by Liz Meldon
“I—”
“There’s nothing wrong with taking a beat between jobs,” he continued, facing her now with a slightly lifted brow. “Working here doesn’t diminish your accomplishments. Take a breather, then get back out there swinging when you’re ready. Nothing wrong with that.”
For once, Elise had absolutely nothing to say. All her self-deprecating nonsense—she couldn’t find a single syllable to retaliate with. So, she tucked her hair behind her ears, cheeks burning for a different reason, and tipped her head to one side, smiling shyly.
“Thanks.”
“No problem.” He looked up and down the aisle, grimacing. “I’m sure working here with people who see you as less than human can dampen your spirits, but cheer up…” Elise stiffened when he playfully tapped her under the chin and winked. “It’s almost Christmas.”
And with that, he was off, leaving her standing there, alone, surrounded by fake trees—and hopelessly smitten. Every inch of exposed skin was on fire, but that was nothing compared to the surge of white hot desire swirling within her. Elise took two steps after him, only to stop when Penelope appeared, as if by magic, at the end of the aisle.
Well, if she ever couldn’t find a cold shower, the sight of Penelope did the job just fine. The woman inspected a few of the decorated trees, then pointed at them with her pen, clipboard tucked under her arm.
“These look like crap. Do them again. And this time, follow the pictogram! I don’t make them for my health…”
Five
The Customer is Always Right
Jack rounded the corner of the Bennington’s doll aisle just as a woman walked out—with two blue-haired Miss Molly dolls under her arm. Hope. Elation. Success. Victory was in sight! And only a week before Christmas too. He had been seriously pushing it.
He quickened his pace, only to stop and curse under his breath. There wasn’t another blue-haired doll to be found. That woman must have taken the last two. Scowling, he searched through the department for an associate, but as usual, there wasn’t a hideous vest in sight: just a sea of frantic shoppers. He contemplated chasing the woman down and offering to pay double for one of the dolls, but that seemed unlikely to work.
Besides, he couldn’t find her anywhere, and not for lack of trying. Annoyed, he marched back to the aisle and grabbed a purple-haired doll instead. They seemed to be friends in the commercial, her and ol’ blue. If he couldn’t make the blue work, maybe purple would be close enough. He still had a week left to shop, and damn it, he was going to make this happen.
He did one last loop around the department—not because he wanted to purchase other toys, but because he wanted to see if Elise was around. Last time they’d seen one another they had decorated trees, and he had left the department store positively buzzing, grinning from ear to ear like a fool in love. However, he realized his mistake as he was pulling out of the parking lot: he hadn’t asked for her number. Jack had hoped to do it right this time, but she was nowhere to be found. Disappointment compounded with his annoyance, and he trudged through the store, straight for the thirty cash tills, without so much as a hint of a smile.
That is, until he found her. Elise wasn’t in the toy section because she had been stuck behind a register. Poor thing looked absolutely miserable. Jack, meanwhile, felt a rush of giddiness course through him as he got in her line.
Ten minutes later, Jack almost regretted the move. Elise seemed to have a whole slew of customers buying enough crap to fill a bus, and each transaction moved painfully slow. The elderly gentleman in front of him, complete with whiskers sticking out his ears and nose, had started grumbling about two minutes ago, a string of endless cursing that made Jack press his lips together as he tried not to laugh.
Another five minutes crawled by before the older gentleman dumped his basket of socks on the counter.
“It’s about damn time,” he snapped as Elise started scanning his items. Jack, meanwhile, was sort of half listening as he tried to figure out which chocolate bar from the shelves next to the register would best boost his waning blood sugar for the ride home. “I’ve been in this line for over an hour!”
“Sorry,” was Elise’s response, which only seemed to rile him up more.
“You’d better be. I didn’t come here just so I could stand in a line. I’ve got things to do, you know. Places to be. Though I suppose you wouldn’t understand that… I bet you’re rushing home to sit on your phone all night, huh?”
Jack shot the man a look, then rolled his eyes. Working behind a register must have been soul-crushing if you had to deal with jerks like him all day. Elise had the right idea in ignoring him. Once she had all his socks bagged, he threw—literally threw—a handful of coupons at her. Jack’s hand tightened to a fist as he watched her scramble to pick them all up, then squint as she read the fine print.
“Today,” the man growled. “Sometime today.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but these coupons have expired.”
Well. That did it. “What did you just say?!”
She looked up, heavy bags under her eyes, and tried to hand the slips of paper back. “The coupons have—”
“Listen here, you little bitch. I cut those out this morning—”
“Hey,” Jack barked, slamming his Miss Molly box onto the counter. The older man spared him a brief, bewildered glance, one Jack held and wouldn’t let go of. “There’s no need for that kind of language.”
“Piss off, you—”
“These are all expired,” he continued, rifling through the few coupons that were still sitting on the counter. “Like… a month expired. Stop yelling at her for just trying to do her job. She’s a person, not a bitch.”
He spat the last word for emphasis. The man sputtered up at him, then turned on Elise again and demanded to speak to a manger—immediately.
“Look, pal, either pay for your stuff or get out of the line,” Jack said firmly. “We’ve all got places to be, just like you.”
