Gifts

2024

For my 29th, I received an antique silver-plated watch, an ultra-wide plasma screen television, and two casks of a certain exclusive wine, France’s best-kept secret. Other things too, of course, but those were the highlights.

It’s the gifts that make you feel older, you know. I have more than yesterday. I am more than yesterday. It’s as intoxicating as the champagne, that feeling.

It was Geoff with the TV, naturally – one of my best chums for life. An endearingly simple kind of mind that won’t overlook the fundamental pleasures. But a young lady, Monica, surprised me with the wine. Something I’d’ve never known to ask for. She moved up instantly in my esteem. Not a romantic prospect, I hasten to add – hasn’t the face for it – but worth having in the room.

A memory came to me while we reposed in the sitting room, passing around a dish of bourbon bonbels.

“That girl. Secondary school. Who – Geoff, Adam, you went to St. Augustine with me, I’m almost certain. That utterly embarrassing girl?”

“Magda,” Geoff said immediately, nodding.

“No, it definitely wasn’t that. But I can’t for the life of me recall. But she had that hair – that absurd, scratchy hair.”

“Of course,” Adam laughed. “You couldn’t see anything but the hair. It must’ve eaten combs alive.”

“Yes, the ratty brown hair, and the large chipped teeth, and the acne. All of it.”

“She had glasses, yes? Big clunky ones?” Adam said.

I pinched the bridge of my nose and thought, leaning back over the arm of the couch. “Did she? Or is that just stereotypes at work? Like the Monopoly man’s monocle?”

We laughed.

“Sure and I knew her too,” Kevin said, crunching a candy. “Or I knew one of those. Pretty sure they mass produce ‘em in Korea.”

“Good, good, everyone can relate,” I waved my hand. “But do you remember what we did to her?”

There was an odd kind of silence. After a moment there was a hushed oop as someone nearly dropped the dish.

“Nobody showed up,” Adam said.

“That’s right,” Geoff said, wincing. “To her party. Don’t know who started the thing – but we all agreed to RSVP and stand her up.”

“That wasn’t the half of it!” I laughed. “Don’t you remember? The boxes?”

“The boxes. Oh, god,” Geoff nodded with a pained laugh. “I can’t believe it. All the boxes – all beautifully wrapped – but of course, once she finally got around to looking inside…”

“In fairness, should’ve noticed how light they were right away,” Adam noted.

“But you have to imagine her,” I insisted, gesticulating, “because I’m sure she did – opening each present one by one. One by one. And soon she knows, but – she just has to keep trying. Is there anything sadder?”

It was quiet again.

“That seems a bit cruel, doesn’t it?” commented Suzanne from the armchair by the fire.

“Of course it was cruel!” I laughed. “It was downright sick! Children are such rotten little bastards, I can scarcely believe it.”

“But she’s fine,” Adam said, waving a hand and taking a sip of champagne. “She’s our age now. She’s got a life of her own. For all we know, she got hot!”

We all had a guffaw at that.

Over the next several days, late gifts wandered in through the post. Something from my aunt and uncle up the coast. Something from my aging grandmother – really from her aide Shirley, of course. And I could have sworn my parents double-gifted me by mistake, but I knew where not to look that horse. If this was the first sign of oncoming dementia, it was one of the better ways to find out.

It was almost tiring, unloading the boxes. For the first time in my life, I was at a loss for where to store things. Should the new skis usurp the old ones where they rested in the closet? Did the juicero deserve its own counter space, or did it detract from the atmosphere when left out?

I took it easy that weekend – rose late and retired early. It was still practically my birthday, after all.

More gifts came over the next few weeks. A definitely unusual amount. More and more obscure connections were seeing fit to give me something. Not cheap things either. An ostensible great-uncle in Norway had them deliver a state-of-the-art moped to my door. A coworker from two companies ago sent me a supposedly original Rembrandt study. By this point it was obvious some prank was at play, and I very much doubted the authenticity of the work. But it looked indisputably fetching in my front hall.

