The truth was, over the last few years Brendan had become an expert at forgetting about Christmas. A few days after the start of the Official Holiday Shopping Season, the ubiquitous background soundtrack of "Silver Bells" and "Silent Night" and "Christmas at K-Mart" had diminished to nothing more than a very faint whining echo in his ears, choir boys and rampaging reindeer and Bing Crosby relegated to that same mental dungeon where he banned homeless people on the Metro, magazine ads for starving children, stray cats, and junkies nodding out at Dupont Circle. It didn't snow, so a whole gauntlet of joyfully shrieking kids on sleds or snowboards or big pieces of cardboard could be avoided. But it was cold, that frigid dank D.C. cold that seeped into your pores and filled the newcasts with reports of homeless people freezing in alleys and cars stalling on the Beltway on their daily exodus to the sprawl.

It sure didn't feel like Christmas to Brendan Keegan. But then, he'd been successfully inoculated against the holiday two years ago, right about the time they'd been busy playing that popular parlor game, What's Wrong With Our Baby? Peter had been a toddler that December, and it was Christmas that had finally triggered Brendan's realization that something was wrong.

"Hey, what do you think of this tree, huh, Peter? What do you think, is this the greatest tree ever or what?"

It was a beautiful tree, a blue spruce that had set Brendan back almost a hundred bucks; but hey, what was Christmas for? There were presents hidden away that he'd bought back when Teri first told him she was pregnant, a baseball mitt and football helmet, plush Redskins mascot and oversized jersey, copies of Winnie-the-Pooh and The Hobbit and a videotape of The March of the Wooden Soldiers that his cousin Kevin had given him. Most of the presents were still too old for Peter, he knew that; but he also knew that this was the age when kids started getting into tearing off the wrapping paper and gazing at Christmas ornaments and stuff like that. A sort of synaesthetic experience of Christmas; and Brendan wanted to be right there, video cam in hand, when Peter got his first look at a real Christmas tree, his very own real Christmas tree.

Well, Brendan was there, all right, and he got it all down on tape. A few months later, playing it back for doctors and psychiatrists and a few close family members, it amazed Brendan that he hadn't grabbed Peter and driven directly to GW Hospital.

Because what the tape showed was a fantastically decorated tree, branches drooping beneath the weight of popcorn strings and cranberry strands, Shiny Brite balls salvaged from Brendan's own childhood, hand-carved wooden Santas from a shop in Georgetown, and, most wonderful of all, an entire North Pole's worth of fabulous glass ornaments from Poland—clowns and dragons, cathedrals and polar bears, banana-nosed Puncinellos and one vaguely ominous St. Nick. Eileen and Teri had spent hours hanging baubles and carefully hiding each tiny bulb so only its glow was seen, magically, from within the secret forest of dusky blue-green needles.

"Close your eyes!" Teri had cried, covering his face with her hand as she led him into the room. "Now—"

When Brendan saw the tree, he got gooseflesh: that atavistic sense of looking down some endless tunnel, past the window displays at Mazza Gallerie, past the Cratchit children exclaiming over the plum pudding, past the manger and the Romans and the circled stones: all the way back to a forest clearing and falling snow, cold flung against his limbs and the unspeakable wonder of flames leaping beneath an evergreen. He blinked back tears, touched Eileen and Teri each on the arm and mumbled something about incredible, amazing, beautiful; and bent to scoop up his son.

"Look, Peter, look—"

But Peter wouldn't look. His gaze shifted, then his head, and finally his whole body, so that no matter how Brendan turned and twisted, trying to hold Peter so he could have the perfect view of the perfect tree—no matter what he did, his son would not look. It was as though the tree did not exist. Indeed, the more Brendan tried to direct his gaze, the more his son struggled, until he was thrashing in his father's arms, making those soft nnnhh nnnhh sounds that, so far, were his only efforts at speech.

"Look, honey, see where Daddy is? Look! Look at the pretty Christmas tree! See where Aunt Eileen is pointing—look at the bird! You like birds—look, look!"

