The Christmas Eve Wish

It was a warm early Spring day. It was Monday. School out in two weeks. He was a teacher. He was fifty today. He taught senior English with one Junior class. He has been teaching since he was 25. He stood at his lectern and looked out at the class. Some here and there looked up from their notebooks and their texts, out the three oblong windows, at the warm sunny green grass day outside. Somewhere the sound of a lawn mower was running. Cars gentled by. The zephyrs of childhood beckoned them. They were still ready to be children forever.

The teacher, whose name was Eysman, smiled at them and paused a moment in his note giving. He was tall and not as thin as he once was. He had long, gray hair that extended a bit past his shoulders. He had sad blue eyes. They were the eyes of someone who remembered Christmas Eve. And his being a child, before his bed, kneeling, as every night, and praying. But on Christmas Eve, he bowed his head especially and prayed so secretly, and silently, even he did not know what he had been praying for. This Christmas Eve, that was so close to him, with the snow in drifts outside the windows and the gale winds blowing, promised to break the mould of Christmas morning, with nice gifts and all, but still the disappointment of it's not being what he wanted.

He started talking again, about "Moby Dick" and what the whole thing meant. He did it on autopilot, not aware of what he was saying, but knowing it was the right thing. But a part of his mind noted that he was wearing a soft color yellow short sleeve shirt and tan colored light slacks, which baffled him, as he looked a moment at the class room coat rack, and saw only a few girls' sweaters on it, and one or two boys' jackets. And out the window said anything but Christmas and frosty mornings and happy school freedom for two weeks of pure glory. For him though, it was always lonely. He was a man of shadows and memories. He wondered if he had now gotten lost in them. He wondered how he would make it through this eleven a.m. class—there, he thought, resolutely, I know what period class I'm in and I know that lunch is less than half an hour away.

He saw the back row of the class and thought, my God; it's Judy there. Judy Stone. Tall and slender, with huge black dark eyes that smiled and danced all the time. She was wearing a summer dress, here in winter? which he still thought it was. She was writing down what her teacher said. Her teacher remembering of a sudden that it was he. How are you, Judy? I love your long dark luster hair and your pretty dimpled smile. And oh your long arms and legs are so lovely and tanned. I'm sorry, he wanted to say, and that party, the only one I ever went to, and I danced with you, back in seventh grade, and stepped all over your feet and just was so embarrassed. But you smiled at me and put your hand on mine. And I just about died, Judy. I loved you. Sometimes boys would tell me that you had a crush on me. Me? I spent so many years wanting to say hello to you and would you like to see a movie?

In college, I saw you walking cross the quad. Had no idea you had gone there too. I followed you, trying to say hi to you, trying to be someone you noticed once and somehow through some wonderful miracle actually remembered, and we could have walked to the student union, where we were both heading, and had lunch together.

And there in the front row is Joel. No, it's Alton. No, faces becoming distinct then faded and fast moving and then back to the true face and that was Joel. Hey, Joel, remember me? I loved you, man. You were my soul and my heart and I never got over you. I threw my whole life over for you, because I wanted to, because I looked for you everywhere all those long shadowy years later. And here, here you are. You look as great as ever. Even better than I remembered. Oh I loved your pale lips and your golden thatch hair and you are writing down what I am telling the class. I remember your handwriting. From the poems you used to read to me. And the country lanes we raced down and the songs we loved then, and I wanted to say something, something that would turn everything right, but you ran away—Joel, oh God, you and Judy, you were my salvation and I never told either of you. God, how could I have been so thoughtless and scared?

No. Alton. And back there. Melissa, not Judy. And it's almost summer and school's almost out and Melissa does not have Judy's almond shaped eyes, and Alton's hair is thicker and fuller and more golden than Joel's was, though not that long as Joel's. Alton is from Chicago originally. Melissa's last name is Peacock and she certainly is. And very unlikable and very beautiful in one of those Joan Collins as a child kind of way. The kind of girl Joan Collin's sister, Jackie, probably wrote about. The teacher remembered that, so he was not going loco. And it was a long way from summer. He was fifty today. And he was alone. But like Mr. Chippings, he had his children here. They kept leaving at the end of each term, just like real people, and he smiled at the soft joke, the sad joke of it.