That was also the time that I began to fall ill. It started small, with some cloying fatigue and a spreading ache in my joints. I had to use extra moisturizer in the mornings, and felt less and less inclined to visit the gym.

Things deteriorated very quickly. I knew it was something serious when I woke on the floor, having no memory of a fall that had shattered a mug and bruised my hip. I spent more and more time at home and sitting down. I developed a hacking cough, and could never seem to get warm. My hands shook when I lifted anything at all heavy. It was with no small shame and frustration that I asked for dispensation to work remotely.

Over the course of months, the prank gifts kept coming. They were no longer connected to my birthday; friends and family and the occasional generous stranger were finding random excuses to buy me things. I rang up several of the culprits, including Geoff, to chew them out for being part of the bizarre hazing, but they acted the offended innocent without a hitch. My flat was filling with things – things I wished I had the energy to enjoy. A new bike. A new adjustable standing desk. A new set of bocce balls ‘after I’d looked at them with such interest in the shop.’ The kitchen was crowded with chocolates and wines and edible arrangements whose safety I did not remotely trust.

Before half a year had passed, I was bedridden. My memory became hazy for long stretches. When I did wake, to friends or doctors or alone, I was terrified and confused. I never got a clear answer as to what was wrong with me.

Monica visited often to help, the sweet thing, though I wished very much it had been Suzanne who took the initiative. I had all the more need of a bit of eye candy.

One day, half-asleep, I shuffled my way to the bathroom. A sharp smack of my toe against some huge still-wrapped box jolted me awake. Wincing at the jet of pain, I stared around my home with hazy eyes. It was hardly recognizable. The endless clusters of new packages struck me as the eggs of some invading parasite. The latest ones were all ‘get well’ presents.

I felt ill – more ill than I did already. I hurried to the bathroom, shaky and weak and in prickling pain at the knees. I couldn’t believe my caretakers had continued receiving the packages for me, had let them stack up like this. Couldn’t they see what was happening? Couldn’t they see the – the evil?

I heaved at the sink, but my stomach was bare, and my body seemed unable even to generate an upchuck of acid.

But then I saw myself in the mirror, and was struck dumb. I stared, blinking desperately for a better view that would not come.

“I’m not sick,” I muttered to myself in a voice like a tortoise.

I needed to sit down. I very clearly could not support myself a moment longer.

“I’m not sick,” I wheezed.

I fumbled my way to the toilet and slumped upon it as my consciousness made another bid for freedom.

“...That’s not it at all.”

My skin was wrinkled leather. My eyes were small in deep sockets. My hair was colorless and wispy on a mottled scalp. But my face – the shape of it – that was the damning thing. I looked more like my father than I ever had before.

When next I woke in my bed, there was someone there.

“Suzanne?” I said weakly. It was hard to remember who had been by lately, but I felt somehow sure this was a woman.

I struggled to pull my eyes open, and took some time to realize there were no lights on. Only a milky glow between the shutters made it into my cramped, stale room. It felt smaller than it used to. There were large, square shapes stacked by the walls and corners.

I fought my aching muscles to pull myself up, to even approximate a sitting position against the pillows at my back. The person here was short. The person here was a child.

I opened my mouth to manage a syllable – who, or the like – but it didn’t seem worth the effort. I stared at her, waiting, feeling my organs sluggishly work inside me.

It was a girl. A young teenager. She had long, scratchy hair. She had large chipped teeth. She had acne. And she had awkward, clunky glasses stretched across her flat nose. So awkward, so clunky, that she was just begging to be teased. What was wrong with her? We never could figure out what was wrong with her.

She held a package in both hands. It was a small white box with no wrapping paper, but with an elegant ribbon that could have been any color in the dim light. You could see the weight of it in her hands, whatever it was.

My heart hiccuped. Like it was trying to be afraid, but just didn’t have the energy. I wheezed a heavy breath of dismay. I mouthed no, and shook my head, and tried to turn my body away, as if safety was standing on the other side of the bed.

She looked at me without much expression, whatever her name was. Tired, if anything, much as I was tired.

“I got you something,” she said in barely a voice.