Somewhere Else

Chapter 2: Winter Rose

Christmas was coming. The apartment was always so full at Christmastime. Not always full of stuff exactly, but there was always a full feeling. She wished the apartment was full of presents, most of them for her, but that was never the case. Mom said that’d make her a very spoiled little girl and neither of them wanted that.

The door flew open and in barged Brecker. Today he was wearing mostly purple, which she knew to be his favorite color. Purple pants, purple shoes, purple shirt, purple hat: everything was purple. He looked like a grape.

“I’ve finally got a solution, Winter.”

If his eyes could have been purple, they would have been. They would have sparkled lavender to accent the enthusiasm he held as he announced this. He sufficed instead by wearing purple tinted lenses in his sunglasses. In actuality, his eyes were a dark blue, like the sapphires in her mom’s ring. He said they were hard to accessorize around but since everyone liked them so much, refused to get a transplant. She was only pretty sure he was joking about the transplant.

Rather than responding, she clambered up onto the couch in order to stay out of his way. Brecker was the sort who needed the whole room to himself if he was excited enough. Clapping her hands on her thighs, she looked around for Oreo. Trained like a dog, the fluffy feline ran and hopped into Winter’s lap, eyeing Brecker warily as she usually did. Circling, circling, and finally hunkering down, her eyes narrowed and she tried to elicit affection from the little girl.

“Oreo won’t be taking down the tree this year!”

Winter rolled her eyes. Oreo was just a kitten after all. She’d gotten her from the grape man for Christmas last year. When all three of them had gone out for breakfast, Oreo managed to remove most of the ornaments from the tree. Luckily none of them broke. Mom said a lot of them were irreplaceable.

Ever since the can won versus the tree, Brecker had been trying to Oreo-proof the entire apartment, especially for holidays. He didn’t want a repeat of Jane’s anguish. Winter thought he was downright silly.

“Are you sure?” the little girl asked.

“I’m sure. You know how I’m sure?” He didn’t wait long enough for her to reply. “Because we’re not going to have a tree.”

“No tree?”

“No tree.”

He thought it was pure genius himself. If they didn’t have a tree, the cat couldn’t take it down. His plan was going perfectly until he saw that lower lip of hers jut out and start to tremble. Next he saw her eyes brimming with tears. He’d waited too long to finish explaining his brilliant plan, so he hurried it along.

Through the narrow doorway, he tugged an empty shopping cart into the apartment. Nondescript in every way, save for the plastic part on the seat advertising which store it came from, he proudly presented it to Winter as though he’d made it with his own two hands and was awaiting her critique. Well, he did carry it up the stairs himself!

“What is that?”

“Our new Christmas tree!”

Winter groaned loudly and another tear fell from her eyes. No branches! How were they going to hang the ornaments? The underneath was hardly enough to hold her presents, let alone mom’s and Brecker’s and all the presents they kept until their Christmas Even rounds when they were distributed to friends.

“Where is Santa going to put my toys?”

Brecker pointed to the basket part of the cart. “Right there. All our presents will fit in, no problem. The really big ones will go on the bottom. The tiny ones will go in the front seat so they don’t get lost.”

Somewhat skeptical, she slid off the couch, pushing Oreo out of her lap. She’d been shopping with her mom before. She could fit a lot of groceries into one cart. “But what about ornaments?”

Brecker lifted a finger and then walked over to the open shoe box on top of the television that housed the girl’s ornaments. Then he dipped into the small check box full of hooks. Putting them together, he hung it off one of the small metal bars that ran across the side of the cart.

“See? And if you give me just a few minutes, I’ll get the lights wrapped around it.”

“What about mom’s angel?”

Studying the cart for a moment, he realized it wouldn’t rest on there anywhere. Not safely at least. “With change comes small sacrifice.” He nearly pinched his fingers together, illustrating how small the sacrifice would be this time around.

The long green strand of multicolored lights was thread through the bars of the shopping cart. Once he’d made it around the cart three times, the height of the lights ranging from top to bottom, he went to plug it in. Then he stood back to admire his handiwork. This was much better than a stupid old Christmas tree.

“See? Just as good as anything we’ve had before. Only Oreo won’t be able to tip this over.”

Winter still thought it was strange, but life with Brecker was bound to be. He was far different from anyone else she’d ever met and living with him was quite different from living with mom and dad. This was especially different from back when mom and dad used to live together.

