An Un-Miraculous Christmas

An Un-Miraculous Christmas

Let me set the stage for you.

The atmosphere is redolent of grief, and fear—literally; the smells of those who’ve shat or pissed themselves is omnipresent, only minimally offset by the smell of bleach.

Cells line four long cement aisles, and each cell is equipped with a drain to catch bodily fluids.

In spite of the brightly-colored toys and the determinedly cheerful staff, there is no pretending this is a happy place. The lights are too bright, for one thing, and there is noise, noise, noise, noise, noise everywhere, all the time.

There is also the ubiquitous possibility of violence. Many of those who came in meek and hopeful of redemption are soon driven mad by the waiting and the lights and the noise, and fighting becomes the default response. “Fight or flight” is more evident here than anywhere else I’ve ever been, and on those occasions where an inmate chooses “fight,” the fur flies.

Yes, fur. I’m talking about the animal rescue society where I work. (About the word rescue: I am daily reminded that the death penalty waits for any animal who isn’t endearing enough or young enough or healthy enough to warrant rescue.)

I don’t particularly like animals. I have a hard enough time bathing myself and washing my own dishes before the fuzzy mold takes over and replacing my own milk before it gets sour and lumpy. I can’t imagine stretching my limited capacity for responsibility to include someone or something else. And at thirty-two, if feels like I’m too old to change. So, unlike my colleagues, I have never felt the pull of all those sad eyes, never longed to take one of the animals home with me.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not completely heartless. I do feel sorry for my charges. But the weight of their hopes and broken hearts is a burden I’m happy to shed at the end of my workday. This has always been a way to pay my bills and nothing more, a means for getting groceries and electricity and to ensure I can continue to rent apartment 661C, where the décor has not been updated since the nineties and the carpets reek of loneliness but when I open a window the downstairs family’s ever-present fried fish smell comes in, and the elevator is always broken so I have to walk two flights up, and heaven help Norma McRae, who lives down the hall from me, if there’s ever a fire or an earthquake, since she can barely walk, and I don’t have the strength to play the hero for her, even if I was so inclined.

My work with the animal rescue society is just a job, my apartment is just a place to live, my neighbors are just people who live in the same building. Bringing home a cat or a rabbit or a hamster or a dog is not going to transform my existence into something other than barely tolerable.

In other words, be forewarned: this is no Miracle on 34th Street story, and it doesn’t end with a happy gathering where he, he himself . . . the Grinch . . . carves the roast beast.

I’m vegetarian, for one thing.

Oh how my mother complained when I told her. What are we supposed to have for Christmas dinner? she said. You’re not going to make one of those tofurky things, are you? I hate tofu.

You’ve never had tofu, I told her. How would you know? I said.

I just know, she said.

She also doesn’t like the fact that my apartment number is one digit off the sign of the devil. One more six and I’d be battling demons in the fridge like that poor woman in Ghostbusters, or maybe sprouting horns myself. Growing up, we had a family friend who used to jokingly call me devil spawn. How’re you doing, Devil Spawn? he’d say, and then he’d laugh, and my mother would laugh, too. His name was—is—David. He’s a giant Viking of a man, complete with a bushy beard that used to be red, and wild hair (ditto on the color). Mom seems to think he must be wise, because of the biblical David, but all I’ve ever heard from him is wisecracking, which is not the same at all.

When I turned thirteen Mom decided I was old enough to know “the truth,” and she told me I was the product of a sperm donor. How’s that for a Happy Birthday? After that, David’s joke pierced like a long hollow needle straight through where my umbilical cord used to be.

Because I couldn’t help but think, What if I really am the son of the Devil?

When I hit my twenties, there was another thought: does being demon-born come with any perks? Would my life be better if I just accepted my provenance and embraced my inner evil? Would Daddy show up some day and offer me my heart’s desire in exchange for my soul? Or maybe just place me on the throne of Hades as my birthright?

But see my earlier statements. I am a man who hates to shave, hates to grocery shop, hates to even consider the possibility that at some point in a speculative future I might have to be kind to a neighbor. What the hell (pun intentional) would I do with the scepter of the underworld?

And, to be frank (no, Frank is not my name, but you get the idea), I don’t know what my heart’s desire is, so I wouldn’t know how to answer if Papa Satan asked.