Look. They had played the tape for Dr. Larriday, after she observed Peter in her office. Waiting for her comments, Brendan and Teri held hands so tightly that Brendan's knuckles ached for two days. For hours they perched at the edge of the precipice, the doctor's diagnostic terms whizzing past them like stones—

Lack of affect

Little receptive language

Little or no eye contact

Impaired motor skills

Ritual behavior

Failure to speak

Morbid fear of change in routine

Peter had struggled and screamed in his father's arms while Dr. Larriday went down her list. Finally he had fallen asleep. They had brought an evaluation from their family physician, along with seven hours of videotaped footage of Peter—Peter crying, Peter sleeping, Peter crawling on his knuckles and toes, Peter obsessively pulling himself up and down, up and down, on the edge of his crib. Peter stacking one block on top of a second—clumsily, the wooden pieces flying from his unwieldy grip between pinkie and thumb. Peter sitting in front of the glass door, moving his head back and forth, back and forth, watching the flicker of movement from the corner of his eye. Hours and hours of tape; but Dr. Larriday was most interested in the earliest one, the Christmas tape.

"Let's see what we have—"

And there it was, glistening branches blocked by Brendan's struggling figure as he crossed and recrossed the living room, towheaded child screaming in his arms. Even now, almost three years later, Brendan couldn't bear to think of that tree; any Christmas tree. Because watching the tape again in Dr. Larriday's office that July afternoon, it was apparent that Peter had not been ignoring the tree.

He was avoiding it. He was terrified of it.

Morbid fear of change in routine …

Teri had wept, sobbing until the words were lost. "Oh, Christ, how could we—I mean, look at him, it looks like he's being tortured …"

Dr. Larriday looked, and took notes. Brendan stared straight ahead, his sleeping child in his lap, Peter's damp face pressed against his arm and his own tears falling, unheeded, onto his son's cheek.

That was the end of Christmas for Brendan. The end of everything, really—his marriage, his dream of himself as a father, his dream of a child. Oh, he still did everything he was supposed to, buying presents for Peter, encouraging him to open them under the small artificial tree at Teri's house, its sparse aluminum branches threaded with a few red plastic balls. Opening the presents for Peter, when he showed no interest in them himself; following the behavioral therapists's directives as to modeling play behavior with the new blocks and games and trucks.

But Christmas? Christmas was gone. Brendan didn't even hate it, because how could you hate something that was dead? Instead he focused on his work, and tried his best to ignore whatever demands the season put upon his senses, if not his time.

"Mr. Keegan?" His secretary's voice came through the intercom. "It's Toys for Tots again."

"Thanks." He put the phone on monitor, his gaze still fixed on the computer screen, a half dozen heavily scrawled-upon yellow legal pads scattered on the desk before him.

"Mr. Flaherty?" A cheerful voice boomed from the speaker. Brendan winced, reaching to turn the volume down. "This is Don Huchison from the Capitol City Chapter of Toys for Tots. As I'm sure you know, we—"

"This is Mr. Keegan, not Mr. Flaherty. And I don't take solicitation calls at the office—"

"Well, Mr. Keegan, I'll be happy to note that and request that someone call you at home, at your convenience and when you have time. When might that be?"

"Never."

Don Huchison laughed, a sympathetic, Ain't that the truth! chuckle. "I hear you! This time of year, there's never enough time to—"

"I mean, never call me. Again. Anywhere." Brendan flipped through a legal pad with one hand, with the other reached to turn off the monitor.

"Mr. Keegan, I'm sure you're aware of the difficulties many families have at this time of year, meeting their children's expectations for a happy—"

"I don't give a shit about anyone's expectations. Remove me permanently from your list, and please don't call here again."

Click.

That evening he walked home. The cold spell remained unbroken. Pockets of slush filled potholes and broken edges of sidewalk. The eastern sky had a blackened cast to it, like a scorched pan; behind him, the last glowering trails of sunset streaked the horizon blood-red, so that the walls of the Library of Congress seemed to burn as night fell. Clouds of vapor surrounded the crowds hurrying home from work, giving everyone a ghostly familiar. But they were were cheerful ghosts haunting cheerful people: even the rat-tailed mongrel who kept Dave the Grave company on his bench in Stanton Square Park raced excitedly back and forth, rising on its hind legs and walking backwards when smiling passersby tossed coins into Dave's battered Starbucks coffee mug.

"God bless ya, god bless ya—"

Brendan gritted his teeth, staring stonily at a down-clad woman who stooped to put a five-dollar bill into Dave's hand. "You're wasting your money," he said loudly. The woman looked up, startled; Dave swayed back and forth on his bench, his litany uninterrupted. He still wore Tony's coat—Brendan's coat—though it was black now with grime, the sleeves and collar disintegrating. "He's a wino. You're just feeding his addiction."

