Santa Steps Out: A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups (12 page)

Rachel raised the presser foot, pulled the material free, snipped the thread with her orange-handled Fiskars, and switched off the sewing machine light. She needed to apologize to Wendy, she thought. "Fairies don't have wings and they don't have wands," she had insisted, amazed at her own vehemence. She kept pressing the point, as if it were arguable, until Wendy burst into tears and Rachel regained a semblance of self-control.

But six-year-olds, thank goodness, forgive and forget with blessed ease. By the time Rachel arrived at the Montessori school her daughter attended, Wendy fairly leaped into her mother's arms. In the living room now, having pulled on her new ballet tutu over her sky-blue leotard and tights, Wendy stood patiently while Rachel made up her eyes.

"Kim lost a tooth today."

"Kim Rogers?"

"Uh-huh. I can move this front one a little I think with my tongue."

"That's nice, honey. Close your eyes. Okay, now let's tie those wings on." Rachel brought them out, crisscrossing the ribbons on Wendy's chest and tying them in back. Not bad, she thought, admiring her daughter's loveliness as she adjusted the wingtips. But beneath her calm, a dark premonition hummed. Absurd, she thought. It was as if she were afraid she might invoke some savage fairy by dressing Wendy this way. Yet everyone knew that fairies were creatures of myth, no more substantial than Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny.

"There." Rachel smiled. "Now stand right here and don't turn around."

"Why, Mommy?"

"You'll see." She went past Wendy to the tall hutch that had been her mother's, opened the middle drawer, and drew out the wand.

Wendy gasped and reached for it. It was nothing more than a dowel with a cardboard star taped to it and covered with aluminum foil, but Wendy loved it. Rachel delighted in her daughter's reaction, wishing that Frank were here to share it. His death had happened more than six months before, but she still woke in the night expecting to find his huge bearlike body beside her.

Wendy tugged her outside then and Rachel escorted her winged wonder from house to house, standing on the sidewalk while Wendy strode boldly up porch stairs to demand her due. The eerie feeling stayed with her during their hour on the streets. The shadows of bushes and dumpsters and alley-ways concealed not so much the human terrors she might dread on a normal night in Sacramento, as something unnameable that touched the nape of her neck with a cool hand.

"Look, Mommy," said Wendy, tearing down the steps of a house with a dozen blazing pumpkins grinning from the porch. "The funny lady let me reach into her bowl of steam and take two handfuls of candy."

"Did you say thank you?"

"Uh-huh," said Wendy, then raced to the next house. A heavyset man stood on the porch, watching what Rachel guessed was his son—a cowboy of perhaps four—hold out a pillowcase for a Tootsie Roll Pop. When they passed her on the sidewalk, the heavyset man smiled at her.

Rachel liked the conspiratorial camaraderie that bonded Halloween parents. Except for single mothers like herself, it seemed that mostly fathers escorted their young ghouls and goblins about. There was something very attractive about a man who displayed his love for a son or daughter in this way.

It was even better when he was large and bearded like Frank. Her girlhood friends had watched
Batman
or
The Fugitive
and swooned over the Beatles. But Rachel's favorite shows had been
A Family Affair
with Sebastian Cabot and the short-lived
The Bold Ones
with Burl Ives, whose records she bought exclusively for two years solid. More recently, she had been drawn to William Conrad and Dom DeLuise and Luciano Pavarotti. Nothing thrilled her—indeed inflamed her with desire—like the sight and sound of the huge tuxedo'd singer, absurd handkerchief in hand, caressing those liquid Italian syllables with all the love in his expansive heart.

"Mommy, my arms are getting tired."

"It's time to head home anyway," said Rachel. "Do you want to hit one more side street?"

"No, I'm getting cold. Mommy?"

"Yes, honey."

"Can I have a Snickers when we get home? I got three of them."

"Yes, but I'll need to look them over first. And then, lovely lady, we'll get you out of that fairy outfit and into a nice warm bath. Sound good?"

Wendy gave an enthusiastic yes. As they walked home hand in hand, Rachel had a sudden urge to hide the fairy costume in the hall closet during Wendy's bath and bury it in the trash the next day.

And though she kept telling herself as she ran the bathwater that the idea was absurd, that's precisely what she did.

