Santa Baby

Santa Baby

His palms skated across his belly, poking and prodding at the skin around his hairy pelvis. He pinched a fold around his stomach and stretched it out.

“Ah,” Linus groaned and shut his eyes.

When he’d been tugging on his skin for over 3 minutes—and he did count—Linus let go and opened his eyes. He looked down at his naked belly, which was now marred by red marks blossoming near his abdomen. Despite Linus’s initial hypothesis that fat was as malleable as play dough, his stomach remained flat and mercilessly concave. No big belly. He let out a long whine, “Shit!”

He’d just have to stuff the suit then. Whatever it took, Linus would be jolly. He was determined to spread cheer. With a huff, he hauled the crimson suit over his body, careful not to dirty it with the grime that lay at his feet. When he’d bunched up his shirt and crammed it into the midsection of the red coat, Linus produced a comb from his jean pockets. He ran the brush through his beard once—imagining that this single stroke was all the taming his facial hair needed to look presentable. And so, framed by snowflakes and the flicker of streetlamps, Linus Graber was illuminated on Christmas Eve and became somewhat divine.

Clad in scarlet and white, a self proclaimed saint emerged from the shadows, all the while humming under his breath, “I’m dreamin’ of a white Christmas,”

There was a certain skip in his step. A certain…je ne sais quoi. Perhaps it was the patchwork jeans that smelled of piss and bourbon, or maybe it was the red coat that hung like a wilted poppy petal on Mr. Graber’s malnourished frame—whatever it was, people stared. Most however paid little attention to Graber’s blundering gait or his yellow grin or even the bottle of eggnog vodka which Linus steadily nursed, no, instead, all eyes were drawn to the burlap sack which he had swung over one shoulder.

Linus strode down 44th Street, his smile only growing as dusk faded into a night sky void of stars or a moon. He was like a train—his open mouth expelling breaths that were seen in the cold air like steam from an engine—so when he halted in his tracks, the whole street seemed to stop to stare at the sudden lack of motion.

It was a tree that had stopped Mr. Graber; a pine which towered over the passing crowds. It was layered with tinsel and peppered with little LED lights. Bobbles and ornaments hung from the branches and their glinting forms seemed to invite Linus. The star that rested at the top of the tree stretched its heavenly arms towards the man, “Come closer,” it seemed to whisper.

So he did. He lumbered forward with the grace of an infant elephant and licked his lips. As Linus neared the tree and imagined the warm glow of starlight embracing his body, he heard a pair of rasping voices.

“Jesus, Mary…”

“Look I’m sorry it’s just, I thought if I told you here then—you know, the separation would be….”

“Would be what? Amicable?” He inhaled sharply, as if inflating his lungs would help to drown the sorrow building up in his throat. “Fucking hell, Mary. Have the apartment then. Have it all if you want.”

Mary frowned, “Harvey, please, please don’t do that.”

The man opposite her, the one she called Harvey, he just stared at her for a moment. The way she had said his name… of course. Of course she didn’t love him anymore. There is one sacred tenant in Love; you speak your lover’s name like a secret. But the way Mary had said his name, it was dull and factual. Her tongue hadn’t bothered to caress any vowels or consonants. His name was now like a curse, and Harvey’s eyes watered as he remembered the times when it was like a kiss.

It was then that Linus stepped in.

“Hullo there.” His lips curled up and out as he smiled at the couple. The couple did not smile back. Neither party said anything as Linus fished around in his burlap sack with his tongue caught between his teeth and eyebrows furrowed in concentration.

“Ah!” He exclaimed and from the bag, he produced a lighter. It was yellow and lacking opacity, so you could see the small amount of lighting fluid still swiveling round in the plastic.

Mary and Harvey were still silent, though both wanted to speak. Linus could see it in the careful way they watched him and his lighter. He knew they wanted to say something—perhaps they were too starstruck to talk—so he took the liberty of filling the silence.

“That’s for you then. To keep—not to borrow! You kids, you dunno what it's like to be alone. You gotta keep each other around. Look out for each other’s backs—not stab em!” Mr. Graber was stroking his beard, scraggily silver tendrils getting caught on his hangnails. “Take the lighter. Light each other’s ciggs, after sex, after baths, after meals. Just light em’ up for each other and have a good smoke. That’ll be your weddin’ ring from now on. Keep it on ya and neither one of ya will doubt how your marriage is goin’.”

