The Christmas Truce Read online

  “Oh, but I’m not.” She wagged her finger at him. “I’m picking me over him.”

  “Do you regret it yet?” Kingsley asked.

  “Sometimes. Occasionally. Except…”

  “What?”

  “When I’m beating you,” she said and gave him her own devil-may-care grin, the one that made male submissives all over the world hard as bricks.

  “Good thing I’m here then. And good thing you are. We can pretend we don’t wish we were with him tonight.”

  “I don’t,” she said. He raised his eyebrow at her. She was a very good liar, but Kingsley was even better at seeing through her lies. She picked up a pile of Christmas cards from off the side table. The pile wasn’t very thick. A card from her bank. A card from her doctor’s office. An exquisite Joyeux Noël card from Juliette, which Kingsley likely signed under duress. And one other card.

  She handed it to Kingsley.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “What’s it look like?”

  “A boring Christmas card with a church on the front,” he said. “What is it?”

  “It’s a boring Christmas card with a church on the front.” She smiled. “It’s the annual Sacred Heart Christmas card. I got it in the mail a week ago. I am embarrassed by how excited I got when I saw it was from ‘Rev. Marcus Stearns, SJ.’ I knew it was the church’s Christmas card. I knew I got it because I’ve always been on the mailing list. I just thought…I thought maybe he’d write a special message in the card for me. I was shaking when I opened the envelope. I had to sit down.” She waved her hand in front of her chest, miming how her heart fluttered.

  Kingsley opened the card.

  “Just a signature,” Kingsley said. “His and his secretary’s.”

  “Right. Just a signature. And the same boring card a thousand other people got this year. Including his bishop, the mayor of Wakefield, and Pope Benedict.”

  “I would have been hurt, too,” Kingsley said.

  “My throat’s been hurting ever since I got this card in the mail. But it’s not a cold. I’ve been trying not to cry for a week. Hard on the throat.”

  “Elle…” Kingsley said, his tone pitying.

  “I did all this decorating for him,” she said. “I have this recurring fantasy that one evening I’ll be in my office writing, I’ll hear a knock on the door, and he’ll be there. And I wanted the house to be beautiful so he’d see it and…”

  “He’d realize what a stubborn ass he’s being? He’d magically have a change of heart about you going pro? About you and me?”

  “Now that you say it out loud, it does sound incredibly stupid.” She laughed at herself. “I guess I just keep hoping he’ll miss me so much he’ll come around on the idea. I can’t go back to him if he’s going to take that away from me,” Nora said.

  Søren wanted her back and would take her back in a heartbeat…but only if she gave up this whole new wild world Kingsley had given her. Her world or Søren? Søren or her world? Should have been an easy choice, especially since for her entire adult life, Søren had been her world. But it wasn’t easy.

  “He may never change his mind,” Kingsley said. “You know that, yes?”

  “I know,” she said. “But I keep hoping…”

  “Moi aussi.” He raised his glass to her in salute. She returned the salute and started to drink her wine, but found she’d lost her taste for it when it came to her lips. She set the glass down on the side table, still full. Kingsley took the card from her lap, the one from Sacred Heart. He opened it, flipped it over and around as if looking for a secret message.

  “Maybe he wrote something in invisible ink,” Kingsley said.

  He held it up to the lamplight.

  “Nope,” she said. “It’s just a card with all the Christmas mass times. Guess when midnight mass starts.”

  “Midnight, I would assume.”

  “No, 11:30 actually,” Nora said. “They’re having Christmas music for a half hour first. So…right about now,” Nora paused and glanced at the clock, “Søren is in his bedroom at the rectory putting on his clerical shirt and collar. Socks and shoes. Mirror check. Gotta make sure the perfect blond hair is perfect, which it is, of course.”

  “Of course,” Kingsley said.