The woman stared at Brendan coolly. "It's Christmas. And it's none of your damn business what I do with my money."

"Ha ha!" Dave laughed; the dog did a back flip, to applause from several of Dave's cronies drinking malt liquor on the brittle grass. "God bless you, darlin, that's right …"

Brendan started to yell after the woman's retreating back, but then he noticed that people were stopping to stare at him. Instead he glared contemptuously at Dave, spun on his heel and stalked home.

"Merry Chrissmas!" Dave called after him, and the other homeless men raised their voices raucously. "Merr' Chrissmass!"

He had left work earlier than was his habit. Since his divorce, he'd adjusted his schedule so that he seldom left the office till after dark; an exception had always been those days when he had Peter. No word of his Thanksgiving fall from grace had reached Teri—Brendan silently blessed Kevin and Eileen. But since then, his visits with his son had been cut back, at Brendan's own suggestion, to every other week. Just until the new year, he assured Teri, pleading pressure from work, a case long pending that now looked as though it would be settled out of court but there was still paperwork, and client interviews, and of course it was the holidays—

And of course that was it, exactly. Teri had seen it in her ex-husband's face when they had last met a week earlier, staring out at her from the front of the Volvo.

"Don't you want to come in for a minute? It's so cold."

Brendan shook his head. "I'm not cold," he said, his voice tight. He continued to stare resolutely at the steering column. "Is he ready? I have to get going."

"He's ready." Teri looked at the house, where Peter stood impassively on the steps, then turned back to the car. "Will Tony be there?"

"You got a problem with Tony, take it up with your lawyer." Brendan's knuckles whitened as he clasped the wheel. "I don't give a—"

"I am not being hostile." Teri's voice shook. "I'm glad Tony's there. At least Tony is capable of something resembling an emotion. At least Tony remembers what time of year it is. You know why you don't feel the cold, Brendan? Do you know why?"

Brendan turned the key in the ignition. "Get him in the car. I'm leaving."

"Because—"

He tapped the accelerator. The engine roared. On the porch Peter began to cry. Without a word Teri walked back to the house and got her son.

"You have a good time, sweetheart," she murmured as she buckled him into his car seat. He had stopped crying almost immediately, and she tucked a scarf around his shoulders. "You have a good time with your Daddy …"

She drew away from the car and stared at Brendan in the front seat. In the back Peter pushed off the scarf, letting it drop to the floor. "You could do something with him, you know." Her voice was perfectly calm now. "He's doing so well at school these days. You could take him to see the White House tree, or Santa out at White Flint. Peggy said that might be a good idea. She said—"

Fuck what she said, thought Brendan. He glanced back to make sure Peter was buckled, then rolled up the window. He had already started to pull away when Teri ran up beside him and pounded at the glass.

"What?" He stopped and rolled the window down a crack. "Now what?"

"I wanted to make sure you hadn't forgotten and made other plans for next week."

"What's next week?"

"Christmas." Teri's smiled tightened. "You said you wanted to have him Christmas Eve—last summer, remember? When we—"

"I remember."

"I thought—I hoped that we could all be together. To give some, some continuity. For Peter. I asked Kevin and Eileen—"

"Oh, Christ—"

"And I wanted you to ask Tony for me. If you don't mind." Teri's voice had taken on the same brisk oldest-daughter tone she used with her elderly clients. "If you don't want to stay you don't have to. They're going to come after church, mid-morning. You can just drop him off if you want. Or you're welcome to stay."

"We'll see. I'll let Tony know."

But tonight, walking up the sidewalk towards his apartment, he remembered that he never had let Tony know. Not that he suspected him of having any big plans for the holiday. Occasionally Brendan could hear music from behind the closed door of his room, Tony playing guitar and singing softly to himself; but that seemed to have stopped with the onset of the holiday season. Unemployment didn't just suit Tony better than any job he'd had since fronting the Maronis. It was as though he had actually found another job, one that involved getting up each morning promptly at six A.M., showering, shaving, dressing in black jeans and T-shirt and leather jacket, then eating a modest bowl of Grape-Nuts before getting down to work.

