Season of Wonder

by Paula Guran

  Parasite, thought Matt. Not a promising opening. But the building sounded cheerful. —How are you?— she thought.

  —Warm, snug inside,— thought the building. —Freezing outside. Quiet. It won’t last.—

  —Oh, well, just wanted to say hi,— thought Matt.

  —All right,— thought the building. She felt its attention turning away from her.

  —Aren’t you getting up now?— asked Linda’s room. It sounded grumpy. —It’s Christmas morning!—

  —Oh. Right.— Matt slipped out of bed, pulled the big black robe around her, and ventured out into the hall, heading for the bathroom. Not a creature was stirring. She finished in the bathroom, then crept into the living room to check the clock on the VCR; it was around 7:30 a.m., a little later than her usual waking time. She peeked at the Christmas tree on the table in the dining nook. Its white lights still twinkled, and there were a couple more presents under it.

  —Coat?— she thought. It occurred to her that she had never talked to her own clothes before. Too intimate. Her clothes touched her all the time, and she wasn’t comfortable talking to things that touched her anywhere but her hands and feet. If her clothes talked back, achieved self-will, could do whatever they wanted—she clutched the lapels of the black robe, keeping it closed around her. She would have to think about this. It wasn’t fair to her clothes. —Coat, where are you?— she thought.

  A narrow closet door in the hall slid open. Looking in, she saw that Jim had hung her coat on a hanger. She put out a hand and stroked the stained army-drab. Coat had been with her through all kinds of weather, kept her warm and dry as well as it could, hidden her from too close an inspection, carried all kinds of things for her. She felt an upwelling of gratitude. She hugged the coat, pressing her cheek against its breast, breathing its atmosphere of weather, dirt, Matt, and fried chicken (she had carried some foil-wrapped chicken in a pocket yesterday). After a moment, warmth glowed from the coat; its arms slid flat and empty around her shoulders. She closed her eyes and stood for a long moment letting the coat know how much she appreciated it, and hearing from the coat that it liked her. Then she reached into the inside breast pocket and fished out the pen-and-pencil set she had bought the night before. With a final pat on its lapel, she slid out of the coat’s embrace.

  —Anybody know where I could find some wrapping paper and tape?— she asked the world in general.

  The kitchen called to her, and she went in. A low, deep drawer near the refrigerator slid open, offering her a big selection of wrapping paper for all occasions and even some spools of fancy ribbons. Another drawer higher up opened; it held miscellaneous useful objects, including rubber bands, paperclips, pens, chewing gum, scissors, and a tape dispenser.

  —Thanks,— she said. She chose a red paper covered with small green Christmas trees, sat at the card table with it and the tape, and wrapped up the writing set after she peeled the price sticker off it. Silver ribbon snaked across the floor and climbed up the table leg, then lifted its end at her and danced, until she laughed and grabbed it. It wound around her package, tied itself, formed a starburst of loops on top. She patted it and it rustled against her hand.

  She put everything away and set her present under the tree, then went back to Linda’s room and lay on the bed, yawning. The bed tipped up until she fell out.

  —It’s Christmas morning,— it said crossly as she felt the back of her head; falling, she’d bumped it, and it hurt. —The one never comes back to bed until she’s opened her presents!—

  —I’m not the one,— Matt thought. —Thanks for the night.— She left the room, got her coat out of the closet, and lay on the couch with her coat spread over her. The couch cradled her, shifting the cushions until her body lay comfortable and embraced. She fell asleep right away.

  The smell of coffee woke her. She sighed and peered over at the VCR. It was an hour later. A white porcelain mug of coffee steamed gently on a coaster on the table. She blinked and sat up, saw Jim sitting in a chair nearby. He wore a gray robe over blue pajamas. He smiled at her. “Merry Christmas.”

  “Merry Christmas,” Matt said. She reached for the coffee, sipped. It was full of cream and sugar, the way she’d fixed it in the restaurant the night before. “Room service,” she said. “Thanks.”

  “Elf pick-me-up.” He had a mug of his own. He drank. “What are you doing out here?”

