Santa Steps Out: A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups (5 page)

It occurred to him, as his legs carried him toward Santa's cottage, that many centuries past there had been wild times indeed, intimacies as commonplace as they were scandalous. But memories of those days—before God had conjured them out of nothing to work with Santa—were so hard to dredge up, and so evanescent when you succeeded, that it was scarcely worth the effort.

Another volley of blows hammered against his back. Snowballs whistling overhead fell just short of Santa's cottage. The huge one that finally hit swept rudely past his right ear and boomed against the sewing room window, blotting out Mrs. Claus's matronly bosom.

*****

It came straight out of the blue. One moment, the rhythmic ticking of cuckoo clocks above the low, steady swing of their grandfather clock's gold pendulum; the next, a sudden whump, the heart-clenching report of balled snow smacking glass. Anya rose sharply, threw her knitting into the rocking chair, and glared out at the halted hordes of helpers.

Dear God, how many times must she warn them not to play so close to the cottage? At least once more, that was clear. She made her way out of the sewing room to the front door, muttering all the way.

Outside, two score elves stood chastened in the snow, eyes downcast, shoulders slumped. Some held their caps over their crotches or let them hang listlessly from their hands. Bald pates glistened in the sun. Karlheinz moped forward and made a shamefaced confession.

In her kindest voice, Anya said, "It hardly matters who threw the snowball, does it?"

They shook their heads.

"I'm old. My system doesn't take kindly to shocks. It's fine to let loose on your day off. But please. Not so close to the cottage. You've got that whole expanse out there to play in." She pulled her shawl about her shoulders and gestured to the commons and beyond. Her hand, she noticed, was frail and arthritic, its dexterity lost in the passage of years.

It was cold out here. Her cheeks tingled. Her ears rang with the faint whine of fresh snow in still air.

But no. The sounds she heard came and went. Not the steady throb of winter but high discrete pulses, like the tremolo of distant violins, like zephyrs wafting over harpstrings.

Like sleighbells.

She lifted her eyes. Out past the skating pond, out beyond the elves' quarters, above the tops of the tallest trees that tickled the sky's underbelly, a black dot hung in the distance, growing imperceptibly larger.

Love swelled warm within her.

As effortlessly as a morning glory opens to the sun, Anya smiled.

*****

Fritz raised his eyes to Mrs. Claus. Her left hand gripped the porch railing. Her right froze in mid-gesture as she gazed into the sky.

He was the first to notice her radiance, the first to divine the reason for it. But the others quickly caught fire. Bright green caps, buoyed by whoops and shouts, pancaked into the air. Fritz endured with good humor the sixfold embrace of Heinrich the dollmaker. On all sides, his bearded brethren leaped and hopped about or attempted cartwheels in the snow. Mostly, they jumped for joy, pointing ecstatically to the heavens and rolling out shouts of welcome for their returning master.

Fritz turned about and looked up at the long brown insect struggling through the sky. Santa's whip was an eyelash, his team the third part of a centipede, himself not much larger than a ladybug rearing on her hind legs.

The elf's eyes brimmed with joy.

*****

Santa felt soiled.

And cleansed.

Coursing across the arctic sky, brutal winds above, frozen tundra below, he marveled how these two feelings, so violently opposed, could take root and thrive in his breast, entwined like old friends. Not-Santa had butted his way in, and the Santa Claus he had been before—pure goodness, all giving—stood there in shock, incapable of tossing the intruder out.

He felt deep shame.

Shame for betraying his wife, for reveling in the flesh of another woman. Shame for having befouled the bed of little Rachel Townsend while the darling girl dozed innocently beside them. Shame for the desecration he had visited upon one dwelling after another thereafter, his mind fixated on copulations past and to come, while it ought to have been fully on the task at hand.

But he also felt delight.

More precisely, the not-Santa, that vile intruder lured out of his depths by the Tooth Fairy—
this
creature felt delight. Delight in the hot savagery of his lover's supple body, in the way she opened herself to his hunger. Santa was shocked to realize that the perverse divinity of their coupling inspired in this not-Santa a feeling that could only be called reverence.

Ahead, a glow on the horizon.