And then as the lawn mower came into view, it was a riding mower, the man on it mowing the crescent of ground under the sparkling sun, one of the maintenance men in his brown school work pants and work shirt and heavy black boots so rocks picked up would bounce off them, the teacher knew what was happening. The faces of children beside him, as he lumbered his dance with Judy, the faces of children also dancing, and kids at the punch bowl of Kool-Aid on this hot Spring night, and the families in charge standing to the sides of the small living room, eating cookies and drinking soft drinks and coffee, and Joel's face circling round about the teacher now, shown in all the colors of the spectrum and the rainbow was Joel and the skies were November and the teacher had been invited to the Haden house for home made soup, which was so delicious, especially with the cold outside. They had also corn bread and apple pie was for dessert. Joel's father was an English teacher. A nice kind easy friendly big bear of a man. Joel sat next to the teacher before he was a teacher, and he was so in love with Joel, as sometimes the family would stop talking, and listen to the chamber music.

It was old music from another era, another century, and he dreamt there and in his own bed and aloneness as well of dancing with Joel to that music in a huge baronial hall in some faraway place like Russia, with snow storms and wintry blusters knocking at the windows and doors, but he and Joel, he and Judy, were safe and he was a fine dancer with him, with here—they wore old fashioned clothes-heavy and brocade-waistcoats for the man and boy and lovely floor sweeping many layered gown of blue diamonds and endless petticoats—he danced with them in soft yellow and brown shadows—the shadows were kind—they said eternity, they said you've made it—that that boy once you praying on Christmas Eve by his bed, is having his wish and it's not a trick or a desertion or turning its back on you and walking away without another word or thought of you, it is now inside you, like the secret snow Conrad Aiken wrote about, and which you read aloud every Christmas Eve to yourself after seeing it dramatized on "Night Gallery" and it broke your heart in half. And it is inside you now, all in you, especially your left arm and it is not fire and it is not scary and it is not lonely, and you think, yes, it's come and it's good for now, good because I can see these children's faces before me. They are good kids. They are kind and respectful and some seem interested in what I teach or try to, he thought.

He saw Judy behind the back row, and Joel with her, and they were the taste of pencils in September start of school, as summer finally ended its doldrums and October promised and usually delivered cold weather, the air conditioner was turned off, and windows in his sun room bedroom were opened, and he had to sleep under sheets and finally as the days got colder and the nights even more so, under a quilt or two, that he grandmother made for him. And then the left side of his chest, around the middle edge of his ribs started throbbing a little. Like a Valentine's Day card delivered late. Or a Christmas present from a good and dear friend that I could keep for when days get sad, like Lionel Bart's OLIVER! sang in the movie the man had fallen in love with the first time he saw it.

He managed to keep talking. Surprised his voice level was as usual. He thought he was not panicked. He saw Judy and Joel coming down the aisles toward him, and he felt a great breathlessness in his lungs—he felt as though he were not hollow exactly, but diffident, netherworldly, very temporary and delicate and of some value at the very end of the thing as he could not really explain, especially now, since he was too busy collapsing onto his right side behind the lectern and the desk, his hand accidentally pulling a book down off the desk with him. He wondered what the book was. He could not remember. He, a man of books, all his life, thought he should have been allowed to know the book he was dying with. A small giving up for the wonders that awaited him.

He heard Judy and felt her shadow and her perfume, the exact kind she wore in high school, that he loved the smell of when she sat next to him in class, he heard her lips say to his ear, "it's okay, Barry; you did really well. People did love you. They did care about you. I will love you forever and never forget," and she kissed his pallid cheek as tears beaded out of his eyes.

