Christmas Gift

The kids who lived next door were sweet. That’s the stupid part. Unlike a lot of kids who would come into the store where I worked, wild and so fucking loud, these two were sweet. Quiet. A girl and a boy. The girl was older. She had crooked little bangs that made her face look crooked, too. I tried to be pleasant, to be the way I knew I should be. Say hello. How’s school. All that junk. But she just stared at me. The boy, he cracked me up. He’d hang from the low willow tree in their yard, swinging like a monkey, touching his toes to his chin. They were about six and eight, I’d say. Harmless. The kind of kids who are probably overlooked, mainly, because they’re polite. The kind of kids that don’t deserve anything bad, but won’t get anything good.

I told Eric that I thought they were cute. He told me there was no fucking way we were having a baby. I didn’t even want one.

Their mom was Joanne. I watched her brush the girl’s hair out back, taking care with her, being gentle. Sometimes she yelled. What mother doesn’t? They had a hammock on the porch and sometimes I’d be smoking and see all three of them piled in there, like animals. They’d be jostling for the best position, the closest place to their mom’s heart. But the boyfriends—they always wrecked it. She had a couple different ones during this time, usually the kind with long hair and ripped jeans. A time of relative quiet would end with tires screeching in the middle of the night, a locksmith’s truck in the driveway the next morning, the kids standing outside without jackets, glumly bouncing a ball between them, waiting.

That’s when this one thing happened—the thing that I try to remember. Like a postcard from a sunny vacation spot, that reminds you what it felt like to be warm. I went outside to empty the kitchen trash. It smelled of everything rotten and I thought I would barf as I tossed the bag into the dumpster.

“Hey,” I said to the two of them. The girl looked up and silently raised the palm of her hand toward me.

The boy said, “We can’t go inside until they’re done.”

I nodded. I didn’t know what he meant, exactly. Other people’s business usually doesn’t make sense.

“I’m thirsty,” the little boy said, which sort of annoyed me because it was a request disguised as a fact. This is something Eric did, too.

The dishes are all dirty.

There’s nothing to eat.

I’m horny.

I looked at him. “Uh, huh,” I said. “Me, too.”

He went to the spigot attached to the side of their house and turned it on. A little trickle of water spilled onto the ground. He placed his mouth around the rusty spigot and drank. Then he wiped off his chin with his sleeve. “Want some?” he asked.

I shook my head. “How about an apple juice? I’ve got cans in the fridge.”

The boy looked at his sister. She shook her head. He hung his, and his whole body dropped into a complaint. “Angie,” he said. “I want apple juice.”

“We’re not allowed,” Angie said. “Stop whining, Jack.”

“Is it the juice or the house? Which is not allowed?”

The girl gestured with her head. “We can’t leave the yard.”

I nodded. I thought I could still smell a rubbery carcass from somewhere deep inside the garbage can. My throat seized with the prospect of vomit. If I could distract myself from the nausea, it would go away. “Wait here, then,” I said.

The cans were miniature, two cool cylinders pulled from the refrigerator. I held them against my cheeks as I walked back through the house. When I handed one to Angie she grabbed it tightly between her small hands as though it might squirm away if she was not careful. “You’re welcome,” I said.

“Thank you,” she said quietly, as she worked at the tab.

“Jack,” I said. “Apple juice?”

“Alright!” he shouted, throwing the ball into the middle of the dead grass and running over. I watched them drink the juice and it felt nice to make them happy. It was easy—too easy. Life isn’t like that, I know. Once somebody loves you, it just gets harder and harder to make them happy.

They sipped their juice and then handed the cans back to me. Their mother called out to them from inside. They mumbled another thank you as they proudly walked across the yard.

That was the most I ever had to do with them.

About three weeks later, Eric came home late. I’d already made noodles, but they were still in the pot, soaking in their own starchy water. Just as the timer buzzed, I’d decided I didn’t want noodles after all. In fact, the idea of food was still like a threat, a danger in the other room I couldn’t face.

“What’s for dinner?” he asked as he threw his keys on the coffee table, next to my beer. He took a sip.

“I made pasta,” I said, over the banter of the courtroom drama on TV.

“What kind?” he asked. “Isn’t this the time of year for roasting meat? It’s fucking winter, Michelle. Pasta is a summer thing.”

“Really? I didn’t consult my seasonal cooking guide, Eric. So sorry.”

