Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Vol. 131, No. 1. Whole No. 797, January 2008

Hidden Gifts by Steve Hockensmith

Steve Hockensmith tries to contribute a holiday story to each of our January issues and a Sherlock Holmes-themed story to each February issue. The series that began with his first Holmes-themed story has turned into a success at novel length, with the first book, Holmes on the Range, earning Edgar, Dilys, Anthony, and Shamus award nominations. Look for book two, On the Wrong Track, in paperback now, and The Black Dove (hardcover) in February.

Karen had just spoken blasphemy, plain and simple. Heresy. Sacrilege.

Not that her little brother knew what blasphemy, heresy, or sacrilege were. But he did know poo-poo when he heard it. And to Ronnie, this would be big poo-poo. The biggest.

“That’s not true!” he screamed, popping off his pillow and scrambling over the wadded-up macramé blanket that separated his half of the couch from hers. “You’re lying!”

Karen didn’t even look away from the television.

“Oh, don’t be such a baby. Everybody knows it.”

And she said it again. The blasphemy. The poo-poo. The innocence-scorching truth.

“Santa isn’t real.”

“No no no no nooooooooo!”

Ronnie balled up his fists and pounded at Karen with them. But Ronnie was only six, and small for his age. He might as well have tried beating his sister senseless with a pair of earmuffs.

“Stop it. I can’t hear.”

Karen swiped out a long, thin arm that swept her brother off the couch. She didn’t do it maliciously. It was a casual gesture, like opening a curtain. There were things she wanted to see. Things she wanted to feel.

Cousin Rick hadn’t been in the apartment when she and Ronnie got home from school. And when their scrawny, thirtyish “cousin” (they refused to call him “Uncle Rick,” like Mom wanted) wasn’t around to hog the TV and flick lit cigarettes at their heads and hunch over the phone having hissy-whispered conversations with his creepy friends, Karen tried to make the most of it.

Today, “the most” meant soaking up Christmas cheer.

It was December 23, 1979, and the afternoon reruns were Christmas episodes. Andy Griffith, The Beverly Hillbillies, even The Addams Family — they’d all been wrapping presents and drinking eggnog and learning Very Special holiday lessons. It was totally phony and forced, but even bogus Christmas cheer with a laugh track and soap-flake snow was better than no Christmas cheer at all.

Karen and Ronnie didn’t even have a tree that year. They’d started to put one up with Mom, pulling out the big fake fir Dad used to call “the holly-jolly green giant.” But Cousin Rick put a stop to that.

“Jeez, what are you doin’? A guy can barely turn around in this sardine can, and you’re gonna plop that big S.O.B. in the middle of the room? No way. You want a Christmas tree, decorate the bushes in the parking lot. Now shut up, would you? I gotta keep my cool. The Big Call could come any minute, and those guys ain’t messin’ around.”

The kids turned to their mother.

Cousin Rick had been waiting for “The Big Call” for a week, and something was always getting on his nerves. When he wasn’t out “hustling” — his word for whatever it was he did all day — he paced the apartment like a barnyard rooster, twitchy, herky-jerky, his round, anxious eyes darting from the TV to the phone. He’d already turned off the Christmas carols (he couldn’t bear “B.J. and the Bear”) and nixed the stringing of lights (the bright colors reminded him of “a bad trip,” whatever that meant). Now he wouldn’t let them put up a tree?

Surely, Mom would stand up to him this time. Surely, she’d choose their Christmas over her boyfriend’s weird little tics. Surely.

Without a word, Mom packed up the tree and stuffed it back in the closet. The next day, Karen saw it poking out of a dumpster around the other side of the building.

Which is how Christmas came to be something out there — at school, in stores, on billboards. In the past.

Or on TV.

It was the Bradys’ turn now. Little Cindy was asking a department-store Santa to cure her mother’s laryngitis so she could sing a solo at their church Christmas service. That’s what had brought up the whole Santa Claus thing in the first place.

“Stupid kid,” Karen had snorted. And then she’d said it, blasphemed — and Ronnie had flipped out.

“There is a Santa Claus!” he howled from the floor.

