Waterways (37 page)

“Yeah,” Samaki said. “She’s small, she’ll fold up, right?”

“No!” she squealed. “I don’t fold!”

“Sure you can.” Samaki indicated a space about a foot square between his desk and the side of his loft. “I bet you could squeeze into there.”

“Mommy!”

“Sammy’s just teasing you, Mari,” Mrs. Roden said. “Go get the blankets from your bed and we’ll set them up here.” She started clearing away a pile of toys.

Ajani watched her with bright eyes from his top bunk. “Why doesn’t Kory just sleep up with Sammy?” he asked. “Then there’d be plenty of room.”

“Oh,” Mrs. Roden said, “I don’t think Sammy’s bed is big enough.”

Kory looked up, not wanting to meet Mrs. Roden’s eyes. “I’m fine on the floor,” he said, and thankfully, Ajani disappeared back into his bed and didn’t pursue the matter.

Mariatu’s head ended up a foot or so from Kory’s when they were all in bed. Above them, the silhouette of Samaki’s muzzle peered over the loft. “Good night,” the fox said. He blew a kiss down to Kory.

“Night,” Kory said. He raised a paw to his lips briefly and returned the gesture.

“Kory,” said Mariatu softly.

“Hmm?”

“What do you think Santa will bring me?”

“I don’t know.” He turned onto his side to look at her. “What did you ask for?”

“She asked for a pony,” Kasim said scornfully. “Like we could have a pony here.”

“I dunno,” Kory said. “Santa can be pretty creative.”

Ajani laughed. “I know something about Santa this year.”

Samaki said, “Ajani,” warningly.

“I won’t say it,” Ajani said, but now Mariatu wanted to know.

“What?” she said. “What about Santa?”

Kory thought of one of the stories he’d told Nick. “Ajani knows how Santa gets into houses that don’t have chimneys.”

He saw Mariatu’s eyeshine as her eyes widened. “We don’t have a chimney,” she breathed, as if just realizing it.

Kory told her the story of how Santa learned to walk through Christmas trees, so that as long as you had a Christmas tree, you could count on a visit from Santa. “Because Christmas trees are all connected in the Christmas forest,” he said, “which Santa knows how to get to. So if you don’t have a chimney, Santa will just land on your roof, step into the Christmas forest, and step around your Christmas tree to deliver your presents.”

“Wow,” Mariatu breathed. Kasim and Ajani were also leaning over their beds to watch him. He looked up to see Samaki’s broad smile.

“All right now,” Kory said. “Time to go to bed, or Santa just might pass this house by.”

“He won’t,” Kasim said, but his face slipped back obediently with the others.

Mariatu said, again, “Kory?”

“Shh,” he said. “Go to sleep.”

“I’m happy you’re here,” she said, and her eyes slid shut.

“Me too,” Samaki whispered down to him. Kory blew him another kiss, and closed his eyes.

Morning seemed to come almost immediately. He was awoken by Mariatu scrambling over him to get to the door. Ajani and Kasim’s covers lay in a disordered heap on the floor, the lower bunk visibly empty, the upper one silent. Kory got up to his elbows in time to see Mariatu’s tail disappearing out the door. He turned to see if Samaki were up yet, but there was no sign of the black fox.

“Samaki?” he whispered.

No answer. Yawning, he got to his feet and stood near where he’d seen Samaki’s head, repeating the black fox’s name. Still nothing. He set one paw on the loft ladder and climbed up far enough to see the lumpy outline of Samaki’s sleeping form under the blankets. He climbed a little further up and grabbed the fox’s hind paw.

“Psst,” he said.

Samaki jerked awake. He turned, blinked, and smiled at Kory. “Morning,” he said.

“Merry Christmas.” Kory smiled.

Samaki sat up and leaned forward. Kory met him for a warm kiss. “Merry Christmas,” the fox said. “And what a nice present.”

They kissed again, and Kory slid his paw up the fox’s leg. Samaki curled his tail around, and then a noise in the hallway broke them apart. For a moment, they looked sheepishly at each other, and then Kory said, “We should probably go downstairs.”

The scene in the living room was at once familiar and strange. Kory could clearly remember running to the tree with Nick to open his presents, but they hadn’t done it for years, and there had never been three of them all whispering loudly to each other at once. Mr. Roden, yawning on the couch, waved to the two of them as they came in. “You’re late,” he said softly.

“Mom sleeps in,” Samaki explained to Kory in a whisper. “Dad’s Christmas present to her.”

