4. Hank
HANK
Itake my Christmas tree search seriously.
Look, the way I see it, you have one chance each year to get a good Christmas tree for your home.
If you pick wrong, then you’re stuck with it all holiday season.
Selecting a tree that isn’t full enough or that’s drying out the second you bring it home?
That’s on you. Ho-ho-horrible decision making on your part.
I don’t want to look at a bad Christmas tree in my living room for a month. The holiday season is meant to bring us joy. So I take my time.
“No good?” Griffin asks me with a knowing sigh. He rubs at his temples.
“The branches are too thin. You can’t hang hardy ornaments on this one. I have an ornament in the shape of Homer Simpson’s head. It’s going to slide right off.” I walk around the Christmas tree in question, the fifth one I’ve checked out so far today, quickly cataloguing its many faults.
“I think I’m close to a beheading myself,” Griffin grumbles.
I’ve known Griffin since high school, when we were back-to-back hockey champions, me on goal and Griffin as a brick wall of defense.
We reconnected recently when a few former teammates started a team, affectionately named the Comebacks, in a recreational beer league.
In all the years I’ve known him, Griffdog has never been a cheerful person per se, but even by his standards, he’s extra grumpy this morning. It’s okay. I still love him.
“What about this one?” He points to a perfectly fine tree, but…
“This one…it screams ‘tree,’ not ‘Tannenbaum.’”
“Hank, you said you needed help hauling your tree home. I didn’t know it was going to be a beauty pageant process first.” Griffin gulps his coffee. “Where’s Brody? Don’t you guys usually do this together?”
“Brody couldn’t make it. He’s hanging out with some friends.
” This is the first year we aren’t picking out a tree together.
He used to be so excited, making a checklist of different criteria.
Watching your kid go from wanting to be your shadow to wanting to hang with his own friends is a heartbreaking kind of torture that I’m still adjusting to.
Brody has had trouble making friends, so I want him to enjoy today.
I was a social butterfly in high school.
Still am. I love mixing it up with people.
My son is more introverted, yet another way we share roots but our branches grew in opposite directions.
And soon, our branches could be on opposite sides of the country.
Will he ever come home for Christmas again once he’s in California? I can’t help but wonder if he’s been dying to get away from me for years, counting down the days until he escapes his dimwitted dad.
“I can’t believe he’s all grown up,” Griffin says.
“It’s weird…you’ll know the feeling when your girls are grown.” Griffin has two daughters in elementary school. He may project the image of tough, scary hockey player, but underneath, he becomes instant putty around his girls. I’ve seen the man rock an Elsa dress and tiara.
“Let’s go to the next row. I feel some quality trees calling to me.” I rub my hands and zip around the corner.
“I’ve giving you three more trees, and then I’m leaving.
” Griffin squeezes his bloodshot right eye shut and rubs at his temples again.
What makes him look so intimidating isn’t just his big, burly frame and thick beard.
It’s the patch over his left eye, remnants of a brutal hockey incident in high school.
“Are you doing okay, Griffdog? Don’t take this the wrong way, but you look like shit.”
“Thank you,” he deadpans. A yawn rips out of him. “I went to a concert with Jack last night. The main act didn’t go on until eleven.”
Jack is the captain of the Blades, our rival team in the league. He used to play professionally. Originally, he and Griffin hated each other, but then they decided to convert all that rancor into passionate hate sex, and the rest is relationship history. Now they’re a disgustingly cute couple.
I do a double take. “Eleven PM? Jesus, did they get lost?”
“We didn’t get home until three. And I was up at six.”
“Why?”
“Muscle memory. That’s when the girls get up. They’re at Carmen’s this week.”
I get tired just thinking about Griffin’s last twenty-four hours. “Why do they make concerts start so late? What’s wrong with a seven p.m. start time? You’re home by ten, in bed by ten-thirty.”
“Never used to be a problem for us. I once went to an all-night house party then worked a shift the next day.”
I get even more tired thinking of that, even though that used to be me, too. Tons of partying, barely any sleeping. Throw in a case of chlamydia, and I don’t know how anyone survives their twenties.