His voice quavered, as if he might cry, but Karen knew it wasn’t the tumble off the couch that had hurt him. Their apartment might have been tiny, but the musty, mustard-colored shag covering the floor was as thick and soft as a dirty old sponge.

No, she’d hurt him, and she wasn’t even sure why. His faith in Santa had been irritating her, rubbing on her nerves like sandpaper, for weeks. She was a big kid — almost ten — and she knew she should let Ronnie have his little-kid dreams. Yet another part of her longed to shake him awake.

She kept her eyes on the Bradys.

“Santa’s fake,” she said.

“He’s real!”

“No, he’s not.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do.”

“But how do you know?”

“I just do.”

“Prove it!”

Karen finally tore her gaze away from the screen.

“You want me to? Really?”

Her brother blinked at her. It was up to him now.

If he insisted on this, she’d have to go through with it, right? That’s what big sisters are for — helping little kids learn. And if a lesson stung a little, well, that wouldn’t be her fault, would it?

Ronnie nodded reluctantly.

“All right,” Karen said.

She walked over to the TV and switched it off. The reruns would come around again one day. That’s why they called them “reruns.” But this moment with her brother — it would come only once.

“Let’s go.”

She headed for the bedroom Mom had been sharing with Cousin Rick the past few months. The door was closed. The door was always closed.

“Where are you going?”

Karen looked back at her brother. “Where does it look like I’m going?”

“But... we can’t go in there.”

“Why not? Mom’s at the Tiger tonight — she won’t be home for hours. And you know how it is when he’s supposed to be watching us. He’ll probably show up five minutes before Mom and pretend he was here all day.”

“But if he catches us... you remember what he said.”

Karen did remember — the tone of Rick’s voice, anyway. If he ever found them messing with his things, he’d have to do something... ugly. Karen had understood that much even if some of the words were new to her.

“He won’t catch us,” she said. “We’ll only be in there a minute.”

She turned and opened the bedroom door. The room beyond was messy, dark. Adult.

She stepped inside.

The bed — that was the place to start. Karen got down on her hands and knees and pushed away the crumpled clothes and cigarette packs so she could take a look underneath. The shades were drawn down over the windows, yet just enough silver-gray light glowed around the edges to see by.

There wasn’t much to see, though. Just more clutter.

A single shoe. Dad’s aluminum softball bat, the one Mom kept around “for protection.” An old People magazine. A torn wrapper with the word “Trojan” printed on it.

It suddenly occurred to Karen that she might not find what she was looking for. The thought scared her.

“What’s down there?”

Karen looked over her shoulder. Her brother stood in the doorway, half in half out of the room.

“Nothing.”

She stood and started toward the closet. To reach it, she had to step around a pile of dirty clothes as high as her waist.

The apartment had never been like this when Dad was alive. But after Mom had to start working two jobs — days at the Lawn Devil plant, evenings tending bar at the Toy Tiger Lounge — things changed.

And then Uncle/Cousin Rick showed up, and things didn’t just change some more. They fell apart.

He appeared overnight, like Christmas presents or Easter eggs. One morning, Karen and Ronnie stumbled bleary-eyed from the tiny bedroom they shared and there he was. A complete stranger eating their Boo Berry at the kitchen table.

“Hey,” he’d said through a mouthful of cereal. “Your mom’s still asleep.”

After another half-hearted bite — and a full minute of awkward silence — Rick dropped his spoon and stood up.

“I don’t see how you can eat this crap,” he mumbled, and he stomped past the still-gaping kids and disappeared into their mother’s bedroom — closing the door behind him.

He’d left the bowl, still filled with milk and soggy blue blobs, sitting on the table. That was The Rick System for dining and dishwashing: Dirty bowls, plates, cups, and silverware were left out, encrusted with food, until there was nothing left to eat with. And when you reached that point, you got all your food from KFC and White Castle and ate it straight out of the box.

Cleaning (never), sleeping (late), bathing (when people noticed the smell) — soon it was all on The Rick System. Mom was on The Rick System. And it was making her seem less like Mom every day.

