Chapter Eight
The entire transaction
When they got home, Tanya agreed to take care of Reese so Gerry and Ally could go shopping. The night before they’d finally decided on a present they thought he’d love: a pocket-sized video camera. Gerry understood that, to some degree, this was a stretch. Reese had never expressed any interest in taking videos and he was, after all, only six years old. However, Reese’s seemingly endless curiosity combined with his outsized imagination made it likely that he’d love the gift and use it often. Yes, there would certainly be times when he simply left the camera on accidentally, performing a half-hour study of his bedside lamp, and surely there would be a learning curve, but now that they’d come up with the idea, Gerry was enthusiastic about what his son might create. Maybe he’d stage a live-action remake of “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” Maybe he’d capture his incisive multi-part interview with Cardboard Santa. Without question, Reese would do something unexpected and Gerry couldn’t wait to see what that was.
The good news was that they didn’t need to go to the mall for this particular purchase. The bad news was that they needed to go to one of the big box stores whose parking lot was stuffed and whose aisles were filled with people who’d waited far too long to buy things they could have gotten with a couple of clicks.
“This amazes me,” Gerry said as they crammed their way toward the cameras. “Why does anyone buy electronics in a store? You don’t want to buy produce online? That I understand. You’d rather not get a Christmas tree from Buy.com? I get it. But this? You read some online reviews, you compare prices, and you place your order. Why would you do this instead?”
“
We’re
doing it instead.”
Gerry nudged around a cluster of people looking at stand mixers. He could see the video department from here, but it still seemed like a huge uphill journey. “We’re doing it because you prefer doing it.”
Ally glanced at him, amused. “Ah, so that little rant just now was directed at me.”
“No it wasn’t. Well, not specifically. Remind me why we’re doing this.”
Ally seemed surprisingly relaxed in this huge crowd. “It’s the human factor.”
“This is something you haven’t revealed to me up until now, isn’t it? You like rubbing up against strangers. I’m not sure how to feel about this.”
Ally’s expression had less amusement in it this time, which made Gerry feel that he’d perhaps taken this a bit further than he’d intended since he wasn’t feeling particularly put out at all.
“You caught me, Gerry. I might as well admit now that I far prefer anonymously brushing my forearm against a stranger’s protruding belly than my husband’s touch.”
There was an opening in the crowd, and Gerry reached for Ally’s hand so they could work their way through it. When they were on the other side, he brought her hand to his lips and kissed it. “Sorry. I guess I was crusading again. I need to learn when to turn the promotion machine off.”
Ally kissed his hand back. “You’re winning, Gerry. By all indications, you’ve already won. Have you seen the numbers for online shopping this season? Have you looked at
your
numbers for this quarter?” She looked around at the crowd. “This isn’t a bad thing, though.”
“You’re right. What I said was stupid. I’m glad these guys are doing well. Let’s go get Reese his camera.”
Of course, Gerry knew exactly which camera he wanted, having researched it online. The entire transaction took less than three minutes – after the twenty-five minute wait to get a salesperson’s attention. He had to admit that he liked the clerk’s nod of approval at his selection and the surprise in his eyes when Gerry mentioned that the camera was for a little boy. That was something you couldn’t get on the internet, at least not now. Maybe he could find a way to approximate it on his company’s site.
After checking in with Tanya, Gerry and Ally detoured to a nearby coffee bar before heading home. Reese was glad to have his daughter back from school for many reasons, but among them was her ready willingness to take care of Reese. The relationship between siblings had started out in the worst possible way – Tanya had disappeared at sixteen, seemingly motivated in equal parts by her criminal of a boyfriend and by her mother’s becoming pregnant – but that was the most distant of memories now.
“So did you buy
my
present online?” Ally said once they’d gotten their coffee.
Gerry pretended a look of consternation. “Didn’t we agree that we weren’t buying each other presents anymore?”
Ally’s eyes narrowed. On many people this caused them to seem fiercer. In Ally’s case, though, it drew attention to how beautiful her eyes were. “I don’t remember having that conversation.”
Gerry looked toward the ceiling. “Are you sure? I really think I remember talking about this. You were adamant. Something about not overly commercializing the experience between us.”
“I’m not sure who fantasizes more, you or Reese.”
Gerry shook his head slowly. “Wow, a present for you. I guess I’d better get to work on that, huh?”
Gerry had already bought Ally a suite of presents, all thematically linked by cashmere. He’d gotten none of it online, actually, preferring to patronize some of the local boutiques. In truth, though he made his living through internet retail, he had nothing against shopping in physical retail stores, and he especially liked supporting nearby merchants, though he truly did find it difficult to understand why anyone would buy from a huge national chain rather than a website.
