Henry
“Wow, we really need to work on your booty texts,” says Grace.
“No voice texting tonight?” I ask.
“Nah. I’m opting for voice voicing. Old-school.”
“I thought about that after I hit Send, by the way. If that had been a booty text, it would’ve been a pretty lame one.”
“You never know,” she says. “People are into all kinds of things. And, yes, I have seen A Charlie Brown Christmas. The sad little tree, right?”
“That’s the one.”
I brace for cynicism. After all, even the best holiday movies—or in this case, one-off holiday TV classics—are ridiculous. They’re overly sentimental. They prey on our most basic emotions. They’re a promise made by fiction that reality can’t keep. Grace, though, is quiet.
“What?” I say. “You’re not gonna rip on it? Tell me I’ve been wrong all these years for loving it?”
“Absolutely not. It’s A Charlie Brown Christmas, Henry. It’s perfect.”
“Whew,” I say.
“My sister and I used to watch it together,” she says. “It always came on with the Rudolph special.”
“That’s right. The Grinch cartoon, too, and Frosty the Snowman. Two hours of pure joy.”
“Tim could do the Grinch voice, like the guy in the song.” She sings now, “You’re a mean one, Mr. Grinch.”
“That’s pretty good.”
“It sounded better when he did it.”
“Our first Christmas tree was utterly pathetic,” I say. “Brynn’s and mine. Just like the one in Charlie Brown. We found it on this sketchy lot in Canton. She said it’d be funny if we got it, like an homage. I think she just felt sorry for it.”
“Aww,” Grace says. Then, after a pause, she says, “Fucking Christmas, right?”
“Right.”
We’re quiet. I’m thinking of Brynn sitting cross-legged on the floor in our row house beside our sad little tree. I assume Grace is working through something equally depressing.
“You wanna watch it?” I ask.
“Now?” she says. “It’s late. Then again, time is a meaningless construct.”
“Do you have Prime?” I ask.
“You think I’m gonna pay for shipping like a chump?”
There’s probably an easier way to do it—some screen-sharing app or IT wizardry—but the only thing we can come up with is to both order A Charlie Brown Christmas and push Play simultaneously. First, though, we each get a drink: a Jack Daniels and Diet Dr Pepper for me and a beer for Grace.
“You’re the most random drinker I’ve ever met,” she says. “Diet Dr Pepper isn’t a mixer, you dork.”
I tell her anything’s a mixer if you’re brave, then I say, “On three. One, t—”
“Wait. Does that mean we push Play at the exact second you say three or right after? It’ll be annoying if we’re half a second off.”
“Will it?”
“Oh, it will,” she says. “If we’re doing this, let’s do it right.”
“Fine,” I say. “Our fingers should push Play as I say three. Cool?”
“Agreed. Go.”
“One, two…three.”
The opening scene fades in. I can hear it both from my flat-screen and through my phone, somehow synced perfectly. “Shit,” I say. “We did it.”
“My god, that piano,” she says.
Along with the famous piano score intro, a choir of children sings “Christmas Time Is Here,” and it’s soothing and melancholy. The Peanuts gang skate together in a tight little clump.
“We just time traveled to my youth,” says Grace.
Brynn and I watched this together once, that first year in our house, but it wasn’t part of our annual rotation, so seeing it now reminds me less of her and more of being a kid.
Charlie Brown and Linus walk through their snowy little town.
“No one ever talks about this,” I say, “but Charlie Brown was, what, ten? Poor kid had the worst male-pattern baldness I’ve ever seen.”
“He’d so get plugs now,” Grace says, laughing. “Okay, shut up, they’re talking.”
Charlie Brown and Linus stop at a brick wall. “Christmas is coming,” Charlie Brown says, “but I’m not happy. I don’t feel the way I’m supposed to feel.”
“Join the club, kid,” says Grace.
“Wow,” I say. “I forgot that’s how it starts.”
“Henry, are…are we Charlie Brown?”
“I think we might be.”
Linus tells Charlie Brown that he’s the only person he knows who can take a wonderful season like Christmas and turn it into a problem.
“Shut up, Linus,” I say.
“Right? Hasn’t he ever heard of the stages of grief?”