Dad used to warn Karen about “bad influences” at school, but she never really knew what he meant until she saw the effect Cousin Rick had on her mother. If there really were a Santa Claus, she knew what she’d ask him for. Not that the fat man would do it.

Santa gave bad people a lump of coal. He didn’t drop them down abandoned mine shafts.

“What are you looking for?” Ronnie asked as Karen stepped up to the closet Mom and Rick now shared.

“You’ll see.”

But Karen wasn’t sure he would. What if there was nothing to see? Could Cousin Rick have changed Mom that much?

She pushed aside one of the closet’s sliding doors and got her answer.

“Come here,” she said.

She turned to her brother and grinned.

Ronnie moved into the room slowly, cautiously, as if the floor was littered with land mines instead of dirty laundry. But then he saw what had put the smile on his sister’s face, and he ran the rest of the way to the closet, plowing through heaps of wrinkled clothes as he went.

“The Death Star! The Death Star! The Death Star!”

Ronnie reached out for the box, ready to tear the heavy cardboard apart with his bare hands to get at the treasure pictured in color on the side: a Star Wars Death Star Playset, the very thing he’d asked Santa for in the letter Mom helped him write two weeks before.

Ronnie stopped.

The very thing... and here it was in Mom’s closet next to a Nerf football and a Shaun Cassidy album and a Nancy Drew book and a bunch of plastic-wrapped socks and underwear.

Two tubes of brightly colored wrapping paper were propped up in the corner.

Karen watched her brother’s face as he put it all together. Wonderment gave way to puzzlement gave way to disappointment.

And then finally: contentment.

No, there was no Santa Claus. But yes, there would be a Christmas... because their mother still loved them.

Ronnie dropped to his knees before the Death Star, looking as reverent and awestruck as a shepherd in the manger.

“Last year, it was all under the bed.” Karen knelt next to her brother and picked up the Shaun Cassidy LP — obviously a gift for her, even though it was Leif Garrett she truly loved. “I found it by accident. Mom was getting rid of Dad’s clothes and junk, and I... I guess I was looking for something I could keep.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Karen shrugged. “You were too little. And you were still all sad about Dad.”

“I’m still all sad about Dad.”

Ronnie leaned in closer to the Death Star and started picking at the packing tape that sealed it in its box.

“Hey!” his sister barked, making him flinch. “You can’t open it, dummy! We’re not even supposed to be in here.”

“But I wanna play with it,” Ronnie whined.

“You can play with it after Christmas,” Karen said, unconsciously imitating the flat tone and clipped diction of an exasperated adult. “And don’t forget to look surprised when you unwrap it.”

“But—”

“Do you want Rick to know we’ve been in here?”

“But—”

“Cuz he’ll figure it out.”

“But—”

“And then he’ll do it, I swear. What he said he would.”

Ronnie nodded glumly... then reached out for the box again.

“But I wanna play with it.”

Karen sighed. Fear didn’t always work with Ronnie, and logic was no help whatsoever. What she needed now was a distraction.

“Hey, you know what?” she said. “I bet there’s more presents in here. Maybe even something cooler than your Star Wars thing.”

Ronnie looked at her sceptically, for what could be cooler than a Death Star Playset? But he said, “Really?”

“Sure.” Karen pointed into the darkness that swallowed the rest of the closet. “Back in there. Get out of the way and we can look.”

“Well...” Ronnie slowly dragged himself away from the toys. “All right.”

Karen stood and pulled the sliding doors toward her, revealing the other half of the closet — Cousin Rick’s half, to judge by the leisure suits hanging there. Not that Karen had ever seen Rick in a suit. He favored loose, broad-collared polyester shirts and tight white slacks. He used to be some kind of salesman, Mom had explained once, but now he’d “gone freelance,” so he could dress however he wanted. Later, the kids asked him what his job was, but he just grinned and said, “Your Uncle Ricky’s a desperado.” He said it like it was a joke, but Karen and Ronnie didn’t get it. When they didn’t crack a smile, Rick told them to buzz off and mind their own beeswax.