He heard Debbie say, "Mr. Eysman!" in terrible shock. She was kneeling beside him. She was dressed in brown shirt and brown skirt and he remembered Jo from college and got confused which person she was. A boy's voice shouted out, as desks were rapidly pushed aside and children came to him, as one boy knelt and pulled out a handkerchief and wiped the perspiration off his teacher's forehead, who was thinking, wait, how can I be sweating this close to Christmas? And the thought, someone ought to turn that radiator down; it's costing a ton of money we don't have. A girl shouted out, "Get Mr. Makin and call 911." He thought for a moment she was talking about 9/11, and then Joel was next to him. Joel with his patented cambric shirt of red and brown and his tough heavy jeans for and heavy brown boots for he was a farm boy knelt beside him, as someone came in the doorway. Some student said, as he or she held Mr. Eysman's head in their lap, their hands cold on his suddenly blistering hot face, "help, Mr. Franklin." Good. The math teacher down the hall. A dependable good man. Mr. Franklin laid the man's head back on the floor, gently, and asked, "Is it your heart? Do you have any pills I can get? What is it I can get you?" Mr. Eysman shook his head or tried to, tried to say, nothing been wrong with my heart, and he thought he was a child again, going with his mother for new school shopping-clothes and notebooks and supplies and his summer friend gone for another whole year and comic books to buy and paperbacks from the news stand and a show in its second season, "The Twilight Zone" which he loved beyond all sanity, and Joel said Autumn in the man's ear and he said it's all forgotten, it never happened, this, the bad things. You really did jump off the Sandias Mountains and said catch me, heart in your throat and here my love I am to catch you.

And some of the students were very frightened. One of the girls was crying. And that made the man ashamed he was dying in front of them. He was as selfish as he had been told all childhood along that he was and he wished he could have apologized. He hadn't meant this. Other children were out of their classes and crowded with teachers interspersed in them in the door and out in the hallway. Mr. Makin in that distinctive toothless mouthed voice said to someone else the ambulance was on the way.

And the man was dying. And it was autumn and spring and summer and winter all at once. Joel took his hand and with no effort at all, easy as eating a blueberry pie and twice as good, tossed his friend out of the school and away from the hot and hotter Spring day and out into a summer that was fully blue skied and young voices and songs all up and down the scales of the day, and the sun was soft and the winds and the warm were intermixed with cool November breezes, this just the first instance of the impossible becoming very possible indeed, and the man once a teacher, the man once the clumsiest dancer in the world, the man who spent his life loving a boy and a girl, but in truth loving the boy more, was in that sky, in those free safe school's out forever zephyrs and he was flying with youth in him again, and no tears in his eyes, and no heart and mind and soul to hurt, finally he was free and laughter bedecked him with golden dust, as he started descending from the skies over the Blue Bell laundry where his grandfather once worked, and perhaps, here, still did, as the descent continued downward—

--as he saw Joel smiling up at him, as he came to land, he for this moment turned into a butterfly, on Joel's left shoulder. And Joel touched him and his wings with such paper child hands delicately as any delicacy could be, and then the boy began to run cross the summer green/November brown lawns and off to the country roads that they ran together as boys, the butterfly perched safely and contentedly on Joel's shoulder, as some old man's body was hefted onto a stretcher as the children looked on, and for a little while, there was memory on all sides.

And he got to be this time out the little bit of lovely colors on Joel's shoulder. He tasted Joel's gold hair and his perspiration, felt that boy heart racing and those boy muscles flexing in and out in phenomenal precision, not for nothing when Joel was in school, he was the champion track runner every year.

And the man now butterfly, soon to be boy again, was rushed into forever by the boy he loved. And the sun was a kind guide, as Joel said, in that whispery soft voice, "I am so glad you're here. So very glad indeed."

And the time of going away was finished. As the boy who once was, said at the end of his Christmas Eve prayer beside his bed, his head bowed so deeply and shivery with anticipation, thank you God, thank you. And finally the great Christmas morning, the boy dreamed about, as he crawled into bed and pulled up the quilts he grandmother had made for him, was now coming true.

"Hey, Joel."

"Hey, Barry."

It was Day One. Begin----