Do Better: Marla Mason Stories

by T. A. Pratt

  “Gabe. My fiancé. He was back, and then he vanished. As soon as Christmas ended.”

  “Was there a question?”

  She felt the prickle of tears being born and tried to hold them back. “Why couldn’t he stay?”

  The woman shrugged. “You shouldn’t question miracles. What did you expect? Bringing someone back from the dead, and I didn’t even have a body to work with? Twenty-four hours is a pretty good miracle.”

  Ivy clenched her hands into fists, her nails digging into her palms. “If you give someone a gift, and then you take it away—”

  “Possessions make terrible gifts,” the woman interrupted. “They just clutter up the place. The best kind of gift is an experience. Something to build memories on. You got some good memories, didn’t you? Better than your last memories of him, all broken up in the street. So tell me: would you give up what you had yesterday? Would you take it back?” Her eyes glittered, strangely avid, and Ivy paused before shouting a furious reply. Whatever this woman was, she was powerful. Who knew what she might do?

  “No,” Ivy said. “But if I’d known I only had one day with him, I would have done things differently.”

  “Live and learn. Or is it live and let live? Or die?” The woman took a noisemaker from some hidden pocket, stuck it between her lips, and blew, producing a sound like a dramatically dying duck. Ivy flinched back from the noise. “Enjoy your new year. I’m going to visit a friend of mine, we have this whole tradition. You won’t see me around here for a while.”

  “I—thank you.” Ivy had gotten a day with Gabe, and it was better for her last memory to be him, sleeping peacefully, in her bed. Even if this did feel like losing him all over again. “For the miracle.”

  “Don’t thank me, thank... no, you’re right, it’s me.” The redhead rose and walked off, leaving behind her blankets and bags and all the essentials for surviving life on the street, like they were props forgotten by a performer at the end of a show... and maybe they were.

  Ivy had the picture of Gabe, so she knew it had really happened, but she put the experience out of her mind as best she could, focusing on her work, and socializing with friends, and volunteering with abused children: looking for meaning, and a way to fill her days with something other than crying. Around October she gave in and went on a couple of dates with people her friends set her up with, and they were nice enough men and women, but none of them were Gabe, and their smiles and chit-chat and kisses were intolerable to her. Her therapist told her to be patient, that things would get better, but she didn’t understand. Ivy’s process of getting over Gabe had been interrupted by his miraculous reappearance. The miracle had reset her clock of grief.

  All year, she walked the long way around to avoid the block where the redheaded woman had sat. Ivy’s sanity couldn’t stand another encounter with her.

  She did Thanksgiving with her family, to stave off doing a big Christmas, and planned to just hide her way through the holiday, but her ex-girlfriend and present best friend Melissa insisted she spend Christmas Eve at her house: “You aren’t going to ghost ship through another holiday, girl.”

  So Ivy hung out with Melissa and her fiancée Chelsea, and they drank spiced apple cider bourbon punch and ate a cheese log and watched Die Hard and Bad Santa and Scrooged. She actually had a nice time, and went to sleep on Melissa’s couch by the soft lights of their tree, and dreamed, of course, of Gabe.

  Gabe

  He woke at midnight, naked on the floor under a tree, but this time it was just a little artificial one standing on an end table: the fiber-optic kind of toy tree, with the glowing white branches, except it wasn’t turned on. The apartment was dark, and he wandered, calling for Ivy, confused. Last thing he remembered, he was drifting off in her bed—

  “Shit. A Christmas miracle.” He’d come back to life, again, but this time, she wasn’t home; clearly she hadn’t expected him. Maybe she’d gone to see her family, or maybe she was staying over with some new boyfriend or girlfriend. That idea brought a sharp pang, but he pushed through it. Had she forgotten him? Two years now, since he’d died, or so he determined once he got the TV turned on and confirmed the date. He looked around for a tablet or laptop or something that would let him message Ivy, wherever she was, but she must have taken that stuff with her. She didn’t have a landline, and anyway, he didn’t know her phone number. She was unreachable.

