A Rose-Scented Santa Claus

Mrs. Claus doesn’t bake cookies. She doesn’t prepare any dessert at all, for that matter. Her husband eats enough cookies to last him one year on his journey around the globe. Instead, she cracks five eggs (three for him, two for her), spreads butter on toast, tosses a bowl of fruit for them to share, and prepares her husband’s favorite: a mug of coffee with frothed reindeer milk and candy cane crumbles on top. It always gives him a nice boost before the annual Christmas Soirée, which is hosted by the elves—forever adorers (kiss-asses, another might say) of the man in the red suit. This cup of joe will definitely give him a kick.

The clock reads 5:35 a.m. He should be arriving soon, no later than six, she hopes. If he’s on time, their Christmas tradition can go on as usual. In the first twenty-five years of their marriage, she’d hear the reindeer and their jingling bells land on their cottage’s immense sleigh-way at six on the dot. For the last eight years, he was always ten, twenty, even thirty minutes late. “Old age,” explained the Elder Elf through the years. She scoffed openly at his comment. Sixty-five was not that old.

Last year, Mr. Claus arrived an hour late due to a highly rare reindeer injury. Plight, the “Rudolph” of the group (there were others with noses to guide the way, but Rudolph was the original), had broken a leg. Before he landed, Mrs. Claus was so distraught by her husband’s recurring tardiness that she’d thrown the entire breakfast in the trash and dumped the coffee in the sink.

5:45 now. She should soon be hearing Santa’s “Ho-Ho-Ho,” as he slows his sleigh in the sky. She doesn’t. But her anger is now water underneath a frozen layer of cool indifference. She grabs the coffee pot and pours two cups now, prepares his, then lays it on the pine-tree-shaped coaster. 5:50. 6:00. 6:01. She waits at the table. At 6:25, Santa Claus lands. From inside, she hears the elves cheering, clapping, celebrating. No doubt they’re all wearing their best elf suits, midnight black and made of pure wool, ready for the party that starts in forty-five minutes. Mrs. Claus stopped going out to greet her husband three years ago. “Old age and whatnot,” she told the Elder Elf with a stiff, sweet smile, whose reply was merely an awkward smile and hesitant nod.

Mrs. Claus waits at the circular, wooden table, on the chair that faces the door of their small cottage. Just a minute later—better to walk past those elves lest they talk your ear off—the door opens, and in walks the man of the hour. Noel, known to her and some close friends, smiles. She knows what he’s going to say next because it’s the same thing he says every year. Mrs. Claus deepens and roughens her voice to imitate her husband as he says, “I can’t wait to shave this damn thing off.” Noel laughs and she does too. She still does love this man very much. Nothing, no one, could ever snatch that feeling away from her.

Noel loves being Santa. She still remembers the pride on his face, mixed with shock and sudden nerves, when the Elf Jury chose him for the task. This was way back when he was Noel Fable and she, Winter Frost, back when they'd only stolen a kiss or two and were too shy to hold hands in public. She’d never imagined she’d be Mrs. Claus, and certainly never thought about how their lives could look twenty-eight years later. 

They selected him just one hour after Nick Claus had passed away at 75. It was and had to be a swift process. She’d wondered what it’d feel like if her husband died and just sixty minutes later people were lining up to replace him. She also thought about who it’d be. Perhaps Elliot Rider, the young man who’d fixed up Plight’s leg last year. She quite liked Elliot. He was the only one who was honest with her and told her that the only reason Plight would injure his leg, the others left unscathed, would be because he didn’t want to land on a certain roof. Despite popular belief, reindeer are not loyal to the man with the bag himself but rather the cause of Christmas itself. In fact, she too might say that she was dedicated to the cause if need be. “So why wouldn’t he want to land?” Elliot had asked her. She’d merely shrugged because that was none of his business.

She’d be replaced too, of course. If the new Santa had a honey, then it’d happen immediately. If he was single and ready to jingle, then later. But she’d be stripped of the name Claus and forced to move on. At least she’d get to keep their home and have a comfortable place to grieve. It was a quick and cruel but necessary procedure. Christmas didn’t wait for anybody, and the North Pole was legally required to meet those children’s demands.

“Come sit, my love,” Mrs. Claus says, patting the seat of the empty chair beside her. Noel obeys and moves closer to her. Before sitting, he leans in and gives her a sweet kiss on the cheek. The first time that Mrs. Claus smelled roses off his puffy white beard, she didn’t question it. The third time, it’d made her eyebrows furrow, but they'd had breakfast, and she'd moved on. The fourth time, suspicion came. Only confirmation followed in the next years. A perfume that didn’t belong to her, that didn’t, actually, exist on the North Pole at all. Where there were only cinnamon, hot chocolate, pine, and other related scents. The tardiness and the incident last year only added to the pile of evidence. He threw in the logs and the kindling—add a flame and what else could you get but a fire? The scent now makes her knuckles turn white as snow against the mug’s handle.

“My favorite part of the day,” Noel says as he finally sits. He reaches for the coffee cup, and Mrs. Claus only stares with a smile that looks like a sticker someone threw on her face and stuck. It doesn’t take one sip. He tells her about his night—skipping over certain details, she imagines (not that she wants to know)—and together they eat. She finds that she has no trouble swallowing the eggs, chewing on the toast, even sipping her coffee. Not even when Noel starts slurring his words while talking about the best cookie of the night. She places the mug down with a soft thump as the slurs become choking sounds. She notices drops of milk on his mustache then. He looks at her with a confused expression and those still-gloved hands go to his neck. But Mrs. Claus doesn’t move. Not even when he calls out for a name that is not her own. The smell of roses is still fresh under her nose when Mr. Claus starts turning purple. Santa falls off the chair, and Mrs. Claus, like any good wife, screams and calls for help.