Santa Claus Conquers the Homophobes (14 page)

* * *

The instant its runners touched down, Santa leaped out. Gripping Wendy by the waist, he lifted her to the late autumn lawn. “Let’s have at them!” he said, and up the porch steps they bounded, passing through the locked front door. It was strange entering homes with nary a Christmas trapping laid out. A coffee table strewn with magazines stood in the space the Strattons’ tree usually occupied, where Santa would set out presents and stockings for Kurt and Jamie, their names embroidered on flat red felt stockings, which Santa filled with trinkets and gold-wrapped chocolate coins and other oddments until they plumped up like overstuffed peapods.

If the glow of magic time hadn’t lit their way to the upstairs landing, luminescent green nightlights in a series of outlets would have. On their left lay the boys’ bedrooms. Though Santa was tempted to look in on them, he followed Wendy toward the master bedroom.

“Ready?” she asked, a twinkle in her eye.

“Yes,” he said, and over the threshold they stepped, passing through the door as if it weren’t there.

Cherrywood furniture gleamed momentarily in moonlight. Then magic time cast its soft glow all about and a moment later, the replica, without hitch or jolt, slipped in around them. Walter and Kathy Stratton lay a-slumbering, unbreathing, still locked in normal time.

“Shall I wake them?” asked Wendy.

“Soon. Look there. You see?” An ornate Japanese screen stood by the door where none had stood before. Snowdrifts rose against either side of it. A dragon, rampant with a huge head and unsheathed claws had been painted on the screen in opalescent greens, reds, and blacks. “The dragon’s proportions are all wrong. The hinges are cut-rate. The lacquer is moist, the angles out of true. And that’s just one item.” Santa moved around the room, pointing out flaws in the furniture, in the swirls of stucco on the ceiling, in the curlicues carved into the bedroom door. “And look at this.” He knelt, scooped up a pile of wood shavings, and let them fall through his fingers.

“Jeepers,” said Wendy.

“Something’s amiss. This isn’t like them. I expect perfection because that’s what they always deliver. They’ll get a talking to, I’ll tell you that. But I refuse to let this throw me. Actors know that how the flats are hung matters little to their performance. These trappings set off the pearl of our persuasion. But it’s the pearl, not its setting, which must be of great price. If it fails to impress, no amount of window dressing will do the trick. So yes, Wendy. Please bring these good people into magic time. It’s time we showed them the effect of their actions on their son.”

Wendy said okay and gestured toward the couple, seeming to bring them to life. Santa took a calming breath, steeled his resolve, and prepared for the encounter ahead. Pan, he thought, I will keep under wraps at all times. And I will not despise these grown-ups, no matter how deserving of spite they prove.

* * *

When Kathy awoke this time, the aromatic snap of sizzling pine logs greeted her, though there was neither fireplace nor logs in their bedroom. Walter was already sitting up, staring about in wonder. She found herself feeling...more compliant. It had something to do with her dream, though she recalled none of it. Then she remembered what she was expected to become compliant about, and her resolve stiffened.

“Hello again, Kathy,” said Santa.

“Before you start, let me just say that I refuse to believe my son is that way. And now that you’ve alerted us, he
definitely
won’t be that way.”

“You can count on it,” said Walter.

Santa said, “All right, Wendy.”

And the little girl, looking a bit shy, pointed into the space before their bed. At once, they were at Grandview Memorial Gardens, peering past images of themselves at a small crowd gathered around a coffin. Reverend Taylor, his prayer book open, intoned in pantomime. From the way he held himself, Kathy could tell something about the deceased troubled him. She had seen him at other funerals, where he would often weep and carry on over the dearly departed. Not so now.

“Whose funeral is this?” asked Walter.

Kathy recognized members of their congregation, the Graysons, the Stupplebeens, crab-faced Hanna Bach, shaking with palsy. Everyone seemed a bit off, as though they were attending out of obligation or morbid curiosity.

“We’re older,” Walter noted. Kathy saw that that was so. Grief, the evidence of which shown on her cheeks, aged one; but there were new lines in her face and an apparent decision to let the gray show, which signaled the passage of time.

“This is eight years on,” said Santa. “The young man beside you is Kurt at twenty-one. He’s back from college.”

Kathy gave a start. Of course that’s who it was. How handsome he had become. Though he stood beside her, he neither touched nor held her. His eyes had difficulty settling anywhere.

