That Old Cape Magic

exist in the real world, and second because all the imperfect trees fell into two categories. The first was the all-too-familiar Wouldn’t Have It As a Gift, and the second applied to just one tree: Well, I Guess It’ll Have to Do. He couldn’t remember ever voicing an opinion about the tree his parents finally agreed would have to do. The search over at last, his father would hand the lucky attendant a length of gray, weathered clothesline so the tree could be hoisted onto the roof of their car and secured through its open windows. Sometimes the clothesline would snap when they rounded a corner, sending the tree into the gutter. One year they didn’t even make it out of the lot. Griffin’s father, leaning forward so he could keep an eye on the tree strapped to the roof, backed into a parked pickup, and their tree leapt as if by wizardry into its bed.
    Back home, they invariably discovered, by trying to stand the tree up, that it was indeed too tall, and with a curse his father would lay it back down on the floor. Some years the tree lay there in the middle of the living room for days while he canvassed his English department colleagues for a saw he could borrow. What he actually meant, they understood all too well, was a saw he could
have
, since he never once returned a tool. (The saw he’d borrowed the previous Christmas was no doubt hanging from a nail in the garage of last year’s rental.) Eventually, though, someone would come through, and that was when the real magic began.
    The first cut never took quite enough off—here again, no measuring for the Griffins—and the second usually didn’t, either. The third would be off by a mere half inch, close enough if you forced matters (they always did), and the freshly cut top of the tree would leave a moist, six-inch, greenish-brown streak on the white ceiling, which no doubt puzzled the owners when they returned home from their sabbatical. The broken toaster oven, the missing eighth chair from the dining room set, the red wine stains on the shag carpet—these things could happen, but how on earth had the Griffins managed to scar the fucking
ceiling
? And of course the tree
did
look funny with its top sawed off. Their Christmas trees always looked to Griffin like they’d grown right through the ceiling, as if what you were looking at was just the bottom two-thirds, and if you went upstairs, the top third would be growing right out of the hardwood floor.
    Once the tree was upright, Griffin’s father would pick the lock on the closet where the owners stored the stuff they didn’t want ruined or broken, see what they had by way of Christmas decorations and berate their bad taste. His mother thought the prettiest trees were decorated all in white, with maybe a little silver for contrast, but Griffin himself liked all the blues and greens and reds and was grateful for other people’s lack of refinement. She claimed garlands were especially tacky, but he liked those, too. He was allowed to help decorate, of course, but he couldn’t remember ever hanging an ornament or icicle that his mother didn’t adjust later. Once the tree was finished, his favorite thing was to crawl beneath it, lie on his back and peer up through the branches, imagining other worlds, himself miniaturized and climbing ever upward, from branch to branch, among all the blinking lights and shiny ornaments, until the whole world lay below him.
    One year—he must have been seven or eight—he’d crawled under the tree during his parents’ annual boozy Christmas partyand watched the drunken kaleidoscopic proceedings from there. Over the course of the evening, two or three of their guests noticed him back there and asked his parents if he was okay, and they responded that yes, he was fine. He remembered
feeling
fine. His father had spiked the eggnog that afternoon, forgetting to reserve some for Griffin. His mother said he couldn’t have any of the spiked, but his father felt guilty about forgetting him and let him have a big glass before anyone arrived. During the party he kept wishing somebody would slide him a plate of Christmas cookies, but otherwise he felt warm and happy and tipsy tucked into his own private little corner. He’d fallen asleep there, staring up into the magical branches, and eventually one of his parents must have pulled him out because the next morning he woke up in his bed, the sheets full of pine needles. Which one of them had remembered him? he’d wondered at