  He went looking for his old clothes and they were gone—another pang—so he settled for putting on one of her robes, even though it was pink and had a ruffly hem and barely fit him. He was ravenous—it had been a year since he last ate—and he ransacked her kitchen and made himself a sandwich, a bowl of cereal, and a bowl of ice cream. He’d always had a tendency to stress eat... but it didn’t much matter anymore, did it? No need to worry about keeping in shape when he was reborn every year, unchanged.

  Gabe found a pad of paper and a pen and tried to write Ivy a letter, since he didn’t expect to see her before he vanished again, but what could he say? She’d be heartbroken to know she’d missed him... right? Or would she just freaked out that he’d reappeared?

  He sat on the couch instead, and turned on her TV, and caught up on the year’s worth of TV shows he’d missed, and tried not to think about whether or not he was crying.

  Ivy

  She slept late Christmas morning, and then helped Melissa make a ginormous brunch of mimosas and bacon and poached eggs and hollandaise, and then they lazed throughout the afternoon, watching TV and playing the weird zombie board game Chelsea had gotten from Melissa (that reminded her of Gabe, too, but he hadn’t been a literal zombie, at least). Eventually it was approaching dinner time, and they offered to go out with her for Chinese, but she declined. “This has been great, guys. You took my mind off... everything. You’re the best friends ever. But I just want to go home and read the internet and introvert for a while.”

  They farewelled, and she swiped up a ride on her phone (at least she wasn’t spending Christmas day driving people around for money), and let herself into her apartment a bit after seven p.m.

  Someone was sitting on her couch, and she screamed and reached for her pepper spray, but he just raised a hand in a wave “Hey. I thought you must be visiting your folks.”

  “Gabe?” Then she understood, and started to sob.

  Gabe

  They lay tangled together in bed. Midnight approached, and Ivy was apologizing for the thousandth time. “I didn’t know, she never explained, I had no idea it would happen more than once—”

  He put his finger over her lips. “Shh. You’re forgiven. Let’s not spend the little time we have together on that. Fill me in on what you’ve been doing for the past year.”

  Gabe listened as she haltingly talked about work, and Chelsea and Melissa getting engaged—that was nice; maybe they’d have a Christmas wedding and he could hide in the back and watch, god—and the volunteering she was doing. Eventually he said, “Are you, ah... seeing anyone? I mean, I’d understand—”

  Now she shushed him, and then kissed him. “You,” she said. “You, you, only you.”

  That gave him a pang, too, just as bad as the one he’d felt when he thought she had moved on. How did that make any sense?

  He stayed awake, this time, until the end, thinking he’d have some feeling, some sensation, but she was just starting into his face and then blink—

  Gabe opened his eyes, naked, under a real tree. Ivy was sitting on the carpet wearing a Santa hat and a short red dress, grinning at him. She slid a large wrapped box toward him. “Hey babe. Merry Christmas. Open that up.”

  He did, and found a set of clothes: ultra soft boxer briefs, his favorite brand of jeans, a waffle-knit Henley in his shade of blue, fuzzy wool socks, and a set of reindeer antlers. He put those on, but didn’t bother with the rest, grabbing Ivy, kissing her, and tumbling her onto the carpet. “I want to unwrap you.”

  Later, he ran his fingers through her hair. “It’s gotten so long.”

  �
�You like it long,” she murmured. “I’m growing it out for you.”

  That pang again, and this time, he was able to identify it. “Ivy... this... I’m no good for you. This relationship. It’s been three years since I died, and... shouldn’t you have someone else in your life now?” He paused. “Or do you, and I’m just your side thing?”

  “I don’t want anyone else but you. This can work, Gabe. I know it’s strange, but it’s fine, it’s just... a long-distance relationship. I tell myself you’re out of town, traveling a lot.”

  He disentangled himself and sat up, blinking at her. She was so beautiful, under the lights of the tree, and he loved her more than anything, but because he loved her, he had to say it. “You can’t live your whole life for just one day a year, Ivy. You can’t put everything on hold. It means so much to me, but... it’s no kind of life.”

  “I’m a grown-up, Gabe. I can make my own choices, and I choose you.”

  “You want to have kids.” He said it calmly, as straightforwardly as he could, but she flinched back like she’d been slapped. “Three kids, remember? I can’t give you that.”

