Miracle and Other Christmas Stories

by Connie Willis

  There was no one there. She went and got the chalice, stuck it into the wide sleeve of her robe, and looked out into the hall. There was no one there either. She went into the adult Sunday school room and put the chalice back into the display case and then went downstairs.

  “Where have you been?” Reverend Farrison said. Two uniformed policemen came out of the nursery, carrying flashlights.

  Sharon unzipped her choir robe and took it off. “I checked the Communion silver,” she said. “None of it’s missing.” She went into the choir room and hung up her robe.

  “We looked in there,” Reverend Farrison said, following her in. “You weren’t there.”

  “I thought I heard somebody at the door,” she said.

  By the end of the second verse of “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” Mary and Joseph were only three-fourths of the way to the front of the sanctuary.

  “At this rate, they won’t make it to Bethlehem by Easter,” Dee whispered. “Can’t they get a move on?”

  “They’ll get there,” Sharon whispered, watching them. They paced slowly, unperturbedly, up the aisle, their eyes on the chancel. “‘How silently, how silently,’” Sharon sang, “‘the wondrous gift is given.’”

  They went past the second pew from the front and out of thechoir’s sight. The innkeeper came to the top of the chancel steps with his lantern, determinedly solemn.

  “‘So God imparts to human hearts,

  The blessings of his heaven.’”

  “Where did they go?” Virginia whispered, craning her neck to try and see them. “Did they sneak out the back way or something?”

  Mary and Joseph reappeared, walking slowly, sedately, toward the palm trees and the manger. The innkeeper came down the steps, trying hard to look like he wasn’t waiting for them, like he wasn’t overjoyed to see them.

  “‘No ear may hear his coming,

  But in this world of sin …’”

  At the back of the sanctuary, the shepherds assembled, clanking their staffs, and Miriam handed the wise men their jewelry box and perfume bottles. Elizabeth adjusted her tinsel halo.

  “‘Where meek souls will receive him still,

  The dear Christ enters in.’”

  Joseph and Mary came to the center and stopped. Joseph stepped in front of Mary and knocked on an imaginary door, and the innkeeper came forward, grinning from ear to ear, to open it.

  IN COPPELIUS’S TOYSHOP

  So here I am, stuck in Coppelius’s Toyshop, the last place I wanted to be. Especially at Christmas.

  The place is jammed with bawling babies and women with shopping bags and people dressed up like teddy bears and Tinkerbell. The line for Santa Claus is so long, it goes clear out the door and all the way over to Madison Avenue, and the lines at the cash registers are even longer.

  There are kids everywhere, running up and down the aisles and up and down the escalators, screaming their heads off, and crowding around Rapunzel’s tower, gawking up at the row of little windows. One of the windows opens, and inside it there’s a ballerina. She twirls around, and the little window closes, and another one opens. This one has a mouse in it. A black cat rears up behind it with its mouth open and the mouse leans out the window and squeaks, “Help, help!” The kids point and laugh.

  And over the whole thing the Coppelius’s Toyshop theme song plays, for the thousandth time:

  “Come to Dr. Coppelius’s

  Where all is bright and warm,

  And there’s no fear

  For I am here

  To keep you safe from harm.”

  I am not supposed to be here. I am supposed to be at a Knicks game. I had a date to take Janine to see them play the Celtics this afternoon, and instead, here I am, stuck in a stupid toy store, because of a kid I didn’t even know she had when I asked her out.

  Women always make this big deal about men being liars and not telling them you’re married, but what about them? They talk about honesty being the most important thing in a “relationship,” which is their favorite word, and they let you take them out and spend a lot of money on them and when they finally let you talk them into going up to their apartment, they trot out these three little brats in pajamas and expect you to take them to the zoo.

  This has happened to me about ten times, so before I asked Janine out, I asked Beverly, who works in Accounting with her, whether she lived alone. Beverly, who didn’t tell me about her kid till we’d been going out over a month and who was really bent out of shape when I dumped her, said, yeah, Janine lived alone and she’d only been divorced about a year and was very “vulnerable” and the last thing she needed in her life was a jerk like me.

