\u201cDon\u2019t take too long washing these dishes,\u201d Gary said. \u201cSanta\u2019s coming soon.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He gave his mother a squeeze from behind at the sink and kissed Sierra\u2019s neck. He rubbed his hand over her stomach, too, before heading back to the living room to watch It\u2019s a Wonderful Life<\/em>\u2014the scene where George Bailey\u2019s little brother was so reckless stacking the good flatware for a party while George and his father discussed finances and dreams deferred.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gary\u2019s mother rinsed the soap from one of the big knives Sierra could rarely bring herself to use\u2013sharp and murderous as it was. A \u201cgrownup\u201d knife. The older woman wielded it with such ease when she diced mangoes for a fruit salad that afternoon, when she cleaned it now, and handed over with a flick of the wrist for Sierra to dry it. Sierra\u2019s face looked back at her from the clean face of the blade. The bright glare of the fluorescent light overhead obscured the reflection. Sierra never turned on herself because it hurt her head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sierra couldn\u2019t have imagined this whole scenario even a year earlier. She\u2019d gotten laid off from her job in financial aid for an educational non-profit that couldn\u2019t afford to offer financial aid anymore. She hadn\u2019t imagined unemployment would give way to online dating, or that she\u2019d get pregnant, or that all of this might lead to a stay-at-home mom future. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It had been a major victory to convince Gary not to travel home this Christmas, when Sierra made it clear she wasn\u2019t comfortable flying pregnant, even if the doctors said it was perfectly safe at this stage. The pregnancy\u2014this whole life with Gary\u2014was unplanned, unimaginable really, a year earlier, when he was one of a half-dozen coffee meetups she\u2019d agreed to from a dating app. The idea of staying at Gary\u2019s mom’s house pregnant was simply too much to bear that Christmas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It had been a minor setback then when Gary announced that his mother was coming to stay with them. Sierra had wanted Christmas to enable her to catch her breath, but she recognized she was asking a lot of Gary to spend his first-ever Christmas away from his childhood home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gary\u2019s mom insisted Sierra called her Meg, which felt like a sweet albeit unearned intimacy. Meg was stout, gray-haired, a body all too anxious for grandmotherhood. Sierra intuited that she put aside her misgivings about how quickly Gary had intertwined her life with hers for the excitement of welcoming a baby.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Meg spoke in a low voice as the Charleston contestant in the movie. \u201cThere\u2019s something we need to discuss.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sierra dried the big glass bowl Gary had brought into the relationship but Meg had never seen him use. She was nervous about heavy glass things, too, the risk-reward ratio of them being pretty on the table but threatening to shatter if she dropped them, not least of all when its surface was slick with water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cGary\u2019s father and I waited too long to tell him about Santa Claus.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sierra laughed softly, breathing easier. She could handle warm nostalgia. Welcomed even stories from Gary\u2019s youth, how he\u2019d come to be as sweet and innocent as he was\u2014the kind of person who paid cash around the holidays so he\u2019d always have change to give Salvation Army Santas outside stores, and who always slowed down or moved over to let people enter a highway with ease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThen his father passed,\u201d Meg scrubbed a cookie sheet with a Brillo pad, loosening the burnt remains from the snickerdoodles Sierra had left in the oven too long. \u201cGary was twelve. I couldn\u2019t bear to break it to him then.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Sierra tried to offer some reassurance about how parents did the best they could. She didn\u2019t think of herself as that well-equipped for motherhood. Gary would be a good father.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Meg cut her off, \u201cWhat I\u2019m trying to tell you is, we never told him about Santa.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sierra tried to suss out where Meg was going. Had it been some sort of ordeal when he did figure it out, or when the wrong person told him. An embarrassingly public revelation? <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cListen to me.\u201d Meg\u2019s voice grew perceptibly sharper. \u201cI\u2019m trying to tell you, he doesn\u2019t know. He still believes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gary had made mention of Santa a lot that holiday season. Sierra wasn\u2019t pregnant enough yet for the baby to kick, but had grown large enough to sort of roil beneath the surface of her belly. Gary had warned this half-formed thing not to be naughty, because Santa was watching. He\u2019d made a similar warning to boys roughhousing outside a Denny\u2019s where they\u2019d stopped for breakfast the week before, when Sierra craved bacon and eggs. She\u2019d thought it all charming and imagined him gleefully donning a Santa suit in years to come, theatrically staging the delivery of presents on Christmas Eve, taking bites from cookies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sierra remembered how carefully Gary had selected three of the Christmas cookies to put on a little plate for Santa after dinner. Three of the best cookies, left on the mantle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019m getting too old to keep it all up alone,\u201d Meg said. \u201cEspecially if you aren\u2019t going to come back to my house for Christmas. I\u2019ve had help the last few years. It\u2019s my neighbor Luca who\u2019d get up on the roof.