The Christmas Company

by Alys Murray

  “How do you decorate this thing? And where did all of these come from?”

  “It’s all Christmas Company stock,” she explained, “but we have this tradition where every year everyone who works for the festival brings one ornament and adds it to the collection. That’s why they don’t match.”

  “And what’s the point of that?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just fun.”

  “But why?”

  “Because it’s a tradition.”

  “But why is it a tradition? How did it start? What’s the big deal?” Clark honestly wasn’t trying to be an annoying jerk. He simply didn’t get it, like his twelve-year-old self didn’t get the point of the Christmas traditions at boarding school. Everyone bought into the rituals and empty gestures; he didn’t understand why.

  “It just is.” Kate’s hands hesitated over a small puppy ornament, searching for something to offer him. Clark held his breath. “Like your mom putting out the Santa candle. It didn’t actually do anything. It’s just meaningful for its own sake.”

  “Wait…you mean Santa isn’t real?”

  He chose to joke rather than acknowledge his own investment in his mother’s tradition. That was different. It earned him a good-natured shove from his partner.

  “Of course he’s real. Shut up and decorate the tree.”

  Obediently, Clark collected a few ornaments out of the box, inspecting each one with keen interest. They didn’t come out of a two-for-one sale from some big box store. Each one came from a person here in town. Each one carried meaning. They were, like the paperclip stars, special to someone. Maybe if he knew why, everything would become clear.

  “Can you tell me about them?” he asked.

  “The ornaments?”

  “Yeah. Do you know anything about them?”

  “I know them all. I keep the record books about who gives us what.” She collected a few herself. “Why don’t you start putting them up and I’ll talk you through them?”

  Clark nodded, then reached up on his toes to place a toy X-wing fighter up towards the top of the tree.

  “What’s the deal with this one?”

  “It’s heavy!” Kate held out a hand to stop him, her fingers barely brushing his. Panic gleamed in her eyes. Clark reminded himself how important these little trinkets were to her. Breaking even one would break a piece of her. “Put it on a low branch. The high branches aren’t strong enough to hold it.”

  “Right.”

  Great move, Clark. Now she thinks you’re a triple moron. You don’t get Christmas and you made her confess her life story to you and you don’t get basic physics. He placed the miniature space plane on the appropriate branch, ignoring the heat rising to the tops of his ears. If she noticed the red splotches undoubtedly forming there, she was decent enough not to mention anything.

  “Teddy Cooper gave us that two years ago. He got it in a happy meal, said it was the “happiest meal of his life,” and so he turned it into an ornament so he could always remember.”

  “Wow. Okay…” Clark scraped his memory for the last time he’d laughed as much as he laughed today, only to come up empty. Brushing that thought away, he picked up a tiny gold band turned into an ornament by an interlocked strand of clear fishing line. He dangled it so close to his eyes his lashes brushed the circlet of metal, trying to discern what it could possibly be. “What about this one?”

  “Condola Walker. She broke off her engagement and that’s the ring.”

  “What?” The urge to throw the ring across the room fought his urge to run into town and return the jewelry to this Condola person. Who would give up something so expensive when they could have just pawned it? Kate, unmoved by his indignation, rolled her eyes.

  “It was, like, twelve dollars or something. Believe me, she was glad to be rid of it. Keep ’em coming. We’ll never get this tree decorated at this rate.”

  Shaking off the abject strangeness of someone just giving away their engagement ring, Clark hung it up towards the top of the tree. It caught the light, spinning in the gentle breeze of the drafty old house. Even if he wasn’t inclined to like her—which he was, he’d admitted defeat in his battle against his affection for Kate—he’d still be the first to admit how impressive Kate’s instant recall of the facts of the town was. Like a close-hand magic trick, Clark all at once wanted to move in closer and step further back. Her confession about her childhood rattled him; the distraction of decorating didn’t prove as distancing as he hoped. She’d been so broken by her family that she’d devoted her life to everyone else in this town.

