Christmas karol, p.9
Christmas Karol, page 9
“I . . . don’t laugh okay?”
Beau made an elaborate gesture over his heart. “I swear.”
“I . . . I want to help children get the educations they deserve. Help them out of bad situations and into better ones. I want to . . . to help people. Kids. I want to help kids.”
She watched him, gauging his reaction. He was still looking at her, genuine puzzlement etched across his face.
“Why would I laugh about that?”
Karol chuckled.
“Wait,” Beau said. “Are you allowed to laugh? It seems like if I’m not allowed to laugh then you shouldn’t be allowed to laugh.”
“No, I’m allowed.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Did you want to laugh?”
“No, actually.”
Karol nodded. “It’s just a stupid thing to say. Here anyway.” She gestured at all the law students ranged around the room. “A stereotype, you know? Something you’re supposed to grow out of.”
“I hope you never do.”
He held the cookie plate out to her again. There were only two left. They were identical: red and white dough twisted into the shape of candy canes. Karol took one, Beau took the other. He held out his cookie.
“Cheers.”
Karol laughed and tapped her cookie candy cane against his. “Cheers.”
They ate their cookies in silence, sitting side by side on the windowsill, watching the party ebb and flow. Beau’s shoulder was lightly brushing Karol’s, their knees gently touching. In the fireplace, a log popped and the two women now sitting in the armchairs jumped, then dissolved into fits of giggles. Karol smiled a little.
“Do you want to get out of here?” Beau asked. He said it softly, like a secret.
She looked at him. Met his eyes and he held her there. Pools of hazel laced with yellow threads. She did. She did want to get out of here. It hadn’t been a bad evening. She was glad she’d come. She probably would have stayed if she hadn’t opened the curtain and found Beau standing there. But she had opened it and something had released inside her—a tension she had come to live with, come to accept as normal. It had gone away. Or at least taken a break—gone for a night out with friends. And she found, more than anything, that she wanted to stay with Beau and find out who he was—this man who wandered away from parties to look at falling snow.
“I didn’t mean like to . . .” Beau said in a rush, reaching out for her but not touching her. She realized she’d been just sitting there, staring at him and not answering. She looked away, her cheeks heating up. Beau ploughed on. “I . . . I meant like a walk or a cup of coffee or . . . or a treasure hunt or something . . . not like . . .”
Karol burst out laughing. “A treasure hunt?”
Beau shrugged. “If you want.”
“Yes,” she said, the blush receding. “I absolutely do want to get out of here. With you. Any of those things sounds . . . great.”
Beau let out his breath in a rush and grinned at her. “Good,” he said, hopping down off the windowsill. “Because I know this really great diner that’s open all night and they have the most amazing pie.”
Karol grinned. “Pie! I’ve just eaten three cookies. I’ll be 500 pounds by the time the night is through.”
“And just as beautiful.” Beau offered her his hand. She took it, her cheeks coloring, and he helped her down from the windowsill. They stood like that a moment, her hand in his in front of the window, removed from the party but not yet gone from it. “That was a line, by the way,” Beau said. “In case there was any confusion.”
Karol laughed, a delicious burst of adrenaline shooting off through her bloodstream. “Noted.”
“Come on,” Beau said. “I’ll get our coats.”
The screen went dark and Karol jumped up from the futon.
“No!”
She looked back at the girl, sitting placidly cross-legged and eating her popcorn. The girl tilted her head, knitting her brows together.
“What?”
“Can you . . . can it . . . can you make it keep playing? From right there? Can you . . .”
Karol went up to the screen. Reached out for it but didn’t touch it. Turned back to face the little girl. She didn’t know exactly what she was feeling. She couldn’t have described it if she’d been asked. But seeing that play out—that moment when she’d first met Beau—it was like she was living it. Living all over again that electrifying sense of calm. Of home. Of contentment and ease that had come over her almost immediately. Well, after the first initial shock of finding him there anyway. And she didn’t want to let that go. She wanted to keep living it. To keep being herself at twenty-three. And Beau. She wanted Beau. Like he’d been that night. Like he’d been for . . . when had he stopped being like that? She couldn’t remember. She was homesick for him. Filled with a desperate ache. She wanted to fall in love with him again. To watch him fall in love with her.
