Cindy & Santa

The night that Santa Claus robbed Wanda’s Jewelry Shop, I was sitting in my brother’s room, watching TV and eating popcorn.  I liked watching all those Christmas movies mostly because of the snow everywhere. I longed for snow, I yearned to dust my face in it.  Nick, my brother, said snow was just like air, but I refused to believe him. It has to be more heavenly, more exquisite.

That night, I had propped his window open, and a hot breeze suddenly came flying through, whisking Cindy’s picture right off the wall where it sullenly dropped to the floor. It can’t be a coincidence, I thought, hope in my heart.  Cindy was Nick's girlfriend.  She was really crazy and was a terrible influence on him.  I was always telling him that, but he didn’t pay attention, and if he did, it was only to demand, “How?  How’s she such a bad influence on me?”  And as I sputtered because it was so obvious, he would say, “Ha!  You don’t even know,” as if he’d won the argument, even when I proceeded to collect my thoughts and list the reasons. 

First, she has dyed strawberry-pink hair and a pierced lip – there's nothing wrong with those things, except she has convinced my brother to pierce his nose and it looks awful.  Second, she's ruthless, and this is the hardest to explain, and maybe the most serious.  She is constantly saying things like, “Man, we should go to the drugstore and get some Twinkies,” and Nick, who’s usually broke, says “Naw,” and since she knows he doesn’t have money, she says, “Don’t worry about it, I got a big bag right here,” and she pats her gigantic patchwork purse, implying that Twinkies could slip in there easy as butter.  Though she smiles to show she’s joking and they drop it, I can tell that she’s partly serious.  It's the way she looks at him afterward, as if they had a secret. 

Then there was this other time.  The house was quiet and I was in the bathroom and Cindy and Nick were in his room talking, and I overheard everything through the vent.  I would have left, I wouldn’t have even bothered to listen to it since usually they bore me to death, but this time I stayed.  Cindy was talking about her uncle.  She said he’d got drunk one day and gone into a bank dressed up as a bear in his Halloween costume and actually stole about a thousand bucks.  She was screeching with laughter the whole time but it was put on, I could tell. And she said, “Can you believe it?  If my Uncle, stone drunk, succeeded in stealing a thousand, imagine what sober people could do!” 
I heard Nick say, “Did he get caught?” 
“No.  He didn’t!” 
“You didn’t turn him in?” 
“No...” 
My brother didn't say anything.


Cindy was crazy, you know, she did crazy things.  Nick told me about this time after they’d watched a drive-in movie at the Peach Bowl, how she had climbed up onto the top of the car and wouldn’t budge.  She’d insisted that she’d only get down once he’d driven her around some, so she could “feel the wind in her face.” My brother said that it was like she was trying to be Pocahontas, which was the second movie that'd been shown.  He said that it was like something had gotten hold of her and he couldn’t talk reason with her.  So he’d had to give in, to drive around and around on the sandy backroads until she was satisfied.  “She's crazy,” he said.  I agreed.


The holiday movie I was watching that night ended so I turned to the local channels.  On the screen was a grainy image taken from one of the surveillance cameras, of a guy dressed as Santa Claus going into Wanda’s Jewelry Shop.  I doubled over with laughter - I thought it was hysterical.  Lisa Metermowski, the newswoman, was saying, “This man entered the store 7 PM today and robbed about $1000 in jewelry. His true identity remains to be found.  Looks like this is one Santa that didn’t have a Merry Christmas or a good-natured 'Ho Ho Ho' in mind.”

I didn’t put two and two together until later, when my brother came in late, with a haggard expression on his face.  I was in bed but he stood in my doorway, and since I could see he wanted to say something, I said “What?”  He came and threw himself across the bottom of my bed. “I think I’m going to break up with her.”

“Why?” I said, sounding aghast, but really I was just freaked out, thinking about the picture that the breeze had knocked over.  Maybe there was no such thing as coincidence. 

“I don’t know,” he said listlessly.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing really.  It’s just that she’s crazy, you know.  She said that she’s always had this dream of wearing a black velvet dress and jewelry head to toe, and she found the perfect dress today at the thrift store so all she needed was the jewelry.  And she kept obsessing over it until I had to make her stop.  She can be really stubborn.” 
I still didn’t get it at that point. I just said, “How'd you make her stop?” 

He didn't answer. He got up and left.

It was only then, as I lay in bed thinking about Christmas and my brother and Cindy and her uncle that everything clicked. 

(Dramatic thunderclap)