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sierra remembered Luca, actually. They\u2019d stayed two nights in Gary\u2019s childhood home over the summer, when it felt too early to be spending the night at her boyfriend\u2019s mother\u2019s house, but she could tell Gary was committed to his mother, and that felt endearing, too. Luca was the nextdoor neighbor, who mowed his lawn bare chested, all his hairy paunch exposed to the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou have your own life. I understand,\u201d Meg said. \u201cBut after you mess up telling your son about Santa for this long, it\u2019s just cruel to do it when he\u2019s a grown man. I\u2019m telling you for his sake. You\u2019ve got to keep it up.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sierra came to understand that Meg surveying the lawn and the roof, tracking exit points, and lingering to press her weight against the creakiest floorboards were not matters of scrutinizing the house, but rather recognition. She insisted Sierra complain of an upset stomach before bedtime to later have an excuse to go to bed early. When Sierra didn\u2019t say it\u2014or didn\u2019t say it soon enough, Meg stepped in too loudly and all but theatrically offered her an antacid, \u201cto help settle your tummy, sweetheart. You were complaining about how sick you felt.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sierra did excuse herself from bed and found Meg outside, she had a pair of ski poles outstretched, each with plastic animal hoof affixed to the ends, expertly laying reindeer tracks in the snow. Meg had already leaned a ladder against the side of the house\u2014a ladder Sierra couldn\u2019t fathom where she\u2019d found or stowed\u2014and prodded Sierra to climb it to shake jingle bells on the roof. And, after all of this, Meg wheeled out the big suitcase she\u2019d insisted no one could help her take upstairs, and removed all of the gifts, wrapped in red and gold foil. \u201cAlways foil. Santa never uses wrapping paper with a print on it.\u201d Two presents for Gary, one for Sierra, one for herself. Last, Meg took a bite from one of the Christmas cookies on the plate. Sierra ate a whole one of hers. \u201cYou can mix it up,\u201d Meg said. \u201cMake it your own. But the reindeer prints are a must if there\u2019s snow. And the jingle bells. And the foil.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The next morning Gary ripped through the foil wrapping with glee to get to a video game and a book about parenting. He looked to Meg, it must have been an instinct. \u201cHow did Santa know?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHe always knows, doesn\u2019t he?\u201d Meg said, not only smug but triumphant, as if her son\u2019s joy was directly proportional to how right she was to keep Santa Claus magic alive in his life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sierra sipped a cup of store-bought eggnog, warmed in the microwave. She missed coffee, but despite Meg\u2019s insistence one cup wouldn\u2019t hurt the baby, Sierra knew herself. One cup wouldn\u2019t have been enough, just a tease, enough to make her miss the second cup that much worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cGo on, sweetheart.\u201d Meg had turned her attention to Sierra. Meg drank a mix of equal parts coffee and instant hot chocolate, a little eggnog as a substitute for half and half, because they didn\u2019t have any in the house. Gary drank his coffee black with a spoonful of sugar. \u201cGo on and open your presents.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n It had been madness\u2014the lengths this woman went to, and, no less so, Gary\u2019s bright-eyed reaction the next morning when he asked if they\u2019d heard the bells on the roof and when he pointed at the paw prints out back. It was all enough to make Sierra question\u2014really question\u2014if she could build a life with him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The key was boundaries, she\u2019d decided in the end. They\u2019d never go to Meg\u2019s for Christmas, and she\u2019d do her best to discourage Meg from visiting the house that next December. A six-month-old provided a good excuse because Sierra and Gary were both a little sleep-deprived and he tended to defer to her judgment about not wanting people in their mess of a house and accepted her trepidations about visitors who might bring a cold in that could jeopardize little Ben\u2019s fragile constitution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Six months old at Christmastime, and Ben had started sleeping longer, most of all when his father held him. Sierra had been hesitant about co-sleeping. She\u2019d read about how it could foster over-dependence, over-attachment, the sort of thing where a kid would have trouble detaching when the time came for daycare and school or for them to get a date night to themselves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But it was hard to argue with results, after Gary had transitioned to working from home for his database management gig, she appreciated that he could take Ben off her hands for nap times\u2014usually taking a nap himself\u2014while Sierra had the chance to go for a run or watch an episode of Real Housewives<\/em>. It was hardest of all to argue <\/em>the point when she watched the two of them rest so peacefully. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Christmas Eve. It\u2019s A Wonderful Life<\/em> on TV again, Mary telling George he\u2019d lassoed a stork, Gary\u2019s face colored in flickering black and white, Ben\u2019s eyes closed, mouth open and drooling on Gary\u2019s chest, nestled in his flannel shirt. Gary\u2019s eyes closed, too, hard to tell if he were asleep or merely resting his eyes. She might gently wake him for the end of the movie\u2014his favorite part, when George Bailey went running through the streets, calling every old building wonderful<\/em>. Or she might let him doze. Better not to risk waking Ben if Gary startled at her touch. It was good for both of her boys to be at peace. Besides, having his own child to rest against his body seemed to console Gary about not being with his own mother this Christmas. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Sierra was blessed, she knew, to have had a child with such a good father.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She saw the moonlit outline of antlers through the window that looked out on the backyard<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then, she heard the crunch of snow underfoot outside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sierra found Meg out there, the same ski poles with reindeer hoof prints on the ends of them. She wore a bicycle helmet with wide plastic antlers affixed to each side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There was a delicate balance, living with a baby. Sierra had learned to loathe delivery people who insisted on ringing doorbells when they left packages. She\u2019d learned to leave her phone with not only the ringer off, but in Do Not Disturb<\/em> mode because the vibration itself could wake baby Ben. There was always the chance of a baby sleeping and these were the most precious hours of the day to get dishes done, to fold a load of laundry, to get a moment to read or to sit still and think<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, it was instinctive, even in these absurd circumstances, for Sierra to gently close the sliding door behind her, tiptoe through the snow, and tap her on the shoulder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Meg startled, leaping from the touch, staggering, only catching herself with her ski poles. She exhaled, her breath taking shape in a jagged cloud of mist. \u201cAre you crazy?\u201d She shook her head. \u201cImagine sneaking up on me like that!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sierra pressed a finger to her lips and rallied all of her self-control. \u201cWe didn\u2019t invite you for Christmas.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019m well aware of that.\u201d Meg rubbed a reindeer hoof against the errant prints she\u2019d left when she caught herself. \u201cDon\u2019t worry yourself. I\u2019ve got a room at the bed and breakfast at the riverfront.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sierra almost felt sorry at the mention of the place. There weren\u2019t a lot of hotel options nearby. The bed and breakfast used to be nice, but dwindling clientele and changes in management left it a hole in the wall, in need of renovations that would never come. Sierra\u2019s brother had stayed there when he came to see the baby but didn\u2019t want to be intrusive with an infant around\u2014he had kids of his own. He reported back that the breakfast had amounted to a Keurig and frozen blueberry muffins guests had to microwave themselves in the lobby.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This wasn\u2019t a time to feel bad for Meg, though. \u201cWhat are you doing here?\u201d Sierra asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Meg planted the ski poles in the snow and put her hands on her hips. \u201cMy intuition told me you weren\u2019t going to keep up traditions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sierra had paid more attention when Gary spoke about Santa Claus this year, mostly to Ben about being good and stories about how this was Santa\u2019s busy time of year and speculating about if the elves used SQL server to keep track of all of the good boys and girls. He offered nuggets to Sierra, too, though, speculating about what Santa might bring Ben. He appeared nonplussed when she talked about the gifts she\u2019d bought they\u2019d say were from Santa versus ones credited to Mom and Dad. (At six months, the distinction felt absurd, but she knew she was supposed to be invested in such things).<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s not your place to our <\/em>family traditions.\u201d Sierra knew it bothered Meg they hadn\u2019t married.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cEvery boy should have Santa Claus in his life,\u201d Meg said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe can make-believe Santa fine on our own.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAnd if you don\u2019t make-believe<\/em> the way Gary has the last thirty years, you think he won\u2019t notice? You think it won\u2019t ruin Christmas?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The woman could rationalize anything. Even Gary admitted that, a moment of frustration after he\u2019d argued with her over phone weeks back, his final assertion that, no, she could not come for Christmas that year. Sierra felt relieved he could recognize some faults in his mother. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Meanwhile, there they stood at an impasse. Sierra\u2019s toes numbed in her fuzzy slippers, not built for the outdoors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou know, if Ben wakes up, Gary\u2019s going to wake up, too.