Charming Christmas (18 page)

2

“O
h, thank God you're still here.” Jaimie Mayhews reached toward us as if she were extending a lifeline to save us from drowning in the employee locker room.

“We're on our way out.” I was zipping up Tyler's bag of Legos and books and emergency snacks, and Tyler was swaying against the painted concrete wall by the door, dusting it with the back of his coat as he munched cheese crackers.

“No, you can't go!” Jaimie tucked the thick, wavy tendrils of her hair behind both ears. We're both brunettes, but her hair springs forth in lush Victorian curls while mine is the straight-as-a-flat-ribbon variety. Jaimie is petite and sweet looking, but that wiry frame is solid and strong as a bull, which fits Taurus, her birth sign. We've been friends since junior high when she felt sorry for me sitting alone in the lunchroom with my plantain chips and carrot juice. She offered me a seat at her table and half of her Hostess Ding Dong; we've been friends ever since.

“There's a meeting in the buyer's conference room and you have to be there,” she said urgently. “Chicago has sent us a new manager, a hatchet man, I think, and he came here straight from the airport and I think he's going to fire anyone who didn't work a full shift tonight.”

“That's ridiculous,” I said. “Probably illegal, too.”

“He's the kind of guy who'll fire first, worry about lawsuits after the smoke clears.”

Tyler's chin lifted. “Does he have a gun?”

“No, honey, it's a figure of speech.” Jaimie kneeled beside him. “But your mom needs to talk with him. Do you want to come up to my office?” Jaimie is a buyer at Rossman's, which is a godlike position that requires a phone and an office—an oasis of calm. When she was pregnant with Scout we all worried that she'd be kicked out the door through some loophole, but in fact Rossman's wanted her back, even on her terms: job sharing with another experienced mother of three. “We can set up your sleeping bag, and you can watch my portable TV,” she told Tyler. “How about that?”

“We need to get home,” I said. “And I'm an hourly employee. I don't have to work full shift.”

“Just come.” Jaimie took the bag in one hand, Tyler's hand in the other. “If you're good, you can read the new Captain Underpants book that someone gave Scout.”

“Scout is three months old,” I called after her. “Who'd give a book like that to a baby?” Ever since Jaimie and her husband Matt had their first child, she'd been showered with gifts from coworkers and family, many items, like batting helmets and footballs, a tad inappropriate for a teething blob o' baby.

“Just come on,” Jaimie insisted.

It was an exercise in euphemism to call the cold tiled room with vinyl chairs and a Formica table a conference room; the drab, windowless space was a sad indicator of the run-down inner workings of this branch of Rossman's, but tonight the room was brimming with employees churning with suspicion and discontent. The seats were filling up fast, so Jaimie and I squeezed into two chairs between a heavyset man with thick black eyeglasses and a young woman with exotic dark eyes and an impressive row of gemmed piercings along her right ear.

“This is ridiculous. I don't have time for this. Will we be paid for attending this meeting?” The young woman cocked her head, catlike, as she spoke.

“Lucy, I honestly don't know,” Sherry Hayden answered from the head of the table. The chief of personnel tried to restore calm with her quick smile and her amazing retention of every single employee name, probably because she'd hired all of us. Sherry had one of those ageless faces, smooth chocolate skin and barely a crease. In the two months that I'd worked here Jaimie and I had played a guessing game about Sherry's age. If this new manager was truly going to downsize, I figured Sherry's job was safe; she had seniority over all of us. “You can save your questions for Mr. Buchman, who should be here momentarily.”

One of the men I recognized from the security team asked what the meeting was about.

“Right now, I don't have any more information than you have yourself, Tadashi,” Sherry was telling him as the air seemed to thin.

“Good evening,” came a brisk voice with a British accent.

I looked up. Chicago had sent us a Brit? It was so unlike the Rossmans to outsource, but apparently the character of the company had begun to shift with the tragic death of the famous Rossman couple last December. As he entered he worked the room, making contact with all of us briefly. I liked those eyes, round and blue, like the eyes of a waif pasted on the face of a prince in a rumpled suit. “Thank you all for staying. I would be the dreaded, sure-to-be-maligned Samuel Buchman. But please, feel free to call me Mr. Buchman.”

A few people snickered.

