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Unwrap these Presents

Page 8

by Astrid Ohletz


  Caroline’s heart dropped. She had used it as a bad pick-up line before, but now the woman’s face took on a more definite shape. She was older now—and this was no longer the foolish girl-crush Caroline had had during their creative writing course. But it was her. It had to be. Before the woman could sit down, the words were already out of Caroline’s mouth.

  “Kim?”

  “Yes. Though I kind of go by Tiny Kim now—like Tiny Tim—on account of the cane. I thought that was where you were going when you first mentioned it.”

  Caroline put a hand over her mouth. The memory came back in bits and pieces, like a haiku in her mind. In their creative writing class, Kim had stood at the front and recited a poem about falling in love with a woman. Her lips were red, her black hair short and cropped. She wore a collared shirt, un-tucked, and carefree, like the way she spoke about love. Kim had been much younger then, a freshman when most of the students were seniors. More than Mary Oliver, Kim was why poetry represented Caroline’s queerness, even twenty years later. That was why poetry, more than any other art, made her think of women and love.

  “What happened to you?” Caroline asked. “We all thought you’d be out of there, winning Pulitzers prizes. No one wanted to read after you. It always felt like child’s play.”

  Kim laughed, though the lines around her eyes creased with sadness. “Thanks. But you guys were good, too. I did try to do the whole poet thing. That’s why I was in San Francisco. But things kind of…went off course. I fell for the whole illusion of the poet. The past and present ghosts of great men and women, drinking themselves to death. I thought that was part of art.”

  Caroline suddenly became aware of the drink in her hand and placed it down on the counter. “Does this bother you?”

  Kim shook her head. “I don’t drink anymore, but I can’t stop people.”

  “Still…” Caroline replaced her drink with water. She got plates and napkins while listening to Kim tell what happened to her after high school. It seemed as if she had been dying to tell someone, especially someone who could remotely understand.

  “The last drink I had was the night I got this.” Kim held up her cane. “It was around Christmas and I fell down a flight of icy stairs outside a bar. I remember going in and out of consciousness at the bottom of the steps. I suppose it was my Christmas Epiphany, you know? The kind they always talk about in church or on Lifetime movies. I slipped on the ice and an angel appeared—only my angel was Anne Sexton’s ghost. She told me I was crazy, and that she knew crazy, and that I should just go home.”

  “And so you’re here now. Working… at a pizza place.”

  “Temporary for now. Turns out poetry doesn’t have a lot of job openings.” Kim smiled and leaned forward. “What about you? Last thing I saw, you were heading to your own kind of poetic greatness.”

  “Not really. I got a good job. A husband. A son.” She sighed. “But now I’m divorced.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  “No, don’t be. It’s for the better. I… I love him, but I realized that I wasn’t happy.”

  “I know the feeling,” Kim said.

  Their eyes met one another. Clear and hopeful. Caroline felt a lump rise up in her throat. She lifted the lid of the pizza box, thinking that food would help ease whatever tension she felt inside the room. But as the steam rose up, the words on the lid of the pizza box became clear. And another memory came rushing back to her as she read over the stanza.

  Sit here and think about your life;

  Your last night and your many firsts

  Then make a wish and dream a little

  Try and get what you deserve.

  “It’s not the whole poem,” Kim said. “Not all of it would fit, so I had to pick and choose.”

  “I remember,” Caroline said. This was the poem Caroline knew from high school. But it was so hard to capture, she worried that it was all a dream. “What was the rest of it? Just humor me for a while—a summary will do.”

  Kim smiled. “The poem was about a café in Paris that granted people’s wishes. A woman walked in and wished for her best friend to fall in love with her. This part—what’s written in the box—was the precursor to warn people about getting what they wanted. People like to think about their past and try to get it back. But wishes are rarely kind with our memories. They have to have more meaning than nostalgia.”

  “And the girl in the poem?” Caroline asked. “How did that turn out for her?”

  “She made a different wish. But she still fell in love with someone. She was happy.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yes. I wanted to have a happy ending, for once.”