  No wonder they all came at her call today. No wonder they decorated his house and cooked a banquet at her request.

  “This one’s a tiny fake tree,” Clark said, twirling the small carving. Kate wedged herself between the wall and the tree, trying to decorate an unseen portion of branches, so this one demanded some description.

  “Does it have little red baubles on it?” she asked, muffled by the tree between them.

  “Yes.”

  “That one’s from Mr. and Mrs. Simon. Their little grandbaby died, and Mrs. Simon built the coffin herself out of a tree in their backyard. She took a piece of the scrap wood and carved that.”

  Clark cradled the tiny ornament in the palm of his hands, staring down at it reverently as he searched for a word to properly describe the empty cavern opening in his chest. He hadn’t felt this way in so long.

  “That’s sad.”

  “Don’t worry. There are plenty of funny ones in there.” Kate came to the rescue as Clark placed the tiny tree in a high place of honor upon the larger tree. “Do you see any paper flowers made out of thick paper? They should have music notes on them, if that helps.”

  Digging around, he finally found not one, but about twenty of those flowers tucked into a shoebox in the bottom of one of the ornament crates.

  “Yeah.”

  “Those were given to us by Pastor Mark, but he didn’t make them. He caught a bunch of boys making paper airplanes out of hymnal pages, so he decided if they liked folding paper so much, they would take all two hundred of the out-of-date hymnals and make paper flowers out of them. They spent six days of Christmas vacation making those things.”

  They carried on in this fashion for longer than Clark cared to admit; even worse, he hung on her every word. He actually invested himself in the intersecting and interweaving lives of these strangers. A born storyteller, Kate shared every story she remembered, dragging him deeper and deeper into the melting-pot mythologies of Miller’s Point.

  His attention slipped only once, when he pulled out what seemed like the millionth star-shaped trinket. Only, this one was different. It struck him. Multiple shades of ugly green and brown glass had been melted together to form a sort of patchwork glass star. Its edges created an outline out of twisted wire. The most similar thing he could think of was a stained-glass window, but those were beautiful. This wasn’t quite beautiful. It was sublime, perhaps. Holding it up to the light, he let the color play on his face, losing himself in the warped surface of the star.

  “What’s this one?”

  “That’s one of mine,” Kate said, her voice dipping low. The pride she’d taken only a few minutes ago in her stories and shared histories vanished.

  “What is it? Did you make it?” Clark squinted, coming up closer to a raised etching along one of the corners. He could hardly make it out. “Is this a whiskey label? I didn’t know you drank.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Was this like an art project or something?”

  After hours of learning about her town and these ornaments, he should have known none of these were just anything. They all carried their own weighted tales. To think Kate’s wouldn’t was the height of foolishness.

  “When my dad died, right after my eighteenth birthday, I went to his apartment and cleaned it all o
ut. I hadn’t been living there for, like, two years. Emily’s family took me in. So, I went through the whole house, throwing almost everything away. And then I got to my old bedroom. It was covered in broken bottles, like he’d just thrown them all at the wall and let them shatter. There had to be a hundred of them. He used my room as a garbage can, basically.” She laughed a wry laugh.

  It occurred to Clark then how unfamiliar they were, and yet how close at the same time. They’d only met yesterday, but they’d both exchanged their most painful memories without a second thought. Maybe it was the magic of the season or her persistence or a little bit of both, but they trusted one another even when they had every reason to protect their own secrets.

  He’d broken her once. He told her he didn’t care. He lied. But this moment was different. She wasn’t broken; she wasn’t hiding. But he still wanted to wrap her in his arms and hold her together.

  “Kate—”

  “Anyway,” she brushed him off. “I cleaned the whole house, but I couldn’t get rid of all that glass. I mean, I could have. But when the whole house was clean and I was left with a handful of broken glass shards, I didn’t want to. I wanted something of his, even if he hated me. I asked Michael to help me make this. My dad wasn’t a good dad. Or really a dad at all. But he was mine. And I didn’t want him to be erased. I wanted to always look at the tree and remember.”

