AllFreeNovel
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We had sex every night for the first year. Every single night. And sometimes in the middle of the day. But a child didn’t come.
Our marriage went on for twenty more years like this, hitting several dry spells where it seemed we loathed each other. I turned to my work and she turned to depression, sitting for days in front of the fire, knitting, or taking long walks into town to see her old friends.
I made toys. I started out giving them to random kids in the neighborhood who had very little. I made wooden dolls and horses and carriages and figurines. The kids loved them. I took Agatha to church with me and as we listened to the stories of Christ and what he did for the world, I was hit with sudden inspiration.
I would give to the world too. I was so excited about it. I would spend the year making toys whenever I wasn’t working on something to trade in town. Then, on the eve of Christ’s birth, I would set out with Agatha to deliver the toys to the town’s children. It would be fantastic.
Where I’d been filled with sorrow for my lack of ability to give my wife a child, I suddenly felt that it had happened for a reason. We weren’t meant to have one or two children. We were meant to have them all, to give to them all, to surprise them all, to see their little faces light up with joy.
The first year was the roughest. Agatha didn’t have the same enthusiasm that I did. She wasn’t so thrilled about spending our free time giving to children that weren’t ours. I dragged her with me on Christmas Eve, hoping she’d understand once she saw the poverty many of these kids were living in.
But she didn’t get it. Instead, she reminded me of the poverty we were living in. She started to tell me how her family was right and how she should have listened to her parents. I was hurt. I was heartbroken. But I still loved her.
It was my fifth year delivering gifts when I was visited by an angel. I was alone in a small workshop I’d created at the back of our home when he came to me. Yes, I’d been drinking, but he was as real as the dirt floor beneath my feet. He has never told me his name but I took to calling him Nathaniel. I don’t know why. He just looked like a Nathaniel.
Nathaniel told me that I was giving selflessly and for this I would be greatly rewarded. I would be blessed with everlasting life, a wonderful home, a team of helpers, and a means for delivering my toys to the world’s children, not just the kids from my hometown.
And that’s how it really started.
***
I drain what’s left of my glass and feel the familiar burn and tipsiness that accompanies such a strong drink. Marlena coughs at my side and I dab the specks of blood from her lips before tucking her handkerchief back between the cushions at her side. It’s where she always keeps the old rag.
Outside the elves are still playing and the Christmas lights on my window blink, shining multicolored globes across my paper. The lights. So lovely.
***
Agatha.
In a Christmas world, our North Pole gift from God, a snowy world that never was short on joy or happiness, my Agatha struggled to find the peace I’d quickly come to know. She missed her family. Sure she had good times. We were too old to have children by this point. And she seemed to loathe the time of the year when the elves and I put in extra work.
Agatha was the first Mrs. Claus. She had servants to cook and clean, elves to build the toys, me to make her laugh, but even with all that she was distant. She’d become an empty shell. This wasn’t the life she’d married into. This was not the life she was meant to have. It was my life and I’m afraid I dragged her into it with little care or worry about what that might mean to her.
I suppose I was an asshole. But, God, I loved that woman.
She got sick, very sick with the flu. I did everything I could to help her and I prayed and begged for God and Nathaniel to do something to help her. She’d taken my hand as she spoke her last words.
“Do you think I don’t want to leave this world behind?” she’d asked.
I nodded.
“I do,” she said.
The night she passed, I sat with my face in my hands, and I sobbed. I bellowed. I was devastated that she’d been taken from me but even sadder that she’d wanted to go. The loneliness set in so quickly and unexpectedly. It was like I was being locked in solitary confinement.
Finally, as I shriveled up in my bed and cried, Nathaniel came to visit me.
“Why?” I asked. “Why would you put me in this wonderful place with the woman I’ve always loved and then let her leave me like this? Why would you take her away?”
Nathaniel’s face was blurred out with light. It always was. I have never been able to clearly make out his features. He explained once that I wouldn’t be able to handle it. My eyes weren’t meant for looking upon a light so powerful.
Even without seeing his face I can tell that he’s always smiling. Always at peace.
“You were blessed with everlasting life,” Nathaniel said.
“I remember, trust me,” I replied.
“You have given selflessly and have been rewarded with longevity.”