III. Consequences

God sends meat and the devil sends cooks.

—Thomas Deloney

The prerequisite for a good marriage is the license to be unfaithful.

—Carl Gustav Jung

Jealousy is the greatest of all evils.

—La Rochefoucauld

7. Anya Confronts Her Husband

When Anya woke the next morning, her world had been transformed. She distinctly recalled the long trek back to the cottage. She had glared at the Easter Bunny as he sniffed the red panties and shoved them back into Santa's workpants. But once he had leaped through the window, all was a morass of vague thrashings and feverish dreams.

Her nightgown clung now to her back. She lay there stunned, her eyes roving, cataloging all things drab and diminished.

A dull stirring on her right. Something bulky rolled toward her, its arm heavy across her belly. A hairy upper lip brushed her cheek, a voice babbled alien words: "Good morning, Anya my love."

Whatever she replied seemed to amuse the creature beside her, for his eyes wrinkled up wet and demonic, and intermittent bursts of noise erupted from his lips like genuine laughter. She remembered laughter—what it felt like, what it meant. She wondered why this creature thought it necessary to perform such a pale imitation of it for her.

The bed shuddered when he rose. Then she was alone under the blankets, watching him move here and there, into the bathroom and out again, to the window for a hands-on-hips appraisal of the day, to the closet—Santa's closet, where red panties lay concealed in pants pockets. She fielded sound blips from him, tossed back blips of her own.

Thus it went that morning.

Over the weeks that followed, Anya walked about in a daze. She felt no great urge to re-embrace the myth of free will nor to begin making conscious choices. In fact she was moderately surprised—though she didn't show it—when she heard herself lie to Santa and knew at that precise moment that it was a lie.

"While you and the elves are busy in the workshop this morning," she said, "I think I'll drop in on their quarters and clean up a bit, maybe leave them a surprise."

"Wonderful, dearest," he said. "I'm sure they'll appreciate your thoughtfulness." He raised a bottle of Coke and smiled fatuously at her.

In the empty dorm, she straightened the sheets on a few beds, those belonging to the more voluble elves whose jabber would corroborate her story. Then she opened the windows to let in fresh air and set a potpourri beneath each pillow. When she was done, their quarters smelled like herb heaven.

To avoid being seen from the workshop, she slipped out the back, weaving in and out of the towering fir trees, deep into the woods. Not once did she falter in her steps, nor did the clearing where the lofty trees were thickest fail to appear as expected, nor did the dark stone hut refuse to rise from new-fallen snow like a rotten molar jutting up out of healthy gums.

She pulled off a mitten and touched the pane.
The kingdom and the power.
It was smooth and cold.
The glory and the ecstasy.
In the dim interior she made out the blackened fireplace, the four-poster dusky with shadows, the tiny bed with its dozing doll tucked snug under her coverlets.
The grape and the grope, the wild abandon.
Holding her fingers to the hut, Anya walked once around it, reading the rough stone of Santa's betrayal with her fingertips.
Encirclement by satyrs, goat hoofs in clover, their needy hands touching her breasts, their eyes transfixed by her vulva.
She tried the front door, opened it, felt the pull of youth and . . . something else tempting her inside. She closed it again, leaning against it until her head cleared.
Skin breathing on skin, polyrhythmic grunting, she being slowly spun and spindled, they like four rich flavors alternately sipped.
But when she returned to her original spot by the window, Anya, tears in her eyes, rapped sharply, slowly, repeatedly on the glass as if to rouse the little girl lost in slumber beneath the far window.

*****

Fritz grinned into the mirror, turning his head this way and that to admire himself. His bunkmates Karlheinz and Max on either side of him fluffed their beards up around the red and green ribbons they had tied into them and flashed killer smiles into the glass. At the door to the washroom, envious faces, stacked like cordwood clear to the top of the doorframe, glared at them and shouted taunts.

"Simpering sycophants," growled one.

"Dumb luck for dumb clucks," sneered another.

"May you choke on a drumstick," cursed a third.

Fritz chuckled. Every year it was the same. The chosen three would elbow their way through a barrage of insult and invective to the dormitory entrance, link arms and stroll proudly across the commons to the jeers of their fellow elves, and be welcomed into the cottage to share Thanksgiving dinner with Santa and Mrs. Claus.