\u201d Sierra whispered. \u201cThe first thing he\u2019ll do is go looking for me. What\u2019ll he think when he finds you like this?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Meg grumbled that she\u2019d done enough anyway and took off the antlers and the only condition she imposed was that Sierra had to help her get the gifts in the house. Sierra knew she should say no, but acquiesced because she couldn\u2019t help feeling she\u2019d lose whatever moral high ground she had if she denied a mother the chance to give her son a Christmas present, or denied a grandmother from gifting something to her only grandson his first December.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There were a lot of presents. Meg had rented an SUV from the airport for the space to haul all the foil-covered packages she must have wrapped at the hotel for them to be in such pristine condition across a plane ride. Meg didn\u2019t come into the house, but the two of them carried it all to the front door, where Sierra hid the boxes in the coat closet in case Gary woke while she was in the process of putting them under the tree. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOne last thing,\u201d Meg said when they were done, a film of sweat over her face, a cruel grin. \u201cPut out your hands.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sierra did and Meg fetched a little red pouch from her coat pocket. Meg was back in the SUV already by the time Sierra pulled the little gold drawstring open wide enough to understand she\u2019d been gifted a lump of coal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n #<\/p>\n\n\n\n The next morning, Gary\u2019s face glowed, looking first to Sierra, then to Ben. \u201cCan you believe<\/em> Santa brought all this?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He got a complex model airplane with a lot of small pieces. Sierra would have to police him, keeping them away from Ben. Ben wasn\u2019t very interested in putting things in his mouth just yet, but if he\u2019d proven anything in those first six months, it was how quickly he might change. Gary got a mystery novel, too, and rifled through it, as if to confirm, in childlike wonder, there were words on every page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI should FaceTime Mom while Ben opens his gifts,\u201d Gary said. \u201cYou don\u2019t mind, do you?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n #<\/p>\n\n\n\n Years went by. One son turned to two. Gary insisted on Meg staying for the holiday, and Sierra couldn\u2019t deny him that. She imagined the Santa issue would come to a head one year or another, but when it only came up once a year and their children to keep up appearances for, Sierra let it slip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then her boys\u2014ten and twelve\u2014still believed. Sierra began to understand what Meg had said about it being cruel, after a certain point to shatter a life-long illusion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Christmas Eve after Meg had passed, Sierra opened the ski bag Meg\u2019s sister had surreptitiously gifted her when they were clearing out Gary\u2019s childhood home that fall. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Sierra found the jingle bell anklets and bracelets, for ease of ringing while climbing a ladder up to the roof. She found the collapsible antlers, the rolls of foil wrapping paper. The Ski poles with hoofs at their ends. She thought to wonder, for the first time, if Meg ever used them for skiing at all, or bought them exclusively for reindeer purposes, hoofs affixed from the day she\u2019d brought them home to this very moment. The woman was nothing if not committed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the boys had gone to bed and Gary fell asleep on the couch\u2013the boys all dozed off on the couch, Sierra got to work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She took care of the presents first, all wrapped in foil\u2014a gift certificate to a spa she\u2019d bought herself, in the biggest box because the boys always thought it was riotously funny when Santa put small things in enormous boxes. Two presents\u2014a nice sweater and a remote control with too many buttons for Gary. Then, two evenly distributed piles, ten presents each for the boys. As she put the last one down, she could\u2019ve sworn she caught Pete\u2019s eyes open, but he closed them quickly, and his breathing never changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How many times must Gary have caught his mother in some act of positioning presents or taking a bite from a Gingerbread cookie? Or climbing up to a roof? He had to have known something, hadn\u2019t he, after all this time?<\/p>\n\n\n\n But boys wanted to believe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maybe Sierra did, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She closed the sliding glass door behind her as softly as she could, dropped the ski bag on the patio with only a small clatter, took out the ski poles, and set about making merry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cDon\u2019t take too long washing these dishes,\u201d Gary said. \u201cSanta\u2019s coming soon.\u201d He gave his mother a squeeze from behind at the sink and kissed Sierra\u2019s neck. He rubbed his hand over her stomach, too, before heading back to the living room to watch It\u2019s a Wonderful Life\u2014the scene where George Bailey\u2019s little brother was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-issue-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}