What is it I long for, what signature element is missing from my life that would magically make me happy?

. . . A bowl of vegan chili with crispy fried onions on top, and cashew cheese curds, maybe. Spicy but not too spicy.

. . . A personal toilet fairy so I don’t have to choose between peeing into a puddle of leftover fecal matter or scrubbing said fecal matter out of the way with a toilet brush (a tool I would not own if my mom hadn’t bought it for me) that is then reinserted into its holder with bits of unmentionable stuff still on it.

. . . For the damn dog to give me more than five minutes’ warning before she needs to piddle again.

Wait, you say. You have a dog?

Yes, I have a dog.

I know I just did the whole bringing home an animal isn’t going to transform my life yada yada.

Here’s the explanation.

It’s a quarter to five, my shift is almost over, and I’m doing my final walk-through with Ruby, the staff member who will take over when I leave. Our shifts overlap on purpose, to allow the outgoing staff a chance to check things over one last time before leaving, and share any updates with the incoming staff. Management calls it the No Pet Left Behind policy, which is ironic considering one of the tasks on the list is making sure there is no last-minute hold for any of the animals slated for euthanasia.

At the end of the last aisle I see a pen labelled Misty. I don’t look in the pen, because I don’t want to see who’s on death row.

Ruby tells me anyway. Misty’s a dog who was picked up off the streets in Los Angeles, she says. Adopted three times, returned three times, she says. Chronic incontinence. The L.A. shelter is a no-kill organization, so Misty was sent up here to be euthanized.

I find Ruby annoying, but that is or should be shocking to no one who knows me. She’s always chewing gum, for one thing, constantly smacking it and blowing little bubbles with it. And, as far as I can tell, she owns only striped shirts, as if she’s constantly on the verge of trying out for a role in Where’s Waldo. And she wears her purple-black hair in short pigtails that bob when she walks.

In spite of all that, I find myself oddly attracted to Ruby. But that’s neither here nor there, as I know she would never consider a romantic relationship with me. I am . . . self-contained? Shy? Cynical? Whatever you call it, Ruby is the opposite, kind and enthusiastic and gregarious and passionate about animals. I have done nothing to earn her regard, and I don’t see that changing any time soon. Or ever.

Six o’clock is when they’re gonna do it, Ruby says, with more unnecessary gum-smacking.

A little over an hour from now.

Ruby crouches down so she’s eye-level with the mutt, and proceeds to ask the dog over and over Who’s a good girl?

Like I said: annoying.

Ruby stands and tells me the L.A. shelter picked the name Misty based on the movie Play Misty for Me. She looks at me quizzically, and I’m astonished to see she has tears in her eyes, presumably for the dog’s fate, not the movie.

That was before my time, I point out, though I’ve seen the movie because my mom likes it. It’s a thriller about a dangerously obsessive lover. Bearing the villain’s name is not exactly an invitation to adopt, I say.

Ruby shrugs, shoving her striped shoulders up to her quivering pigtails. And then she says something like Guess this is the end for you, kiddo.

Kiddo? Misty is a dog, not a human child. My annoyance deepens into exasperation.

Ultimately, it’s too much work to hold onto my irritation, so I prepare to clock out and get on with my life. At the end of the aisle, just beyond Misty’s pen, there is one of those old-fashioned machines where you shove a card in and it prints the time. (The humane society once talked about fundraising to go digital, but there was a revolt against spending money on that rather than something like, say, expanding the facility to reduce the “kill” rate, or giving staff a much-needed raise.) As I step past the cage I can’t help but see the unfortunately-monikered canine. She is a youngish dog of uncertain heritage. Mostly border collie, I’d guess, white splotched with black, soft ears, one of which is flopped down toward her cheek, a generously fringed black tail. She’s sitting close to the bars of her cage, looking steadily at the two humans. Her tail brushes across the floor, once to the left, once to the right. A dignified greeting.

Back to my heart’s desire, what I would be willing to trade my soul for: I want to be content. To see what is without wishing it was something else.

Misty seems to know she’s in her final hour, and she seems to have accepted it. She’s pleased with Ruby’s attention, but she’s not begging to be rescued.

As I reach for the time clock, Misty looks up at me and nods, a weirdly human gesture.

Remember when I told you this is not some Dr. Seussian happily-ever-after story?

