A magic Holiday Story by Michèle Laframboise
Judy Uphill swallowed a sinful tumbler of vodka-laced eggnog to pacify her grumbling stomach. She shouldn’t drink, but her strict stuntwoman diet, coupled with the exertion of tidying up a two-story mansion and cooking the perfect Christmas Eve dinner, had conspired to lower her defenses.
After a guilt-ridden glance toward the front door, she washed and put away the goblet in the glass cupboard, fumbling with the porcelain latch. The tiny alcohol content was already melting her insides like soft caramel.
Judy leaned against the fifteen-foot granite counter of the gazillion-dollar designer’s kitchen, breathing in the aroma of almond cookies baking in the oversized oven. She had a mountain of chores to finish before Porter came back.
She gazed through the sink window. At the dead, snowless grass. At the sky, its stars hidden by the light pollution. Only one blinking red dot moved in the emptiness, a plane packed with last-minute travelers going to their families’ homes.
Judy’s own emptiness clogged her throat. How she missed the glittering sky over her parents’ cottage!
The almond cookies still needed ten minutes.
Judy flopped on the sprawling living room couch, sending up a few pale strands of cat hair. She looked at the crystal chandelier hanging from the twelve-foot ceiling, then to the medieval-sized foyer facing her, its smile of blue gas flames protected by a metal grid. A black-tiled ledge protected the illusion. Almost touching the ledge, stood the requisite Christmas tree, its artificial limbs bent under pounds of ornaments and lights, its point topped by a glass angel.
Judy stretched, clad in her go-to charcoal-gray yoga pants and an orange Tee sporting the ninja silhouette of her gym’s logo. Faint traces of Porter’s Cologne lingered on the couch’s black leather…
Handsome in a lean, fortyish fashion with silvering hair, Porter was as smart and witty as befitted a talented scriptwriter pursued by all major movie producers. (All but one: he had pissed off Spielberg last year, for some obscure reason.)
Porter had been considerate and fun with her, his fame a glowing halo. Smitten, Judy had moved in with him in a week, marveling at a kitchen her dad would have died for, at the fairytale foyer, at the sparkling chandelier, at the room-sized bathrooms and at the walled garden, large enough to practice her combat choreographies…
A high-pitched yowling, followed by a frantic yapping, called Judy from the soft depths of the couch’s embrace. She registered a patter of nails on kitchen tiles, then more hissing and yowling.
Still squabbling, she thought.
A loud crystal crash rang her inner alarm full tilt. The young woman opened her eyes to a nightmare.
Porter’s ten-foot Christmas tree was wobbling as Mad and Madder, as she called his cats, chased each other around its tripod base. Glittering pieces of the glass angel, dislodged from its perch, lay on the regal foyer’s tiles.
McCoy, Judy’s caramel-and-white basset hound, was chasing the cats, his short legs sinking in the jumble of pearly white electric lines linking the tree to the mural connector.
An angry hiss from behind the base sent McCoy flying to the opposite corner of the living room, yelping as his head knocked the leg of a glass display case. The Marvel Special Edition action figures standing inside toppled over each other in lurid, un-heroic positions.
While the black-and-white cat played with the electric lines, the tortoiseshell jumped all claws out in the lower branches, clearly aiming for a vintage tear-shaped ornament. The devilish creature’s wild grappling unbalanced the tree, who tipped forward with a furious jingling.
Muttering a curse, Judy launched herself from the couch, stretching her arms to catch the tree before it hit the immaculate carpet.
The twenty-eight-years-old possessed the trained reflexes of a professional stunt double, but the exhaustion of tidying, cooking and baking tons of biscuits, plus her contractual weight obligation (and tumbler of vodka eggnog), had messed those reflexes.
Hundreds of hard plastic needles scored her bare arms as Judy grabbed the central pole protected by looped tinsels, more needles and twisted electric lines. The corner of the foyer’s ledge hit her left elbow. The sharp pain of the impact would not be worth a mention on a shooting set, not like a bad fall in a combat scene.
The immense tree was now leaning on the young woman at an angle, its taut needles pressing against her orange Tee. Her head in the needles, Judy smelled the false fir scent Porter had sprayed on the branches.
The tree, with kilograms of crystal globes, vintage ornaments, false gift boxes, hundreds of white LED lights, weighted as much as a median adult. Still, Judy managed to break its fall.
What she couldn’t stop, though, was the rain of ornaments dislodged by her quick action. She winced as more crystal pieces crashed on the hard tiles of the foyer.
She pushed the tree back to its upright position. Porter would be fuming when he saw the wreckage of his vintage tear-shaped ornaments. His doting parents would raise their noses and tsssk at her.