  Caroline’s fingers traced over the words in the pizza box. She felt a sudden surge of hopefulness wash over her. She closed her eyes and then bit her lip. “Should I make a wish now? I mean, it’s not exactly a café in Paris…”

  “Sure,” Kim said. “It’s as good as anything, right?”

  Their eyes met again. Caroline continued to look without worry or apprehension. She heard the steady thump of her heart and felt the slow ache of love moving through her, and allowed herself to dream a while.

  Kim closed her eyes first. When Caroline followed, she repeated the poem like a prayer before she let her heart speak: I wish for a better Christmas—a new Light Holiday. She opened her eyes to see Kim still sitting in front of her. A light shined behind, like an aura. It was so sudden and beautiful that Caroline almost forgot to breathe.

  “You good?” Kim asked.

  “Yes,” Caroline said. “Will you stay for pizza?”

  “Definitely.”

  Caroline could tell from the way she smiled that that had been her wish. A small thing—just to stay for a meal. Caroline glanced past Kim as she handed her a slice, along with a napkin. She spotted her new window that looked out on her backyard, and noticed there was absolutely no grass to see. Snow fell down by the streetlamp, casting an amber glow.

  “It’s getting late, you know.”

  “It is,” Kim said. “It’ll be hard to drive, but I can make it.”

  “Even with that?” Caroline asked, pointing to the cane.

  “Damn,” Kim said playfully. “I wished for it to be gone.”

  “You should stay here.”

  “I should?”

  Caroline nodded.

  Kim took a bite of pizza, considering it slowly. “Was that your wish?”

  “Not quite…” Caroline said. She leaned on the kitchen island, her hands linking around Kim’s wrists. The touch was slow and tentative. Caroline was still new to approaching a woman. The pizza lay forgotten between them. Kim leaned forward also and held her hands. When their lips met, they were huddling over the pizza box, the poem looking up at them.

  It wasn’t perfect, Caroline knew. But it was definitely a proper start.

  * * *

  “Okay… hello? Hello? Can you hear me?”

  “Yes, Mom, you have it. You’re doing fine,” Daniel said on the other end. He sat with his face in his hands, rolling his eyes.

  “Well, then. Good morning, Happy Christmas.”

  “You seem in a better mood, Caroline,” Jay said, passing by the screen in his robe. He paused and raised his eyebrows, genuinely interested.

  “Yes, I’m in a much better state of mind. Christmas isn’t so bad, apparently.” Caroline looked behind her as Kim walked with her cane to the coffee pot. Caroline motioned with her head to get over here, but Kim held up a hand. This is all about you, Kim seemed to mouth.

  They talked, the night, about poetry and their lives. The years between them disappeared, and along with Caroline’s hatred of the season. While Kim was still sleeping early the next morning, Caroline crawled out of bed. She wrote the first poem that came to her; a picture of nature, with two women at the center. She decided that maybe she could rewrite A Christmas Carol, after she scared away all the ghosts of her pasts.

  “Anyway, how are you, Daniel?” Caroline asked. “What did Santa bri
ng you?”

  “Come on, Mom. I know there is no such thing as Santa.”

  “Well, maybe not in human form. But there’s a certain spirit to Christmas that I like. And I think that’s as real as anything.”

  Daniel sighed. Kim blew a kiss to Caroline. Caroline reciprocated without a second thought.

  “Who do you have with you, Mom?”

  “No one.”

  “Come on, now. If I could figure out there’s no Santa, then I know you have a girl there.”

  “Maybe…” Caroline said. She stretched out her arm and ushered Kim forward. Kim joined, her brown eyes wide and nervous. Caroline slid an arm around her and pulled her into the webcam. “Daniel and Jay, this is Kim. Kim, this is everyone else.”

  She waved and mumbled a greeting. Caroline kissed her on her cheek.

  “Kim was just making us breakfast. And then we’re going to open our presents. But first, tell me what you got, D. I’m riveted.”