  She must’ve given Janine the same line because I had to really turn on the old charm to get her to even talk to me and had to ask her out about fifteen times before she finally said yes.

  So, anyway, the Knicks game is our third date. Bernard King is playing and I figure after the game I’m gonna get lucky, so I’m feeling pretty good, and I knock on her door, and this little kid answers it and says, “My mom’s not ready.”

  I should’ve turned around right then and walked out. I could’ve scalped Janine’s ticket for fifteen bucks, but she’s already coming to the door, and she’s wiping her eyes with a Kleenex and telling me to come in, this is Billy, she’s so sorry she can’t go to the game, this isn’t her weekend to have the kid, but her ex-husband made her switch, and she’s been trying to call me, but I’d already left.

  I’m still standing in the hall. “You can’t get tickets to Knicks games at the last minute,” I say. “Do you know what scalpers charge?” She says, no, no, she doesn’t expect me to get an extra ticket, and I breathe a sigh of relief, which I shouldn’t have, because then she says she just got a call, her mom’s in the hospital, she’s had a heart attack, and she’s got to go to Queens right away and see her, and she tried to get her ex on the phone but he’s not there.

  “You better not expect me to take the kid to the Knicks game,” I say, and she says, no, she doesn’t, she’s already called Beverly to watch him, and all she wants me to do is take the kid to meet her on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fifty-eighth.

  “I wouldn’t ask you to do this if I had anybody else I could ask, but they said I needed to come”—she starts to cry again—“right … away.”

  The whole time she’s telling me this, she’s been putting on her coat and putting the kid’s coat on him and locking the door. “I’ll say hi to Grandma for you,” she says to the kid. She looks at me, her eyes all teary. “Beverly said she’ll be there at noon. Be a good boy,” she says to the kid, and is down the stairs and out the door before I can tell her no way.

  So I’m stuck with taking this kid up to Fifth Avenue and Fifty-eighth, which is the corner Coppelius’s Toyshop is on. Coppelius’s is the biggest toy store in New York. It’s got fancy red-and-gold doors, and two guys dressed up like toy soldiers standing on both sides of them, saluting people when they walk in, and a chick dressed like Little Red Riding Hood with a red cape and a basket, passing out candy canes to everybody who walks by.

  There’s a whole mob of people and kids looking at the windows, which they decorate every Christmas with scenes from fairy tales. You know the kind, with Goldilocks eating a bowl of porridge, lifting a spoon to her mouth over and over, and stuffed bears that turn their heads and blink their eyes. It looks like half of New York is there, looking in the windows. Except for Beverly.

  I look at my watch. It’s noon, and Beverly better get here soon or the kid can wait by himself. The kid sees the windows and runs over to them. “Come back here!” I yell, and grab him by the arm and yank him away from the windows. “Get over here!” I drag him over to the curb. “Now stand there.”

  The kid is crying and wiping his nose, just like Janine. “Aunt Beverly said she was going to take me to look at the windows,” he says.

  “Well, then, Aunt Beverly can,” I say, “when she finally gets here. Which better be pretty damn soon. I don’t
have all day to wait around.”

  “I’m cold,” he says.

  “Then zip up your coat,” I say, and I zip up mine and stick my hands in my pockets. There’s one of these real cold New York winds whipping around the corner, and it’s starting to snow. I look at my watch. It’s a quarter past twelve.

  “I hafta go to the bathroom,” he says.

  I tell him to shut up, that he’s not going anywhere, and he starts in crying again.

  “And quit crying or I’ll give you something to cry about,” I say.

  Right then Red Riding Hood comes over and hands the kid a candy cane. “What’s the matter, honey?” she says.

  The kid wipes his nose on his sleeve. “I’m cold and I hafta go to the bathroom,” he says, and she says, “You just come with me to Coppelius’s,” and takes hold of his hand and takes him into the store before I can stop her.