  “Then he’s—right this second—striding down the steps, probably adjusting his cuffs as he goes. Jacket on in the kitchen. Short walk from the rectory to the church so he might skip his overcoat. Then again, it’s freezing and it snowed last night so maybe he’s putting it on. Lights off. Out the door. Straight to the church. Soon as he walks in, Diane will be there in her red Christmas dress with her gold tree broach on. She’ll let him know everything is running smoothly. He’ll go to the adoration chapel and pray. The rosary first then whatever novena he’s working on. He’ll pray for all the sick people in his congregation, he’ll pray for the dying, he’ll pray for the dead. He always says a long prayer to St. Dymphna at Christmas. She’s the patron of mentally ill and depressed people who always get screwed over at the holidays. Then he’ll pray a simple Christmas prayer for his congregation.

  God of love, Father of all,

  The darkness that covered the earth

  Has given way to the bright dawn of your Word made flesh.

  Make us a people of this light.

  Make us faithful to your Word,

  That we may bring your life to the waiting world.

  Grant this through Christ our Lord,

  Amen.

  “And that’s it for the chapel,” Nora continued. “At 11:15 he’ll check with Diane again, give her her Christmas bonus, and she’ll cry and hug him and tell him he’s too generous. He’ll make a joke about skimming it all from the collection plate. She’ll kiss his cheek and wish him a Merry Christmas. Then he’ll go to the sacristy where the deacon’s already there waiting. They’ll help each other put on their vestments. And in the background, Søren will hear the choir begin to sing Christmas music. He’ll enter into the sanctuary right after midnight. Old Testament reading. New Testament reading. Gospel reading. Then a homily to make even the Grinch weep and call his mama. And the good Father Stearns will end Mass wishing everyone a Merry Christmas, and then it’ll officially be Christmas because he said so.”

  Kingsley said nothing, only looked at her long and hard.

  “I was there at the rectory a lot of Christmas Eves. We would…we would make love under the tree at his house. Take a quick shower together. He’d leave to go to Midnight Mass, and I’d wait and sneak in late so people wouldn’t see that I was coming from the rectory. I know his routine.”

  She knew his routine. She knew his secrets. She knew his needs and wants and desires. And for years she could have sworn she’d known his heart. But she wasn’t sure she knew his heart anymore. Three months since their fight. You could forget anything in three months. Maybe in three months, he’d forgotten he loved her. She knew he hadn’t. Of course he hadn’t.

  But what if he had?

  “I forget sometimes you weren’t just his lover,” Kingsley said. “In so many ways, you were his wife.”

  “I was never his wife,” she said. “Wives get the boring moments. I only got the highlights and the holidays. No mornings, just nights. I can count on two hands how many times we sat at his kitchen table and had morning coffee.”

  She wiped another tear and Kingsley put his head on her knee.

  “I didn’t want to be alone,” he said.

  “Tonight?”

  “I understand why Juliette visits her mother on Christmas. We’re the opposite of you and him. She gets me all the boring times. We have coffee together every morning. She has nights and days with me. Her mother needs the special times. The holidays. But I miss her. She’s become so important to me so fast that I forget most of the time how much I love him because I’m so busy loving her. Then as soon as she’s gone…”

  “You remember,” Nora said.

  “I remember,” Kingsley said, “too many things I want to f
orget.”

  “So, you pouted at me to wrap your Christmas gifts just so you’d have an excuse to come over?”

  “Pathétique, non?” he asked.

  “If I could have one thing for Christmas, it would be to have coffee with him tomorrow morning. Just coffee in his kitchen. How pathétique is that?”

  “Your Christmas wish is more likely to come true than mine,” he said.

  “What’s yours?”

  “I want to swallow Søren’s come again,” Kingsley said.

  Nora narrowed her eyes at him, her lips slightly parted. A rare moment when Nora Sutherlin was rendered speechless.

  “For old times’ sake, I mean,” he said.

  “This is why I keep you around,” Nora said. She grabbed his earlobe, tugged it hard the way she knew he liked. “You make me laugh and gross me out when I need it most.”

  “That is what I’m here for,” he said. “That and to be beaten and fucked.”

  Nora grinned into her wine glass, took a small sip when she wanted to guzzle the whole thing down.