“Where’s Jamie?” she asked.

And the scene faded, to be replaced by a series of vignettes in and around the house. Jamie, of junior high age, coming home with books in hand. Walter asking, “Met any new girls today?” “No, Dad.” Jamie, somewhat older now, at the dinner table. “So you taking the Pavlovich girl? She seems the studious type.” “I haven’t decided yet, Dad. I may not go at all. It’s only a stupid dance.” “Hey, come on, Jamie, it’s what healthy boys do,” said Walter.

Kathy stiffened. “I don’t like where this is going.”

There was Jamie’s bedroom, a Coronado High pennant on his wall, his father solemn-faced and clasp-handed beside him on the bed. “That book will clue you in. Your brother’s got himself a nice girl, cute and smart. You should too. But you need to be careful. In control. It’s too easy to let your hormones carry you away. Best not go there at all.”

“Go where, Dad?”

“Where you shouldn’t. Where your natural tendencies will try to take you. Just read the book. They’re described in gory detail. You gotta squelch ’em is all. Girls are tender. They need to be treated with kid gloves, like I treated your mother. Remember that, son.” He put a hand on Jamie’s knee. “Will you remember that?”

“Sure, Dad.”

Kathy said, “You’re showing us a future that’s changeable, right? It isn’t hard and fast. Jamie’s much too soft. We’ll harden him.”

“It’s all right, Missus Stratton,” said Wendy. “That’s the way he is. There’s nothing you have to change about Jamie. You only have to love him.”

“Don’t lecture me, little girl,” said Kathy sharply. “This whole subject is making me ill.”

Looking cowed, Wendy gestured. Now Jamie was slumped on a couch in the den, his parents standing over him.

“Walter,” said Kathy, “talk sense into your son.”

Jamie’s features were pained, his face red. “I can’t help it. I’m just that way. I need you to accept that.”

“No son of mine is gay,” said Walter. “And that includes you. You’re mixed up in the head is all.”

Kathy said, “It’s disgusting. Who’s been at you? You haven’t actually...this is all theory, tell me it’s all theory. The Devil’s got you. Do you really want to let Satan have his way with you? This is ridiculous. I ought to pray with you, but I want to strike you, I want you out of this house. You did not come from this body. You couldn’t have.”

Walter said, “You’re upsetting your mother. You see that?”

“Please, Dad, Mom, it’s not about you, it’s about me.”

Wendy faded the scene and brought the bedroom back.

“I won’t let this happen,” said Kathy, shaken now. “We’ll send him to Bible camp. We’ll get him counseling.”

Walter said, “Military school will drum this out of him.”

“No more TV,” said Kathy. “No more movies.”

Santa interrupted. “Now wait. Jamie was born this way and he can’t be changed. For the love of God, you’re his mom and dad. Your job is to accept and embrace and celebrate
all
of him, even and especially his homosexuality.”

“Never,” said Kathy.

“To do less than that is to dishonor the abundant variety of God’s creation. I tell you this as his emissary. Your preacher and your whole misguided sect have got this issue dead wrong, just as they had the slavery question wrong two hundred years ago, and interracial marriage fifty years ago. Now, you can’t change things for the mass of people needlessly suffering. But you can and you must change yourselves to spare your son an otherwise crushing burden of pain.”

“I don’t care if you
are
Santa Claus,” said Walter, “and frankly I have my doubts about that. You’re no emissary from any God
I
care to worship. Our God condemns this practice in clear and certain terms. Queers are hellbound. The Good Book says so. No son of mine is hellbound. I think you’ve concocted this whole display is what I think. Now why don’t you just haul your fat red ass out of my house pronto, mister?”

In response to which, Wendy gestured and traffic noise filled the room. The bedroom setting dropped away. There was Jamie trudging despondently along an overpass, his backpack slung over one shoulder.

“What’s this?” asked Kathy.

“Watch,” said Santa, his voice thin and harsh.

Trucks barreled by below in swift smears of color. Jamie took two apples from his backpack. He dropped one over the side.

“Oh God, he’s not....”

Jamie dropped the other apple.

Cars going eighty pierced the soundscape and vanished in a sigh. A semi shoved massive amounts of air aside.

Jamie hauled himself up onto the parapet and sat there, transfixed by the traffic.

Walter said, “He can’t be serious. What the hell could drive him to this?”

