Finding Father Christmas (2 page)

“That’s what I was afraid of.”

As she tilted her head, her silver earrings caught the light from the fire. “If they were in business here, I’m sure someone
around town would know about them. I’ve only lived in Carlton Heath for a few years, so I’m not too helpful when it comes
to the comings and goings of the past. My husband would know.”

She paused before turning over the photo and asked, “Would you mind if I had a look at the picture?”

“No. Please do. And tell me if you recognize either of the people in the photo. I was hoping someone at the photo studio might
have an idea who they were.”

The image she gazed at was ingrained in my memory. I had stared at the photo so long in my adolescent years that every detail
of the two people was familiar, including the nasty, faded green shade of the sweater the little boy was wearing. He appeared
to be four or maybe five years old and was seated precariously on the lap of a man who was dressed in an odd-looking Santa
suit. The boy was wailing, mouth open wide, head tipped back. His short arms were rigid at his side as if he
was being a brave little soldier about the situation, but he wasn’t too afraid to let his voice be heard.

I knew every line in the face of the man who was playing Santa Claus. His outfit resembled a Bohemian-style dressing robe
rather than the usual red velvet Santa suit. Nor was his red cap typical Santa attire. Instead, it rose to a point before
tipping to the side, and it was trimmed sparingly in black piping rather than the customary wide band of white fleece.

The whiteness in the photo was found in the man’s long, flowing beard and in his thick eyebrows. He seemed to be trying to
keep a straight face, yet his eyes merrily revealed his mirth as well as his age. The exposed laugh lines around his clear
blue eyes put him past fifty, by my estimation. His large left hand, visible around the boy’s middle, displayed a gold ring
on the third finger and the edge of a gold watchband around his wrist.

“What a charmer,” Katharine said as she looked at the photo. A smile grew on her lips.

I nodded. The photo couldn’t help but bring a smile to any viewer.

“Curious,” she said, tilting her head. “I believe I’ve seen this picture before.”

My heart rose to meet the sip of hot tea I had just swallowed. I put the cup back in the saucer, not completely on target,
and kept my eyes fixed on Katharine. “You have? Here in Carlton Heath? Do you remember where?”

“No. I’m not sure. I do remember the photo was in a frame, though. An ornate frame. It was lovely. I can’t quite remember
where I saw it.”

I waited eagerly as she stared again at the photo and pursed her lips.

After a full minute she said, “I have a suggestion.”

“Yes?”

“I’m not able to place where I’ve seen this photo, but someone in town might know. Others who have lived here longer than
I have would also know about the photography studio. One of them might possibly recognize the man or the boy in the photo,
as well.”

“Whom should I ask?”

“Several residents, actually. My husband, for one. He and the others will be at the performance this evening. Why don’t you
come with me?”

“The performance?” I repeated.

“Yes, the Dickens play,
A Christmas Carol.
I should warn you, though, it’s a rather wry version. But the resident thespians have kept up the tradition for more than
forty years. Mind you, the play is an abbreviation of the original, and the adaptation of the characters is, shall we say,
loose. But it is wonderfully entertaining.”

I bit my lower lip and felt a sickening knot tighten in my stomach.

“Would you like to come, then?” Katharine asked. “As my guest, of course.”

“I… I don’t know.”

“Ah.” She handed back the photograph. “Perhaps you have plans. It is Christmas Eve, after all.”

“No. I mean, yes. I do have plans. I need to get back to London. To my hotel room.”

“Che-che-che. London is close enough. You won’t have difficulty returning later in the evening.”

I scrambled for an appropriate response while Katharine stood tall and graciously patient before me, hands folded across the
front of her lovely evening dress, waiting for my reply.

“I don’t have the right kind of outfit with me for the theater,” I said.

She smiled. “I don’t think anyone in attendance tonight would even lovingly refer to what you’ll see as ‘theater.’ What you’re
wearing now is entirely appropriate. I’m dressed as I am because I’ve a part in the production. In the concessions, actually.”

I stalled, looking down at the untouched scones on the china plate.

