I bet most days it didn’t matter too much to him. Ash Black, rock star, had too much going on to dwell on his fractured family. But I bet growing up he’d felt some pain. And I bet Christmas might not be the most fun day of the year for him. Even the most hardcore, rock-n-roll baller had to feel the pull on that holiday, the desire to sit in front of a fire with loved ones, enjoying the peace and harmony of the season.
Christmas morning, activity in my childhood home started early. My parents would celebrate again in January, observing the traditional Julian calendar as well as the Roman Catholic calendar, covering all their bases. But they’d lived in America for almost three decades now, and each year they did December 25th took more and more precedence. We hit the early church service, emerging a cool two and a half hours later.
“What’s this? About you and the punk rocker?” Older women I’d known since I was a baby came over to me with coffees in the adjoining hall, pinching my cheeks and warning me against predatory men.
“Our Anika has a good head on her shoulders,” my mother assured them, though privately last night she’d asked the exact same questions. I’d managed to dodge most of her bullets. I hadn’t played fair—I’d arrived late in the afternoon on the 24th when I knew food preparation and table decorations would take precedence over all else. Even when your daughter was rumored to be dating a no-good, sleeze-bag of a rock and roller. Her words.
“It’s nothing, really,” I told them all, knowing I was actually speaking the truth. There honestly was nothing real between us. “The press likes to follow him around and make up rumors.”
“How about what he did to that nice girl, that Moira?” They shook their heads in disapproval.
“Well, I don’t know how much of that happened exactly like they say it did.”
They lit up. “You do like him! Our little Anya with the rocker!”
At home, we bustled around, the number of dishes at least two times the large number of guests. My mother and I laid out two enormously long tables comprised of a number of borrowed folding tables pushed together, all covered by table cloths and ornate fruit bowls and candles. To my father’s right, we set an extra plate at the table to honor those who’d passed. Before we sat down, I had to remind my mother to take off her apron and her babushka. She still had a red headscarf tied neatly under her chin like she was heading off to the open-air market in Moscow. In 1908.
The toasts, the wine, the teasing, the laughter, it felt so good to see my family.
“He’s a hot one!” Aunt Irina declared, already on her third glass of cordial. She’d been serving it to me on the holidays since I was five, waving away my mother’s concern with “It’s fruit and nuts!” And cognac, lots of it.
I turned to my cousin sitting next to me, praying Irina wasn’t launching into a speech about Ash. But the thirteen-year-old by my side had the same topic on her mind. “Can I meet him?” she asked, her eyes wide with hope.
“Oh, honey, I barely know him. But I can see about getting you his autograph.” I let her down gently.
“I’ll get it!” My mother rose to another knock at the door. Most of our guests knew to arrive by two o’clock, but you never knew who might stop by on the holiday, and my parents had a wide-open door policy. She disappeared out of the dining/living/kitchen area where we’d taken over, all of us sitting down together to eat. When she came back, looking surprised and a bit flushed, she had Ash Black standing next to her.
“Hey.” He gave a small wave, looking shy as he walked in on everyone seated at the table.
“Oh!” I leapt up, nearly clattering my plate to the floor. “Hi! I didn’t realize!”
“The punker!” Aunt Irina toasted his arrival.
“Who’s this now?” My father at the head of the table rose in his argyle sweater vest with at least equal parts welcome and confusion.
“Hi, um.” I could barely remember my own name, standing in my kitchen with Ash and my parents and my entire extended family all watching us. For such a noisy crew, now you could hear a pin drop.
“I’m Asher. I’m a friend of Ana’s.” He stuck out his hand to my father and they shook. “I’m sorry to disturb your dinner. I tried to call ahead but I couldn’t reach you.” He looked at me.
“My phone’s upstairs.”
“I just wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas. And give you a couple of gifts.” Bringing his hand up, he rumpled his hair and gave me a bashful smile. My heart melted into a hot puddle on the floor. “But I can head out.”
“Don’t be crazy!” My mother swatted him with a dishtowel. “There’s more than enough. You sit! Sit and eat!”
Before I knew what was happening, Ash got squished in between my Aunt Irina and Uncle Yuri, seated in front of a large bowl of borscht, an overflowing plate of blinis and beans and peas and cod fish, and a large goblet of cordial.
