They drove from San Anselmo to Mill Valley for a Christmas celebration in the town center. Both towns were in Marin County, just north of San Francisco, across the Golden Gate Bridge, but Mill Valley, being closer to the city, and more secluded amongst the redwoods and nestled in a valley surrounded by lush hills was the more affluent of the two.
Price had spent much of the drive using his daughter as a conduit through which to good-naturedly criticize what he believed to be Delancey’s unapologetic and rampant materialism with regards to the Christmas season. While Delancey responded with humor, a tension formed, which Price realized arose from his cowardice in not confronting her directly.
Upon arrival, the three were briefly separated before Delancey found Price and his daughter standing in line to ride a small electric train.
“Everybody here is so low-key wealthy,” she said, almost fondly.
Price nodded without looking around. He was kneeling and struggling with his daughter who was trying to stop him from zipping her coat. When he finally stood and took in the crowd, the accuracy of Delancey’s statement became apparent. He was surrounded by people who paid full price for winter coats. Expensive haircuts. Whitened teeth. Electrically smoothed skin. Subtly ostentatious jewelry that only announced itself when the light shifted.
The electric train looped around the town square. He watched his daughter, hair lifting in the breeze, wave to those they passed with the confidence of knowing they would all wave back.
Stepping off the train, he lingered, his gaze drawn to a mother adjusting a child’s scarf, the blinding diamond of her ring catching briefly in the wool.
Standing beside Delancey, amongst the crowd outside the café in the town center, he became aware of the effort he was making. His own coat, while purchased on sale, was chosen more for status than for function. He grew conscious of his posture. The positioning of his hands. The almost subconscious decisions he was making to affirm that he should be there.
A stage had been erected in front of the café’s patio where dozens brunched. A truncated performance of The Nutcracker by students from the Marin Conservancy of Dance ended and a selection of Christmas staples sung by the Carolers from the Marin School of the Arts began.
Their daughter gravitated toward another little girl of similar age, and they held hands and swayed to the caroling. Price and Delancey looked at each other and smiled. It was, despite the accompanying baggage, an idyllic holiday scene. And it swelled—marvelous under the redwoods and a low, thick fog that seemed to hug the picturesque town and its inhabitants, the eyes of which were all trained on the exquisite caroling—into a totality that exuded a collective awareness of its near perfection.
As the holiday cheer and glee reached a fever pitch, into the open space near the stage wandered an elderly man, wearing a garish Christmas sweater and a Santa hat, who stopped, uncertain, as if he had arrived somewhere without remembering why.
Two men, extremely well-barbered and adorned in cashmere sweaters, appeared almost at once and lead him away on their arms, but it was clear the veneer had cracked. Eyes darted. Bodies shifted uneasily. Children wept, aware of their parents sudden alertness. The stop/start of “O Holy Night” shocked the brittle continuity of the merriment.
Price felt an embarrassment he could not quite place as he watched relief quickly spread through the crowd in the elderly man’s absence. He even felt his own anxiety lessen against his will. It was as if he were trapped in a snow globe of a town, so fragile that the slightest brush with the grimness of reality could send it spinning into mania like the shake of a giant hand.
~
Wilson Koewing is a writer from South Carolina. His books JADED, QUASI and ROLLING ON THE BOTTOM are available from Main Street Rag/Mint Hill Books, Anxiety Press and Cowboy Jamboree Press, respectively. His fiction and essays have appeared in Wigleaf, Pembroke Magazine, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Gargoyle and New World Writing. He is currently at work on a new short story collection titled THE MELANCHOLY OF DAD and his debut novel WEDDING CRASHER, MARIN COUNTY. He lives and writes in Marin County, California. You can purchase his books and read more of his work on his website www.wilsonkoewing.com. He is active on X @jadedwriter_