Karen didn’t think there’d be any presents mixed in with his stuff. But she made a show of looking anyway, sliding aside suits and digging through the tasseled loafers and stinky sneakers heaped up on the floor. Another minute or so and she’d contrive some reason for them to get out of there. Maybe a false alarm of the “Do you hear footsteps?” variety. Anything to get her brother away from the Death Star before he could open it up — and totally give them away.

“Hey,” Ronnie said. “What’s that?”

He pointed at a dingy Purdue University sweatshirt at the back of the closet. Unlike the rest of the clothes spread around on the floor, it didn’t look like it had been dropped and forgotten the second it was stripped off. It was actually spread out with something resembling care.

Just below the Purdue logo — a barrel-chested, mean-eyed man gripping a sledgehammer — the sweatshirt bulged as if straining to cover a big pot belly.

There was something under there. Something hidden in a half-assed way that seemed oh so very Rick.

“Go on,” Ronnie said. “Look.”

The little man on the sweatshirt glared at Karen hatefully. He had more muscles than Rick, that was for sure, but the look of surly contempt on his cartoon face — that was the same.

It should’ve served as a warning, a reminder that they hadn’t actually “messed with” any of Rick’s stuff yet. That it wasn’t too late. Karen knew that.

And still she flipped the little man off and whipped the sweatshirt aside.

Underneath was a box with the word “Florsheim” printed on the lid.

“What is it?”

“I think it’s just shoes,” Karen said.

The disappointment in her own voice surprised her. What had she been hoping to find? A Malibu Barbie? A pony?

It was Christmas, and Rick had bought new shoes... for himself. Of course.

Karen lifted off the lid.

“Hey!” Ronnie said, leaning in to peek around her. “He did get us something for Christmas!”

There were no shoes in the box. Instead, it held a loafy-looking package about the size and shape of a large fruitcake.

Ronnie poked it with a single finger.

“Kinda squishy,” he said. “Cruddy wrapping.”

Rather than the usual festive red, green, silver, or gold, the package was swaddled in coarse brown paper that looked suspiciously like a cut-up grocery bag. The jagged edges and clumsily folded flaps were fastened down with long strips of masking tape.

Karen didn’t know what was in the package, but she knew enough to be scared.

This was what Rick didn’t want them messing with. A squishy secret wrapped in plain brown paper. A grown-up thing, forbidden and frightening.

It was time to go.

Ronnie started picking at the tape on the package.

“Stop it!” Karen snapped. “It’s not for us!”

Her brother kept working at one corner with a fingernail. A sliver of tape began to peel off.

“Hey! I said stop it!”

“I’m just gonna peek. Rick’ll never notice.”

“Yes, he will!”

“No, he won’t.”

Karen grabbed the package and jerked it out of the box. She meant to shove Ronnie away, fix the tape, put things back together again.

But her brother had already worked enough tape loose to pinch it firmly, and when Karen snatched up the package, he held tight.

A long strip ripped off. The package opened.

And then it was snowing.

Fine, white powder filled the air. It seemed to hang there a moment, so thick Karen and Ronnie couldn’t even see each other. It drifted down slowly, covering the carpet, the dirty clothes, Karen, Ronnie, everything.

By the time the blizzard was over, Ronnie was crying.

“We’re in trouble, aren’t we?” he said, tears gumming up in the white dust covering his cheeks. “We’re in so much trouble.”

Karen knew the truth of it. She wasn’t sure what the white stuff was — Coke Cane? Heroine? Mary Wanda? — but she’d seen enough Rockford Files and Starsky and Hutch to know it was something bad people fought over. Killed over.

She and her brother weren’t just in trouble. They were in danger.

Karen felt her lower lip start to tremble. Moisture pooled in her eyes.

And then someone said, “Don’t worry. Everything’ll be all right.” And Karen was shocked and relieved to realize it had been her.

Her knees trembled as she pushed herself to her feet, but she willed them to stop.

She and Ronnie had been looking after themselves for a while now. Washing their own clothes, getting themselves up for school, packing their own lunches. How was this any different? It just made their To Do list a little longer.

Clean up drugs

Fix package

Stay alive

“Don’t move,” she said, heading for the door. “And don’t get any of that white junk in your nose or mouth.”

