Candy Cane Calaboose

by Spaeth, Janet

  Usually she was up early, quick to get ready for her busy day and always the first one at the mall. What was happening to her? She hadn’t overslept in a couple of years. Crazy dreams had haunted her sleep, dreams filled with dancing candy canes and prisons made of sweets.

  And Mike. He’d been in all of her dreams, all night long.

  Once when she was in high school, studying French, her teacher had told her that when she dreamed in French, she could be assured that she had total command of the language, that she totally understood it. What did that mean when she dreamed about Mike?

  She’d never dreamed in French anyway, she told herself as she slurped down a gulp of too-hot coffee, so she’d never had the chance to test the hypothesis. She needed to wake up and quit worrying about such inane stuff.

  Customers were already browsing through the sales racks as she slipped into her spot behind the cash register at Trends.

  Selma glanced at her curiously. “Oversleep?”

  Abbey nodded. “I couldn’t believe it myself.” She busied herself with rearranging the display of glittery necklaces and earrings. “I guess there’s something about winter that makes me want to hibernate.”

  Her associate snorted inelegantly. “There’s something about working sixteen-hour days that makes you want to hibernate.” Selma put her hand over Abbey’s and stilled her active fingers. “Quit dinking around with that stuff and look at me. You need to take a break. You’re working too hard and too long—”

  “It’s Christmas,” Abbey replied, as if that explained it all.

  “So go have a Christmas. Even a couple of hours. Go shopping. Drive around and look at the lights. Sit at home and watch that Christmas special with Charlie Brown and Snoopy.”

  As Selma spoke, Abbey felt a hunger rise in her, almost palpably. She wanted to shop, to look at lights, to watch Charlie Brown with his pitiful little tree.

  She nodded. “I will. I promise. Tonight I’ll take a break.”

  Selma looked at her with unsure eyes. “You’d better. A promise is a promise, and I’m holding you to it. You’re missing the best part of Christmas, hanging out inside this mall day in and day out.”

  “Okay, okay, you’ve made your point!” Abbey cried with exasperation. “I’ll do it, I promise!”

  ❧

  “It’s four o’clock,” Selma said pointedly when the afternoon rush had tapered off.

  “I know. Did you want a break?” Abbey began sizing the sale blouses.

  “Yes, I do, but not for me. For you. You promised.”

  “And I will.” Abbey stooped to pick up a blouse whose hanger had broken. “Selma, can you get another hanger for this?”

  “I’m going to keep after you until you go,” Selma warned. “Brianna will be here in less than an hour, and then you have no excuses, M’lady.”

  “But who—”

  “I don’t know because I’m not going to listen to your question so I can’t answer it. But you are going to go. How do I know? Because I can be the world’s biggest pain in the neck when I need to.”

  Abbey grumbled under her breath.

  “I heard that,” Selma snapped. “I’m not sure what you said, but I can’t think it was nice. Now go.”

  “All right.” Abbey gave in grudgingly. “But first I’m off to grab a bite to eat. I’m just running down to that pretzel place, then I’ll be back to do those markdowns.”

  Selma barred her way. “You will not. You promised me you were going to take the evening off, and I’m holding you to it. Brianna will be in to cover tonight, and there’s that high school student backing her up. The store will be fine tonight. Go get some R & R.”

  Abbey couldn’t summon the strength to argue. “You win. I’ll be back tomorrow morning.”

  “Good. Now, at the very least, I want you to promise me you’ll get in your jammies with some popcorn and veg out in front of the tube. Either the Peanuts special or It’s a Wonderful Life.” Selma almost pushed her into her coat.

  “They might not be on tonight,” Abbey protested lightly.

  “Ha. It’s December. They’ll be on.” Selma’s laughter followed Abbey as she left the store.

  ❧

  Mike smiled as he stopped at the door to Trends. He’d come to see if Abbey wanted to go back to Golden Meadows, but Selma’s voice had stopped him. He was glad he hadn’t barged on in.

