In that reindeer getup he looks an awful lot like Anthony Hopkins playing Hannibal.
“We need to get back to work!” Declan announces, storming off.
“Sounds like Santa was already in someone’s chimney, busy at work—”
“MOM!”
I storm off and follow Declan. We come to the end of the hall and into the main part of the mall to raucous applause. The line is twice as long now, but no one has kids with them. It’s all elderly women and gay men.
Declan goes behind the Santa chair and I realize I need caffeinated reinforcement. I stumble over to the espresso cart near the service desk and dig into my breasts again. I can store anything in there, including a sweat-soaked twenty.
At least, I hope that’s sweat…
Two double Mexican mochas later, I come back to find Declan already in the chair, Amy and Mom there to help, and a series of old ladies from Mom’s yoga class tittering. I drink as much of my spicy-hot nirvana as I can before setting it down and getting back to work.
“You don’t smell like Santa,” one of them giggles, making fun of a line from the movie Elf. “You smell like beef and cheese!”
“Actually, he smells like sex,” Mom says cheerfully. I kick her.
“Elves can’t kick people!” Amy informs me. I kick her, too.
“Shannon the Violent Elf,” Amy mutters as she hands a candy cane to yet another old lady who just got more male muscle contact from my boyfriend than she’d had since he was born.
And then:
“Hi, Auntie Thannon!”
I look at Mom and Amy. “You have got to be kidding me.”
Mom kicks me. “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Now smile!”
“Smiling is my favorite,” I say as I frown. Chuckles nods.
“Auntie Thannon!” Jeffrey and Tyler sprint through the crowd and both of them leap into my arms at the same time, knocking me backwards onto my ass. Something in my costume rips.
“Day-um!” Amy says just as Dad appears, his face shocked as he quickly looks away.
“Um, honey? Cross your legs. No one needs to see your clam,” Mom whispers in my ear.
“You have a clam?” Jeffrey asks. “I have a hermit crab. What’s your pet’s name?”
“What a nice surprise!” I shout in an overly friendly voice. Carol comes up behind them, eyes turned to triangles, narrowed with laughter at my appearance. “I thought the kids were too sick for you to work here.”
She ignores that comment. “Shannon the Christmas Can-Can Dancer. How nice.”
“At least there’s no nip slip,” I mutter.
“Lip slip,” Mom says, pointing to my crotch. A three-inch tear in the costume has, um, made private parts of me not so private.
I look around frantically for anything I can wear, then spot it. Perfect.
I wrap Declan’s green cashmere sweater around my waist.
“That’s cashmere!” Mom gasps. “It will pill!”
“My labia are on display in a place where people are snapping pictures at a rate faster than the paparazzi following Lindsay Lohan.”
“But it’s cashmere!” She’s scandalized. I don’t care.
“We’re here to see Santa and take the family Christmas picture,” Carol explains.
“There is no family Christmas picture!” I scream. My cries echo through the high-ceilinged mall at the exact moment the Muzak system cuts short and the service desk announces:
“We will now start the canine Santa time. I repeat, bring your favorite furry kids on down to Christmas Village and get some bow-wow-wow holiday cheer.” The clerk says this with the enthusiasm of a Brazilian announcing Germany’s win in the World Cup.
“Let’s give Tyler and Jeffrey a turn first,” Mom pleads as a slow trickle of dogs on leashes, attached to green-and-red-covered owners, makes its way to the Christmas Village.
Carol grabs five-year-old Tyler, marches over to Declan, and unceremoniously plunks him down. Tyler hates strangers. Despises face hair. Can’t stand loud noises. And yet he looks calmly at Declan with absolutely no facial expression whatsoever, eyes blinking.
“What do you want Santa to bring you, buddy?” Declan asks in a soft voice, familiar with my nephew’s language disorder. For a kid who can’t say much, little Tyler looks Declan firmly in the eye and says:
“You need to pee.”
Tyler confuses “I” and “you” and is potty trained, but…
Declan jumps up and Carol swoops in, hurrying my little nephew off to the bathroom as his older brother, eight-year-old Jeffrey, climbs shyly onto Declan’s—er, Santa’s—lap.
“I don’t need to pee,” Jeffrey assures us. His lisp that was deeply pronounced just eight months ago has faded, a hint of it left. His features have broadened and he’s in third grade now, on the cusp of being a bigger boy. This might even be his final year in Santa’s lap.
Mom snaps picture after picture, ignoring her duties and reveling in being Grandma. Dad beams and records the whole little moment as Jeffrey chatters on and on and on, giving Santa a list of requests longer than anything you’d find on the wish list of one of the wives in those fancy reality television shows about over-consuming rich people.
Carol rushes back with a (hopefully) emptied Tyler as we all hear Jeffrey loudly request the latest video game system, and then he goes quiet.
“But I have one final thing, and Santa?” he whispers.
“Yes?”
“First of all, I know you’re really Declan, because Santa needs lots of helpers, and you’re one of them.”