Jessica’s dark blue eyes lit on the beautifully decorated and illuminated 
Christmas tree across the room, almost in the far left corner, before a window that allowed its holiday radiance to warm Damascus Place passersby.
Right of the tree, against the far wall, was a comfy loveseat with rolled arms, just perfect for seating a medium-sized grey tabby cat—a grey tabby carefully sizing up a red ornament of the thinnest aluminum.
“Dusty,” Jessica warned, her voice deep and threatening.
Dusty turned her intelligent green eyes directly on Jessica—would have raised an eyebrow Claude-Rains style if she could have. Her expression seemed to say: “This is what you get for cutting me off from Gerry Davis’s Polish ham hors d’oeuvres.” Out went one paw and down went the ornament to shatter on the floor.
“Dusty! You rat!” Jessica blurted, and the furious Mrs. Crawford/
Minton almost flew across the room—but not soon enough to catch the feline perpetrator of destruction. Dusty hopped down, batted a few shards of ornament under the loveseat, then was gone in a whirl of grey, a shred of paper snatched from the floor in her mouth.
Looking down at the scarlet shards, Jessica reflected, At least Dusty, the villainous grey tornado, didn’t select one of the expensive ornaments oran heirloom. Did that little stinker really know what she was doing? Annoyed as she was, though, Jess had to admit that Dusty could also be a sympathetic companion when the chips were down. Nevertheless, Dusty had been wise to head out for parts unknown.
Jessica stood before her beautiful tree, a tree with, to her anyway, a 
noticeable gap in its decoration where Dusty had liberated that ornament into oblivion. Maybe she shouldn’t have forgotten that placing an ornament out of feline reach only worked when there was no furniture around to uplift that reach.
“Well, that much is on me,” Jess sighed as she removed a handkerchief from her skirt pocket. At least she had enough foresight to realize she needed something to protect her while picking up and carrying off the shards, if she didn’t want to slice a finger or a hand.
Crouching down, Jess started carefully retrieving the remnants of the ball when her eye caught, tucked between the tree and the loveseat, a single package, previously obscured. That obscurity behind the branches explained why James, who’d worked this side of the tree handing out packages in the Kris Kringle, hadn’t seen it when he was sitting on the loveseat. But no one had come out without a present, so to whom was this present supposed to go?
On hands and knees, Jessica inelegantly moved forward to grab and drag out the wrapped package a bit larger than a shoe box.
“Hmm, it’s a little heavy,” Jess considered aloud as she sat back on her heels, holding the wrapped present. Turning the gift over and around, Jessica was not rewarded with finding an identifying tag. Come to think of it, this is the same cream paper of dancing candy canes and painted ponies with which James had wrapped the portrait of race horse Blue Warrior, whom we rescued two years ago. It wasn’t his precise, neat wrapping technique, but he could have been in a hurry with party prep distracting him. Still, hadn’t they decided to exchange only one gift tonight and save the rest for Christmas? But hadn’t she been unable to keep the pledge, fudging by putting the Remington shaver and the Esquire jacket in one box?
Still, this package might not be for you, after all. For whom, then? Everyone had left with a present. Where was the tag?
Putting the wrapped box on the loveseat, Jessica commenced to poke around under the tree in search of that phantom identifier, grousing inwardly at the scrape of pine needles on her face, against her forearms. Nope. No tag anywhere that I can see!
Jessica awkwardly got up and settled onto the loveseat to consider the 
possibilities: So, maybe the gift is from James, after all. Maybe there was no tag because he knew it was for me and planned to give it to me, later, when everyone had gone home. It looked the same as the paper he’d used to wrap Blue’s portrait. So why hadn’t he presented the present once everyone had cleared out? A roof-shuddering snore from across the flat left Jessica grinning over that answer. The poor guy had just been too pooped after all the festivities and cleanup duty. Yup, no one left without a present from under the tree and this is the same wrapping paper that’s on his other gift. And it is so like James to say nothing, but leave me a little surprise gift, maybe chuckling to himself till I found it. This has to be for me.
