Christmastime 1940

by Linda Mahkovec

  *

  After the fire died down, after the boys were asleep, she sat on the couch and waited for Drooms to return. Once or twice she thought she heard him coming up the stairs and glanced out her door. He just needs some time alone, she told herself. Yet inside, she felt a darkness growing, a fear that what happened today had changed everything.

  *

  Drooms kept his head down and his hands in his pockets as he walked in the snow, from street to street, farther and farther, not heeding where he was going. Just getting away from what almost happened. The cold was sealing him up again, freezing him into the past once more.

  He pushed down all the happiness and hopes of yesterday, and exhausted himself by walking. The thought of Lillian, of their warm embrace, was only a dream now. As if it had never happened.

  In spite of the dizzying dread and sickness that still filled him, he was grateful that the relationship had not developed. He was not cut out for it. He was better off alone. He had known that all these long years. And she will be much better off without me, he thought, as she must now realize.

  *

  Lillian stared at the dull glow from the dying fire, just a few faint glimmers behind the gray ashes. Now and then the embers would catch and flicker into life, and then die down and become even darker, as if from the effort. The longer she sat, the more she feared that it was over between her and Drooms, before it had even begun.

  Sometime after midnight Lillian heard the vestibule door open, and heard his slow tread on the stairs. She shook off the afghan, opened her door, and stood in the hall waiting for him.

  A shaft of sorrow pierced her as she saw him climb the last few stairs. He was covered in snow. His face, his whole bearing cold, frozen.

  “Oh, Charles. Where were you all this time? Oh, you’re frozen! Let me fix you something hot. Come inside.”

  She started to brush the snow off his coat but he moved away from her touch. She took a step back and tried to read his expression. “Gabriel’s fine,” she said. “He was just scared.”

  But her words had no effect. He stood expressionless, and then began to move away.

  She grabbed his arm and spoke lightly. “They’re always doing that to me. They’re giving me gray hair.” She brushed a hand to her head and tried to laugh.

  When he still didn’t respond, her expression changed to one of desperation. “Charles! Look at me!”

  Drooms finally faced her and spoke softly. “I can’t do it. I’m sorry.” He began to walk towards his door.

  Lillian followed him, not wanting to believe him. “Charles! Don’t be ridiculous. It could just as easily have happened with me. It does happen with me, all the time.”

  “Please, leave me alone.” He stiffly took the keys out of his pocket and began to open his door, his frozen fingers struggling to find the lock.

  She grabbed his arm and forced him to look at her. “Charles!”

  He turned on her harshly. “I don’t want anything to do with you!”

  Lillian took a step back as if he had slapped her cheek. She watched him step inside and close the door behind him. She heard the cold, metallic click of the lock. And then silence. She looked at the hardness of the door, knowing that it wouldn’t open again. After a few stunned moments, she walked back to her apartment.

  She closed her door, sat on the couch, and quietly wept. The darkness from the black pit reached up and slowly pulled her down.

  *

  Having walked for hours in the snow, Drooms was disoriented with fatigue and cold. He knew his words were cruel, but they were for her benefit, he believed. He shook off his coat, and pried his frozen feet out of his sodden shoes.

  Then he saw the boy sitting quietly on the couch. Drooms clenched his hands, his jaw, furious.

  The boy spoke in a soft voice. “That wasn’t your fault.”

  “You! This is all your fault! I want you out of here, do you hear me? Out!”

  The boy tried to squirm away but Drooms grabbed him roughly by the arm and pushed him towards the inner room.

  “I just wanted to play,” said the boy, wincing in fear.

  “I want you out of my life – once and for all. Out! I never want to see you again! God help me. Never!”

  The boy began to cry but Drooms was hardened to his tears and wrenched him to the inner room.

  “Don’t make me go back,” pleaded the boy. “Please don’t put me away. No, no!”

  Drooms shoved him into the room, locked the door, and pounded on it. “Never come back! Never! Do you hear me? Never!!”

