’s also been stressed getting ready for the holidays. She and Liberty are going to have a Christmas dinner with some friends and rent Monty Python’s Life of Brian.

After a while, she says, “I’m fading,” and Sammy says he’ll walk part way home with her. They head out.

They stop at the florist and Sam buys her a sunflower. “What the hell, “ he says as he hands it to her, “I’m a great guy.”

“You are so nice, Sammy,” Molly says. She kisses his cheek. She admires him for his tact, for knowing the perfect thing to give her. Not red roses or mistletoe. That would be weird. That wouldn’t be what he means. He means warm, he means you’re still okay with me, so he gives her a sunflower. Sammy says what he means, simply, and people can understand him.

Sammy, she wants to say to him, why can’t I talk?

“What else are you doing tonight?” Sam asks as they walk on.

“Charlie Brown Christmas is on at seven.”

He nods. “I remember that.”

“How about you?”

“Not much. Wrapping presents, stuff like that.”

At Molly’s corner they hug goodbye and she walks another half block. Then she turns and calls, “Hey, Sammy!” at his retreating back.

“Yeah?”

“Sammy.” She smiles up at him as he walks toward her, at his face, his shining hair, his warm mouth.

What language does that mouth speak? she wonders. It speaks the official language, the one in which the usual emotional business is conducted. It speaks the language of normalcy, while Molly speaks only a pidgin or creole. Not even that, because her language has no other speakers. Some people may understand her, but even among them she knows that each of them is fluent only in his or her own obscure dialect. They share a language common only in its familiarity with shame. And although the language of normalcy is the same everywhere, the language of shame is different for everyone who speaks it.

“Sammy,” she says again. What she wants is to stretch out her arms to him. Oh, hey, Sammy, she wants to say. Teach me to talk like you. We hear the same things but people like you know what they mean and I don’t. I know it looks like I do but I don’t. And I want to so bad. I want to so much that the wanting almost bursts in me and I have to slit my skin open to let it out. Would you take care of me, if you saw the red lines on my arms? Would anyone? We were lovers once, baby, it was so sweet, so fine, and doesn’t that count for something? Can’t you help me? Sammy, I’m so scared. Talk to me. Help me. And Jesus God, don’t leave me alone in the house with all those slick, cruel, beautiful knives.

“Charlie Brown is on pretty soon,” is what comes out. “You want to come back and watch it with me? It’s only half an hour.”

He considers, looks at his watch, shrugs, says, “Sure.”

She turns on all the lights in the house and puts out Christmas candy and chips and salsa and more beer, and the tail end of the news fills the place with sound. She and Sam get a little more buzzed and flirtatious, and just before the special starts Liberty comes home, full of stories of horrible people who have tortured the waiters while she cooks, cooks, cooks all day. She breaks out vodka and cranberry juice.

Sam follows Molly into the kitchen when she goes for more candy. “When are you leaving?” she asks. She means, when is your flight, when are you heading home?

“Tomorrow,” he sighs. “I tried to get out of it.”

“Don’t you want to?” It seems so enviably normal. To go home for Christmas. Sam starts to say something, but stops himself.

“Let’s just leave that alone,” he says. He laughs.

“We didn’t know each other last Christmas,” Molly answers him, then is flustered because she hadn’t meant to say that out loud. It was only a thought that was occurring to her. She didn’t know him last Christmas. She’s never seen him on a birthday, or met him in the company of his family. She’s fucked him every which way from Sunday but come to think of it she doesn’t know him all that well.

He seems to have decided to say what he was going to say, after all. “Do you ever feel,” he says, leaning in close to her, the sweet vodka on his breath, “Like everyone else knows some language that you don’t know, and talks in it, all the time?”

The Charlie Brown music starts so she doesn’t answer him, she doesn’t say, “Oh, baby, I know, I know,” but she thinks it, and they both snap to and run into the living room where Liberty is waiting for them so they won’t miss even a minute. Sam, extra sure of himself on the liquor, plops down between Liberty and Molly in the middle of the couch. They both snuggle up against him. So there he is, beer and vodka and candy canes on the beat-up coffee table in front of him, his arms around two pretty young women. And Molly thinks, well, where’s the harm in that if it gives him some pleasure for an evening? Here we all are, and I’m warm, and I’m safe. So tonight I don’t think I’m going to cut myself up. I don’t think that will happen, and really, isn’t that enough? Can you ask for more? To be safe and warm and cheerful and fairly sure you’re not going to hurt yourself for the next eight hours or so, relatively certain you won’t need to drag knife blades across your wrists? Isn’t that the most that even the healthiest people can have? That’s all you can really want.

It’s a kind and a generous night, and she doesn’t think she’ll feel that usual sinking stone in herself when Sammy leaves and the house is suddenly less lively, and she’s alone in her room. She and Liberty will probably leave the TV on all night for company and get buzzed and maybe stoned and talk about their families and love, about hard times and art and the role of women. The world is full of warmth.

Now the Peanuts are decorating that poor little tree, because all it needed was a little love, and hollering “Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown!” and singing “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing.” They “ooh” their way through it the first time and all stop to take a breath at the exact same moment, every little Peanut cartoon mouth forming a perfect O, just like Molly and Sam and Liberty remember. Then they break, riotously, into the verse. Joyful all ye nations rise, everything’s all right, yes everything’s fine, Molly thinks, and yes Virginia there is a Santa Claus, and everybody get together try to love one another right now, because all you need is love, and merry Christmas, oh, merry Christmas Charlie Brown, and Lucy and Linus and all of you, and God bless us every one, that’s right, she thinks, and fuck you if that’s too sentimental for you. God bless us, every one.

Very early the next morning, as the light turns pale blue, Molly dreams she is at a special screening of a movie. The leading actress is supposed to answer questions after the show, but she won’t; she just stands there on the stage and chatters about nothing. When she finally leaves the theater, Molly chases her outside. A swan flies smoothly overhead with a pale ribbon attached to its foot. Molly catches the ribbon and lowers the swan to her shoulder, and the actress finally turns and listens to her.

“I want to ask you something,” says Molly. She sees the actress’s crow’s feet from the sun, the small imperfections in her beauty.

“I want to know,” she picks up again, “will this always be? Will I always be sick? Do I need a shot of something every morning, like insulin? Do I need a needle in my arm? Can I do anything except prolong my life? Or will I be well?”

The actress answers telepathically, without words.

Molly awakes. She is inhaling and exhaling very fast and her open mouth is dry. She is disturbed, but she is not frightened. She has lost track of the swan.

She can’t remember the actress’ answer to her question. She sits up and examines the tender flesh on the insides of her elbows. How deep, she wonders, is a cut when it needs a stitch? She lies back down, putting her head in the crook of her arm and feeling there the silkiness of her hair.

There are so many things in her life that she wishes hadn’t happened, weren’t real, weren’t part of her memory or anybody else’s. Painful things, humiliating things, hard things, the same as everybody has. But she knows there’s nothing you can do to make it so that those things didn’t happen. Which is the only thing that will help. Sometimes it’s not enough to heal something, you just want the thing not to be. That’s the reason people kill themselves, Molly thinks. To make things that are real no longer real, if only in their own minds, which will never again remember. To go back to long, long ago. Suicide, she realizes now, is just a clumsy attempt at time travel.

Peace on earth and mercy mild.

There is a dictionary across the room, in a stack with all the textbooks and drafting supplies. Molly gets out of bed and sits cross-legged on the floor. She opens the dictionary, so distinguished and courtly with its gilt edges and golden title, and scans the columns, shuffling through the pages, searching, searching, searching, to look up the word “mercy.”