  “The room and I had a little disagreement. It said it was time for me to wake up and open presents, like Linda, and I hadn’t slept long enough for me.”

  He gazed into the distance. “Linda’s always real anxious to get to the gifts,” he said slowly. “She used to wake me and Corey up around six. Of course, we always used to hide the presents until Christmas Eve. We used to get a full-sized tree and set it up over there—” he pointed to a space in a corner of the room between bookshelves on one wall and the entertainment center on the other—“and we wouldn’t decorate it until after she’d gone to sleep. So it was as if everything was transformed overnight. God, that was great.”

  “Magic,” said Matt, nodding.

  Jim smiled. Matt peeked at his dreamscape, and this time she could see the tree in his imagination, tall enough to brush the ceiling, glowing with twinkling colored lights, tinsel, gleaming glass balls, and Keepsake ornaments—little animals, little Santas, little children doing Christmas things with great good cheer—and here and there, old, much-loved ornaments, each different, clearly treasures from his and Corey’s pasts. Beneath the tree, mounds of presents in green, gold, red, silver foil wrap, kissed with stick-on bows. Linda, young and not sullen, walking from the hall, her face alight as she looked at the tree, all of her beaming with wonder and anticipation so that for that brief moment she was the perfect creature, excited about the next moment and expecting to be happy.

  “Beautiful,” Matt murmured.

  “What?” Jim blinked at her and the vision vanished.

  Matt sat quiet. She sipped coffee.

  “Matt?” said Jim.

  Matt considered. At last she said, “The way you saw it. Beautiful. Did Corey take the ornaments?”

  “Matt,” whispered Jim.

  “The old ones, and the ones with mice stringing popcorn, and Santa riding a surfboard, and the little angel sleeping on the cloud?”

  He stared at her for a long moment. He leaned back, his shoulders slumping. “She took them,” he said. “She’s the custodial parent. She took our past.”

  “It’s in your brain,” Matt said.

  He closed his eyes, leaned his head against the seat back. “Can you see inside my brain?”

  “Not usually. Just when you’re looking out at stuff, like the tree. And Linda. And I’m not sorry I saw those things, because they’re great.”

  He opened his eyes again and peered at her, his head still back. “They are great,” he said. “I didn’t know I remembered in such detail. Having it in my brain isn’t the same as being able to touch it, though.”

  “Well, of course not.” She thought about all the dreams she had seen since she first woke to them years before. Sometimes people imagined worse than the worst: horrible huge monsters, horrible huge wounds and mistakes and shame. Sometimes they imagined beautiful things, a kiss, a sharing, a hundred musicians making music so thick she felt she could walk on it up to the stars, a sunset that painted the whole world the colors of fire, visions of the world very different from what she saw when she looked with her day-eyes. Sometimes they just dreamed things that had happened, or things that would happen, or things they wished would happen. Sometimes people fantasized about things that made her sick; then she was glad that she could close her dream-eyes when she liked.

  All the time, people carried visions and wishes and fears with them. Somehow Matt found in that a reason to go on; her life had crystallized out of wandering without destination or purpose into a quest to watch peoples’ dreams, and the dreams of things shaped by people. She never reported back to anyone about what she saw, but the h
unger to see more never lessened.

  She had to know. She wasn’t sure what, or why.

  “In a way, ideas and memories are stronger than things you can touch,” she said. “For one thing, much more portable. And people can’t steal them or destroy them—at least, not very easily.”

  “I could lose them. I’m always afraid that I’m losing memories. Like a slow leak. Others come along and displace them.”

  “How many do you need?”

  He frowned at her.

  She set down her coffee and rubbed her eyes. “I guess I’m asking myself: how many do I need? I always feel like I need more of them. I’m not even sure how to use the ones I’ve got. I just keep collecting.”

  “Like you have mine now?”

  “My seeing it didn’t take it away from you, though.”

  “No,” he said. He straightened. “Actually it looked a lot clearer. I don’t usually think in pictures.”

  “Mostly graphs and blueprints,” Matt said.

  He tilted his head and looked at her.

  “And small print I can’t read.”