  “Remember what?”

  Her arms froze over the tree. The whiskey bottle star halted over the greenery. Her face knitted tightly in an expression he’d never seen come across her face before.

  “I don’t know,” she confessed. “Remember him. Remember that I survived. Remember that I forgave him and loved him even if he wasn’t good to me.”

  “You forgave him?”

  Kate blinked. Her long eyelashes were wet with tears, but none fell down her cheeks. Her stare melted into confusion, as if he was a student who’d just asked what the capital of their own state was, as if the answer was so obvious as to render the question absurd.

  “I had to.”

  “Why?” He asked.

  Somehow, Clark and Kate had gotten so close he could feel her breath on his skin. He wanted to kiss the wrinkle between her eyebrow away. He wanted to hold her and tell her nothing could ever hurt her again.

  “Because we can’t survive if we’re always carrying dead bodies around, you know? That’s no way to make a happy life.” The sting of conviction stole the breath from Clark’s lungs. He was guilty. He’d been dragging around dead bodies his entire life, robbing himself of any chance of happiness just so he could forget his own pain. Kate rolled her eyes, an attempt to clear the air of tension. “Besides, he was kind of a jerk. He probably would have resented my forgiveness. No better way to get revenge, right?”

  She moved to step away, but Clark caught her. He couldn’t help but touch her. Their intimacy demanded it. His cold hand reached up for her left cheek; he cradled it, commanding her eyes. Her breath hitched. His heart stumbled. Kiss her, you moron argued with don’t ruin what you have by kissing her, you moron. He’d gone most of his life without friends, and tonight he’d found one. Learning from her and basking in their friendship had to be more important than kissing her.

  “How do you do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Stay as hopeful as you do. I don’t understand how it’s possible for one person to be this optimistic all the time. I was awful to you and you didn’t flinch. Your life hasn’t been great but you count it as a blessing… How do you do it?”

  “You really want to know?”

  “Yeah.”

  She bit her lip, an adorable gesture Clark never got in movies but now understood completely. She grew increasingly sheepish as she interrogated his motives.

  “You promise you won’t make fun of me? It’s pretty cheesy.”

  “Promise.”

  “Cross your heart?”

  “Yeah.”

  She shot him a look. Apparently, she wanted him to actually cross his heart. He did so, all while struggling to maintain a dignified, solemn expression. When she was satisfied, she shoved her hands into her back pockets, staring up at the tree. In the glow of the lights, she looked more than beautiful as she whispered the simple truth that had sustained her through her entire life.

  “I keep Christmas with me all year long. It’s the one time of year when I find it impossible to think the worst in people. If I pretend every day is Christmas, it makes life so much easier to live. And people so much easier to love.”

  “I wish I could do that,” Clark breathed. He tried to move his hand away from her cheek, but Kate got there first. She held him there, this time forcing him to give her his eyes. A sweet smile encouraged him. Challenged him. Filled him with hope.

  “You can.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Tree decorating gave way to black-and-white movies and popcorn, which gave way to leftover turkey sandwiches with cranberry sauce which inevitably gave way to heavy eyelids and almost naps. Conversation and laughter flowed easily between them, though Kate got the distinct feeling Clark was out of practice when it came to having a friend. The defenses he threw up against her only this morning diffused, leaving them only with his rusty attempts at humor and near-constant questions about Christmas and its traditions. Kate didn’t mind at all. In fact, she suspected this Christmas would go down as one of her favorites. Not because it was perfect—it definitely wasn’t—but because she’d never experienced anything quite like this, something this pure.