  She set her mouth in that stubborn line he’d once found so frustrating and endearing all at once. “We don’t know that we can’t have children. If I was ovulating on Christmas, or, wait, maybe if we saved your sperm—”

  “No!” he shouted. “I’m not—no, Ivy, god. To have a baby, and not see it grow up? Or to see it grow up in increments, like one of those time-lapse things online where the parents take a photo of their kid on the same day every year, and you see them go from infant to teenager in a minute? Don’t do that to me. Please, please don’t.”

  “Then what am I supposed to do?”

  He shrugged. “Move on. Don’t be home next Christmas. Just... leave a bag of clothes for me, maybe a little cash, and I’ll get out of here.”

  She stared at him. “Don’t you love me?”

  “More than anything, Ivy. You’re all I live for, at this point, literally. And maybe you can make a place for me in your life someday. Find someone who understands you have a weird Christmas thing because of your dead fiancé, and lets you run off and spend the day alone, and we can see each other then. Or maybe you can even tell them about me, though I wouldn’t do it until right before Christmas, so there’s proof. But... you have to move on. I can’t keep you from living your life.”

  “How could I ever find someone I loved as much as you, though, Gabe?”

  “Oh, that’s obviously impossible,” he said. “But second-best for the whole year is better than very best for a day.”

  He woke the next year under a small artificial tree, and there was a messenger bag and a pile of clothing, and a letter on top. “Call me if you change your mind,” it said. “Dating sucks.” There was a phone, too, programmed with her number.

  Gabe dressed, slung the bag (with the phone, the cash, a spare key to her place, and an iPad loaded with his favorite shows, or at least the ones that were still running) over his shoulder. He went down to the street and walked for a long time through the cold night, until he reached the block where Ivy had met the woman who gave her the miracle. He wasn’t sure the woman would be there—it had been years—but she was leaning against the stone wall in a little alcove, surrounded by bags and blankets, wrapped in a blanket decorated with leering cartoon snowmen, her hair so red it looked like holly berries or bishop’s robes. “Hi,” he said. “I’m your miracle.”

  She squinted at him. “Oh, right. What was your name? Dave?”

  “Gabe.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I said. What do you want? Shouldn’t you have Ivy climbing all over you, like you’re a building at Harvard?”

  He sat down on the sidewalk. “I want you to break this curse.”

  “It’s not a curse. Believe me, you’d know if it was a curse. If the cookie had crumbled a little differently, you’d know for real.”

  “Ivy can’t move on with me popping into her life every year. I need to stay dead.”

  The woman sniffed. “The evergreen doesn’t die. The sun returns after the solstice. It’s a whole thing. You want to mess with that kind of symbolism, you’re braver than me.”

  “What if I kill myself?”

  She shrugged. “You reappear next year. Look, I get that it’s kind of a drag. Your lady’s getting older and older, less and less hot, and for you there’s no gap, so it’s like you’re having sex with the same boring woman day after day after day except every time she’s got more wrinkles—”

  He leaned away from her. “You have a really ugly mind, don’t you?”

  “Ha. Call me experienced. You want me to break the miracle? Snap the tether that binds you to the season and leave that Christmas miracle just whipping around wild like a broken power line? Sure, I could do that, but there’s no telling what would happen. Dead reindeer falling out of the sky on Christmas day. Families waking up to find thousands of fat men in red suits rotting in their heating ducts. Snowmen coming to life with burning coal eyes, stabbing people to death with icicles. Krampus, maybe, he’s in the collective consciousness more lately.” She cocked her head. “Actually, that would be kind of interesting.” She reached out; her fingernails were long, red, and perfectly manicured, which was odd for a street person. “Shall I?”

  He jumped up and backed away. “No. How long will this last? This miracle.”

  She spoke in a chirpy voice and a fake English accent. “Why, for as long as the spirit of Christmas lasts, guv’nor!”

  “What are you? Why are you doing this?”

  “I’m something else, and I do it because I like to see what happens when nobody knows what’s going to happen. So far you guys have been pretty boring, but you showing up here is promising development. Stay frosty, Dave.” She shooed him away, and he went.