  Caroline leaned into the screen, absorbing every last word her son told her about his holiday as Kim’s arms snaked around her back. Everything, from the snow outside to the smell of Kim’s perfume began to rearrange itself into another poem inside Caroline’s mind. As soon as Caroline held it, she also let it go.

  Throughout the morning, the snow continued to fall. As Kim and Caroline finished the phone call and had breakfast together, the world outside went on.

  Mary Christmas

  L.T. Smith

  For as long as I can remember, I have been in love with my best friend. It took me nearly sixteen years to realise that little fact about my life, and still it came as a shock. I just thought that’s how friends felt about each other. In retrospect, wanting to be with her all of the time, wanting to cuddle her, kiss her cheek, hold her hand seemed a little too familiar for even the closest of friends. It was definitely a case of not seeing the wood for the trees, and then having the startling realisation that there was only one tree I wanted.

  Mary Carpenter. That’s her name, a simple name—not classy, not double-barrelled, not anything special. But her name belied how very special she was, and not just to me. There was just something about her that attracted people to her, something about her that made a person feel better knowing she existed in this world. Everyone loved Mary. Everyone. If I didn’t know better, I would have said even my parents loved her more than they loved me. Not that I minded. It was the boys who hovered around her all the way through school that I hated. Those pimply-faced wankers would try to cop a feel of her at any opportunity.

  That’s where Mary and I met. School, I mean. Infant school. We bonded immediately, becoming firm friends within minutes. She poured sand into my hair from the sand pit and I punched her squarely in the face, and those things seemed to solidify our friendship, though we came out of the experience grainier and bloodier than when we started. Blood sisters from the beginning.

  Life with her in it always seemed better, brighter, full of fun. Being with Mary filled me with such agonisingly wonderful emotions that I knew she would always be a part of my world. Either that, or I would shrivel up and die in a corner somewhere. Overly dramatic? Yes. But that’s how it’s always been, and would continue to be if I had anything to do with it.

  Anyone would think I should have caught a clue in my teens, especially with all those hormones raging inside of me, screaming, ‘Give it to me. Give it to me. I don’t know what it is, but give it to me anyway.’ But no.

  I didn’t even go down the ‘experimenting with others of the same sex’ path, as quite a few of my classmates seemed to do. My experimenting happened with lads. I should have realised then, but, once again, no. I was so far in the closet I couldn’t even find my way past my t-shirts and to the doors, not that I was looking for them. I was oblivious to the fact I was a lesbian.

  When Mary had a date, I would be happy for her. Well, happy in the way that included grinning and nodding stupidly whilst wondering why there was a feeling of emptiness creeping inside me. When she wanted to stay out late, I would lie and tell her parents she was staying over at my house, when I knew for a fact she was shacked up with some twat-faced, tit grabbing, arse-wipe of a boy, and they were probably doing unmentionables with the stickier parts of their developing bodies.

  She never told me, though—never bragged about it, complained about it, or laughed about it. She was always the same, always my Mary.

  I’m not surprised she had all the lads in a tizz. Mary Carpenter was a beauty. Her body was that of an athlete—firm, strong, toned. Whatever the season, Mary’s skin appeared to always have a soft tan, and instead of this hiding her other features, it gloriously enhanced them.

  Her eyes. God, those eyes. I could live and die a thousand times in them and still beg for more. Dark. Dark and intense, and able to absorb the world with just one look. Thick lashes framed those perfect orbs, making them even more striking. But that wasn’t all. Her long dark hair shone when there was any kind of light, and even when there wasn’t. Her lips appeared to have been crafted by a Heavenly Being rather than the result of genetics passed down to her from her parents.

  Even though I had duly noted every one of Mary’s attributes, I was still surprised to discover that my feelings for my best friend ran deeper than platonic love. The moment I first realised I was in love with her instead of the sisterly adoration I believed I felt will be forever engraved in my mind.

  We were seated in Pizza Hut, wading through a 14-inch Hawaiian. Not the most romantic of places, but who said a person had to be sitting on a beach in Hawaii to get the gist of the tropics? I was picking pineapple off my half as if it was the spawn of Satan, and she was laughing at me.