  Abbey didn’t even see him as she swept out with her coat on. That was good. She needed to get away for awhile, and it didn’t matter where she was going: home, grocery store, Laundromat. Just as long as she wasn’t living her life here in the mall.

  He’d seen the little lines that were beginning to etch themselves around her eyes. She was far too young for that hard-worn look. Exhaustion radiated from her like an aura. Abbey clearly needed someone to make her leave the mall once in awhile, someone to insist that she take some time to herself.

  That’s why he wanted her to go with him to Golden Meadows. That’s why he was going to ask her to go to dinner with him tomorrow night. She was a child of the heavenly Father, and she deserved time to relax. That’s why he was taking her away.

  And it had nothing, nothing at all to do with the way her gray eyes made him feel suddenly warm and protective.

  ❧

  Her car sputtered and bucked. Abbey’s eyes darted to the dial on the dashboard. Gas. She’d forgotten gas.

  Luckily the station by the mall was open, and she basically coasted into the bay.

  “Fill ’er up?” the attendant asked.

  “Oh, no, I can—” she stammered in confusion. Then she realized she had driven into the full-service bay. A slow smile crossed her face. “No, go ahead. Fill it up.”

  It felt nice to let someone do this simple task for her. She leaned against the headrest and felt the tension try to leave her body. And she felt the resistance of habit. Go. Do. Get busy.

  They were hard habits to let go of.

  “Don’t forget to plug in tonight.”

  The voice of the station attendant startled her. “What?”

  “Plug in tonight. Supposed to be eighteen below.” He clasped his hands together and rubbed them briskly. “Already twelve below.”

  She thanked him for the reminder. Minnesota winter evenings were sometimes so cold that cars needed block heaters so they’d start in the morning. Born and bred Minnesotan, Abbey thought briefly that any car without the plug hanging out of the front grillwork looked odd.

  She paid for her gas and headed home. Popcorn and a television movie did sound heavenly. If she tried really hard, she might be able to get into this relaxing stuff.

  But success isn’t measured by how much you’re relaxed, a nasty little voice whined inside her head. It’s measured by how much you’ve achieved, and you’re not going to achieve anything by lolling around the house.

  One night, she told herself, just this one night. It was an experiment to see what it was like.

  The wind whistled around her ears as she dug the plug-in out of the snow bank. The fellow at the gas station was right: it was already cold enough tonight to plug in her car. She hurried through the task and was glad to get inside to the warmth of her small house.

  One of these days she’d actually do something to decorate the inside. The house was still painted the same bland off-white it had been when she’d bought it. The furniture was, to put it bluntly, practical, and that was all. It was the same couch, chair, bed, and table that she’d had when she was in college.

  But before she committed herself to anything, she would think about what kind of furniture she wanted. And that took time. She didn’t have time.

  She shed her suit and wrapped a thick terrycloth robe around her. Popcorn, then the television.

  Abbey pulled open first one cabinet, then another. They seemed to gape at her. Where was the popcorn? Didn’t she just buy some? She shook her head as she realized that she had last bought popcorn nearly a year ago.

  “Okay, no popcorn.” She shut
the last cabinet door, perhaps a little harder than necessary, and opened the freezer. It was well-stocked with frozen dinners. “And this, my friends,” she intoned to an imaginary group of visitors, “is what the larder of the busy career woman is like. Cabinets are empty while the freezer is stocked.”

  She’d make a list, she decided, and put everything she needed on it. She returned to the bare cupboard shelves. It was amazing how empty, how totally empty her shelves were.

  “Okay,” she continued aloud, “first item: everything.”

  She microwaved a macaroni and cheese dinner, figuring that was as close to popcorn as she was going to get, and sat down in front of the television with the remote control.

  Click.

  The screen lit up with fuzzy static. She tried another channel. It was no better. And on through all the channels, still no picture.

  “Stupid cable company,” she muttered, getting up to shuffle to the phone and call them.

  Abbey punched in the numbers with a vengeance. “Hello, this is Abbey Jensen. My cable isn’t working.”