The mild bubble of winter God had given him and his little community so many centuries before.

Home.

"Almost there, my lovelies," Santa bellowed into the deafening wind. "Straight on between Lucifer's antlers. There await warm elfin hands to rub you down, young aspen shoots and willow buds and berries in abundance to satisfy your hunger, and a cozy stall to rest yourselves in."

Santa grimaced.
There await the purest beings God had the good grace to set upon this gentle earth, and the purest of them all—my dear sweet wife Anya.

He longed to be with Anya.

Yet, God help him, he dreaded it.

Would she sense the change in him? Would she catch the musky aroma of the Tooth Fairy on his clothes, in his whiskers, hanging thick about his sex?

The bubble arched up bit by bit, stretching wider along the horizon and taking on a thin bristle of trees.

He shifted in his seat, eager to entrust the sleigh to Gregor and his brothers for a wax and polish, a new paint job, careful storage until next year. What a relief it would be to roam the woods again after being gone so long, to cast a benign eye upon his elves' labors, to sit by the fire, of an evening, puffing on his pipe and watching Anya knit and rock, rock and knit.

God grant it be so.

Now the tree stubble took on stature, rising majestic from the snow-clad wilds ahead. The sub-zero temperatures of the polar icecap abruptly yielded to the milder weather within. Ahead, like miniatures in a model train set, he saw the tiny workshop and stables, the mica shine of the skating pond, and dead on, his and Anya's cottage, green with touches of red and white. He wept to see their home, floating upon a sea of snow, smoke skirling up from its chimneytop.

And waiting on the porch, his darling Anya.

But fear tainted his joy. Fear that she would slip away, turn her back on his betrayal and vanish forever.

One thing was clear. His unwelcome guest must be locked away, given no chance to show himself before the polar community.

As he began the slow descent, Santa did his best to put on his prelapsarian face.

*****

He was beautiful up there, her man. If anything could rekindle the fires of her infrequent passion, it was watching him sail in over the treetops, cherry-red and rotund, a radiant smile playing upon his lips. The sight always made her stand taller, breathe deeper, go as moist as a lusty young bride.

He urged his team onward, sweeping in ever narrowing circles overhead. The insistent jingle of sleighbells slapping at the haunches of the reindeer made her feel all saucy inside. Part of her wanted him right then in mid-descent with all the elves watching. But the rest of her was more than content to prolong the wait, to savor every moment that stretched from right now to the delicious suspension of time beneath their blankets after the day's festivities were done.

She couldn't be sure, afterward, when she had first begun to feel unsettled. Without question, the feeling was heavy in her by the time hoof and runner touched snow. Before that, its stages were impossible to define. It seemed much more an accretion of small noticings: the way he held back his descent, the angle at which he cocked his head, a hint of tension in his upraised arm, an unsettling disharmony in the team, the unmistakable impression that he was at once avoiding her eyes and forcing himself to smile in her direction.

The elves appeared to notice nothing. They swarmed over him as always, lifted him high on their shoulders, carried him (according to tradition) once, twice, thrice around the sleigh, then wrestled him to the snow and fell to tickling him and mauling him until, through the boom and roll of his laughter, he begged for mercy. When at last they calmed down, the elves set Santa back on his feet, brushed him off, and led him up to the porch where his wife stood waiting.

Without knowing why, Anya felt sick inside.

No, that wasn't true. She knew this feeling well. She understood precisely what was going on. A name flashed inside her head.
Pitys.
Spoken in a voice that belonged and did not belong to Santa, thick with crushed grape and guile and eternal boyishness. Then the voice and the name it had spoken were gone, and all that remained were a hard knot in her stomach and a wife's unerring instinct for betrayal.

Shiny black boots crunched the snow on the steps to the porch. An alien face loomed over her. A chill white beard brushed soft and swirly against her cheek. Around her body, bearish arms wrapped an embrace.

She watched herself return a kiss, heard the roar of the elves, felt the fire's warmth reaching out to claim her as they stepped inside and closed the door.

*****

As Santa stood beside Anya at the fireplace, the crackling flames seemed neither as bright nor as warm as memory claimed they should be. Home didn't feel like home. It felt like some painted replica, a stage set waiting to be struck at the ringing down of some final curtain.

