The Christmas Market

December 15th, 2007. Nuremburg, Germany.

I’m walking down a row of wooden stalls with candy-cane striped roofs. The smell of roasted sugar, pine needles, and bratwurst is overwhelming. Around us, the air is filled with joyful shouts, children playing, and carols. But I feel removed from it, far away, my eyes locked on my phone screen.

“Let’s see it.” Emmerich puts his arm around me, leaning in. 

I lower my phone. I know it’s not fair to Emmerich to be so distracted tonight, not when he was so excited to bring me to the Christmas market. “Don’t be silly,” I say. “Let’s go look at the chocolate booth.”

“Skye.” 

I sigh and pull up the Facebook page. A picture of Noah fills the screen. It was posted just an hour ago. He looks good in the photo; blond hair nearly as white as mine, brown eyes that gleam. He’s wearing a stupid Christmas hat that makes it seem as if there’s a tree growing out the back of his head. The look on his face is mischievous, like he’s goading the person taking the picture. Beside his face, there is a button I stare at nearly every day, taunting ‘Add as friend?’

“He looks fine, Skye.”

“He’s in school, right?” I say. “Does he look drunk in the photo?”

Emmerich puts his hand over mine, partially blocking the screen. “He looks like he’s having fun.”

I know it’s ridiculous. Not even ridiculous, it’s pathetic. I am twenty-five years old, for God’s sake. I’m staring at this Facebook page with the hunger of a fifteen-year-old stalking a crush.

“Do you want to go home?”

“What?” I put the phone in my pocket. “No, Emmerich. I don’t want to go home.”

The picture caught my attention, as all his posts do. When there’s a new one, it’s hard not to drop what I’m doing to analyze every detail it holds. He doesn’t post very often. There’s a photo from his high school graduation, which happened a year later than it was supposed to, a discrepancy that was at least 75% my fault. There are a few photos from his first year of university, some pictures that inexplicably seem to be taken in England, and a few photos with different girlfriends. That’s it, though. He posts things and I see them. That’s the extent of our relationship. He can’t even stalk me back. Thanks to some ill-advised actions on my part a few years ago, I’m hesitant to put my name online. 

Not that the angry Texan drug dealer would have much luck finding me in Germany.

“But are you going to be present, here? Or is your mind going to be off in Kingston?” 

“I’m going to be here, I promise.”

Emmerich gives me this look as if he doesn’t quite believe me. He takes my gloved hand, and we stroll slowly through the booths.

I imagine Noah is with his friends tonight – at least I hope he is. Either that, or he is sitting in silence with our father. Probably in the same house I grew up in. A quiet house where everything is falling apart, with our father who himself fell apart years ago; that might be Noah’s Christmas. I will be at Emmerich’s parents’ house where the lights are warm and the fireplace burns merrily and the air smells like the bread his grandmother bakes every day for supper. Maybe it’s wrong, not to share this with Noah. I so want to share it with him. But Noah seems to be doing well. I don’t want to screw up his life any more than I already have. 

Emmerich squeezes my hand. Right. I’m supposed to be focusing on the market. We’ve wandered closer to the towering cathedral and the little booths in its shadow. We pass booths with Christmas ornaments, suspended from the ceiling on pieces of red ribbon. There are endless rows of blankets and scarves. There are booths with Christmas decorations that seem to be made of paper, depicting sleepy village scenes. When we pass shops selling homemade toys: blocks, dolls, teddy bears, and wooden horses, I tug Emmerich over the closest booth, trying to demonstrate my enthusiasm for our activity. I pick up a soft baby doll with curling black hair. 

“Are you expecting?” the saleswoman says in German.

“Oh us?” I look at Emmerich, laughing. “No, no, no. We’re not married.” I put the doll down, backing away.

Emmerich’s face is clouded as we leave. He takes his hand from mine. “You don’t have to say it like that. We could be married, you know we could be. It’s not like I haven’t asked. You know I would do it in a moment.”

“Emmerich.” I reach for him. 

