Santa Claus Conquers the Homophobes (6 page)

At the thought of her, Chuff’s throat narrowed. She preferred her sons vicious. But Chuff found viciousness harder to conjure up with each passing day. She rewarded mayhem in the telling. Even when one of his brothers lied, and everyone knew he was embellishing his nasty deeds, Mom praised the liar.

When the blood of vengeance rode high in her, a certain nostril flare and lip curl distorted her looks. Chuff’s tales, contrive them though he might, never managed to please her. Hard and cold as her heart, she listened. If he escaped the telling without a scornful word or a command to the others to beat him senseless, he counted himself lucky. “She means well. No, that’s wrong. She never means well. I don’t want her approval or praise. But I do. It’s the coin of the realm, and dear pale moon—who at least, in your indifference, spares me your sneers—I sit here impoverished. Enrich me, or at least grant me minimal sustenance. There must be a way out, some way to...to find my true family, not these awful changelings.”

His brothers’ scowls rose before him. He dismissed them, but they came again. Then he calmed and let them vanish into the chill air of the island.

“A sign. One small sign pointing the way out.”

But the moon’s glare held steady. No wink. No warmth. No wavering. Clouds came in to cover it, until it was but a gray smudge hidden inside a darker gray.

For the longest time, Chuff tried to coax the moon back into view. It refused to return.

Chapter 6. The Power of Prayer

THE ELVES WEREN’T THE ONLY creatures at the North Pole who had slipped into magic time that night.

Santa, having scrutinized the ceiling above his bed for hours, finally crawled from beneath his blankets and over the bottom lip of the bed, doing his best not to disturb his wives. He pulled on flannel underwear, shrugged into a suit and boots, and trudged across the commons to the workshop. There he sat for many an hour, summoning scenes past and present from the four mortals whose futures Wendy had shown him.

First he examined Ty Taylor, a proper lad who had adopted without question his parents’ strictness. From his earliest days, he seemed destined for the ministry. Santa observed the young man at seminary, swallowing as gospel his denomination’s lies. Evangelicals were a cockeyed fringe back then, as the seventies began and Ty turned twenty-two. Outside, authority was being questioned, defied, rebelled against. But inside, Ty and his classmates were admonished to obey absolutely and to buttress with rhetorical flourishes the beliefs of the buttoned-down.

Santa brought up scene after scene of Ty’s indoctrination into institutional homophobia, into selective Bible parsing that slathered a false sheen of God-acceptance over the prejudices of the day. Though Santa longed to wrench these teachings from Ty’s mind, he could only observe their inculcation.

In his teens, Ty passed two vagrants on a park bench in Chicago and burned at the suggestion they shouted after him. Santa felt his discomfort, as if he thought that heterosexuality ought to blare with trumpeted certainty from him, but did not.

Then came assignments to this or that church, sermons on sin, the gradual development of a beguiling preaching style that honed the fear, hatred, and self-righteousness that worked upon the sinful.

Despairing at what he saw, Santa let Ty Taylor go.

He next probed Jamie’s parents, likewise tracing them from their childhoods, how they met, the dominance of Kathy MacLaren in their marriage. Here as well he noted the gender uncertainty in both of them, dropped references to manliness as their sons developed and diverged. Though Jamie was only eight, Santa observed his father’s worried looks and felt the fears of both parents as they discussed the boys in the privacy of their bedroom.

But what most upset Santa was the life of Matt Beluzzo at his current sullen age of twelve.

His father, languishing in jail, despised his wife and son and had let them know it with curses, slaps, and belt-whippings. Matt’s mother smoked and overate, covering her misery in excess makeup. She rarely looked Matt in the eye but stared past him, speaking, when she spoke at all, in insults.

For Santa, who had focused all his life on good little boys and girls, Matt’s family repulsed him. And that repulsion distressed him no end. Worse, he knew that what he had seen played itself out repeatedly in homes throughout the world. Seeing
one
such family was unbearable. Imagining their misery multiplied drove Santa to his knees, his hands clasped in prayer, his eyes red and wet.