We chat as the show plays, randomly quieting down at times to watch, particularly when Snoopy is on the screen because there’s just something wonderful about that dog.
“How did you and Brynn meet?” Grace asks.
“Um.”
“Come on,” she says. “I like hearing about how couples meet.”
I tell her that we worked together—that she was a media buyer, and I was a creative.
“So, what, you lurked, pining, then you finally got the guts to ask her out?”
“Well, the first part of that’s true,” I say. “But she asked me out, actually. Kind of. It’s hard to explain.”
On my TV, the Peanuts characters do their funny little dance while Charlie Brown tries to get them to rehearse for the Christmas play.
“Give it a try,” she says. “I’ve got time.”
“Well, this is gonna sound made up, but it happened immediately after a company-wide sexual harassment workshop.”
Grace laughs. “Okay, good start.”
“There were all these high-profile creeps in the news, so HR was being proactive. It was fine, typical corporate stuff. Ironically—you know, because of the subject matter—I kept checking her out the whole time. She just…she just really looked good that day.”
“Yeah?” Grace says.
I think of Brynn in a skirt and blue sweater sitting with the media team. She was hunched a little with her arms crossed because it was always freezing in the big conference room.
“There was a happy hour afterward at Little Havana on Key Highway.”
“Smart,” says Grace. “Nothing helps co-workers avoid sexual maleficence like liquor and tacos.”
“I was up at the bar with my friend from work, Win,” I say. “Suddenly, I realized I was like five feet away from her. She was talking to a woman from accounting about, I don’t know, Excel or something. When they paused, I jumped in.”
“What was your opening line?” Grace asks.
“I said, ‘So, how are things in the Media Department?’ ”
“Hot,” says Grace. “Did she throw her underwear at you right away, or…?”
“Stop it,” I say. “She said things were fine and we talked about calculating costs per thousand, which is a thing in advertising.”
“I’m just gonna take a nap really quick, if that’s cool,” says Grace.
“It gets better, I promise. So, I asked her if she enjoyed the workshop. And she said it was okay as far as mandatory corporate things went. But then she said, ‘Actually, I found it useful.’ ”
“Okay,” says Grace, “I’m listening again.”
“She said it was good to know the dos and don’ts.
Like how things get tricky if one person works for the other, or if one person has authority over the other person.
I didn’t realize what she was getting at because I’m an idiot.
But then she kinda eased off her barstool so we were face-to-face.
Then she said, ‘Fortunately for you and me, our departments have nothing to do with each other. So, if you were to ask me out, I wouldn’t have to report you.
You know, unless you got all handsy about it. ’ ”
Grace gasps. “Oh my god, no way.”
“Yep.”
“Okay, now that’s hot. Go, Brynn!”
We laugh, and I realize it’s the first time I’ve thought of Brynn and smiled since she died. Until now, everything has just made me sad.
The tree scene starts and even though I’m not talking, Grace tells me to shut up again. Charlie Brown picks the smallest tree on the lot. When he takes it back to his friends they’re cruel and call him names.
“Those little shits,” says Grace.
“It’s okay,” I say. “I have it on good authority that it all works out.”
“Yeah, I know,” she says, “but I’d love to see a reboot where Charlie Brown tells them all to shove that little tree up their asses.”
“Bend over and I’ll show you,” I say.
Grace laughs. “What?”
“Nothing. It’s a line from Christmas Vacation.”
“Ah,” she says. “Men do know that constantly quoting movies is super sexy and not at all annoying, right?”
“Keep the change, you filthy animal,” I tell her.
“Oh god,” she says. “Wait, that’s from Home Alone, right?”
“Good catch.”
Things do work out in the end for Charlie Brown, like always, and Grace and I watch it happen quietly. The credits roll, and I say, “Okay, your turn.”
“My turn to what?”
“How’d you and Tim meet?”
She’s quiet for a moment, remembering.
“Also work,” she says. “Back when I was head bartender. I was working. He was drinking. Sparks flew.”
“Wait, hitting on female bartenders actually works?” I ask.
“He didn’t hit on me hit on me. He…he was nice. He was with some friends watching a Ravens game, and he kept trying to talk to me even though we were slammed.”
