Christmas Carole
Couples
were rushing in and out of stores and on and off of buses, mittened
hands clasped tightly together. The occasional lone man hurried
past, dressed in a business suit with matching scarf and gloves,
shopping bags under one arm, not looking to either side, just
anxious to get home to his wife and kids. Scattered here and there
were groups of women pulling brightly colored sweaters and shiny
gold and silver watches from bags and boxes, comparing the riches
they would soon bestow on their husbands, boyfriends, lovers.
And there
was one woman walking slowly down the sidewalk all alone, arms laden
with the fruits of a long day of shopping. She was not a thin
woman; she was quite heavy, in fact, full and round, softly curved
and womanly, but she floated along the sidewalk as if she weighed
nothing at all. She moved confidently through the crowds with a
smile on her face, nodding or waving at any whose eyes she caught
along the way.
But the
smile wasn’t quite reflected in her eyes. And if anyone had really
looked at her, had stopped to talk and looked into her eyes instead
of flitting past with a quick hello, that person would have seen
tears there, unhappiness, loneliness. And that person would also
have seen her taking her cell phone from her pocket every three or
four minutes and studying it carefully, then replacing it with a
sigh. Carole was happy that no one took the time to really look.
It let her hold on to the illusion a little while longer.
Her phone
was supposed to be ringing, had been supposed to ring two hours ago,
when Michael was finished with work for the day. No such luck.
Apparently Carole had been stood up and their first in-person
meeting was not to be.
She dodged
across the busy Chicago sidewalk and ducked into a clothing shop
decorated with sparkling white lights, red velvet bows, and faintly
scented pine cones. She went through the doorway just to avoid all
the people outside who were holding hands and walking arm in arm and
obviously succeeding where she had failed, but as she did she
narrowly missed a couple who had stopped to share a lingering kiss
under the mistletoe that hung above the door. Tears rushed into her
eyes and she swatted them away with one green mitten.
At least
she’d gotten to come into the city for the day, finish most of her
Christmas shopping. She supposed there was always an upside, even
to the bleakest of situations. Carole took her phone from her
pocket once more. Over two hours since he had gotten out of work.
Even if he had run home after, or stopped to do some shopping, he
should have called by now. Her shoulders slumped as she stopped in
front of a jewelry display near the cash register and pretended to
study the gleaming gold and silver necklaces and rings inside.
Her
attention was really drawn, however, to a man and a woman who were
standing shoulder to shoulder in front of a rack of soft pastel
sweaters. The woman gently rubbed her fingers over one of the
sweaters then took the sleeve in her hand, looked down at the price
tag, sighed, turned away. The man, who had been silently watching
her, put one arm around her shoulders and bent his head to softly
nuzzle her cheek. She smiled and tilted her head to kiss him. When
she did, the man reached his free arm out and removed a sweater from
the rack, holding it close to his side out of her sight. And when
they made their way to the cash register, he swiftly took the items
the woman was holding and deposited them on the counter with the
sweater at the bottom of the pile. He directed the woman’s
attention to the opposite side of the jewelry display Carole was
watching them through as he handed the cashier a credit card and
motioned for her to put the sweater quickly into a bag.
Carole
backed away from the woman’s face, maybe two feet away from her
through the glass case. The only thing worse than being all alone
and enviously watching a couple in love was to be caught doing so,
and to be pitied. She approached the rack of sweaters cautiously.
She wanted to feel their softness for herself, but she could almost
hear the cashier’s thoughts: What are you doing here? Can’t you
see we don’t have anything here in your size? Those sweaters won’t
fit you!
Carole
hurried away from the sweaters and quickly left the store. She
stood waiting at the bus stop on the corner, wondering why happy
things like people in love seemed so much happier at Christmastime,
and why loneliness seemed so much lonelier.
It began to
snow large, sparkling flakes as she got on the bus. It was dark
now, and the city buildings, all lit up with Christmas lights and
glowing through the snow, were so beautiful that it almost hurt to
look at them. And when she got off the bus at the train station,
Carole stopped outside for a few minutes to feel the snowflakes
tickling her skin as they landed on her face. The snow seemed to
hush all the sounds of the city. The peaceful moment of magical
silence gave Carole one last flash of hope and she looked at her
cell phone one more time to be sure she hadn’t missed Michael’s
call. She even flipped open the phone to check her missed calls
list, just to be sure. He hadn’t called, though, so she forced
herself to accept that he wasn’t going to and went inside to wait
for her train. A glance at her schedule told her that the next
train wasn’t coming in for a little over an hour, so she settled
onto a bench in the corner.
