SANTA AND THE SHORTSTOP, by Steve Liskow

I’m almost eight so I can read by myself, but I felt really tired and my throat was scratchy so I let Shenka read “The Night Before Christmas” to me on the couch.

* * * *

“It was the night before Christmas, and all through the house…” Her accent made the words sound like scissors snipping the paper on the presents under our tree. She was from Georgia, so when I first met her I thought she’d have a southern accent, but Mom told me it was a different Georgia, over in Russia. Her real name is Natyashenka Taracova. I’m glad I don’t have to write that on top of my papers at school. It would take up a whole page.

“The stockings were hung by the chimney with care…”

Her eyes flicked toward the fireplace, where the last log was still smoking.

“No stocking this year, Daniel?” She made it “stockinks.” She made my name start with a “T,” too. I snuggled against her and pretended my throat was really sore so I didn’t have to answer. She smelled good and her sweater was soft like my blanket. She put her arm around me like I was a little kid and asked me again.

“Uh-uh.” Dad said I was getting too big for Santa Claus. Mom told him I had plenty of time to grow up, but he said there’s no such thing as Santa and that he and Mom put the presents under the tree and in my stocking. It made my eyes burn and my nose feel stuffy.

“How come?” Shenka squeezed me a little closer and her big blue eyes looked down at me. “You’ve been a good boy, haven’t you?”

“Yeah.” I didn’t want to talk about it. Dad dressed up in a red suit with a white beard to go to his Christmas party. Mom wore green tights and red boots like an elf, too. They wouldn’t be back until late, not until I was in bed.

“So you’re going to have lots of presents for Christmas tomorrow, aren’t you?”

I looked at the pictures in the book again. Big boxes under a tree, people in funny caps they used to wear to bed, and stars and snow outside. I heard Mom say it was supposed to snow tonight, so they wouldn’t stay late.

“Can we read more of the story?” My voice felt like nails in my throat.

“Are you all right, Daniel?” Shenka’s hand felt cold on my forehead. “Do you have a fever?”

“Uh-uh.”

We read until the guy saw the moon on the best of the new-fallen snow. I never get that part. How can part of the snow be better than the other part? Mom told me it was “breast,” not best, but that doesn’t make any sense, either. Snow isn’t a lady like Mom. Or like Shenka. She’s a lady, too, almost.

But she plays softball really good. She’s shortstop on the high school team. Dad knows her dad from work and that’s how she started coming to sit for me last winter. Dad and Mom took me to some of her games last spring. She doesn’t look that big, but boy, she hit the ball so far I could hardly see it. She showed me how to bat and catch better last summer, too.

I wrote Santa Claus and asked him for a new bat and glove like Derek Jeter’s before Dad told me he’s just made up. I was really sad then, but when he brought Shenka back tonight, she brought a long thin package wrapped in green paper with gold designs on it, and a big green bow that has gold running through it, too. The tag had my name on it. I’ll bet it’s a bat.

I ran upstairs to get my present for her. It’s a little heart on a chain and Dad helped me pick it out. He helped me pay for it, too. I wanted to get her something really nice ’cause she’s so nice. Dad said I was posolutely absatively right. That’s how he talks when he’s being funny. Shenka’s so pretty I wondered why she was sitting with me on Christmas Eve and not out on a date with some guy.

When she read the part about dry leaves and hurricanes, it felt like I had dry leaves in my throat and I coughed. I couldn’t stop for a minute.

“Are you all right, Daniel?”

It hurt too much to say anything. She laid the book on the coffee table and put her hand on my forehead again. The room felt hot, but I was shivering. She pulled the comforter from the back of the couch and wrapped it around me.

“Let me make something to help you feel better.”

“I don’t want anything.” My voice felt thin as a wire. “I don’t like medicine.”

When I have to take medicine, Mom hides it in candy or ice cream, even my Flintstones vitamins. But I still know it’s there. Yuck.

“This isn’t medicine,” she said. “Let me go get it started, then we will finish the story, all right?”

She wrapped the comforter around me nice and tight and glided through the dining room arch in her tight blue jeans and fuzzy white sweater so she looked pretty as Mom. Dad says she looks really hot, but I was the one who felt hot and cold at the same time. Through the window, I saw white floating around the streetlight at the end of our driveway. After a minute, I knew it was starting to snow, little tiny flakes. I could hardly see them except around the light.

I didn’t even hear Shenka come back until she helped me sit up again and I felt really heavy. She stuck the thermometer under my tongue. When she pulled it out, her eyes turned sad.

“Oh, Daniel, I think you are coming down with a cold. And on Christmas Eve.”

She hugged me and I was afraid I’d give it to her, too. I could feel the soft bumps under her sweater while she read about Santa Claus getting to work and filling all the stockings. I wanted to ask her to skip that part because it made my eyes feel all gooey, but I figured it would mess up the rest of the story, so I just watched the fire getting smaller in the fireplace and listened to her voice snipping in my ear. I know the story pretty well, anyway, and it felt good laying against her.