At her, the genius scriptwriter’s kept-in girlfriend.
A shot of anger burnt through her, like a too-strong spirit. Judy turned to the pair of culprits, now serenely lounging by the bay window, licking their paws.
Mad was a black and white lady, her immaculate face and pink nose giving her an angelic air. Madder was a tortoiseshell with a clear penchant for antics, as she demonstrated by hunting dangling ornaments in the tree.
Poor McCoy looked at his mistress from under the Marvel figurines display case with its toppled superheroes, his sad brown eyes questing affection.
The basset and the territorial cats did not get along on most days. Christmas Eve was no exception.
Fists on her hips, Judy cast the duo of felines a withering stare that would have been any aspiring actress’s dream.
“You,” she said, “will not get the Tuna Special this evening!”
It was an empty threat, because as soon as he came back from the airport, Porter would spoil them rotten.
Judy crouched to caress her diminutive basset, his pendulous ears and skin folds giving his face the sad puppy look she fell in love with at the pound.
She checked his brown eyes for any redness, and guided the dog’s uneven steps down the basement’s stairs. McCoy’s wicker basket lay next to a pair of washing-drying machines with windows like spaceship portholes. At each laundry, Judy had to reassure her dog, unnerved by the sloshing noise and the clothes spinning behind the porthole.
Basset hounds were renowned as calm and placid, but the volunteer at the Portland Animal Rescue shelter had told Judy that McCoy had been neglected by his former masters. He had a gimp leg and jumped at sudden noises.
After a last look at her companion, his sad puppy eyes raised over the basket rim, Judy scampered upstairs to survey the disaster. It looked as if an army of miniature trolls had attacked the tree and rained silver fragments of ornaments on the floor. The thick carpet had cushioned the fall of the upper ornaments, but too many had crashed on the flat stones near the base and bounced away. Brilliant shards peeked from the threads of the creamy carpet.
She needed to vacuum the carpet before the in-laws came, because Porter’s brother and sister-in-law had two picture-perfect children. And put those Marvel figurines back up.
And what was giving off this burnt smell? Oh.
Judy ran to the kitchen where her batch of what should have been almond cookies were consuming themselves.
She scrambled for mitts and pulled off the oven a tray of dark circles. Leaning on the cold granite counter, she set to scrape off the blackened husks. She was wrangling the scorched remains in the Garburator sink hole when a nerve-wracking ululation seared her ears.
Judy climbed on the central island to reach the Camembert-shaped smoke detector, and tap it shut. Panting, she looked up the hour: seven and ten.
Time to pull the pre-cooked dead bird from its wraps and put it in the oven, to reheat. Last year, Porter had hired a catering service. This year, he had opted for a homely DIY feel. Which meant, a Judy-Do-It feel. She had willingly gone along with it, in the hopes of getting his family’s approbation.
After the turkey, she got into the pantry to pull out a blue egg-shaped vacuum cleaner, hitting her already sore elbow in the process.
Great, now my coordination’s failing! she thought.
The cute egg-shaped vac-cleaner overheated and gave up the ghost in minutes. Only the bi-weekly cleaning crew’s power machines could remove embedded glass shards. Judy claimed a white kitchen bag and walked back to the living room.
As she scooped up the bigger shards from the carpet, she felt overtaken by an impression of being a stranger. She missed her one-bedroom flat, three streets from the river. But she had rescinded the rent when she moved into Porter’s lavish house.
Everything around her felt off: the too-dark leather couch with the imprint of her lean body across it; the pale khaki walls; the thick cream-colored carpet, twinkling with smaller shards. The mural gold-plated clock with Roman numbers ordered from Switzerland.
Even the fairy-tale stone foyer was spooking her now. The gridiron barrier was pulled shut so neither cats nor incoming children would take into their cute little heads to explore the cavernous space behind the false logs. The chimney trapdoor was shut, too, to prevent cold air from invading the living room.
She was getting more and more of this sense of not belonging, even if she had loved the place: the master bedroom done in classic browns and blues with the requisite four posters bed, walk-in closet and tall mirror; the study lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and a mahogany writing desk with the laptop.
Judy liked cooking in the well-equipped kitchen (with a vacuum sealing machine!) But it was torture to sit at the table with a meager salad and beans plate to respect her contractual weight requirement, while Porter, tall and slim like his mother, ate like an ogre.
Only the den in the basement felt like home, with McCoy’s wicker basket in view while she jogged on the rolling carpet. But she couldn’t rehearse her choreography there, with the washing/drying spaceship and Porter’s exercise machines taking most of the space.