Which, in Tony's case, seemed to consist of watching every single Christmas special that every single television station on Earth chose to air between the first and twenty-fifth of December. No program was too obscure or too terrible for Tony's viewing pleasure—not The House Without a Christmas Tree or The Bishop's Wife; not Andy Williams' Christmas Special, or Elvis's, the King Family's, and Barbara Mandrell's; not A Very Brady Christmas! or Mickey's Extra Special Christmas Eve or The Little Drummer Boy Returns.

And certainly not Rudolph, the Grinch, Charlie Brown, Frosty the Snowman or Mr. Magoo. Tony had It's a Wonderful Life committed to memory; what was harder to take was that Tony knew every word of Santa Claus Versus the Martians, as well as The Christmas That Almost Wasn't and Fuzzy the Christmas Donkey.

"That one ought to be called The Christmas Jackass," Brendan had snapped one morning when he woke to find Tony already sitting transfixed on the living room couch, steaming coffee mug beside him.

"You should check this out." Tony shot a quick grin at Brendan, then hunched closer to the edge of the sofa. "Shh, this is the sad part—"

Now, as he hurried up the steps, Brendan saw the familiar blue-grey wash of light through his apartment window, the telltale flicker of shadow on the wall behind the sofa where he knew he would find Tony in the exact same place he had left him that morning.

Only this time when Brendan walked inside it was different. On the floor, staring at the television with the same rapt expression, was Peter.

"Peter." Brendan shut the door and dropped his briefcase. "Tony? What's going on?"

Tony looked up and smiled. "Oh, hey, man! You're home early. That's good, I'm glad—"

"What's he doing here? What happened?" Brendan quickly stepped over a small mountain of Peter's things, knapsack and overnight bags, his pillow, his lunchbox, his duck. "What—"

"There was a problem …"

"Problem?" He knelt beside his son, fighting the need to hold him, to shout at Tony gazing at them calmly from the couch. Peter edged away, making a small humming sound, his gaze fixed on the TV. "What problem? What happened? Is he—"

"No, no—Teri had the problem. She tried calling you but she couldn't get through—"

Brendan sighed with relief, then nodded. "Right—Ashley left this afternoon, she'll be gone till next week. But—"

"I dunno, some client thing? Teri said she'd call from the airport—"

Right on cue the phone rang. Brendan grabbed it.

"Brendan." Brendan could hear her swallow, fighting tears. "Jesus, Brendan. I called and called—"

"I know. What happened?"

"Oh, Christ, some stupid thing. Well, not really—old Mr. Wright died, everyone was expecting it but not right before Christmas, I mean he was ninety-three. But I have to go out there to deal with his wife and ex-wife and his sister and his kids. I'm at Dulles now, this case is a mess, you remember me telling you—"

"But Peter's okay?"

"Peter's fine. He really likes Tony, doesn't he?"

"Yeah, yeah, sure. So what's the deal here?"

Silence. He heard airport noises in the background, the squawk and boom of flight announcements. "The deal is, Brendan, that I have to be out of town on business right now. And—"

"How long?"

"Just till tomorrow. It was impossible to get a flight, they're completely booked, but—"

"And Peter's schedule? All this talk you had about how fucking important it is for everything to be—"

"Look, Brendan, stuff happens. You can't control everything. Or maybe you can, but I can't. Peter is with me every hour, every day, every week—"

"Except when he's with me—"

"—you have no idea how exhausting it is, being with him all the time. It's killing me, Brendan, it's—"

Her voice broke, drowned in a spurt of static as another flight announcement thundered somewhere behind her. —I can't, Brendan, not anymore, he's—"

Brendan shut his eyes and took a long breath. "Teri? Teri?" He turned so that Tony and Peter wouldn't see him. "Can you hear me? Listen, I'm sorry, really. Don't cry. We'll be fine. I know you're with him all the time, I know how hard it is. He'll be fine—"

"Shit. That's my flight. I'm sorry, Brendan, this is so crazy. But I really did try to call. He's got school, I gave Tony the schedule. Except for Christmas Eve, but you knew that. His medicine's in the blue bag with the dinosaurs. Okay, shit, I have to run—kiss him for me, I'll call you, bye—"

So.

"So." Brendan put down the phone, turned. In the living room, Peter sprawled on the floor, fingers pulling at a thread in the carpet. On the couch behind him sat Tony, pointing excitedly at the screen.