  He staggered backwards towards his bedroom and collapsed on his bed. Alone. He was utterly alone in the world except for the gnawing guilt and sorrow that would never leave him, his companions all these long years. He held his head in his hands and muttered confusedly. “I can’t do it, I can’t do it. I’m so sorry, Sam, Sarah, I’m so, so sorry.”

  In a state of fevered confusion, images swirled in his head of the twins laughing and playing, riding on his shoulders, giggling at the dinner table – then their frozen little bodies laid out in the parlor. Fitful images of his mother blurred into Lillian saying, “You two mind Charles, now.” His mother’s words, “I can always count on my Charles,” blended into strangled screams. Confused memories of him as a happy little boy shifted to him standing frozen at the burial, then morphed into Tommy standing in the snow, then to Gabriel lying dead on the couch. The sad eyes of the little boy as he slammed the door on him, turned into the sad eyes of Lillian as he closed the door on her.

  The visions finally slowed and settled into a heavy, still darkness that mercifully pulled him into sleep.

  But it soon shifted to a restless sleep. He tossed and turned and gradually became aware of a tiny noise. He desperately wanted to sleep, to forget, to sink into black nothingness, but the sound kept waking him.

  He lifted his head to listen. It sounded like a child’s soft weeping. He sat up, and realized it was the boy. Drooms repented his cruel words; he could never willingly hurt a child. He hoped the weeping would stop. But it went on.

  The sadness and pain that shaped the crying left Drooms shaken. He couldn’t take it anymore.

  “Shhhh. I’m sorry boy. Don’t cry. I’m sorry. Please don’t cry anymore.”

  But the heartrending sobs continued. Drooms got up and looked for the boy.

  He searched around his bedroom. Nothing there. Then he saw that the door was open to the inner room.

  “Little boy? Where are you? Don’t cry. Please come back – it’s not too late. Come back.”

  He looked inside the inner room, but it was empty. He went into the living room and peered around in the faint light. He could make out the furniture, but he couldn’t see the boy and he became worried.

  Then the weeping stopped, just a soft catching of breath now. No, no – silence was always worse.

  “Little boy? I’m so sorry. Please come back.”

  Drooms stumbled around his desk, the couch. He walked towards the animal collection on the bookshelves – then a flood of relief to see the boy standing there. Drooms almost laughed with joy. Of course the boy would be there, with the animals.

  How could he have hurt him?

  “Little boy, I’m so sorry –” But as Drooms reached out to touch him, he recoiled as his hand touched the stiff body. The boy had become stuffed like the animals, his face the last to change, tears still streaming down his cheeks.

  Drooms backed up in horror, falling to the floor. He reached out again, only to pull back in revulsion.

  “Oh, what have I done? Please come back! Oh, my God,” he moaned, “what have I done?!”

  Drooms sat up in bed, pale and sweaty from the nightmare. His heart hammered inside his chest, as if tiny fists pounded on it, sending the vibration up to his neck and temples. He held his head, and gasped for air, until his breathing calmed.

  Though he knew it was just a dream, he got up and looked around. He had to be sure. The door to the inner room was cl
osed. Thank God.

  His breathing still ragged, he stumbled into the living room, and stood in the center of the room. It was softly illuminated by the streetlight, but he could see that it was still the same; nothing had changed. There were the stuffed animals, frozen, rigid.

  For the first time, he was repulsed by them. He saw them for the dusty, dead things they were, staring back at him with lifeless, glassy eyes. He slowly shook his head. He was not going to do that to himself. He was not.

  He threw open the living room window, cold air rushing in. He then stood in front of the shelves and beheld the lifeless menagerie. He shuddered as he grabbed a bunch of the stiff animals and threw them out the window into the falling snow, crying out, “No more! No more!” Back and forth from shelves to window, tossing and throwing them out until the shelves were bare.

  The animals landed on the snow below – squirrels, birds, rabbits, snakes in strange embraces and chase scenes.

