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By Root 642 0

that was part of it, Alice says. Instead of the regular syrup she'd bought real Vermont maple syrup, because it was Christmas. Just a small bottle. On sale, she explains as if still needing to justify her goading error, but it made him so mad. He couldn't stop talking about it. Grumbling. Couldn't get over wasting his hard-earned money on real Vermont maple syrup, 100 percent pure, he read from the label in a voice shrill with disbelief. And for little kids, the baby, as if they'd even know the difference or had the slightest appreciation of anything, anyway. Anger building, he insisted the younger boy, Cam, stay at the table and finish his pancakes, bloated with the precious syrup, while the rest of the family left to open presents. From the other room she could hear her little boy's sobbing gags as he tried to eat, and it tore her apart. Not only was Cam missing his presents, but he hated soggy food, which was her fault for having poured too much syrup on his plate, her fault for even having bought the expensive syrup. She waited until her husband started opening one of his own gifts, the Rubbermaid tackle box and fancy lures he'd wanted, and then she slipped away to check on Cam. Shh, she gestured to the child, as she stuffed his pancake into her mouth. She had just swallowed, when her husband came into the kitchen. He demanded to know if she had eaten it. No, she said, with her son staring into his syrupy plate. He insisted on smelling her breath, but of course, they'd all had the syrup. He checked the garbage can. He turned on the light over the sink and peered into the disposal, sniffing to make sure.

“So then we went in, and took the family picture, and Cam starts opening his presents. And Luke's got that look. Watching. Like he gets when he's fishing, you know, waiting for the tug on the line. Just waiting, I could tell. And then Cam opened his Power Ranger. He loves Power Rangers. I'd gotten him two, the red and the blue. I knew he wanted the blue, but he didn't know, he opened the red one first. And all he said was, ‘Oh, I wanted the Blue Ranger,’ the way kids do. And that was it for Luke. It was like he got what he wanted, finally, exactly what he'd been waiting for. He started running around like a crazy man, all out of breath, panting and picking up presents, grabbing them right of the boys' hands, even the baby, and of course they're crying and begging him not to. ‘Ungrateful little bastards,’ he's screaming. ‘Bring it back. Just bring it all back’ I tried to get him to calm down, but that's when he hit me.”

Stop, Nora wants to say, unable to hear any more. Her eyes ache with the pressure of tears against the vision of such cruelty. A father bullying his children, babies really, five, four, and two, on childhood's most magical day, the holiday she and Ken delighted in bringing to life with Santa Claus's boot tracks in the backyard snow, alongside the trail into the woods of chewed carrot tops the reindeer had dropped. Maybe Alice and Luke also set cookies and milk out, leaving the crumbs and streaked glass as proof not only of Santa's existence but of some deeper, more enduring benevolence as well. And maybe at dawn they also crept from bed and waited, breathless, at the bottom of the stairs, jingling an old strap of sleigh bells to wake the children. Maybe they did too, in the hope it would work, the hope that maybe, once again, for a time however fleeting, if even just a day, the power of myth and ritual might be enough to subdue the darkness.

“We were supposed to go to my mom's for Christmas dinner, but how could I, with my eye all swolled up and the kids so upset. So I called and said we were all coming down with something. And of course, my mom, she's so disappointed. My brother's up from Texas and my sister and her kids're there. ‘That's all right,’ she keeps saying. ‘Come anyway, honey. We'll take care of you.’ And the whole time, my husband, Luke, he's right there by the phone, listening, scared to death I'm gonna say something, and he writes on a piece of paper and holds it up. ‘Tell her we got