(That's cuz we don't belong here, Santa old buddy. This place is too perfect, not enough blemish, no room for passion, you catch my drift?)

Oh fine, thought Santa. Now his intruder had found a voice. Raspy as a hacksaw, biting as a freshly opened can of shellac, as dark as three coats of walnut stain.

"I must have snow in my ears, Anya dear," he joked. "Couldn't quite hear what you said."

She grimaced. "I said it's good to have you home." Tension lined her face.

(Sexless bitch is on to us. Best we should—)

I won't have her talked about that way.

"Is . . . is something wrong?" Santa gasped out. His scalp beaded with sweat. A fist clenched deep in his gut, down where truths hide unspoken. Her unwavering gaze unnerved him, and unworthy thoughts—seeds of resentment toward his wife—came upon him. Looking away, he fished for his pipe, his pouch, busying himself with them.

(That's it, chum. Evasive action's always good. And we've got lots of evading to do, all that fine humping—)

She took his face in her hands, searched his eyes for oddity. "Something happened to you out there, didn't it? Something you're keeping from me."

(Oooh doggies, we're in for it now, fat boy!)

Santa froze. How could he just blurt out the truth? It felt so bitter on his tongue, this blunt admission of adultery. Yet even if he were successful in putting her off with vague denials, his unspoken misdeed would stand there solid but invisible between them. Better to lay it before her, he thought, come what may.

(Hold it right there, chubbynums. This situation calls for a bit of good old husbandly deception. I—)

That's enough. I'm telling her.

(Heh-heh-heh. Guess some folks gotta learn the hard way. It's your funeral, bub.)

Santa sat beside Anya on the couch by the fire, looking down at the plush throw rug and holding her hands. And as the grandfather clock's great pendulum knocked aside every other second, he began to tell her what had happened, leaving nothing out.

*****

Fritz loved the reindeer so. While Gregor and his brothers led them to the stables, Fritz walked beside his beloved Cupid, smoothing his chestnut pelt and fondling the intricate branchwork of his antlers. But as Gregor decoupled team and sleigh, Fritz's enthusiasm made him more hindrance than help. After two unheeded warnings Gregor dismissed him, telling him to come back the next morning when Cupid and the others were rested.

On his way across the commons, heading for the elves' quarters, Fritz heard voices raised and the slamming of doors inside Santa's cottage.

He froze.

His pale blue shadow stretched across the drifts as he strained to distinguish words. Elusive shapes moved from room to room. The muffle of window and wallboard stripped away all consonants, leaving only naked vowels that traced the unfamiliar sounds of marital strife.

A chill slipped into Fritz's bones and held. He raised his hands against the sights and sounds. When he put a finger to his lips, they were dry, hard, tight, the painted lips of a ventriloquist's dummy. He faced about then and ran, kicking up snowy waves of panic and denial as he closed the distance between himself and the dormitory.

*****

Midway through Santa's narrative, Anya startled him with a mangled cry. Santa looked at her for the first time since he had begun. Her rage hit him before he could piece together the face it flared from. She slapped him, hard and stinging. Then she bolted from the couch.

"Anya, wait!" he shouted, his jaw awkward and gangly from being struck. He took off after her, deflecting doors slammed at his nose, begging her to be reasonable, to hear him out. At last he found himself kneeling beside their bed. Her steamed spectacles she protected by propping herself up on her elbows and bending her forehead to the pillow.

"Bastard!" she hissed. Tears curved along her lenses and hit the pillowcase. "Didn't you for one moment stop to think how I'd feel?"

"Anya, she seduced me," protested Santa. "She came up to me and started rubbing against me. Not that it's her fault, that's not what I mean. You don't know what that does to a man, to have a beautiful barely-clad woman drool all over him. I know, I know. I'm as much to blame as she is."

She fisted the pillow and glared up at him. "How dare you make excuses for that fairy slut. Just look at yourself. Big saintly man, brimful of love and presents for the little ones. Ah but put down the pack, strip off the red suit? You're nothing but a rutting animal, just another overweight hog with a twinkle in his eye, sniffing at the hindquarters of any sow that trots across his path."