She was still picking up shards off the carpet when she heard a tinny orchestral rendition of Con Te Partiro. Her canary yellow cell was dancing in circles on the polished wood of the side table, on its max vibration setting.
Now, what? she thought, her mood tittering between rage and zen-like acceptation of life’s little annoyances.
She didn’t have the luxury of ignoring a call, not this evening. It could be Porter telling her his parents’ plane had not landed yet, or asking about the dinner, or it could be the studio. Or…
She hadn’t spoken with her parents in years. She envisioned the affectionate pair decorating their tree, going at the local Mom-and-Pop restaurant to meet friends.
She’d invite them here, but they lived on the West Coast and had stopped traveling since the pandemic struck. Worst, neither her Dad nor Mom were big Internet users.
None had called since she moved with Porter three years ago. Maybe she had disappointed them by choosing a stunt woman career. Her brother also kept radio silence.
She ran to the side table.
“‘Lo?” she gasped.
She should have drunk mineral water instead of that egg-nog.
A raucous voice exploded at the other end.
“Judy baby, the shooting is a go! But it starts next Monday.”
Mighty Al, from the Champion Den Studio. He had been a stunt double in his youth, and forty years later he looked the part of an aging Sylvester Stallone. Now he managed the lesser-known operatives in a movie production, body doubles and stuntmen.
“But, Al, I was supposed to have two weeks!” she said, failing to hide the annoyance from her voice.
Mighty Al poured a torrent of words, ending with a convocation. Judy was too tired to protest.
She had signed the retainer contract when she was single and unemployed, for a good fee. She had to study movie projects specs and train to get her combat choreographies down pat. She also modelled the lead actress’ costumes for light measurements before the actual shooting.
And…
Judy pinched a centimeter of body fat at her waist. She was lean and muscular, but still eleven pounds over the lead actress’s current weight. Judy had counted on the week following the New Year Eve feeding frenzy to get back to her contractual weight and polish her combat scenes.
She also needed those days to work out her relationship with Porter.
Too many little things didn’t add up. She played hostess for guests who only saw her as his kept-in girlfriend. Porter had not shown any inclination toward deepening their commitment. The romantic will-you-marry-me scene Judy had envisioned at the start of their whirlwind romance had not materialized yet.
She loved his wit, but this agile tongue of his could get mean in a flash whenever he choose to. Like the last time she had lobbed the commitment question at him.
“Do you want a ring?” he had said, with that snarky tone he usually reserved for critics he didn’t care about.
When she had gasped aloud, stricken, he had dialed down the sarcasm scale.
“You know I don’t like to be pushed into marriage,” he said in a soothing tone, before shutting himself in the study.
Judy was no husband chaser, despite her biological clock clicking louder. But she had been peeved when she learned that Porter had waited a full year before telling his parents about his new girlfriend.
Her meetings with the pair had been dry, his parents being so well-off they jetted where they wanted. No harsh words were exchanged, but the way his peroxided mother consulted her phone, the indifferent look his balding father cast, the perfunctory compliments. (Oh, you’re a stunt girl? How original!)
A fiancée Judy was definitely not. At least, she was, by the joined efforts of three generations of Uphill women and men, a fair cook.
Mighty Al’s scraggly voice piped in her thoughts.
“Hey Jude! You’ listening? So get your gear ready for Monday!”
She nodded. “Okay, I’ll…”
The line cut before she was finished nodding. Mighty Al was a busy man, which meant, in the industry, no call lasted a second longer than needed. Unless he hit on her, which would bring another kind of hell.
The Swiss mural clock chimed nine when Judy finished removing the shards she could feel with her fingers. She had a good chunk of free time before having to shower, change and greet Porter’s family. Time she could use. Her gym was closed today, but the living room space was perfect.
Judy pushed the coffee table against the leather couch. She stretched her limbs to prepare her body for explosive action. Her combat scene lasted two minutes and a forty seconds.
She tied up her sneakers and stood, facing the window and the pair of cats.
No snow. The front lawn, the three wire-framed reindeers grazed on the dead grass. The red dot of a plane was moving slowly in the otherwise empty sky.
Judy closed her eyes; breathed in; out. Counted the beats in her head.
Then she launched herself across the room, pirouetting, swivelling, fists shooting off as she battled invisible adversaries left and right. The Mooks, she thought, lower-rank baddies that the female character would beat without difficulty to imprint her skills in the spectator’s mind.
She had four mooks to dispatch, one every thirty seconds. If the doubles playing the mooks were as well prepared, their scene could be wrapped sooner.
Her pace slowed down after the fourth “mook”. She jumped over his (imaginary) body to prod forward, her head swiveling left and right to check the location (a dark warehouse) for any sign of additional danger.