“You know what?” Ally said. “You have a really good point. We shouldn’t be buying each other presents. After all, it’s not as though there’s anything
special
about having the person you love select something exclusively with you in mind. I’ve just been buying into the whole
overly commercial
thing. Why don’t I just return what I picked out for you?”
Gerry threw up his hands. “No, no, really, I’ve come around to your thinking on this. It’ll be no trouble, really.”
Ally took a sip of her coffee. “That’s very thoughtful of you.”
When they got home, it was Gerry’s job to create a diversion while Ally sneaked the present into the walk-in closet in the guest bedroom where they kept all the presents. The package wasn’t particularly large, so that wasn’t the issue. The diversion was necessary, though, because they’d so far been able to keep Reese from knowing the closet’s function at all.
Gerry’s diversion involved a challenge to a snowball fight. He hadn’t anticipated that the snow had turned powdery in the past day, making it impossible to pack into balls. Ultimately, this didn’t matter. Reese and he merely threw wafts of snow at each other for a few minutes, which was easily long enough for Ally to take care of things. Then, they wound up staying outside until their fingers were numb.
Chapter Nine
Sticking out from a tangle of garland
It was getting harder and harder and harder for Reese to decide which Christmas show was his absolute favorite. He didn’t know how Tanya could be so sure that “Charlie Brown Christmas” was hers. When he asked Dad, he just came right out and said, “The Santa Clause,” and when he asked Millie, she took about a second to say that she loved “The Nutcracker,” whatever that was. How could people be so sure of this stuff?
Reese thought Frosty was great
, and Charlie Brown was very cool, and he liked “The Santa Clause,” though it was kinda long. But tonight, after watching “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” he thought that one might be his favorite...but he wasn’t really sure.
Reese didn’t like the Grinch himself very much, at least not until the end. He loved his dog, though. Reese thought he would like to have a dog like that. Really, he would have liked to have any kind of dog. He was sorta hoping that Dad and Millie read his mind and got him a dog for Christmas, though he’d only decided recently that he really wanted one. It didn’t even make it into his Santa Claus letter, so he knew he wasn’t going to get one from the North Pole.
He thought the people in Whoville were great. Cindy Lou seemed like an okay girl and Reese was very impressed with the way the town decided to sing on Christmas morning instead of complaining about how their presents were stolen. Reese thought he would have done a lot of complaining and not very much singing at all.
Tanya kissed him on the head and said she was going out as soon as the show was over. Reese had a bunch of questions about the whole Grinch thing, though, so as soon as Tanya finished saying goodbye to Dad and Millie, he started asking away.
“How’d he do it?” he said as Dad got up to get the disc out of the DVD player.
“How’d who do what?” Dad said.
“The Grinch. How’d he get all that stuff out of people’s houses?”
Dad sat on the coffee table across from him. “Well, you know, he went down the chimneys and slithered around. That sort of thing. Then he threw stuff up the chimneys and onto the roofs.”
“I know that part, but how’d he do it without anyone noticing?”
Dad put out one of his hands, which was something he liked to do when he was explaining things. “Cindy Lou heard him.”
Reese tipped his head forward. “I thought she just wanted a drink.”
Dad thought about this for a second. “Yeah, I guess that might be true. I guess the Grinch was just super, super quiet like Santa is.”
“That’s another good question,” Reese said, getting a little more concerned about all of this. “How come he didn’t run into Santa while he was stealing all this stuff?”
Dad seemed very confused by this. Reese thought it was a little weird that his dad was a grown-up but obviously hadn’t thought about this stuff before.
“That’s an interesting question,” Dad said. “I’m guessing they were on different schedules.”
“But Santa must have come first, because the Whos didn’t have any presents, and they would have had Santa’s presents if he’d come after the Grinch.”
Dad wrinkled his face like he was thinking very hard. “I guess that’s the way it went.”
Reese thought about this for a second. “So he managed to steal every present in Whoville just by being super quiet?”
Millie moved next to him on the couch at this point. Maybe she had better answers. “You’re not worried about people being able to get in our house, are you? We live in a very safe area, and we also have an alarm system.”
Reese wasn’t worrying about that at all, though now that she brought it up, it was a little creepy thinking about all these guys just going into people’s houses.
“So if the Grinch came into our house, the alarm would go off?”
“Yes, it would,” Millie said.
“Does that mean it goes off when Santa comes in, too?”
