A little Christmas story

You know the kind: the types who shop at places like Organic World when Everyman grocery store is right around the corner; the types who order coffee nonfat, no foam, and request that the unassuming barista let the cup stand for five minutes so they don’t burn their precious tongues; the types who take such care of their tongues because they go wine tasting with their slick-haired fiancés on weekends; the types who have self-cleaning litter boxes for their diamond-stud-collared cats; the types who have their chiropractors on speed-dial; the types who consider valet a prerequisite rather than a burden; the types who write letters to their city councils because someone had the audacity to put such low-income establishments as Supercuts and Target within the sacred ten-mile-radius of their Beaver Cleaver homes; the types who sleep with blindfolds over their eyes; the types who don’t pump their own gas; the types who have velveteen workout suits with matching shoes they call “tennies”; the types who take in 19-year-old women from Mexico as nannies; the types who mispronounce the names of those nannies―Lupes become “Loops” ―and insult them by saying “co-mo-es-tas” so slow that the implication is that the nanny is either deaf or retarded; the types who eat pigs-in-blankets; the types who download classical music for their cell phone ring; the types who go to the theater and applaud by tapping two fingers against their palm; the types who have memberships to country clubs; the types who have yoga mats in three different colors; the types who subscribe to Tennis Weekly, Gourmet, and Martha Stewart Living; the types who follow rules like “don’t wear white after Labor Day.”

You know the kind.

Mom, Dad, Sister, and I climb into the old mini-van, disgraceful by yuppie standards. We’re wearing elf costumes, as we have been instructed. Christmas Eve and they, the yuppies, are hiring a Santa Claus to surprise their three children, two of whom I’m sure don’t believe in Santa Claus anymore, but, hell, won’t it make for cute pictures?

Even my father is wearing the white tights and red puffy pants. He bobs his head as we listen to the same Christmas compilation tape we listen to every year. When that stupid “partridge-in-a-pear-tree” song comes on, he sings along, thinking he’s a world famous tenor every time he gets to the “five golden rings” part. He did the same thing at the Hollywood Bowl, when the orchestra played the score to the “Sound of Music”; the hills were alive with my father thinking he was Elton John. Still, I’ll overlook that and fully blame the costume, the yuppies, for the fact that my father seems gay.

We’re not allowed to park the van on the driveway because, occasionally, it leaks oil and, don’t we understand how ugly that is? They have a security gate, as all yuppies do. About three-feet high. Apparently protecting their family from the criminal midgets who prowl the streets of Beverly Hills at night. The gate is open, the driveway empty before us. I see Dad’s eyes, hopeful and rebellious. He steps on the gas.

“Dad, we can’t park in the driveway.”

“They won’t care. It’s Christmas.”

And he goes on singing.

I see Yuppie Aunt sitting inside on the pillow-covered seat underneath the bay window, like a model in a J. Crew catalogue. She peers out at us, waving in that annoying way―using both hands, her fingers flapping against her palms. She scurries toward the door and comes outside, prancing in red high heels, likely purchased with the expressed goal of “being festive.”

“Are her boobs bigger?” Sister blurts out.

“Probably from nursing,” Mom says.

“Isn’t the baby two years old now?”

She approaches the car and taps her acrylic nails―painted red with little Christmas trees on them―on the window. Dad rolls down the window, allowing her Calvin Klein perfume to infiltrate.

“Merry Christmas everyone,” she says. “You know, Santa is going to need the driveway tonight.”

She winks with such exaggeration that I can see the clumps of mascara on her lashes.

Dad rolls up the window, and puts the car in reverse, defeated.

“Does she know the reindeer are gonna shit all over?” I ask.

We go inside and are nearly blinded by the lights on a twenty-foot-tall tree in the living room. There are boxes wrapped in big ribbons and shiny paper, placed strategically around the entry way. I pick up one―it’s light ―and shake it around―it’s empty.

“I just had Loop wrap some boxes for decoration. Isn’t it divine?” she says. “And Loop’s husband helped us put up the tree.” We smile and nod. She leans over to Mom and says, “Don’t worry, I gave her a Christmas bonus.” For yuppies, that’s charity. They probably write it off on their taxes.

She ushers us into the family room. Yuppies cling desperately to the difference between living rooms and family rooms. Living rooms are for grand pianos and bookcases of classic novels never read, only used as weights when toning arms while watching TV in the family room.

“Look, children, Santa’s elves are here!”

There they are―the future yuppies, the little beasts, the twin five-year-old boys dressed in red sweaters and tan khakis, like they just returned from a day on the fairways, the little girl in a white dress, red and green ribbons in her hair. The little girl starts crying. I should be compassionate―my eyes are watery looking at my father in white tights too―but I’m not. This child pukes on me every time I go near her. I see beyond her obvious desires for pureed bananas and clean diapers. I see inside, to the evil.

She’s just standing there, on her still-unstable legs, crying her eyes out, staring at me, likely calling forth vomit to expel upon me.

“Loop! Loop!” Yuppie Aunt calls.