She didn’t
notice that she had nodded off until she woke with a start. Her
immediate reaction was to check the time and make sure she hadn’t
missed her train, but before she could find a clock, she noticed a
man sitting on the bench next to her. The most beautiful man in the
world, with pale skin and dark curls and almost translucent blue
eyes. He was well-dressed and appeared perfect in every single way;
it almost took her breath away to look at him. She couldn’t stop
looking at him, though. Which probably explained why he decided to
speak to her. It didn’t explain, however, the words that he said.
“Hello,
Beautiful.”
“Uh—hey—hi,” Carole stammered, sure that she must still be sleeping,
dreaming. Beautiful? Why would this perfect angel of a man think
she was beautiful? Who was he? She struggled to shrug off the
cloudiness of sleep in the hopes that it was the source of her
confusion, that everything would make sense in a few minutes when
she was more awake. She looked around the train station—the train!
What time was it? She spun her head around wildly, looking for a
clock.
“Don’t
worry about the train. You’ll be fine. You need to spend some time
with me. I have some things to share with you.”
“But—my
train—who are you?”
“Well, that
is rather difficult to explain. Can I be completely honest with
you?”
“Uh, yeah.
Sure.” Carole touched her leg and wiggled her toes, trying to
determine if she actually was awake yet.
“Alright,
good. I’m a ghost.”
“A what?”
“A ghost.
The Ghost of Relationships Past, to be more exact.”
“Oh, okay.
Right. What is this, ‘A Christmas Carol’ or something?”
“Actually,
yes. Very similar. I’m glad you’re familiar with the story. It
will help you understand this all a little better.”
“Okay.
Yeah. So say I did decide to believe you instead of screaming for
help. What are you going to do, drag me around to look at all my
past relationships and show me how stupid I was?”
“Exactly.
Although I would never use the word stupid, and I think the things I
point out to you will not be the things you would expect me to.” He
rose and walked a few steps, then turned to see if Carole was
following. She shrugged her shoulders, gathered her shopping bags,
and stood.
“You can
leave those here. Your body is still here sleeping. No one can see
the part of you that is coming with me.”
“Okay—”
Carole hesitated, uncertain. She figured either that either she was
dreaming, this guy who claimed to be the Ghost of Relationships Past
was nuts, or she, herself, was nuts. Something, some voice or
feeling inside of her, though, made her want to trust him. She left
her bags under the bench, where her body did indeed appear to be
sleeping. Seeing herself from the outside that way made a chill run
up and down her spine, but something made her turn and follow him
anyway.
When they
left the building, the air flew out of Carole’s lungs all at once.
They weren’t standing on Canal Street, where she thought they’d be,
at all. Not even close. Instead, they were on a quiet street in
the town she had grown up in. She hadn’t see the street in years,
but she recognized it immediately.
“How’d you
do that?” she asked. “How did we get from there to here, just by
walking out the door?”
“I told you
I was a ghost. It comes with the territory. Especially if you’re a
Dickens-style ghost.”
They walked
down the street side by side. It was dark out, and Carole could
hear children’s voices in the distance. They turned a corner and
came upon a group of children. There were five of them: a thin
blonde girl who Carole recognized as her best friend Monica from the
seventh grade, Monica’s little sister and one of her friends, a
tall, broad-shouldered, blonde-haired boy who looked a little older
than the rest, and Carole herself, chubby and smiling broadly.
The
children ran laughing down the sidewalk until they turned onto the
sidewalk in front of an old gray house that appeared to be falling
apart in various places. As soon as she saw it, Carole remembered
who the blonde-haired boy was. Her middle school boyfriend, her
first one ever. James.
As the
watched, the children ran around the back of the house, unaware that
anyone was following them. Because we’re invisible, Carole
reminded herself. She and the ghost rounded the house just in time
to see Monica and the two younger girls sliding a board across the
door of the shed. She and James were nowhere to be seen.
“I know
where we are. We’re in the shed. They locked us inside as a joke,
because they knew he liked me.”
“And did
you like him?”
“Well, of
course I did. I ended up dating him—okay, no. I really didn’t. I
was just so excited that a boy liked me that I said yes when he
asked me. But he wet the bed at night and came to school without
showering, and he wasn’t all that bright, wasn’t interested in the
same things as me… I didn’t really like him that much at all. In
fact, when he broke up with me, I laughed at him. Didn’t mean to,
just couldn’t help it.”
