Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
brANCA
I t felt oddly familiar, Christophoros ministering to me, though it was in someone else’s home.
I’d thought myself humbled before; now I knew what humbled meant.
We offered children different lives. I never offered the chance to make amends.
I didn’t know how.
“I’ve made a mistake.” With the glamor shielding us, it didn’t matter how much noise I made.
Still he pretended not to hear me over the noise of his machine. “Not as far as I’m concerned.”
“Beloved. Stop.”
He paused, thumb flicking the machine off. “What if Noah’s mom comes home and the floor’s wet because you dripped all over it?”
“Noah will tell her a story about a dog.” I brushed down a clump of my chest fur. “A big dog.”
“Not everything can be fixed by lying,” he said with that prim little press of his lips, and I wanted to kiss him.
“Many things can.”
He did not want to hear; he turned on the hot air again, waving it over my fur which he raked with his free hand to keep it from clumping.
And I did not know what to say.
If I failed to find the right words, I might not see him again for a century. Perhaps longer. I could not wait that long to make this right.
On the other hand, if I said the wrong thing, I might never see him again at all.
I had to admit that would be fair.
But it would also be the end of me.
I grasped his wrist, the one shaking the hot air machine. “I must apologize and don’t know how!”
He still looked warm and fluffy from lovemaking. I wanted to crawl into bed with him somewhere. Anywhere.
Nor was he interested in my soul-searching. “Look. Branca. When things are all tangled up in that head—” he playfully poked one horn, “there’s nothing I can say. You love me, but you left me; I heard you. I don’t want to talk about it.”
He made things so delightfully simple. And they were , once I stopped winding them round and round in my head trying to make them fit what I thought I knew.
I wished I’d practiced apologizing more when we were younger.
“I was wrong?—”
“I know.” That damned machine kept blowing hot air all over me, evaporating the water.
Plus I smelled like peaches and it felt humiliating.
I tried again. “Beloved, I?—”
“What will you call me when you stop calling me that?” He made it sound light, but he wasn’t meeting my eyes.
Damn everything.
I yanked the cord from the wall and swept him close with one arm, machine and all. “I will never stop calling you that.”
I saw his chest expand with his intake of breath, saw his shoulders rise. He looked like he might actually get angry. I had finally annoyed Santa Claus.
Then he let out all that air, and some willingness to fight. But the look he gave me was hard.
“I don’t want to play games tonight. I have too much to do, and too much to think about. I’ll meet you next Christmas.” He put his hands against my chest as if to push me away, but they just rested against my damp fur. “Since you’re stuck in the States, I’ll meet you in Maine.”
“I don’t want to meet you in Maine.”
“You like Maine.” Some unfamiliar expression passed over his face; I hated that I didn’t know it. “Did someone leave you in Maine?”
“Christophoros. Please.” I tried to be quieter. He would not find roaring persuasive. “Let me explain.”
“Let me go.”
I did.
Towel around his waist, holding up the drying machine like a weapon, he stood his ground. “If there’s something you have to say, say it. I’m behind schedule.”
That cut. “I thought you no longer cared about the schedule.”
“I put it aside for what I wanted.”
I rose up on my haunches, bent my head down close to his so I could see him best. “Did you get it?”
We were too close; he didn’t even try to lie. “No,” he licked his lips. But he didn’t look away.
“Tell me what you want. Please.” It was the coward’s way out, asking him questions rather than explaining my mistakes. I took it.
I am Krampus, and I am not good.
He folded his arms across his chest. It made him look broader; it also protected him, perhaps. “I wanted you. Not just for sex. To travel with, live with. Carve sleighs in the winter and try to keep our house from falling down. I wanted to laugh with you, eat with you, sleep with you, grow old with you if we ever grow old.”
“Do you still want those things?”
“I don’t know yet. I can’t trust you anymore.”
That sliced into my heart. It was the complete opposite of the way we’d been not an hour before, locked together, him trusting me completely. “Because I left you?”
“Because you’re lying. All these half-truths.”
Well. He’d turned that neatly around. If I wanted to speak, now was the time.
I too took a deep breath, and did my best.
“We always asked children about the life they wanted , like our friend upstairs.” I wasn’t sure when Noah had become my friend as well as Chris’, but somewhere during the night he had. “Somewhere their belly would be full every night, and they could dream of Christmas trees and presents. Where things would be easier for him. If they wanted to go. ”
Here I was, a tree-sized monster, avoiding the truth.
“I always asked them, but I didn’t ask you.”
I felt like I’d been running. My chest rose and fell while Chris stared at me, just waiting for me to go on. The silver bristles on his chin glinted in the faint glow from the glamor around us. His rainbow eyes said nothing.
So I kept going. “I knew you could have an easier life, a better life. You’re so determined to give. I thought you gave me so much because you didn’t know any other way to be. I wanted you to get. I wanted you selfish.”
I breathed in, let it out. “Just a little. So I could know... if you loved me, or just loved giving to me. You give me everything, Beloved. All the time.”
