Dear Santa (A Blazing Little Christmas) Read online

  KATHLEEN O’REILLY

  Dear Santa

  A Blazing Little Christmas Part 3

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Epilogue

  Chapter 1

  Wednesday, December 18

  With eleven minutes to spare, Rebecca Neumann finished concealing the last pieces of Christmas contraband from her kindergarten classroom.

  Though the big day was exactly a week away, the headmistress could come around the corner at any moment. The headmistress who insisted that Santa was nonsense and that the holiday was no holiday, a day like any other.

  So the reindeer antlers were hidden under the piles of neatly graded and filed spelling tests. Verboten Dear Santa letters were stashed inside Rebecca’s prized Prada bag. Blackballed holiday cards were stuffed beneath her FootSmart custom orthotics that would never see the light of another human being’s eye. And the paper-plate snowmen were strategically covered by the flirty, little black Versace that she kept on hand for date emergencies. A woman never knew when the man of her dreams was destined to appear, and although never having been a Boy Scout, Rebecca had dated and dumped three of them, and cleaved to their motto like her own.

  The clock ticked off another minute, and she took a last look around, checking for any telltale holiday paraphernalia.

  Everything…looked…

  No! Teddy! Teddy Ruxpin! A tiny piece of candy cane was dangling from his fuzzy bear mouth. According to Headmistress Cruzella (not her real name, but apropos, nonetheless), sugar was the worst of all sins of the young and impressionable. Sugar and processed grains were banned at Modern Manhattan Preparatory School, where “every mind is priceless,” and the punishment for sugar possession was a ten-minute diatribe on nutritional education.

  Furiously Rebecca pulled at the sticky mess, but it wasn’t budging. No matter how hard she picked, it was still stuck.

  Think, think, she just needed to think.

  Okay, would anybody notice if she dumped Teddy in the trash? Probably. Ethan Wilder seemed really attached to the bear, and Ethan was Rebecca’s last, greatest hope for the next generation. It would be her luck that she’d destroy his favorite toy, and curse his life-destiny forever.

  Nah. She could erase the evidence but she had to maintain an efficient calm. After eight years of dodging Cruzella’s rules and regulations, she’d gotten cocky. There was no transgression she couldn’t sweep under the rug, no institutional infraction she couldn’t whitewash away.

  While keeping a careful eye on the clock, she plucked, pulled and wiped, clearing up everything but one stubborn bit of sticky candy. Eventually she knew she had no choice—Teddy was about to get buzzed. Stylishly, of course.

  With bear in hand, she flew across the room, sliding to her desk in stocking feet. Right then, the door opened. As the lies sprang to her lips, Rebecca dug her shoes out of the desk while simultaneously stashing the bear behind her. Then she assumed an innocent smile, ready to face Headmistress Cruz.

  Instead it was only…Natalie.

  Rebecca dumped her shoes back in the drawer, and resumed breathing. “Give me a heart attack next time, will you?”

  Natalie was the next-door kindergarten teacher, happily married with her first kidlet on the way, her face was always lit up brighter than a halogen bulb.

  Sometimes Rebecca felt a twinge of envy, an unnecessary emotion that she rarely felt, and never admitted to. Rebecca’s life goal was to marry a Prince Charming with a twelve-cylinder steed (preferably of Italian design), and live a life of luxury with a seat on the board at the Astor Foundation, and a new, state-of-the-art, homeopathic, ultra-luxe foot spa with jets and soothing, acupressure massage nodes.

  Natalie’s husband had a twelve-cylinder Jag, but Rebecca forgave her, since Natalie kept setting her up on dates with men who rated A+++ on the Rebecca Neumann Eligibility Scale. Unfortunately sparks never flew, the men were blah and something always felt wonky. But Rebecca kept trying; she had a mission.

  Natalie looked at the bear, looked at the scissors, looked at Rebecca. “What are you doing?” Then she looked closer. “Candy? Peppermint candy? You’ve been at it again, haven’t you? When are you going to learn, Christmas is a hanging offense at this school. Listen, I’ll keep an eye on the door while you get rid of the evidence. You have thirteen minutes. That’s what I came to tell you. Mistress Yvette is keeping them late in French class today. Le pop quiz.”