Judy stepped toward the ledge of the foyer, executed a quarter turn to the bay window (a noise in the scene draws the heroine’s attention). Suddenly, her head whipped back (as a boss baddie’s karate-chop clobbered her character) and she collapsed in a boneless heap on the living room carpet.
The ‘boneless’ posture actually required more efforts, her body twisted in a sexy pose: face to the foyer, knees to the window.
As a body double, Judy would stay inert for ten seconds (that would be sheared off the final cut), so the lead actress could match the position for the close-up of her unconscious figure. On the thick carpet (there would be none in the movie studio), the falling was not too bad, except for her lancing elbow and a budding headache.
At the eleventh second, Judy unfolded from the carpet and jumped to her starting point.
She went through the whole routine twice, without a hitch.
At the fourth iteration, she overcompensated the last move by a few inches and flopped too close to the foyer. The angular stone ledge grazed her brow.
Pain and dizziness launched her headache into a pounding boss-baddie level. She felt her brow with trembling fingers: no bleeding, but the upcoming purple bump would annoy the make-up artist next Monday.
Cursing the vodka-laced eggnog, Judy rolled on her back and kept still, hoping she didn’t nurse a concussion. Everyone knew of a sports star or an actor who ignored a headache, only to turn up dead the next day.
She closed her eyes, breathed in, out, in…
A gust of arctic air blew from the chimney sending goosebumps on her arms. The chimney trap must have fallen open. But the cold receded, replaced by the warm aromas of chocolate cookies, fruitcake and gingerbread (that she definitively did not cook!)
Then a deep, cavernous voice hollered out.
“By my pixies, are you wounded?”
Judy opened her eyes to a vision in scarlet red and fluffy whites.
She bounced back, fists raised.
The chimney intruder wore a Santa outfit, several sizes over extra-large, a dark belt with a silver buckle, a red cap topped by a white tennis ball-sized pompom. White gloves and boots completed the picture.
Break-outs happened in posh neighborhoods, especially in the holidays when most residents flew under more clement skies. Because he had left Judy cooking inside the house, Porter had not set the sophisticated 12-points alarm system.
This false Santa was not the first thug using a disguise to get in a house.
Judy took the stance her self-defense instructor taught her at the gym, legs slightly apart, one in front of the other, body turned, knees flexed. Her eyes surveyed her adversary’s body to find vulnerable points.
Which was not that easy when a formidable belly hung over the family jewels, and a thick, flowing white beard hid both neck and solar plexus.
That left the eyes, a pair of baby blue marbles creased with a web of amused lines, behind a pair of silver-rimmed glasses. The intruder looked old enough to be her grandfather when she was a child.
A very big grandad. Those baby blue marbles hovered at well over six feet.
My God! she thought.
How could this giant swoop down a chimney that was, at the most, thirteen inches wide? With his expansive belly and height, the Santa guy would weight about three hundred and fifty pounds!
He could eat at a Heart-Attack Grill for free, a cynical part of her thought.
The burglar adjusted his fine-rimmed glasses to get a better look at Judy, and that’s when she noticed how his gloves were an immaculate white, how his red coat with fur trimmings glowed like satin. Even if the chimney had been wide enough, the soot-grimed bricks of the conduit would have stained his costume. The grid was still in place…
Judy chided herself. With the 12-points alarm disarmed, he must have used another way for breaking and entering… Her eyes locked on the red canvas bag, almost as big as he was, hanging from a shoulder. A very full bag. Was he already robbing the upper stair rooms while she trained?
“Who are you? How did you get here?” she asked, keeping the fear from her voice.
The intruder exploded in a rumbling laughter, his belly shaking like a jelly bowl, his eyes squeezing shut. A small bell hidden in the pompom atop his cap rang.
“Two funny questions,” he said.
His jolly tone did not reassure Judy. He made no aggressive move, as he lowered the huge bag on the carpet, its contents jiggling in a soft whisper of cardboard boxes.
“I, I can call the police,” she said, keeping her combat stance.
Where was her cell? Beads of sweat dripped along her spine.
The man disguised as Santa inclined his head on the side, the bell pompom still ringing. His baby blue eyes peered at her through the round lenses, as if she was an interesting specimen. A green flash dashed around the fine rims, maybe a metal reflection.
“Why are you afraid of, Judith?” he asked.
His voice was at odds with his incredible mass, low and soft as her grand-father’s had been.
Judy’s fists clenched so hard her nails would pierce her skin if she had let them grow. Afraid?
“Oh, let’s see,” she answered in a droll tone. “First you know my name. That’s makes you a stalker!”
