Growling, Monica carried the tree into the living room. She put it down on the floor in front of the window and went back to close the front door. She picked up the bag and set it on the kitchen table, pulling out of it a box. Monica turned the box over in her hands and carefully read the instructions on the back.
This should be easy.
Monica opened the box and pulled out a series of metallic objects. One was vaguely bowl-shaped, three looked like miniature playground slides, and three strange-looking screws. Monica frowned at them, frowned at the back of the box, and frowned at the pieces of metal again. Experimentally she tried fitting one of the slide-looking thingies into the bowl thingy. It fit.
She began preliminary assembly. Satisfied that she had it all in hand, she put the half-completed sculpture on the floor. Monica lifted up the tree and tried to place it in the middle of the bowl. The sculpture immediately fell apart into its component pieces.
Growling, Monica leaned the tree against the window as best she could. She got down on her hands and knees and put the metal puzzle back together. Still on the floor, she tried to lift up the tree by the bottom of its trunk and slide the bowl underneath it. The tree immediately began falling to one side, and Monica shrieked.
"Hey hey hey." The tree stopped its descent and righted itself. Chandler's voice came from the other side of the branches above her. "What are you trying to do, Mon?"
"Just hold it like that. Lift it up a little. There, hold it right there. Don't move it!" With the tree upright and steady, Monica was able to maneuver the metal bits underneath it. She positioned the legs and tightened the screws, and amazingly the whole thing seems to achieve a fragile stability. "Okay, let go."
The tree settled slightly but remained upright. Sighing in relief, Monica began to scoot out from underneath it.
"Wait, don't move." She heard Chandler move about in the kitchen for a few seconds, then a pitcher of water appeared underneath the tree. "There."
Monica felt the frown returning. "There what?"
"Fill the bowl with water."
"Why?"
"To keep the tree from drying out."
"You mean... it drinks the water? It's still alive?"
"Well, I don't know if it technically counts as alive. I'd recommend that you avoid the subject when you talk with Phoebe, though."
Monica carefully poured the water into the bowl, then finally extricated herself from the tree. She stood back and eyed it critically. It seemed to be tilting ever so slightly. For once, though, she decided that this was good enough. Monica carried the pitcher back into the kitchen and set it in the sink. Then she removed another box from the bag on the kitchen table, turned it over, and frowned intently at the instructions on the back.
After she'd been doing this for a minute, Chandler interjected, "It's just Christmas tree lights. They're not exactly difficult to put up."
"The tree wasn't supposed to be hard, either, and look how that turned out. And see, I have to carefully loop these wires around the branches."
"Which is about as difficult as putting on a party hat." Chandler took another box out of the bag, this one filled with baseball-sized colored hollow balls. "So, your first Christmas tree, huh?"
"Yeah. I don't know how you gentiles put up with it. Everything's so messy and cumbersome." Monica glanced over at the needles still littering the floor by the front door, and decided they took precedence. She stood up and got out her broom and dustpan.
"Well, we generally convince our kids that decorating a tree is great fun and con them into doing it." Chandler opened the box of ornaments and began assembling them to Monica's silent relief. "And generally we leave the trees up as long as possible to avoid having to pack everything up again. The preferred method for taking them down is to burn the lights so long that the tree catches on fire and burns the living room to ashes. Then we build a new one."
"Oh, a barrel of laughs you are." Monica dumped the needles into the garbage, then put the broom and dustpan away. "So, any awful Christmas stories you can tell?"
"Nah. Christmas was always okay." Chandler's voice was unusually sober. "My parents actually pretended to like each other. You know, until the divorce. Then Dad moved to Las Vegas and it was just me and Mom, and she usually found time to stay at home during the holidays. So for like one day I could pretend I was part of a normal family."
Monica reached out and squeezed Chandler's shoulder reassuringly. Then she picked up the string of Christmas lights and carried them over to the tree. She examined the tree closely, mapping in her head where she thought the lights should go. She hoped she had enough.
Just as she was starting to string the lights through the tree, the front door opened. "Ooh! A tree, a whole tree!"
"A Christmas tree." Chandler lifted up one of the ornaments.
"Oh." Phoebe didn't seem enthusiastic about it.
Monica looked over her shoulder, praying that Phoebe wouldn't begin complaining about killing a tree. Just this once, please, don't get worked up over this kind of stuff, Phoebe.
"C'mon, Pheebs." Chandler now had an ornament in each hand, and he shook them festively. "It's fun, and at the end, there's presents!"
"Presents. I like presents." Phoebe's enthusiasm grew, and then as quickly died. "Mom gave me a present one year. She killed herself."
"Oh." Chandler lowered the ornaments. "Your mom killed herself on Christmas?"
"Around Christmas, yeah. Then I ran away and it was so cold." Phoebe's eyes grew distant.