“It’s just fruit and nuts!” Anut Irina lied to him. “Drink! Drink!”
In the ensuing madness, I was glad no one could tell I was rendered speechless. With all of the excitement over Ash’s arrival, I couldn’t have gotten a word in if I’d tried. And I couldn’t find words. I was floored to see Ash, absolutely floored. Was this another PR stunt? Were cameramen waiting outside our home?
In a moment of relative calm, I caught his eye across the table. “Cameras?” I asked, nodding nervously toward the front door.
He shook his head, no. “Took my brother’s truck,” he reassured me. “No one knows I’m here.”
After dinner, a couple of cousins trapped Ash on the couch, asking him about Taylor Swift. Did he know her? What was she like? Was she super nice?
I went into the kitchen to help with dishes, and soon as he could escape he joined me, washing as I dried, making conversation with my mother about how Christmases here compared to Christmases growing up.
“More here,” my mother summed it up, more food, more presents, more of everything. The dishes kept coming and he kept at it, joking around with me, singing bits of Christmas carols with my aunt. She decided to teach him a traditional Russian Christmas song, “The Forest Raised a Christmas Tree.” The look on Ash’s face as he earnestly listened, then repeated the lines about an evergreen nurtured by the forest. He just about killed me, in a whole bunch of ways.
“Listen, I didn’t mean to barge in here and stay so long,” he apologized to me, as if he’d done something wrong.
“Ash, I’m so glad to see you. I’m just surprised.”
“I haven’t even given you your gift yet.” I had one for him, too, upstairs. I led him up the stairwell, feeling absurdly guilty for sneaking a boy up into my room. I gave him mine, first, nervous and shy. It wasn’t much and it was kind of nerdy, but after all, that’s who I was. And what did you get for the rock star who had everything?
You knit him a hat, that’s what. I’d done it in the same chocolate brown as his eyes, plus some charcoal gray, and lined it all in soft, fuzzy fleece. “So you don’t get cold when you go on tour,” I explained, looking down at my bed.
“I love it!” he exclaimed, holding it up and looking at it. “Is it Gucci?”
“No, I made it.”
“You what?”
“I made it.”
“How?” He looked at me, confused.
“You know, I knit it.” I felt embarrassed. “With needles and wool.”
“You knit me a hat?”
I nodded. So dorky.
“No one’s ever knit me a hat before.” He sounded astonished. I shrugged, self-conscious. But he seemed to like it. “Thank you, Ana. I can’t believe you did this for me.”
“Try it on.” He slipped it on and I had to admit, it looked good. The brown matched the exact color of his eyes. What was it about a handsome man with a strong jaw in a knit hat? He should probably take it off. We were still in my parent’s house. Jumping him wouldn’t do at all.
“Well, now I feel like my gift isn’t anything,” he said. “I didn’t make it.”
“Ash, you did
n’t have to get me anything.”
He handed me a small box, wrapped somewhat clumsily. I liked that he’d wrapped it himself. I had to smile, picturing him with scissors and tape, struggling and failing to get the paper just right. “Open it.”
I ripped off the paper, opened the lid and found a ring with two keys. No tag on it or label. I picked it up, curious.
“I wanted to get you a piano,” he started explaining, “but I couldn’t see where one would fit in your apartment.”
I laughed in agreement, picturing the grand piano I’d seen in his San Francisco home in our tiny living space. There’d be nowhere to walk around it.
“So, I talked to a friend of mine who runs a recording studio. He’s cool with you coming and using one of the practice rooms any time you want. Great acoustics, everything’s top of the line. And it’s not far from where you work, in SoHo.”
“You mean it?” I lit up. The only time I got consistent access to a piano was when I headed up to my parents’ house on the weekends. I’d been starved for one.
“Anytime you want. This key’s to the front entrance. This key’s to the practice rooms.”
“Ash!” I threw my arms around him, amazed at not only his generosity, but his insightfulness. I couldn’t think of anything I’d want more, the gift of playing music anytime I wanted. He wrapped his arms around the small of my back.
“Merry Christmas, Ana.” He kissed me, sweet and full. My lips met his, kissing him back like I never wanted to stop. Until he broke it off.