Porter’s wit and success had brought him as many rivals and bitter enemies as friends. Whoever had decided to loot his study’s safe or steal his manuscripts would know all about his kept-in girlfriend.
She bit her lower lip.
Kept-in.
This wasn’t what Judy had wanted in life. She was proud of her stunts, but Porter had told her more than once she didn’t need new gigs now that he provided for both of them.
The genius scriptwriter’s girlfriend.
A rumbling hohoho shook her thoughts like feathers in a very fluffy pillow.
A soft, uneven paddling sounded on the carpet. McCoy had come to investigate, his lumbering gait unmistakable.
“Oh, but I know all the names!” the false Santa said.
So that’s how you play it, right? Judy thought.
“And who’s been naughty or niiice,” she sang, the tune so familiar.
“Oh, I know you’ve been nice, my girl! Doing your homework an all…”
The huge Santa’s voice petered off as his eyes alighted on the mangled tree, with the remaining broken ornaments littering the underside, the streamers like silver snakes. Moreover, three branches had been skewered, leaving glaring gaps in the ornaments ranks.
“My, my!” he said. “Methink’s someone has been naughty here, heh?”
Judy followed his gaze to the window. Both cats sat on their haunches, staring at the man, mesmerized. McCoy had found a spot under the coffee table, his droopy head resting on his paws.
“Not nice, Beatrice and Bally, to hound this poor McCoy!”
Dear God! To Porter, McCoy was ‘my girlfriend’s dog’ when he entertained at home.
“How do you know my dog’s name?” she asked.
A stalker would know the cats’ names, but it was impossible that someone had followed Judy five years ago in the animal shelter of another city. She had been distraught after a break-up, and needed a faithful companion.
The Santa bent over to pat McCoy on his head. The move in such an enormous body transformed him into a red ball. She picked up a delicious aroma of the maple sugar pie her dad cooked, long ago. Where did it come from?
“Hey, buddy, take it easy. I know you’re a good dog.”
McCoy was too shy to warm up to strangers, and did not even endure Porter’s touch. But this total weirdo got instantly accepted, if Judy could believe the soft whimpers and the tongue lapping the stranger’s hand.
She brushed her palms together, suffused with a tingling hope, like when she was a wee girl. Could this gentle giant be the real McCoy?
But no. She had stopped believing long ago.
Do the math. If Santa somehow found his way in this house —this childless, heartless house—it was impossible to do billions of houses, appartements, huts, lean-to, caverns, refugee camps, in the same night.
Then another detail came up.
“It’s not even midnight,” she said, ignoring the tiny hammers pounding in her head. “And, well, there’s no children living here.”
He rose from his crouch, the tip of his cap brushing the lower curves of the chandelier. Really, this weird Santa could play basketball if he had been leaner.
“My work begins way before midnight,” he said.
His eyes, paler than ice, shone behind the round lenses as if a flood projector stood behind Judy.
“There was a child waiting for me, in this house,” he said.
Judy pulled a bit of pluckiness from a hidden pocket.
“I’m not a child anymore, big guy,” she said, words spilling fast. “I’m waiting for my boyfiend to come back!”
His eyes, so jolly a few minutes ago, became shrouded in mist.
“My, my, such desire to get ensnared by a fiend.”
That’s when Judy realized what she had unwittingly said.
“A telling lapsus,” the Santa guy said.
“No, no, I love Porter, I do!” Judy countered. Her voice sounded meek to her ears. “But, I just wish, that…”
She caught herself in time. She had been lulled by his grandfatherly act, and about to blurt her pain to a stranger! The huge Santa looked around him.
“But you feel trapped.”
Judy looked at the Swiss clock. Ten thirty. She felt a panic rise. How could more than one hour have passed? Her concussion, was it worsening?
She cast an anxious glance at the door. Any moment, Porter’s BMW would turn in the cobbled entrance…
“Look, whoever you are, you should go, really,” she said. “Porter won’t appreciate, he’ll call the cops…”
She raised her palms and pushed against the red ball of a belly, trying to get him to the back door. It felt like plunging in a soft mattress, but that softness hid an immovable object.
She felt like a child. And those sweet scents swirling around filled her with a longing she had not felt in ages. For home, for simplicity, for her grandma’s cakes, for her dad’s maple sugar pies.
“Judy,” he said, “I have something to show you. But first, let’s tidy up this place.”
He pulled off his red cap. More white hair tumbled down, long and curly. He shook the cap. The jingle bell in the pompom rang, high and pure.