At first it was all they had dreamed.

"Max, Fritz, Karlheinz, my dear friends," boomed Santa. "Come in, come in, come in." Slaps on the back, warm hugs, and glad hands all round. The vestibule glowed with candlelight. The inviting aroma of roast turkey and honey-baked ham wafted in from the dining room. Then, a tinkling bell sounded in the next room and Mrs. Claus's melodious grandma-words: "Dinner's on the table!"

Karlheinz and Max, squealing with delight, dashed under Santa's arms and disappeared through the archway. Santa broke into a belly laugh. "Your bunkmates always were eager little devils, Fritz."

Fritz tried to look arch and disapproving. "Thank God some of us know our manners. Shall we in?"

"After you," said Santa, sweeping as low as his bulk would allow, and Fritz passed at a measured pace through the archway, hoping that Santa's laughter was not at his expense. But when the dining room opened out before him in all its splendor, Fritz forgot his misgivings.

In the fireplace, subdued flames sizzled along three neatly stacked logs. From the large beam that stretched across the dark wood ceiling depended a simple but elegant chandelier. Two dozen beeswax candles rose slim and tapered from their holders, spilling soft light onto the great oak table below.

Fritz knew this table well. Long ago, he had been one of a score of elves who had helped Santa apply the finishing touches to it, planing and sanding and staining and polishing and buffing deep into the night so that Anya would have it in time for Christmas that year. Tonight, of course, the craft that had gone into its manufacture—the turnings, the friezes, the knees, the stretchers, the fluted edges—was covered, splendidly, in the finest damask.

But as beautiful as the tablecloth was from where he now paused, it paled in comparison to the spread of food that covered it. Mrs. Claus stood at the head of the table, a carving knife in her hand, a plump roast turkey on the platter before her. Steam rose tantalizingly from its gleaming brown body. The rich aroma that permeated the air nearly made Fritz swoon, it was so warm and full and inviting. Spilling out as though from Mrs. Claus's bountiful bosom were dish upon dish of cranberry sauce, fresh piping-hot peas and carrots, white whipped potatoes, fanned rolls and firm dewy pats of butter, breaded dressing barely contained by the rim of its serving dish, brimming gravy boats, and pumpkin stewed in maple sap.

"Don't stand there gaping, Fritz," said Santa with a chuckle. "Come, sit beside me."

Santa placed himself at the far end facing Mrs. Claus and seated Fritz on his left. Fritz noted the empty chair across from him and its place setting. It was Santa's way of remembering the homeless and hungry. As he stood with his head bowed and his generous hands folded over the back of his chair, Santa asked the Good Lord to open the hearts of those blest with abundance so that they might know the joy of serving those less fortunate.

They fell then to eating and talking and laughing, to sharing precious memories, to hearing Santa regale them with stories of his nocturnal travels.

And yet throughout the evening, it seemed to Fritz that Mrs. Claus held back. She appeared at times to be observing them through an invisible sheen. Then she would interject a witty comment or a homily, or ask if anyone wanted another slice of breast meat, and Fritz dismissed his fancies.

The strangeness came on full force, however, when they had stuffed themselves fit to bursting and were all—the menfolk anyway—sitting back and letting escape exaggerated sighs of satiety. Santa held the sides of his belly and
ho-ho-ho
'd in sweet pain, then suggested they retire to the sitting room for a pipe.

"Gonna regale us wid yer exploits, Santa?" asked Max. He winked hawkishly at his bunkmates.

Karlheinz giggled, making fire with his fingers. "Oooh Max, you naughty elf, can you be suggesting that our innocent master—he's a saint, don't you know?—after spending all night reaching into his sack, might be so bold as to climb
into
the sack with some sweet single mom? Is that what you're implying, you little scamp?"

Fritz chimed in over them, feeling uncomfortable with the turn their conversation had taken. "Now, now, lads, no need to get indecent. There's a lady present. Let's do as Santa suggests and retire to the sitting room."

It seemed to Fritz that at this moment a sudden blast of air frosted his left cheek. When he turned his head, Mrs. Claus sat hunched over the picked bones of the turkey, her bloodless knuckles dug taut into the damask, her eyes fixed on her husband. "No," she said, "I think it's time for Santa and me to have a little talk, just the two of us."