Jess smiled up at electric candles on the mantle draped with faux holly. Pretty soon the Christmas cards would be rolling in, and they’d be added to the holiday decorations. However, right now, the holiday item she was most interested in was her phantom gift.
So, what the heck did he give me?
Jessica picked up the package and shook it ever so carefully, hands on either end. It was fairly heavy, but didn’t rattle or slide around. Big enough to fill the box or just roundly, firmly, fully packed—to quote an omnipresent cigarette commercial.
At this point, Dusty slipped into view, settling cautiously under the 
chair before the hearth, not quite sure if she were yet out of the “cat” house, as it were.
Mischievous anticipation pushing aside earlier annoyance with the cat, Jessica queried, “What do you say, Dusty? Should I open this now or wait for James? He’s so exhausted, I’d hate to wake him—and I don’t think I can sleep from wondering what this gift is. I think he’d want me to open it now, don’t you? I can always give him a very special thank you in the morning, when he’s awake enough to appreciate it. What do you say, pal?”
Dusty blinked.
“Good enough for me!”
Jess held the box closer to her face and gave it another steady shake, deciding, “No way to tell until we open it.”
Sitting back, Jessica started carefully to slide her fingers in the crease where the paper was taped together on the bottom, but the tape was too stiff to part, so she pronounced, “Oh, heck, I’m just going to rip it!”
Paper went flying, leaving Jessica to stare at a plain, brown, heavy, cardboard box, held closed by masking tape. No clue from a manufacturer’s printing.
“What the heck is this?” Jess muttered. Then she turned to Dusty and queried, “Well, pal, what do you make of this?”
Recognizing a tone of camaraderie, Dusty decided she was now restored from the realm of reproval and came out from under the chair, crossed the room, then hopped up onto the loveseat next to her human. The human’s hand reached for her, and Dusty pushed her head into it for a pet.
Jessica, absently rubbing Dusty’s forehead, was considering. She wasn’t sure why she didn’t just pull the lid off the box. Well, there was that masking tape that looked pretty strong. It was more than that, though. It just looked rather oddly put together for a present from her husband: less that precise wrapping; downright inelegant, in a plain, industrial box; and that masking tape? What on earth could be in here?
She pondered out loud, “Hmm, it’s like a shoe box, but it’s too heavy for spectator pumps and too small for army boots.
Dusty blinked. 
“You’re right, Dusty. We’ll never solve the mystery of the inelegant-looking gift by sitting here wool-gathering, will we?” Jessica agreed, deciding she might act just as inelegantly as the present looked.
Jess slid her fingers under the masking tape on one side of the box then, with a fierce jerk, ripped up the tape and peeled back the cover. There she discovered:
“Dish towels?!”
Befuddled, she stared into the box. They were nice dish towels, but definitely not the sort of gift one gave one’s wife for Christmas, at least not this early in a marriage.
How could dish towels be heavy, anyway? Only they weren’t really all 
that was in the box. With a poke of her finger, Jess realized that the towels were wrapping up something else. To protect it? Maybe a sculpture? But why put something as elegant as a sculpture in such a clunky; ugly; again, inelegantly presented shoe box?
Dusty poked her nose into the box and swiftly recoiled.
“You do that to bananas and oranges,” Jess noted curiously. “Somehow, I don’t think James packed me a lead fruit basket. That man sure knows how to get me mixed up with mysterious packages, doesn’t he? Well, heck, Dusty, let’s get to the bottom of this. At least we know, there shouldn’t be any Nazis involved this time—I hope!”
Jessica pulled back the towels until she came across an object that sent 
a white-hot arc from her tuffet to her noggin. Her gasp sent Dusty back on her haunches.
No, this is inarguably no romantic knick-knack from a loving husband!
Posted 11/6/26
All Images author’s collection, except “broken ornament,”which is Unsplash/CCO Public Domain
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