Blue dust fell on the floor. Not dust: motes of lights, twirling around the living room, brushing the couch, the coffee table with the books, the display shelves, the special edition figurines…
Shiny shards jetted off Judy’s white plastic bag; many others she had missed, barely bigger than a speck, rose from the carpet to rebuild intact balls of glass. The tinsels’ snakes slithered up the tree. The reassembled tear-shaped vintage ornament took back its place, and the angel at the top was whole again, wings outstretched.
The cats zoomed from the windowsill, so fast Judy would not believe her eyes. McCoy did not rise from his spot, his brown eyes twinkling under his droopy lids.
That’s when she heard noise in the kitchen. Another intruder?
Judy stepped closer.
A tall woman was rolling a pie crust, clad in a sunset-blue dress and apron, snowy hair pulled up in a bun. She sprinkled the cookies, then turned to the oven.
Her twig-like arms reached inside to pull a steaming plate of turkey, without using mitts!
The elderly woman put the plate down. Her delicate fingers, unburnt, palms rosy, were coated with flour dust. Shiny motes of yellow light, like tiny stars, rose from the fabric of her blue dress.
Sensing Judy’s gaze, the crone smiled, her teeth indistinct under a soft light that seemed to come from inside her head. She did not wear any make-up, not even lipstick, but her eyes and mouth were sharply delineated.
“Do not worry, child,” she said, her dark, dark eyes shining like onyx. “Everything will be fine.”
She had a soft, ageless, peaceful voice. She did not look at all like Judy’s grandma, who had been petite and roundish, but there was something familiar in the face. That same dedication to everything she was doing, like the cupcakes currently cooling on the counter.
The blue-garbed fairy cast a glance at the twirling motes in the living room. Her lips pursed in mock anger.
“That dear husband, always showing off!”
The affection under the words hinted at a person constitutionally unable of screaming in anger or hurling verbal abuse at anyone. Judy clutched her arms, fingers digging in her biceps, feeling a rush of emotion laying waste inside her.
Tears welled in her eyes, spilling on her cheeks.
“That’s what called me here,” Santa said.
“Klaus, you could have done it without her knowing,” his wife said, her flour-covered fists on her thin hips.
Behind her, a procession of plates sailed through the air, trailing the best almond cookie odors of all times, and then, oh, was it a spice chocolate cake, and lemon scones? All plates settled like UFOs on the tablecloth adorned with ribbons and mistletoes, sugar canes everywhere. The good cutlery was out, already, borne out by a spattering of brilliant stars.
The fairy had set the table for Porter’s parents and his brother’s family, but… She counted again.
One place was missing.
Hers.
Tears streaked her cheeks, as she fell on her rump in a sorry heap. McCoy padded close and licked her hands.
When Judy blinked off the torrent, the big Santa had his red cap back on. He bent over the old cook and deposited a puckered-lips smack on her crown of snowy hair.
“You won’t get away with it, you know that, dear? There’s rules,” the woman was saying, her voice still soft as silk.
“Oh, darling, her soul was crying loud and clear…”
Whose soul? Judy thought, her hands on McCoy’s warm pelt.
“Like the rest of humanity,” his wife replied, with a benevolent smile. “But that’s why I married you, you big, bleeding-heart oaf!”
“I’m sure the Boss will understand.”
The Boss word snapped Judy out of her misery. All this time, moping for herself. She got up, pushing the headache at the back of her mind.
“Yes,” she said, battling the ball of grief in her throat. “You should care for all the others on the planet, there’s so much poverty everywhere…”
And abandoned animals, she added for herself.
A loud thump, like a giant’s robot’s hand hitting the roof, echoed through the house. The cutlery and glasses in every cupboards clinked, and the superheroes figurines toppled again.
“Ah,” both Santa and his wife said, in such perfect unison that Judy was reminded of her parents.
“What is it?” Judy asked.
The Santa emitted a bark of laughter,
“No worry!” he said.
Looking at the bay window, Judy sucked in a happy breath. Fluffy white flurries landed on the lawn, making a velvety carpet lit up in deep violets and soft reds. Those colors couldn’t come from the streetlights.
And, oh, was there four tall trees planted on the street?
She gasped when a Soyouz-sized sphere lowered itself to the window, half of its curve glowing a deep carmine at the limit of the infrareds.
Judy didn’t see anything besides that incredible ball, and the two jets of white steam under it.
The fairy woman in blue chuckled.
“Well, see how your bragging trickles on poor Rudolph?”
“Almost done,” the Santa—Klaus or Claus? —said.
When Judy wrenched her attention from the glowing red sphere, the living room stood as untouched, her white plastic bag out of view. The food smells were so wonderful she felt ready to jump with glee. Mrs. Klaus (Judy had opted in her head for this name) was laying down a slip of paper next to the red napkins artistically folded.