“Dear God,” he began, “I thank you for my many blessings and above all for my loving friends and family here at the North Pole and for the children who hold my truth in their hearts. My life, save for that unfortunate interlude with the Tooth Fairy, is one of contentment. Even my struggles with my...my less savory side led eventually to Rachel and Wendy’s welcome into our community and the enrichment and expansion of my marriage, for which I could praise you for all eternity and not begin to praise you enough. But tonight I must speak a prayer of pleading, a request to be granted the power to right a wrong, to extend my charter, and not to shrink from extended contact with grown-ups.

“I am Santa Claus. It has been my rare pleasure and duty to be childlike, though ancient, the better to resonate with mortal children. The naughty ones I gave not a thought to, so full of joy was I for the others, for the effervescence of desire that filled their hearts. This was my task, and I embraced it with all my heart.

“But now, at Wendy’s urging, I have seen how mortals fall as they leave childhood, how even well-behaved children join the grown-up world and make its lies their own. I am the heart of generosity. Now I beg permission to extend my generosity to Wendy herself.

“She has asked the impossible. Children do that all the time, and I nod and smile, give what I can, and they forget their extravagant wishes and are content. But this time, there is no easy substitute. Wendy is on the cusp of adulthood, yet still she is my little girl. She is pushing me to grow, but I cannot see how. Teach me the way, o Lord. Show me how to save Jamie Stratton and his tormentors.

“Please, God, do not think that I question for one moment your ways with mortals. There must be some point to the suffering, the cruelty, the cosmic game they play of exalting goodness with their words while committing the most vicious assaults upon each other—all of it must be part of your divine plan, inscrutable as it is.

“And though the simplest of minds can easily conjure utopias—a wonder it is that not
one
of these alternate worlds, infinitely better, has been your gift to humankind—I do not question your ways. After all, I and Anya and my elves and, God knows, Rachel and Wendy, suffered much before the awful storm abated. But then, perhaps my second wife and my stepdaughter are more precious for having been won after such pain and suffering. Who am I to judge? So I do not question your ways, nor even expect that the gift I request you will bestow upon me.

“That gift, dear Lord, is the ability to save Jamie Stratton from his suicide and from the suffering fated to lead him to self-slaughter. If I cannot sway his tormentors to withhold their torment, let me at least somehow divert their negativity.

“But I dare not stray into particulars. I have made my request. You know best if and how that request will be granted. I leave it in your bounteous hands, assured by faith that you will give my plea your attention and, as always, make the wisest choice. The greatest good for all the universe, whatever it may be, is all I ask.” Santa shut his eyes, sent his anguished plea heavenward, gave thanks for his blessings, and spoke a final “Amen.”

As he doused the lights and trudged across the commons to the warmth of his marriage bed, his words like moonbeams in reverse traveled through the firmament, up up up through the cloud-covered floor of heaven to the ear of the Father, who glanced down, momentarily annoyed, from his interminable conversation with the Son, tugged at his earlobe, and asked, “Where were we?”

“Some disturbance, Father?”

“Just a whining suppliant. Go on.”

And their never-ending debate continued.

* * *

The Son felt eternally betrayed all the time.

He had visited humankind to save them from damnation. And he’d done his damnedest. Some he had inspired. But far too many perverted his message, using it to justify cruelties of one kind or another. More critical than that betrayal, they betrayed, by denying, what was best in themselves. That squandering of their talents, well nigh unforgivable, made his burden heavier. Since his visit to earth, he always wore a doleful and downcast look, though it never overshadowed his essence as a being most loving, forgiving, and intercessive with the Father.

As for the suppliant God had mentioned, the Son had seen who that suppliant was and, there being no secrets in heaven, his father knew that he knew.

And so the Son, once Dionysus now Christ, kept close watch over Santa Claus, tracking his disturbed sleep and the content of his dreams. He watched him soap and shampoo his capacious body, mournful as he passed his open mouth beneath the shower spray. Through Santa’s long days of industry the eye of Christ was upon him, upon his increased consumption of Coke, his scarcely concealed agitation, and his feverish toymaking, productive days driven by equal parts love of children and anguish over whether God would answer his prayer.