Keep that in mind, please.

I do not think Oh if I took her home I’d find a heretofore undiscovered well of compassion in my heart.

I do not think What sweet eyes I simply have to save her from death.

I do not think My nights are desperately empty and dreary and a dog could fix that.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, that’s not who I am. No, I look at the mongrel and think I want what she has. I want to achieve a state of Zen so complete even my mother can’t disrupt it. Misty has it, and I want it.

“You’re coming home with me,” I say peremptorily.

You’ve adopted her? Ruby asks.

Yes, I say. I figure I can deal with the logistics later and turn the lie into truth.

So that’s how I ended up with a super chill but frequently piddling dog in my previously dogless life.

***

It’s Saturday, two days before Christmas, and Misty and I are going to get a Christmas tree. I’m neither sentimental nor religious, but I like the smell of pine, and having a tree in the apartment is better than those little air-fresheners that always smell like the blue disks they put in the men’s urinals.

The elevator is broken again, so off we go to the stairwell. Misty has been with me for a couple of weeks, and, as previously mentioned, she has chronic, intractable incontinence. (Before you ask, yes, I took her to a vet, she doesn’t have any painful or treatable condition, it’s just that her ureter is malformed and the only real solution is surgery, which I can’t afford.) So she and I spend a lot of time on these stairs. I’m pleasantly surprised to find I am huffing and puffing less on these trips.

“I guess you’re good for something ,” I say, as we reach the ground level and push through the door into the cold gray air. She shoves her smooth head under my hand, which I now understand means You got that right, bub.

We walk to the Christmas tree lot outside Freddies, where I rediscover that if you wait until just before Christmas to get a tree, you’re hosed. There are less than a dozen trees left, all of them scraggly and sickly-looking. The opposite of festive. But I fork over my hard-earned cash, and choose the smallest and greenest of the remaining trees, which is when I realize my decision to combine dog-walking and tree-shopping means I’ve made no plans for getting the thing home. It’s a Charlie Brown tree, for sure, but I’m still not going to be able to carry or drag it home while holding onto Misty’s leash. I toy with the idea of letting her walk beside me, off leash. She’s calm and obedient—only her bladder is rebellious—but then, without warning, a vision smashes into my brain. Misty darts into traffic, maybe a squirrel or another dog or who-knows-what distracts her normally staid demeanor, brakes scream, and metal thunks against soft, soft dog.

I realize I’m hyperventilating. What’s that about, for heaven’s sake?

The man running the Christmas tree lot agrees to hold the tree for one hour. One hour, he repeats. His face is deeply pitted with what I assume are acne scars, and lined with age. One front tooth is missing, another is clearly rotting and on its way out. I wonder, briefly, whether it’s merely neglect, or whether he’s a meth addict. I decide it doesn’t matter, everyone deserves a little happiness, and hand him another twenty for holding the tree. Then I call a cab (my Uber app’s not working), and the lady on the line says someone’ll be here in about twenty minutes, so we wander into the store to get another package of the adult diapers Misty wears, and another can of Pet Odor B-Gone.

When a store employee approaches, presumably to tell me only service dogs are allowed in the store, I tell her my dog prevents violent psychopathic fits. The employee looks suitably frightened, and scurries away.

If Misty had hands we’d do a high five.

The cab driver looks like she’s in her seventies (begging the question why she’s ferrying strangers around rather than hanging out with her grandkids or sitting on a beach in Florida). Did her husband leave her? Die? Oh, wait, that’s sexist, to imagine she was supported by a male spouse or partner and now is forced to support herself because he’s gone. Sexist, but probably true. We live in a sexist society. My male body parts may have rendered me immune to being a victim of sexism, but they haven’t obviated my powers of observation.

I’ve just begun to feel sorry for the cab driver when she announces irritably You didn’t say nothin’ about a dog and a tree. She tells me she doesn’t usually allow animals, and if that tree gets goddamned sap on my seats I’m charging you extra, she says.

Merry effing Christmas to you, too, I think but don’t say.

***

Every morning, Misty and I go for a walk, then I dress her in a fresh diaper and load her into my ancient, barely-functioning Subaru and take her to work with me. No one objects because she has a calming influence on the other animals. Except the two rabbits. They seem to think she’d eat them if she could, and for all I know they’re right. And some of the cats, who vacillate between huddling fearfully in a corner, obviously worried she’s going to chase them, and staring her down with a Just-try-it-I-dare-you glare.