  “Hey!” I say, and go after them, but the toy-soldier guys are already shutting the doors behind them, and they go through their whole stiff-armed saluting routine before they open them again and I can get in.

  When I finally do, I wish I hadn’t. The place is a nightmare. There are about a million kids hollering and running around this huge room full of toys and people in costumes demonstrating things. A magician is juggling glow-in-the-dark balls and Raggedy Ann is passing out licorice sticks and a green-faced witch is buzzing the customers with a plane on a string. Around the edges of the room, trains are running on tracks built into the walls, hooting and whistling and blowing steam.

  In the middle of this mess is a round purple tower, at least two stories high. There’s a window at the very top and a mechanical Rapunzel is leaning out of it, combing her blonde hair, which hangs all the way down to the bottom of the tower. Underneath Rapunzel’s window there’s a row of little windows that open and close, one after the other, and different things poke out, a baby doll and a white rabbit and a spaceship. All of them do something when their window opens. The doll says “Ma-ma,” the rabbit pulls out a pocket watch and looks at it, shaking his head, the spaceship blasts off.

  A whole bunch of kids are standing around the tower, but Janine’s kid isn’t one of them, and I don’t see him or Red Riding Hood anywhere. Along the back wall there’s a bunch of escalators leading up and down to the other floors, but I don’t see the kid on any of them and I don’t see any signs that say “Bathrooms,” and the lines for the cash registers are too long to ask one of the clerks.

  A chick dressed up like Cinderella is standing in the middle of the aisle, winding up green toy frogs and setting them down on the floor to hop all over and get in everybody’s way.

  “Where are your toilets?” I say, but she doesn’t hear me, and no wonder. Screaming kids and hooting trains and toy guns that go rat-a-tat-tat, and over the whole thing a singsongy tune is playing full blast:

  “I am Dr. Coppelius.

  Welcome to my shop.

  Where we have toys

  For girls and boys,

  And the fun times never stop.”

  It’s sung in a croaky old man’s voice and after the second verse finishes, the first one starts in again, over and over and over.

  “How do you stand that godawful noise?” I shout to Cinderella, but she’s talking to a little kid in a snowsuit and ignores me.

  I look around for somebody else I can ask and just then I catch sight of a red cape at the top of one of the escalators and take off after it.

  I’m about to step on, when an old guy dressed in a long red coat and a gray ponytail wig moves in front of me and blocks my way. “Welcome to Coppelius’s Toyshop,” he says in a phony accent. “I am Dr. Coppelius, the children’s friend.” He does this stupid bow. “Here in Coppelius’s, children are our first concern. How may I assist you?”

  “You can get the hell out of my way,” I say, and shove past him and get on the escalator.

  The red cape has disappeared by now, and the escalator’s jammed with kids. Half of them are hanging over the moving handrail, looking at the stuffed animals along the sides, teddy bears and giraffes and a life-size black velvet panther. It’s got a pink silk tongue and real-looking teeth with a price tag hanging from one of its fangs. “One of a kind,” the price tag says. Four thousand bucks.

  When I get to the top of the escalator, I can’t see Janine’s kid or Red Riding Hood anywhere, but there’s a red-and-gold signpost with arrows pointing off in all directions that say “To Hot Wheels Country” and “To Babyland” and “To the Teddy Bears’ Picnic.” One of them says “To the Restrooms” and points off to the left.

  I go in the direction the sign says, but the place is a maze, with aisles leading off in all directions and kids jamming every aisle. I go through fire engines and chemistry sets and end up in a big room full of Star Wars stuff, blasters and swords that light up and space fighters. But no signposts.

  I ask a gold-colored robot for directions, feeling like an idiot, and he says, “Go down this aisle and turn left. That will bring you to Building Blocks. Turn left at the Tinker Toys and left again. The restrooms are right next to the Lego display.”

  I go down the aisle and turn left, but it doesn’t bring me to Building Blocks. It brings me to the doll department and then the stuffed animals, more giraffes and bunnies and elephants, and every size teddy bear you’ve ever seen.