“Well, then,” she said, easing my silence. “Perhaps I’ll leave you to enjoy your tea, and you can take a moment to consider
the invitation. If I can bring you anything, do ask.”

As she turned to leave, I unexpectedly blurted out the reason for my indecision. “I don’t go to plays.”

Katharine’s expression appeared unaffected by my strange declaration.

I added a little more information. “I stopped going to plays a long time ago and… ”

The resolve that had fueled my boycott when I was nine years old now waned in the light of this room where all my logic and
defenses seemed unnecessary considering my hostess’s elegant grace.

“… I don’t go to plays,” I finished lamely.

She stood still, a few feet away. After a pause, she spoke.
“What I have always loved about decisions is that you can make a new one whenever you like.”

Then she slid behind the curtain that cordoned off the kitchen area from the half a dozen open tables covered in their crimson
cloths and dotted with flickering votives. I sat alone by the comforting fire.

Yet I didn’t feel entirely alone. A select convoy of early childhood memories gathered in the empty seat across from me. They
rose to their full height, leaned closer, and stared at me, waiting to hear whether they still held power over my decisions.

I
n the silence and safety of the Tea Cosy, the echo of my gloriously odd childhood bounced off the sooty hearth and returned
to me.

All the memories began with my mother. She was an
actress.
Not an actor. Please. An
actress.
She introduced herself as ‘’Eve Carson, the actress,” and people responded with a hazy nod of vague familiarity. The truth
was, none of them had ever heard of her.

Each summer Eve Carson, the actress, cavorted about the stage, embodying some immortal character or other at the Shakespearean
theater in Ashland, Oregon. The rest of the year she packed our forest green Samsonite suitcases into the hatchback of our
little blue car, and we traveled up and down the West Coast, calling on her string of theatrical connections.

In Santa Cruz, my mother went to work wearing a Renaissance costume that was sewn by a bald woman who had seven cats and no
television. In San Diego, our hotel room was right next to the dinner theater where my mother sang and danced every night
in a sailor suit. Performances were twice on Saturdays, and the food was plentiful, if I didn’t mind eating at midnight, which,
of course, I didn’t.

I was a gypsy child. An only child. As such, I believed everything my mother said, including her embellished account of how,
one moonlit night, she slept beside a lake on a feathery bed of moss.

“Silently, so silently, the Big Dipper tipped just enough to drop one small yet very twinkling star into the hollow of my
belly. That tiny star sprouted and grew like a watermelon until… ”

Her deep, midnight blue eyes would widen as she declared that one day, without warning, I popped right out and peacefully
went to sleep in her arms.

“And that day, my darling,” she would conclude in her winsome voice, as a plumpness rose in her high cheekbones, “was the
happiest day of my life. You became to me the sun, the moon, the stars, and all my deepest dreams fulfilled. Never doubt the
gifting of your being or the beauty of your light, my sweet Miranda.”

Like a baby bird, I swallowed every juicy word that tumbled from my beautiful mother’s mouth. We looked alike, with our dark
hair, defined eyebrows, and slender legs. Her eyes were the deepest shade of blue before the color could be called black.
My eyes, however, were the fairest shade of blue with the sort of transparency seen in a marble when held up to the sun. The
lightness in my eyes and skin transferred to the feathery lightness of my logic, as well.

Until I was almost nine, I had no formed sense of reason. I was a child with delayed rational development. I didn’t understand
the peril of such an existence with such a woman. I didn’t know a fine line existed between art and deceit. I couldn’t tell
when she was performing and when she was telling the truth. All of it was real to me. Every word, every smile, every tear.

My strongest memories begin with the day we drove into Ashland. The hillsides of southern Oregon were paling from green to
yellow, and the hot scent of the drying grass came through the car window like a faint sweetness riding over the sticky smell
of the eternal 5 Freeway’s tar and asphalt.

We checked into our room at the Swan Motel on a Tuesday afternoon and ate pizza, sitting cross-legged on our bed. After that,
we were living in the rhythm of her performance schedule. Every day seemed to be a Wednesday or a Thursday. It didn’t matter.
My mother only came back to our room to sleep for a few hours during the darkest part of the night.