Each of the ornaments was hand selected by her and Brecker put a hook through them. Then she found a place on the cart to hang them from. She liked that she didn’t have to worry about the heavy ones sliding right off a branch. Other than that though, it was pretty much the same. She had to ensure the good ones were out of the reach of the cat, lest Oreo believe they were snacks dangling for her to nibble on throughout the day while they were all away at work or shopping.

“Where’s the top of it?”

Brecker scanned the cart for a minute and then pointed to the handle. “There. That’s the top of the ‘tree’.”

“What are we going to put there, Brecker? You can’t leave the top of a tree naked. It’s bad luck.”

There was a box full of miscellaneous Christmas paraphernalia down by the window across the room so he hurried over to it and started rummaging around for what he had in mind. Winter waited expectantly by the shopping cart. Item after item was taken out: ornaments, tree skirt, boxes that used to hold ornaments that he couldn’t get rid of for whatever reason, a list of every ornament owned and why he had it, a silken beard! He was getting closer. After nearly unpacking the entire box, he finally produced that which he sought most: a velvety red Santa hat, trimmed in plush white fur.

This was the sort of hat that was included in a very expensive Santa costume rental, something that someone might buy if they really wanted to pull off looking like a Santa. There was nothing fake looking about it, not like how some of the stores sold theirs. Some had cheesy white beards already attached to the hat and the very tip of the hat looked like nothing more remarkable than a cotton ball. A tugged on, almost used cotton ball at that.

She laughed. “That’ll work!”

So he took the hat over to the cart and placed it right on the handle. He was sure not to cover any of the lights wrapped around the red plastic that advertised which supermarket the hobo stole the cart from in the first place. Then they continued putting ornaments on the cart: Baby’s First Christmas, complete with a picture; a stuffed house that reminded her of what Christmas used to be like when she still lived with both mom and dad; a marshmallow snowman she made in school, complete with permanent ink eyes and yellow yarn hair; several carousel horses because she loved them most of all; and a cute collection of Pooh and Friends, most with something special about them -- Tigger and his spring to make him really jump for instance.

As Winter decorated, Brecker took pictures. He wasn’t sure why Jane was so particular about having pictures of her decorating the tree when she usually watched her do it herself, but he learned long ago to argue with the logic of a woman first, and worse than that, the logic of a mother. He snapped away happily as if she were a young model just been discovered doing some of the most adorable things. To Jane, she surely was.

When she finally got home and opened the door to look upon the two of them, her daughter with one of the final ornaments in her hand and Brecker who was rather dressed up for the occasion, she arched a brow and cracked a smile. She wished they’d waited so that she could have been there for it as well, but Brecker was spontaneous, to say the least.

“Look Mommy!” Winter ran up to her mom and took her by the hand, all but dragging her to the metal tree. She proudly pointed out every single ornament that she put up herself, then moved on to show her which of the ornaments belonged to Brecker. “Now you have to put yours up and we’ll be done. We wanted to surprise you. Are you surprised?”

“By the decorations or your selection of this year’s tree?”

“Brecker’s selection. You put up your ornaments and I’ll take pictures!”

Jane smiled slightly when her daughter suggested getting behind the camera. She really was quite good, considering her age. It’d been months since she chopped a head off or amputated a very important limb. She could even make out what the event was, when so many months ago she could usually only make out that someone had been somewhere and they had a foot or red sweater.

“Not right now baby. I have to change and talk to Brecker. Then I’ll be right out.”

Sensing that he might have overstepped his boundaries on this one, he’d taken to hanging the rest of his ornaments as slowly as he could, listening to her every word, to the tone of her voice. When she mentioned she wanted to talk to him, he could only imagine what she might say. He’d already decided a good solution would to simply take everything down and let Winter do it again. After all, he didn’t think the girl would ever get tired of decorating for Christmas.

Hanging the ornament that he held currently in his hand, he put on a rather charming smile and then looked down to the girl. He removed his purple fedora and deposited it on her head before heading down the hall to the Master bedroom, closing the door but not enough for it to latch. A moment later he was met by Jane. She closed the door tight, but didn’t lock it.

Discarding her jacket to the bed, she stepped up and wrapped her arms around him, embracing him warmly. She’d had a trying day. Brecker was sweet in that he would always share his affection with her, regardless of how he might be feeling or how his day went. She was ever grateful for his ability to share so much of himself with her, even though she knew there was someone more important in his life right now.

As she pressed her face to his neck, the tears began to well in her eyes.