All Christmas Trees
Are
Perfect

Natalie sat on the floor staring into the fire.  It did not crackle and snap over pine logs; nor did it flash with glints of colour:  it was simply Nick’s gas fire, which he’d clicked on almost automatically as he came into the loft.  Still, his old Persian carpet, fuzzy under her forearms, reminded her of days of yore, when a little girl flopped on the rug and stared up at Christmas stockings dangling from the mantel waiting to be filled.  As she drifted into the past she could almost … almost … turn her head and see the family Christmas tree with the dear old ornaments on it.  They’d reappeared on her grandparents’ tree after Mum and Dad had died, accompanying even older ones that dated back to when her mother was a girl.  After Nana’s death she’d hauled the box back to Toronto, intending to put up a tree of her own some day.

“A penny for your thoughts?” Nick said behind her.

“Oh, Christmas,” said Natalie wistfully.  She turned her head to look up at him.  He grinned and sat down on the leather couch.

There was no “Christmas” in the loft.  The mantel was devoid of candles or ivy (though it did, of course, display a fine carved dragon).  There was no potted poinsettia on the dining table, nor carols on the radio.  Certainly, there was no tree.

“I got you a tree once,” said Natalie thoughtfully.  “It was a while back, just a smallish one.  And some decorations.  Where are they?”

Nick glanced towards the storage cupboard under his bedroom.

“Ah,” she said.  “There.  Yup.  Middle of December and still in storage.  Uh-huh.”  She nodded.  “That’s about par for the course with you.”  She twisted lithely round and sat cross-legged facing him.  “Shall we get it out and put it up?”

“Should we bother?”

“Yes, we should,” she said firmly.  “It’s the human thing to do.  Or—” She corrected herself quickly.  “—it’s the Christian thing to do; and, for that matter, a lot of people do Christmas who aren’t Christian, which probably makes it the Canadian thing to do.  And anyway,” she finished in triumph, “you are probably more Christian in your upbringing than most of the people I know.  And they mostly have trees up already.  For a couple of weeks, in fact.”

“Meaning,” he said, smiling at her, “you want a tree.”

“Yes,” she said defensively.  “Yes, I do.  We always had one when I was a kid.  I put out a little table-top thingie, even now, though there’s no one to share it with but Sydney; and, frankly, he’d probably only care if it were big enough for him to climb.”

“Well,” said Nick in very sensible tones, “if you have a tree on a table, then you do have a tree—and, if you already have a tree, then we don’t need one here.”

At this Natalie rolled her eyes, scrambled to her feet, and headed for the storage room.  Bemused, Nick watched her wrench open the doors and disappear inside, after which came alarming sounds of things being shifted around.  In far too short a time, he felt utterly compelled to his feet, and followed to find out what damage she was doing to the organization of his goods and chattels.  Even as he tried to find the best words of protest, she backed out—and almost into him—tugging behind her a storage bag out of which peeped the top end of a five-foot artificial tree.  “Found it!” she said, turning in triumph.  “Now all we have to do is put it up.”

Twenty minutes later, she had decided that the best place for the tree would be beside the piano, which had to be shifted; Nick had helped her fit the sections together, and—when things proved potentially wobbly—reluctantly agreed to let her tie ropes linking the tree on one side with the nearest radiator and on the other with a piano leg.  She then dived back into the storage cupboard in search of the decorations, which turned out to have been shoved higgledy-piggledy into a large cardboard box.  There followed almost an hour in which she not-too-patiently explained that the lights went on first (and then had to locate an extension cord); insisted that, as it was his loft, it should be he who decided which garland should be draped where; and finally conscripted his aid in distributing sundry glass and plastic ornaments around the branches.  Belatedly, she plucked the brass tree-topper star from the very bottom of the box.  “Oh, great,” she said to it, “I was wondering where you were,” and held it out to him.  “Here, you’re taller than me.  Just don’t jostle the balls already on the tree.”

He took the star, glanced at the almost fully-decorated tree, and then—with a wicked little smile—lifted slowly off the floor.  For a long moment, he hovered below the ceiling looking down at her, before slowly flipping over to reach down to the treetop.

“Well, that’s one way to do it,” Natalie said wryly as he set the star in place.  “Yes, Nick, point taken.  Sometimes your powers are handy.”  She stood back to give everything a good once-over inspection, swapped a red ball too near another for a blue one a couple of branches over, tweaked a drooping garland, and sighed.  “You know something, Nick?  It looks a bit thin to me.  You could do with more decorations.”

“It looks fine to me,” protested Nick, returning slowly to the carpet.  “Really, Nat, we’ve already spent an absurd time decorating it!”

