A Long December

by Richard Chizmar

  No, my social schedule was clear. I spent my time with Julie and her family, though they never knew that I was around.

  The rusted mailbox in front of the house said COOPER. The house itself looked like any other in the neighborhood, just another old ranch-style thing that needed work—new gutters, energy-efficient windows, some paint. There were no Christmas lights hanging from the eaves, no tree in the window. That wasn’t unusual—more than a few of the Cooper’s neighbors seemed to be getting along without the prescribed signs of seasonal cheer. The neighborhood was definitely not upwardly mobile, more like we’re-holding-on-by-the-skin-of-our-teeth. But Julie’s was the only house on the block where the snow mounded unshoveled on the walk, the only house where a television antenna stood in for a cable hookup.

  None of that really surprised me, not at first. I’d seen the way Julie and Tina—that was her mom’s name—dressed. I’d followed them to enough discount markets and cheap gas stations to know that things were tight with them.

  I wasn’t really surprised until I saw Julie’s father for the first time. He glided past my parked car late one evening, lounging behind the wheel of a black Cadillac Seville that shone like a new eight ball. He parked next to the rattletrap Datsun that Tina drove, a hunk of Japanese metal that looked like Godzilla had had his way with it.

  A couple days passed before our schedules meshed. Then I followed Mr. Cooper instead of Julie and Tina.

  I hated him instantly. For one thing, he worked for the phone company. He was a big enough fish to warrant his own parking space, and he made a habit of taking the bigger fish to lunch and picking up the tab. I followed him into places where I could barely afford the price of a Diet Coke and a bowl of soup. I watched as he left generous tips for the waiters, and I don’t think I’ll ever forget the satisfied little smirk that crossed his lips when he gave his boss a pen-and-pencil set from Parker’s, a shoplifter’s favorite that would have set me back several day’s pay. After work, Cooper stopped off for drinks at a bar near the highway, a dive called the High Hat Club. Dropped more tip money, though he kept to himself. Didn’t spare the booze, either. He was always pretty well tanked by the time he headed home.

  All this while his wife and daughter lived like paupers.

  That wasn’t the only reason I disliked Julie’s dad, though.

  His first name was Adrian. That went right along with the little smirk.

  And Adrian Cooper liked to rape his daughter.

  It happened on weekends as far as I could tell. Tina actually had a job on Saturday and Sunday at a run-down florist shop over by the mall, but I knew the job was just a ploy to get her out of the house.

  I sat in my car on two consecutive weekends, trying not to be noticed on that gray little street. Four days, and every one of them was the same. Tina would leave for work. Shortly thereafter, the drapes would whisper closed, and the lights would be extinguished. The last drape to close and the last light to dim were always in Julie’s bedroom.

  Several hours passed each time. Then the lights came on and the drapes were opened, after which Adrian packed the sullen little girl with the porcelain complexion into his big black car and treated her to an ice-cream sundae at the mall. I’m sure that in his sick little mind that trip to the mall made everything okay with him. The son of a bitch couldn’t even see it. Slurping up his ice cream, fingers drumming so innocently on his pale daughter’s knee.

  Four days of that, and I saw everything as if I had x-ray vision. I sat there in my old car, watching the minutes tick by on the dashboard clock. It was all I could do to stay behind the wheel while it happened.

  And then the last Sunday came, the Sunday before Christmas, and suddenly I realized I was done sitting.

  The Caddy pulled out and headed for the mall. I made a U-turn and parked in front of the rusted mailbox that said COOPER. I got out and walked up the drive, and I didn’t even bother to knock because no one who lived on the gray little street was paying attention.

  I kicked in the door. Like I said, there wasn’t a Christmas tree, but there were a few presents. It didn’t surprise me that most of them were addressed to “Adrian” or “Daddy.” I collected a stack, took them out to the car, and dumped them in the backseat, just to make it look good. I waited to hear the sirens, but there was no sound at all.