  “I don’t know why I’m taking this so hard,” she said. “It’s not like this is our first bad Christmas. Our first Christmas…that was probably the worst. Spent all Christmas Eve crying in bed.”

  “What happened?” Kingsley asked.

  “You don’t remember? That was when I was sixteen,” she said. “I broke all his rules in one night. I went and saw my father—rule broken. I didn’t water the stick I was supposed to water. Another rule broken.”

  “You showed up at my house without being invited, fooled around with…who was it?”

  “Lachlan,” she said with relish. She’d always liked that guy. “He called me Bite-Size. Then he bit me.”

  “Ah, that bastard Aussie who stole my girlfriend,” Kingsley said, nose wrinkling in disgust.

  “That was the first night I ever laid eyes on you,” Nora said. “God, you were so arrogant. I can still see you standing there wagging your finger at me. ‘Tsk-tsk, no children allowed.’ ”

  “What was I supposed to do? Give you a glass of Pinot and take you to bed with me? I admit I considered it.”

  “It would have been much more fun than getting yelled at and dumped.”

  “That’s what happened after? He yelled at you?”

  “He doesn’t really yell, you know. Until you push him.”

  “Oh, I know. I’ve pushed him.”

  “Søren took me home in your Rolls. On the way there, he made it very clear he and I had gotten too close too soon, and I was way too young to be part of his life. After that, it was the silent treatment for almost a full year. Except for a couple times I got desperate and snuck over to see him. Christmas was the first time I caved.”

  “What happened?” Kingsley asked.

  “You really want to know?” she asked. “This was…what? Thirteen years ago. It’s all stupid maudlin teenaged goo.”

  “I love your stupid maudlin teenaged goo. All your goo really.”

  Nora was glad Kingsley was here to keep her from getting too maudlin.

  “Come be my foot warmer,” she said, “and I’ll tell you the story.”

  Kingsley obeyed without a word of protest. He set his wine glass down and laid at her feet. Nora slipped her cold toes under his shirt and onto his warm stomach. Ah…bliss…

  “My dad had just gotten sentenced the day before,” Nora said. “Christmas Eve Eve. Talk about sadism, sentencing a guy the day before Christmas Eve.”

  “Hard day,” Kingsley said.

  Nora slowly nodded. “Hard winter.”

  She wasn’t Nora Sutherlin yet that day and maybe if she had been, Elle Schreiber would have handled it better, hearing from her mother that her father would be spending the next fifteen years on Rikers. Elle had agreed to testify against him as part of her plea deal when she was up for five counts of grand theft auto. Her testimony could have put him in prison even longer than fifteen years and without chance of parole after seven, so he’d cut a deal. She was sixteen and that meant he wouldn’t be out until she was thirty-one at least. Thirty-one seemed a thousand years away to her. She could only imagine how long it seemed to her dad.

  And even worse, Søren had stopped talking to her. He’d cut her off, cut her out. No more visits to his office, standing in the doorway and only putting a toe over the threshold because of “Father Stearns’ Rules” about not letting anyone under the age of seventeen into his office unattended by an adult. So she’d stand there in the doorway, with her toes on but not crossing the threshold as she pelted him with questions. It should have annoyed him—it would have annoyed any normal priest—but it never did because Father S was never a normal priest. But all that was over. No more getting help with her math homework. No more hot cocoa. No more intimate conversations that left her shaking and shivering and smiling for days after.

  It was all her fault, though, and she knew it. She’d screwed up, and had no one to blame but herself. She’d knowingly disobeyed his express orders and gone to see her worthless father, which ended in her half-frozen and wandering the streets of the city. Maybe if she could prove to Søren how sorry she was, he’d lift the ban on them being friends? Maybe if she could fix things with the right words or the right Christmas gift? Maybe if he knew how much she loved him, his heart would melt and he’d let her back in?

  Worth a shot anyway.

  Her mother had decided to work at the hotel on Christmas Eve night for the overtime and the holiday pay. There she was, all alone at midnight, wide-awake and miserable. She couldn’t possibly get any more miserable, could she? Might as well go to church.

