“…the blue ledger shows eighteen thousand dollars withdrawn from the children fund since March,” Walt Kowalski said, and he opened the small book on the kitchen table of the Elks Lodge with a shaking hand. I stood in my shirtsleeves with a dish towel over my shoulder. The party in the main hall was still going, the carols tinny through the swinging doors. But in the kitchen it was very quiet. Walt, ninety years old, our treasurer since 1985, laid his finger beside a column of figures. Each entry bore the same note in the margin: Lodge improvement, per D.P.
D.P. was Doug Pratt, our new president. He stood by the stove with his arms crossed and his jaw set, forty five years old, handsome, with a carefully trimmed beard. He had followed us into the kitchen and shut the door behind him. His face had gone the color of old putty. He said, in a thin, brittle voice, “Walt, that is an internal accounting matter. We do not need to discuss it in front of the janitor.” I said nothing. I am eighty three years old, and I have been called worse than a janitor by better men.
Walt did not blink. He said that the children fund account required two signatures, his and mine, and that Doug had gotten around the rule in March by filing a signature change form with a bank officer who had not looked closely. He said, “Frank, I did not know who to tell.” He pulled a second paper from the ledger, a photocopy of the bank form, and set it before me. The signature on it, my signature, was a good imitation. But Theresa taught me to sign my name with a flourish on the F, and this one had none.
A hand sewn Santa suit with a hollow in the lining, a blue ledger from the lodge treasurer, and a child who wanted only a tree.
The kitchen door opened, and in came Tyler, the young realtor, still wearing my red velvet suit, with the white beard hanging around his neck like a scarf. Behind him came three of the lodge elders, and a county deputy in uniform who happened to be a member and had come for the pie. Tyler looked at the ledger, at Doug, at me. He said, in his friendly, easy voice, “Mr. Morelli, I did not know the suit had secrets.” Then he reached up and unclipped the beard, and said, “Maybe you should have this back.”
I took the suit. It was warm from his shoulders. I put it over my arm. Doug, by the stove, began to speak, quickly, in a low urgent voice, telling the elders that the funds had been moved temporarily to cover a roofing contractor, that the roof would be done by spring, that the lodge needed a new boiler. Nobody answered. The deputy, Mr. Reyes, asked politely whether he might see the bank statements. Doug stopped talking. In the sudden quiet, I could hear the carol from the hall, a child voice singing Silent Night.
The inquiry took two weeks. Doug had indeed used some of the children fund to pay the roofer, a cousin of his wife, at an inflated price, and some to cover a personal credit card. He signed a repayment agreement and resigned the presidency. The lodge voted to accept, with deep unhappiness and a great deal of coffee. The elders asked Walt to serve as interim president. He declined, gently, at ninety. He asked for me. I said I would rather be Santa Claus than president, and the room laughed, and it was settled.
On Christmas Eve I put on the suit. Theresa had sewn it in 1993, at our kitchen table, in the evenings after supper, with a tin of buttons and a pair of silver scissors. She had stitched the fur trim by hand, one small loop at a time. As I buttoned the jacket, I felt, in the lining, the place where the envelope had been, a small flat hollow like the print of a hand. I remembered her face, bent over the velvet, humming. I put my hand on the spot and closed my eyes. Then I went out into the hall.
Fifty families were waiting. The children ran toward me in their bright coats, shrieking, and I sat in the big red chair beside the tree, and one by one they climbed onto my knee. A boy of six told me he wanted a bicycle. A girl of four whispered that she wanted her daddy to come home from the Navy. I told her I would see what I could do. At the end of the line, a skinny girl of eight in a thin coat looked at me for a long moment and said, “Santa, are you the same one as last year?”
“Same one,” I said. “Thirty three years in a row.” She nodded, satisfied. Then she leaned close and whispered that her family could not afford a tree, and that she did not want a toy, only a tree. I held her small cold hand in my big gloved one. The children fund, restored in full by that week, had a line item for exactly this. Walt had seen to it. I whispered back that I thought a tree could be arranged, and her whole face opened like a window.
Tyler, who had asked to stay on as my helper, stood at the edge of the stage in a green elf hat, passing out candy canes. He caught my eye and winked. In the corner, old Walt sat in a folding chair with a cup of cocoa, wearing a red scarf. And above us, among the paper snowflakes and the string lights, hung a small hand lettered banner that the children had made that morning with glitter glue. It said: Thank you, Frank. And underneath, in smaller letters, in a child handwriting: and thank you Mrs. Santa.