“Let’s buy them,” Max said. He leaned down and looked at the Santa. Max seemed to be floating in the mall’s air, glowing from its clear panels. He looked so different from everyone else, although his clothes were no better and he wasn’t bigger or stronger or handsomer. He was at ease, unfazed by her sobs and upset. “Let’s buy him the toys. What did he like? How about a sword? My son used to love swords. He still does but he’s too old to admit it.”
She didn’t understand him. Or didn’t believe she had understood. “Your son…?” she mumbled wiping her wet cheeks.
“How about it? What would your son like for Christmas? Does he play with Legos? No, he’s too young. How about the big ones? Or Bristle Blocks? Does he have Bristle Blocks? They’re great. They can really use them and they don’t get bored by them for years.”
Carla still wasn’t sure she understood. “You want me to buy presents for Bubble?”
“Bubble?” Max said.
“My son, Leonardo.” She understood now; he was crazy. “You want me to buy presents for him. That’s sick.”
“Why?” he asked innocently.
“Because he’s dead. It’s only going to make me feel bad to pretend he’s not.”
“Of course he’s — what did you call him?”
Carla lowered her eyes. She felt ashamed. She didn’t know of what. “Bubble,” she mumbled.
“Bubble,” Max said as if he were tasting it. “Of course Bubble is dead. But your wish to give him presents isn’t dead. I like giving presents too. So let’s do it.”
“What? Are you serious? You wouldn’t do this yourself.” She wasn’t angry, but she didn’t believe in him suddenly. “You gonna buy a present for your father?”
“My father,” Max said thoughtfully, again as if he were tasting the word. “I’ve never bought anything for my father,” he said wonderingly.
He sagged against the railing, no longer afloat. Carla felt she had hurt him and it was just like hurting a child — he looked crumpled and defenseless. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s not a good idea. That’s all I meant.”
But he wasn’t hurt. Max’s pale blue eyes focused on her, curious and energetic. “I made him something in school. I carved his name in wood. You know, a nameplate to put on his desk. But I never had a chance to buy him a real present.” He moved close, filling her vision, blocking the pretty stars and talking louder than the happy music. “Let’s do it! Let’s buy presents for the dead.”
She wasn’t angry anymore or appalled either, but she couldn’t accept his idea. She backed against the railing to get some distance from his eager face. “I can’t.”
“Why?”
“What’ll we do with them?” she demanded, exasperated and confused.
“Do with them?” Max shook his head of white and black curls. The sparkling Christmas lights in the ceiling shined through his halo of hair.
“Who do we give them to!” Carla almost shouted. His suggestion made goose bumps up and down her back. She was scared of buying things for the dead. Vaguely, she feared it was sacrilegious.
“I don’t know,” he said, undeterred. “We’ll figure that out later. Come on,” he took her arm and tugged. “I know just what my dad would want.”
“You do?”
Max was excited. He pulled her the way a kid would, dragging her down two flights of stairs and hurrying her into a trot until they reached the side of the mall where a large Sears department store took over all the space. He moved with such enthusiasm that they attracted glances even from harried Christmas shoppers. He kept going through section after section until he reached the hardware department.
Max stopped in front of an enormous red metal tool chest, displayed with its top open, its interior drawers out in various levels, each one filled with a tool or a part of a tool that fit precisely in the space allotted. “He liked to build things,” Max said with a smile of satisfaction.
“Can I help you?” a young salesman asked. He was skinny and his head had a distorted shape, the top extraordinarily wide and flat and then narrowing to an unusually small and narrow chin.
“I want to buy that.”
The chest and tools were so expensive that even the salesman had to be told twice that Max meant to buy both. The salesman’s excitement at the effortless sale of an item he obviously thought would never be sold brought a flush to his oddly shaped cheeks. His hands shook while he wrote out the order.
“We lived in an apartment,” Max told Carla while they waited on the clerk. “So Dad couldn’t really have room to work, but he used the maid’s room, right off the kitchen, and built chairs — he even built our dining room table. “His voice, his language, the slouch of his body had become like a boy’s. He beamed at her while he talked. “And he used to fix things for the neighbors for free. Anything he could. Just on the weekends. I’d watch and he’d give me the hammer to hold or have me do the easy stuff. Anytime we had to get something at the hardware store he’d stop in front of one of these”—Max pointed to the display chest—“they weren’t as magnificent as this one — and long for it. He’d look at it silently for minutes and minutes while I pulled at the drawers and then he’d say, ‘I’d like to have that,’ and walk away.” Carla saw the tears collect in Max’s pale blue eyes. But he was still smiling.
When the salesman took Max’s credit card, Max told him that he wanted the tools and chest shipped. The salesman paled. His little chin quivered. He said in a strangled voice that to get the chest there by Christmas it would have to go by UPS and that would cost extra.
“I don’t care what it costs,” Max said, his eyes staying wet, but not letting go of their tears. “It’s for my father and I want him to have it on Christmas.”
The salesman paused for what seemed a long time and said nothing. He regarded Max with respect during the silence. When he finally spoke he said softly, “I wish I was in your family.”
At first Carla had thought Max’s idea mad, then dangerous. As she watched him feel this happiness she wanted it too.
“Where are you sending it?” she asked him as he wrote down the address for the salesman.
“Where am I sending it?” Max said loudly and he and the salesman exchanged looks as if Carla were quite foolish. “I’m sending it to my father. It won’t fit under my tree. It won’t fit under his either. He’s Jewish. He doesn’t have a tree.”
The salesman nodded politely. “Happy Hanukkah,” he said when they were finished.
Max took Carla’s arm and said, “I’d like to buy Bubble a set of Bristle Blocks. Unless that’s what you’re getting him.”
She saw Bubble reach for a Ninja Turtle figure belonging to another boy in the sandbox and screech when she said he couldn’t grab it away. The boy’s mother explained her son didn’t want to share it because it was a special toy — he had just gotten it for his birthday.
“I want it for birthday,” Bubble said to Carla.
“Okay, I’ll get it. I’ll get you everything you want. I just do whatever you tell me. I’m your slave,” and she had kissed him and they had had pizza — Ninja Turtle food — and she had never had the chance to buy it. She had promised her beautiful baby a long list of toys for his birthday and she hadn’t kept her promise.
Carla could remember the toys Bubble wanted; she could hear his musical voice asking for them. Wanting to buy things for Bubble still lived in her.