  Elle got dressed and put her hair into a loose braid, wrapped up in her coat and boots and scarf and walked over to Sacred Heart. She was late. She wanted to be late so she could be alone with Søren after everyone left. While everyone milled around, hugging and kissing and saying Merry Christmas to everyone they knew, Elle snuck up the side stairs and sat in the front pew of the choir loft. Finally, the church cleared out and she was all alone.

  Leaning forward, she peeked over the balcony and watched. She waited for ten minutes, then fifteen. After twenty minutes, she thought she’d made a mistake. Maybe he’d gone straight to the rectory. But the small weight in her pocket reminded her of the reason she came so she made herself wait a few more minutes.

  Finally, she heard footsteps echoing off the hardwood floors. Søren strode to the front of the church, turned around, and paused. His dark gray eyes scanned the sanctuary, and she bit her bottom lip to stop a smile, her first smile in weeks. He was looking for her. She knew it in her soul. Part of her wanted to call out and wave to him, but she stayed silent and kept watching. Usually it was his eyes on her watching her even when she didn’t know it. For some reason, and from the very moment they’d met, they had some sort of secret understanding between them. She tried explaining it to her friend Jordan late one night when Elle had slept over at her house.

  “Elle...he’s a priest. You can’t be in love with a priest.”

  “It’s not like that. Not totally. I don’t know, Jordan. I think I belong to him. I think I’m supposed to belong to him.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Jordan said, throwing the covers over her head and sinking down into the pillows. “You’re crazy. People can’t belong to other people. They can only belong to God.”

  But Elle knew there was a way to belong to someone, a way that wasn’t like slavery but more like Jordan said, like the way Christians belonged to Jesus. Or the way people in arranged marriages belonged to each other even years before they’d met?

  Elle hadn’t tried to explain it to Jordan. Either you got it or you didn’t, and Jordan didn’t.

  Søren went to the piano and began to play “O Holy Night.” When she was certain they were alone in the sanctuary, Elle crept down the stairs and walked toward the front of the church. Søren didn’t pause in his playing, but he moved slightly to the side to make room for her on the piano bench. She sat
down, her back to the piano.

  Closing her eyes, Elle leaned against his shoulder as the last haunting strains of her favorite Christmas song rang out for a melodic eternity before quietly dying.

  “It’s a pretty song,” she said, sitting up straight. “But it’s no ‘You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch.’ ”

  Søren said nothing. Not a word. His fingers continued to tickle the keys and though the sounds were lovely it was no song she recognized, just beautiful noise.

  “I got an A on my European History exam,” Elle told him. “Got my report card two days ago. I’m keeping my grades up, but English and History were my only As.”

  She waited, hoping and praying for a response, a congratulations, something.

  More silence.

  “We learned about something cool on the last day of school,” she continued. “Mr. Stone taught us about the Christmas Truce of 1914. You ever heard of it?”

  Søren didn’t nod or smile but only continued softly playing.

  “Well, it was a World War I thing,” she said. “There were these French soldiers on one side of no man’s land in their trenches, and there were these German soldiers on the other side of no man’s land in their trenches. And then somebody…who knows who? He decided there ought to be a day off fighting the war. I mean, it was Christmas, right? Who fights a war on Christmas Day? So somebody went up and over into no man’s land. And then somebody on the other side did the same. And somebody brought out a soccer ball and the war turned into a France versus Germany soccer game. Mr. Stone showed us this famous picture of the soldiers who were killing each other the day before and would kill each other the day after, talking and lighting each other’s cigarettes. One French soldier even gave a German soldier a haircut. I mean, if they can declare a truce on Christmas Day I thought, maybe you and I could?”

  Søren’s fingers stilled on the keys.

  Elle smiled as Søren closed the fallboard. Leaning back, she rested her elbows on the fallboard.

  Søren raised his hand and tucked a snowy strand of hair behind her ear. She quivered at the touch of his hand and the fingers that lingered meaningfully on her cheek and her ear.