Welcome to Gaia! ::

How could someplace that was once so warm seem so cold?

Alan Murrow settled into his armchair and stared out the window of his penthouse. The wall of buildings around Central Park was fading fast in the ever-heavier snowfall, only the twinkle of lights visible through the whitening mist.

Damnit, Helen, I tried.

He saw her in the falling snow, standing out on the small balcony and looking out to the park, wearing her “casual” summer clothes and watching the thousands of tiny people living their tiny lives and enjoy God’s gift of a warm, sunny day. Helen was the one who insisted on being close to the park, so that if they had kids (it wasn’t even a question of when at that point and to the two of them the thought of children was fading like the sun into night) they could bring them out on sunny days and they would be able to have grass until they eventually bought a house out in the suburbs, maybe in Westchester or even far out west in the rural parts of New Jersey, some big old farmhouse or even one of those old Victorian manors in a rural town that specializes in antiques and gift shops.

That, of course, was before A Closer Look was cancelled for what NBC called “a new, dynamic news lineup,” which is company code for dismal ratings. That, Alan has often thought in the last month or two, was probably the last straw for her. One day in early November, while Alan stayed home, she returned from window shopping with her girlfriends with papers from her lawyer. She was living with her sister, now, in Philadelphia.

A quick wind picked up, and twirled Helen off the balcony and into the whiteness of the snow beyond.

Alan tore his stare away from the window to the television. Sighing, he picked up the remote and pressed the ON button. The high-quality television started to emit its cold glow.

“…I want to be…a dentist!”

He smiled at the clay elf. This show…it’d been around for a while, and was one of his favorites as a little kid. Alan smiled, bathing in the cool glow of the television and the warmth of watching it as a kid, with his younger sister Rebecca Lee sitting next to them, both warm under a blanket, their mother making cookies and hot cocoa as they waited for their father to come home to have the midnight Christmas meal. As they laughed as strange toys sang about how silly they are, she turned and smiled warmly at him.

“That was Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer. Coming up next on this Christmas Eve, A Charlie Brown Christmas, only on ABC.”

Alan sat up suddenly. Had I dosed off…? He looked at the clock. Nearly 2 hours! Outside the window, the lights of New York were twinkling in the dark of the snowstorm.

He got up from his chair and walked across the across the open living room, heading for the refrigerator. He rarely drank and had been that way since at least his mid-20s, but right now he could really use that spiked eggnog he bought.

As he was taking the carton out of the lighted refrigerator, the phone’s electronic ring pierced the near silence of the large penthouse. Sighing, Alan put down the eggnog and picked up the phone.

“Hello.”

“Alan?” an older woman asked on the other end of the line.

“Yes, this is he.”

“Alan, it’s your mother.”

“Mom?” he asked. “…how did you get this number?”

“Your agent. So, how are things?”

“No different,” he lied between his teeth. He imagined Helen laughing at a joke her sister made in Philly. “Why did you call me?”

He heard her hesitance on the other end of the line. “It’s Christmas, dear.” There was another hesitant pause, as if his mother was trying to make up her mind. “…and your sister would like to see you.”

Alan stood there, open-mouthed. “Rebecca?” Soon, though, his senses caught up to him and the anger that he had been holding close to him for over a decade came rushing to his head. “Rebecca? What does that pervert want?”

“Alan!” his mother scolded, as if he were a young child. “She’s your sister!”

Alan gripped the phone tightly. “That lesbian is no sister of mine. Now, if that’s all you want, I hope you three sinners have a very Merry Christmas—“

“Alan, don’t hang up on me! Please, just listen.” His mother sounded desperate.

Alan remained silent.

“She has AIDS, Alan.”

“Gay cancer?” Alan tried to dig the insult as deep as he could.

“You know that isn’t true.” Once again, the scolding. “Apparently, she had gotten it from a bad blood transfusion, before she even realized that she… is…”

“Can’t say it, can you?” He taunted.

“Alan, stop it! We’ve been trying to tell you for years, but you just won’t talk to us. Your father and I, every time we’d call your assistant would tell us you were out, or in a meeting…It’s been very obvious that you don’t want to talk to us. But please, for your sister’s sake, just listen to me.”

Alan paused.

“She isn’t doing very well,” the voice crackled through static. “Alan, she’s dying.”

Rebecca is sitting there in the blanket next to him, watching the clay reindeer save Christmas, as their mother brought them their hot cocoa and cookies.

“She doesn’t have much time left….and she said she’d like to see you.”

The two of them laugh at the strange toys stuck on the island, singing as they did things that didn’t make sense. Their father would be home soon, and then they would have dinner and go to sleep and await Santa Claus and his bag of gifts in the morning.

“…Alan? Are you still there?”

Alan stood there, silent, anger rising.

“…Alan?”

“I have no sister,” he said, voice full of hate.

“Alan, please, stop this! She’s dying! Your sister is dying!”

“My sister died a long time ago!” he screamed into the phone. There was silence on the other end.

Rebecca was smiling, innocent, happy, full of life, standing right beside him.

There was a series of short, shallow gasp hidden behind the static.

Alan hung up the phone.

Angrily, he threw the eggnog at the wall. The carton exploded, the thick liquid dripping down the white wall and over pictures of him and Helen, Helen’s family, their wedding. Hastily, he opened up the cabinet above the refrigerator and grabbed an old, dusted flask of Jack Daniels he originally bought to celebrate the birth of his first child…a birth that never came.

Sitting down once again in his chair, he opened the bottle angrily and turned his attention once again to the cold television. A little boy was on a stage, a sole spotlight upon in.

Alan took a deep swig, trying to swallow it down. He wasn’t used to the taste of alcohol—the whiskey burnt his throat as it went down.

“…and that’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.”

Alan Murrow put down the bottle, held his head in his hands, and sobbed