Christmas - He was her only consolation this Christmas. Despite the meagerness of their days, her heart was full. She thought of those few moments before he had drifted off, rambling on about elves and asking what made Rudolph's nose red, wide-eyed at her every word.
The very word brought back all the happiest moments of her life, and the saddest, like a great stream strewn with tinsel and icy water, swirling together, twisting into a great and confusing knot of emotion.She carefully entangled the last few silver icicles and laced them over the branches of the tiny tree on the coffee table. It was not late, but it seemed like it. And she was very tired. The last few pieces of tinsel seemed weighted with lead. But still she took her time hanging them - a ritual trance carried over from childhood.
She thought of her mother and father and suddenly missed them desperately. In November, she had thought of going home for Christmas but had decided she really couldn't afford the gas money, and with the car on its last legs, there was the possibility of it breaking down along some lonely stretch of highway in a blizzard or something. The thought of being stranded with little Rick out in the middle of nowhere - well, it just didn't seem that important to go home at the time. She didn't even know if they would let her off work at the 7-Eleven in the first place.
But with Christmas so close, it was different. Her few acquaintances had either gone to their own homes or had someone visiting.
She had worked late tonight. It had been totally dark by the time she picked Rick up at the baby sitter. Then a tired half-hour straightening up the apartment and fixing supper - Spaghettios and bread. She was out of margarine. She got Rick ready for bed then took a few minutes on the fold-out bed reading to him. Before she knew it, he was asleep.
She looked at him, his arms tangled in the old blanket she had brought from home, one leg sticking out over the edge. She reached over and lifted his leg onto the sofa and covered him with the blanket, all the time wishing she could afford to turn up the ther-mostat.
He was her only consolation this Christmas. Despite the meagerness of their days, her heart was full. She thought of those few moments before he had drifted off, rambling on about elves and asking what made Rudolph's nose red, wide-eyed at her every word.
Still, talking to Rick was not the same as having someone to talk with - an adult, a friend, a companion - someone to share feelings with, who could understand and talk back.
Had she only looked ahead or seen it coming. But that was then. This was now. She would make it work somehow, as hopeless as it seemed, every month, budgeting out every penny, trying to set aside enough for night classes and wondering what she would do with Rick if she did get into night school.
For a few minutes, she just sat there, looking into the scraggly limbs and the lame single strand of tiny lights.
In the apartment next door, she could hear the sounds of voices - muffled visages from a different continent. The lights of a car pulling into the complex flashed a brief sliver against the wall.
She reached over and unplugged the tree. A glow of yellow street lamp prevailed, spilling pale, acidy shadows over the darkness.
She laid down on the sofa bed, slipping her hip over the bump in the middle of the hide-a-bed and pulling the edge of the blanket across her.
She reached her hand across and felt the warmth of her little boy sleeping next to her.
Within a few minutes she had drifted off herself, exhausted, with the sound of her tiny son's breathing her only consolation in an otherwise seemingly empty universe.
Dennis Smith is an artist and writer living in Highland, Utah County.