My Most Excellent Year (24 page)

We finished our letter to Julie Andrews. Tick, Alé, and I each wrote our own drafts, but since I’m the authority on divas, it was my job to choose the best parts and put them all together.

I really hope she comes through. At first I thought Hucky was just another one of my brother’s long-term, generally weird projects (e.g., Free Buck Weaver and Save Fenway Park), but the more I hang out with this kid, the more I remember what it was like to be the same age. And since Hucky doesn’t have to worry about getting confused by words, sometimes he zeroes in on the bottom line a lot faster than I do—especially when I try to con myself into or out of things.

Maybe I’d be smarter with only four senses.

Love,

Augie

Dear Angie,

Nobody remembers that when you sang “We Need a Little Christmas,” it wasn’t supposed to be because you were happy. The stock market had crashed, you had to sell all of the paintings in
your Beekman Place apartment, and the only present you could afford to buy your nephew was a pair of long pants. But as soon as you finished the song, the doorbell rang and it was a Southern gent named Beauregard. You both discovered love, got married, and lived happily ever after (until he fell off an Alp).

So while I was standing in front of the Coolidge Corner Theatre yesterday afternoon waiting for Andy, I should have known that everything was going to work out as soon as I heard “We Need a Little Christmas” twinkling through the box office speakers. Up until that moment, my mood was so right out of Dickens and Sondheim, I didn’t even notice the first couple of snowflakes, the Xmas lights, or the smell of roasting chestnuts from the vendors on every corner. How could I?
Andy’s going to Cleveland tomorrow. For eight days. EIGHT DAYS! That’s 192 hours. 11,520 minutes. 691,200 seconds. 1 one thousand, 2 one thousand, 3 one thousand . . .
Right around “103 one thousand,” I saw him weaving his way through the crowd of second-to-last-day shoppers on Harvard Street. He hadn’t noticed me yet, so it gave me a chance to take my favorite kind of inventory from an anonymous point of view.

1. His hair curling out from under his wool cap.
   
2. His red nose from the cold.
   
3. His right hand jammed into his pocket because he’s always losing one of his gloves.
   
4. His scarf hanging around his shoulders because he doesn’t understand that you’re supposed to wrap it around your neck. (“It’s not a fashion statement, you dope—it has a function!”)
   
5. His eyes darting all over the place—looking for
   me
   !
   
6. His eyes finding me and smiling before his mouth even does.
   

“Hey, Spidey.”

“Hey, Aquaboy.” We stood there for a second just looking at each other. How come it’s so easy to talk on the phone and online but so impossible in person??

“You get the tickets?”

“Yeah. They’re almost sold out.”

“We’d better go inside then.”

“Let’s do it.”

As usual, Andy went ahead to find us seats while I stood in line at the concession counter—which gave me a good chance to get un-neurotic before the movie started.
Look, it’s not like you’re going to be sitting on your hands while he’s in Ohio. You’ve got Vermont. Skiing with Tick!! Toboggan rides with Mom and Dad! Snowboarding with Pop! Hot chocolate in front of the fire with Hucky! 691,200 seconds’ll be over before you know it. No, they won’t. 211 one thousand, 212 one thousand . . .
Just then my cell phone rang.

Naturally, by the time I got to our seats with the popcorn, the red Twizzlers, the Junior Mints, and the Slurpees, we were back to single syllables again. “Here.” “Thanks.” “Gum?” “Sure.” If you and Beau had started out this way, you’d still be selling off your paintings.

But I finally decided to do something about it. Maybe it was because Hucky had made me realize what ginks we were or maybe it was because I knew I’d never be able to sing a torch song with any real authority until I took some affirmative action. So as soon as the lights went down, I gave my right hand permission to storm the beaches at Normandy. Which is exactly what it did. Reaching across the armrest, it deliberately took hold of Andy’s five left fingers—no accidental bumping this time, but sure and confident like it knew just what it was doing. Andy instantly squeezed back, and that’s the way we stayed for two and a half hours.

LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING

Reviewed by Augie Hwong and Andy Wexler

When we left the theatre for cookies at the café, the snow was falling all over a winter wonderland of our own, and “We Need a Little Christmas” was still serenading the people lined up to get in. That’s when I knew for sure that I was going to survive the 192 hours without him, and that sooner or later we’d wind up as happy as you and Beau (assuming Andy doesn’t fall off an Alp). Besides, I’d already started a new page in the Augie Hwong Journal of Modern Anxiety called “Will He Ever Kiss Me?”

Phyllis was right. I made it through the first 43½ Andy-less hours without even counting them.

Christmas Day was mostly about getting ready for Vermont, but we had a truckload of packages under the tree that we had to plow through first. Half of them were for me and Tick, and half of
those
were from Aunt Babe—who always finds a way to blend our Christmas presents into our birthday presents without a gap. (Tick is February 16 and I’m March 24, so Aunt Babe’s figured out how to blend our birthdays into Easter too.) Best Reactions to Christmas Gifts 2003? Mine when I opened the actual authentic original reproduction
All About Eve
poster from my brother, and his when he got a good look at the autographed photo of Carlton Fisk in the 1975 World Series that I’d even framed in gold. (I still don’t know what he sees in that guy. So he hit a home run. Big deal. Isn’t that what they’re
supposed
to do?) Andy and I already decided that our present to each other was just knowing we’d be together on January 2. Alé thought it was “achingly sweet,” but I never told Tick about it. He’d have puked all over me.

Since we’re leaving for Woodford early tomorrow morning, Mrs. Jordan brought Hucky over to our house in time for dinner. That’s when he scored the bonanza he’d been coveting through three weeks’ worth of pilgrimages to Toy Mart: an electronic sing-a-long keyboard with a mike. Go figure. Tick says that deaf people can feel music the way we can hear it, and Hucky proved the point. He gave three sold-out concerts between the plum pudding and bed.

“What song was that”

“‘
Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out’! Don’t you know
any
thing?
”

I have a boyfriend and I’m going skiing with a 3½-foot Bruce Springsteen. Haul out the holly.

Love,

Augie

P.S. By the way,
Hello, Dolly!
finally opened. It’s a good thing we saw it over Thanksgiving, or else we’d be out of luck.

Dear Angie,

Briar Hearth Inn looks like a cross between a gingerbread house and a von Trapp Family guest cottage for 158 of their friends. The outside is made of dark brown logs with pointed roofs, apple-colored shutters on all of the windows, and vanilla icing on the top whenever it snows. Seeing it for the first time in the middle of a curvy driveway lined with pine trees, all you want to do is drink hot cider and sing “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas.”

My favorite room is the Briar Lounge on the second floor. One whole wall is a stone fireplace that stays lit 24/7, with enough couches and stuffed chairs in front of it to keep you there all day, especially if you have a ginky vacation assignment to read like
Great Expectations
. Best of all is the bay window that looks out across the whole valley, with the kids’ slope front and center. This is where we took Hucky as soon as we’d unpacked. Mom and Dad rented him the smallest skis you’ve ever seen, and Pop walked behind him—hands on shoulders—all the way down the hill, which maybe slants twenty degrees, tops. Dressed in his Red Sox ski jacket (from Mom and Dad), Red Sox ski cap and gloves (from me and Tick), and Red Sox muffler (from Pop), he looked like a frozen little Ramon Garciaparra who was scared to death—but once he’d made it to the bottom in one piece, the cheers and high fives changed his mind. So did the trophy (HUCKY HARPER—BRIAR HEARTH SKI CHAMPION). After that, he wouldn’t let Pop help him out anymore.
“But you can watch me.”
He figured out the rope pull that took him to the top all by himself, and by the time he’d finished his first solo run, he was on his way to the Olympics.