“This isn’t pasta,” he called out from the kitchen. “They’re like maggots. And no red sauce. At the very least, winter calls for red sauce.”

“You’re drunk already,” I said, noticing the cold for the first time that day. “I guess a roast would be nice. Why didn’t you go to the store?”

He came back to the living room with a heaping bowl of engorged noodles and the bottle of soy sauce. He took my beer and drained it.

“Are you sick?” he asked.

“Why?”

“You don’t look good. Puffy. And tired.”

“Charming,” I said, grimacing. “You’re awfully late.”

“Traffic,” he said without a pause. He worked at the middle school about ten minutes from the house. School gets out at 2:45. But this was the last day of school before the holiday. Early dismissal.

“How is it that the traffic bought you a couple of drinks? I can never figure that out.”

“Ha. Ha. Very funny. You know today was the softball game. Teachers versus staff. Somebody brought a cooler to the park.”

I looked at his wingtips. Such a bad liar. I just wanted to watch the courtroom on TV. I wanted that pretty lawyer who looks like she spends all her time at the gym to catch the twitchy guy in his lies. You could tell, the way the camera was closing in on his face, his lips fumbling though his lines, his eyes shifting from left to right, that he was about to be skewered.

Eric slurped the noodles. The sleeves of his dress shirt were rolled up past his elbows. I stared at the TV, wondering if I didn’t care about his lies because I loved him so much, or because I didn’t love him at all.

Just then, the doorbell rang. We looked at each other. “Don’t answer it,” I said. Nobody ever visited us without a request: Jehovah’s witnesses, politicians’ groupies, or kids selling candy bars. And I knew right away that if I’d said nothing, we both would have sat in front of the TV and let the door go unanswered. But Eric admired his own rebellion like it was some kind of prized garden—something he’d been cultivating for years.

“Of course I will,” he said, taking his bowl of noodles with him.

The neighbor stood in the doorway alone. No kids. “Hi,” she said, turning quickly to look behind her at the street. “I’m in a bit of a bind, and I know it’s crazy to ask this kind of favor, but . . .” Her eyes drifted right past Eric, to me.

He left the door open as he walked away from it, back into the kitchen. “I think it’s for you,” he said.

I stood up and walked toward the door. Her car was parked on the curb, still idling.

“My kids said you were real nice to them. I know it’s crazy. This time of year always makes people do stupid things.”

I didn’t want her kids. Not even for an hour. I started shaking my head, no.

“Please, just listen. I got them a dog. A puppy. For Christmas. But I want to surprise them. I know it’s a lot . . . but, maybe, do you think . . . could you maybe just keep it until Wednesday? He’s cute,” she kind of smiled, a plea.

“Are you kidding? No way. Really? A puppy? I work tomorrow, Joanne. I won’t be home. Sorry.” I put my hand on the door. I shrugged my shoulders. “Sorry.”

She sighed, rubbed her hand across her forehead. “Okay. How about just for the next few hours? I gotta go fix dinner and get them to bed. I’ll think of something. Please? It’s Christmas.”

I didn’t want to. And it wasn’t. Not yet. Christmas is just that one day. People try to stretch it out, all the way to fucking July.

“I go to sleep early . . .” I hadn’t even finished. Hadn’t emphasized the temporary nature of this favor before she had turned and was running toward her car. I watched her reach into the back seat, look toward her own house, then toward mine, and then pull her coat around what could have been a sad sack of groceries.

She was winded. Her face flushed. I thought she looked happy, which should have made me feel good. Why didn’t I feel good? I was angry that I had made her look that way. I didn’t care about her. Eric hadn’t looked happy like that for months. Certainly when I told him why I was so puffy and tired, he would not be happy at all.

She opened her coat. I saw a tender pink nose, no bigger than my fingernail. The rest of him was slick and black. So small.

She handed him to me, then pulled a towel out of her pocket. “Here, this smells like home for him. That’s what they told me. He likes it.” Joanne shoved the towel in between the puppy and my chest. “Thank you so much. I will be back before nine. I promise. Thank you.”

Again, she beamed. A smile of charity and hope and conspiracy. Those kids. She loved those kids and she was going to make them happy.

I closed the door and the puppy quivered a sigh. Was it asleep? It was so still. I looked at its face. His eyes were closed. Totally unaware of the transfer that had taken place.