“That
doesn’t seem like a very good relationship.”
“Well, we
were in the seventh grade. I don’t suppose any are then.”
“Just think
about it. Now let’s move on.”
They walked
out of the yard through the alley and when they turned onto the
street, their location had once again changed.
They were
now in another neighborhood that Carole recognized easily. It was
the neighborhood that her close friend Stacie had lived in until
just a few years ago. Carole herself had lived just down the
street, but it was her friend’s house they were approaching. There
was snow on the ground in which they left no footprints, and there
were white lights and red paper hearts in the windows of the house.
Valentine’s Day, thought Carole. The flickering blue light
of the television played over them as they approached the window.
Inside the
house, Stacie and her husband were on the couch and their young
children on the floor. Across the room, Carole was on the love
seat. There was a man sitting next to her, arm draped over the back
of her shoulders and head resting practically on her chest. That
was when she had, briefly, been dating a man named Colin, who was
from Maine. They had met online and he had come to visit her for a
week. Carole cringed at what she was sure she was going to see.
And she saw just what
she had expected. Carole—not ghost-Carole, outside the house, but
real Carole, from three or four years ago, inside the
house—was staring intently at the television, which prevented her
from seeing exactly what Colin. First, as he alternately watched TV
and stared at Carole’s chest, he absent-mindedly lifted his hand and
rubbed his nose. And then he actually slipped his finger into his
nose. And then into his mouth. Ghost-Carole shuddered as she saw
Stacie and her husband stare at him in horror while she, herself,
remained obliviously glued to the movie that was on.
“Ugh, I can’t believe I
dated him. What’s wrong with me?” Carole mumbled, almost to
herself.
“Well, you broke up
with him after that, though, right? After you realized he wasn’t
right for you?”
“I broke up with him.”
Carole paused. “Okay, but not right away. I just couldn’t bring
myself to do it. I didn’t want to hurt him. And I didn’t want to
be alone, either.”
“Why did you date him
in the first place? You had to have some idea that he wasn’t the
one for you.”
“Why? I don’t
know—because he asked me to.”
“I see.”
“What do you mean, you
see? It wasn’t my fault. There just wasn’t anyone else there, and
he was. I’m not the type of person who can just go around turning
guys down. I don’t get that many chances and I can’t risk bad
karma.”
“Let’s go look at one
more thing. Then I’ll leave you alone.”
He stepped away from
the window and, once again, Carole followed. This time, when they
magically changed locations—Carole still couldn’t quite comprehend
how that was even possible—they were inside of a building. The
hallway they stood in was flanked on either side by matching rows of
identical doors. It was an apartment complex. And again, she knew
exactly where she was. It was her ex-boyfriend Craig’s building,
and a few seconds later, they were standing in his kitchen. Craig
and Carole were sitting on the couch watching television. Carole
recognized what they were watching as a sitcom by the laugh track
coming from the television speakers.
The two of them were
laughing, but Carole looked distracted. Again, she knew what was
coming, and again she cringed.
“Craig? Babe?” she was
saying.
“Yeah?” he asked.
“I think we need to
talk about something.”
“’Kay. Talk.”
“No, I mean, really
talk. You need to listen.”
“I’m watchin’ TV.
Lemme alone.”
“No, I won’t!”
Carole was surprised at
the strength of her voice. She didn’t remember that she had ever
been that forceful; she only remembered doing whatever she felt like
he wanted her to, up until she had been so desperate that she
couldn’t anymore. She definitely remembered the desperation. That
desperation must be what had created her sudden assertiveness.
“Awright, whaddya
want?”
“I think that—that
maybe we aren’t right for each other. I think you want someone who
is different from me, and you should be able to have that.”
“What the hell are you
talking about?”
“You know what I mean.
You’re always talking about all the other girls that want to be with
you, and how hot they are. What are you doing with me? You don’t
want me.”
“That’s just ‘cause
you’re so fat. I like your hugs, though.”
Carole watched herself
struggle to hold back tears.
“O-okay. But you
should be with someone you like every part of. And I should be with
someone who likes me the way I am.”
Her voice dropped so
low at the last sentence that Craig didn’t hear it. She cleared her
throat and squared her shoulders before she spoke again.
“If that’s the way you
feel, I think we should break up.”
“No. I don’t want to.”
“We need to.”
“Can we try again?”