  She gave them the pertinent information, then paused, aghast, at what she heard. “I haven’t had cable since when? No, I guess I haven’t turned on my television since then. Oh, no, no need to come out. No, I don’t want the service started again. Thanks, though.”

  She hung up the phone and stood motionless, staring at the mute television screen.

  She hadn’t had cable in five months. She’d been disconnected when she hadn’t responded to a switch in service. And she’d never realized it.

  Abbey sank to the kitchen chair beside her. She didn’t know she was out of popcorn, and she didn’t even know she didn’t have cable TV. Could it be worse?

  How had her life gotten so far away from her? No wonder she spent so much time at Trends. She didn’t have a life at all.

  That wasn’t true, she argued with herself. She had a VCR, and she could rent a movie and watch it. The more she thought about it, the better the idea sounded. There was a video store just around the corner. Actually, she could even walk there.

  She quickly changed from her robe to a pair of woolen pants and her thickest sweater and piled on a coat, boots, mittens, and hat. She stuck her VideoVideo card in her pocket and headed out.

  The crisp air froze the inside of her nostrils. That, she told herself as she strode enthusiastically through the December night, was one of the best things about living in the north. Where else could you experience that?

  The cloudless sky sparkled with a few random stars that were powerful enough to overcome the lights of the city. Abbey stood still and tried to pick out Orion’s belt and the Big Dipper.

  A sudden memory shot into her mind, like a long-forgotten message. She had been tiny, two or three perhaps, and on such a winter night as this, her parents had bundled her up and driven her out of town, far away from the streetlamps and house lights, to the absolute darkness of the countryside where her father pulled the car over.

  Abbey could still remember the rush of cold air invading the heated car as they took her out. And there, as her mother held her, still wrapped in too many layers of quilts, her father pointed out the constellations in a sky that seemed to have too many stars.

  “This is Cassiopeia. See her throne? Orion the Hunter: that’s his belt, those three stars in a row. The Pleiades, the Seven Sisters. The North Star is at the end of the Big Dipper’s handle. Sailors used it to navigate by, and it’s still the first star our eyes see in the heavens.”

  On and on he talked, naming the magical constellations, most of which her young eyes could not take in, but even now she remembered her mother’s warm breath on her cold cheek and her father’s calming voice. She was cocooned in their love.

  She missed them.

  A tear threatened to slide down her face but began to freeze. Abbey swiped at it with her gloved hand. There was no time for this foolishness. And it would never do to step into VideoVideo teary.

  The video rental store was so bright her eyes hurt after being in the dark night. A teenager, so tall and thin that his long-sleeved VideoVideo shirt could cover only part of his arms, approached her. “Can I help you find something?”

  Abbey sniffled. The problem with that marvelous feeling of breathing in icy air is that when she got into a warm room, her nose began to run. “Yes. I’m looking for It’s a Wonderful Life.”

  “Right here.” The boy stretched one long arm and snagged a video from the Christmas display at the register. “Can I see your card?”

  She pulled the card from her pocket and handed it to him. The clerk frowned. “This expired three years ago.”

  “You’re kidding me!” Abbey snatched it from his hand with more gusto than she intended. “How can that be? Why, I just—” She sighed. It had been that long. “Fine. I’ll get a new one.”

  “Okay. I need a picture ID.” The teenager handed her a clipboard with a pencil dangling from a grimy string.

  “ID?” she asked blankly. “I don’t have my ID with me. Can’t you just reactivate my old card?”

  “Not after three years. Sorry, but it’s—”

  “Company policy,” she finished for him. “I know, I know.”

  “You know, you could buy it for only $4 more. There’s a special right now, it being Christmas and all.”

  “Oh, I don’t need to—” she began, then stopped. Four dollars, she told herself. Four dollars. Bend, Abbey. Bend and breathe.

  “That sounds like a deal,” she said brightly.

  What’s wrong with me? she asked herself as she hurried home, the video tucked under arm. She’d forgotten the present at Golden Meadows, she’d neglected to put gas in her car, she was out of popcorn and just about everything else to eat, her cable TV bill wasn’t paid, and now her video card had expired.

