by A N Sandra
Helena didn’t even know what to say. She thought for a long time.
“So, now that there’s no world to go back to… do we have a new plan?”
“I don’t know if there’s any point in making a plan.” Duane said. “But I think my dad and your mom are going to go out fighting.”
Helena felt tears flowing down her cheeks. It was very cold in the art studio, even though Miss Jan left a space heater running continuously, so Helena was surprised at how hot the tears on her cheeks felt. A sob jerked from her throat against her will. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness enough to see the general shape that was Duane, and she hoped he couldn’t see well enough to see how she must look.
“Here,” Duane stepped forward and folded Helena into his arms.
She was relieved that his embrace calmed her almost instantly. But then the calming stopped, and her heart began to jump in her chest. His arms were perfect, his hand was on the back of her head and his coat was cool against her hot cheek. More than anything in the world Helena wanted to lift her face and kiss Duane. To lose herself with him, right there in the cold, dark art studio...
“We’d better go,” Duane said before Helena could risk lifting her lips to his. He gently let go of her.
“Oh.” Helena sighed. Suddenly she understood how alone she really was in the world.
“Your parents will never trust me again if I’m out here with you in the dark, all alone.”
“Cause with the world ending, my reputation is super important,” Helena shook her head.
“We don’t really know how any of this is going to play out,” Duane said. “They’ve made a lot of plans, yes, but even the best laid plans get fouled up. We don’t know what’s going to happen, really.”
“I’m not worried about my parents right now,” Helena said. “They have a lot of nerve not telling Peter and Lourdes and Ray and I the truth.”
“I think they intend to, after they make a plan for the future.”
“I don’t know if I can pretend not to know what I know.”
“Can you try, for a while anyway?”
“Will you keep me in the loop, so I don’t have to hide in cupboards?”
“I’ll try, but we really can’t be caught sneaking around,” Duane said. “We really can’t. Your dad made me promise not to seduce you.”
“Seriously?” Helena was horrified. The embarrassment. The possibilities. Without thinking she blurted out, “What if I wanted to be seduced?”
Duane laughed a little. “I’m four years older than you, but your dad was worried that we would… gravitate toward each other.”
“Like Anne Frank and Peter Van Daan,” Helena said. Her cheeks burned as she remembered the antics of Anne and Peter in the annex.
“I guess,” Duane said.
“But Anne never really respected Peter, and I really respect you,” Helena said shyly.
“I really respect you too. I think we’d better say goodnight and sneak back home.”
Helena sighed. “Goodnight,” she said softly.
“Goodnight,” Duane said back from the darkness.
“So, what are you getting everybody for Christmas?” Peter stood behind Helena, who was trying to grate potatoes for hash browns.
“Candy,” Helena answered, without trying to evade the question. They were living in each other’s space. There was no point in super secrecy. “I got permission to make candy for everyone with some of the sugar in the store room.”
“That sounds hard,” Peter fretted. “What do you know about making candy?”
“I follow directions and understand that cooking is a form of chemistry, so I get to use five pounds of sugar and a pound of cocoa to make fudge.”
“That sounds good,” Peter said. “I’m excited to get fudge, but I don’t know what to give people for Christmas.”
“Lourdes used some goat’s wool to make slippers for everyone,” Helena said. “I thought that was pretty clever.”
“That doesn’t help me at all,” Peter whined. “I don’t want to be the only person without gifts on Christmas.”
“I’ll think about it,” Helena promised. “Did you ask Duane for any ideas?”
“No, but that couldn’t hurt.”
“Hey.” Helena let something that had been simmering on the backburner of her brain surface. “Do you think Mom has Autism?”
Peter looked surprised at the question.
“Don’t you?” he asked. “I mean, she’s a pretty classic case of High-Functioning Autism. High IQ, low people skills.”
“She must have better people skills than average; she managed to become one of the most important research doctors in the world.”