“I'm afraid I'm serious. Well, then, Ms. Hayden, thank you for holding the rank and file for me. Given the lateness of the hour, let's dispense with formality and get to the point. If you are in this room tonight, you are designated to be trained and deployed as overtime staff during this holiday season. Of course, you will be paid double rate for the overtime hours you work. This measure is designed to A, maximize our use of personnel, since all of you will have the training to serve in more than one department, and B, eliminate the excessive expense of hiring an additional Christmas crew who will need training, training, and more training, then will leave us in January.” He loosened his necktie. “Well, then, that's all for now.”

“Hold on a second,” Fred chimed in. “Fred Chalmers from the maintenance crew. Correct me if I'm wrong, but are you telling me you expect me to work in another department, too?”

Mr. Buchman pointed at him. “Precisely, sir. If you know maintenance, we will teach you how to operate a terminal on the sales floor or how to size a foot in the shoe department.”

Everyone started talking at once, voices of dissension.

Fred shook his head. “That is crazy.”

“It's also textbook management theory,” Jaimie muttered under her breath as she sized up Buchman. “This one's a climber.”

“This has got to be a bad joke,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck.

Buchman swung around to face me, clapping his hands like a magician.

The room fell silent as he scowled at me. “Your name, please?”

“Cassie . . . Cassandra Derringer.”

“No, Ms. Derringer, it most certainly is not a joke. If you haven't heard the advance rumblings, I am your worst nightmare—the no-man from headquarters here to trim off excesses, fire the slackers, consolidate departments, push the staff until they give 150 percent, and if all that fails, ultimately, I am the one who will recommend closing this branch of Rossman's. Yes, the stakes are high. Your store is in jeopardy of being wiped from the streets of San Francisco, Ms. Derringer. Do you think that's a joking matter?”

“Well . . .” I wanted to reply that it wasn't my store, that I was an hourly employee hired just two months ago, but two dozen employees with vested pension plans in this store were staring at me, and I had a strong feeling Mr. Buchman's question was rhetorical, anyway. “As you can see, Mr. Buchman, I'm not laughing.”

He nodded and turned, as if to dismiss me.

“But I'm also not completely on board with your plan.”

He turned. He glared.

“And your department is . . .”

“Design. Window displays, floor displays. Christmas decorations.”

“Design?” He pressed two knuckles to his chin, right under a cleft that would have been attractive if he weren't so obnoxious. “I look forward to reviewing the necessity of your department, Ms. Derringer.”

Translation?
You and your silly jingle bells are history
.

Lucy the earring girl shot me a frown that said,
You are busted.
And though I didn't cower under Mr. Buchman's glare, I had a feeling she was right.

 

 

Although I felt possessed by an overwhelming desire to jump up and shout “Fire me now!” I managed to restrain myself until the meeting wound down. Mr. Buchman assigned Sherry Hayden the task of handing out our dual assignments in the morning, which had to mean she was going to be up all night trying to make appropriate matches, but sleep deprivation seemed to be a minor factor in Mr. Buchman's diabolical plan to ruin Christmas for all of us.

As soon as the meeting ended, Jaimie and I moved quickly to her office.

“I don't even want to talk about it now,” she said, glancing over her shoulder as we passed down the dark hallway to her office. “If I lose my job sharing . . .” She shook her head.

We both knew that a full-time position was out of the question for her right now, not with Matt working on an expansion in Tokyo, Scout crying for hours at night, and Jaimie trying to strike that delicate balance between having a life of her own and devoting her life to this precious new bundle of needs.

“Tomorrow,” I said, quietly rubbing her back between the shoulder blades. “We'll straighten it out with Sherry.”

Jaimie's office was quiet, a soft pool of light sweeping under her desk lamp. “I'm not even going to check my e-mails,” she said, clicking the mouse. “I haven't worked this late since before Scout was born. Let's get the hell out of here.”

A momentary panic hit me as I wondered where Tyler had gone. Then I saw him facedown in his sleeping bag, his little body curled up like a worm in the rain. I touched his forehead lightly, raking back the damp hair there. “He's out.”

Jaime peeked over her monitor, her lower lip jutting out. “Oh, look at the lovey . . . I am definitely driving you home.”

Normally I would have insisted that we could make it on our own, not wanting to take Jaimie out of her way, but I couldn't do that to Tyler, couldn't bear to disrupt the downy rhythm of his sleep. “Okay.” I shrugged on my coat, scooped him up into my arms, and pressed my lips to his forehead. “But just this once.”

3

H
ave you ever noticed how so much of our life is framed in rectangular vision with three-to-five ratio? The three-by-five photograph, the computer monitor. Postcards. Business cards. The rent check. Placemats. Windshields, windows, the ATM screen. And the box, the boob tube, the television screen that had paid my way in the world for more years than I'd like to remember.

