Chapter Text
Christmas Eve Night - 5 years old
The apartment is cold like always, and Robby wraps the threadbare blanket tossed on the couch around himself. It curls around his legs like a cloak and he has to carefully shuffle towards the door to prevent himself from tripping over the pool of fabric.
He sits in front of it, shivering, waiting. His breath comes out in wisps and he pretends he’s smoking like he sometimes sees the man from next door do so out on the fire escape. He can hear his mother snoring loudly from her bedroom. She had downed a bottle of wine as red as blood that evening, sniffling about all the parties she was missing. How she was stuck here. With him. It made him feel sad, how she had to forgo fun to look after him, so he sat quietly at the coffee table, drawing a picture. He hoped if he made himself small enough, she’d forget he was there and be happy again.
Robby helped her to bed once she started slumping over the arm of the couch. He was an expert at this stage. At manoeuvring her taller body down the hall, removing her shoes, putting a pot next to her in case she threw up and didn’t have time to reach the bathroom. He had tucked her in, and carefully kissed her forehead. Sometimes, if he was lucky enough and quiet enough, she did the same to him, and he liked the feeling it gave him. It made him feel important. Like he was someone special.
After his mother was safely sleeping, he began the process of setting up for his special visitor. Disposing of the wine bottle and glass, putting stale cookies and two glasses of milk on the table, putting a little bow he’d found outside on the picture. He had spilt a bit of the milk, he had to stretch up real high on the chair to get it from the fridge and it slipped from his hands. He mopped it up as best as he could, and was thankful the bang of it hitting the floor didn’t wake his mother.
With that all sorted, he sat and he waited. He had wrote a letter to Santa earlier that month, one his mother had read with screwed up eyes. She got real quiet after it, and then hugged him real tight.
“Are you sure that’s what you want?” She asked, “I can get you something else? Like a… like a toy truck or something?”
But he shook his head. He knew what he wanted.
They had no chimney, so he knew his present had to come through the front door. He wondered if Santa had a special key that opened all the doors in the world. He hoped his present wouldn’t prove difficult to deliver, technically what he asked for was awkward and huge, and part of him felt bad for asking such a big task for Santa to do. Though he did figure he had been a very good boy this year. He made his bed every morning and brushed his teeth, never complained or had a tantrum, was always perfectly polite even to some of the weirdo men his mother brought home sometimes. He deserved it, he thought.
Robby was used to waiting. He didn’t mind it. He was used to watching the big hand of the clock turn, used to the growing disappointment, used to counting numbers in his head then losing track and starting from zero again and again.
He was used to falling asleep, and waking up in the cold.
His mother gently shakes him awake Christmas morning. She is hungover, the wrinkle between her eyes a give away. His body is twisted around the blanket and his face wet, as if he’d been crying while he dreamt.
He wipes his cheeks roughly, avoids the pity in her eyes.
“Did Santa come?” He knows the answer, but still his eyes hopefully search the room.
Under the measly tree (a tiny battered plastic thing covered in tinsel) is a roughly wrapped box.
“He did,” she grins, but it’s fake because they both know it’s not what he wanted. He smiles back too, just as fake as her, another thing he’s good at.
In a few minutes, he’ll open it, and he’ll pretend to be happy with what he’s received. Then when she’s not looking, he’ll take the picture he careful drew for his dad the night before, a picture of the two of them, smiles brighter than the sun. He’ll rip it up into tiny pieces and flush it down the toilet.
If not even Santa can get his dad to visit him, then what will?