For a while Mary and Harvey stayed quiet and still. But then, Harvey’s fists went limp at his sides and his eyes drifted unwillingly towards the woman beside him. His jaw clenched once, twice, and then his lips parted, expelling a heavy sigh into the chilled evening air. Right at that moment, Harvey was willing to overlook the affair. He was willing to forget the subtle but certain way she criticized his screenplays over the dinners that he prepared. He was ready to let go of her flat ‘I love you’s and the fact that sometimes, when the bed is empty and it’s just him lying there alone, he doesn’t even notice her absence. He was ready to settle for whatever she had left to give him.

He was so ready in fact, that Harvey started to reach for the lighter in Linus’s hands. And that’s when Mary spoke.

“You fucker,” she spit, “go be senile elsewhere.”

Harvey’s hand snapped back to his side and he shoved both fists in his coat pockets. Linus however had not been so quick to recover from Mary’s bitter gaze. He stumbled backwards, as if taking her words like a blow to the gut. He was so startled that he hadn’t even noticed the sharp clatter that sounded as the translucent yellow lighter dropped from his shaking hand to the ground.

Mr. Graber lurched down the sidewalk, repulsed by his failure. “Shit, shit, shit!” He cursed and howled with one hand repeatedly hitting his temple.

Mary watched the drunk waddle away, something between a scowl, a sneer and a smirk brewing at the corners of her mouth. Minutes later, she finally noticed Harvey watching her. Shit. Right. The breakup. She had to do it, had to push through, had to break his heart—she groaned inwardly. But it was Harvey who spoke first.

“Take it all. Leave the cat though.”

Mary balked at his leveled tone. Never had she heard him so calm. “Are you—shit Harvey, you sure?”

He nodded, jaw taut and tense. But the certainty of his actions was betrayed by the vacancy that lingered behind his irises. He hadn’t even been making eye contact with her, instead, he’d been staring at something behind her, lying on the ground. Spaced out. Broken.

She shook her head, running a manicured hand through her hair, ruffling it uncharacteristically. “At least take the night to think about it—“

“I don’t need anymore god damn time to think about us,” He shut his eyes, “I’m letting you go, Mare.”

She wanted to scream, to argue, to do something. Walking away was not something she was accustomed to. But looking at him now, she saw fragments of Harvey. Not a whole man, but a man who could never be completed by her. She could not bare to break him further. So she leaned into his warmth a final time to kiss his jaw and smiled when she saw the muscle relax slightly—but he kept his eyes closed.

“Merry Christmas, Harve.” She whispered.

Winter nights are sacred in their ability to shift into a shade of yellow that is not seen during any other time of day, season, photograph or painting. The dim glow of streetlamps bathes every surface in a burnished gold, and the flaxen tones are upheld and saturated by the frosty blankets of white that the snowfall provides.

Linus was toeing the edge of 84 Chaleur Crescent’s driveway and watching the suburbia before him. This was a cul de sac world, a PTA bubble, and Linus’s only relief was the yellow light that made it all just a tiny bit more tolerable. He’d always preferred the cold to warmth. He used to inhale the winter air so deeply that he worried he would somehow accidentally inhale all the colours before him. It was a fear of his; a monochromatic life. He lived in technicolour now and saw rainbows dripping like melting popsicles from rooftops and fingertips. But standing here, in front of the red bricked house of his nightmares, his world seemed to regress into a grey state.

Just then, a light flickered on in an upstairs window. It was coming from Janey’s room. All this time and Janey was still home! It was fate—it had to have been. Linus watched the light open mouthed as it shone with the same yellow grace that was showering the rest of the street. He approached it; like a moth to a flame he walked up the driveway, burlap sack still in hand, heart still thumping wildly in his chest.

There’s a knock on the door, the third one of the evening. The first was from Max. Jane sent him home though. One look at his hands was evidence enough that they shouldn’t be couple. He had a present for her in his arms; it was wrapped up in the prettiest periwinkle. She’d just stared at him and his large crescent grin, his wide eager eyes and his heart that she could see beating so feverishly on his sleeve.

“I was going to tell you at your Chanukah thing,” Jane hadn’t let him inside. She stares past him, into the wintery afternoon and at the streetlamp that has just flickered into being.

Max’s head dipped to one side, “Tell me what, love?”

She nearly gagged at the way he crooned to her, as if she were in need of consoling or fixing. “Tell you that I can’t do this anymore,” her hand lifts just as his mouth parts. It comes to a halt over the skin of his cheek, and it hovers there, waiting. But she knows she’ll never get permission to touch him ever again. This is the worst part. The revulsion.