Millie looked at Dad. That made Reese look at Dad, and he saw that Dad was looking back at Millie. That’s what they did whenever Reese said something they didn’t want to talk about. Parents were so predictable.
“We set the alarm to recognize Santa,” Dad said, “so it doesn’t go off when he comes. Our alarm has special facial recognition software.”
“Huh?”
“It’s all good, Reesey. This isn’t something you need to worry about.”
But Reese
was
worried about it, and he stayed worried about it right past bedtime. He kept thinking of all the presents in the guest room closet (Dad and Millie didn’t know he knew about them, but he’d seen Millie sneaking packages in there a few times) and how the Grinch could just slither in and get them whenever he wanted.
The more Reese thought about this, the more nervous he got. There were some great presents in there, like the giant stuffed dog they got Millie’s niece and the video game they got for Sara. Even the jacket and cocktail dress (whatever that was) that they got Tanya would probably be great if you liked that kind of thing.
Dad and Millie were great about almost everything, but they really weren’t taking this Grinch situation as seriously as they should. Maybe when you got older you forgot how dangerous the world could be. Sure, it was Whoville in the show, but it could be Port Jefferson next – maybe even tonight. He looked over at the picture of his mom. Reese had a feeling she would understand. She would have kept their presents safe from the Grinch because she really, really loved Christmas and she knew how important it was to other people. He really wished she were around right now to help him.
But she wasn’t, something had to be done, and Reese was the guy to do it. He had a plan, and he knew it was going to work.
The first challenge was sneaking out of his room. That wasn’t the easiest thing to do with Millie and her super-hearing. He wasn’t worried about waking up Tanya because he heard her get home a while ago, and she slept through anything. He tiptoed as quietly as he’d ever tiptoed in his life, opened his door without a noise, and then went down the stairs really, really, really slowly. Once he got downstairs, he could move a little faster. The floor in the foyer wasn’t creaky.
He headed for the pantry. He knew just where the duct tape was, because he and Dad had used it to fix the fender on Reese’s Batmobile after Reese had accidentally dropped it from the top of the big cabinet in the living room. Making sure he didn’t make anything fall off the shelves and wake up Dad and Millie, Reese got the tape and then headed down the hall to the guest room.
The door to that room was closed, which meant more possibilities of creakiness. Reese really had no idea how the Grinch got away with doing what he did when houses could be so noisy. Maybe he put the people in the house under a spell. They didn’t say anything about it in the show.
It took him something like an hour to open the guest room door and not make a sound. Finally, he was in. Now he had to open the closet door without waking anyone up.
Man, this was tough. But Reese wasn’t going to give up. He was going to Grinch-proof the presents if it was the last thing he did.
* * *
“Did you hear that?” Gerry said, waking up with a start.
Ally mumbled. She’d obviously been fast asleep. The fact that the sound had awakened him but not her was surprising because the opposite was usually true. Maybe it had only been in his dreams. He turned over and tried to get back to sleep when he heard the unmistakable sound of feet padding across the downstairs hall. He checked the alarm keypad on the bedroom wall. He was fairly lax about activating the alarm system, but he knew Tanya liked to turn it on when she came home at night. The system was working fine and showed no indication of intrusion.
“Something’s going on,” Gerry said.
Ally rolled in his direction. “Maybe Santa’s come early.”
“I’m going down to check.”
“Say hi for me if you see him. Remind him that I really need a new scarf.”
Gerry climbed out of bed and put on a pair of pants, feeling less vulnerable that way than he would have if he’d gone down in his underwear. From the hall, he could see that Tanya’s door was closed. However, Reese’s was open, and when he went into the boy’s room, he saw that the bed was empty.
Okay
, Gerry thought,
no intruder. But what’s he up to now?
Gerry hoped Reese wasn’t doing the Polar Express thing again. It wouldn’t be fun if they regularly had to retrieve him from the front lawn. When Gerry got to the bottom of the stairs, he saw that the front door was locked, and flipping on the porch light, he saw that the boy was not outside waiting for a train. When he looked down the hall, though, he noticed that the door to the guest room was open and that there were definitely sounds coming from there.
Reese had figured out where they kept the presents. He was probably rummaging around in there right now trying to find his stuff. Had Ally wrapped the camera before putting it in the closet?
Just then, he heard what was without question the sound of duct tape being pulled from a roll. What was going on in there? He moved quickly to the guest room. As he assumed, the closet door was open and the light was on.