  I returned to the house, and this time I closed the door behind me. Adrian and Tina had separate bedrooms. Adrian, of course, occupied the largest in the house.

  It was a fairly boring room. Dull—if tasteful—furniture, stupid little Sharper Image gadgets, uninspiring prints on the wall, and a bed with a very hard mattress.

  A stout, masculine dresser stood to the right of the bed. I searched the drawers and found stiff pin-striped shirts and argyle socks and other clothes that seemed designed especially for a phone company fast-track kind of guy. Other drawers housed Ralph Lauren clothes for fast-track-kind-of-guy weekends.

  In the bottom drawer, beneath Adrian’s Polo sweaters, I found a pistol.

  So, the bastard was smart enough to be a little paranoid.

  I figured the pistol was a sign that I was getting close. I pulled up the lining paper glued to the bottom of the drawer. A large envelope was hidden underneath, along with a few kiddie porn magazines.

  I dumped the pictures on the hard bed and saw the little girl with the face of an angel doing the things her daddy made her do.

  But I only looked at her eyes.

  After I left the house, I drove over to the florist shop and parked next to the battle-scarred Datsun with four balding tires.

  Tina was inside, busily misting some ferns that hung near the cash register. I thought that she looked good in the cheap pink blouse with her name stitched over the pocket, and then our eyes met and I found myself remembering Julie’s eyes in Cooper’s secret pictures.

  “Can I help you?” she asked, and it sounded like she’d break apart if I refused the offer.

  “I hope you can.” I tried to make it light, but I was a bundle of nerves. “I guess I’m just not a white Christmas kind of guy. I want something green. You know, something nice. Not a fern or anything. Something with flowers.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t mean to sound weird or anything,” she said. “But your voice—it sounds really familiar. Have we met?”

  “Picture me with a long white beard.”

  “What?”

  “Santa Claus.” I smiled and found the expression was becoming a little more comfortable. “Parker’s Department Store version, at your service.”

  She laughed, and it was a good sound. “I thought we’d met.”

  “Yeah. I guess there’s something about a man in red that makes a lasting impression.”

  We stood there for a moment, staring at each other, and then she went into florist-shop mode. “So,” she said, looking around, “we’ve established that you’re not a fern kind of guy. Is this for a gift?”

  “No. It’s for me. I just want a little something to, y’know, brighten things up.”

  “If you want bright, maybe you should get another string of lights for your tree.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t have a tree. I live alone.” The statement sounded too blunt, so I tried to lighten it. “It’s a real small apartment. I need all the oxygen for myself.”

  That fell flat.

  “Sorry,” Tina said. The word slipped out as a sigh, and she left it at that. I recognized the ploy. She didn’t ask any questions because she didn’t want to be asked any questions.

  “So?” I said.

  “How about this?” She was smiling now, holding a little pot with some kind of miniature bush in it.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m looking for something with flowers. And this looks like one of those Japanese bonsai things—”

  “No.” Her voice brightened. “It blooms. It’s a miniature rose.”

  “What color?”

  “White.”

  I nodded, and we moved over to the cash reg
ister. The top button of her blouse was undone, and I could still see the porcelain skin of her neck…and the bruise that began at her collarbone and ran God knows where.

  She cringed a little, raising her arm, working the register buttons. I didn’t say anything, even though the picture of her husband’s little smirk was locked up tight in my head without possibility of parole. Fair trade, that smirk said, a little pain for a late dinner.

  She took my money, and I started for the door. Then something inside me switched gears, and I stopped short. “I’ve got a question for you,” I said.

  “Shoot.”

  “Miniature roses—if you treat them right, do they grow up to be regular roses?”

  She shrugged. “I really don’t know.”

  I stood there a moment, just to let a beat pass, and then I shrugged. “Well, I guess I’ll just have to wait and find out for myself.”

  “You’ll let me know?” Tina asked.

  “I’ll let you know,” I said.

  I didn’t realize then, but it was the first promise I’d made in years.