I do my job, she does hers, and we go for a ramble in the pouring rain on my lunch break. (It’s Seattle, and it’s December. Rain is what you get in Seattle in December.)

***

On Christmas Eve, I give her a unicorn-shaped chewy toy and a box of peanut-butter-flavored treats. She sniffs the toy and looks at me bemusedly before shoving it carefully under the sofa, with her nose.

A few minutes later, Norma McRae stops by with a plate of cookies which turn out to be surprisingly delicious. I guess I figured if she can barely walk she’d have a hard time standing long enough to make cookies, but clearly I was wrong. Or maybe she just powers through the pain, because she likes to bake. Norma hangs heavily onto the doorknob so she can lean over and pet Misty, and she tells me Misty’s beautiful. Yes she is, I say, dropping my voice to a dramatic whisper, but don’t tell her I said so. I wouldn’t want her to get a big head about it.

I’m just getting ready for bed when there’s another knock on the door, and this time it’s the family downstairs, the apartment directly below me that always sends its fried fishy-smell upward. The entire family, Mom and Pop and two littles (up late for the holiday, apparently) swarm into my apartment when I open the door. Mom has a gift for me in her hands, but it’s clear there was an ulterior motive, as the kids rush over to Misty and begin fawning over her. I’m a little worried at first, since I don’t know how Misty will react to children, but she is as gentle and forgiving as a British nanny.

***

In the morning I make tofurky, to spite my mother. I mash the tofu and potatoes and poultry seasoning and nutritional yeast and then I shape it and wrap it in phyllo dough and brush the whole thing with olive oil and tamari sauce, and when it’s done it is a sight to behold. I take it out of the oven with a flourish. Ta da, I say, this is what you get for letting the old bastard call me Devil Spawn.

Misty looks her disapproval at me, and I am chastened.

By a dog.

“You have no idea,” I say, petulantly, “what it was like growing up with my mother and David.”

Misty’s not overly-demonstrative. She doesn’t lick or slobber all over anyone, but just now she licks my hand, a small, unobtrusive gesture, and I sigh.

“You’re right,” I tell her. “I should forgive my mom. She was probably just doing the best she could.”

***

Remember: do NOT get your hopes up for some kind of sappy reconciliation. This is not that kind of story.

***

David and my mother are charmed by Misty, and my resentment at both of them for the devil spawn comments and every other careless cruelty casually heaped on me is softened ever so slightly. I won’t tell Misty that she was right, but I can admit that to myself.

David further ingratiates himself by declaring the tofurkey delicious. He’s still got a long way to go before I shove that grudge off my shoulder, but it’s a start.

***

Later that night I throw on the ratty sweats that pass as pajamas, and brush my teeth, and I’m just preparing to slide into bed and tackle the award-winning novel on my nightstand, the one that doesn’t do much for me but I’m determined to get through it since everyone else says it’s great and since I spent an ungodly amount of money on the hardback version since the bookstore was sold out of the paperback, when Misty starts to pace, and whine, and drool.

She looks at me with fear, her eyes asking me to make it stop.

I shove my feet into a pair of flipflops, lift my jacket and Misty’s leash off the hook near the door, grab the list of numbers and addresses I compiled carefully the day I brought Misty home with me, and rush her to the nearest emergency vet hospital.

The emergency vet is young and handsome, or he would be if he didn’t have dark circles under his eyes. Dogs are usually pretty stoic about pain, he tells me, and then he explains that it’s an evolutionary trick, because a wolf in pain will be taken down by the other wolves. So the fact that Misty is showing her pain means it’s bad.

I’m as close as I’ve ever been to violence. I want to shake the man, or slap him, but mostly I want him to fix her, to do what I cannot, and take her pain away.

Over and over my brain keeps saying Please. I believe in the devil (you kind of have to if there’s a chance you might be Satan’s son), but I’m not sure what to think about God. I don’t know who I’m saying Please to, I just know I want the universe to intervene and make Misty all right.

I remind myself I don’t particularly like animals.

I remind myself I’ve only known Misty a few weeks.

None of my reminders does any good.

Please, I say.