“For a little longer,” Mr. Roden said. “Have a seat if you don’t feel like diving right in.”

Kory preferred sitting on the couch, so he and Samaki watched the cubs empty out their stockings and root through the contents. Here, again, Kory felt a familiar yet strange twinge. Each cub had a full stocking, full of candy and small trinkets like superballs. He and Nick used to get stockings full of “small” things like headphones and video games. And the pile of presents, now he looked at it, hadn’t grown appreciably from Santa’s visit, as his family’s did. But the cubs seemed to be enjoying it just as much as he and Nick ever had, sniffing at all the candies and exchanging them, all three little tails wagging in glee. When they’d woken up a little more, Samaki fetched his stocking and another one which Kory was surprised to see had his name on it. They shared the candy with Mr. Roden, who seemed particularly fond of the peanut brittle.

Church was a revelation to Kory, who’d been taught from childhood never to raise his voice during a service. Despite Samaki’s repeated exhortations, and the loud, joyful congregation, he could not bring himself to sing at the top of his lungs. The preacher, a wolverine with a booming voice, sang that this day was Jesus’s birthday, a day to celebrate His love. And then he said something Father Joe had never said: “Sing with love, and sing it loud!”

His reticence didn’t prevent Kory from feeling happy inside. The younger cubs seemed to enjoy church a lot more than he remembered liking it at their age, though, he thought, if he and Nick had been allowed to make a lot of noise in church, they likely would have been more enthusiastic about it from a younger age as well.

Back at home, the cubs could no longer be kept from their presents and fell on them as soon as they’d loosened their church clothes. To his embarrassment, Kory had another present from the Rodens in addition to two from Samaki. He had only bought a couple presents for Samaki, and even though the Rodens waved off his half-hearted protests, he resolved to do something nice for them. Even with the new expenses of living, he thought he could figure something out.

Like for Samaki, he’d written out his rainbow poem, the one that Samaki said had drawn him to Kory, in calligraphy and put it in a nice wooden frame he’d found at the thrift store. Samaki loved it. He’d gotten Kory a small gift card to the bookstore near his apartment, “where we can go pick out something to read together and harass Malaya,” and a hand-crafted wall-mounted shelf. “Made it in shop,” he confessed.

“It’s beautiful,” Kory said, and nudged Samaki to open his other gift, a Starbucks gift card. “After we pick out those books, we can go get coffee.” Samaki laughed, and they settled back onto the couch to watch the rest of the present opening. Kory felt the warmth of family around him, and it wasn’t hard to let himself sink into it.

After most of the presents had been opened, Mrs. Roden padded to the kitchen to start Christmas dinner, while Samaki and Kory helped Mr. Roden clean up. Kory’s cell phone rang just as he was breaking down a small cardboard box for the trash.

“Merry Christmas, Nick,” he said as he picked up the call.

“She says I can’t come,” Nick said, miserably.

“What?”

His brother sighed. “I asked her when I had to be back and she said she’d made plans to go see Aunt Tilly, and that I have to go along with her.”

“Oh.” The warmth of family drained away from Kory. “Can you come over later?”

“We’ll be gone all afternoon. You know she’s just doing this because of yesterday.”

He saw Mr. Roden and Samaki glance at him. Ajani looked up from his action figure as well. Kory held up a finger and walked out into the foyer. “Just because you talked back to her?”

Nick hesitated for so long that Kory wondered if the call had been dropped. “Nick?”

“It’s not that,” Nick said. “You don’t know?”

“Did Father Joe talk to her?”

“No.” Nick hesitated again, and this time when he spoke, he spoke in an urgent whisper. “It’s because… she was thinking about asking you to come home for Christmas dinner. But she saw you bring Samaki to church, and seeing the two of you together, talking to Father Joe… she thought you were rubbing it in her face.”

“She said that?” Kory had to unclench his paws.

“Yeah, pretty much.” Nick made a noise that could have been a growl, or a sigh of frustration. “Sorry, Kory. I really want to be there.”

“She thought that was about
her?
”

“I gotta go. We’re leaving in ten minutes. Merry Christmas, Kory.”

“I wish you could be here too, Nick,” he said, realizing too late that he’d lost track of the conversation in his anger at his mother. “Merry Christmas.”

Samaki appeared in the doorway, watching Kory stare at the cell phone in his paw. “Is Nick coming?”

Kory shook his head. “My mom…” he said, and then thumbed through his phone’s stored numbers. “I’m going to call her.”

