Carol for Another Christmas (16 page)

As one voice, the people in the tiny apartment stood up and cheered and ran to the window to look out at the fireworks created by the popping transformers.

“Turn on the radio, Jamie. I bet the newspeople are having a good time with this storm,” Noah said.

But all of that went unnoticed by Monica, who was good and angry at what she had been forced to endure at the hands of children, literary devices, gamesters, cleaning men, dead brothers, and possibly a Program Manager who might or might not have been God. She said as much to the spirit, ending by saying, “. . . and furthermore, I want to go back to my office right now, Spirit. I know where this is in your little plan. I'm supposed to get all mushy over the differently abled little dolly and turn into Lady Bountiful. Well, forget it. The brat has been playing with valuable equipment and conspiring against me with my sanctimonious sibling, who hasn't been the least improved by death as near as I can tell. I want to go back to my nice, comfy couch, and I will forget you and everything tonight and take a Gaviscon and it will all be better.”

The spirit, she saw to her satisfaction, was extremely dismayed. “You would have made an admirable matron in a workhouse,” he told her. “You are made of very stern stuff indeed. I'm afraid you're lost, despite all our efforts. So, very well, we'll return.”

But when they tried to leave the room, they found they couldn't move beyond the walls that confined them. They could not use the door; they could not swoosh; they could not wish themselves back to the sleigh or to Monica's office. They remained within the darkened interior where the children crowded at the window watching the snow fall, the wind blow, and the power lines undulate in their shocking dances, while Tiffany and Noah lit candles and the people on the newscasts invited listeners from around the Sound to call in and tell how the storm was ruining their Christmases.

At one such story, Jamie looked back approvingly at the radio. “Wow! The whole roof of their house blew off! Cool!”

“Yeah, of course it was, nerd-brain.” His sister brushed the top of his head with her fist. “Freezing.”

“I like it when they have this kinda broadcast,” Tiffany said. “Makes you feel like everyone in the area is like in one little town, y'know? It would be better on TV, though, where you could see.”

“No, it wouldn't, Mama,” Tina said. “If it were TV, it wouldn't work now 'cause the power's out.”

“That's it, of course,” Monica said, slapping her head. “God, here I was getting all panicky and there's a simple explanation. This whole thing is an elaborate, maybe—okay, I'll give you
maybe
—supernaturally enhanced computer game. And the power's off. Somehow that cuts us off, too. We just have to stay till it comes back on.” She nudged the Spirit of Christmas Present. “Didn't think of that one, did you?”

“My dear lady, I'm from an earlier time than this one. Electricity wasn't—”

“Yeah, yeah, excuses, excuses. It didn't take a genius to figure it out, just a little clearheaded thinking, none of this sentimental stuff you and Doug are throwing at me. Hah!”

“Grandad, can we go out and play in the snow now?” Tina asked.

“Not in this wind and with all the sparks flying. Maybe in the morning, if it's still there. I think right now Brianna and Jamie should clean off the table; we'll put the candles there and play Skipbo, okay?”

“I'll get the cards, Dad,” Tina's mother said.

Monica had planned to stay aloof and bored during the card game, but the room was very small and the little circle cast by the candle made it cozy. She could hardly sleep in her incorporeal form, and there was nowhere to sit. And the Ghost of Christmas Present got busy immediately kibbitzing with everybody's hand.

“Hey, I thought you were here to show me something,” she complained.

“I tried,” the spirit said. “But you quit, remember? Still, no reason to ruin a perfectly good Christmas. That's it, Tina girl. You've got him. He's got nothing to play on that and you're going to go out!” The spirit seemed to have grasped the rules of contemporary card games very quickly.

“You're cheating!” Monica complained. “You're favoring the little girl just because she looks like she belongs on a telethon.”

“Am not,” the spirit said.

“Are too,” Monica insisted.

“Am
not
,” the spirit insisted harder. “And if you think I am, then you ought to get over here and help some of the others instead of pouting.”

“I'm not pouting.”

“Are too.”

“Am not. Oh, for pity's sake, anything to shut you up. First it was cats singing Christmas carols, now this.”

She hadn't played cards since she was a child, and it took her longer than it had taken the spirit to learn the game, but once she did, she and the rest of the table took on the spirit and Tina.

Jamie made large, swaggering gestures as he laid down his cards. Tiffany, who'd wanted to go to college to study psychology, assessed the latent hostility or envy or feelings of deprivation behind each move of her opponents. Brianna tried to tell everyone else what to do. Noah pulled Jamie's baseball cap low on his forehead, like an eyeshade, tried hard to look sneaky, and several times made rather obvious and ridiculous moves just to hear the kids holler that he was cheating.

Tina whined, “That's not
fair
. I wasn't
ready
. You didn't give me any good
cards
.” And then she beat everybody else. Every single hand.

“Well,” said Noah, four hands later, rising to his feet. “I've had about enough of this. This is elder abuse, is what this is. I'm going to see if the phone's still working. There's a team over at Databanks who will have been up working all night. I'll call up and find out how things are going. Ms. Banks is up there in her little old apartment all by herself on Christmas Eve.”

“Daddy, let those people check on her and take care of themselves. They make four times what you make, and I'm sure there's auxiliary power there, isn't there?”

“Well, sure, honey, but they're all real young people, and they don't necessarily know where to find the backups. Ms. Banks doesn't much trouble herself to find out about it. Used to be there was a crew on hand twenty-four hours a day, but she decided that was a waste of money. Penny-wise and pound-foolish, that girl. But anyhow, I'd better go call and see if everything's okay.”