He stared at me so long, a new little wrinkle between his brows as he thought and thought, and for the first time in many centuries I felt terror.
Finally he said, “So you chose my new life. Just like my old life, but without you. You chose for me to be alone. That’s funny, Branca. I don’t remember you dumping any of your rescue kids alone on the street.”
I swallowed. Before I could speak, he held up his hand to stop me.
“You didn’t want me to find someone better than you. You just thought I could be selfish with someone else, and never was with you.”
I didn’t have words. I nodded.
“Fine.” He tossed the blowing machine on the counter behind him, faced me again. “Well. I learned to be more selfish. I just showed that. I guess I gave up a little virtue for—” he waved a hand back and forth, “—us. What about you? Can you give up a little of your...” His mouth worked. I had no idea what would come out. “A little of your fucking faults? Can you do that? Can you let go of some of your everlasting self-disgust—self-pity, I should say, after all this time—and just get a damn grip? ”
It would have been funny had he not been so deadly serious. I was terrified.
“Yes.”
He put a hand to his ear. “I can’t hear you?”
“ YES! ” Glamor or no, my roar shook the roof tiles.
“Then what should we do now?” He waited. I suppose it was fair; if I was so determined to steer both our lives, this was the moment to try.
“We should get married.”
As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I felt myself shrink. He should laugh at me. He should refuse. It was a pathetic thing to say, needy, when I had walked out on him without a word so long ago and we had only been reunited a few hours.
He didn’t laugh.
Nor did he say yes . Instead he asked, “Why?”
“Because I’ll always love you. I am foolish and vain and thoughtless and mean, but I will always love you. I will never stop. And I will never leave your side again.”
He licked his lips again. He didn’t say yes. But he didn’t say no.
He shook his finger at me like he used to do. Like I’d been naughty. I felt a little lighter. He said, “I can’t trust you after the trick you pulled.”
“Fair.”
“How long should it be before I trust you again?”
“However long you like.”
“Are you going to do something else stupid?”
“I’ll try not to.”
“Do you understand now? How I love you? Not just for you, you horned meathead. For myself. For me. Because I want you, for me. Do you get it now?”
“I do.”
I wanted him to say it back. We would never sanctify this in a church or a town hall, but we could say vows to each other, and know we would keep them.
He didn’t.
But he did say, “Okay. You can ask me again next Christmas.”
CHRIS
It was hard not to grin a big, stupid grin as we worked together cleaning the place. Branca looked so funny in dish gloves working the paper towels and bleach.
There was something new between us as we worked side by side, cleaning the place, putting out gifts to leave. Several new somethings. I wondered if things would ever be the way they’d been before; I wondered if they might be better.
I had stories to tell him he didn’t know. That hadn’t happened for so long. And he had tales for me.
Once this holiday was over, I very much looked forward to getting back to our house in Longyearbyen and seeing if Branca still knew how to cook.
He was subdued. I’d never seen him so subdued before. It was good for him, I decided, having to admit his mistakes, carrying the weight of them for a while.
I put the basket full of toiletries in its cellophane wrapping on the now-clean table, looked up into that dear face so different from everyone else’s. “Do you really want to marry me?”
“Yes.” His answer was instant.
He didn’t ask if I wanted to marry him, and that was wise of him. What would it even mean, for people like us? People already locked in forever together as we were? I wasn’t sure.
But I was definitely ready to find out.
Noah’s mother made out like a bandit. She got a big shiny basket of toiletries to replace her shower gel (I liked Branca smelling like peaches), plus a new set of bath towels, new dish towels, her fridge full of food and a sparkling cleaning job. (We made sure to get Branca’s fur out of the shower drain when we left the wrapped towels by the sink.)
I didn’t leave her any diamonds. But I did leave her a journal, hoping she might spend a little time writing down her history, or her son’s. Or just things that she thought.
I knew how hard it was to understand yourself when you had no one else to talk to.
Truth be told—for what else would you expect from Santa—my knees were still weak from Branca’s lovemaking when there was nothing left to do.
He looked around, his ears drooping softly. “I will miss this house.”
“Let’s come back. In ten years. See if Noah still lives here.” I planned to keep tabs on Noah. He was one of mine. I expected him to be good.
He already understood something other people didn’t learn their whole lifetimes. That being good didn’t come from keeping cops and teachers happy. It came from loving the people who loved him.
And maybe leaving the corner store alone.
I saw Branca check the clock. It was half past twelve. He looked at me with those fire-and-forest eyes. “You have never spent so long on me on Christmas Eve. And you have never spent so long on yourself.”
“I gained a little weight. Got a little smarter.” I shrugged my wool jacket back on. “Will you wear the glamor?”
He picked up the ribbon; the glimmer in the air twisted in shape. The stain of blood was still tacky, not dry. “If you want me to.”
“You don’t have to.” I didn’t intend to finish the thought; then I realized I should. If he planned to talk more, so would I. We weren’t one person, and bridging the gap between us could only happen with words; it would only be fair. “It’s Christmas Eve, after all, and I do have the dream dust. I know you don’t like to wear them.”
