“Don’t take too long washing these dishes,” Gary said. “Santa’s coming soon.”
He gave his mother a squeeze from behind at the sink and kissed Sierra’s neck. He rubbed his hand over her stomach, too, before heading back to the living room to watch It’s a Wonderful Life—the scene where George Bailey’s little brother was so reckless stacking the good flatware for a party while George and his father discussed finances and dreams deferred.
Gary’s mother rinsed the soap from one of the big knives Sierra could rarely bring herself to use–sharp and murderous as it was. A “grownup” 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’s 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.
Sierra couldn’t have imagined this whole scenario even a year earlier. She’d gotten laid off from her job in financial aid for an educational non-profit that couldn’t afford to offer financial aid anymore. She hadn’t imagined unemployment would give way to online dating, or that she’d get pregnant, or that all of this might lead to a stay-at-home mom future.
It had been a major victory to convince Gary not to travel home this Christmas, when Sierra made it clear she wasn’t comfortable flying pregnant, even if the doctors said it was perfectly safe at this stage. The pregnancy—this whole life with Gary—was unplanned, unimaginable really, a year earlier, when he was one of a half-dozen coffee meetups she’d agreed to from a dating app. The idea of staying at Gary’s mom’s house pregnant was simply too much to bear that Christmas.
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.
Gary’s 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.
Meg spoke in a low voice as the Charleston contestant in the movie. “There’s something we need to discuss.”
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.
“Gary’s father and I waited too long to tell him about Santa Claus.”
Sierra laughed softly, breathing easier. She could handle warm nostalgia. Welcomed even stories from Gary’s youth, how he’d come to be as sweet and innocent as he was—the kind of person who paid cash around the holidays so he’d 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.
“Then his father passed,” Meg scrubbed a cookie sheet with a Brillo pad, loosening the burnt remains from the snickerdoodles Sierra had left in the oven too long. “Gary was twelve. I couldn’t bear to break it to him then.”
Sierra tried to offer some reassurance about how parents did the best they could. She didn’t think of herself as that well-equipped for motherhood. Gary would be a good father.
Meg cut her off, “What I’m trying to tell you is, we never told him about Santa.”
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?
“Listen to me.” Meg’s voice grew perceptibly sharper. “I’m trying to tell you, he doesn’t know. He still believes.”
Gary had made mention of Santa a lot that holiday season. Sierra wasn’t 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’d made a similar warning to boys roughhousing outside a Denny’s where they’d stopped for breakfast the week before, when Sierra craved bacon and eggs. She’d 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.
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.
“I’m getting too old to keep it all up alone,” Meg said. “Especially if you aren’t going to come back to my house for Christmas. I’ve had help the last few years. It’s my neighbor Luca who’d get up on the roof.”
Sierra remembered Luca, actually. They’d stayed two nights in Gary’s childhood home over the summer, when it felt too early to be spending the night at her boyfriend’s mother’s 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.
“You have your own life. I understand,” Meg said. “But after you mess up telling your son about Santa for this long, it’s just cruel to do it when he’s a grown man. I’m telling you for his sake. You’ve got to keep it up.”
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’t say it—or didn’t say it soon enough, Meg stepped in too loudly and all but theatrically offered her an antacid, “to help settle your tummy, sweetheart. You were complaining about how sick you felt.”
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—a ladder Sierra couldn’t fathom where she’d found or stowed—and prodded Sierra to climb it to shake jingle bells on the roof. And, after all of this, Meg wheeled out the big suitcase she’d insisted no one could help her take upstairs, and removed all of the gifts, wrapped in red and gold foil. “Always foil. Santa never uses wrapping paper with a print on it.” 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. “You can mix it up,” Meg said. “Make it your own. But the reindeer prints are a must if there’s snow. And the jingle bells. And the foil.”
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. “How did Santa know?”
“He always knows, doesn’t he?” Meg said, not only smug but triumphant, as if her son’s joy was directly proportional to how right she was to keep Santa Claus magic alive in his life.
Sierra sipped a cup of store-bought eggnog, warmed in the microwave. She missed coffee, but despite Meg’s insistence one cup wouldn’t hurt the baby, Sierra knew herself. One cup wouldn’t have been enough, just a tease, enough to make her miss the second cup that much worse.