“It plays what it plays,” the girl said. She scooped up the remote from the futon beside her and held it out facing Karol. In the dim light Karol saw that the remote had only one button. A large blue circle with a white triangle inside it. A play button.
“Well press it!” Karol said. “Maybe it’ll show us more.”
“Don’t you, like, live with that guy already?” the girl said. “Couldn’t you just, you know, go home and see him?”
“Sure, if you people would let me out of this freak show.”
“Is that the only thing stopping you?” Behind her glasses, the little girl’s magnified eyes blinked up at her.
“I . . .” Karol made a frustrated sound. “I can’t . . . I can’t explain it to you; you’re like, what, eight?”
“Sure.”
“So are you gonna press the button or what?”
The girl shrugged and pointed the remote at the screen. The screen went white and Karol sat back down, shielding her eyes with one hand and waiting eagerly for what came next.
“Yes!” Karol said when a picture appeared. Her heart leapt in anticipation. “This is that same night! After the diner. And the pie. It really was good pie by the way. But we talked for hours about . . . well about everything. And . . .”
“Shh,” said the girl. “I’m watching.”
“Sorry,” Karol whispered. She dug her hand into the popcorn bowl and settled back to watch.
~ ~ ~
A large brick apartment complex appeared on the screen. It was modern, but made to look old-fashioned, with gabled roofs and dormer windows. Bare trees, lit from behind by metal streetlamps, cast shadows across the empty road. A swathe of darkened lawn rolled downhill from the apartment building toward the sidewalk. The snow had stopped but a cold breeze was whistling through the branches, making them dance with their shadows on the ground.
Karol and Beau were standing on the concrete walkway that led into the apartment complex. The path cut through the lawn and they were standing just at the edge, where the pavement met the grass, in a pool of light cast by a streetlamp. Karol had her hands jammed into the pockets of her long red puffer coat. Her white wool beanie was pulled down over her forehead, the tips of her hair peeking out and curling on her cheeks. Beau’s hands were bare, shoved into the pockets of his jeans. He wore a black wool peacoat and a black knit cap. His cheeks were red from the cold. They stood close together under the light. Karol’s face was tilted up to look at Beau.
“Listen,” he said, closing his eyes and tilting his head. “It’ll come again.”
Karol listened but she didn’t close her eyes. Instead, she studied Beau’s face. The angular planes of his nose and cheekbones, the full bow of his lips, the curls that burst at odd angles from under his hat. It was a strange feeling, this. Like remembering something wonderful you’d completely forgotten. Like opening a door in your house and finding a secret room filled with cozy chairs, a book to read, a fire in the fireplace, a steaming mug of tea. But she knew that, in a minute, she’d have to walk all the way up the path. She’d have to pull her key from her purse and go into the building—Yale’s graduate student housing, paid for as part of her law school financial aid package—and go back to her life. He had offered to walk her home and she’d accepted, not because she needed an escort but because she didn’t want this night to end. But now they were here. And she wasn’t the kind of girl who invited a man back to her room on the first . . . was this even a date? So it was almost over. Whatever this was. And she felt it like a sadness. The anticipation of goodbye.
A low, mournful hoot echoed through the night. A two-syllabled keening: hoo-HOO. Beau opened his eyes and grinned.
“There! Did you hear it?”
Karol nodded. “It sounds sad,” she said. “Like it’s lost. Or like it’s lost something it can never get back.” It sounded, Karol thought but didn’t say, the way she felt.
Beau shook his head. “No. Listen.” The sound came again. Followed by another, slightly higher hoot. “They’re talking to each other. Like the moon talking to the stars.”