  The Festival was her life. Everyone who worked on it was her family. She was immeasurably glad for the security they gave her. The problem came on Christmas night, when her entire year had been leading up to a grand spectacle of the season. She loved the spectacle, but there was something beautiful and singular about sharing a private Christmas with someone who’d never had one before. For the first time, Kate saw the holiday not through her eyes, but his. The beauty of this holiday she loved so much now engulfed her. The lights shone brighter. The classic lines of It’s a Wonderful Life cut deeper. Her faith renewed.

  When It’s a Wonderful Life went into its encore showing, Kate stretched her tight muscles along the overstuffed couch. Clark, for his part, sprawled out in a distinctly Victorian armchair. Wide, decorative walls of the chair obscured his face behind their panels while the roaring fireplace illuminated his long limbs.

  “Clark? Clark, are you awake?” she whispered. Half of her didn’t want to disturb him, while the other half of her demanded she wake him up. It wasn’t even midnight, after all. There was so much Christmas left and so little time to prove its worth to him. Fortunately, he saved her the trouble of waking him.

  “Yeah, I’m awake,” he whispered back, as though they were in a crowded movie theater instead of his own living room.

  The next phase of Kate’s plan wasn’t really for him. It wasn’t even part of the plan. She’d been doing Christmas without parents for most of her life, which meant she was fairly stuck in her ways. There was one tradition she refused to compromise on.

  “I was wondering… Do you have a copy of A Christmas Carol?”

  “No idea. Why?”

  “I read it every Christmas Eve.”

  She thought she’d brought her own copy for such a scenario, but a quick scan of her backpack earlier in the evening revealed only pajamas, a change of clothes for Christmas Day, a toothbrush, and a box of white chocolate pretzels. Perhaps during her packing she assumed the multimillion-dollar mansion would contain at least one copy of the greatest novella in the English canon; if she had a manor and an estate, she’d have a million copies. It was, after all, her favorite book.

  “Really? But don’t you…” Clark leaned forward, popping out from behind the panels of his chair to scoff in disbelief, “You basically watch A Christmas Carol every day for like, a month and a half, don’t you?”


  “Yeah, but…” Kate played with her hands. One of the reasons she’d gotten the job at the festival was her reputation in town as the “Dickens-obsessed girl.” She could practically recite the original book by heart. What they didn’t know was that after the festival ended on Christmas night, she tucked herself into her bed at her dad’s house and read the book over and over again, just so she could pretend she was still in a magical world of hope and joy, rather than a booze-soaked nightmare. Kate didn’t feel inclined to tell Clark the entire truth, so she danced around it instead. “Usually, once the festival is over, I go home and I’m too keyed up to sleep. It’s my favorite book, so it puts me in a good mood.”

  “Follow me,” Clark said, rising to his feet.

  “Where are we going?”

  “If it’s anywhere, it’ll be in the library. C’mon.”

  Kate caught a passing glimpse of the library earlier, but walking in and fully immersing herself in it almost knocked her back a step. She’d never been in this room before. It was off-limits during all Christmas Company events. Belle’s library in Beauty and The Beast had nothing on this beautiful collection of leather-bound tomes. The Woodward Library in the center of town, until now Kate’s favorite place in the world, paled in comparison. She thought back to the stack of three rotating library books on her bedside table and her falling-apart copy of A Christmas Carol. Rich people may not have had it easy, as Clark’s stories about his childhood suggested, but they did have an endless supply of books, which Kate could absolutely get on board with.

  “There must be a million books in here,” Kate said, awed.

  “I think it’s closer to two thousand. Let’s check the card catalogue.”

  “There’s a card catalogue?”

  “How else would you find anything?” Clark arrived at a carved wooden chest pockmarked with orderly drawers. Each was labeled with a series of letters. He rifled through the Da-Dl drawer, moving the cards with practiced efficiency. Kate could only assume he was too cheap to digitize his office. Everything in Woodward Enterprises probably operated on card catalogue. “Dickens… Dickens… Oliver Twist. Tale of Two Cities, A… Pickwick Papers… I’m sorry. No A Christmas Carol.”