“Happy Christmas to all and to all a good night.” She held the book open in her lap and I looked at the picture of Santa Claus and his reindeer flying toward the big white moon and felt bad again because he wasn’t real. When I looked out the window, the streetlight looked like a big white moon, too, with snow falling around it. The ground was already white.

Shenka went to the kitchen and came back with a cup and saucer. I could see steam coming from the cup.

“Shenka, I’m too little to drink coffee.”

She helped me sit up again.

“It is not coffee, Daniel.” Her voice sounded soft like Mom’s. “It will make your throat feel better. Just take a few sips.”

“I don’t like medicine.”

“Silly.” She gave me a big smile and she looked even prettier than Mom, even prettier than Santa’s elf. But there’s no Santa, so I guess she looked prettier than anything I could think of. My head felt like I had rocks in it.

“It is not medicine,” she said. “It is warm tea, and I put in it some honey. It will make your sore throat feel better.”

“I don’t like tea.” I didn’t know that, but I don’t like to try new things. It’s like when she made me change how I held the bat last summer to help me hit better. It felt strange at first, but it worked, so maybe this would work, too.

“Just try a little, Daniel, okay? For me?”

She held it close and I felt the steam go up my nose and it felt sort of good. I tried to breathe through my nose, but it was hard and I couldn’t smell anything any more, not even Shenka’s fresh smell.

I blew on it a few times until the steam went away. I couldn’t taste much but it felt good sliding down my throat. Shenka gave me a big smile.

“Good boy.” That made me think of the stocking that wasn’t hung by the chimney with care and I felt myself sniffle again. “Try a little more, okay?”

I did. She put another log in the fireplace and a few minutes later a little flame started peeking over it. It made me sleepy to watch it. I can stay up until eight-thirty when there’s no school, but I already felt tired and it was only seven-twenty-five. It was snowing even harder, and I wondered when Mom and Dad would come home.

“Daniel, why don’t we get you some cookies and get you ready for bed.”

I almost asked if I could pour a glass of milk for Santa Claus and put some cookies out for him, too, but then I remembered.

“Okay.”

Mom made her special chocolate chip Christmas cookies, but I couldn’t even taste them. I only had one and it hurt to swallow. Shenka watched me push the plate away and hugged me again.

“Daniel, I don’t think your parents will mind if you don’t have a bath tonight because you are ill. Let us get you into a nice warm bed so you can rest and feel better for Christmas.”

She watched me brush my teeth and left me in the bathroom alone to get into my pajamas. When I came out, she’d put another blanket on my bed and she tucked it in around me. I still felt myself shivering. I looked out my window at the garage and the empty swimming pool with the cover over it, snowflakes getting bigger and floating around in the light between the garage doors. Shenka pulled the shade down most of the way so the light was just a little box on the far wall. She leaned down and brushed her lips across my forehead and left me nestled all snug in my bed.

“Try to sleep, Daniel. If you need anything, I will be right downstairs until your parents get home.”

It was bad enough waiting for Christmas, but even worse knowing that Santa Claus wasn’t going to come. My clock ticked as loud as a hammer and kept me awake. I tried reading some of my comic books, even though I’d read them all before, but my eyes were all yucked up so the pictures looked blurry and I finally dropped them next to my slippers. I put my head down but it was hard to breathe so I watched the square of light on my wall like it was a movie. I tried to remember How The Grinch Stole Christmas and watch that, but my eyes didn’t work and my breathing filled up the whole room.

I wondered if Shenka was watching a DVD downstairs or reading a book. Maybe she was eating a cookie for me. At least I knew she got me the bat I wanted, and that made me feel a little better.

When my clock said it was almost midnight and Santa Claus should have been landing on the roof, Dad’s headlights flashed on the garage and I heard him stop near the back door. He and Mom stamped the snow off their boots on the back porch before they came in.

A few minutes later, the car pulled out again and I knew Dad was driving Shenka home. She must have told them I was sick because Mom came into my room a minute later. She was still wearing her elf costume, her red sweater with candy canes and the green tights. Her dark curls had a few white snowflakes melting in them.

“Honey, are you all right? Shenka said you weren’t feeling well.”

“I’m okay.” My throat burned and the words came out so soft I don’t think she even heard me.

She had a bottle of Robitussin and a spoon. Yuck. She felt my forehead.

“Shenka said she took your temperature and you had a little fever. She gave you some tea and honey. Did it help any?”

“A little,” I whispered. I didn’t care if it was Christmas eve or not. There was no Santa Claus and I felt sick. I just wanted to close my eyes and wake up all better. Then I remembered I wouldn’t be able to try out the bat Shenka gave me until spring anyway. I wondered if Mom and Dad got me a new glove, too. Maybe Shenka told them I wanted one like Derek Jeter’s.

“Let’s give you some of this,” Mom said.

She waited with the spoon until I opened my mouth and she could slide it in. I couldn’t even taste it.