Eric came in the room, eating pretzels. “You are so gullible,” he said. It could have been sweet. He might even have been paying me a compliment. Sometimes, moments like these turn things. The gentle criticism that we can both agree upon. I could nod. Shrug. Give him a gullible smile.

Instead, I said, “Fuck off. It’s Christmas, Eric.”

He laughed. “Oh, right. You are the manger, huh? Shall I expect the wise men to visit in the night?”

I used to like this about him: the way he could skewer a generalization with its own specifics. It always made him seem smart.

“It’s a puppy. For some kids. Don’t be an asshole.”

He nodded. “Ok. Fair enough. You tend to that guy’s asshole. I’ll tend to mine.” He winked at me, like this was sex talk or something.

I sat on the couch, the small, warm weight of the puppy gloriously soft in my lap. He sunk further into his nap, grunting a little in satisfaction. I had my hand beneath his belly, which was strangely warm. It was so full, so alive. I thought about his lungs, his little heart. Everything that starts as nothing and becomes something. And then returns to nothing. All of us. Every single thing. I lifted up his ears and let them flop. He didn’t mind.

Soon, though, he did wake up. He yawned and the pinkness of his mouth and tongue were new surprises. I put him down on the carpet and he looked at me, blinked slowly, and peed.

“Shit,” I said, stomping my foot in close proximity to him. “No!”

He didn’t cower the way I thought he should. He just wagged his tail. A play mate’s greeting. Then, he walked away, sniffing at the edges of the room. Unbothered, but cautious, he poked his nose near the vent, behind the lamp, into the dust bunnies.

“Hey,” I said, and he looked at me. His eyes seemed to recognize me. “You can go outside now.” He sat down. I reached out for him and he let me. His warmth was once again startling. He seemed like an actual heat source, fed by electricity. I walked with him to the back door, placed him out on the brown grass and went for a towel.

I pressed the towel into the carpet, absorbing the urine. Eric walked through and chuckled. “Merry Christmas, babe,” he said, looking at his cell phone.

I ignored him. Breathing in the scent of the puppy urine, I regretted everything. The puppy whined on the other side of the back door. I sprinkled baking soda on the carpet.

Eric was in the shower. I opened his dresser drawer and took the baggie of weed from between his ugly black teaching socks. As I stood there rolling a joint, his phone lit up. I licked the paper and saw this text: Historic fuck. Icon-worthy. Tmrrow?

I swallowed hard. Words are easy for me to ignore. I just pretend I don’t understand. Like maybe those words don’t mean anything to me. He speaks a foreign language. I’m a foreigner, from somewhere else. Somewhere far away. Nod and smile. Reach for the lighter. Go outside. Nothing has changed.

The puppy had forgotten all about me. He’d found a garden trowel and was chewing its wooden handle. When he saw me, though, he bounded toward me. His ears flopped stupidly, betraying his innocence.

“Hi, dummy,” I said and blew smoke in his face. He blinked and tried to nip at the smoke. I liked the sting in the back of my throat. It was hot and sharp. The taste of the marijuana coated my mouth and felt like something certain. I didn’t usually get stoned alone. Before Eric, I hadn’t really smoked at all. I’d come up avoiding it. All the losers I knew smoked pot. But Eric wasn’t a loser. In fact, when he first offered me a joint I thought it was a joke. He looked so straight. He wore blazers and neckties.

The puppy put a clumsy, black paw up on my lap. “What?” I asked him. “Are you hungry?” But he wasn’t hungry. He climbed into the little space in front of my tummy and curled into himself, tucking his nose between his back legs. He let out a heavy sigh.

I took one last drag and then put the blunt out. I hung my head over the puppy’s little body. He was already asleep. I breathed in his scent; dusty and sweet.

I wondered what time it was. I held tight to the puppy’s tummy and stood up. The sky was especially dark with no moon in sight. A rash of stars in the east glimmered so gently that I was sure my own eyes had made them up. How could anything exist so far away from here and be seen?

I knew that I was slightly stoned and that this was the kind of thought that can monopolize a high, but it did seem ridiculous that there were people all over the world—famous actors getting their hair done, memorizing dialogue, assembly lines putting together cars, coyotes on the border stalking their prey—let alone colossal fireballs millions of miles away that turn our black sky into something beautiful. Could anything be impossible?