  “Good,” he said. After a moment’s silence, he said, “I would rather you didn’t look at what I’m thinking.”

  “Okay,” she said. For the first time it occurred to her that what she did was spy on people. It hadn’t mattered much; she almost never talked to people she dreamwatched, so it was an invasion they would never know about. “I do it to survive,” she said.

  “Dahmer dudes,” he said, and nodded.

  “Right. But I won’t do it to you anymore.”

  “Thanks. How about a pixie dust breakfast?”

  “Huh?”

  “Does the kitchen know how to cook?”

  She laughed and they went to the kitchen, where he produced cheese omelets, sprinkling red paprika and green parsley on them in honor of Christmas. He had to open the fridge, turn on the stove, fetch the fry-pan himself, but drawers opened for Matt as she set the table, offering her silver and napkins, and a pitcher jumped out of a cupboard when she got frozen orange juice concentrate out of the freezer, its top opening to eat the concentrate and the cans of water. She had never before met such a cooperative and happy room. Her own grin lighted her from inside.

  Jim’s plates were eggshell-white ceramic with a pastel geometric border. He slid the omelets onto them and brought breakfast to the table. She poured orange juice into square red glass tumblers, fetched more coffee from the coffeemaker’s half-full pot, and sat down at the green table.

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” Jim said.

  “Me too,” said Matt.

  “Makes a much better Christmas than me quietly moping and maybe drinking all day.”

  Matt smiled and ate a bite of omelet. Hot fluffy egg, cheese, spices greeted her mouth. “Great,” she said after she swallowed.

  Jim finished his omelet one bite behind Matt. She sat back, hands folded on her stomach, and grinned at him until he smiled back.

  “Presents,” she said.

  “That was my line. Also I wanted to say having you here is the best present I can think of, because all my life I’ve wanted to see things move without being touched. It makes me so happy I don’t have words for it.”

  “Did you design this kitchen?”

  He glanced around, smiled. “Yeah. I don’t do many interiors, but I chose everything in here, since I like to cook. Corey did the living room and our bedroom.”

  “This kitchen moves more than any other place I’ve ever been. I think it was almost ready to move all by itself. I bet your buildings would like to take a walk. I wonder if they’re happy. I bet they are.”

  He sat back and beamed at her. Then he reached for his coffee mug and it slid into his hand. His eyes widened. “Matt . . . ”

  She shook her head.

  “Gosh. You are an elf.” He sipped coffee, held the mug in front of him, staring at it. He stroked his fingers along its smooth glaze. He looked up at Matt. “It’s beautiful,” he said.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Everything is.”

  For a long time they stared at each other, their breathing slow and deep. At last he put the mug down, but then curled his fingers around it as though he couldn’t bear to let go.

  “Everything?” he said.

  “Mmm,” she said. For a moment she thought of ugly dreams, and sad dreams, and wondered if she believed what she had just said. Some things hurt so much she couldn’t look at them for long. Still, she wanted to see them all. Without every part, the balance was missing. Jim’s image of a Christmas Linda was intensified by how much he missed her. Cocoa tasted much better on a really cold day, and a hug after a nightmare could save a life . . .

  After a moment, she said, “I got you something.” She stood up. He stood up too, and followed her into the dining nook. She picked up the parcel she had wrapped that morning and offered it to him. “I had to, uh, borrow the paper.”

  “How could you get me anything?” he said, perplexed. “These are for you.” He handed her three packages. “I didn’t know what to get you.” He shrugged.

  “Dinner, cocoa, conversation, a shower, laundry, a place to sleep, coffee, breakfast,” she said. She grinned and took her packages to the couch, where she shoved her coat over and sat next to it. “Thanks,” she said.

  He joined her.

  She opened the first present, uncovered a card with five die-cast metal micro-cars attached, all painted skateboard colors: hot rods with working wheels. Delighted, she freed them from their plastic and set them on the coffee table, where they growled and raced with each other and acted like demented traffic without ever going over the edge.