“She started college when she was nine,” Peter reminded Helena. “As a sophomore. That’s a pretty big sign that someone isn’t typical. Her parents died when she was small, and she managed to become important anyway. I think having her magic box made up for the lack of people skills she might have.”
Helena had never thought of that before. Losing your parents at a young age would be a very distressing thing for most people, yet it had not destroyed her mother. It had not stopped her from starting college as a pre-adolescent. The ivory box probably did help her mother compensate for things that might be hard for someone with otherwise low empathy.
“I know it seems nuts, but it never occurred to me until recently.” Helena didn’t say that it had never occurred to her until her father had brought it up, and she had not been able to forget it.
“In fourth grade we had Alex Heart in our class, and we all had to learn about ASD,” Peter said. “It didn’t take long for me to figure out Mom isn’t so different from Alex. The hyper-focus about saving the world, ignoring her husband and kids to do it…”
“She’s doing a lot better now,” Helena said.
“She can’t do much now. She doesn’t have a lab. The world is falling apart in spite of everything she did, so she’s letting go of what was important and moving on to what she can do. A totally normal person might be in a big pit of depression, but she’s doing pretty well. But if something happens and she has an idea to fix this mess, she’ll drop us and fix it.”
“If only she had an idea to fix this mess,” Helena mused, thinking over her mother’s futile hours at her whiteboard. “I’d be happy to be dropped.”
“Right?” Peter said. “That’s what I want to get everybody for Christmas. A fix for the world.”
“That’s the original idea behind Christmas. A little baby to fix a big mess.”
“The mess is bigger now,” Peter said.
“The world is bigger now,” Helena said. “I think we were always one step away from the world ending. So, some people figured out a way to use Mom’s project to put a virus on every chip and kill the people they think are extra, to start the world over. Mom’s project was designed to save everyone; their project was to save themselves. They think they’re saving the world too, but they are just saving their own world.”
“I want to get everybody something good, in case it’s the last Christmas.” Peter completely ignored Helena’s deep thoughts.
“See what Duane has to say.” Helena put Peter off. “You have almost three weeks.”
“It’s almost five days until Christmas, you can’t give us our present now,” Helena argued with Peter as they walked toward the promised gift.
“Yes, I can,” Peter assured her. “There are no real rules about Christmas anyway.”
“Why is our gift in the forest?” Christina asked.
“Because it wouldn’t fit in the house,” Peter told her. “Come on.”
Even though it was high noon, they had to walk carefully because there wasn’t much light. As they came to the edge of the forest Helena gasped.
“Like it?” Peter gloated.
“I love it!” Helena reached for Peter and gave him an excited hug.
“It’s amazing,” Christina told him. “You really did good.”
In front
of them was a small spruce tree that was decorated for Christmas with hundreds of reflective ornaments hanging from it. In the dim light the tree sparkled as the ornaments shifted slightly in the light breeze.
“How did you make all the ornaments?” Helena wanted to know.
“I cut up a bunch of empty tin cans from the junk heap,” Peter said. “Mr. Todd has scissors that cut metal, and I cut all the circles and stars and painted them with reflective paint.”
“That is so awesome,” Helena marveled. “It’s the best Christmas tree ever.”
“Ever,” Christina agreed.
“I made it for everybody, but you get to see it first,” Peter said. “I’m going to get Dad and Tawna later, and the Wilsons know about it, but they haven’t seen it yet.”
“They’re going to love it,” Christina said. “Just amazing, honey. I’m so proud of you.”
“Thanks, Mom,” Peter said.
Helena felt warm, even in the middle of so much snow. Beauty, love, goodwill, all circling around her.
“Go get Dad,” Helena said with a big smile. “He’s going to love it too.”
“Wait till you see what Duane made everybody for Christmas,” Peter warned. “He let me go first, but tomorrow you get the real surprise.”