I walk to the fridge for another Jack and Diet Dr Pepper.
“Guys were always trying to talk to me,” she says.
“Occupational hazard. I was good at brushing them off, and I brushed him off at first, but then I realized how sweet he was. When the game was over, he lingered while he settled his tab. He told me his name, even though I already knew it because I had his credit card. When I told him my name, he said that it made sense because I was a thing of grace.”
“Damn,” I say. “Better than my line.”
“Yeah, it was pretty good,” she says. “I mean I’m not, obviously. You know, graceful. It’s like my parents were going for irony when they named me. It was nice to hear, though, so I gave him the look.”
I’m back on the couch now. Prime is asking if I want to watch It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. “The look?”
“Yeah,” she says. “It’s this look I used to give guys when I was interested, sort of a green-light-to-engage kinda thing.”
“Really? What was it? I mean, what did it…entail?”
“Combination of things,” she says. “Slight lip bite, half smile, exactly one second of full, devastating eye contact.”
“Oh. Interesting. It worked then, I take it?”
She scoffs. “It never didn’t, Henry.”
“Can…” I stop, shy suddenly. “I’m curious now.”
“You wanna see it, don’t you?”
“Well…”
She sighs. “Ugh, fine. If this has been one long ruse, though, I’m not showing you my boobs.”
“Duly noted,” I say.
“Okay, here, I’ll FaceTime you. Warning, I’m dressed like a lady who’s about to fall asleep at a bus station.”
My phone makes a sound I don’t recognize because no one ever FaceTimes me, and then I see Grace. Her hair is pulled up into a roundish mass at the top of her head. Her eyes are a little puffy, like maybe she cried earlier.
“Hey,” she says.
“Hi.”
Harry Styles is asleep beside her, which is when I realize where she is. “Oh,” I say, “you’re in…”
“What?” she asks. “Bed? True. This is where I sleep, you know, when I’m not out fighting crime.”
I suffer another wave of shyness—I’m seeing Grace in bed. She sits up, though, like it’s nothing. “You ready?” she asks.
“I think so.”
“Okay. Beware, though, I’m gonna be coming in pretty hot.”
I tell her that I’m fully prepared, and it strikes me that I’m a little nervous. Her face looks so close to the screen, and I see in the corner of my phone that to her my face must look close, too, like we’re just inches apart.
She lowers her gaze. “Okay, so I was looking down, right, at his bill. I had to play it off like I was arranging the pen on the little pad. Then I looked up at him like this.”
I watch as Grace does exactly as described.
The bite is just enough to slightly change the angle of her lower lip.
She smiles next, subtle at the corners of her mouth.
She must be looking at the little camera dot on her phone because it’s like she’s staring into my eyes.
The sum of these parts makes me skip a breath.
After a long second, she breaks character and settles back onto her pillow.
It takes me a second to say something, because I’m stuck mid-swallow, like I’ve forgotten how my mouth works. “Wow,” I say. “Holy shit.”
“You like?” she asks. “My secret weapon when I was younger.”
“I can see why it worked.”
She’s tired again—slowing, slumping—like right before she zonked out during The Family Stone.
“Hey, what are you doing tomorrow at nine a.m.?” she asks.
I go over my typical morning routine in my head. Wake up. Walk to get coffee. Stare at animatronic Santa for a few minutes. Watch The View. “I’m pretty open, why?”
“Do you wanna go running and screaming with me?”
“What’s that?”
She keeps her phone pointed at herself as she rolls onto her side and lays her head on her pillow. “It’s when I jog at Lake Roland for like a mile and a half and then scream into a man-made waterfall.”
“Oh,” I say. “So, it’s literally running and screaming.”
“It is. There’s not much subtext with me, Henry.”
“I’m beginning to see that.”
“I read about it on my website for sad people,” she says. “The rush of endorphins followed by the release from screaming is surprisingly therapeutic. I’ve done it twice.”
“Okay, yeah. I’m in.”
Her eyes are at a full droop now. She tells me she’ll text me the address and that I should stretch first, and I tell her that I haven’t stretched since junior high rec league basketball.
“See ya, Henry.”
“Good night, Grace.”