Free Feel Again by Fallon Sousa

Chapter One

    It was a cold, bleak,
December night in New York City, Christmas Eve, in fact. Yet,
without any falter in their enthusiasm based on the weather, Maggie
and Arthur Davidson were preparing for the holidays just as they
did each year. Earlier that day, Maggie had gone to the grocery
store and bought everything they had needed. She had picked up the
turkey, the wine, and side dishes of cranberries, green beans, and
her famous honey bread, which she planned to drown in melted
butter, despite warnings from her doctor that she needed to watch
her weight.
    Their four-year-old son,
Lionel, who was supposed to be asleep, appeared suddenly just as
Maggie and Arthur were dragging boxes of Christmas decorations up
from the basement.
    “Why
aren’t you asleep, Sweetie Pie?” Maggie asked her son. “You know
that tomorrow is Christmas. Santa won’t bring you any presents
unless you go to bed early like a good boy.” Maggie, a pudgy blonde
woman of thirty-two, was still happy about Christmas, and happy to
see her son, but she was just a little bit annoyed that he did not
want to go to bed.
    “But, I
don’t wanna,” he said, tears building up in his eyes and snot
running down his little button nose. His mother could sense a
tantrum coming on. She realized that it would not be easy to get
Lionel to go to bed, especially not when he was just so excited
that it would be Christmas the next day.
    “Come on, honey, just go
to bed,” she told her son again, sensing for some strange reason
that he needed to sleep and that he would be much safer upstairs.
Just then, her husband, Arthur, entered the room.
    “What’s the matter, Mags?”
he asked. “Is our little pookie bear too wound up about the
holidays to go to sleep? Did you tell him that Santa Claus only
gives presents to the good little boys and girls?”
    “Yes, I did already tell him that,” Maggie said, her patience
slowly running out with every word that she spoke. She just had a
feeling that Lionel belonged upstairs. Then, she got an
idea.
    “Well, Lionel,” she began. “What if Mr.
Santa Claus gives you an extra present tomorrow for going upstairs to your room
and sleeping in, oh, let’s say...the next ten minutes. How about
that?” Maggie was smirking now, beginning to believe that her idea
for getting her son to bed was working. Perhaps her parenting
skills were finally improving. It had only taken her four years to
get there.
    “Okay, Mommy,” the boy said sincerely, his
tears fianlly beginning to dry up from his big blue eyes, and his
cute little pre-Christmas smile returning to his small round face.
“I’ll get to bed in one minute, Mommy.”
    Good boy, Lionel,” she said,
smiling, just as Lionel ran up the stairs to his room, his tiny
feet pounding much harder than one would expect of a forty-pound
toddler.
    Maggie
turned to her husband. “See, Arthur, I think I am finally getting better
at this,” she said, laughing.
    Arthur laughed right back at
her. “You sure are,” he said, “You sure are.”
    “Now,” Maggie began. “Why
don’t we get started on those Christmas decorations?” She asked
him, hinting that there might be a little something more to her
plan.
    “That’s a
great idea,” Arthur replied, not quite catching on to his wife’s
full intentions. He got up and walked across the living room to
where a cardboard box was lying by the door to the basement, just
as he had left it earlier. They got out the Christmas tree, and,
together, they picked up each ornament from the box and began
placing them on the rough, broccoli-colored branches.
    “Oh,
Arthur, look at this one,” Maggie said, holding up a porcelain
angel. It was entirely white except for the tiny little decals
around the angel’s wings, which consisted of tiny red and green
dots, placed symmetrically along the curve of each delicate little
wing.
    “Oh my
God,” I’d forgotten about that one. It was my grandmother’s,
right?” he asked, a puzzled expression