Spook

25

From Visuals, Inc. I drove downtown and hung around Bates and Carpenter’s offices on lower Geary until Kerry could break free. We had just enough time for a quick lunch before we headed out to the avenues to Emily’s school. The Christmas pageant was scheduled for one o’clock. She really wanted us to be there, and I’d rather have cut off an arm than add another disappointment to her already too-long list.

The auditorium was mostly full by the time we walked in, but it turned out that the Simpsons, Carla’s parents, had saved a couple of seats for us. Nice people, Carl and Lorraine; always cheerful and friendly, and affectionate toward each other in public. But since Emily had dropped her little bombshell, I’d felt uncomfortable in their presence. The Simpsons’ problems in the bedroom were none of my business, but the seed had been planted and it kept sprouting whenever I saw them. Out of the mouths of babes. The less you know about somebody else’s sex life, the better off you are — and if that isn’t an axiom, it ought to be.

So I sat next to Carl and made polite conversation and was relieved when the program finally started. I’d figured they would put it on by grades, but they had a better scheme than that — a series of nonsecular skits, each one integrating several kids from different age and ethnic groups. Pretty well done, too. The second was a Santa’s Workshop thing, a biggish twelve-year-old dressed up as St. Nick (poor kid), a dozen or more elves in costume puttering and singing. Originally Emily had been assigned to that skit, in the role of one of the elves, but she’d talked her way out of it. “I think it’s silly,” she’d said when I asked her why.

“What’s silly about it?”

“Elves are silly. There aren’t any such things.”

“There aren’t, huh? What about Santa Claus?”

“He’s just a figment.”

“Figment?”

“Make-believe. I’ve known that since I was five.”

“Who told you?”

“My mom. She said all that stuff, Santa Claus and reindeer and elves, was just a big stupid fantasy that messes up kids’ heads. Parents and friends give you presents at Christmas, not some fat elf in a sleigh.”

“You really believe it’s just a big stupid fantasy?”

“Well, I cried when she told me. But I’m too old for that stuff now anyway.”

Ten years of life. Too old for that stuff. Kids grow up so damn fast these days, by necessity, and maybe the earlier they start being fed doses of reality, the more effectively they’ll be able to cope with the screwed-up world of the twenty-first century. Some modern theories of child-rearing embrace that approach. Admittedly Kerry and I are Johnny-come-latelys to parenthood, and I’m hopelessly old-fashioned; but it seems to me that the traditional fantasy beliefs of childhood are neither stupid nor harmful. They encourage kids to indulge their imaginations, allow them to keep their sense of innocent wonder a little longer. Emily’s parents had been fearful, cold, materialistic people with darkly hidden pasts; their doses of reality had been tainted and had tainted her. It would be foolish to say that she’d have fewer psychological scars if they’d let her believe in Santa Claus, but in my view, destroying her child’s fantasy world so early and so harshly had contributed to the damage.

The skit Emily had lobbied for, and gotten to perform in with Carla Simpson, was called Evening Carolers and featured a wintry street scene — cotton batting and white confetti doing duty as snow — and a dozen or so kids in snowsuit costumes going from door to door singing “Silent Night” and “O Come All Ye Faithful” and “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.” It was the right venue for her, the one she should’ve been picked for in the beginning. She had a clear, sweet voice and she liked to sing — a fact neither Kerry nor I had known until recently, when she began to come out of herself and regain optimism, put trust in her new life. One night we’d heard her singing in her bedroom, to the accompaniment of one of her CDs: wounded little bird learning how to be happy again. It hadn’t taken much praise and encouragement for her to overcome her shyness and do some warbling in front of us; and now, up there on the stage in front of several hundred people, she was radiant and you could tell even at a distance that she was having a fine time. Natural-born performer.

After the show, when kids joined parents out front, she hugged Kerry and me and said, “I’m so glad you’re here,” as if she’d been worried right up to the last minute that one or both of us would back out.

“So are we,” I said. “You were pretty terrific up there, kiddo.”

“Honest? I missed a couple of high notes. But so did Carla.”

“Couldn’t tell it from where we were sitting.” Kerry gave me a wink that said, How would you know, you have a tin ear. I ignored it. “How about singing those three carols for us on Christmas Eve, see if you can hit the notes you missed?”

“What, the whole group?”

“We don’t need the whole group. Just you.”

“Well... maybe.” But her smile said the suggestion delighted her.

The Simpsons came up. “We’re heading home to get things ready for the party,” Lorraine said. “Emily’s coming with us, right?”

“Right,” Kerry said.

Carla said, “Great. See you both around five.”

When they were gone again, the two children in tow, I said to Kerry, “Party? What party?”

“You’re a nice man and a good father, you know that? And I love you.”

“Never mind the soft soap. What party?”

“The Simpsons are having a little Christmas get-together at their place, kids and adults both. And before you start grumbling and grousing, Pm going to be as nice to you as you were to Emily just now. I’ll go by myself and tell them how sorry you are to miss it but you had some urgent business to attend to downtown.”

“You’re really willing to do that?”

“Well, I don’t like to lie, but it’s better than listening to you grumble about having to endure another party.”

I kissed her, by way of thanks. But in the car, on the way downtown, I began to feel a little guilty. I asked how many people were going to be at the Simpsons’; she said she thought twenty or so. Twenty or so, a third of them kids — not so bad, really. What’re they having to eat? I asked then. Canapes, cake, ice cream, she said. Eggnog? Eggnog, sure, what would a Christmas party be without eggnog.

It was the eggnog that did it. I like the stuff, entirely too much. Hard to find and therefore easily avoidable most of the year, but the holiday season is a different story. “All right,” I said when I pulled to the curb in front of Bates and Carpenter’s building. “You won’t have to lie for me. I’ll bite the bullet and go to the Simpsons’.”

“If you want to,” she said. “Entirely up to you. I should be there no later than five-thirty.” She slid out of the car, then leaned back inside to wink at me again before she hurried away, a big, broad wink this time.

Sneaky woman. She’d planned it this way all along.

I drove over to O’Farrell, found parking on the street for a change, went into my building. The office door was locked; Tamara must’ve gone out somewhere. I was smiling, thinking about Emily and her pageant performance, Kerry and her devious little ways, anticipating the Simpsons’ eggnog if not the Simpsons’ party, as I keyed the door open and walked in.

My high spirits made the shock even greater. It was like passing through a doorway from heaven into hell.