He saw Santa take Wendy aside to assure her he had not forgotten and was going all out to find a solution, though solution there might not be. And he felt Santa’s anguish at the hint of disappointment that passed over her features.

In the midst of these observings, the Divine Mother asked whom he observed. This she did though she too knew all, what was occurring, what would occur, and what her role would be. Even now, her lactose, lachrymose mammaries were readying the milk of human kindness for...but we’ll come to that in due time.

The Son told her anyway.

He comprehended the shape of what had been and what was to come, the great sacrifice he had made for humankind and Santa’s impending sacrifice in the same vein...but we’ll get to that, we’ll get to that.

It’s a challenge, describing the
über
-temporal in temporal terms, the
über
-spatial in terms of space. For the Divine Mother was near and far, inside him and he inside her at the same time. And all converse between them was necessary and unnecessary, as it had always been and would always be, world without end.

As that day drew to a close, Santa trudged once more to his workshop, lit a thin candle, fell to his knees, and clasped his hands in prayer.

“Is he at it again?” asked the Father.

“He is,” said the Son.

“That’s right. Be compassionate. It’s your way. And my way is to snap and snarl at him. How dare he ask for anything, he who has it made? He hasn’t thought through his piety, his pretense at fervor. How dare he question my ways, even as he pretends not to? Where was
he
when the universe was created?”

“His concern is only for Wendy, and for the suffering boy. His heart—”

“Yes, yes,” said the Father. “But he’s out of his league. If I answer this prayer, where will it end? There would
be
no end. I’d have to fix the whole damned race. They’re never satisfied. Not mortals, and not immortals either. Look at him. Two loving wives, to whom he was married by no less than me, a wonderful stepdaughter, adoring and adorable elves, millions of enthralled children, the perfect workplace, access to magic time, flying reindeer—the list goes on. But is he content? He is not content. There’s always one more thing he needs. He slanders me in the asking. I have my reasons for allowing suffering. Don’t ask me what they are. It’s no one’s goddamned business but mine. I refuse to be second-guessed. Oh, great. Just listen to him.”

“Calm down, Father.”

“He wants all four of them fixed. Jamie’s tormentors, he calls them. It’s clear of course that fixing the parents would save the child, that alone. But, no, he wants the preacher and the bully fixed too. If I do that, if I grant him any part of what he wants, the floodgates will burst wide. Fix their tormentors too, why don’t you? Fix everyone’s tormentors. You’re God, for the love of Christ. You can do anything. Work those miracles, tote that barge, lift that bale, fix that world. Well I’ve got news for Santa. The world doesn’t need fixing.”

“You’re getting worked up again.”

“The temerity of the little elf. I ought to demote him is what I ought to do. One swaybacked reindeer I'll give him, half a helper (the lower half), and some hell hole to toil in, sweaty, stinky, and confining—with no reduction in workload!”

On and on the Father railed, so upset that hints of Zeus, hurler of thunderbolts, peered through his façade of white-robed grandeur, the fire in his eyes, the armor, the fists full of heavenly vengeance. But the Son kept up his soothing words until Santa’s prayer ended. And as the unjolly old elf trudged back to his cottage and the Father checked his temper to ask, “Where were we?” the Son decided to be Santa’s champion, to persuade God to grant him this one small concession, putting reasonable bounds upon it, if need be. He had already made changes for Santa’s sake eight years before. And the ones Santa now requested would serve a good cause.

But, truth be told, the Son fretted over his father’s health. He was surely eternal. Of that, there could be no doubt. But he ought to
enjoy
eternity more than he did.

The Son vowed to do what he could to make it so.

* * *

The following day, the Father looked down on his creation, of which the earth and its creatures were the centerpiece.

It pleased him that the Son existed. For it allowed him to be judgmental, even curmudgeonly, playing off a foil. Could he change things? In an instant, whenever the urge took hold. But he chose not to. “Creation is perfect,” he said to no one in particular. A perfect mess, he thought. But perfection dwelt even in mess and sprawl. The world as it was was good enough.