I guess I finally fell asleep, but then I started coughing and couldn’t stop and it woke me up again. Mom came in wearing her nightgown and robe. She got me a glass of water and watched me drink the whole thing down. Then she hugged me.

I rolled over and looked past the glowing numbers on my clock and out the window. The snow was drifting over the swimming pool cover and making the light on the garage look like a big puffy cloud.

Mom looked out the window, too.

“What do you hope Santa brings you most tomorrow, Daniel?”

My eyes blurred up again. “Dad says there’s no Santa Claus.”

Mom made a face. She was still looking out the window. “Forget what Dad says. What do you want most of all?”

“A bat,” I said. I figured it was safe to wish for that because I knew Shenka got me one.

Just then, I heard a car coming down the driveway and the lights reflected off the garage door so the box of light moved across my wall.

My clock said it was after two o’clock and Mom said something about some kind of pitch. I didn’t think she liked baseball that much. I heard her feet on the stairs, real heavy. A minute later, I heard the back door open.

The light over the garage was like the moon on the best of the falling snow, and I saw Mom walk toward the garage with something shiny in one hand and the long green package behind her back. I could see her nightgown below her coat, almost down to her boots. Dad eased out of his car and she met him after he closed the garage door. Even though there was no such thing as Santa Claus, he was still wearing his costume.

Mom handed him the shiny thing and he tipped it up to his mouth. It was the flask he drank liquor from.

He took a long drink and when he took his hand away from his mouth, Mom swung that green package at him. She stepped forward with her left foot, the way Shenka taught me to do, and led with her hips and kept both hands together. She let her arms stretch out as long as they could, and her shoulders turned with her hands so the package was a green blur in the snow-filled light.

The snow was so thick it was like watching through fog, but I saw Dad’s head snap back. He dropped his flask and stumbled back a step, then he fell through the swimming pool cover and into the deep end, near the diving board.

Mom stood there looking at the empty spot for a minute, then she held Shenka’s package up and looked at it from one end to the other. Snow was coming down so hard I could hardly see her as she looked at the garage, down at the flask, and at the swimming pool. Then she walked back toward the house and I pulled the covers around me before she saw me looking out my window.

When I went downstairs the next morning, it was still snowing and there was a fire in the fireplace. Mom was in jeans and her red and green Christmas sweater, the one with snowmen all over it.

“Merry Christmas, honey.” She gave me a big hug. “How do you feel?”

My throat was still sore and my eyes were sticky. I sat on the couch and looked in the fireplace, where a bundle of green paper burned along with a log. At one end of the mantel, I saw my stocking on the nail above the fireplace, and it was bulging full, round and thick like a catcher’s mitt.

“Where’s Dad?”

Mom put my stocking on the table in front of me. “He must have stayed at Shenka’s parents’ house because of the snow.”

When I looked out the window, I couldn’t even see Dad’s tire tracks from last night. Or where Mom went out to meet him. Maybe she didn’t go out there after all. Maybe I just dreamed it because I was sick.

Mom put my other presents on the coffee table so I could sit on the couch and open them.

She reached under the tree and picked up a long thin package. The tag had Shenka’s writing, but now the paper was shiny red with pictures of Santa Claus all over it.

“I’ll bet you know what this is, so why don’t you open it first.”

Sure enough, it was a bat, just the kind I wanted. I stood up and held it high, the way Shenka showed me. It felt good in my hands, like something alive and strong. I wanted to try it out, but I couldn’t, not in the house.

“How nice,” Mom said. “You should call her later and thank her.”

“I will.”

I wondered if Shenka had opened the gold heart on a chain that Dad and I got for her. I’d ask when I called to thank her for my bat.

Mom watched me opening the presents from my stocking. She pulled a tissue from the box on the table for me and wiped her eyes.

“I hope I’m not getting your cold.”

I got a baseball glove, too, a Derek Jeter one, just like Shenka’s. Even with my cold, I could smell it, like a whole room full of shoes.

When I’d opened all my presents, Dad still wasn’t there.

Mom dialed her cell phone. When Shenka’s dad came on, she wished him Merry Christmas.

“Is Ted over there still? Oh. I see. No, but it was snowing pretty hard when he left here with your daughter last night, so I wondered…”

There’s no such person as Santa Claus, so he couldn’t be lying in the deep end of our swimming pool. Besides, who ever heard of Santa Claus swimming?

Mom listened to the voice on the other end for a minute, her eyes drifting beyond our Christmas tree and out the window toward the garage.

“Could you put Shenka on for a minute?” Her eyes looked back at me. “Daniel wants to thank her for the baseball bat.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Steve Liskow (www.steveliskow.com) is a former actor, theatrical director, and English teacher whose short stories have earned an Edgar nomination and the Black Orchid Novella Award. Many of his novels take place in his home state of Connecticut and feature issues including teen trafficking and a shooting at a public school. Blood on the Tracks (2013) introduces Detroit PI Chris “Woody” Guthrie and draws on Steve’s experience as a guitarist and DJ. The book won Honorable Mention for the Writer’s Digest Self-Published Novel Awards in 2014.