“And what was it you wanted to show me?” she asked.
The big red Santa got redder in the face.
His wife lifted her hand to tap his rounded shoulder.
“Now, dear, this needs a gentle touch. Let me do it.”
Her flour-covered fingers touched Judy’s throbbing elbow. The pain ebbed out. As did the pounding under her cranium. She closed her eyes, grateful to the odd couple.
When she opened her eyes, she was not in the kitchen but standing in Porter’s study, with the neat rows of books and the writing desk.
The fairy’s long fingers tapped the laptop keys so fast they blurred, sending up a cloud of flour powder. Somehow, Mrs. Klaus had hacked Porter’s password (which was not “password” but a very convoluted sentence). Snowy strands of hair had fallen loose from her bun.
“There, my dear. This concerns you.”
Judy bent over the gentle crone’s shoulder to read the email displayed on the screen. It was a bullet list of instructions to an ISP server tech, so that any letter or email from Judy’s mother, father, brother would be deleted. Even her yellow phone, a gift from him, had been rigged to reject any attempt at communication from family members.
Her knees wobbled as if she had received a blow from a Boss-level villain. She slapped one palm on the desk’s wooden surface for support. Her voice was a whisper.
“Why? Why would he do that?”
The fairy fingers blurred again on the keyboard. Another list of emails appeared. Private emails. Judy couldn’t read the content, but the subject lines were adamant.
Very private emails.
“Maybe for his research…,” she said, but she did not believe her own words.
The addressee was a younger woman Judy had met in his circles. An up-and-coming writer, full of promises.
A cupcake crumbled in soggy crumbs inside her thoracic cage. Judy had been right to think she didn’t belong here. She had been cut off, smothered.
Kept-in.
“He has gotten addicted to the flavor of success,” Mrs. Klaus said. “You were a bouquet on his lapel.”
She traced in mid-air a blue outline of a blooming flower. Then the petals wrinkled and fell.
Judy swallowed.
“I feel so, so…”
Defeated. Betrayed.
She couldn’t stay in this house, his house, anymore. Nor could poor clumsy McCoy. But she had no place to stay in this city where all their friends were his friends. And her parents, oh, what would they think of their ungrateful daughter?
And will I ever be ready for my choreography?
Petal-soft fingers brushed her forearm. Just as swift, she was back in the living room. Snow was now piling up under the four new columns. Klaus was setting colorful wrapped boxes under the tree.
“For the children,” he said, winking.
“I don’t think they believe in… you,” Judy said, finally acknowledging Santa as himself.
He proffered a box wrapped in tiny fir trees on a red background. The label under the red ribbon read: ‘from Judy’.
“That’s the reverse of what many parents do!” she said, a tiny, edgy smile on her lips.
Mrs. Klaus strode closer. Her loose silver hair had reformed in a very neat bun. She pointed at the envelope on the table.
“And this note is also from your hand, child.”
“But I didn’t write anything.”
“The note says that you are grateful for the time spent here, learning how to care for house and friends. But now, you are needed somewhere else and wish them well.”
As the blue fairy spoke these words, the truth settled in Judy’s mind like an angel snow print. She knew in her heart she wouldn’t stay in that plush mansion. She looked at the Swiss clock.
“Ten past eleven!” she read.
Even if she caught a plane, she could never be with her parents in time.
Santa clapped his hands in a playful sound.
“What would you say you hitch a ride with us to see your folks?” he asked.
“My f-folks? But they live in…”
She fell silent as the Soyouz-sized bubble lowered itself again, misting the tempered glass. McCoy let out a joyful bark, as if the basset had recognized a friend. She had forgotten that her visitors had their special means of transportation.
“W-well,” Judy said, nonplussed. “I still have to pack my things…”
A whoosh of displaced air interrupted her. A door on the second level slammed shut. Then her backpack, filled to the rim, sat at her feet. Her booted feet. She undid the clasps to examine the contents.
Santa’s wife had packed in a split-second exactly the things Judy would have chosen herself… after two or three grueling hours.
Her hands went over the fat layer on her middle. Maybe I could train at home, in their basement, she thought. A half-thought formed in her mind. Lose those eleven pounds…
The graceful crone’s lips formed this adorable pout that normally only young women got away with, while her fingers played in her husband’s beard.
“Please, please, my sweet child, don’t heed those insane standards! I won’t exert any magic toward social conformity.”
Judy felt herself go red in the face. Her hands left her belly to cover her heart.
“Oh, I, I didn’t…,” she blurt, but she trailed off, remembering her half-formed thought.
Compassion filled the older woman’s dark eyes.