  “A votre santé, Mistress Yvette,” Rebecca murmured while efficiently trimming away the clumps of fur and tossing them into the trash.

  “You’re going to die, you know that, don’t you? Cruzella catches you, and you’re dead. Sugar! Oy vey. After that last bit at Halloween, with the candy pumpkins, you’d think you’d learn your lesson, but no—”

  “Keep quiet while I get the last of this.” Rebecca scanned her work, gave Teddy a sophisticated, slicked-down comb-over and threw him back into the toy bin, missing by a mile. Damn. Someday she’d master that shot.

  Natalie picked up Teddy and slam-dunked the bear into the bin. “Why do you even try? You’re too short.”

  “You’re too pregnant, and you can still make the shot.”

  Natalie smoothed a hand over her stomach. “Yes, yes, I am, but I have the added benefit of a hormonal imbalance. Better than steroids.”

  Rebecca and Natalie pulled out two pint-size chairs from the tables. Rebecca sank gratefully into the seat and began rubbing her feet, already aching with another three hours of the school-day left. It was going to be a Four Advil day. And that was on top of the Three Advil day yesterday when Mrs. Capezzio insisted that sweet Richie did not scrawl his name all over the gym in permanent maker. Today on Oprah: Parents in denial. Rebecca shook her head sadly. “I’m worried, Natalie.”

  “About what?”

  “I think being around overprivileged kids is messing with my head. Don’t get me wrong, I yearn for the finer things in life, but I’m losing the delicate balance. The other day, Kaitlyn told me I needed collagen injections for my mouth, and I considered it. I don’t need collagen injections. Do I?”

  “No. Of course not, silly,” answered Natalie with a quick glance at Rebecca’s mouth, which Rebecca didn’t miss, by the way.

  The drawings above the blackboard weren’t of monsters and bunnies, but designer fashions, formal dining rooms, pictures of South Beach winter homes and four Picasso-esque paintings of polo ponies. “It’s these kids. I’ve dated men with less understanding of finance than little Claudio Gettleman. How a six-year-old can calculate earnings per share is really beyond me.”

  “He gave me stock tips the other day,” Natalie admitted.

  “Really? Did you invest?” The words slipped out before Rebecca could stop them.

  “He is only six.”

  Rebecca grabbed the pen from behind her ear. “What’s the name of the company?”

  “B-I-O-N-E-X-T.”

  Carefully she blocked the letters on her hand, making her “N” with the three-step process they practiced in class. “You invested, didn’t you?”

  “No,” answered Natalie. “Some. He gave me this whole spiel about engineering biological components—and it made sense.”

  Rebecca made a mental note to herself to call her broker that afternoon and then tucked the pen back behind her ear. The money was one thing—she could adjust to that—but the mind-set of the school was another. That was the one that kept her awake at night.

  “This school is doing a huge number on them, depriving them
of sugar, Santa, the tooth fairy. All the carefree things in life. Do you know that Cruz told Justin Lowenstein the tooth fairy didn’t care if he lost a tooth because the tooth fairy didn’t exist? Where’s the justice in that?”

  “You could quit.”

  Rebecca snorted inelegantly, a sound reserved only for her very best friends. “I’d die first. These children need me. Their childhood is zipping right past them. I was happy when I was a kid. No ADD, no bubble-gum-flavored Prozac. I’m the only piece of sanity in their lives it seems, certainly in this stylized mental institution. Present company excepted, of course.”

  Natalie popped a Tums into her mouth. “The kids do like the birthday parties you give. They think that keeping it a secret from their parents and the headmistress makes it extra special. Although I think Cruz is catching on.”

  “If she does, I can handle her.”

  “I hope so because now my class is asking for it, you child-corrupter, you.”

  “Go ahead, Natalie. Walk on the wild side.”

  Natalie laughed. “Oh, right. Classroom antics aside, you’ve never walked on the wild side. Your closet is littered with skeletons of skeletons that have never gotten a chance.”

  “Who needs skeletons anyway?” Rebecca shrugged it off. Her skeletons were all gone now.

  “A skeleton is much better than a regret, do you at least have any of those?”

