The Christmas Sweater (2 page)

I
t was Christmas Eve, and, as usual, Mom was at work. She was a cook at the local high
school, but she always picked up an extra job or two at the mall around the holidays.

I was home from school by myself, which always made Mom anxious. She hated leaving
me alone. Not because I couldn’t take care of myself, but because she knew that I
was way too much like my mischievous grandfather—who happened to be the inventor of
the very pre-Christmas tradition that I was about to embark on: Operation Sneak Preview.

One Christmas Eve, a few years ago, Grandpa and I found ourselves alone. My father
was still at the bakery finishing up the croissants and cakes that would soon elicit
“oohs” and “ahhs” at dinner tables all across town. My mom and grandma had gone to
church. Normally my grandpa and I would’ve been dragged along, but Christmas was on
a Monday that year, and somehow he had persuaded them that tomorrow’s Christmas service
should count for both days. I had a lot to learn from him.

“You want to play cards, Eddie?” Grandpa asked as soon as the front door clicked shut.

Oh boy, here we go again,
I thought.

Grandpa loved playing cards. No, I take that back, he loved
winning
at cards. And he always won. In fact, he won so often that it had become somewhat
of an unwritten family rule that you never, ever, at any cost, agreed to play cards
with him. It was like feeding a wild animal: It might seem like a good idea at first,
but you always regretted it later.

I used to believe that Grandpa won at cards because he was really good, but that year
I was old enough to know
better. He won because he cheated. Perhaps “cheated” isn’t the right word; Grandpa
had a system. Much like counting cards at a blackjack table, his methods weren’t necessarily
illegal, but he didn’t advertise them either.

Whenever we played, he concentrated more on figuring out the holes in his system than
on actually beating me—though that never posed much of a problem either. I’d play
a card and he’d pick it up and put it back in my hand and say, “Nope. You don’t want
to play that card.” At first I thought he was just being helpful, but later I realized
that it wasn’t about the kill for him. It was about the thrill of the chase. For Grandpa,
playing cards with me was like going on a big-game hunt at the zoo—there was no real
sport involved. I never really felt like I was playing cards with Grandpa so much
as I was his test subject.

I always figured that he used the practice rounds with me to refine his system so
that he could win his weekly card game with friends, but I never asked and he never
told me.

“You’re sure you don’t want to play?” he repeated.

“Sorry, Grandpa. Maybe later.”

“Suit yourself. But I’m feeling pretty vulnerable today. I think you might have a
real shot at beating me.” Grandpa was a
really
good liar. “But if you’re sure you don’t want to play cards…” His voice lowered as
he got that “I’m more of a kid than you are” glint in his eyes. “Maybe I can think
of something else for us to do.”

“What?” I asked, which really meant “I’m in!” Grandpa had a knack for getting us into
various levels of trouble, and I loved every second of it. His “ideas” were almost
always code word for an elaborate plot he’d spent weeks dreaming up. As evidenced
by his secret card-counting system, Grandpa was a big fan of finding the gray area
between the letter of the law and the spirit of it.

“Follow me,” he said, the playful edge in his voice now completely gone. Grandpa took
his schemes very seriously. Whenever he and I embarked on a mission, no matter how
absurd it was, we tried as hard as possible to get away with it. On the rare occasions
when we did get caught, he would skillfully employ an extraordinarily complex, time-tested
strategy: Deny, deny, deny. Surprisingly, it worked
most of the time because adults simply didn’t want to believe a grown man would actually
do the things he did.

A great example occurred two summers earlier, when a troublemaking teenager stayed
with his aunt, who lived across the street from my grandparents. The demon kid would
stay up late screaming and hollering, vandalizing mailboxes, and generally trying
to make life miserable for everyone in the usually quiet neighborhood.

His favorite activity took place after dark, when he would set up a wall of rocks
across the country road that wound its way through the neighborhood. Placed right
at the crest of a small hill, the wall was invisible to cars coming from either direction.
It wasn’t high—just a few inches in most places—but that was enough to make the unlucky
cars that hit it blow out a tire, lose a muffler, or worse.