“Barely an hour!”   Natalie shook her head.  “Seriously, when I was a girl, it took the whole family to do the tree and the better part of the afternoon, too.  We bought a new box or two every year—well, that was partly because of breakages, especially when I was little—but, over time, the tree got much fuller than this.  Anyway,” she finished, eying him firmly, “what’s a couple more hours?  You have nothing in your future but time, do you?  Decades and centuries and eons of time.”

He did not attempt to deny that.  He did, however, point out that Christmas celebrations had altered dramatically over the “decades and centuries and eons” that he had already lived—if “lived” was the right word to use for vampire existence—and that, by the time an equivalent period of future had elapsed, there was no assurance that the holiday would be celebrated at all.  “I can pretty well guarantee,” he finished, “that there won’t be Christmas trees in whenever-it-will-be eons from now.”

“And these particular decorations will be long since broken,” she agreed, with the voice of experience.  “Still, we’re not really talking centuries, are we?  Let alone eons.  We’re talking this tree, here and now.  And, for that matter, I’d be willing to bet they still have Christmas trees ten years from now—and, come to think about it, quite possibly a century from now.  After all, people have been putting them up for more than that long already.”  She grinned at him, nudged him a bit too hard in the ribs, and added, “Oh, come on, Nick! Think of it as an excuse to go shopping.  We can hit the Eaton Centre, see what they have in the department store, go to Hudson’s Bay as well, look at the decorations, and even see Santa Claus if you’re so inclined.”

He wasn’t so inclined.  Of course not.  Not remotely.  Still, in the face of her enthusiasm, he didn’t say so—not if it would put out the light in her eyes.

“Come on,” she urged.  “We’ve used our day off to put the tree up.  Let’s use the evening to go out.”

“Evening?”  Nick looked puzzled.  “It’s not quite five yet.”

“Well, it’s dark out!” Natalie expostulated.  “Who cares about the time—except that it’s early enough that the stores won’t close for hours.  We can shop.”  Grabbing him by the arm, she drew him over to the elevator.  His look of astonishment lasted almost down to ground level, and returned when she neither got into her own car nor let him get the Caddy out of the garage.  “Parking?” she exclaimed.  “Near the Eaton Centre?  You must be kidding.”

“We can fly,” he suggested; but she was having none of it.  He found himself, barely five minutes later, standing on Queen Street waiting for a streetcar; and then, as they got on, had to admit to her that he didn’t have a token.

Natalie dug back into her purse and dropped a second token in the box before grabbing him again by the arm to steer him down the aisle.  The streetcar trundled through the intersection.  As it clattered and shook over the north-south rails, she lowered herself quickly into a seat.  The driver braked suddenly; and Nick belatedly grabbed one of the poles.  “Haven’t you ridden one of these before?” Natalie asked him dryly.  Her answer was a sheepish grin, and “On, but not in”.  He did not explain.

They got off at Yonge, crossed to the south-west corner, and walked along the façade of The Bay as Natalie lamented the Christmas windows of yore.  “Nose practically squashed on the glass,” she said, “watching the clockwork figures go through their pantomime, one fairy tale per window or whatever the theme was that year.  Coming into town to go shopping, sit on Santa’s knee—every kid knew the real Santa was the Eaton’s department store Santa—”

“This is The Bay,” Nick pointed out.

“Simpson’s back then,” Natalie corrected him.  She twisted round to point across the street.  “Eaton’s was there.  The old store, I mean.  The two arch-rivals, facing each other.  The battle of the Christmas windows, so to speak.  Then they tore the old Eaton’s store down to build the big mall; and Simpson’s was sold to The Bay.”

“And fashions change,” Nick nodded.  “Yes, they do.  I’ve rather noticed that myself down the centuries.  Nostalgia is—”  He hesitated.  “—not something one of ‘us’ can indulge in, you know, Natalie.  Not safely.  One must move with the times.”

“Says the man who goes off into long trances, thinking of the past,” she scoffed.

Nick grinned.  “Well, if history doesn’t quite repeat itself, it often does seem to do its best.  And, no matter what LaCroix may say, I can’t quite induce a perfect amnesia in myself!  Of course, I remember!”

“Oh, LaCroix!” said Natalie dismissively.  “Put him out of your mind, Nick.  We’re here to celebrate Christmas; and frankly? what does he have to do with the holidays?”  She opened the brass-bound door into the old building and ushered him inside.

“Oh, I recognize this place,” said Nick, looking around.  “Of course!  We’ve been here before.  During a case a few years ago.  All those counters of cosmetics.”  He waved his arm in a broad encompassing gesture that took in much of the hall in front of them.