  ‘Why do you insist on getting pineapple on the pizza when you hate it?’

  Her voice was soft, yet sultry. It was me recognising the ‘sultry’ part that made me realise that things were not as they usually were. My hand hovered over the pizza, mozzarella clinging to the piece of pineapple dangling from my fingers almost like a fucked up fruit version of a bungee jump.

  Her face was animated; her parted lips exposing wonderfully straight white teeth. I sucked in an involuntary breath as the ache inside my chest intensified into sweet agony. A light seemed to glow behind her, illuminating her outline as if she was being signposted to me by God, ‘This is she!’ With her very own nimbus to seal the deal.

  It was at that precise moment that I knew I was in love with Mary Carpenter, that miniscule moment in time when all my sad little life up to that point seemed to make sense to me. I remember the pull of the idiotic love-struck grin slowly sliding into place across my lips, remember sighing dreamily, leaning forward, my fruit and cheese combo dragging across the table.

  ‘Are you okay, Louise?’

  The sultry tone was gone, replaced by what I can only term as confusion, with maybe a little panic for good measure. The intense eyes were boring into mine, her body language and expression expectant yet guarded.

  ‘Yeah. Sure. I just don’t like pineapple.’ What the fuck?

  And I wondered why Mary Carpenter didn’t want me the way I wanted her. Even at the precise moment I realised I was in love, I couldn’t think of anything else to say apart from a reference to me not liking pineapple. That’s the kind of sad fucker I was. Or should say ‘am.’

  * * *

  It has been six years since I realised I was in love with Mary Carpenter. Six long years. Six years of wanting her, yearning for her, praying that she would one day look in my direction and realise I was what she wanted. And for those six years I had to stand to the side and watch her become more beautiful, witness the longing looks from all the men she met—and even some of the women. The green-eyed monster seemed to be forever present, but I told him, unceremoniously, to fuck off.

  Not long after I realised I was in love with Mary, we went off to university. Separately. She went to Durham, and I stayed nearer home in Manchester. We stayed in touch. We were best friends, after all. We even made the time to meet when
our schedules allowed. It was these times I loathed and loved. To be with her was a pleasurable pain. Don’t get me wrong, being with her was glorious, but it was the knowledge that she would be gone again, living her life 130 miles away from me, that was the kick in the teeth.

  Let me get one thing straight: I wasn’t straight. Being in love with my best friend had awakened me to all the possibilities that life could hold. I wish I could say that in the six years I was waiting for Mary to notice me in a way that went beyond friendship, I was a saint, but, alas, I wasn’t. I wasn’t a tramp; I was just searching for someone who could ease the yearning I had for the one woman who was unobtainable.

  In some ways, I still feel bad about all the women I’d been with. They wanted so much from me, and I couldn’t give it. I wanted to. God, I wanted to. But how could I give my heart when it had already been lost when I was 19 years old? Maybe even way before that, but I was too stupid to realise it earlier. Relationships seemed to be built on empty foundations, and I counted the days until I could make an excuse and flee from what I termed the shackles of life with someone I didn’t love, would never love, could never love.

  Stupid, I know. Why would I give up a chance of happiness because of someone I knew I could never have? Simple. Because I knew I would never know true happiness unless I was with her. She was my all, my everything, my heart’s desire. For me, Mary was the woman all other women had to aspire to be, and she didn’t even know it.

  Mary was oblivious to my pining. Surprising, considering I am the worst actress known to mankind. Her behaviour towards me never changed. When we saw each other, she was still filled with excitement, bubbly, wanting us to do the same things we had always done. But now I felt weird cuddling up with her on the sofa, watching old films. I felt like I was taking advantage of her whenever she slipped her arms around me, pulled me close, and told me how much she missed me when she was away. It was becoming more and more difficult to not be on edge all of the time I was with her. I was afraid the longing I felt for her might expose me; I might turn in her arms and kiss her when she was dozing behind me.

 

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