Free The Great Good Thing by Andrew Klavan Page B

work so early in the morning that he was often asleep by nine, by ten at the latest. By midnight, usually, the whole house was quiet. When I felt I’d waited long enough, I opened the toy cabinet—quietly, quietly. I slid the boxes of board games aside. I drew out the leather box full of jewels. Barefoot in my pajamas, I crept downstairs with the box tucked under my arm.
    Just in back of the house, down a flight of three steps, there was a concrete platform. It was set beneath the kitchen window, beside the cellar door. Two garbage receptacles were built into the cement, side by side. When you wanted to open one, you would step on a foot pedal to lever up the iron lid. Then you could lower in the old grocery bags full of kitchen trash.
    I remember—I can feel it as I write—the cold of the concrete on my bare feet as I hurried tiptoe down those steps. I can still feel the rough surface of the cement through the knees of my pajamas as I knelt on the platform beside the receptacle. I pressed on the foot pedal with one hand to lift the iron lid. I can still feel the cold of the iron against my palm. With the other hand, I stuffed the leather box into the sodden garbage bag. I remember—I can feel as I write—the damp coffee grounds and the brittle egg shells that rose around my forearm as I worked the box deep, deep into the trash. I wanted to make sure it would not be discovered before the garbage men came in the morning and took the bags away. When the leather treasure box was well hidden, I lowered the heavy lid carefully so it wouldn’t make a noise.
    I crept back inside—crept quickly back upstairs, two stairs by two. I slipped back into my bedroom, closing the door behind me.

CHAPTER 4
A C HRISTMAS C AROL
    W hen did I first become aware of Jesus Christ? Every idea comes with its own history. What was the history of this idea in me? During those months of self-searching in the hills above Santa Barbara, I asked myself that question continually. I had heard a call to be baptized, but why? Why baptized? Why Christ?
    The thing was, the figure of Jesus had been at the center of my thinking for a long time. Even before I had any faith at all, I had written an entire novel about him—two novels, in fact, though the second was just a slapdash abridgment of the first, as I’ll explain. By the time the call to baptism came to me, I did have faith, a general faith in God. And yes, the God I believed in looked very much like the God of the New Testament: the logos of Love that redeemed a tragic world. But that only begged the question: Why? Why that God? Why Christ?
    Finding the answer was not as simple for me as it would have been for someone who had been raised in a Christian household. As a child, I had never been taught that Jesus was even special, let alone divine. I couldn’t recall ever having been inside a church as a boy. I don’t think I seriously discussed Jesus with any of my little Christian friends. I didn’t have that many Christian friends, only a few. Mostly, I grew up a Jew among other Jews. So how had Jesus entered my imagination? How had he come to occupy its core?
    It took an effort of memory, but after a while I reached back and recalled the first time I truly noticed him. It happened on a Christmas Eve. I don’t know how young I was, but young, a little boy, five or six maybe. I had been sent to stay overnight at the house of a woman named Mina.
    Mina had come to work for my family shortly after my younger brothers were born. My older brother was six then and I was three. With the two of us underfoot already, my mother needed help taking care of baby twins. Mina came to live with us for a while, a year or so, I don’t know how long exactly. But even after she moved out, she remained our regular babysitter. She was more than that to me, though, much more. To me, she was almost a second mother.
    My first mother—my real mother—was an enigmatic figure. I find, when I try to describe her, pale