A Winter in New York(68)
—
TRUE TO HIS WORD, our journey isn’t a long one, but it’s one I hope to remember forever. The combination of the car, the man driving it, and the glittering city lights as we drove across Brooklyn Bridge was the kind of perfect snapshot you can’t hope to capture on your cellphone camera. I’ve captured it in my head instead and filed it away to look back at in the days and years to come, in much the same way my mother spun a million love stories around that single photograph of Santo.
“Here should do it,” Gio says, pulling the car up curbside in a quiet residential street.
“Is it a restaurant?” I say, hoping not because Bobby and Robin called me upstairs to share pizza earlier.
Gio shakes his head as he gets out and locks the car.
“A bar?”
He shakes his head again and links his arm through mine.
“You’re not going to tell me, are you?”
“You’ll see,” he says.
The farther we walk, the more people there are on the streets too, obviously headed the same place as us. Couples, families with little kids, everyone bundled up in winter coats and hats.
We round a corner and I gasp, coming to a surprised standstill.
“Worth the suspense?”
The road ahead is a blaze of color, every house almost obscured by Christmas lights and ornaments. Huge golden snowflakes, life-size snowmen, illuminated Santas climbing down chimneys. This is the America of my childhood movie-spun fantasies, Disney-bold and brashly beautiful.
“What is this place?” I breathe.
“Dyker Heights,” he says. “They’ve done this every year since the eighties, it goes on for another twenty blocks or so.”
We join the throngs of sightseers walking slowly through the illuminated streets, and honestly, I feel as if someone scooped me up and dropped me on a holiday movie set. Every house seems to be more ornately decorated than the last. Candy canes and dancing elves fill the front lawns, shimmering presents line the porch steps, starlight nets cover trees and shrubs.
“You can probably see this from space,” I say, blown away by the sheer scale and spectacle.
We pause outside a huge old house guarded by a battalion of ten-foot-tall nutcrackers, their brass uniform buttons flashing gold as Christmas music pumps from hidden speakers. Angels dance between the trees, and a life-size nativity scene takes up most of the lawn.
“Wow,” is all I can say. “How do they even do this every year? They must need another house just to store all the decorations.”
“It’s companies mostly these days,” Gio says. “Big business.”
“Oh, I quite fancy that job,” I say, taken with the idea. “Professional elf.”
We buy hot chocolate from a vending van, because this scene isn’t quite festive enough already, and Gio produces a hip flask of brandy and hands it to me.
“You think of everything,” I say, sloshing some into my cup.
He slides the bottle back inside his jacket and I realize he’s brought it just for me, just for this hot chocolate, and I link my arm through his as we wander from house to house, bedazzled.
I stop to admire a vintage metal sleigh that rivals Santo’s Cadillac in length, metallic scarlet and big enough for us to climb aboard. We don’t, though—the front seat is already taken by a Coca-Cola-worthy Santa Claus holding on to the reins of eight reindeer in flight across the lawn, all of them aglow with hundreds of golden pinprick lights. I check, and of course the one up front has a red nose.
“For a guy who doesn’t like the Christmas store, this is a big step,” I say.
He drops his arm across my shoulders. “This is different. We came here every year as kids.”
I see the Belottis in my mind’s eye, a gaggle of overexcited little girls and Gio, dark-haired and serious-eyed, tagging along behind them.
“We come from very different lives,” I say with a soft sigh. “My mother was a huge Christmas fan, but we never amassed a collection of family decorations or yearly traditions, we moved around too much. If it didn’t fit in the backseat of the Vauxhall it didn’t come with us, and it was nothing like the size of Santo’s Cadillac, let me tell you.”
He squeezes my shoulders. “Come spend the holiday with us this year?” Christmas lights reflect gold and green in his eyes as he looks down at me. “Unless you have other plans?”
I don’t have other plans. Bobby has been furious this entire year straight that he and Robin are committed to spending the holidays on a cruise with Robin’s family because Robin’s eldest sister has decided to get married while everyone is together. Up until today, my vague plan has been turkey for one plus Smirnoff, gelato on tap, and the TV on. I haven’t actually been depressed about the idea, it’s felt simple and unfussy. I’ve been eyeing up new pajamas and saving a bottle of champagne just for the big day.
But what now? Gio has offered me a seat at the Belotti dinner table. I don’t need to be the little kid with her face pressed against the window this time, or even the woman telling herself her lonesome Christmas is stylish and independent. I long to say yes, to experience a real family Christmas Day.
“I’d love to,” I say, and I do an internal double-take at myself for blurting the words out before my head and my heart have had at least a ten-minute ruck about it. “Only if you’re sure? You can change your mind, I won’t be offended.”