  He spent the day wandering, walking up and down the length of the hilly city, watching TV shows in a café with headphones on, trying to read and getting distracted. As night fell, he sat on the steps near the little beach by the chocolate factory, and he stayed there as the hours went by, looking at the dark water. When midnight approached, he texted Ivy: I left your bag hidden in the trash can by the In-N-Out in North Beach. I love you. Merry Christmas.

  Ivy

  She waited for him the next year, and when he saw her, his face fell, and wasn’t that a knife in the gut?

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I just wanted to tell you... I met someone. His name’s Rob. I think you’d like him.”

  “I’m really glad for you. I... maybe don’t tell me too much, though? I’m not sure I can handle it.”

  “I’m supposed to go over to his place in the morning, to spend the day together, but....” She reached out and touched his knee. “I have until morning. Is this okay? Now that I’m moving on? Could we... for old time’s....”

  He smiled, and it was that smile she loved, and he touched her, and it was the touch she loved, and it was a miracle of a night.

  The next morning she kissed him goodbye and left. She went to a nearby BART station and caught a ride to the East Bay. She wandered around downtown Berkeley and the university campus, where she’d gone to school. Where she’d met Gabe when they were both undergrads.

  There was no Rob.

  The next year, she confessed she didn’t have a boyfriend. Gabe got upset and said he was poisoning her future and ran out and never came back.

  The next year she didn’t get him any clothes, so he couldn’t run away, but he ran away anyway, into the cold night, down the dark streets, naked, and she never did find him, though she looked all night and day. She wondered if he’d spent Christmas in jail somewhere.

  The next year, with as much willpower as she could muster, she didn’t set up a Christmas tree, and he didn’t appear at midnight. Was that the secret? He needed a tree to appear under?

  At 12:15 there was a knock at the door, and Gabe was there, shivering. “Oh, thank god, I was afraid something had happened to you! I woke up under a tree
in the park down the block, and I thought....” He shivered, and grabbed her, and held her close, and she took him in.

  “You really love me, huh?” he asked later, in her bed.

  “You’re just now figuring that out? I’d rather have you for a day once a year than not have you at all. Maybe that makes me crazy. Maybe it makes me a romantic. My life isn’t empty, though, Gabe. I have friends. I volunteer. I got a new job—I’m an office manager now, in charge of keeping everything running at a bigger company, making good money. Sure, my family thinks I’m weird and spinstery, but I can live with that.”

  “But you wanted children—”

  “I wanted children with you, dummy. Let’s do this, okay?”

  They did it. They experimented with the nature of the miracle. She set up a little plastic tree in a hotel a few blocks from her house, and he appeared there. The next year, she stayed at a little bed and breakfast in Sonoma, two hours away, and he appeared there, too. Once they’d determined that all he needed was her and a tree, she saved up her money and vacation time and they spent Christmas in a new place every year: Florence, London, Paris, and, when she got sick of the cold, Sydney, Hawaii, and the Caribbean. They ate in the finest restaurants, saw the sights, and added to her refrigerator magnet collection. Every moment together was magic, and precious, because it was only once a year. He was her destination and her gift, and he told her his “life” was simply day after day of wonders.

  She got older, sure, and worried he would find her unattractive as time went by, but he professed to find her as lovely at forty as she’d been at twenty-five, and his ardor never flagged. Fifteen years after his death, she snuggled up against him in a ski lodge in Switzerland and said, “Every Christmas with you is the best Christmas ever.”

  “Every day’s a holiday for me, and every day, you’re my gift,” he said.

  Gabe

  On the seventeenth Christmas after his death, Gabe woke up naked under a tree in a strange room, which wasn’t surprising: he never knew where Ivy was going to take them. She wasn’t waiting for him, though, which was peculiar, and he looked around, frowning. Flames crackled in a brick fireplace, and the walls of the room were hung with framed paintings: a lot of Hieronymous Bosch, some Goya, and, incongruously, cartoons by Schulz and Watterson and Breathed. The furniture was broken-in and comfortable looking, and the wall-sized windows looked out on a dark, snowy forest. This wasn’t a hotel room, and didn’t look like a vacation home, either. Maybe it was some weird “rent-out-my-house” thing?