The first few times it happened, the neighbors called the police. But that did little
good, because no one actually caught the kid with the rocks. After a while most people
just kept quiet and counted down the days until the unwelcome visitor would leave.
But not Grandpa.

A few days after the first rock wall incident, he began plotting. He observed that
every night, after the mayhem was over, the kid would leave his football on his aunt’s
front porch. The next morning, while Grandpa was eating breakfast, he would watch
as the kid would run outside barefoot and kick his ball into the yard as hard as he
could. That routine gave my grandpa a simple, yet completely diabolical, idea.

One night, while the rest of the neighborhood slept, Grandpa took the football from
the porch and brought it into his workshop. He carefully slit it open and filled it
with the same rocks and stones the kid had used to make his walls. Then he sealed
it back up and returned it to the porch.

I don’t know exactly what happened after that, but I do know that the kid had a cast
on his foot the next afternoon and the neighborhood never heard another peep out of
him.

No one ever knew my grandpa was responsible.

While I never knew when he’d pulled another prank, I always figured that something
had happened when he
provided me with an alibi for no apparent reason. During a walk to the barn or a trip
into town he’d turn to me and say something cryptic like, “By the way, Eddie, if anyone
asks, you and I were at the feed store last night around six.” I’d smile and never
have to ask why.

The only two people who would ever call him on his schemes were my mother and my grandma.
They knew that Grandpa was the
only
one who would ever go through all the trouble of flawlessly filling a football with
rocks just to teach someone a lesson. But he didn’t cave easily. When it became clear
that his denials would not stand up, he would say, “Eddie might have been slightly
involved in something like that.”

While it might sound like he was simply shifting the blame to me, that’s only part
of the story. The real reason Grandpa loved to use that defense is that his name was
Edward too. When he said “Eddie did it,” people would naturally assume that he meant
me, and he could still feel good for not
technically
lying. Fortunately anyone who really knew my grandpa wasn’t fooled, so I never got
in trouble.

Now, back in the farmhouse, in the early stages of carrying out yet another undercover
mission, Grandpa walked with a purpose. I did the best I could to keep up, but my
short legs had to take two steps for every one of his long, graceful strides. We didn’t
stop until we were standing in front of the guest bedroom closet. Without a word,
Grandpa pulled open the closet door and reached one of his long arms into the back
corner, retrieving a wrapped present. I was speechless.

“First thing a Christmas aficionado needs to learn,” he said firmly, “is that the
good presents never go under the tree until Christmas morning.”

My eyes grew wide as his arm dashed back behind the clothes hamper and another present,
this one slightly larger than the first, materialized. “Ooh, Grandma’s getting sly,”
he snickered, clearly proud of himself. Four gifts later he was done fishing. “Okay,
Eddie, now hold this one up to your ear. What do you think it is?”

I took the box, careful not to rip the wrapping paper or crush the bow. The tag on
the front said, “To Grandpa,
From Grandma.” I held it up to my ear, unsure of exactly what I was supposed to be
listening for. “Hmm…” I pretended to be weighing various options in my head, though
the truth was I didn’t even have a guess. “I don’t know. I don’t really hear much.”

“Let me have a shot,” he said, barely able to control his excitement.

I handed the box to him and he put it against the side of his head. He closed his
eyes, shook it lightly, paused, then announced his verdict: “It’s a winter coat. Brown.”

“Really?” I was shocked. “How do you know?”

“I can hear it. Now hand me that one.”

I picked up a rectangular box, put it in his oversized hands, and watched as he repeated
the same process: Listen, shake, pause, verdict. “This is a curling iron. One of the
fancy ones that automatically turns itself off.”

I was stunned. Not about the curling iron, but at hearing how sure Grandpa was about
it. There wasn’t an ounce of doubt in his voice.

He asked me for the other two presents and repeated
the now familiar routine. I put the curling iron and coat box to my ear as he worked,
trying to hear something,
anything,
but they were both silent.