A gust of wind whipped by them and Karol shivered.
“Come on,” Beau said. “I’ll walk you to your door.”
They began to walk along the path again.
“The moon talking to the stars?” Karol said. “Where do you come up with this stuff?”
Beau laughed. “Too weird?”
“No,” Karol said. “Just exactly the right amount of weird.”
They had reached the glass front door of Karol’s building. She looked up at Beau and found that he was grinning at her. She smiled back.
“What?”
“I . . . I had a really nice time tonight,” he said.
Karol’s smile widened. “So did I.”
“Glad you opened that curtain?”
“Very glad.”
“Then do you think we could . . .”
“Yes, definitely.”
They both laughed. Karol fumbled around in her purse with a mittened hand and pulled out a pen and an old pay stub envelope. She wrote her name and number on the envelope and handed it to Beau. He took it and put it in the inside pocket of his coat.
“So, how soon is too soon to call you?”
“I think I saw a payphone on the next block over. I’ll be inside in like three minutes.” She grinned up at him. She was joking. But not really.
“Is it insane that I kind of want to do that?”
“Is it insane that I kind of want you to?”
“How about breakfast tomorrow? Or, I guess, today. I could pick you up at, say, nine o’clock?”
Karol’s heart leapt. The ache that had been widening with each step they’d taken toward her door receded a little. “Yes, I’d . . . I’d love that.”
“So would I.”
Reluctantly, Karol pulled her keys out of her purse. She smiled at him and turned to put the key in the lock. She shoved the door open and then turned back around. He was standing a few steps away from her on the walkway, both hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunched a little against the cold. The look on his face was hard to read.
“You know . . .” she said. And her cheeks flamed in anticipation of what she was about to say—what she was saying, somehow, without even thinking about it. “You can . . . you can kiss me goodnight if you want to.”
“Oh thank God,” Beau said.
And then she was in his arms. And his lips were soft and gentle. Then her cheek was against his chest, his chin resting on top of her head, and she was breathing in the scent of him—cinnamon and cloves and coffee and paint—and there were tears in her eyes for some reason. And it felt like coming home.
~ ~ ~
Karol, on the futon, in the dark, had tears in her eyes too. A tissue materialized in front of her and she turned. The little girl was holding one out to her silently. She took it and dabbed at her eyes then blew her nose loudly.
“Thanks.”
“So, I know I’m only, like”—she made quotation marks in the air with her fingers—“eight or whatever, but I kind of thought falling in love was supposed to be . . . happy.”
“I . . . I am happy!” Karol sobbed. Fresh tears rose to the surface and she wiped them with the now-sodden tissue. The girl passed her another. “At least, I mean, I was happy. Then. The me on the screen was happy. So now I’m happy, watching.” Her breath hitched and she held the tissue up to her mouth. She found she couldn’t stop the tears now. They were streaming down her face and into her mouth. The girl tossed an entire box of tissues onto her lap. Karol pulled one out but didn’t do anything with it.
“You don’t really look that happy.”
“I . . .” Karol let out a low wail and covered her face with her hands. A small faraway part of her mind was sitting in an office chair somewhere, crossing her legs and raising her eyebrows and calling out to the front desk to get someone in here to remove this sobbing woman asap. But that person wasn’t steering the ship right now. Karol wasn’t sure exactly who was—or if anyone was really. Instead, she was adrift in some emotion she couldn’t quite name. Something raw and multifaceted and sort of awful.
“He’s not, like, dead or something right? Beau? He’s still alive? You guys are still married?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“And if you were able to get out of this . . . freak show . . . you could go home and he’d be there?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And if you wanted to talk about snowflakes that looked like owls or whatever it was you guys were going on about he’d . . .”