“Should I have rejected my Klaus because he didn’t have a gladiator’s body with the requisite six-pack? Should he have ignored me because I didn’t have those lush maidenly curves?”
A big red arm encircled the thin shoulders.
“Hoho-ho! My sweet cupcake, your beauty never ceases to amaze me!” Santa said in his affectionate, rumbling voice, sending a cinnamon-scented breath.
His wife gave him a playful nudge. “Hush, you big bear! And get the sled ready.”
She turned to Judy, who was wrestling herself in her coat and adjusting the straps of her backpack.
“Sweetie, just do your best, do what you love. And leave the rest to settle as it may.”
A thump, louder, sounded from the roof. Santa booming voice responded.
“Coming, Rudolph!”
Then his body broke in a thousand red satin balls, passing through the grid bars, disappearing up the chimney.
“Take my hand,” the blue fairy said.
Judy’s fingers gingerly closed over the thin fingers, still daubed with flour.
Flying was a lot like sledding around the lake, the coverlet drawn to her chin.
Bells shook and jiggled from the team of house-sized reindeers pawing the air. A red beam at the front searched the landscape, a landscape that flowed under the clear skies.
Where those white peaks passing under them the Rockies?
McCoy, safe on her lap, barked at the moon crescent. They were flying so high the curvature of the planet showed. Judy should be freezing or asphyxiating or pierced by cosmic rays, but Mrs. Klaus told her the sled carried its own protective bubble.
Suddenly, Judy saw hundreds of reindeer-pulled sleds flying left and right. Red-clad, big-bellied Santas held the reins, their jolly faces showing every skin tone between ivory and ebony… one was even driving, no, flying a 53-foot-long delivery truck!
She bubbled with the urge to talk, to tell she understood. Mrs. Klaus, draped in a satin coat and a pill-box hat covering her white bun, patted the young woman’s shoulder.
The gesture brought forward, in clear details, her grandma doing the same after each visit. The little girl had taken her for granted, then. Her grandmother had known that each visit could be the last. Judy felt a pang inside.
“I miss her,” she said, her voice covered by the mad jingling.
Mrs. Klaus spoke, her voice soft as warm chocolate.
“I miss my grandma, too,” she said. “But she had left me so much knowledge, and recipes!”
Judy nodded and sank a little more in the thick fur wraps, drinking the luminous presence of Santa’s fairy wife. She closed her eyes, exhausted; maybe the bubble around the sled leaked oxygen.
The bells’ silvery voices rang louder, louder as she fell weightlessly through a mass of clouds.
Judy opened her eyes. The sky was clear, the stars so neat she could almost grab one. She was propped against a metal pole, McCoy a ball of warmth on her folded knees.
She should be freezing, teeth chattering, but the cold air did not bite. No moisture trapped in her clothes, no sweat runnel tracing her back, her feet were numb but warm. It was as if the winter had taken a pause.
It must be close to midnight. She wondered what Porter’s family would make of the miraculous dinner and the presents she had left. Maybe by an effect of distance, she did not care much. She guessed Mad and Madder would be well-cared for, one redeeming quality in Porter.
Judy searched the celestial tapestry for some tangible proof she hadn’t dreamed this encounter. She found a brilliant point moving north, most probably a satellite.
It flashed a quick red and zoomed out.
Judy brushed the snow from her yoga pants and stood up, feeling the pack settle on her back. The pole she had leant against supported a little mailbox in the shape of a house, with a front door to slip envelopes in, and all windows at the right places. Her dad’s work. You pulled the roof open to get the mail.
Behind the mailbox sat the original model, the snow shoveled in small mountain ranges along the entrance path. She could hear the TV going on, filling the windows with a bluish glow.
Judy walked to the door with a welcoming crown of fir branches, McCoy shambling on her talons in the snow. She picked up the basset hound. Mom would be so amazed!
Hot tears came out, carrying away the last dregs of her headache. She had a hunch the fairy wife of Klaus was right. She would talk to her parents, to her brother, mend the hole her absence had left.
She would do her best, practice the combat choreographies she loved so, set her limits with Big Al. Even if that gig didn’t pan out, Judy would go on getting better.
And making others better, too.
For now, she enjoyed the marvelous gift of being home.
With her loved ones.
2025@Michèle Laframboise
First published in 5 Sweet Holiday Stories, Echofictions 2025
Picture : Deposit Photos
Title image layout copyright © 2024 Echofictions
The very perceptive among you,readrs, will recognize where this 53-foot flying truck comes from… yes, from one of the first 5 Chocolate-Rich Holiday Stories!
Please contact the author for reprint permission.
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