  “Not many,” answered Rebecca, because honestly, there wasn’t much she regretted. She’d always gone after what she wanted with an élan that made her captain of the cheerleading squad, homecoming princess and president of the student body. No, not many regrets, except for…

  “What?” prodded Natalie, whose dogged determination was probably the reason she got pregnant in like, two seconds.

  “It was nothing.” Quickly Rebecca tried to change the subject. “Isn’t Cruz due about now?”

  Natalie checked the clock. “You have over eight minutes. Just enough time to spill all the regrettable details.”

  “There’s nothing to spill,” Rebecca insisted.

  “You’re lying,” answered Natalie, and Rebecca heaved a sigh. She was getting weak in her old age (not quite thirty-one, although if anyone asked, she was twenty-nine).

  Natalie flashed her tough-girl look. The one she used when determined to get the truth—whatever it took. Rebecca held up a hand before she brought out the instruments of torture.

  “Okay, fine. You want to know? It’s completely nothing. There was this one day, this one guy in high school. Cory Bell. He looked at me. And I got this tingling in my fingers, my toes and the back of my neck. This was in my fully hymenated days, so I didn’t quite understand the biology of tingles very well. Then Lawrence—who was captain of the football team—came up and took my books and walked me to class. Cory never looked in my direction again, but I’ve always wondered what would happen if…End of regret.”

  “That’s all?” asked Natalie, which made Rebecca wish she’d made up something juicier.

  “I don’t get tingles very often. Bad circulation, I think,” she answered, rubbing her feet.

  Natalie’s gaze turned wistful. “I had one of those. Once.”

  “What happened to yours?”

  “He got incarcerated, ten years for grand theft auto. I consider myself lucky to have escaped. Think of it, instead of planning a Disney cruise for the little guy, I could be scheduling my conjugal visits.”

  “Think he’s turned around?”

  Natalie shook her head. “Ha. And Santa’s going to drop down my chimney.”

  “Bite your tongue lest the reindeers and elves hear you and start offing themselves because you’ve dashed their Kris Kringley version of reality.”

  “You think this Cory person got incarcerated?”

  Rebecca thought for a minute. “Odds are good. He wasn’t at school long. Half a semester at the most. They said he had lots of problems. Foster kid. No parents. Hair too long, and eyes that revealed a level of experience far removed from the restrictive bonds of traditional adolescent behaviors. Every female has one of those boys in her closet.”

  Natalie wiggled her brows. “Would you have slept with him if those experienced eyes wandered in your direction?”

  “No. I had plans, goals, aspirations. I still do.”

  “Would have been fun.”

  “So is jumping out of airplanes. Don’t want to do that, either.”

  “And now?” asked Natalie. “What would you do today?”

  Rebecca allowed a moment of introspection, savoring the idea. As a rule, she stuck to predictable men, and with the clock ticking, she couldn’t afford to waste her prime-matrimonial years. But the single second in time had lodged in her brain, chiseled there for over a decade. Sometimes, late at night, when she was lying in bed alone…

  Whoops. Rebecca shook her head, her blond page boy shaking artfully. “The fantasy is better. Besides, my tastes were never a black leather jacket. My standards are higher.”

  “Alec Trevayne high?”

  Alec Trevayne. Now there was a man who rated A+++++ on her scale. She’d never met him in person, only drooled from afar when he pulled up in a bright red Bentley and dropped off Natalie’s husband at a party two months ago. Rebecca lifted her hands innocently. “I can’t help it if I’m seduced by such shallow things as a dimple, golden hair and abs made of steel.”

  “You said that about Jeremy Smithson when I set you up with him. Three dates and you dumped him.”

  “Snooze alarm, Nat.”

  Natalie got up and began to shuffle slowly around the room. Rebecca knew she’d be losing her partner in crime soon. Childbirth could do that to a woman, and Natalie was due in six weeks.

  “You’re too picky, Rebecca.”

  “You didn’t settle. Why should I?”

  Natalie leaned against the Wall of Presidents, a contented smile on her face. “No, I didn’t.”

  “Thank you for the vindication. I’m waiting for true love, too.”

  “Is that what you’re putting in your Dear Santa letter?”