Jamie’s arms stiffened with resolve where his hands clenched the concrete's rough edge. Then, mouth grim-set, eyes resolute and teary, he slipped off and Wendy wiped the scene away.

Stunned silence from the bed. Kathy came nearly unglued but stubbornly held back her tears. Walter drew her to his chest. “All of this is a lie,” he said.

But Kathy knew it wasn’t.

“We’ve got to look into this, Walter,” she said. “What if we do everything to fight it, and we’re wrong, and Jamie ends up there, doing that? What if Reverend Taylor’s wrong too? Maybe he’s right. But do you want to gamble Jamie’s life on that? I don’t.”

Walter looked defeated. “What happens then?”

At Wendy’s gesture, a series of muted scenes passed before them. “You argue more frequently,” said Santa. “You spend less time together. Walter starts having affairs, a short-term fling or two, looking for a shoulder to cry on. He leaves the church and reverts to Catholicism of an activist sort. Kathy, you cling to your Bible more fiercely, blaming yourself and Walter and the whole world. The church becomes your all-consuming passion. You continue living in the same house, but Walter sleeps in Kurt’s old room, makes his own meals, and you barely exchange a word.”

Santa nodded and Wendy stopped the scenes.

Kathy began, “But how can we—?”

“Sleep,” said Santa. “We’ll be back one last time. All will become clear then.”

A great weariness seeped into her bones. “All right,” she said, but it came out a mumble. Just before her eyelids closed, the flicker and smell and crackle of pine logs vanished. Recalling the dreamscape, Kathy slid eagerly down toward its comforts once more.

Chapter 15. Darkness and Light

OVER AND OVER, the Tooth Fairy and her imps lost skin and bone as they hurtled toward the earth’s center. Reconstituted in air pockets, their immortal flesh shattered anew when they smashed through rock. At last they broke free of that torment and emerged into the underworld, speeding toward the pit of Tartarus. A sphere of brass surrounded it, three layers of night around that. Upon the edge of the outer layer stood a great palace, dark and spiked and sparse-windowed.

In at a stone casement they tumbled, breaking their bones again on the marble floor. They lay in a heap before an ornate throne, upon which sat the goddess of night. Torchlight bathed the room in intensities of black, an absence of color that stole detail from, and thereby delineated, all it touched.

“Hear me,” said Nyx, stabbing a finger at the Tooth Fairy. “I will grant you your wish on two conditions. First, you must sacrifice one of your teeth.”

“But, I—”

“This one.” Some foul hand gripped the right incisor in her lower jaw and wrenched it out by the roots. Blood flowed bitter and salt, the empty canal a sharp needle-thrust. But this tooth, unlike other teeth immortals lose, did not grow back. She cursed Nyx under her breath.

“Same to you, tenfold. Second condition: You must speak the absolute truth, no guile, no mewling, and no grandstanding in your request.”

The Tooth Fairy drew herself up. If she were to be blasted, it would be for insolence, never mewling. “Pan threw me aside for a mortal woman, this after two decades of incredible sex. I had him by the stalk. I was this close to tossing the fir nymph out on her ear. I would have whipped his former satyrs into shape. Toys slapped together under my reign would have hurt and saddened brats worldwide, delivering misery, rage, and fear deep to the heart. But enough of Pan. Know this only: I would make any sacrifice to avenge myself on the goat god turned goody-twoshoes.

“As for Zeus, in the Great Transformation, he slaughtered my sister ash nymphs. With thirteen thunderbolts he violated me, saddling me with these malformed imps, who offend my every sense. Worse, each time I enter some rug rat’s bedroom, Zeus’s strictures reach into the private place of loathing from which I despise the little shits and turn me toward...indifference. Not until I’ve left their bedrooms do my true feelings return—for the brats, for their foul progenitors, for the whole sorry race of mortals.

“Give us access to this dreamscape, o Goddess of Night, and we will whip into a frenzy the inhumanity Zeus, Pan, and their henchmen would destroy.”

Nyx’s smile cast a pall upon the proceedings. She raised a hand into the darkness and spoke a phrase in an ancient tongue. At once, on the opposite side of the throne, appeared a gaunt, hairless creature, everywhere a dull gray, his skin crusted, diseased, and dandruffy. He opened his palms in supplication, and flecks of skin, so fine they might have been dust, drifted to the floor. “But I mustn’t stop,” he said in a panic, “I’ll never catch up, I....” His voice sifted and sighed. “Who are you to—?”