“Maybe you should wait,” Samaki said.

“They’re leaving in ten minutes,” Kory said. The familiar number glowed on his cell phone screen, a relic from his past staring at him. He stared at it, hating it, and then jabbed his thumb at the Talk button.
Connecting…
 

Samaki hung back as Kory put the phone to his ear. It rang, once. Silence. Maybe she knew it was him and wasn’t picking up. No; they had no caller ID on the land line. It rang again, and then he heard his mother’s voice, pleasant and slightly out of breath. “Merry Christmas.”

He snapped, “Why do you think everything is about you?”

He heard her breathing, but she didn’t answer. He said, “I wasn’t thinking about you at all when I took Samaki to church.”

He couldn’t hear her breathing anymore, just silence. He took the phone from his ear and saw a flashing “00:32,” telling him the exact second she’d hung up. He hit Call Again and heard nothing but rings this time, and then his mother’s pleasant voice on the voicemail. “Hi, you have reached the Hedleys. Nobody is here to take your call right now, but if you want to leave a message for Celia or Nick, we’ll get right back to you.”

Beep.

Kory snapped his phone shut. Breathing heavily, he leaned against the wall of the foyer. Samaki came back into the room, stopping a few feet away. Kory kept staring at his phone, and then forced himself to shove it into his pocket. He didn’t understand why he suddenly felt a lump in his chest, pressure behind his eyes.

“We’re having lunch in a few minutes,” Samaki said quietly. “How did it go?”

“She took me off the voicemail,” Kory said.

Samaki tilted his muzzle. Kory shook his head. “I mean, I know I don’t live there. I just…” He stared down at the floor.

The fox came over to him. “You okay?” He put a paw on Kory’s shoulder.

“I guess.” Kory didn’t want to burden Samaki with his problems, and moreover, he was afraid that if the fox hugged him, that expression of love would make him break down completely. He forced a smile onto his muzzle. “It’s Christmas, right?”

Violet eyes full of sympathy looked back at him, and he almost broke down anyway. Samaki smiled, and nodded, and they went in to lunch.

The food was delicious as usual, but even through the friendly banter, Kory’s mood was subdued, and for once he was glad to get home to the peace and quiet of Malaya. She didn’t seem at all perturbed at having spent Christmas alone, nor did she force him into conversation. They ran out to McDonald’s, ate a quiet meal, and then Kory went back into his room to try to work on homework. But he sat for an hour with his history book open to the same page, seeing his mother’s phone number flashing on his cell phone, hearing the tension in Nick’s voice, hearing her calm voicemail message that went on as if he’d never existed.

Fine, he decided shortly before ten o’clock, the window outside flickering with Christmas lights, headlights, and broken streetlights. If she wanted him out of her life, then he would be out and stay out. He wasn’t sure what that would entail that he wasn’t already doing, but it felt good to make the resolve, and it enabled him to finally turn the page in his history book.

Nick got away and visited for a few hours the next day. Kory didn’t ask how he’d gotten away, and Nick didn’t volunteer the information. Nick told him about the visit to their aunt’s place, and Kory surprised Nick with some of the candied peppers he’d saved from the Rodens’. Nick had gotten Kory a small iPod shuffle, an expensive and surprising gift. He didn’t want to accept it, but Nick’s expression when Kory opened the box was so earnest that he didn’t have the heart to refuse. Nick, for his part, loved the DVD set Kory had gotten him of the three surfer movies starring his favorite teen otter actress.

They had rigged up Kory’s computer to show the first movie on the TV and were halfway through it when Samaki came over. He snuggled up next to Kory on the couch, while Nick and Malaya lay on the floor ogling Jessica in the revealing swimsuit. Malaya was the first to say, “She’s got great boobs,” and after a grin at Kory, Nick confessed he liked her legs and tail better. After that, Kory and Samaki started to chime in on the relative merits of the parade of sexy guys she met on the beach, and by the end of it all four of them were laughing. Kory found himself a little warm, and a brush of his paw against Samaki’s pants as they got up told him the fox was, too. But it was okay, surprisingly comfortable after the first swell of embarrassment had subsided.

They ordered Afghani food from the small cafe across the street as a holiday meal. Nick hadn’t tasted it before but pronounced it delicious. This, Kory thought, looking around the table, this feels as much like family as the Rodens did yesterday, as much as I ever felt at home. There was a warmth inside him that had nothing to do with food.