“Go on, sweetheart.” 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’t have any in the house. Gary drank his coffee black with a spoonful of sugar. “Go on and open your presents.”
It had been madness—the lengths this woman went to, and, no less so, Gary’s bright-eyed reaction the next morning when he asked if they’d heard the bells on the roof and when he pointed at the paw prints out back. It was all enough to make Sierra question—really question—if she could build a life with him.
The key was boundaries, she’d decided in the end. They’d never go to Meg’s for Christmas, and she’d 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’s fragile constitution.
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’d 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.
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—usually taking a nap himself—while Sierra had the chance to go for a run or watch an episode of Real Housewives. It was hardest of all to argue the point when she watched the two of them rest so peacefully.
Christmas Eve. It’s A Wonderful Life on TV again, Mary telling George he’d lassoed a stork, Gary’s face colored in flickering black and white, Ben’s eyes closed, mouth open and drooling on Gary’s chest, nestled in his flannel shirt. Gary’s 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—his favorite part, when George Bailey went running through the streets, calling every old building wonderful. 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.
Sierra was blessed, she knew, to have had a child with such a good father.
She saw the moonlit outline of antlers through the window that looked out on the backyard
Then, she heard the crunch of snow underfoot outside.
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.
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’d learned to leave her phone with not only the ringer off, but in Do Not Disturb 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.
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.
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. “Are you crazy?” She shook her head. “Imagine sneaking up on me like that!”
Sierra pressed a finger to her lips and rallied all of her self-control. “We didn’t invite you for Christmas.”
“I’m well aware of that.” Meg rubbed a reindeer hoof against the errant prints she’d left when she caught herself. “Don’t worry yourself. I’ve got a room at the bed and breakfast at the riverfront.”
Sierra almost felt sorry at the mention of the place. There weren’t 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’s brother had stayed there when he came to see the baby but didn’t want to be intrusive with an infant around—he 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.
This wasn’t a time to feel bad for Meg, though. “What are you doing here?” Sierra asked.
Meg planted the ski poles in the snow and put her hands on her hips. “My intuition told me you weren’t going to keep up traditions.”
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’s 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’d bought they’d 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).
“It’s not your place to our family traditions.” Sierra knew it bothered Meg they hadn’t married.
“Every boy should have Santa Claus in his life,” Meg said.
“We can make-believe Santa fine on our own.”
“And if you don’t make-believe the way Gary has the last thirty years, you think he won’t notice? You think it won’t ruin Christmas?”
The woman could rationalize anything. Even Gary admitted that, a moment of frustration after he’d 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.
Meanwhile, there they stood at an impasse. Sierra’s toes numbed in her fuzzy slippers, not built for the outdoors.
“You know, if Ben wakes up, Gary’s going to wake up, too.” Sierra whispered. “The first thing he’ll do is go looking for me. What’ll he think when he finds you like this?”
Meg grumbled that she’d 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’t help feeling she’d 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.
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’t 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.
“One last thing,” Meg said when they were done, a film of sweat over her face, a cruel grin. “Put out your hands.”
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’d been gifted a lump of coal.
#
The next morning, Gary’s face glowed, looking first to Sierra, then to Ben. “Can you believe Santa brought all this?”
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’t very interested in putting things in his mouth just yet, but if he’d 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.
“I should FaceTime Mom while Ben opens his gifts,” Gary said. “You don’t mind, do you?”
#
Years went by. One son turned to two. Gary insisted on Meg staying for the holiday, and Sierra couldn’t 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.
Then her boys—ten and twelve—still believed. Sierra began to understand what Meg had said about it being cruel, after a certain point to shatter a life-long illusion.
The Christmas Eve after Meg had passed, Sierra opened the ski bag Meg’s sister had surreptitiously gifted her when they were clearing out Gary’s childhood home that fall.
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’d brought them home to this very moment. The woman was nothing if not committed.
After the boys had gone to bed and Gary fell asleep on the couch–the boys all dozed off on the couch, Sierra got to work.
She took care of the presents first, all wrapped in foil—a gift certificate to a spa she’d 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—a 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’ve sworn she caught Pete’s eyes open, but he closed them quickly, and his breathing never changed.
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’t he, after all this time?
But boys wanted to believe.
Maybe Sierra did, too.
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.