“No!” Karol sobbed. “He wouldn’t . . . I mean, I wouldn’t . . . I mean . . .” A fresh wave of tears robbed her of speech for a moment. “He . . . he . . . he . . . he doesn’t . . . he doesn’t talk to me anymore!” she wailed.
“Okay, well, maybe not about owls but . . . like, if you wanted to . . .” she wrinkled her nose, “. . . kiss him or whatever, he’d probably . . .”
“Would he?”
“What’re you asking me for? He’s your husband.”
She tried to think of the last time Beau had kissed her—like really kissed her, not just a peck as she walked out the door—or held her the way he’d held her that first night. It used to happen all the time. But now . . .
“I wish . . .” she sobbed. “I . . .”
“Hmm?”
She shook her head. She’d been about to say that she wished Beau were there, now. So she could go to him and hold him the way she had on the screen. Only, if Beau were there now, he wouldn’t be that Beau. He’d be the Beau who looked at her with closed-off eyes. Who always seemed wary—braced for a blow. The Beau who always looked defeated now. Who hadn’t tried to hold her in so long. Why would he want to now?
Karol blew her nose again. “What went wrong?” she said, not really to anyone in particular.
The screen suddenly lit up again, blinding white in the darkened room. Karol squinted up at it, filled with longing. She wanted to see more—wanted desperately to see more—but the longing was tinged now with a sadness so acute it felt almost like pain. She pulled another tissue from the box and sat with it in her lap as the picture materialized on the screen.
~ ~ ~
It was the living room in Karol’s childhood apartment. Same threadbare rug, same lumpy gray couch, same dumpy armchair, its stuffing poking out in places. The Christmas tree was in the corner, beside the one window. It was tall—nearly touching the ceiling—but lopsided and brittle. It dripped with cheap tinsel and clumsily-strung multicolored lights. On top, the angel looked down on the scene, impassive. A perfect angel for my perfect angels. Outside, it was dark. The streetlight in front of their building had burned out. But the next one over cast a dim glow on the snow-blanketed sidewalk, revealing the mounds of trash bags that had been sitting there for weeks—too buried for the garbage men to bother digging them out.
Alice was lying on the couch, her head propped up by pillows, a red plaid blanket thrown over her and tucked in under her feet. She was thin—gaunt even—and wore a silk floral scarf around her head, to hide her baldness. She was smiling, though, as she listened to the chatter in the room.
Fran sat at the end of the couch, her legs tucked up under her, her hand resting lightly on her mother’s feet. She was fourteen. The only nod to awkwardness was her braces, but she wore them boldly, with pink and purple rubber bands on each tooth. Her blonde hair was cut asymmetrically, with one side brushing her chin and the other her shoulder. She had dyed a strip in the front bright pink. She was grinning at Karol, who was sitting in the armchair, and Beau, who was sitting on the floor, leaning against Karol’s legs. A tinny-sounding stereo was playing selections from The Nutcracker.
“Okay,” Fran said. “But if Santa Claus actually flew fast enough to deliver all the presents in one night, he’d, like, catch fire or something.”
“Well sure,” Beau said, “but Santa Claus is magic.”
“And?”
“And magic people don’t catch fire. That’s . . . that’s right there in the magic people handbook. Haven’t you . . .” He turned to look at Karol, then at Alice. “Haven’t you read the magic people handbook?”
Alice laughed, holding up a hand as the laugh turned into a cough, then shook her head. Fran giggled. Karol grinned. She’d been so afraid to bring Beau home to meet her family. Terrified really. She’d met Beau’s family a bunch of times in the year they’d been together—his parents lived in New Haven after all. And she liked them a lot. And they seemed to like her too. But they lived in a nice little house—not a mansion or anything but a real house, with two floors and a yard and a guest bedroom and everything. And they went on vacations twice a year and had a cleaning lady and a person who came to walk their dog while they were at the college—they were both undergraduate professors at Yale. They went to church on Sunday and even stayed for coffee hour. Karol had gone with them a few times, but mostly just for Beau.