“That’s what you get for dating a twentysomething.” There’s a twenty-year age gap between Griffin and Jack. Despite Jack being a generation younger than us, we all get along great. He fits right into our group. Sure, he’s never seen Titanic and doesn’t know what Fruitopia is, but pobody’s nerfect.
I stroll up the new row and examine the first tree on my left. It has good depth and coloring, but the branches seem to twist in odd directions. I’m not vibing with it.
“Jack really wanted to see this band. We haven’t had a date night in a few weeks,” Griffin says. “He’s wonderful with Annabelle and June, but he doesn’t want to do the dad thing all the time. He’s young. He wants to go out.” Griffin yawns. “With his boyfriend.”
“His boyfriend looks freaking exhausted.” I march a few trees down to a promising contender, but up close, the needles are too light a shade of green.
Christmas trees require dark green. Light green is for Easter.
I don’t make the rules. “Isn’t there another date night you can do?
They just opened up a pickleball place by the highway. ”
“Jack doesn’t want to play pickleball with his boyfriend. He wants to party.”
“And you want to take a nap.”
“A nap sounds so good right now.” Griffin sighs, a different kind of wariness in his eyes. “I don’t want to remind him that he’s dating a guy twenty years older than him. I don’t want him thinking that he’s wasting his life with me.”
“He’s not,” I say with all the confidence Griffin can’t seem to muster. But his words also make me think of what Cathy said the other night about our marriage. “Jack loves you. You survived one long night. I’m sure parts of it were fun, right?”
“The music was decent. Loud, but decent.”
“Next time, you can bring ear plugs. Ah, this is the one.” I walk up to a beauty of a tree. Lush, the right shade of green, full branches. They say when you know, you know. Usually, they’re talking about soulmates, something I don’t have experience with. But I do know Christmas trees.
“It’s a good one,” Griffin says, acknowledging my decision making prowess. Not all beauty pageants are bad.
Fifteen minutes later, we’re walking down Sourwood’s main street with the rope-tied monster between us.
Griffin’s got the front end like it weighs nothing.
I’ve got the back end, which is apparently where all the weight and vengeance of nature lives.
I hold it like I’m a cameraman following a TV reporter.
The stump bears down on my shoulder, sticking out behind me. The tree sheds needles into my jacket. One branch keeps poking me in the chin like it’s personal.
“Grip higher,” Griffin says over his shoulder.
“I am gripping higher,” I say. “The tree keeps changing its mind.”
The street is packed. Holiday shoppers, kids with candy canes, couples holding hands, someone playing a trumpet version of “Jingle Bells.”
I adjust my grip, the trunk slipping just enough to make my arms burn.
“I feel it slipping,” Griffin says.
“I have it. Mostly.”
“Mostly?”
In that moment, I swear I hear my name, someone calling after me. I run into friends and acquaintances in downtown Sourwood all the time.
I turn my head. And apparently my body, too.
The tree swings. Not a lot. Just enough for the stump to clock a guy square in the face.
Shit.
There’s a very undignified oof, followed by a yelp, followed by the sound of a human body losing a fight with gravity.
He goes down backward—right into a slushy pile of snow and salt. I make out a fleece jacket and pair of dark jeans immediately getting subsumed in the gross post-wintry mix.
I drop my end immediately, the tree thudding to the ground as I scramble forward.
“Oh my god,” I say. “I am so sorry. Are you okay? Are you missing any teeth?”
The guy sits up, blinking, clothes equal parts wet and dirty, his dark hair and neatly trimmed beard dusted white.
In the middle of his forehead is a big red mark from the stump.
Nature’s version of Ash Wednesday. No bleeding, luckily.
His cheeks are flushed—either from cold or from being assaulted by Christmas foliage.
He shakes his head and rubs at the mark. That’s when his gaze meets mine.
Two dark ocean blue eyes blink at me, and like many a garbage disposal I’ve installed, they pull me right in.
He offers an awkward smile that shows off red, full lips and gleaming teeth.
His whole face should come with a warning label.
Do not even attempt to operate heavy machinery around a face this gorgeous.
The 20 percent of me that’s bisexual stands at attention.
I came looking for the most beautiful Christmas tree, and instead I might’ve found the most beautiful man.
I just hope I didn’t give him long-term brain damage.