A Christmas Sonata (5 page)

His voice was soft the way it had been in the room when we were thinking of Santa and he had wanted it so much, and I heard it and my feet moved.

They moved me out the door, and I hated them because the other parts of me didn’t want to move, but they moved me and I walked across the snow by the door and to the first reindeer and looked up and it was real.

The antlers crossed the moon the way Mother said the smoke from the little houses on the lake crossed the moon, went up and up to the moon, and they were real
and his eye was so big I could see myself in it, big and brown and round, and there I was, standing next to him.

He shook his head and the antlers moved in big swings and I turned to run, but Matthew was looking at me.

“
Touch
it!”

So I did.

I reached out and touched the reindeer on the leg and felt the hair, the warm hair, and the leg moved and I turned to Matthew and said, “It’s real.”

“For
real
real?”

“For real.”

“Pull his beard.”

“What?”

“Get into the sleigh and pull his beard.”

And I would not, could not have been able to do that except that my legs moved, kept moving, and I walked past the reindeer and to the sleigh and looked up and knew
he was real,
knew
he was real and he smiled and I stood on the side of the sleigh and touched his beard, pulled on it.

And it was real.

“It’s real.”

“For
real
real?”

“Real.”

“It’s him.” His voice was soft, a whisper.

“Yes. It’s him.”

And I jumped down and ran then, ran
to stand with Mother, and we stood away from the door and watched him come in with his sack, come right in the door and put presents all around under the tree until the sack was empty and the tree was full. Then he turned and looked at us, looked at Matthew, and still without saying a word went out of the door and we watched him move away into the darkness, the reindeer trotting and the bells jingling softly until we could not see him or the sleigh or the deer,
could not hear him and Matthew sighed once more and said, “It’s him.”

And it was him.

It was him for that Christmas and all the Christmases since; it was him later when Matthew did not come home again and I went to the funeral and tried to tell Mother he was just sleeping and not to cry; it was him when Father did come home from Europe and we had Christmases together; it was him for each and every Christmas of each and every year that I have lived since then, and will still be him for each and every Christmas of each and every year that I have yet remaining.

It was him.