  The black Caddy with the billiard ball shine pulled away from the parking spot marked A. COOPER, and I followed it into the night.

  Adrian had worked late—three hours overtime by my estimation—but that didn’t matter to me. Now that his day was over, everything was going to go smoothly. Adrian was going to hit the High Hat Club. I was going to join him. Belly up with Mr. Fast Track and strike up a conversation. If that was possible. Order a beer, my first in three years, and hold myself to just one, if that was possible (and I prayed that it was). Maybe we’d talk about the kind of magazines that came in brown paper wrappers, or trade tips about how to find camera shops that were willing to print pictures of naked children if you were willing to shell out some of the cash your wife and kid never saw. In short, I wanted to watch old Adrian sweat a little bit, just so I would know what that looked like. I wanted to see him loosen his expensive tie, and I wanted to sniff the air and learn just how effective his expensive deodorant was.

  But if he was all chatted out after a tough day shilling 800 numbers, that was okay too. I could wait. I could bide my time. Either way, when Adrian left the High Hat, I planned to be right behind him, closer than he could imagine. Closer even than his own shadow.

  The Caddy eased onto the freeway and dipped into traffic. I followed. I was signaling for the exit near the High Hat when Adrian changed lanes and headed south. Sweat beaded on my forehead, and a hole seemed to open up in my guts. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t supposed to happen.

  And then Adrian’s turn signal was flashing. He took the Briarwood exit, traveled a road I knew by heart, and made the same turn I’d made morning after morning for the last three years, ever since I’d gotten sober.

  There weren’t many empty parking spaces, it being the Monday before Christmas, so Adrian Cooper parked his Caddy in a handicapped spot near the big glass doors of the mall that housed Parker’s Department Store.

  I started to worry when closing time came and there was no sign of Mr. Adrian Cooper. Then I remembered what kind of guy he was. Cooper certainly thought he held a paramount spot in the universe. Such an important personage wouldn’t think anything of holding up a few working stiffs so he could get what he wanted.

  The thought got under my skin and stayed there. As if on cue, Adrian exited the mall’s smoked glass doors. A slash of bright light knifed across my feet, and then the door whispered closed and the light was gone. I stood to one side of the door, just some nobody Adrian had to step around, and I welcomed the shadows and the soft green light that painted the snow-covered parking lot.

  Adrian’s expensive loafers crunched over the fresh snow. He balanced a stack of boxes which were wrapped in the signature silver-foil wrap of my employer.

  The Caddy was one of two cars parked in the first row.

  Adrian noticed what I’d left for him quicker than I’d expected.

  “Shit,” he muttered, setting the boxes on the hood of the Caddy and snatching something from under the windshield wiper.

  It wasn’t what he had expected. It wasn’t a parking ticket.

  His knees actually quivered. He nearly went down. I enjoyed seeing that.

  I walked over and took the little picture of Julie out of his hand.

  “This is what it feels like,” I said.

  He didn’t seem to hear me. I took the keys out of his hands, opened the door before he could protest.

  “We have to talk,” I said, lowering a leather-gloved hand on his shoulder, pushing him into the car.

  The first thing Adrian did was loosen his tie. Then he started to sweat, and the Caddy was choked with a scent both raw and spicy.

  We were parked at the edge of the mall lot, next to a chain-link fence that rimmed a Christmas tree lot. The hour was late and the lot was closed. All I could see was a sprinkling of dim white Christmas lights; a giant inflatable Santa, arms bobbing under the weight of fresh snowflakes; and the stark, spindly silhouettes of the cheap, dead trees.

  “I bet Julie would like a tree,” I said.

  Adrian Cooper nodded.

  I laughed, kicked at the silver paper around my feet, and shifted the boxes so my hands were free. “You know, she still believes in Santa Claus.”

  Adrian sputtered, “I—I didn’t realize that.”

