Carol’s Last Christmas
A short story
Santa Claus shifted his bulk and extended his right arm so he could frame everyone in his selfie.
“Santa says, ‘Smile,’” he bellowed. “Ho, ho, ho!”
“Harrumph!” said Carol, pulling the toque over his eyes and scowling to spoil the photograph. Santa scowled back at Carol after looking at the picture.
The residents of Eden Easier Retirement Home had just finished their dinner and joined Kris Kringle in a Christmas carol singalong. All of them, that is, except Carol.
“Humbugger off!” he told Fred who had pulled on his sleeve, encouraging him to join the residents in the Circle Singalong area of the TV lounge.
“My my,” Fred said. “You’re a testy Christmas elf for a Carol. You must have been named after crusty ol’ Carroll O’Connor — Archie Bunker from All in the Family.”
“For your undeserved knowledge, I was named after the legendary actor Carol Reed. Sir Carol Reed. My mum named me — she was English.”
“Yessir!” said Fred, a newcomer to Eden Easier. He bowed royally, his forehead parting the folds of Carol’s long, velour blue robe, and immediately regretted the move, knowing it would be difficult to stand up again.
Carol yanked the robe back toward him and shuffled off to his room, as “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” was being sung in disharmony in the background. It was still audible as he pushed open the door to his room.
‘It’s going to be a long night,’ said Carol who was looking to retire in peace.
It was 7:30 p.m.
“Just leave my bowl of gruel there and shuffle off!” Carol told the ‘Resident Ally’ worker who was handing him his nightly oatmeal.
“Mr. Sorge! No need to be testy. I’m just doing my job,” she said.
“I know, I know,” Carol said, mellowing. Despite his uncontrollable outbursts, he had a soft spot for ‘Eileen the Ally’ as he called her, with her dark black curls hanging down each side of a bright ebony face like curtains drawn open to show a big picture window of a smiling mouth and friendly eyes. Once, after drinking one-too-many shots of limoncello following a Thanksgiving feast, Carol serenaded her with a rendition of “Come On Eileen” and danced a jig. He left her gasping for air through uncontrollable laughter.
“I’m … sorry. It’s just that godawful noise going on in multiple parts disharmony that’s driving me crazy! Can’t you tell the buggers that they can’t sing worth a damn and get ’em to stop?” he said.
“Mr. Sorge, they’re just having fun and don’t mean to hurt anyone. Surely you remember what it was like to have fun just for the fun of it. When you were a child, perhaps?”
Carol turned his head away and caught the expressions of his children, Gioia and Santino, picture-framed and smiling in their red-cheeked cherubic youthful splendor on a cold winter day so long ago. The memory of that day was captured as true as that photograph despite dementia that was eating away at Carol’s brain like moths to fabric inside a casket. He had been rolling around with the kids on the snow hills behind their home and they giggled as the white powder chilled their faces and began pooling on their skin inside their snowsuits. Their mom looked at Carol horrified when he brought the kids home and quickly grabbed warm comforters to swaddle them. He just smiled at Bella and she melted like the flakes of snow that were slowly disappearing from the children’s skin.
It was Carol who was smiling now, remembering that day from happier times. Then his face shaded to dark as he came back to the present and remembered things were not the same. There was no Bella anymore and he could not remember the last time he saw Gioia and Santino. He looked up at Eileen whose face also changed, from a glow of warm happiness to the coolness of concern.
“Pshaw!,” he said waving his arms in the air. “My youth was a long time ago.”
“There is nothing long ago but thinking makes it so,” Eileen paraphrased Shakespeare. “Youthful innocence and sweet surrender to joy and hope and wonder is in your heart if only you care to look there.”
“Ah, Eileen. You are the reason that the season doesn’t leave me reeling in misery and madness! Will you marry me for Christmas?”
Eileen smiled, patted his hand, and rose to leave the room. “God rest ye merry gentleman,” she said as she closed the door behind her.