  In the distance a garbage truck made its way in the darkness of early morning, picking up the trash and the odd discarded items of humanity.

  “No more!” cried Drooms as he crumpled to the floor, his hands over his face, rocking on his knees. “No more!”

  Anguish, long pent up, now claimed its right, its life, and flailed out in a frenzy of unpracticed expression. Long years of tears came gushing forth, tears of the boy, and tears of the man – tears for the guilt, the loss, the raw festering loneliness. Anguish released in long, twisted groans and messy, wrenching weeping by a man searching for some answer in the darkness, his beseeching hands held open, weighted with the figment of sorrow.

  The mourning that had never been expressed, the regret for the emptiness of years, now burst forth, knocking down the layers of hardness, tumbling the harsh rocky façade, stripping away the protective exterior – until there was nothing left, but the man himself – bent over a cold, dark floor. Weeping, like a child.

  Chapter 12

  *

  The next morning after breakfast, Lillian packed two tins of Christmas cookies. She was thankful that she and the boys had the week off. She desperately needed the time to finish up with her Christmas preparations and put her mind in order.

  And the extra hours of sleep were a luxury that she needed this morning, after the terrible night. She had barely slept. She kept thinking of the cruel words from Charles, though some part of her refused to believe them.

  In the middle of the night she had woken, dreaming of him as he was in the sketch – struggling, alone. He was trying to move through the snow but couldn’t, and he was beginning to freeze, the icicles keeping him bound. Lillian thought of the drawing of the woman in the long gown standing next to him, with the flame flower cupped in her hands.

  Lillian turned on the lamp, brought the sketch pad to her bed, and finished the drawing. She colored the woman in soft shades of warm rose and blue and gold, and let the colors seep into the gray world of the frozen Drooms, the icicles catching the gold of the flame.

  Lillian studied the drawing and felt that it was now complete. Then even though she believed that all doors between her and Charles were firmly closed, and that it was better this way, she had gotten out of bed, taken the drawing, and leaned it against his door.

  She now wondered whether it was a drawing of the way things could have been, or the way things had actually been for a few beautiful moments. She frowned at her own thoughts. In the light of morning, it all seemed foolish.

  She quickly dressed, powdered her strained and puffy face, and put on a cheerful front for the boys, who were dressed and ready for their visit to Santa.

  “Come on, boys. We have a lot to do today. We’ll deliver Mrs. Kuntzman’s cookies on our way.”

  Gabriel had his coat on and could barely contain his excitement. “I’m gonna ask Santa for a sled, no – a puppy. No – a pirate sword!” He cast a make-believe thrust at Tommy, who responded by unsheathing his own imaginary sword.

  “Down villain! Bite the dust!” cried Tommy.

  “Oh, yeah? Take this Peg Leg! Yaaargh!!” Gabriel grabbed Tommy around the legs and they tumbled, laughing.

  “Boys, boys! Come on now, we don’t have time for that.”

  Lillian took one tin of cookies, and closed the door behind them. She glanced down the hall and saw that the drawing was still there, propped against Drooms’s door. She briefly considered retrieving it, but the boys were already running down the stairs.

  Gabriel gave a hearty Santa’s laugh: “Ho ho ho!”

  When Tommy answered in a pirate’s voice, “And a bottle of rum,” the boys doubled over in laughter.

  They delivered the tin of cookies and spent a few minutes with Mrs. Kuntzman and her daughter, and then caught the bus to the department store.

  Lillian looked out the bus window, wishing that she could go away for the week, to avoid bumping into him. Though it was last minute, perhaps she could take the boys upstate to her sister’s for Christmas. Or maybe they could all take a trip somewhere.

  No. It was no good running away from things. She would be fine. She would learn to think of him again as just a neighbor.

  *

  Spent, pummeled, exhausted, Drooms lay in a heavy, powerful, forgetting sleep. The blackness of nothingness reigned deep while the crumpled soul recovered and rested. A sleep that eventually grew into a lighter slumber as the soul healed and awoke.