“Reese, what –”
His son startled, dropping the scissor he had been holding in his right hand, but still holding a strip of duct tape in his left. Even for Reese, this was an improbable sight.
Gerry just barely stifled a chuckle. “What are you doing in here?”
Reese turned toward the packages. “I’m saving our presents from the Grinch.”
Gerry followed his son’s motion and saw that the boy had duct-taped three packages to the floor. One of them had Reese’s name on the tag, so the boy clearly wasn’t trying to find out what was inside.
“Wow,” Gerry said. “I never would have thought of that.”
Reese turned back to him with a look of determination. “I know, Dad. That’s why
I
had to think of it.”
The boy laid the strip of duct tape he had in his hand across another package and Gerry sat down next to him, realizing he was going to have to curtail Reese’s mission. It was already going to be necessary to rewrap the four presents Reese had “saved.”
“This is a genius move, Reese, really, but I’m wondering if there might be another way to keep the Grinch out.”
Reese went for the roll of tape and then retrieved the scissor that had flown from his hand. “I don’t think so, Dad. I gave this a lot of thought.”
Reese went for another package and Gerry put up a hand to stop him. “I’m sure you have, but how about this? Tomorrow, we’ll put a latch on the door. Way up high where the Grinch can’t reach it. He’s pretty short, you know.”
The boy seemed to think about this for a moment. “What if he comes tonight, though?”
“But it’s not Christmas Eve yet.”
“I thought about that, too. Maybe he’s started coming earlier. I wish you guys would think about this. Just because the shows all talk about stuff happening on Christmas Eve doesn’t mean that’s the way it is in real life.”
Gerry couldn’t help but marvel at how seriously Reese had taken to this task
. “But I thought his heart was big now and he didn’t hate Christmas anymore.”
Reese shook his head very slowly. “Dad, do you really want to take a chance on that?”
Not wanting Reese to see his grin, Gerry turned away from the boy for a few seconds. Then he looked back at him, his eyes wide. “OK, here’s the plan. You and I will sleep here in the guest room tonight. We’ll take turns guarding the presents. I’ll take the first shift while you sleep. Then we’ll put a latch on the door tomorrow right after we finish decorating the tree.”
Reese, who’d been kneeling by the presents, sat on the floor of the closet. “That’s pretty smart, Dad.”
“I have to admit that I impressed myself with that one. Hey, when did you figure out that we kept the presents in here?”
Reese looked at him as though he’d just asked the most obvious question ever. “Not a lot gets past me, Dad.”
Gerry supposed it didn’t. That should make his teen years fascinating.
“Have you been keeping presents in here a long time?” Reese said.
“Since Tanya was your age.”
“She know about this?”
“For a few years now.”
Reese looked around the closet. All the Christmas decorations were in here as well, but those boxes didn’t seem to capture his attention.
“Don’t worry, Dad,” he said. “I like being surprised Christmas morning. You can keep putting my stuff in here if you want.”
Gerry nodded. “It really is better that way.”
Just then, Reese pointed to a corner of the closet.
“What’s that?”
Gerry followed his hand to a silvery point on the floor sticking out from a tangle of garland they hadn’t used in recent memory.
Reese went over and pulled the item from where it was buried. It turned out to be a ceramic snowflake, about seven inches in diameter and glazed silvery blue. Though they’d been storing Christmas decorations in here since they owned the house, Gerry couldn’t recall ever seeing this ornament before.
“Nice,” Reese said.
“Yeah, it’s beautiful.”
Reese looked at the flip side. “Hey, there’s some writing on it.”
Reese handed the ornament to Gerry to read. When Gerry turned over the snowflake and saw the note that had been taped to it, his face warmed.
“It’s for you from your mom,” he said.
Reese nearly gasped his response. “For me?” He moved quickly next to Gerry. “What does it say?”
Gerry took a deep breath before he read. “It says, ‘For my little boy. I made this for you just before you were born and I’m going to give it to you when you’re old enough to understand. I hope that you love Christmas as much as I do. You’re my greatest Christmas present ever. I love you, Mommy.’“
Gerry’s eyes were clouding, but he smiled at Reese and pulled him close. “That’s a heck of a thing your mom made for you, huh?”
Reese took the snowflake from Gerry and examined the note as though he was reading it, though Gerry knew he wouldn’t be able to sound-out all the words just yet.
“Mom really loved Christmas, huh?” he said eventually.
Gerry flashed on Maureen’s child-like face as she filled the house with decorations every year. Even before they had Tanya, she’d insisted on getting up at dawn on Christmas morning to exchange presents. “Your mom
loved
Christmas.”