There were a few tentative yeah and get going, man from the line behind him. With a beet-red face, the man dug out his credit card, once again throwing it at Elise, and shuffled down to the end of the checkout area. When he finished the transaction, he snatched his bag out of Elise’s hand and glared.
“You ought to be fired for allowing him to speak to me like that,” he sneered. “I’ll be speaking to your manager!”
“Okay, okay, get out,” Jack said, situating himself between them so Elise wouldn’t have to look at the asshole anymore. When her eyes met his, they were watery, and he offered what he hoped was a kind smile. “Hi.”
“Hi,” she said back, her voice quiet yet quivering, her emotions seeming barely in check. She started scanning his things and loading them into a bag, her hands shaking harder than her words.
“Long day?”
“Yeah.” She frowned slightly and peered into the bag. “Purple?”
“Last resort,” he insisted as she punched something onto her keyboard. “Still chasing the white whale.”
“I’m sure you’ll harpoon it soon.” She then told him his total, which he paid on credit. Although he just wanted to pull her aside and hug her for as long as she needed, until she stopped shaking, this wasn’t the time or place to console her. While he had chased off one asshole in her line, there could be six more huffing and tapping their toes toward the back, and he didn’t want to invoke their wrath by making them wait longer—because they would take it out on Elise.
“Hey…” Jack fished his chocolate bar out of the plastic shopping bag, then leaned across the counter and slid it into the gaping pocket of her horrendous Christmas vest. “Hope your day gets better soon.”
She said nothing, just stared down at the chocolate bar poking out of her pocket, so Jack took that as his cue to leave. As he approached the sliding doors some ten feet from the register, he caught Elise watching him in the reflection, expression unreadable.
Six
The Most Wonderful Time of the Year
&
nbsp; “Oh, girl, I’m so sorry.”
“Why?” Elise asked as she crossed the women’s locker room, peeling off her enormous coat, cheeks still bright red from her unfortunate ten-minute stint outdoors. Grace raised an eyebrow at her from the mirror, in the midst of redoing her eyeliner.
“You didn’t see?”
“See what?” December 20th, a day where it was cold and blustery enough outside to warrant a million layers, yet the employee lounge at Bennington’s was hotter than hell. She’d be a sweaty mess before she even made it onto the floor. After snatching her holiday vest out of her locker, Elise stuffed her massive parka, gloves, scarf, and hat inside, then struggled to get it closed.
“The schedule,” Grace said, almost hesitantly. “It was just posted… You know, for the holidays.”
Elise stopped wrestling with her locker—because Grace sounded like she was talking to a dead man walking. Swallowing hard, she raced out of the changing room and stormed across the employee snack lounge to the corkboard where two weeks’ worth of schedules were always posted. Management was cutting it close, seeing as the schedule was a day late already, but juggling so many employees who wanted their Christmases off was probably kind of a handful.
She ignored the soft chatter of the few associates on break, eating from their plastic containers of homemade lunches—Elise wasn’t much of a planner and usually ended up at the in-store McDonald’s. Biting down on her lower lip, she scanned the names on the spreadsheet until she found hers.
“Fuck.”
The conversations stopped, but she didn’t care if she’d offended anyone. Her half-decent mood shot straight to hell when she saw that she was scheduled every single fucking day of the holiday “week”. She had New Year’s Eve off, but worked bright and early the next morning. Christmas Eve—2 PM to close. Christmas Day—noon to close. Boxing Day? Yup, working all day too.
“This is such bullshit.” Already on the verge of crying, she could hear the wobble in her voice. Working almost every single day in December had left her nerves frayed and her patience shot, and now she had to work all the busiest days of the year on top of that?
Her watery gaze searched for the signature of the manager, the one responsible for this fuckery, and she snorted like a bull in the arena when she saw Penelope’s name. Of course. Of fucking course. She’d known she had a boatload of punishment pending after skipping out on Black Friday, but this was getting excessive. That complaint from the guy Jack had helped her with must have sealed her fate.
Lips quivering, she stormed back to the locker room, where Grace was finishing up with her lip gloss. Her friend made a face, somewhere between pity and relief—relief that she didn’t have such a monstrous work schedule over the next two weeks, probably.
“I’m sorry, Elise.”
“It’s fine,” she managed, slipping into her holiday vest and wiping under her eyes. “It’s fine. I’ll just make a lot of money. That’s all.”
“Sure.” Grace capped her gloss and tossed it in her locker. “See you out there. I’m with you in toys today.”
“Okay.”
Once she was gone, Elise kicked the nearest locker with all her might, then took a few extra minutes to calm down: wipe the tears away, wait for the colour to drain from her cheeks, and swallow her anger. When she finally did emerge onto the salesfloor, there was Penelope with her pen and clipboard—and a snippy lecture about the importance of punctuality.
As soon as he realized it was his ex-wife’s name on his cell’s call display, Jack pulled his grocery cart to the side of the aisle and answered immediately.
“Gloria… Hey,” he said in a hushed voice. “Is everything okay? Is Maya okay?”