“What if it's not? Are you going to try to take a bus back out there tonight of all nights and leave your family for that stingy, dried-up old maid who would step over you if she saw you dying in the street?”

“Mama, that's not true!” Tina said suddenly, and so hotly that her mother paused in midsentence to stare at her. “Miss Banks does too care about other people. Doug told me she raised him from the time he was a little boy and worked all her Christmases to take care of him. They were orphans.”

“Maybe so, but that doesn't make her care anything about anybody else. She wouldn't give a rat's ass if your little butt was kicked out on the street tomorrow. She's rich and she's mean and she's the enemy, Tina.”

“If it wasn't for her, I wouldn't have a job, honey,” Noah said. “And your job wouldn't be enough to keep us.”

“Daddy, you're a fabricator, not a janitor! She could hire you to do what you're good at—”

“I'm trained in aircraft, not computers, Tiffany—”

“She could retrain you then! And pay you what you're worth. Then we could maybe start saving for Tina's surgery.”

“Mama, she only just got her company. She doesn't know anybody. She's lonesome, and she's only mean because she's scared of everybody. I saw her when she talked to Grandpa, but she didn't see me. I think she needs some friends.”

Tiffany, who had appeared very tough until then, melted suddenly, and tears formed in her eyes as she reached over and pulled her daughter's shoulders to her and kissed the top of her head. “Oh, angel girl. You just think that because you want friends and you can't get out and make them. You think everybody is as good as you are. But okay, we'll give ol' Money Banks the benefit of the doubt for your sake.”

“I don't like her calling Tina ‘angel,' ” Monica told the spirit. “That sounds like she's not long for this world. She's crippled, but there's something else, isn't there?”

The spirit nodded toward Tina, who looked up at her mother, over at her grandfather, and to her aunt and uncle, who were proof that she had to be a pretty good kid, because they didn't even seem especially jealous of the attention she was getting. “Speaking of angels and that kinda stuff? I got something to tell all of you. You know the thing with my heart? Well, don't worry about it too much. See, I didn't tell you this, but Doug is—well, he's not exactly alive anymore. That's why Miss Banks has his company. He didn't exactly say he was an angel, but I could kinda tell. So anyway, if my heart stops working, I'll know somebody in the neighborhood so I won't be all alone.”

“I don't want to hear about you going anywhere,” Brianna said, putting her hands over her ears. “Just stop it.”

“Bad move, Tina,” Jamie said. “I've heard about kids meeting jerks on the Internet, people you definitely wouldn't want to be caught dead with. What if he's one of those?”

Noah began to say something when the lights came back on.

“Time to go,” the spirit said.

“Wait a minute. I want to know what the score is with the kid. Her brother—”

“Uncle.”

“Uncle then, is right. Doug is a jerk and absolutely no fit companion for that little girl to be stuck with. She'll be bored into oblivion. I thought her legs were screwed up and now there's this stuff about her heart. The kid likes me. You heard her. Who do I have to intimidate to get to the bottom of this?”

But the spirit was no longer with her. Instead, she found herself back on the couch, looking at her own reflection on the blank screen of her television.

Thirteen

“Oooh,” Scrooge said, rubbing his hands. “I think that went rather well.”

He had returned to one of the small offices and was addressing the Databanks employees. The young people were not at this time sitting near their separate monitors but were sharing one. The desk that normally contained reference books had been cleared and chairs dragged to it. Spread across its surface was a pack of cards with images of dragons and witches and the like on them.

“It was an e-ticket ride for sure. I forgot that, in the story, Christmas Present was pleasant. I enjoyed it right up until the power went out. Then we had to submit to letting John beat us all at playing Magic,” Miriam said. “What happened with Noah's family and Monica?”

“I think it went well,” he said. “She was quite impressed with Tina. But she is a very difficult lady indeed, you know.
I
was quite in tears and already converted by the time the Ghost of Christmases to Come—er—came. Our dear Monica still feels that it is up to her to play Program Manager with the lives of others.”

“Yeah, we noticed,” Sheryl said. “You know, I hope if this turns her around, it's not going to be a case of—you know—trying to buy love, buy her way into goodness. Did that happen to you, Eb?”

“Er—I suppose so. Dunno, really, never thought about it. But I certainly, in retrospect, don't blame them if they cared more for me afterward than before. I tried to deserve their respect as well. Don't know what else one can do other than withhold, eh?”

“I guess not. But people really hate it if you give them things and then queen it over them,” Sheryl said.

“Yes,” Harald said. “Perhaps we should show her ‘don't' videos of my mother.”

“This really is quite difficult enough as it is, you know,” Scrooge said. “I think I'd best conduct the program and let the Program Manager sort out the rest. I do think she was somewhat impressed by my impersonation of the Spirit of Christmas Present.”

“Looks like it agreed with you, too, Eb,” Dave said.

“Yeah, I was going to comment on that,” Sheryl agreed. “No wattles, fewer lines around the eyes, ros ier cheeks, brighter eyes—you sure you didn't take that extra time to have a face-lift?”

“Eh?” Scrooge asked, obviously confused.

“She's kidding,” Phillip told him.

“But you do definitely look younger,” Miriam told him. “You're not still morphing, are you? To a younger you, I mean?”

“Good heavens, no. I removed the morph at once, dear lady, though I do feel that my time as the Spirit of Christmas Present quite invigorated me. I don't wonder that I look younger. I feel wonderful. But then, my last few Christmases have very much agreed with me, I find. Until I died, of course. That rather dampened things, so I'm quite happy to be enjoying another Yuletide.”