Most days I would go with her to the theater, where I would find new ways to make myself invisible. For a nine-year-old I
was fairly successful at my career as a phantom. When I wasn’t so successful, the next day I always had a babysitter named
Car-lita, who brought me cookies made with pink coconut.

A few times I stayed by myself in the motel with the door bolted and the television turned up as loud as it would go. I never
told anyone that my mother left me alone.

The best mornings were the ones when I would wake to the sound of water running in the shower. That meant she wasn’t going
to sleep for hours while I tried to stay quiet. On those mornings I would stay in bed, pretending to be asleep, and soon my
mother would lean close with her long, black hair dripping tiny kisses on my face. She would say, “Awaken, my little bird!
Let us fly away and dine on golden sunbeams.”

Those were the mornings we crossed the street holding
hands and ate breakfast at the small cafe with the purple flowers by the front door. We always sat next to each other, nice
and close, in the red vinyl booth. I always ordered waffles. Waffles with strawberries that came cold and mushy and tasting
of freezer burn. Over the waffles and strawberries I would hold up the small jug of maple syrup and pour a spinning circle
of liquid gold. The first touch of golden syrup on my tongue tasted like joy.

Eve Carson, the actress, always ordered scrambled eggs, with tomatoes instead of hash browns, and a small grapefruit juice.
As the waitress walked away, I would watch my mother slip six or eight packets of sugar into her purse. She nabbed them in
one smooth motion without taking her deeper-than-the-Pacific blue eyes off of me. One time she took a spoon. My mother was
very good at the small things.

Whenever we were cozied up to each other like that, I didn’t feel neglected or jealous of the hours she spent doting on her
other love, the theater. When I felt her close, I found it easy to believe that I was to her the sun and moon and stars. I
believed everything she said.

Until the day I found the blue velvet purse with the golden tassels.

B
efore I found the purse, I found the one-eyed dragon.

If I had believed in an ordered universe at that time, I would have understood why the one came before the other. But as I
mentioned before, I was young in my logic and naive in all areas of theology.

The discoveries came close to each other while we lived in Ashland. On a beastly night during the second month of our stay
at the Swan Motel, our air conditioner stopped working. It was too late to ask the front desk to call a repairman. And it
was too hot to sleep.

My mother told me to lie still and imagine I was a snow-flake, floating on an iceberg in Alaska. I tried, but it didn’t work.
My Method acting skills were sadly lacking.

“Then come with me, my little fish,” she said. “We shall go for a swim.”

“Now?”

“Yes, now.”

I followed my mother down the stairs, both of us in our thin, cotton pajamas. The motel pool was small and separated from
the parking lot by a chain-link fence lined with sheets
of hard green plastic. All the outside lights of the Swan Motel glowed with a pale weariness as if they were too hot to shine
their brightest and had turned themselves to dim.

“It’s still hot out here,” I whispered.

“Yes, it is,” she murmured in the stillness. “Hot as dragons’ breath.”

My mother lifted the latch on the gate that led into the pool area. She walked right in as if the “Pool Closed After 9 PM”
sign applied to everyone but us.

“They’ll be looking for a cool watering hole this night.” She dipped her foot into the shallow end. “When they come, you will
allow the dragons to drink as much as they like, undisturbed, won’t you?”

I nodded.

“Your movements in the water must produce only the tiniest of ripples.”

I nodded again and lowered my thin legs into the water.

That’s when I saw him. The one-eyed dragon.

In the darkness of the still waters, the smoldering light under the diving board appeared to be the half-opened yellow eye
of a camouflaged dragon gazing back at us.

A shiver raced up my torso.

Ignoring the dragon, my mother demurely slipped her slender frame all the way under the water, submerging with barely a sound.
I watched as her oversized pajama top billowed around her like a jellyfish.

Bravely lowering myself into the water only up to my neck, I kept a watchful eye on the dragon in the deep end of the pool.