"—see, remember? Those are the real three Kings, and that guy there, he's one of the real shepherds. But that other guy with the black beard who's sneaking up on the little donkey, he's a Sears shepherd—"

"Tony. You were here when Teri dropped him off?"

Tony looked over at Brendan, surprised. "Oh. Hey, I forgot you were home. Yeah, sure I was. I was right here, Peter and I settled down to some serious holiday cheer. Right, Petie?"

Peter continued to make the same soft nasal humming sound he always did. His eyes were still glued to the screen: when the bad shepherd grabbed the little Puppetoon donkey and stuffed him in a sack, Peter flinched. His father didn't notice; he was already going through Peter's bags, looking for the pages of instructions he knew would be there.

"Well, thanks. What the hell was she going to do if you weren't here? Why didn't she go by my office?"

"She did. She couldn't even get in the building."

Brendan grimaced. "Damn, that's right. Christmas party next door, they all went down to the Hawk & Dove. And I wasn't picking up the phone."

"You didn't go to the Christmas party?"

"No, Tony, I didn't go to the Christmas party. I mean, what's the point? They don't give you a present."

Tony looked shocked. "They don't give you a present?"

"No, you bonehead." Brendan bopped him on the shoulder with Teri's instructions. "Of course they don't give you a present. That was a joke. But I really am glad you were here when she came. C'mere, Peter—"

He reached for his son, steeling himself for the boy to turn away or, worse, fail to acknowledge him at all. Instead Peter remained where he was, watching TV. When Brendan touched his arm, he could feel the ripple of muscle beneath his son's bare skin. Or maybe it wasn't muscle at all; maybe it was nerve, maybe that was how exposed it all was to Peter, bound sheaves of neurons and ganglions and dendrites, veiled with nothing more than that soft white tissue of baby skin, the tiny hairs like a dusting of snow, the sweet powdery smell of him. For an instant he was close enough to smell him, so close it made him dizzy, made him forget for a moment where or when it was—like when Teri was still breastfeeding and they would lie in bed together and he could smell all of them at once, his own sweat, and Teri's, and Peter's scent, a scent he had always thought came from baby powder—strange and warm, like honeysuckle, or bread—but which he knew now came from babies.

"Peter," he whispered.

For a split second, Peter did not move away. Brendan held his breath until it hurt, until he could feel his own nerves shimmering alongside his son's, the two tines of a broken tuning fork suddenly and miraculously vibrating together. Peter's skin was warm, warmer than Brendan's own; there was a sticky spot within the crook of his elbow, jelly or paste or generic childhood crud. He was close enough to see the small red crescent just below his hairline, where another child had accidentally struck him with a block. Still holding his breath, Brendan let his fingers move ever so slightly down his son's arm, towards his hand—

—but it was too much. The nasal humming became a grunt, of annoyance or fear or pain; and the boy shrugged him off.

"Peter." Brendan spoke his name, louder this time. Peter nodded—a half-nod, really, jerking his chin downward a fraction of an inch—and scooched closer to the television. Brendan watched him, biting his lip; then turned to Tony. "Well. One big happy family. I guess I'll make dinner."

He waited for Tony's usual offer to help, or clean up, or bring out the trash. But Tony only sprawled on the couch and stared at the television, lips moving as he recited along with King Melchior.

"… greatest gifts are always those that cannot be bought with gold or silver …"

"Ugh." Brendan rolled his eyes. "I'm outta here."

He made dinner, pasta with butter sauce for Peter, with pesto for himself and Tony. While it was cooking he rummaged around for that morning's Post. It was gone. When he looked outside the back door, the entire stack of papers waiting to be recycled was gone, too.

"Tony? You do something with today's paper?"

"Um, well, yeah. I did." His expression was distinctly furtive.

"Um, well, yeah. Could you tell me where it is?"

Tony shifted uncomfortably, knocking a pillow onto the floor. "Uh. Actually, no. I mean, it's gone."

Brendan frowned. "But the pickup isn't till tomorrow." Although, now that he thought about it, he hadn't seen any newspapers out there all last week, either.

"I know. I just needed them for something."

"What?"

"Just something. A surprise."

"A surprise. Right." Brendan sighed. "Well, tomorrow leave the damn paper for me to read, okay? I don't need any more surprises."