“Where are you going?” Ronnie wailed. “Don’t leave me!”

“Geez, don’t freak out,” Karen said with all the cool, big-sister condescension she could muster. “I know what to do.”

Less than a minute later, she was back — with the vacuum cleaner.

After hooking up the long, tube-like sucky thingy, Karen used it on her brother. He whimpered and wriggled as the vacuum snorked the powder from his clothes and hair, but soon he was clean enough to go out to the front window and act as a lookout. The second he saw Cousin Rick’s dented-up Dodge Dart pull into the parking lot, he was to run and tell her. At which point, she would...

She had no idea. She just had to hope she wouldn’t need one.

It took her ten minutes to suck up all the powder. She meant to scoop it out and stuff it back in the package, but one look inside the vacuum bag told her that wouldn’t work. The whatever-it-was, once pure white, was now mixed together with gray dust bunnies and strands of long black hair.

So Karen went to the kitchen and got out the Bisquick.

As she was pressing down the last strip of tape, Ronnie called out, “He’s home! He’s home!”

Cousin Rick came through the front door two minutes later. He found Karen and Ronnie on the couch watching The Brady Bunch. On the screen, Mrs. Brady was singing “O Come, All Ye Faithful.”

Her laryngitis was gone. It was a Christmas miracle.

Rick shrugged off his parka and let it drop to the floor. Then he walked to the TV and changed the channel to Bowling for Dollars.

“Go outside and play,” he said, plopping down between the kids. “The Big Call might come tonight, and I don’t want you two hangin’ around gettin’ me all jittery.”

“But it’s cold out,” said Karen.

“And dark,” said Ronnie.

“So?” Rick threw a glance toward Karen’s end of the couch. “Build a bonfire or something, I don’t c—... What’s that?”

“What’s what?”

“That. Under your eye.”

Karen brought her fingers up to her face. There was something dry and chalky caked high on her left cheek.

“Oh... that must be flour. We made Christmas cookies at school today.”

“Yeah?”

And then Cousin Rick did something he almost never did — he actually looked her in the eye.

“You bring any home?”

Karen shook her head.

“Sorry. We ate ’em all.”

Rick turned back to the TV. One of the contestants had just thrown a gutter ball.

“Well, go on, then,” he grumbled, pulling out his BIC and a pack of cigarettes. “Get outta here. I got business to take care of.”

Karen and Ronnie hopped down from the couch and went to get their coats. They didn’t complain this time.

“Karen?” Ronnie said as they roamed aimlessly around the parking lot. “What’s gonna happen?”

Karen shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“You think he’ll ever find out what we did?”

Probably. Yes. Sooner or later. That’s what Karen assumed.

She looked up. It was a perfectly clear night, and the stars were bright and still. None of them shimmered or twinkled. They just hung there like holes in the big, black blanket smothering the sky.

Once upon a time, when she was a little kid like Ronnie, she used to wish on stars. She believed in Santa Claus, too. Same thing, really. Useless.

But it couldn’t hurt, could it?

She picked a star.

“He won’t notice,” she said. “Everything’s going to be okay”

A door creaked open and slammed shut, and the kids turned to see Rick coming toward them with quick, purposeful strides.

He stopped beside his car.

“Finally got the call — the big one,” he said, sounding nervous but excited. “I’ll be gone for a while. Tell your mom to wait up for me. She and I are gonna go out and celebrate when I get back.”

As he ducked into the Dart, Karen noticed something tucked under his left arm.

The shoebox.

“Bye, Cousin Rick!” Karen called out. “Bye-bye!”

She and Ronnie walked out to the sidewalk to watch him drive away, waving until the taillights shrank to mere pinpricks in the distance, then faded to nothingness altogether.

Poor Mom had a terrible Christmas. Fretting. Pacing. Going downtown to fill out the missing-person report. But Karen knew she’d feel better soon. Be better soon. They all would be — Mom and Ronnie and her.

For the first time in a long time, Karen wasn’t just hoping for that. She believed.

(c)2007 by Steve Hockensmith