  Drooms rested in a state of soft waking, his mind rocking back and forth between dream images and awareness of his deep, rhythmic breathing. He lingered between sleep and waking, a kind of third place that he never knew existed, had always rushed by, never even catching a glimpse of it.

  He savored the calm that pervaded him, wondering at the nightly miracle of sleep, the daily miracle of waking. Such a simple, pure thing, sleep. Like love, he thought. What a strange force is love – that lives beyond death, across time. His love for his mother, for Sarah and Sam was as strong today, was the same love, as it was back then. And he could still feel their love – nothing had changed or diminished.

  And this new love, this new love that filled him –

  His eyes snapped opened, and in a flash he saw Lillian’s face, remembered his words to her, the sadness in her eyes. He whipped back the blanket. He could not let that look exist in the world, couldn’t bear for her to feel pain, must hurry. He had to go to her.

  Drooms saw the late time and dressed quickly. He recalled the nightmarish day and night, and still felt a sickness in his stomach when he thought of Gabriel lying in the snow.

  But he no longer felt paralyzed, or immobilized by fear. He even wondered at the new feeling inside him, the light, effervescent feeling of hope. He would convince Lillian that he didn’t mean any of it, that she was the best thing that had ever happened to him, and that he was grateful for her kindness and –

  He wasn’t sure what he would say, but he knew that what had happened between them was real and true and beautiful.

  But perhaps it was too late, he thought. Perhaps all they could be now, after his terrible treatment of her, were friends, neighbors. He couldn’t blame her for this.

  No, however long it took, he would do what he could to make her life easier, to be there for her, to one day see that look of love and trust in her eyes again.

  When he opened his door, he saw something propped against it. He lifted it and saw the drawing of him – it now had a woman in a flowing blue robe offering him warmth and light. His heart pounded; there was still hope.

  Or, did the gesture mean that it was over – that this was what might have been? He felt a heavy darkness filling his chest at that possibility.

  No, he would protect whatever remnant still remained. Gingerly, he held the drawing, searching for a safe place to put it. He went to his bedroom and laid it on his bed.

  Then he left his apartment and knocked at Lillian’s door. He had to know. He would know when he saw her face. He knocked again. Was she home and didn’t want to see him? His despair deepened. H
e placed his hand on her door and spoke softly. “Lillian?”

  Drooms saw the neighbor from the fourth floor coming up the stairs and, for a brief moment, was ready to scowl and leave. But that old self could not be summoned. Drooms actually smiled at the old man.

  “Mrs. Hapsey and her boys left about an hour ago,” the old man said. “Off to see Santa.”

  “Of course. Thank you. Merry Christmas.”

  The old man stood a moment, eyeing Drooms. “And a Merry Christmas to you, sir,” and he continued up the stairs.

  There’s still hope, thought Drooms. He showered and dressed for work, with a clear vision of what he was going to do.

  He ran down the stairs, and out into the fresh December air. He walked briskly with his head up, smiling and tipping his hat to the neighbors, which caused a few double takes.

  When he passed The Red String Curio Store, he paused to look in the window at those combs. They did not have the same power they had yesterday. Today, they were just hair combs.

  The shop owner knocked on the window and motioned for him to come in. Drooms smiled and opened the door, causing the little bell to jingle.

  The owner was at his cheerful, holiday best. “Good morning, sir! I have a new raccoon you might like to take a look at. A nice addition to your collection.”

  “I got rid of that collection,” said Drooms. “Decided to make room for other things.”

  “Oh. Well then,” said the shopkeeper, clearly surprised. He hooked his thumbs around his red suspenders, rocking on his heels. “Can I help you find anything else?”

  “I noticed some toys in the window,” said Drooms.

  “An excellent selection just delivered for Christmas.”

  After a few minutes, Drooms stacked several games and toys on the counter, smiling at the other customers.

  “Can you wrap them, please? I’ll pick them up in a few hours. Thank you. Merry Christmas!”