“I remember,” said Natalie.  “This time, though, we want to go upstairs to Christmas Street.  Which is a department you wouldn’t have seen then, anyway.”  She looked up into his puzzled face and added, “Wrong time of year.  Seasonal merchandise, you know?”

He nodded, still with a faintly bemused expression.

“Or,” she reconsidered, “if you prefer, we could start at the far end of the mall and work our way back.  In fact—” She brightened. “—that might be better actually, rather than loading ourselves up as we go and then having to cart it all back.”

“We could ‘load ourselves up as we go’ and take a taxi home,” Nick suggested.

She laughed.  “We won’t be getting that much!  Unless you want to buy a bigger tree, extra lights and garlands, a wreath or two, Christmas candles, perhaps a poinsettia or three….”  She grinned at his horror.  “I’ll spare you the angels and crèche,” she teased.

“Thank you.”

“Seriously, though, even a half a dozen boxes of ornaments—it’s not the weight, which is next to nothing, really; it’s the awkwardness.  So, unless you’d rather come back laden,” she twinkled at him, “why don’t we take the bridge over to the mall, window shop our way to the other end, and then buy ornaments?”

Decoding this, Nick concluded that the operative words were probably “window” and “shopping”, and that the only sensible thing any man could do was follow along, six paces behind (so to speak), and carry whatever parcels were consigned to him.  “I’m in your hands,” he said, resigned to his fate.  “You said ‘up’?”

Up it was—by escalator to the second floor, and then over the bridge between the department store to the south and mall to the north.  Down below its windows could be seen Queen Street, cars passing city-slow and the sidewalk crowded with pedestrians.  The mall was equally crowded, and the trek to the far end took about as long as Nick had feared, though his arms remained unencumbered.  It was, he thought, a small miracle.  Halfway along the top level of the mall, Natalie stopped for a while to look over the railing, enjoying the sight below.  Not so much the towering artificial tree, since it had dominated their view since they’d come off the bridge; but a long line of small children.  “There’s Santa!” pointed out Natalie with delight.  Nick was familiar by now with the highly-commercial twentieth-century version of Saint Nicholas, and looked around for the photographer.

Eventually, they moved on.

At the far end, they went through to the new Eaton’s department store, open-fronted to the eponymous mall; and Natalie cast around for the Christmas shop.  “I’ve been here before,” she said, puzzled; but, though they ascended several floors by escalator, the decorations proved elusive.  The staff was too busy to attend to a quick question; and even Nick, though he tried to hurry things up, could not catch anyone’s eye.  Finally they had to wait their turn in line at one of the counters.

“Two below,” they were told, and had to backtrack to locate the escalators again before descending into the bowels of the store.  There, though, they came out finally into a Wonderland of Christmas:  packages of crackers and tinsel and twinkling lights, a florist’s full of artificial holly and poinsettias, a card shop, and a veritable forest of trees of different heights, styles, and colours.  Nick shied from a pastel pink pine, trailed Natalie past a table set with an Olde Worlde miniature village, and passed a display of red and green carved candles.  Finally, though, he did stop with a smile of delight, and stood watching a little choo-choo train endlessly circling a heavily decorated tree.

“So that’s what appeals to the inner boy!” murmured Natalie, with a gentle nudge to his arm.

He dropped a feather-light kiss on her curls.  “No,” he replied, “it’s not what I want you to buy me for Christmas.  It would charm any child, though.”

“My brother would have loved it when he was about seven,” she agreed.  “He always wanted a train set.”

“Would Amy?” Nick asked.

“No, you aren’t buying one for her,” she told him.  “Nor am I.  Nothing can make up for losing a father, certainly not buying a train set; and anyway, she’s far too old for something like this.  On top of which,” she added thoughtfully, “there’d be no room for it in their apartment in Vancouver.  Or why do you think I turned down Sara’s invitation to fly out there for Christmas?  It’s not that I couldn’t take a few days’ vacation.  It’s that there’d be nowhere for me to sleep.  Either I’d have to take the couch; or Amy would be turfed out of her room and she’d have the couch; or I’d have to stay at a hotel.”

“I’m sorry,” said Nick.  For what, he couldn’t say; but it seemed an appropriate response.  Belatedly, he thought to ask what Natalie did plan for Christmas.  “I’m working,” he added hastily.  “I always volunteer to take the holiday shift so other people can have the day off.”

“Me too,” she said with a sigh.  “Christmas is not a quiet day at the morgue, you know.  Especially when half the staff are off.  And then it’ll be a Swanson turkey dinner with some cranberry sauce on the side.”  She feigned a laugh.  “Don’t worry.  I’ll be too tired to care.”