  “And you know what else?” He didn’t reply, but our eyes met, and it killed me that even in this moment his blue eyes held more spark than either Tina’s or Julie’s. “No,” I continued, “you don’t know, so I’ll tell you. Julie knows something most seven-year-olds don’t know. She knows how to come on to Santa Claus. She’s a little kid who had to learn how to whore just to survive. And you taught her that. You’re the one who twisted her.”

  Cooper’s hands were tight on the steering wheel. He didn’t say a word.

  “Aren’t you going to offer me money?” I asked.

  “I…I don’t think…you want money.”

  “You’re right about that.” I reached into my coat, and my fingers closed around the pistol I’d taken from Adrian’s stout, masculine dresser. “You know, I had a wife and kid once. A little girl, just like Julie. A woman just as pretty as Tina. I blew it with them. Oh, not as bad as you. Not nearly as bad as you. But I blew it. See, I was a smash-up-the-family-car kind of guy, a come-get-me-out-of-jail kind of husband. A sorry-I-missed-Christmas kind of dad.

  “With me it was the bottle. That’s a sickness. But I woke up and saw it. I faced it down until I memorized every ugly scale on the monster’s hide. And I learned how to control it. Things are better now.”

  Adrian’s voice was very quiet. “Maybe I can…” He hesitated, searching for the right word.

  I found it for him. “Change? Maybe you can. I’m not saying it’s impossible. But I don’t think that it’s going to happen. And I don’t think Julie and Tina can count on the odds you’d give them.”

  One hand stayed on the pistol. The other hand drifted over one of the boxes from Parker’s Department Store. My gloved fingers brushed the wisps of red silk nestled in tissue paper. I hooked the spaghetti straps, lifted the teddy, and watched it dance in the shadows. It didn’t seem any bigger than a handkerchief, really.

  “Amazing,” I said. “I didn’t know that they made these things so small. What did you tell the salesgirl, anyway? You tell her that your wife was Vietnamese?”

  “Look,” Adrian said, “if you’re going to do something—”

  I slipped the gun from my pocket. I could hardly feel it with my hands sheathed in heavy gloves.

  “Wait a minute.” His blue eyes were focused on me instead of the gun. “I know this is going to happen. I know I can’t stop you. But I think it would be easier on both of us if you give me the gun. I’d rather do this myself.”

  I thought it over. I really wanted to believe him.

  But I couldn’t, and that was sad. “I can’t play those odds, Cooper,” I said.

  He closed his eyes.
I stared down at the Christmas card, which had been covered by the skimpy teddy. On the front, a cartoon man wearing a goofy grin, saying, “You’re invited to trim my tree.” On the inside flap, same man, naked and grotesque. “All it takes is two red balls.”

  Under that, scrawled in expensive ink from a Parker’s Department Store pen:

  Love My Little Girl,

  Daddy

  Adrian Cooper said, “Are you sure—”

  He never finished the sentence.

  When they lowered the coffin into the grave, I was thinking that it should have been wrapped with a big red bow.

  Tina and Julie buried Adrian Cooper on Christmas morning. I interpreted that as a good sign, a sign that Tina wanted to lay the past to rest and move on. No one else attended the funeral but the minister, and he was in and out in a matter of minutes. Everyone’s busy on Christmas.

  Everyone but me.

  I stayed in the shadows, standing over the grave of a man I didn’t know with flowers in my hands. It looked like Adrian’s death would be ruled a suicide. I had been pretty careful—I’d worn gloves when I pulled the trigger, and then, after Adrian was dead, I’d twisted his fingers around the weapon and fired a shot through the open window. And if there wasn’t a suicide note, the ripped up greeting card, torn photos, and lingerie seemed to stand in pretty well in the minds of the homicide detectives.

  Still, I wasn’t willing to take any unnecessary chances by getting too close to the ceremony. Cops love to watch funerals, I’m told. So I viewed the proceedings from a distance, and I saw a little girl and her mother standing over a dirt grave rimmed by a meadow of snow, their faces showing nothing, but their fingers interlocked.