“Try again? We haven’t
even finished breaking up yet! I don’t understand why you care.
You never act like you care about me at all.”
“But no one else wants
me.”
“You only like me
because you can’t do any better than me? Craig, I can’t even
believe you just said that.”
“Well, yeah, I like
skinnier girls. Like the one in that poster.” He pointed to a
poster of a swimsuit model on his living room wall. “But that’s
okay. You might lose weight. You work out sometimes.”
Now ghost-Carole felt
her eyes tearing up, just as real-Carole’s were. She remembered how
much she had hurt at that moment, how she had felt like something
inside of her was going to explode with anger and pain and sadness
and fear. She watched herself stand up.
“I’m leaving. We’re
done. Like or don’t like me, but make up your mind how you feel and
feel it all the way.” She put on her coat and walked out the door.
Ghost-Carole was sure that they would follow, but they stayed where
they were. Craig got up from his place on the couch. Carole hoped
that he would have tears in his eyes or go punch a wall or
something, anything to show that he had been anywhere near as upset
as she had been. All he did, though, was pour himself a glass of
milk from the refrigerator, stop at his computer to send an instant
message, and re-settle himself in front of the TV, remote control in
hand. He didn’t look upset in the least.
“Damn him! When I left
there that night, I was so depressed all I wanted to do was die!
And all he did was keep watching the stupid television. I kept
wondering if the things he said, about liking my hugs and not being
able to get anyone better, were his way of saying he really cared.
When I talked to him a couple days later, he wanted to get back
together and made it sound like he was all broken-hearted, and I
felt so sorry for him.”
“And did you get back
together with him?”
“Yes.” Carole felt her
cheeks flush and wondered for just a second if it showed on her
ghost self. Then she looked at the Ghost of Relationships Past
again. “I did. I felt sorry for him, because he couldn’t get
anyone else. And I felt sorry for me, because I couldn’t get anyone
else, either.”
“So, let’s see. James,
Colin, Craig—you dated all of them for the same reason.”
“Not really. I dated
James because he asked me to and I figured no one else would. My
friend’s little sister even told me I should, because no one else
would ever want me.”
“And why did you date
Colin?”
“Well, I didn’t know
him that well. He seemed like a nice enough guy at first, and I
wanted to give him a chance.”
“So you really weren’t
attracted to him, either, then?”
Carole flushed again.
“No. No really,” she
said quietly.
“And Craig?”
“Yeah, I hear ya. I
was only trying to give him a chance, too. But it was because I had
so few chances. It wasn’t just about him.”
“Let’s get you back to
the train station. I think you have enough to think about for one
night.”
They walked through the
door of the apartment and back into the train station. The first
thing Carole noticed was herself, still sleeping, on the bench. She
looked at the clock. Only five minutes had passed since she had
settled herself there. Apparently they were timeless as well as
invisible. And it still made her a little weak-kneed to be watching
herself from the outside. She turned to her ghostly escort.
“So that was it? I get
to look at all the losers I’ve dated, realize that I was just as
much of a loser, and now we’re done?”
“I was showing you what
has been. You have yet to see what is, and what may be.” And then
he was gone.
“But wait—how do
I—get—my body?” Carole shut her eyes tightly, hoping he would be
standing in front of her again when she opened them. Instead, when
she opened them again, she was looking out from her physical body
again, seated on the bench. She looked around for the man, the
ghost, but he was nowhere to be seen. Had it been a dream? It
hadn’t seemed like it. She glanced at the ground near her shoes for
evidence that she had recently been walking through city streets and
snowy yards, but there was nothing. And the clock said that she
still had almost an hour before her train arrived; she’d hardly been
there for any time at all. Confused, she leaned her head back
against the bench and closed her eyes once more.
Seconds later, movement
next to her made her open them again. There was a gray-haired man
sitting next to her. He was looking in the opposite direction.
Carole’s first instinct was to get up and run. She was fairly
certain that the other man had been nothing more than a weird dream,
but she wasn’t quite ready to take any chances on that. Her dream
had left her feeling hollow and depressed, and she didn’t think she
wanted to take on whatever might come next. Because she was just
the tiniest bit afraid that it hadn’t been a dream.
She wished as hard as
she could that she would hear an announcement over the loudspeaker
that her train had arrived early, so she could go settle safely into
a seat and get away from the man, who had now turned to look at her.
“Well, hello,” he said.
“Hey,” Carole replied
dully. Sleepiness and confusion were impairing the part of her that
censored her words and