Monica could not help feeling irritated. She'd embarked on this whole Christmas project to try and help Phoebe and Chandler feel better this time of year, and now Phoebe was threatening to wreck that plan. With great effort, Monica kept her voice friendly, even if it still had an edge. "Well, you're not cold now, are you? You're here where it's warm, and there are trees and presents and no one is going to kill themselves. Now, grab those balls and help Chandler put them on the tree."
Phoebe looked blankly at Monica, a bad sign. Chandler saw it also, and held out the ornaments. "Betcha you can't put these on the tree faster than I can?"
Phoebe shifted her gaze to Chandler. "Is this a race?"
"Yes!" Chandler put the ornaments in Phoebe's hands, grabbed two more off the table, and ran in an exaggerated fashion over to the tree.
A smile grew on Phoebe's face. She giggled and ran, and suddenly the tree was in a very crowded area. Monica felt herself being jostled on either side and had to bite her tongue to keep from yelling. Chandler had done a wonderful job of distracting Phoebe and getting her to have fun. Monica knew she shouldn't sabotage her efforts, despite the fact that the ornaments weren't being placed in what she considered to be optimal positions on the tree.
Monica continued placing the lights as the race slowed slightly between Chandler and Phoebe, probably helped by the fact that there really weren't that many ornaments. At one point, Chandler looked out the window and said, "Hmm. Curiously enough, Ugly Naked Guy's tree has far more decorations than ours does."
"So keeping himself naked is fine, but his tree has to be covered up?" Phoebe peered through the window, then frowned and turned towards Chandler. "Ugly Naked Guy?"
Chandler nodded sadly. "I'm sorry, Pheebs, but I just can't stand using 'cute' anymore when describing him."
"But, but 'ugly' is such a negative word."
"What, and trying to spoil Monica's first Christmas with stories about your mother isn't negative?"
Phoebe looked at Monica. "Your first Christmas?"
"I, I've never had a tree before." Monica looped the end of the string of lights around a branch, then stood back to judge the effect. "And don't think I didn't have holiday celebrations, Dad always gave us lots of Hanukah presents. I'm just doing this for you guys."
"Aw." Phoebe hugged Monica. "You're so sweet."
Monica smiled and returned the hug briefly. "Thanks."
"Ooh, shopping!" Phoebe stepped back and ran back towards the door. "I need to get presents! Oh, and I think Grandma has some Christmas decorations I could borrow. I think she might even have my mother's skull!"
Monica could only stare as Phoebe quickly left.
Chandler sounded equally flabbergasted. "Did she say her mother's skull?"
"Oh God, I hope she didn't mean that literally."
"It's so hard to tell with her. But, but I'm pretty sure she didn't." Chandler suddenly grinned. "That's what I like so much about Phoebe. She is so unpredictable."
"Uhn." Monica turned away from the door. "That's not always a good thing. Kinda tough to live with day after day."
"Phoebe, you mean?"
"Oh, I don't know what I mean. I just, sometimes I wish things were more normal."
"You mean, normal like what you had at home?"
"Okay, point taken. Normal is tough to live with, too." Monica bent down, grabbed the plug for the lights. "I guess I'd like to live with someone who could be both unpredictable and normal. Y'know, did things that surprised me but also knew when to tone it down."
"Someone like you?"
"Oh, I'm completely predictable."
"You are so not. Don't forget, I know whose underwear that is."
Monica blushed but mentally conceded that point as well. She plugged in the Christmas lights, then straightened up and took two steps back.
The Christmas tree actually looked a little sad. Off-center, with far too few ornaments, and the lights only illuminated about half the branches. Still, for some reason it made Monica feel warm inside. Never mind that it wasn't her holiday or her customs; creating something like this to share with Chandler and Phoebe made her feel good.
The door opened again and Ross called out, "Hey everyone."
"Hey, man," Chandler answered. "Look at what Monica did."
Ross walked up and stood next to Monica. Monica kept her eyes on the tree but awaited Ross's reaction. There were a thousand things he could criticize, from the lackluster appearance to the theological implications.
After a moment, he nodded. "Looks great, Mon."
Monica let out a breath. "Thanks."
"We're still going to do the menorah, aren't we?"
"Of course."
"Cool." To Monica's relief, Ross left it at that. "So, Chandler, what do you want for Christmas?"
"Kim Basinger."
"That would not involve kidnapping?"
"Oh. Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi, then."
"Do you even have a computer?"
"I do at work. You don't think I stay late at the office to do actual work, do you?"
"Silly me."
"Candy canes."
Ross and Chandler looked at her. Ross was the one to ask, "What?"
"The tree needs candy canes. I'll make some."
"You know how to make candy canes?"
"Can't be that hard." Monica walked over to the kitchen, selected a recipe book. "You two, clean up any pine needles that have fallen."
Chandler chuckled. "I'm going to guess this will be the neatest Christmas in history. Wonder how she'll respond to wrapping paper being flung about on Christmas Day?"
"Dude, I'll venture a guess that you don't want to find out."
Monica chuckled to herself and searched the table of contents. One Christmas, made to order, coming up.
(to be continued)