Normally Gloria was more of a texter, not a caller, unless there was an emergency. If something was wrong with his daughter, who was supposed to come to his place on the 23rd and stay until Boxing Day, then Jack would abandon his groceries in a second, hop in the car, and break all the local speed limits to get to her.
“Maya’s fine,” Gloria told him, though he could hear the thickness of her voice—something definitely wasn’t right. “It’s my mom. She’s… You know she isn’t doing well.”
Jack exhaled deeply as he rubbed at the prickly winter scruff on his cheek. “Christ, Gloria, I’m sorry.”
Her mom had been fighting various forms of cancer for about five years now, but it was only in the last few months that things really seemed to be deteriorating. There were a few instances where Jack had had to take Maya during the week, using up his few sick days and vacation days, so Gloria could fly down to Florida and be with her mom, fearing that that time was the last time. It hadn’t. The old woman, who had never particularly liked Jack, always pulled through, and for that he was glad. This time, however, something felt different.
“She’s… Oh, Jack, I’m so sorry to do this,” Gloria rambled. She sounded like she was crying—a sound that broke his heart, divorce or no divorce. “They think this will be her last Christmas. For real this time.”
“Fuck.”
“And, y-you can say no, but everyone is going to be with her for Christmas…” Jack closed his eyes tight, already knowing where this was going before she said it. “I want Maya to be able to say goodbye to her abuela before she passes, and it would mean so much to my mom if she had all her grandkids there for Christmas. I know we agreed you would have her this year—”
“Gloria—”
“And I’m really not trying to take her away,” she continued. They’d never created an official custody agreement beyond the fact that they had joint custody. Jack and Gloria had always been able to agree on these sorts of things.
But, god damn it, he didn’t want to this time.
“I promise I’m not,” she cried. “I just don’t know what to do—”
“It’s fine,” he said softly, gripping the shopping cart so that he wouldn’t sink to the ground in the middle of the store. She hiccupped and then fell silent for a few seconds.
“W-what?”
“Maya should be with her grandma,” Jack told her, the pain of each word like yanking out his own teeth. “I know how hard this is for you. I’m not going to…” Be a huge asshole and deny a dying woman the chance to see her granddaughter? “I think she should go.”
“I know she’s been looking forward to Christmas with you,” Gloria said. Jack’s grip tightened on the cart.
“Yeah, I have too. But… It’s fine.”
She didn’t extend a Florida invite to him, but Jack didn’t want it. He got along great with Gloria—less so with her family. No point in making a tough time worse by rehashing old dramas.
“Jack, I owe you so much.”
“Look, I’m at the grocery store,” he said tightly, hoping she couldn’t hear the way this affected him. “Can I call you later? I still want to see her before you go. I… I’m trying to get her that Miss Molly doll. It’s sold out everywhere, but I’m really trying.”
“It’s all she ever talks about,” his ex said with a watery laugh. “I hear it’s nearly impossible to find.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, well, let’s just talk later.” She sniffled noisily. “Call me and we’ll coordinate. I want you two to see each other before we go, and I’ll pay for you to send her gifts down to my brother’s.”
He wanted to argue, to insist he could pay for it himself, but he couldn’t be on the phone with her anymore—not without breaking down. So, he offered a terse goodbye and hung up.
Jack stood there in the cereal aisle, two boxes of Maya’s favourite already sitting in his cart. With trembling hands and a head steadily filling with fog, he grabbed them and set them back on the shelf. With a few hard blinks, some of the fog cleared, and he pushed onward to shop for a holiday for one—more determined than ever to find that damn doll so Maya’s Christmas would go off without a hitch, whether he was physically with her or not.
Seven
D-Day
Madness reigned before the Christ
mas Eve shift even started. First, the parking lot was so packed that Elise had to park in the suburbs and walk fifteen minutes to Bennington’s, sometimes through thigh-high snowbanks. Second, navigating the parking lot on foot was a safety hazard; she was nearly hit three times, each time earning her an excessive amount of honking from the distracted driver behind the wheel. Once inside the store, she’d contemplated turning around and going home. Never before had she seen so many people in one place that wasn’t zoned for stadium-sized crowds.
Why weren’t they all at home tonight? They’d had a whole month, at least, to shop. Her mom usually finished Christmas shopping in September, for goodness’ sake.
It took Elise twice as long as normal to get back to the staff room, as navigating the crowds proved challenging at every turn. Her only flickering moment of solace, of happiness, was coming face-to-face with those starting their shifts at the same time as her. There was an unspoken bond between all the employees working that afternoon—a camaraderie akin to that forged in times of war and strife. For Christmas Eve at Bennington’s was indeed a battleground, associates against panicked last-minute shoppers, and it was a skirmish Elise intended to survive.
Holiday vest on, hair pulled off her face, Elise joined her fellow minimum-wagers as they left the staff room unified at the start of the shift. Immediately the can-do attitude melted away. No longer could she slip through the masses unnoticed. Elise had the vest on. She was fair game for everyone. Head down, she beelined for the toy department, trying not to make eye contact along the way. As shitty as it was to be working Christmas Eve, for once the department had six other people working too.
Every cash register was open. Every department was stocked. Every manager was on duty.