Max staggers back away from her waiting palm and Jane almost smiles at the familiarity of it all. “What the hell do you mean you can’t do this anymore?” He demands. His knuckles have turned white from gripping the gift so hard.

Jane sighs and fold her hands behind her back as she leans against the doorway. “We’re wrong for each other Maxie, fundamentally wro—“

“Don’t you fucking dare, Jane.” He warns in a whisper. “You don’t get to ‘maxie’ your way out of this one!”

She just shrugs. “What would you rather I call you?”

There’s a beat, a moment carved out of time in which both lovers break in a sad harmony, then contemplate and process their brokenness. They assess the damage; can this be fixed? Who have we become? Don’t they love me? Don’t I love them? And when the word no finally rings like a silent alarm through the chilled December air, Max makes his conclusion.

He sits the gift down on the doorstep, staring past her while she stares past him. “I’d rather you not call me at all, Jane.”

And then he left.

The second knock was from a group of carollers. Jane simply put up a finger, signaling the clan of ‘festive fuckers’ to wait. 3 minutes later, Jane resumed her position at the doorway and ate popcorn while listening to a pitchy rendition of Holy Night.

She knew exactly who the third knock was from, and she almost didn’t bother to rise from her warm spot on the bed. But then a fourth knock came, and then a fifth, and then a sixth, and finally, somewhere in-between the seventeenth and nineteenth knock, Jane groaned and felt the heat leave her body in waves as she shed her blankets, though she kept one cloaked round her slight frame as she descended the stairs.

An angel answered the door. She was wrapped in ivory, a stark contrast to the black hair that fell in waves just past her shoulders.

“So,” the angel murmured in a mocking tone, “how’re the reindeer this time of year?”

He stared at the pale yellow light that rolled off of the angel’s chin, knuckles, knees and elbows. It poured out of every edge, corner and curve. “Janey,” he breathed.

But the angel raised a hand, “Don’t.” Her hand then lowered from its warning position and stretched out towards him. “Just give me the gift and go on your way.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Linus spotted a box wrapped in blue. “You already got a present.” It wasn’t a question.

“What? Oh that…it’s not a present.”

“Then what the hell is it?”

“A mistake.”

Linus stared dumbfounded at the blue box. “I don’t give presents by mistake.”

The angel sighed and produced a single cigarette and lighter out of her pyjama pockets. She held it at her lips and inhaled, savoring the lovely silky burn of the smoke. “You come here every year, Linus,”

His silver brows pull together at the sound of his name—not the one he was expecting her to use.

“Yeah that’s right,” she nods and watches the ashes from her cigarette fall onto the doorstep, “I stopped calling you my dad years ago.”

She shifts swiftly into a sitting position and with her free hand she tightens her blankets around her trembling body. “I lost the need for a father when mom took control of things after you left,” the angel’s glow dims as she continues to speak coolly, “And I lost the need for anyone at all when she died.”

He regards her for a moment; saint to angel. Then, after a beat, Linus lowers himself down beside the woman. “Hannah… Hannah’s dead?”

Jane turns her head and arches a brow at him, “You really don’t remember me telling you? Because I have told you—several times. Every god damn Christmas you show up on the doorstep and give me a gift. Last year it was a martini umbrella, the year before it was a ball of yarn, and I think in ’09 it was a dog leash—“

“Stop.” He has his head in his hands now.

She turns back to face the the snow covered porch. “Get the picture, do you?”

He nods slowly and begins to weep into his palms. He doesn’t see Jane staring at the burlap sack that rests beside the blue box who’s wrapping paper is peeling off. “You’ve never stayed this long though.” She whispers with the quiet temerity of a child speaking to a father.

Linus’s head lifts. He nearly cries at the sight of her small smile. It blinds him and clears his vision all at the same time. “All these years of coming an’ goin’…I think it’s about time I stay a little while, don’t you, Janey?”

He looks at her before turning back to watching the snow fall, and approximately 5 heartbeats later, she does the same.

The two sit through the night; watching, remembering, hoping and wishing.

Somewhere in the distance, Harvey hears sleigh bells.

Though the cigarette is already ignited between his red fingertips, the yellow lighter that was used to light it still rests in his fist. He studies the opalescent gold colour of the plastic and chuckles. “How’d he know?” He mumbles, entranced by the little lighter. “How’d that fucker know what my favourite colour was?”