Recently I realized that whenever I thought of my ex, I pictured him on the television monitor, usually at the top of the show delivering his monologue in front of that cheesy replica of the Golden Gate Bridge, one hand in his pocket, the other jabbing at air, fingers splayed as if trying to grasp a ball of sanity in an insane world. That was part of the charm of TJ Blizzard, the Snowman, the Blitzer, the frat boy who never got past the food fights and farting contests. Although TJ often seemed capable of reaching out of the box and grabbing the most laconic viewer in Peoria or Kalamazoo, in reality he was stuck behind that screen, and I liked picturing him that way, static and flat, ineffectual. My way of pantsing the powerhouse quarterback.

Gripping my coffee mug as the sun began to sneak through the slats of the wooden blinds of the turret windows around Tyler's bed, I realized my ex had appeared in a vague dream last night: TJ on the three-by-five monitor, his lips curling in that goofy smirk.

The meaning of the dream was clear: time to circle back to him for the one thing that mattered right now, a father for my son. Although TJ sent money occasionally, the one thing I wanted and needed from him was to be a dad to Tyler. I rubbed my eyes, trying to think through the day, the morning at Rossman's, lunch with Jaimie and Bree, and the afternoon off. I had hoped to take Tyler out of day care early, but instead I would have to squeeze in a visit to the studio.

When we moved here from TJ's Pacific Heights house, the turret was Tyler's space. We had painted the walls cloud blue and cut a thick foam pad to fit the floor, his place to laze and roll, invent and sleep at night. I kneeled down next to him, pulling the comforter back and pushing aside Lemon Bear to kiss his smooth cheek. “Good morning, sunshine.”

“I'm still tired.” He stretched, gazing at me through eyes closed to a sliver. “Come back later. Good night, moon.”

 

 

That morning I arrived before the Rossman's big shots and went right to the front facade, checking the windows for balance of composition and making sure none of the figures had fallen out of place. Would my displays come close to competing with our Union Square rivals, Nordstrom, Gump's, Neiman Marcus, and Macy's? As I walked along the facade, jazz piano played in my head—the song Schroeder plays in
A Charlie Brown Christmas
while the kids are supposed to be rehearsing but instead just dance merrily. Sometimes I wake up with those Vince Guaraldi riffs in my head. The windows did bring a smile to my face, each scene silly and bright, like an animated feature, and I felt sorely tempted to spring into a Snoopy dance right in Union Square.

Warm sunshine broke through the clouds overhead, and I turned toward the square, the wide expanse across Geary Street dotted with palm trees and framed with trim green landscaping. The Christmas tree was surrounded by scaffolding, where workers were hanging electric lights. This time next week the square would be thick with shoppers, even before the tree lighting on the day after Thanksgiving.

Someone nudged me, a woman passing too closely, and she turned toward me with a sweep of her ivory cashmere coat and blinked. Just blinked. No apology. No begging pardon.

I drew back into my coat and watched her walking off, this woman from a club I'd grown familiar with—the Rossman's shopper. On my first day at Rossman's when I'd climbed into the dusty window display in my jeans and sweatshirt, I had noticed these creatures moving through the store in their shopping trances, gazing at merchandise through highlighted, feathered bangs, the women in winter white, so coiffed and calm.

I never felt like an ugly duckling until I started working at Rossman's Department Store. Which doesn't really make sense when you consider that I'd just come from six years of working as a scenic designer on a late-night show where celebrities arrived in their limos every afternoon and breezed past me down the hall in their designer garb, carrying garment bags packed with more designer wear. And yet, in that jocular, hurry-up-and-wait milieu, I never worried about the fact that Elle had a set of legs I'd never compete with or that Renee Zellweger had knocked off her Bridget Jones weight in record time while I was still fighting off the mommy pounds.

But something about the ladies in white was different. I have to admit, I was jealous the first time one of the ladies glided past me, her eyes fixed on some luminescent bottles or squat jars of miracle make-up in a distant display case.

There goes a beautiful woman with a perfect life
, I thought, impressed by her confidence and easy grace. Shopping in those shoes? How did she manage to keep her balance, not to mention negotiate the hazardous hills of San Francisco? But silly me, the winter-white women did not chase after streetcars. How I envied them their perfect lives.