Grandpa sat on the floor next to a present he’d decided was a new teapot for my mom.
“Come here, Eddie, and sit next to me for a second. I want to teach you something.
There is an art to Christmas.” He smiled, magic dancing in his eyes. “Some might say
what I am about to show you is a dark art, but I prefer to think of it more as green
and red.”

I slid over next to him.

“I believe it’s time that you finally understand the truth about the magic of Christmas.”

“Grandpa, I already know. I’m not a little kid anymore.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about. The magic itself is real, but sometimes it needs
to be ‘helped’ along a bit. And that’s what I am…‘a helper.’ It’s like your dad’s
bread. The yeast and flour may rise on their own, but nothing happens unless your
dad puts it in the oven. That’s me. I’m
like a Christmas-present oven.” This was my grandfather at his very best.

Without waiting to see if I understood his cryptic analogy, he picked up the square
present, turned it over, and exhaled gently at the seam where a single piece of tape
held the paper flap shut. The tape’s surface fogged up from the humidity of his breath.
He then worked gently at the corner of the tape with his fingernail until he was satisfied
that he could peel it away without ripping the paper. The flap opened flawlessly.

My eyes must’ve been as big as bike wheels as I watched what happened next: Grandpa
put the gift on the carpet, reached his hand in through the open flap and gently slid
the box out. Then he handed it to me. “Open it,” he said. “But be careful.”

I pulled the top open, removed the red tissue paper, and found the present—a ceramic,
oriental teapot with four small cups. Just what my mother wanted and just what my
grandpa had predicted, though it was now obvious that it hadn’t been a prediction
so much as a fact.

We moved on to the other gifts. Some had multiple pieces of tape, which required patience;
my grandpa reminded me that that was a virtue. Others were wrapped so tightly that
you had to turn them upside down to get the box out. One by one, we unwrapped and
rewrapped them all. (I later learned that by the time Christmas rolled around, my
grandfather had opened all of his gifts
at least
three times.) After we finished, he carefully returned each present to its original
hiding place, and we went downstairs.

Little did I know that we weren’t even close to being done.

Underneath the Christmas tree, there was a treasure trove of wrapped gifts to explore.
We opened them all. It didn’t matter who they were to, or who they were from. We opened
them, talked about them, and sometimes even played with them. Then we sealed them
all up and carefully placed them back under the tree, exactly how we’d found them.

Grandpa swore me to secrecy, but he didn’t need to. I knew that Operation Sneak Preview
would provide
Christmas magic for years to come, and I wasn’t about to blow it. My grandfather might
have been the master, but just as my father had learned how to bake, I quickly became
my grandfather’s very skilled apprentice.

With my mom still at work for at least another couple of hours, I had plenty of time
to execute this year’s “operation.”

Mom and I had been in a continual, although unspoken, game of cat and mouse for the
last few Christmases. She’d find a great hiding spot and I’d find her great hiding
spot. She’d find a better spot and I’d find that one too. Maybe I hadn’t been as skilled
as I’d thought in regards to putting the presents back exactly how I’d found them,
because she’d always seemed to know when her hiding places had been compromised.

This year, as I started searching the floor of her bedroom closet, I was determined
not to leave the slightest trace. After all, I was twelve now and sure that I could
finally pull off the “operation” as well as Grandpa.

As my hand felt into the back corner of the closet, I realized that I was secretly
hoping I
wouldn’t
find a present there. If my present could fit in a closet, then there was no way
it could be a bike, and that was the
only
gift I wanted that year. What I was hoping to find was a receipt—and I knew Mom would
be smart enough to hide that too.

My hands carefully searched every nook and cranny of the closet floor. And then I
felt it. A box. Small. Unwrapped. “Ooh, Mom’s slipping,” I laughed to myself as I
pulled the box out from the darkness. A thin layer of dust coated the top. How had
I missed this the last few years?

I pulled the top off gently, careful not to leave fingerprints in the dust just in
case this was an elaborate trap set by my mother. As I pushed the tissue paper out
of the way, I realized immediately that it was not. The item inside was instantly
familiar. It was my dad’s favorite old Hamilton watch. A faint hint of his Old Spice
cologne still resonated from the band.