“Are they all like this?” Marley covered her ears.
“I just started as a youth counselor, so I can’t say. But my eldest was just getting to that stage when my ex-wife moved.” Embarrassed, Bob ducked his head. “That’s why I volunteered. Rev. Boehm thought it would help me stop feeling sorry for myself.”
“Did it?” asked Marley, feeling the same need.
“Now I feel sorry for myself because I’m a youth counselor.” Bob shoved some papers and a pen into her hands. She signed as best she could as the pen sputtered. “This is a permission slip for me to drive him home, if you still want me to, and one for him to take part in the activity. An information form with his medical and insurance information, a hold-harmless agreement between you and the church and any church volunteer, a personal commitment form agreeing to have him here at the designated times, an agreement to support any disciplinary action that might be necessary (not to include corporal punishment), and—”
“Just for a Christmas pageant?” Rising on her toes, Marley tried to see the Eridanians.
“We have a lawyer on the executive board,” Bob apologized. “And a goat rancher.” He grabbed a runaway goat.
Marley almost escaped, but the professional mom accosted her.
“Marley Richardson? I’m Samantha Jacoby, your Prayer Angel.”
“Prayer Angel?” Marley craned her head to look around Samantha. Curtis was making wide gestures for the Eridanians, and a couple of security men had discreetly closed in.
“I drew your name, and I’ll be praying for you. At the New Year’s Luncheon we’ll talk about our blessings.” Her face lost some of its brightness. “If we’re still here on New Year’s. With aliens roaming the earth, I mean. Did you hear the President’s speech?”
“Roaming?” asked Marley in a feeble gasp. The aliens had hardly set foot out of the Wyndham-Mark until this week, and never without heavy security.
“Is there anything you’d like me to pray for? Any way you’d like your life to change?” Samantha hooked her bright smile on with an effort.
Wild desires tumbled through Marley’s heart, including model sons and men with Caribbean-blue eyes, but as she made a break, she said only, “Just a miracle or two.”
“You know what Rev. Boehm says about miracles,” Samantha called.
The Eridanians waddled back. “Useful,” chirped Red.
Bob came back with the bucking goat, and his eyes widened in recognition. Panicked, Marley herded the Eridanians aside. “It’s about to begin. Let’s go where we can see better.”
The pageant’s static nature gave Marley plenty of time to struggle with translating abstract and religious concepts into a language where she’d barely mastered concrete nouns and action verbs. Finally Kevin ambled back from El Periquito with a bag, adding fried grease to the animal stench. “Special holiday praline taco, anyone?” he asked between munches.
“Can we just get out of here while we’re all alive?” Marley snapped. “Remember what happened to Captain Cook in Hawaii?”
“That was an accident. They weren’t aiming at him.”
“Ha!”
The rest of the evening’s schedule called for a performance of “A Christmas Carol,” a family version cut beyond the bone in deference to early bedtimes. Then they drove through the Candlelight Festival, since it was convenient to the new Hermann Park Theatre. During the drive, Kevin tuned in to a replay of the President’s speech, a rework of one of his first campaign addresses.
President Fordham’s deep voice flowed like black molasses. “I personally am monitoring all activity and negotiations with our interstellar visitors. We will not let the quest for knowledge override our first duty. You may continue with your daily tasks, your preparations for the holidays, secure in the knowledge that your defense from any menace, from this world or the stars, is my only priority. I pledge to you that this administration will never sleep, never relax its vigilance, never flinch from a hard decision when the safety of our nation is at stake. Wherever Americans walk—”
“—They walk in safety,” chorused the men. Kevin mumbled a codetta: “Except possibly in Houston if we have to blow it up.”
Marley’s stomach twisted in knots.