  The Dear Santa letter was Rebecca’s annual Christmas tradition with her class. She believed in Santa as strongly as the kids. So the kids wrote their letters—wish lists, really—and then Rebecca took charge of mailing them off.

  This year Rebecca’s letter to Santa contained three wishes: a new, less volatile father for Pepper Buckley, a reading breakthrough for shy Isaac Gudinov and a fiancé for herself. “I also want you to know that I answered thirty-seven Dear Santa letters, all presents paid for out of my own pocket.” Part of the Dear Santa program organized at the Thirty-third Street

  post office was the ability to write reply letters and send presents to kids, particularly to less fortunate ones.

  Natalie shook her head, rubbing her alarmingly distended belly. “It’s an inhumane heart that tries to bribe Santa Claus.”

  “Just want to make sure I’m making it onto the right list,” she answered. However, Rebecca privately admitted that somewhere in the last few years, what had been a holly-berry outlook on the Christmas season, had become something of a routine. A desperate tradition that she kept up with, only because she couldn’t bear to let it go.

  Just then, the hallway filled with the sound of D&G sneakers, UGG boots and Roberto Cavalli hightops, signaling the end of her break. Rebecca slipped on her shoes and rose to her feet, a weary smile on her face.

  No matter how much she complained and worried, and griped and moaned, Rebecca loved her job. There were some days, some rare days, when the kids would get it, would actually learn, and she, Rebecca Neumann, Girl Most Likely To Become A Trophy Wife, was responsible. Those elusive happenstances made all the “thou shalt have no sugar,” nor any fun lectures from Cruzella worthwhile.

  Rebecca sighed. “And now back to the trenches. I must don my armor and face the mini heathens with a happy smile on my face and a trill of delight in my voice.”

  Natalie waddled toward the hallway. “Maybe this
time Santa will come down your chimney. Maybe you’ll finally get a shot at dipping into the famous Trevayne S-H-O-R-T-S.”

  Kaitlyn stopped in the doorway. “I can spell, you know. That’s shorts. My mommy and daddy don’t think I can spell. She called him a D-I-C—”

  Rebecca clamped a hand over Kaitlyn’s mouth. “Precocious child. Come. Let’s fill your mind with more intellectual drivel. It would be the highlight of my educational existence.”

  * * *

  Three hours later, with quitting time fast approaching, Rebecca finished grading the last round of math sheets. The crisp clip-clip of Cruzella’s heels echoed through the marble hallways, and Rebecca pulled out her knockoff D&B clutch, an “I’m going home now” hint in case the headmistress decided to launch into a lecture.

  Nina Marcel Cruz, known as Headmistress Cruz to all poor serfs in her fiefdom, was a stylish reed of a woman, with an innate fashion sense that made women jealous and men glad they weren’t paying for it. Sometime after thirty, Cruz had stopped showing signs of aging, so Rebecca wasn’t exactly sure how old she was, but the woman had founded Modern Manhattan Preparatory School in the boom days of the eighties, and since that first year, women had rushed from the maternity ward to put their children on the waiting list.

  “Mistress Neumann.”

  Rebecca rose, pocketbook in hand, exit door firmly in her sights. “Yes. I’m just leaving.”

  “We need to talk.” Cruz leaned forward, giving Rebecca a long, lingering whiff of Chanel. “I found these,” she said, throwing the Dear Santa letters on Rebecca’s desk. “Do you have an explanation?”

  It was late, Rebecca was tired and all she wanted was to go home. But noooooo, Cruzella wanted to duke it out.

  Fine. Rebecca jerked open her desk drawer, pulled out her spare Prada bag, which she used for emergencies, and searched frantically inside. Empty. “You searched my desk?”

  “The desk, the drawers and the closets, all fall under the oversight of this educational institution. Which I run,” she added, hammering a finger on the calendar desk pad. “Modern Manhattan prides itself on not pandering to the fantastical myths that are told to children to foster their own sense of self-involvement and pull them further away from reality. If a parent wants their children exposed to the commercial extravaganza that is Christmas, there are any number of educational facilities that will cater to that belief system. We are not one of them, and I will not tolerate this flaunting of our mission. I want you to take these letters and return them to the children, explaining that this was nothing more than a simple exercise in letter-writing.”