Carol’s porridge was already cooling in his lap. Just his luck — he was looking forward to, as he put it, some gruel to end a grueling day. He tilted his head back and closed his eyes, hoping warm memories would smother that infernal noise in the other room.
Bella was as patient as she was kind, but she had her limits.
Carol had been chasing her around the apartment and out to the balcony before smothering her with a hug. They were in their late teens and their young love was being serenaded by the sweet song of a Carolina Wren nestled in the tree branches.
“Listen to that song!” Bella said, playfully pushing him away. “It’s a series of whistled notes in three parts that keep repeating. Like a waltz rhythm.”
“Ugh,” said Carol, fearing another attempt at a dance lesson was coming.
“The male has several different song variations and he sings them about a dozen times or so before switching songs.”
“To attract the female wrens?” Carol said. “But you’re already here, my little chickadee!”
“To signal intruders.”
“And the female does nothing but get serenaded? And you say it’s a man’s world.”
“No, that’s a bird’s world,” Bella said, running away from Carol’s clutch and into her apartment. “Let’s dance! Let me show you how to waltz.”
“Ugh!”
“Come here, it’s easy,” she said. “It’s just a matter of listening to the music and moving up and down to the rhythm, like a horse on a carousel.”
“A two-left-footed horse, you mean?”
“I call the waltz the dance of life. It’s in 3/4 time, so it follows a pattern of one-two-three, one-two-three, one-two-three … Like a feather floating on air. It’s an elegant little dance between two people. But here’s the thing — because it’s three-step, it’s like there’s an invisible third person that’s dancing with you. So there are the two of us but every third step is like an invisible third person.”
Carol was lost. But then Bella worked in the world of creativity and imagination and he was an ad sales director at a newspaper, an end-of-the-month budget-busting kind of guy.
“It’s like a metaphor for life, the waltz. One-two-three, one-two-three… Two people but it’s as though there’s always a third person or force that tries to interfere or that you have to deal with. You have to dance with that third person and stay connected as a couple.”
“Sounds complicated,” Carol said as Bella rushed to put the needle on an album. Over the speakers, the singers started:
“(In Napoli where love is king
When boy meets girl here’s what they say)“When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie
That’s amore…”
Bella grabbed Carol’s arms and started leading him in the dance. He stumbled and bumped his right knee hard against hers, cursing before Dean Martin got to the next “that’s amore.” He pushed off from Bella and cupped his sore knee.
“You need to find another partner,” he hissed. “Another dance partner.”
Bella, frustrated at how quickly he gave up on anything fun and unscripted, had had enough.
“Carol, one day you’re going to figure out that it’s not always about you. That the world’s not that into you. When you do, you’ll discover humility and your own humanity and become a better person for it.”
Bella paused for a moment and repeated, “The world’s not that into you.” She liked the phrasing and what it signified. Later, she would develop it into the title and theme of a self-help book that would become a bestseller.
A loud snort brought Carol back to the present and his small room at Eden Easier Retirement Home. He had mistaken his snore for an intruder. He looked around. There was no Bella in the room. No apartment. He was confused. He looked down at the bowl, at the partially spilled porridge on his robe and lap, and cursed as he got up to grab a small towel to clean himself.
“Bella,” he said out loud. “You were too good for this world and certainly too good for me.”
On the other hand, Carol thought after settling himself under the covers, I am too good for my children.
He put down the book, The Business of Mankind, face-down on his bed. He had picked it up from the library shelf at Eden Easier thinking that an account of how key capitalist tycoons run the world would do him good, would engage his decaying mind and reconnect him with his executive heyday when he commanded ad sales reps to “push, push, push” like the character in The Twilight Zone episode. But that was back when newspapers were like a license to print money.
Carol was looking at graduation photos of Gioia and Santino now. He didn’t have any current photographs, none showing his daughter’s children or even of his more mature full-bearded son.
When was the last time he saw his children or grandsons? At least Gioia had an excuse — she was living in Europe and flights were expensive, especially with a husband and two children in tow. But Santino was only an hour’s drive away. How long had it been since he visited his old man? Carol wondered. Weeks? Months? Time was a muddle.
Cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon, Carol thought. Children just weren’t there anymore for their parents — not like in the old days when you were expected to honor and obey a mother and father. Since Bella died so long ago, they had become like strangers to him and he to them.
Carol picked up his book and tried to read again but found it difficult to concentrate. He was tired all the time, despite sleeping (off and on) for up to 12 hours a day.
When you coming home son? he thought as his eyelids closed down on the photo of his smiling Santino in his grad cap and gown.
“Weeeeeeeeee!” Gioia screamed as she slid down the hill on her snow tube.
“Gioia, wait for meeeeeee!” Santino shouted as he rolled down the hill in his snowsuit. He had hoped that the snow would pack itself around him and turn him into a snowman and was disappointed to find he was still a boy when he landed at the bottom.
Carol clapped his big gloves in delight, watching his children soak up the snow and sun. They were less than two years apart but were joined at the hip like conjoined twins. What one did, the other followed and they romped in perfect rhythm wherever they went.
“Children, be careful,” he exhorted. “And don’t get snow inside your suits. Mom will not be happy and you won’t get hot chocolate when we get home.”
The children ignored their father and he laughed it off. He was having as much fun as them just hearing their squeals of delight and watching them enjoy themselves in all their youthful abandon.
Carol looked behind the hill to the stand of Carolinian trees framing the scene, standing tall and stately as snowy sentinels. In the dense forest, the sunlight filtered on and off through the leafless branches and the light shifted strangely from bright to a darker shade and bright again. It was as if someone had turned a light switch off and on in the forest. Carol was mesmerized.
“Daddy,” Gioia said, looking up at him. He hadn’t noticed his four-year-old baby girl below him, trying to get his attention. “Will you be my boyfriend when I get older?”
Carol smiled and reached down to grab his daughter who had turned into a newspaper. He was reading the sports section and thumbed through the pages to the obituaries, scanning the notices when he felt his heart stop, then the blood starts pumping back to life in his ears.
There, in the middle of the page, was a small, simple notice without a photo:
SORGE, Carol
Suddenly at home alone on Dec. 24. Predeceased by Bella (nee) Romero. Survived by children Gioia (Ben) Johnston and Santino, and grandchildren Caroline and Stefania. There will be no services according to Carol’s wishes.
Carol clutched the paper to pull it closer to him and it turned into Bella. Her face smiling as she turned her head, Carol still had his hands on her thin shoulders that were covered by long flowing hair. Music was playing, the song, “Unchained Melody.”
“Are you going to be my Ghost now?” Bella teased. “Want me to make a vase out of clay while you ravish me?”
Carol could not speak. He felt hot tears coming to his eyes and his clutch loosened.
And time goes by so slowly
And time can do so much…
“Dad!” Santino was standing at the foot of his bed, scratching his beard. “You didn’t finish your oatmeal.”
Gioia was there too, a bubble-cheeked, big brown-eyed little girl of four. She was dancing to “Ring Around the Rosie” with Caroline and Stefania who were about the same age and snorting with laughter as they all fell down. Eileen, in the back, motioned to rush toward the children to help them but then laughed herself as she saw they were having fun. Carol realized Bella was at his side, her left hand clasping his right and her other hand holding on to The Business of Mankind, its title upside down.
Carol extended his left hand as if reaching out to cup one of the lightbulbs on the Christmas tree that stood in the corner of the room. He held out his other hand and both arms grasped in the air for something floating, unseen, or perhaps looping invisible strings into some kind of shape. Something solid then tugged at both arms.
“O Holy Night” was playing and the wrenching heart feeling was gone now, the pounding pulse in his ears replaced by a lilting one-two-three, one-two-three, one-two-three and they were all moving around the room together, arms around each other, not missing a beat.
“I feel light,” Carol thought, “like a feather.”
Claudio D’Andrea has been writing and editing for newspapers, magazines, and online publications for more than 30 years. You can read his stuff on LinkedIn and Medium.com and follow him on Twitter.