A petite Mexican girl comes on the scene. They keep her in a little closet of a bedroom behind the laundry room. They have a laundry room, per yuppie protocol. The nanny takes the child back there.

“We’ll bring her back out when Santa comes,” Yuppie Aunt says, as if we were all so concerned.

The twin boys run around, playing with their remote control cars―a Red Mustang and a White Mustang.

“We think we’re going to get cars to match the boys’ cars,” Yuppie Uncle says.  I laugh―har har―but he doesn’t.  Because he’s not kidding.

“Time to trade in the Beamer?” Sister asks, with a sarcasm that makes me proud.

“Do you think we should?” Yuppie Aunt asks, coming to sit next to Sister and I, thinking that we are inviting some sort of heartfelt conversation with her. About their Beamer.

She nuzzles up against me and I eye the table of food and beverages in the kitchen, arranged and prepared by Loop. There is a bottle of wine next to a plate of cheese and crackers. Wine. My savior. I feel slightly guilty thinking this, being that I am staring at a plastic version of the baby Jesus in the nativity scene staged in front of their fireplace.  Then again, how is a plastic baby Jesus going to save me? I stand to get a glass of wine. Yuppie Aunt stops me. She grabs me by my red puffy pants and pinches my thigh.

“You are so thin,” she says, enviously. “I don’t see why you don’t have a boyfriend. Your look is so in.”

I consider telling her about the construction worker who heckled me a few days back, saying, “Hey baby, the meat’s sweeter closer to the bone.” He could be my boyfriend. But, before I can get a word in, she launches into the explanation of her current diet plan.

“But you’re thin,” I say, making the mistake of talking to a yuppie logically.

“My personal trainer says I’m a fat skinny person.”

She whispers this part—the shameful, oxymoronic diagnosis.

“What does that mean?” Mom asks.

Yuppie Aunt untucks her blouse.

“This is what it means,” she says, revealing her stomach.

We stare.

“I don’t see anything,” Mom says.

“You have an outie,” Sister says.

Yuppie Aunt starts pinching what she calls “the flab.”

“I can pinch way more than in inch,” she says, distressed.

“The personal trainer says there’s hope for her,” Yuppie Uncle chimes in. She nods in agreement, with a sullenness reserved for cancer patients.

Before I can offer my own heartfelt condolences, along with a suggestion that she stop popping out little brats if she really cares about her “flab,” there’s a “ho, ho, ho” at the door. Yuppie Aunt calls, “Loop, Loop, Loop” and the petite Mexican girl comes running with the baby in her arms, still crying. Yuppie Aunt and Yuppie Uncle position the children near the manger as the Santa Claus makes his way into the family room.  He is swimming in his Santa suit.

“Looks like he lost a few since we were kids,” I whisper to Sister.

“Must have the same personal trainer.”

It appears he has one of those practice-for-pregnancy bean-bag bellies strapped on underneath his red coat. So, I wouldn’t describe him as “jolly”; I would describe him as “expecting.” As he comes closer, I see that he is just a kid—twenty-something, like me. His eyes are glossed over and vacant. He is stoned. Maybe drunk too. But definitely stoned.

Dad skips over to take command of the big red bag slung over stoned Santa’s shoulder. Yes, Dad skips. It’s apparently a slippery slope with the white tights involved.

“Merry Christmas,” stoned Santa says slowly. He gives the word “merry” four syllables. He starts itching his face, where the elastic band of the beard is cutting into his chin. The little future yuppies run up to him and fight over who gets to sit on his deceptively-boney knee first.

“One at a time, children,” Yuppie Aunt says. “Remember what Barney says about taking turns?”

Yuppies instill values via big purple dinosaurs.

The little girl starts bawling and the boys decide to stomp on each other’s toy Mustangs while fighting over who gets to sit on Santa first. Yuppie Uncle tells stoned Santa to wait outside for a moment. He slings the red sack over his shoulder, says “peace,” and walks through the French double doors with a surfer-boy saunter that defies the whole myth of his North Pole residence. I follow him because he may have weed.

Stoned Santa and I sit on the tennis court. Yuppies have tennis courts, regardless of whether or not they play, or have ever played, tennis. They have gazebos too, and spas, and right-out-of-a-Parisian-park benches.

“And what do you want for Christmas?” he says to me.

“I want whatever is making you so damn merry.”

 He laughs―giggles―the way stoners do and reaches into his red sack. He takes out a toy fire truck―intricately detailed, the kind in the glass case by the register at Toys R Us―and sets it in my lap.

I look at him like he’s crazy, taking his Santa job too seriously by embracing the belief that plastic toys created for yuppie children can bring true merriment.

“Look in the driver’s seat,” he says.

I open the door of the model truck―it has its own latch―and there, where the fire captain should be, is a joint, wearing a little, yellow hard hat.

“I need a light,” I say, twirling the joint between two fingers.

“Ask Santa nicely,” he says. “Sit on his knee.”

I hop on his knee, knowing full well that this is what he wants: a girl on his knee, leaning against his chest, tilting her head up to his face, warming his ear with her breath.

“Santa, I just want a little light,” I whisper.

“I suppose that’s all anyone wants on Christmas.”