  What else could happen?

  ❧

  She stared at the VCR. A tangle of cords emerged from the back of it, and somehow they were supposed to be hooked up to her television and who knew what else. Abbey sank to the floor and put her head in her hands as she remembered. She’d bought it, and as she was trying to put it together, she had been called back to Trends.

  And she’d never gotten back to finishing it.

  Well, she told herself, it can’t be brain surgery. She bravely took a cord and studied the back of the television. There was no place that it fit. She checked the other end of the cord. Nope.

  If she had the directions, she could figure this out. But she had no idea where they might be.

  Call Mike. She knew she could do that. He undoubtedly knew how to put one of these monstrosities together, just like he probably put gas in his car, paid his bills, stocked his cupboards, and never let his memberships lapse.

  Or, she told herself, she could do it herself. Not that she had any idea how to do it, but she could certainly sit down and give it a shot.

  Surrounded by mysterious wires and cords, the VCR on her lap and her television turned out so that the back faced the living room, she put it together. It would have been easier with the directions, but it was possible.

  Soon, It’s a Wonderful Life—her own copy—was playing as she curled on the couch, snuggly wrapped in pajamas and robe, a bowl of freshly popped popcorn—purchased at the video store—in her lap. But Abbey was completely unaware of George Bailey’s plight.

  She was sound asleep, snoring lightly, with the remnants of a satisfied smile on her face.

  twelve

  Abbey awoke from her exhausted sleep with the instinctive feeling something was wrong. Had she overslept again? She’d been doing that a lot lately, it seemed, even if only for fifteen minutes. She had her morning regime down perfectly, and the slightest variation threw her off. She glanced at the alarm clock.

  It was still early. The alarm wasn’t set to go off for another half hour.

  She knew she couldn’t go back to sleep, but she didn’t want to get up. It was too cold. The only reason it would be this cold was because the power was
out, and the way the window shook told her why.

  Blizzard.

  She sighed and resisted the urge to tunnel deeper into the covers. Instead, she threw back the blankets and shivered as her feet touched the frigid floor. She pulled her thick robe on and tied it tightly, a faint defense against the chilly bedroom.

  The hall, usually brightly sunlit, was shrouded in grayish-white, the color reserved for an intense snowstorm. Abbey padded into the living room and peered at the thermostat. Sixty-four degrees. Not bad. There had been days in August when sixty-four degrees would have seemed like a blessing, she reminded herself.

  A gust of wind made the windows chatter in their frames. This was a major blizzard indeed. It must have just started, because the wind was picking up speed even as she listened.

  She was a good Minnesotan. She knew what to do. The first thing was to determine if it was just her house that was suffering from the power outage, or if it was everyone. She crossed to the window and drew back the curtain.

  The houses on her street could have been lit up like Las Vegas, and she wouldn’t have been able to tell, the storm was that intense. She couldn’t see anything except a wall of white.

  White-out. She hated this part of winter storms, when she couldn’t see more than an inch or two in front of her face.

  As if angry, the wind rattled the panes of glass even more. White snow, once so fluffy and Christmassy, had become suddenly granular and menacing. She couldn’t see past the curtain of white that blew sideways, obscuring even her car.

  Almost idly she thought that she should have put it in the garage last night. Now she’d have to dig it out.

  Then Abbey laughed out loud. At the rate this storm was raging, she’d be shoveling one way or the other.

  One thing was clear: She couldn’t tell if it was just her house or if the entire block was powerless. She checked the phone. It was dead too.

  What she needed now was light and some way to make coffee. She rummaged through her closet until she found what she was looking for. It was a centerpiece she’d gotten as a housewarming gift—from Aunt Luellen, now that she thought about it—and had never used. In the midst of a fuchsia raffia circle studded with oversized fake roses was a huge glaringly pink monstrosity of a candle, with three wicks and a definite strawberry scent. Right now it seemed lovely.