The little light there was caused the snow to gleam as Peter led Christina and Helena to see Duane’s Christmas creation. Behind them, Joel Harris led Tawna, Lourdes, and Ray. Mr. Wilson and Miss Jan were coming from the other direction. Behind the houses, at the edge of the forest, Peter’s Christmas tree flickered as the ornaments swayed.
“It’s a real work of art. It looks enchanted,” Helena sighed, struck by the beauty of the tree. Suddenly the fudge she was about to make seemed very insignificant.
“Ah!”
“Wow!”
“Oh!”
Helena took her eyes off the Christmas tree to see what everyone was excited about. Across from the tree was an intricate nativity scene carefully carved from snow. Over the nativity was a makeshift sort of lean-to of spruce branches. There was Joseph and an angel with huge gravity-defying wings, and a manger, and… Mary looked familiar.
“What do you think?” Peter asked, looking at Helena sideways.
“Is Mary supposed to look like me?” Helena asked, trying not to sound vain.
“Looks like it,” Peter smiled.
Duane stood over to the side of the nativity accepting congratulations on an amazing sculpting job with a huge grin on his face.
“It really is beautiful,” Helena told him. “And you never could have made one in Dallas, for sure.”
“The silver lining to our horrible cloud,” Duane said. “Do you really think Mary looks like you?”
“I do,” Helena said. “The way her hair is just over her eyebrows… impressive.”
“Thank you,” Duane said. “I understand your Christmas contribution is going to be fudge?”
“I’m making fudge tonight to give everyone on Christmas.”
“I’m looking forward to mine,” Duane said.
Helena hoped she wasn’t grinning like a fool. She was never sure if she was handling herself well when she and Duane were talking in a way that was almost flirting, but not really. There had never been any boy in Dallas that was important enough to flirt with, and as Duane was the only guy who might take anything the wrong way, it flustered her to talk to him sometimes.
“After Christmas dinner,” Helena said. “Wait for it.”
“I will,” Duane said. He reached out and squeezed Helena’s hand and her heart stopped for that moment.
As she drifted back through the lightly falling snow to her house, Helena thought how, “He loves me, he loves me not,” got started. It was just so hard to know what was a real signal and what was wishful thinking. She got in bed, tired in spite of the way her heart had been pounding earlier. Sleep came, and Helena surrendered.
“Dad’s here!” Peter called upstairs.
“It’s Christmas morning!” Helena grinned to herself in her cozy loft bed. She hadn’t cared this much about Christmas since she was seven. With resolve, she made her arm reach outside the covers and locate her slippers so she could go downstairs.
“Merry Christmas!” Joel was holding her and Peter’s Christmas stockings, one in each hand, and they were bulging.
“You brought our stockings!” Helena hadn’t realized how much she wanted her Christmas stocking until that moment. She bolted forward and nearly knocked her father over in a huge bear hug.
“Peter felt the same way.” Christina smiled. “Merry Christmas!”
Mostly the stocking was full of cheap penny candy that Helena was pretty sure had been in the storage room the whole time they had been there, but in the toe of the stocking was a tiny e-reader and a charger for it.
“Oh! More books!” Helena knew she was grinning ear to ear. “Thank you so much!”
“Your mother’s idea,” Joel said modestly. “She said you were both reading everything you had, so I took the opportunity to load each of you fifty new books. Hopefully that’ll get you through the rest of winter.”
“I can read fifty books in a month.” Helena laughed. “But thank you, very much!”
“Come have some cocoa,” Christina said. “Then we have a busy day of cooking.”
“I have a busy day of cooking.” Helena grinned. “But I’m happy to do it.”
Christmas dinner was a community affair. Helena and Miss Jan cooked most of the food. Tawna decorated the storage building and made two tables look magical with silver pinecones and evergreen boughs and sparkling candles. Any Pinterest board would have been proud to show off Tawna’s efforts. Christina put together a Christmas playlist and Mr. Todd had turned several jars of jam that Helena had made the previous fall into fruity red wine since Tawna had consumed the “wine cellar.”