Nobody could ever know the truth of the world. The assholes who claim to—men like Eric—just seem arrogant. I’d read something about the deep ocean being like an entire unmapped universe. Literally unmapped. Terrain, inhabitants, atmosphere—all unknown. And we stand at the edge of it and notice the tides, listen to the waves, catch its fish, but understand almost nothing. We drown in its depths, choke on its heavens.

Something in its dream startled the puppy and he flinched. I stroked the top of his head and held him closer to my chest. He settled against me with another sigh.

I went inside and found her number at the bottom of a stack of papers. She’d given it to me when I first moved in with Eric. It was a nice gesture. Neighborly.

“Joanne, it’s me. It’s ok. I’ll keep him until Christmas.”

“Really? Are you serious? That’s great.” She pulled the phone away from her mouth and spoke in a fierce whisper. “Brush your teeth now. Go.” Then, her voice softened again. “Sorry. That’s really sweet of you. I’ll get you back sometime. Promise. Thank you,” she said and hung up.

We were conspirators now. We shared a secret.

Throughout the night, I took the puppy out back in my bathrobe and each time I noticed the stars only getting brighter until, finally, the pre-dawn clouds moved in and obscured the darkness and its stars. The puppy’s eyes always looked sleepy and he stumbled a bit as he peed. I thought of the kids in their beds, with no idea what joy awaited. I let the puppy lick my neck, sending chills down my bare legs. Who else in the world was sleeping while somebody who loved them planned their great joy? I was a part of something rare and miraculous.

When I called in sick to work the next day, I actually did feel pretty terrible. The lack of sleep exacerbated the morning’s nausea. Eric sat on the edge of the bed with the puppy in his lap. “What’s wrong with you?”

“My stomach.”

“Want some tea?” He flipped the dog on its back and rubbed its paunchy tummy.

It would be easier if people were complete assholes. All the time. Not just some of the time.

I shook my head, no.

“Are you faking just so you can take care of this rascal?” He smiled. “He’s pretty cute.”

I didn’t know the answer, exactly. I shrugged.

“I’m going to fight the crowds and do some shopping.” He paused. “Need anything?”

I looked at my swollen fingers. “Nope. You’re not getting anything from me.”

“You mean anything with a price tag, right?” He winked again.

I scoffed. “Right,” I said, taking the puppy from his lap into mine.

He stood and checked his phone. The smile on his face faded into concentration. He typed a few words with his thumbs. He existed somewhere else, for someone else. “Ok,” he finally said as he left the room, “see you later.”

I looked through a few catalogs and forced down a piece of toast. Even if I were buying Eric something, I wouldn’t know what to get. Razor? Pajamas? Condoms? I wished that I had responded to the text I’d seen. But what? I was nobody. I couldn’t make anything they were doing worse or better than it already was.

Some kind of equation took form in my mind. It required my acknowledgment that not all things are equal or fair. There would be things taken away and things given and none of it would ever add up to anything like justice. I convinced myself that there is actually no such thing as equality in real life. There are theories and concepts that the world—our lives—are just too limited to display. Maybe it’s all evident in the complicated math done on paper. Or in giant computer terminals. Antiseptic science labs. Maybe in those places equality does exist.

But real people, real lives—no.

Was I stoned when I thought all of this out? I don’t remember. I can’t say. Does that matter? Will it excuse anything about it?

I’ve never really thought other people’s babies were cute. I never felt their warm breath or heard their sleepy grunts. This puppy, though, with his warm, soft fur and pale pink tongue. I fell for him. It gave me hope. It made me selfish. What’s the worst thing you ever did? That question comes up sometimes. People think it’s a way to know each other.

I never mention the baby I didn’t have. That’s not a thing I did. We did that. We made a baby we didn’t want. And then we undid it. And it didn’t feel that bad. Eric’s heart had turned me into a girl he didn’t love. That felt bad. But I made myself brave. In the clinic, after it was over, we sat together in the upholstered chairs and watched the snow fall. I tried to remember that even though the sky was entirely white, there were stars out there, still burning.

He helped me into the car. My head felt heavy. He drove me to my new place and turned up the heat. I stretched out on the couch next to the puppy. Eric looked around and he sighed. He placed a ginger ale on the coffee table and stroked the hair off of my forehead. Then he texted somebody his apologies that he was running late. These things take time.

But when I confess the worst thing—stealing a Christmas puppy meant for the children next door—nobody seems to know me any better.