Laura Kasischke - In a Perfect World

While Jiselle went to the kitchen and made coffee, Mark started a fire in the fireplace, and the smell of the Christmas tree mixed with the coffee and the sulfur smells of the fire, which roared up quickly—a few black ashy stars from the newspaper drifting among the dancing flames.

Sam was wearing his thermal underwear. Camilla, a long white gown with lace at the sleeves. Mark had his black velvet robe pulled around him, socks on with his plaid slippers.

Sara wore a black slip. Dime-store satin. She perched herself on the arm of the couch, and from where Jiselle sat on the floor, she could see that Sara was again wearing that pair of panties trimmed in black lace that Jiselle had bought for herself in Paris.

“I have to warn you,” Mark had said after Thanksgiving. “Christmas. It was Joy’s favorite holiday. She was very elaborate about Christmas. As you can imagine, for the children, well, it can be a difficult day. For the girls, at least. Sam was so young. I’m sure he doesn’t even remember those years, but…”

Jiselle didn’t speak as he shared this information with her, but later she tried to get more details. What had Joy done for Christmas? How had she decorated? What did she cook? But Mark dismissed the questions, saying, “Joy’s been gone a long time by now, Jiselle. It would be worse if you tried to…” He didn’t have to say it: Be Joy. Behind him Jiselle could hear the kitchen clock ticking like a little hidden bomb.

But if the children were thinking of their mother on Christmas Eve, they didn’t show it. Bobby Temple came over and watched TV with Camilla, and Sara listened to her iPod, sprawled on the family room rug. Sam helped Jiselle frost cookies, and they ate together what was left of the frosting, sitting at the kitchen table with spoons and bowls until Jiselle’s teeth ached with the sugar and Sam’s face and hands were sticky with it. Mark arrived, like Santa Claus, in the middle of the night. He slipped into bed beside Jiselle, smelling of snow and sky. She fell back to sleep in his arms, and then Sam was pounding on the door, and it was Christmas morning, and they were unwrapping presents.

For Jiselle, there was a clay mug from Sam with her initials drawn into it. It had been a class art project. It was a beautiful, solid, turquoise mug, the kind of thing you might find in a museum. Circa 800 BCE. Jiselle held it up for everyone else to see and said, “I love this, Sam!”

She did.

From Camilla, a paperweight with a daisy captured—floating, immortalized—at the center of the heavy globe. As Jiselle looked at it, Camilla said, “You said they were your favorite flower,” smiling.

Jiselle didn’t remember saying that daisies were her favorite—truly, roses were—but she was touched. “Thank you,” she said, “so much,” holding the satisfying weight of it in her palm.

From Mark she received a pair of jade earrings from China—exquisite, breathtaking, something an empress might wear, and she said, “Oh my,” holding them up to her earlobes. “Oh. Mark.”

“Do you like them?”

“Of course!”

And then there were the gifts for the children.

Mark had left the buying of their presents to Jiselle. (“Oh, you know what kids like better than I do,” he’d said. “It’ll be easier for you. I’ll just pick up a few things at the airport if you don’t mind doing the rest.”)

Sam had been easy. He’d happily made a very specific list for Jiselle, all the details, down to the manufacturer of the plastic toys he longed for. On Christmas morning, he ripped the boxes open, exclaiming over each one, shouting out the names, the model numbers.

The girls, however, had not been easy.

Jiselle had shopped for them for weeks, and every time she picked up a sweater, a book, a board game, she imagined the look of exasperation on Sara’s face, or the cool acceptance on Camilla’s. In the end, she decided to shop by material. Cashmere. Linen. Pure silk. How, she’d hoped, could anything made of the right material be scorned?

But the girls’ reactions to Jiselle’s presents were perfunctory. “Thanks,” they said, and then exclaimed brightly over the perfume their father had picked up for them at the Duty Free shop the day before. But that little injustice, Jiselle felt, was to be expected. She herself remembered the thrill of the small afterthoughts her father would sometimes pick up a few days before a holiday—the way the exotic wrapping paper, no doubt chosen for him by a woman at the store, outshone her mother’s dependable efforts. She could still smell the sweet watery little-girl’s perfume he’d bought for her the Christmas she was sixteen, and the way the soft bristles of the vanity brush had felt in her long hair when she pulled them through it, and the weightless feel of the matching gilt-handled mirror in her hand—although she remembered, too, that the gold of it had flecked off on her hands within a few weeks. Still, it had been her favorite gift, and it did not matter that her mother had given her a stereo, the best one at the store.

“This is for you,” Sara said after everything else had been opened. She handed Jiselle a small box.

It was the size of a ring box or a box for a pendant. Beautifully wrapped, in silver. A large white bow. A little glittery tag hanging from it. For: Mommy. From: Sara.

“What is it?” Mark asked. He was sitting on the couch pulling up the wool socks Camilla had knitted for him. Jiselle was still on the floor, her flannel nightgown spread out around her.

The tape along the wrapping seams was gummy. She had to shake it off her thumb and forefinger. She took off the white ribbon, peeled away the silver paper, and opened the box.

Sam leaned over to look. He said, “Huh?”

“Well?” Mark asked, looking up from his socks. “What is it?”

Sara started to laugh then. A high, cackling laugh at first, and then a deep wild hiccupping. She slid off the arm of the sofa and onto the floor, holding her stomach with one hand, covering her face with the other, laughing and gasping as Mark and Camilla watched. Gently, Camilla kicked her sister with the toe of her slipper and said, “So what is it, idiot?”

Jiselle stood up fast, snapped the lid of the box shut. She tried to swallow, but her mouth had gone so dry she had nothing to force down her throat.

“What?” Mark asked, and then looked down at Sara, writhing on the floor. She was still laughing, but it was silent laughter now. Her mouth was open. Jiselle could see her tonsils. The wet red entrance to a cave. “What’s up here, Jiselle?” Mark asked, but Jiselle still could not speak and could not take her eyes off Sara.

“Sam?” Mark asked then. “What’s going on here, Sam? What was in the box?”

Sam shrugged. He cleared his throat. He said, “It looked like a big booger to me.”

Jiselle walked quickly out of the room then, took the box to the kitchen, and tossed it into the trash under the sink. She stood, holding tightly to the edge of the sink for a minute or two, and then she started to run water into it, rinsing the dishes they’d left there the night before. A high ringing started in her ears, as if she were at the end of a long metal tunnel and someone outside of it was pounding on it with a metal spoon.

“Honey?” Mark said, coming up behind her. “Honey?” he said again, burrowing his face in her hair. “Oh, Jiselle. Jiselle. I’m sorry.”

Jiselle said nothing. She continued to rinse the dishes. After a few seconds, she had to break free of his embrace to put a rinsed dish—Sam’s Scooby-Doo plate—into the dishwasher.

“Sweetheart,” Mark said into her hair, and then into her neck. “Sweetheart, you know Sara’s just a mixed-up kid. She’ll be so ashamed of herself in a few days. But this is a tough time for her. Having a stepmother. Christmas. All the adjustments.”