“We get wine too?” Lourdes sipped just a bit before sitting at the “kids’ table.”
“I insisted,” Duane said. “It doesn’t have a very high alcohol content anyway. It’s hard enough that I’m nineteen and sitting at the kids’ table. I’m going to have some wine. Well, it’s really mead, but it’s what we’ve got.”
“Might as well enjoy.” Peter grinned. “If the world ends, who cares that you drank before you were twenty-one?”
“Some busybody somewhere cares.” Helena smirked. “But that’s not our problem.”
Duane sat next to Helena at the end of the table. Helena tried to be mature.
“Your mom did an awesome job with these tables,” Helena told Lourdes and Ray. “She really knows how to make something beautiful.”
“Thanks.” Lourdes beamed. Ray smiled and nodded.
“How many refills do we get when we drink all our wine?” Peter asked Duane.
Helena wanted to kick him in the shins. Unfortunately, she was wearing Ugg boots and didn’t think he would feel enough pain for the effort.
“There might be an extra bottle that only I know about.” Duane winked. “There are rewards for sitting at my table.”
Like a polished waiter, Mr. Harris brought out the bounty Helena and Miss Jan had cooked and all of them settled down to moose rib roast, mashed potatoes and gravy, fluffy rolls, green beans that had been frozen for the occasion, and butternut squash that was covered with precious butter.
“What kind of pie are we having?” Ray asked with his mouth full.
“Apple, pumpkin, and banana cream.”
“Banana?” Peter gasped. “Serious?”
“Dad brought back two really green bananas from Fairbanks. I know how much you love banana cream pie, so I kept them for this.” Helena grinned. “I really worried they would get too old, but they made it.”
“Best. Sister. Ever.”
Even Lourdes and Ray looked impressed. Dinner was a dream. Good food, Duane’s good company, and the warm glow created by Mr. Todd’s homemade wine all conspired to make Helena feel on top of the world.
“This is the best pie, ever. I
n the world,” Peter said after he ate his second piece of banana cream pie. “And, Helena, you are the best sister ever.”
“Hey!” Lourdes was annoyed. “I keep the chickens that laid the eggs for that ‘cream’ you just ate.”
“Fair enough!” Peter was clearly feeling extra judicious after having three glasses of wine with his dinner. The jam wine was fairly low alcohol content, but Peter had never had any before.
“We’re all going to help clean up,” Ray said glumly.
“Yes, we are,” Duane said firmly.
Together, they gathered the dishes to be divided and washed at each house. Miss Jan took the linens to wash at her house and Tawna gathered all the decorations.
“That went faster than I thought,” Ray admitted.
“When everyone works together it always does.” Miss Jan smiled.
Helena knew she was thinking how different Ray was from the kid who couldn’t carry the lightest pack on the hike to the meadow.
“Parting gifts!” Helena called. “Before everyone goes to bed, I have the last Christmas gifts of the night!”
“Whatcha got?” Ray asked.
Helena reached into the bag containing the fudge she had made.
“Chocolate!” she announced. “Look at this! One for everybody!”
With a smile, she handed out a small parcel of fudge with a tiny note on it for each of them. She hoped Duane had the good sense to read his note in private, in case she had gotten too personal.
Helena soaked up their praise at the end of a good night. There was light pressure on her lower back, and with a start, she realized it was Duane’s hand.
“Can I walk you home, Miss?” he asked with a small smile.
“Are you going to carry my share of the dishes?” she teased.
“Of course!” Duane took the tub of dishes she had been about to pick up to carry back to the house to wash. “I’ll even stay to help you wash them.”
“Then what will Peter do?” Helena mused.
“Stay out of the way?” Duane asked.
“Good plan.”
They left the storage building and Helena could hear Mr. Todd closing it up carefully against the wind as they walked in the biting air. There were clouds over the stars, and snow blew around Helena’s legs, making her sorry she hadn’t worn tights under her jeans, but she was next to Duane and it couldn’t have been a better night.