  Holding on to one of them is a toddler bawling its head off. The kid’s been eating candy, and the tears are running down into the chocolate for a nice sticky mess.

  It’s wailing, “I’m lost,” and as soon as it sees me, it lets go of the teddy bear and heads straight for me with its sticky hands. “I can’t find my mommy,” it says.

  The last thing I need is chocolate all over my pants. “You shoulda stayed with your mommy, then,” I say, “instead of running off,” and head back into the doll department, and old Coppelius must’ve been lying about the panther, because there, right in the middle of the Barbie dolls, is another one, staring at me with its yellow glass eyes.

  I head back through the dollhouses and end up in Tricycles, and this is getting me nowhere. I could wander around this place forever and never find Janine’s kid. And it’s already one o’clock. If I don’t leave by one-thirty, I’ll miss the start of the game. I’d leave right now, but Janine would be steamed and I’d lose any chance I had of getting her in the sack on one of those weekends when her ex has the kid.

  But I’m not going to find him by wandering around like this. I need to go back down to the main room and wait for Red Riding Hood to bring him back.

  I find a down escalator in the sled department and get on it, but when I get off, it’s not the main floor. I’m in Babyland with the baby buggies and yellow rubber ducks and more teddy bears.

  I must not have gone down far enough. “Where’s the escalator?” I say to a chick dressed like Little Bo Peep. She’s kootchy-cooing a baby, and I have to ask her again. “Where’s the down escalator?”

  Bo-peep looks up and frowns. “Down?”

  “Yeah,” I say, getting mad. “Down. An escalator.”

  Still nothing.

  “I want to get the hell out of this place!”

  She makes a move toward the baby, like she’s going to cover its ears or something and says, “Go down past the playpens and turn left. It’s at the end of Riding Toys.”

  I do what she says, but when I get there, it goes up, not down. I decide to take it anyway and go back up to the tricycles and find the right escalator myself, but Babyland must be in the basement because at the top is the main room.

  The place is even crazier and more crowded than it was before. A clown’s demonstrating bright orange yo-yos, Humpty Dumpty’s winding up toy dinosaurs, and there are so many kids and baby buggies and shopping bags, it takes me fifteen minutes to make it over to Rapunzel’s tower.

  There’s no sign of Red Riding Hood and the kid or Beverly, but I can see the door from here and all the escalators. Dr. Coppelius is standing over at the foot of them, bo
wing to people and passing out big red suckers.

  The kids around the tower shout and point, and I look up. A puppet with a hooked nose and a pointy hat is leaning out of one of the windows. He’s holding a stick between his puppet hands, and he waves it around. The kids laugh.

  The window shuts and another one opens. The ballerina twirls. The black cat, with teeth as sharp as a panther’s, rears up behind the mouse, and the mouse squeaks, “Help, help!” Rapunzel combs her hair. And over it all, in time to the squeaking and the twirling and the combing, the song plays over and over:

  “… For girls and boys,

  And the fun times never stop.”

  And after I’ve been standing there five minutes, the whole thing is stuck in my head.

  I look at my watch. It’s one-fifteen. How the hell long does it take to take a kid to the bathroom?

  The first verse finishes and the second one starts in:

  “Come to Dr. Coppelius’s

  Where all is bright and warm …”

  I’m going to go crazy if I have to stand here and listen to this gas much longer, and where the hell is Beverly?

  I look at my watch again. It’s one-thirty. I’m going to give it five more minutes and then take one more look around, and then I’m going to the game, kid or no kid.

  Somebody yanks on my coat. “Well, it’s about time,” I say. “Where the hell have you been?” I look down.

  It’s a kid with dishwater-blonde hair and glasses. “When will he come and get her?” she says.

  “Get who?” I say.

  She pushes the glasses up on her nose. “Rapunzel in her tower. When will the prince come and get her down?”

  I stoop down and get real close. “Never,” I say.

  The kid blinks at me through her glasses. “Never?” she says.

  “He got sick of waiting around for her,” I say. “He waited and waited, and finally he got fed up and went off and left her there.”