“This is like living in suspended animation.” Emmerich stops suddenly, blocking the throughway. “With you refusing to move forward, always staring longingly at his photo on that phone, feeling guilty for every good moment we have. I want to enjoy your life. It is frustrating to see this, Skye. Do you understand that?”

“Yes, I’m sure it’s frustrating and I want to marry you but—”

“Then do it.” Emmerich gestures to the church. “We could get married right now. Your reasons don’t make sense to me.” 

A family with what seems like half a dozen kids rushes past us, loudly. The children are holding sticks of unidentified chocolate-covered objects, hurrying to the toy booth we just left. To these little kids, I’m sure the market feels like Santa’s village. I wait for them to pass but my heart feels heavy watching them. They must feel magic in the air tonight. I will never feel that magic again – not after everything I’ve done.

I don’t know how to explain it to Emmerich. He is a good person. The worst thing he’s ever done is ski through unmarked terrain. He doesn’t understand the guilt, the paralyzing guilt, of ruining someone’s life. 

There are so many reasons we shouldn’t get married: what if my past were to catch up with me? I could be arrested for possession or shoplifting. Yes, the crimes were committed years ago in another country, but it could happen. Noah could press charges against me for stealing his money. I could somehow go back to drugs, throwing our lives into chaos. I wouldn’t want to put Emmerich through that. And there’s more: there’s the feeling that it’s not fair for me to feel happy, knowing Noah isn’t. I can’t be happy until I’m sure Noah is happy. No, until I’m sure his life is perfect. For me to start a new family would be unfair to him. It’s ridiculous. I know it’s ridiculous, but that doesn’t mean I can change how I feel. 

“There are big risks in marrying me,” I explain. I would reiterate the threat of drugs and guns and jails, if there weren’t so many children around.

Emmerich’s eyes blaze. “Everything has risks. I told you I don’t care.”

I swallow a lump in my throat. There’s still more. There’s the fact that I would have to walk myself down the aisle at our wedding. I would have no family present; no one from my childhood or adolescence, no one to sit on my side of the aisle. It wouldn’t be what I dreamed about as a little girl. I shake my head. 

“Reach out to him,” Emmerich’s voice is softer now. He puts his hand on my cheek. “Let the wound heal. Let us move on.”

And that’s the last thing, the worst thing. “I’m sure Noah is in contact with our father. If we were in contact, Noah would want us all to be a family and I don't want to see my dad ever again.”

Emmerich looks up at the sky, stepping back from me. His voice is hard. “Fine, Skye. If you want to make things difficult for yourself, I can’t stop it. You won’t reach out, but you won’t move on – how do you expect to live the rest of your life?”

“I—” My throat is burning from holding back tears. The night suddenly seems colder. I pull my scarf tighter around my neck. “I don’t know.”

Neither of us speaks for a moment. Finally, Emmerich sighs and gives me a weak smile. “Would you like some gluwhein? I’ll go get us some.”

“That would be lovely.” I still drink alcohol. Alcohol was never my problem.

“Skye,” Emmerich looks at me over his shoulder. “We can’t do this forever.”

And he walks away.

I put a gloved hand to my head. How did things go so wrong? This evening was supposed to be a sweet date in a perfect Christmas setting. The little booths around me are filled with treasures: porcelain houses, delicate nutcrackers, tiny dollhouse furniture. The sweetshops are heavenly, with cookies of all kinds filling the counters, inscribed gingerbread hearts hanging from the ceilings, and chocolates in the shape of every Christmas symbol imaginable. It’s even snowing, for heaven’s sake! Yet I managed to ruin the unruinable. I have a talent for that, apparently.

I have had twenty-five Christmases. Many have been far, far worse than this one. When I was twenty-one, a few months after I left home, I spent Christmas huddled in a girlfriend’s living room in Texas (huddled because this was after the incident with the drug dealer). I was slowly recovering from three months in a dark, dangerous drug world and the four years of increasingly concerning drug use that preceded it. Three weeks sober, that Christmas my brain was still horribly muddied. It felt like coming out of a fog, coming back to my sanity. As we were watching It’s a Wonderful Life on television, I recovered enough awareness to remember my grandmother’s inheritance. It took some time to access it but by the new year, I was on a plane, ready to muddle together a new life. And muddle I did. 