***

Misty has a urinary tract infection, but she’ll be fine, the vet assures me. He gives her a shot of antibiotics and painkillers, and a prescription for more of both in pill form. She’ll be fine, the vet says once more before I leave, because I obviously need to hear it again. He suggests I buy cotton diapers rather than disposable, since cotton breathes more, so as soon as we get home, around midnight, I order some from Amazon.

At some point in that long, sleepless, anxiety-filled night, I realize I failed to achieved the Zen-state I thought Misty would impart.

And then—maybe it’s because I’ve had no sleep, mind you—I think maybe that was never the right goal. Maybe I should have been aiming at more, not less, engagement with the world. But then the old me, the me I’ve been since birth, responds: Whatever.

***

Three days later I’m back at work, and it’s near the end of my shift. Misty’s by my side, as always, and Ruby is once again my companion on the final walk-through. There’s a sense of déjà vu as we approach the last cell, the home of the doomed, only this time it’s a cat on death row, and the clipboard says her name is Tomasina.

Tomasina’s large. Correction: she’s insanely obese, but that doesn’t stop her from getting up and making her way to the front of the cage and rubbing back and forth across the bars, purring loudly. She’s not terribly attractive. In fact, it looks like she intended to be striped but got confused midway into the genetic process. But her face is open and friendly, not at all what I think of when I say the word Cat to myself.

The note says she’ll be put to sleep at six o’clock. This time, there’s no explanation. Apparently no one wants a fat cat of unknown heritage and temperament, and that’s all there is to it.

Misty presses her nose against the cage. The cat doesn’t pause for a second, just keeps rubbing past Misty. Rub, purr, U-turn, rub, purr.

I start to open the cage, and Ruby lets out a little shriek and demands to know what I’m doing, yelling that we don’t know how Misty and the cat will react to each other.

I’m pretty sure they’ll be fine, I say, hoping I’m right.

As soon as Tomasina’s free she leans against Misty, who looks at the cat with undisguised affection.

“Let’s go, Tomasina,” I say.

Dude, Ruby says, shaking her head so vigorously her short pigtails whip across her face. You can’t take all the animals home with you.

I’m not, I say. Just Tomasina.

Ruby smiles at me and I notice for the umpteenth time how blue her eyes are, cerulean, almost. Maybe it’s just contacts, I think, but then I catch myself—damn it all to hell—smiling back at those blue, blue eyes.

***

Tomasina settles in without a hitch.

Well, she hides under the bed for the first two days, while I try every brand and flavor of cat food known to humankind, but on day three Misty finally coaxes her out.

Hitch fixed.

***

A few weeks later, as I’m whipping up a pot of West African peanut stew, there’s a knock at the door. Norma and the family downstairs are pretty regular visitors now, and I’ve gotten over the fact that they’re never here to see me. They fawn over Misty, then Tomasina, then Misty again. I am wallpaper paste. But they always thank me when they leave, and last night the mom of the downstairs family even grabbed me and gave me a fierce hug, which was surprising but not entirely unpleasant. So I assume it’s a neighbor again, but when I open the door there’s Ruby, and she’s holding a small animal carrier.

His name is Harvey, she tells me, like in that old movie, and she adds, in case I don’t get the reference, Because he’s a rabbit?

Harvey was a pookah, I say.

Ruby explains there was a pile of holiday cards from the Seattle Animal Protection Society to all the employees, and she saw my address, and that’s how she knew where to bring Harvey. She holds up the animal carrier and I see a gray lop-eared rabbit that is missing one foreleg. She apologizes for invading my privacy, but explains Harvey was slated for execution that night.

I start to sigh and then think better of it.

Ruby walks in, bouncing onto the balls of her feet with each step, her pigtails bobbing in time with her steps. Tomasina and Misty amble over to greet her, Tomasina doing that figure-eight thing around Ruby’s legs, and Misty resting her chin on Ruby’s leg as soon as Ruby collapses, somewhat abruptly, onto the sofa. I reach for the carrier, and when I take it my hand touches Ruby’s and there’s a tiny tremor.

I can’t tell whether it’s my hand trembling, or hers, or both.

For just a moment I allow myself to wonder how Ruby would feel if the son of the devil asked her to stay for dinner?

First things first:

“Hello, Harvey,” I say. “Welcome home.”

© Shari Lane 2025
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