  Jim sat gripping his present, watching the cars with fierce concentration. “I got them for the teenage boy,” he said in a hushed voice after a moment. Two of the cars seemed to like each other; they moved in parallel courses, looping and reversing. One of the others parked. The two remaining were locked bumper to bumper, growling at each other, neither giving an inch.

  Matt laughed. “They’re great! They can live in my pocket.” She patted her coat. “Open yours.”

  He touched the ribbon on his package and it shimmered with activity, then dropped off the package and slithered from his lap to the couch, where it lifted one end as if watching. Eyebrows up, he slid a fingernail under the paper, pulled off the wrapping. He grinned at the pen and pencil, which were coated with hologram diffraction grating in magenta and teal, gold and silver. “The office isn’t going to know what hit it,” he said. “Thanks.”

  “I bought ’em for the architect with a green tie. Not a whole lot of selection in that store.”

  “Yeah,” he said, tucking them into the pocket of his robe. “Go on.” He gestured toward the other two presents.

  She opened the first one and found a purple knit hat. The second held a pair of black leather gloves. She slid her hands into them; they fit, and the inner lining felt soft against her palms. “Thanks,” she said, her voice a little tight, her heart warm and hurt, knowing he had bought them for the homeless person. She smiled and leaned her cheek against the back of her gloved hand. “Best presents I’ve gotten in years.”

  “Me too,” he said, holding out a hand to the silver ribbon. It reached up and coiled around his wrist. He breathed deep and stroked the ribbon. “God!”

  Matt tucked the hat and gloves into a coat pocket, patted the coat, held out a hand to the little cars. They raced over and climbed up onto her palm. “Look,” she said, turning over her coat. “Here’s your new garage.” She laid the coat open and lifted the inner breast pocket so darkness gaped. The cars popped wheelies off her hand and zipped into the cave. One peeked out again, then vanished. She laughed. She had laughed more in the last twelve hours than she had in a whole month.

  The phone rang, and Matt jumped. Jim picked up a sleek curved tan thing from a table beside the couch and said, “Merry Christmas” into it.

  Then, “Oh, hi, Corey!”

  Hugging her coat to her,
Matt stood up. She could go in the other room and change while he talked to his ex-wife. Jim patted the couch and smiled at her and she sat down again, curious, as ever, about the details of other peoples’ lives.

  “Nope. I’m not drunk. I’m not hung over. I’m fine. Missing Linda, that’s all . . . okay, thanks.”

  He waited a moment, his eyes staring at distance, one hand holding the phone to his ear and the other stroking the silver ribbon around the phone-hand’s wrist. “Hi, Hon. Merry Christmas! You having fun?”

  A moment.

  “I miss you too. Don’t worry, your presents are waiting. When you get home we can have a mini-Christmas. I hope you’re someplace with snow in it. I know how much you like that . . . oh, you are? Great! Snow angels, of course. What’d your mom get for you?”

  Matt thought about family Christmases, other peoples’ and then, at last, one of her own—she hadn’t visited her own memories in a long, long time. Her older sister Pammy sneaking into her room before dawn, holding out a tiny wrapped parcel. “Don’t tell anybody, Mattie. This is just for you,” Pammy had said, and crept into bed beside her and kissed her. Matt opened the package and found inside it a heart-shaped locket. Inside, a picture of her as a baby, and a picture of Pammy. Matt had seen the locket before—Pammy had been wearing it ever since their mother gave it to her on her tenth birthday, four years earlier. Only, originally, it had had pictures of Mom and Dad in it.

  “I’ll never tell,” Matt had whispered, pressing the locket against her heart.

  “It’s supposed to keep you safe,” Pammy said, her voice low and tight. “That’s what Mom told me. It didn’t work for me but maybe it will for you. Anyway, I just want you to know . . . you have my heart.”

  And Matt had cried the kind of crying you do without sound but with tears, and she hadn’t even known why, not until several years later.

  “That’s great,” Jim said, smiling, his eyes misty. “That’s great, Honey. Will you sing one for me when you get home? Yeah, I know it will feel funny to sing a carol after Christmas is over, but we’re doing a little time warp, remember? Saving a piece of Christmas for later . . .