A new life that now included my second Christmas with Emmerich. A new life living with him in Germany. A new passion for environmental engineering and conservation. An alternate reality where I received all As on my transcript from my first semester of university and where I made real, good friends, despite being six years older than everyone else in my class. 

If we want to stay here, in Germany, together, eventually we will have to get married, though Emmerich swears that’s not why he wants to do it. He’s right in that I can’t stay in the middle forever: torturing myself over my brother but not reaching out to him either. It’s an impossible state to maintain, even if the clock wasn’t running out on my student visa.

I see a band over at the edge of the square, playing Christmas carols. Emmerich still waits in line for gluwhein sign so I wander to join the crowd in front of the band. Snowflakes are floating down from the sky, twirling through the air. 

Noah would love this.

I pull out my phone again and find the picture. He’s alone in the photo, but he does look happy. I can see someone’s arm in the background, cutting into the frame. And there again is that button I just can’t press.

To give it up, to delete my anonymous Facebook account, would be to sever all ties to my family. And that would mean I have no family at all. Of course, I know what Emmerich would say if I voiced this to him; it’s not as if I really have Noah now. I don’t have Emmerich now, either. Here, in the middle, I have no one. 

“Skye!” Emmerich is crossing the square, walking towards me, holding two mugs of gluwhein high in the air. Snowflakes fall into our cups. I can see from here how red the tips of his ears are from under his hat. I want to fold into him, to be with him wholly and fully. I can picture us having a child together, someday, far, far in the future with my hair and his beautiful eyes.

I look back down to my brother who, for me, has only existed in a screen for over four years. I have to make a decision and it doesn’t have to be now, but I want it to be now. Because this moment, this moment could be perfect, and I want to be here for it.

“Hi, you!” I kiss Emmerich’s cheek as he passes over the mug. It’s warm in my hands, the sweet smell enticing. 

Emmerich smiles. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I was too harsh earlier. I can’t imagine how hard it must be to be separated from family.”

“No,” I maneuver myself into Emmerich’s arms and hold up my phone. “You were right.”

“You don’t have to if you aren’t ready—”

But I do. I navigate to the anonymous account I made, and I delete it. With one button, the connection is gone.

Emmerich holds me tighter. “Are you—?”

I nod with the bravest gesture I can muster. “It’s the right decision.” 

As I say the words, I suddenly believe them. The tension in my shoulders relaxes. Somehow the band’s music seems to shine up from the crowd, like the light from the market itself. The notes aren’t gentle, but triumphant. They resonate with a joy I’d worried I would never feel again. The joy was waiting in the notes. And now I drink them in, letting them fill my body. I feel higher, somehow, like I’m floating over the scene, watching the laughter, seeing the smiling faces. It occurs to me that I’m smiling too.

Because I’ve come out from the ashes and I’m not alone. Emmerich is here. Not only Emmerich but my university friends, the Canadian ex-pats I’ve found here, and Emmerich’s entire big, laughing family.

I lean into him; his infectious smile, his nose red and raw from the cold. “I want to marry you,” I whisper. 

He looks at me, his eyes wide as if he can’t believe it. “You don’t have to say it just to—”

I stand on my tiptoes and kiss him. 

“I want to marry you,” I whisper to his lips. “More than anything, I want to be with you. You’re the most wonderful person I’ve met in my life. I want this; a want this life with you.”

When I was little, I loved Christmas innocently. I thought the whole world was Christmas. I didn’t yet know its sorrows or its heartache, its tragedies or its failures. I thought that to know them was to take the magic away.

Because the magic doesn’t come from the world being perfect, sorrowless, pure and good. The magic comes from the fact that the world is not so. And yet we live bravely anyway.

Emmerich picks me up, whooping, and twirls me around as the band hits the crescendo. My vision is dizzy and confused but I’m laughing. I know Emmerich will see me safely to the ground. My eyes, from here on out, are knit to his.