“What on earth is a ‘Swanson dinner’?”

“Frozen,” said Natalie succinctly.

Nick hesitated, but then remained silent.  After the little train had made another circuit, he glanced back at her; but she was looking around at the display of trees, each advertising a different set of decorations.  Her eye was clearly drawn to a group that had been positioned on the other side of the centre aisle.  “What is it?” he asked.  “Nat, if you’ve seen something you want to buy…?”

“I can’t be sure at this distance,” she replied.  “But the decorations I got before came in boxes.  Four or five balls of the same colour.  Some weren’t all that Christmassy to my eyes—olive and aqua and copper and raspberry, that sort of thing—not that I got you any of those.  I picked out more traditional-type ones, with maybe some glitter on them.  You helped put them up; so you saw what I got.  But this year—” She looked disappointed.  “—I don’t see a display of boxes anywhere.  It looks as if they’ve put all the decorations out in tubs.  That’s fine if they’re unbreakables, of course.  Plastic won’t hurt for being sold out of the package.  But I was kind of hoping they’d have the glass ones again.  Our old family decorations are glass, the few that are left.”

“Well, go and have a closer look,” Nick urged.

She hesitated, and then suggested that he go and find them a basket.  “Because we’ll need something to put things in,” she pointed out when he objected.  It took him a few minutes of wandering before he could locate an assistant; and he finally came back to find her bending over, picking gingerly through the contents of a tub about eighteen inches high, nearly filled with oval balls with pointy tips.  She rose with a red one in one hand and a golden-green one in the other, and greeted him with the words, “They’re gorgeous!”

He glanced down at the glitter-encrusted pair she held, with their large, faceted, reflective indentations; and then looked past her to see additional tubs displaying balls in other shapes and colours.  A century or more earlier, he had seen such decor­a­tions—perhaps not, for the most part, quite so large and fancy; but certainly not dissimilar.  “Are you sure those are plastic?” he asked doubtfully.

“No, they’re glass!  Oh, Nick!” she exclaimed, “these are so much fancier than the ones you already have; and they’re bigger than anything we had when I was a kid.”  Carefully, she transferred the two in her hands to the small basket Nick proffered, and then bent for more.   “I can hardly choose!” she said.  “I want all of them!”  She looked around a bit desperately at the prolificity on offer.  “They’re not cheap, either.  Oh, Nick!”  She turned back.

“Well,” he said, more than a little amused, “I’m reasonably certain it won’t be possible to fit all of them on my tree; so you’re going to have to choose.  Don’t worry about the cost, though.  I can cover it.  Money in the bank, and plastic in the pocket.”  He reached for his wallet, flashed it briefly, and put it safely away again.

Natalie grinned up at him, seized the little basket from him, and said firmly, “A dozen at least, then.  You’ve room for that many, certainly.”  And she darted off.

Later that evening, with the new decorations distributed around the tree and its lights switched on, Nick looked at the results.  “Actually, taken all in all, this wasn’t a bad idea,” he said, consideringly.  “It looks very effective.  Very festive.”  He lifted his glass in toast.  “Congratulations!”

“You helped,” she said, eyes on the tree.

“Only a bit,” Nick demurred, refraining from pointing out how often she had insisted that his choice of branch was utterly wrong.  He turned to look at her.

She beamed at the tree.  “Oh, it’s absolutely perfect,” she sighed.

“Better than the trees you had as a child?” he asked.

“Oh, they were perfect, too.”  From the corner of her eye she could see that he was puzzled.  “They’re all perfect,” she explained.  “Every Christmas tree, each in their own way.”  She reached out to the nearest ball, almost to touch it, but stopped just before her finger could set it swinging.

Nick hesitated and then asked her when, on Christmas Day, her shift would end.  “That ‘Swanton frozen turkey’ you mentioned,” he began.

“Swanson.  TV dinner.  You microwave it,” she corrected.

“Well,” Nick suggested tentatively, “why don’t you bring it over to the loft after you get off?  It’ll heat up all right in the oven, won’t it?”

She nodded.

“And you can eat it here,” he gestured, “in front of the tree.  I’ll get a bottle of wine.”

She turned and put her arms around him.  “You know, Nick, that’s a great suggestion.  Thank you.”

“Just don’t ask me to share it with you.”

“I knew you’d say that,” she laughed.  “Okay, you’re safe.  If that’s what you want Santa to not bring you, I’ll manage to eat it myself.”  She leant up and kissed his cheek.  “It’s Christmas, after all.”