My life was like a relief map of mountains and valleys, bumpy foothills and yawning craters. I'd made my fair share of mistakes. Blame it on too many late nights playing quarters in college. Or the days when trays of cocaine were passed around like Cheez Whiz at parties. Jaimie and I joke that the late eighties, when we hit our twenties, are still a blur. Or maybe it's wrong to blame the era; maybe the problem is my compulsive nature. Running away from home at sixteen and returning with a gorgeous golf pro, whom my mother promptly stole from me. Bumming my way across Europe in the summer after my freshman year of college. I'd been irresponsible and reckless, and it was a wonder I'd survived my own bad behavior.

But now that I was a parent, a mom, priorities had fallen into place for me. Right now, I needed to live right for Tyler. My life had been patched up and pulled together in the last few years.

A life on the mend, but still worlds apart from the ladies in white.

 

 

“I'm not sure that these windows have the sparkle we need to compete with Macy's, Neiman Marcus, Gump's,” Daniel Rossman told the management group that gathered in front of the store a few minutes later. The department-store heir apparent had flown in from Chicago with Mr. Buchman last night but skipped the meeting and went straight to the hotel. “It's a shame they couldn't be mechanized.”

“Mechanized?” Sherry Hayden squinted. “I'm not following you, sir.”

“Like the windows at Lord & Taylor in New York,” Daniel Rossman said impatiently. He was an attractive man until he opened his mouth to criticize my work. “Like the little dancing dolls in Small World at Disney World. Moving around and dancing. Real entertainment.”

“Wouldn't that be expensive?” Sherry asked. “We've been given a slim budget for new decorations this Christmas, not just the windows, but everything inside the store.”

“Ah, yes, how amusing that would be,” Mr. Buchman cut in. “However, as we are retailers and not in the entertainment industry, I think we can dispense with dancing Barbies and stick with the charming scenes Ms. Derringer has created here.” He glanced down at his Palm Pilot. “Did you stay on budget, Ms. Derringer?”

“I did.” I stepped forward, surprised and relieved the wicked Mr. Buchman seemed to be saving me from Daniel. “The forms for the elves and Santas were actually old Styrofoam Christmas trees and I—”

“On budget, that's all we need to know,” Mr. Buchman cut me off. “That's it for our window displays. Let's move inside and examine one of our register terminals. I have noted that the software was last updated three years ago, and customers have complained ever since . . .” He disappeared inside the door, followed by the others.

Sherry Hayden fell out of line to touch my arm. “Nice job, Cassie. Don't let Rossman's comment derail you. I understand he's the financial liability of the family.”

“A major liability. When is he going back?”

“Tonight, I think. But we're stuck with Mr. Buchman till the new year at least.” Frowning, she glanced inside. “I'd better get in there before the men do something we'll all regret. Stop by my office in an hour or so. I came up with a cute second job for you.”

“But I don't want one.”

“Just stop by.”

 

 

“Mrs. Claus?”

Poor Sherry fished through papers on her desk, clearly rattled by this extra work. “Cassie, I know it's an inconvenience at this time; however, Mr. Buchman is inflexible on this.”

“Sherry, I'm a single parent with a five-year-old son. I can't take on another job.”

She looked up at me over her reading glasses. “Not when it pays time and a half?”

Quick calculations in my head floated by like visions of sugarplums. Insurance money. A down payment on a car. Christmas presents. “The money would be great, but I've got Tyler.”

“Bring him to the store.”

I thought of his interest in the elves' hammers. “What if he dressed up as an elf? I think he'd like that, and he could stick close by me.”

“Horrors.” She rolled her eyes. “Child labor laws.”

“You won't be paying him. He'll just be playing dress-up with me.”

She winced. “I should probably say no, but if you want to try and sneak that one past Mr. Buchman, I have an elf costume that's too small for anyone on staff.”

“Okay, then, I guess we have a deal. But does Mrs. Claus matter? I thought Buchman was trying to pare things down to essential personnel.”

“The Mrs. Claus costume has sentimental value for the Rossmans. Evelyn used to play Mrs. Claus when she was alive, and, well, the family has been known to fly out and check on the costume, make sure it's being used.”

I rolled my eyes. “Sorry, Sherry, but Mrs. Claus?”

“I know, I know.” She put her hand over mine. “How'd you like to be a security guard hearing that you've got to start fetching designer shoes for women and making sure they wear their footies?”

I took a deep breath. “I see your point.”

“And you know what? Before you say one more thing, let me just show you this Mrs. Claus suit . . .”