At the Galleria they heard special music from local high schools and saw the Santa Claus village. Marley hustled them by a media store, where the wall screens displayed clips of the President’s speech and party footage of the Eridanians. Hearing murmurs like “Blow them back where they came from,” she worried about people recognizing the aliens as Bob had, but the shoppers plowed through everyone in a self-centered whirlwind. After the third body slam, Green asked, “What religion does this activity represent?” Marley thought it a fair question. Fortunately they were walking by Digital Dream, and the fleet of computers playing “Silver Bells” slightly out of phase made answering impossible.
Back in the van, free of the cacophony and rancid odors of Christmas bliss, she said with some anxiety, “Much of what we saw tonight is pretending. Not real. You understand that?”
“We perceive,” said Blue. “People pretend happiness.”
Marley’s head had been pounding cruelly since Bellaire High School’s rendition of “Little Drummer Boy,” which they’d misread as “Little Drum and Bugle Corps with a Few Riffs from the Jazz Band.” The headache dissolved on the soporific return journey, but the scent of roses and new car leather lulled her close to sleep. Maybe she could try again tomorrow. If they had a tomorrow.
* * * *
Copyright © 2001 Madeleine Rose Reardon Dimond
* * * *
A former Texan, Madeleine Rose Reardon Dimond is now freezing in New England. A veteran of Clarion ‘98, Viable Paradise ‘99, and several Turkey City workshops, she has sold several stories, including last year’s holiday story in Strange Horizons. For more about her, see her Web site.
Carol for Mixed Voices
By Madeleine Rose Reardon Dimond
12/17/01
In memory of my Clarion suitemate Tina M. Spell, 1967-2001.
Part 2 of 2
The next few days combined the worst of holiday anticipation and stark terror. The anthropologists asked the Eridanians for more history, and all three described long-term wars and cruelties that made even the most hawkish humans blench. No one could help imagining what such beings might do when the President told them to leave.
Private unvoiced hells drove all departments to redouble efforts on their reports for the President. Everyone needed translation constantly. The linguists never had more than ten uninterrupted minutes to work on their own report. When Dr. Scofield pulled Marley off of High Eridanian qualifiers, she was sorry to be dropped back into the turf wars and shouting matches. Kevin ran about, clamping electrodes onto the combatants’ heads to get good human readouts of strong emotion.
Even packed with multiple excursions for the Eridanians, the evenings brought Marley some relief. At least nobody shouted. They attended a Messiah singalong, hastily scheduled parades at military bases, a klezmer band playing the Nutcracker, a public Hanukkah candle lighting, and Carols on the Square.
They even visited the holiday display at the Space Center, where some impulse made her purchase a souvenir shuttle paperweight. It would probably elicit an “Oh, Mom” and rolling eyes, but Curtis as a small boy had loved rockets and spaceships. It might be his only present, with the bonus money still a theory. The cynical view held that the government hoped to delay paying it until they bombed Houston.
One night Curtis brought home a twisted pine spray. He said the nearby tree lot had given it to him. Looking at the brown-tipped needles drifting to the carpet, Marley believed him. She told him he was responsible for setting it up. “But not there!” she shouted when he filled the kitchen sink with water and stuffed his tree in the drain plug. When she came home the next night, she found it nailed, wildly askew, to the coffee table. Teenage accessories—earrings and keychains—dragged the drooping branches down further.
By Christmas Eve, Marley felt split, fried, and barbecued. Only last night the President had assured them:
“As I watched the World Trade Center towers collapse on themselves, I swore to end all terrorism on American soil. The attacks on our major cities over the next decade only strengthened my resolve. And I stand before you today as your President, the only President in fifty years to have served in the military, and I pledge to you that during my administration you will always walk in safety, no matter what the cost.”
The media stories had tripled in hysteria afterwards, but their reaction seemed mild compared with FCT team’s thrashings with their final reports. No one said out loud how final they might be.
After 3:00 p.m., Marley’s eyes glazed over in after-school anxiety, relieved only when Curtis beeped her wrist phone in his afternoon check-in. She had hoped to leave early for some minor Christmas shopping, but Dr. Scofield planned for the linguists to outstay everyone else and work on their report then.