“I don’t want you to shed blood for it.” He wrapped the ribbon around his waist and disappeared. Then reappeared; I felt relieved. For the briefest moment something inside me said he would walk out the door, invisible and silent, and I’d never see him again. He wrapped the glamor in a paper towel and shoved it in my pocket.
I’d felt nothing so familiar as his big clawed hand pressed against me. Then it slipped into mine.
“It’s dark,” he murmured. “It’s night. But it’s not Christmas Eve any more. Thank you, Beloved.” He dropped a kiss atop my ear. “There will never be a better Christmas.”
I wasn’t sure. He really liked Maine. I could picture an old ship floating in a Maine harbor, evergreen boughs over all the decks and him and me, holding candles, exchanging vows. “We’ll have to see.”
And with that, we walked through the living room arch into a house in New Orleans.
“Noah?”
Kayla froze inside her door. A big present sat on her kitchen table wrapped in shiny silver paper stamped with white snowmen.
She had not brought that into the house.
She took the stairs two at a time. “ Noah! ”
“Merry Christmas, Mom!” There he was, bouncing out of his room, looking two inches taller and wearing a big grin.
“Where did you get those PJs?” She spun in place. “Was some social worker here?”
“I saw Santa, Mom! And a huge monster—a Krampus. Do you know what that is?”
“No.” Was there a gas leak? Was he sick? Kayla felt for a fever.
But Noah seemed fine for the brief second she could touch him before he tore away down the stairs.
“All right! ” The sound of ripping paper prepared her for the storm of shreds into which she descended.
But not the massive slick box inside.
“ Yes! ” Noah sat in the middle of his snowstorm of shredded red paper. Another box she had not brought in.
Kayla studied it. A kit. Little building bricks that made a robot. “Is it good?”
“The best! Santa always knows what to bring.” Noah flung his legs out on the floor like he was five again. Kayla decided she needed coffee.
It had seemed so simple to take the hospital’s last-minute overnight shift. Noah didn’t have a babysitter, not since the incident with that girl down the street who had locked him in the closet for being, quote unquote, bad, but Kayla figured he’d fall asleep in front of the TV and she could wake him up with pancakes and his team baseball hat.
Now someone had broken in and... left him a far bigger present?
She ripped a little hole in the silver paper on her kitchen table. Inside she glimpsed an entire collection of pink and purple bottles. It made no sense. She made the hole bigger, pushing aside a bottle or two through the cellophane, peeking at labels. Someone must have delivered something by mistake.
She’d take this back, but her son was keeping the robot.
She caught sight of the shampoo. Oh, she’d wanted to try that forever. It was forty dollars at the salon.
Maybe she’d keep the gift basket.
When she shifted it, there was another silver-wrapped gift underneath. A slim one.
She unwrapped it too.
No social worker left a journal.
No one ever wanted her to have time to think. About herself, her life, the things she wanted along with everything she wanted for Noah. As if there were time to dream about anything beyond survival.
When she opened the fridge for eggs, she only got more confused. Because every dish in the house was in there, piled with food, food she’d never seen before. A thick smell of cold vanilla and cinnamon wafted out; her stomach rumbled.
She picked up something that looked like fancy sweet potato pie and shut the door.
None of it seemed real. Social workers did not leave piles of food and leave. Nothing good came without stacks of forms, weeks on the phone, and the expectation that she would display a humiliating amount of gratitude. Nothing.
Lost about what to do next, she wandered back to the living room.
She picked up the gift wrapped in grocery bags. She’d know those star-squiggles anywhere. “Is this for me?”
Her son’s face whipped toward her. He stopped looking five and looked much older than his age. She saw him chewing something over in his mind, saw it spinning.
She knew her baby so well that sometimes she thought they’d never need words between them; but time marched on, and sometimes words were necessary.
“I didn’t get that the right way.” Noah’s voice was soft but clear. “I’m sorry, Mom. I just wanted to get you something. I’ll—I gotta take that back and I’ll get you a new present. Soon as I can.”
Kayla put it back down. He wouldn’t understand if she told him all she really needed was its homemade wrapping.
“Baby, you never have to get me anything.” Coffeeless, she sank down on the couch. If this was a dream, she’d deal with it in an hour or two when she woke up. “Are you gonna watch cartoons?”
But Noah still had that older look on his face, even sitting spread-legged on the floor about to build a robot.
“I will, though, Mom. Good things. Great things. Diamonds, if you want.”
Kayla leaned back on the couch and reached over to brush some glitter away from Noah’s face. It sparkled as it fell. Right this minute, that was better than diamonds.
“Diamonds are nice to have, baby, not need to have.” She yawned. It had been a long night. No one came to the hospital on Christmas Eve who wasn’t in bad shape.
“Christmas is one time you get to dream,” Noah said firmly, and Kayla, who really wanted a shower with all those nice-smelling things in the basket but was too tired, lay down and watched her son take the lid off his toy.
“When did you get so smart?” He was so tall already. Christmases passed so fast.
“I’ve been like this,” he told her as she drifted off to sleep and the sun came up.