The Hundred Gifts

by Jennifer Scott

  “I’m fine!” Bren called again, going for cheery, but sounding as manic and desperate and confused as she felt.

  “I’ll just let you go. I’m sure Kelsey and I will call on Christmas Day.”

  But Christmas Day seemed forever away.

  “Wait,” Bren practically shouted. “What about Pavlina? You’re sounding awfully close. I mean . . . do you have plans with her? Those kinds of plans? The big kind? You’re not thinking of making things permanent, are you?”

  There was a pause on the other end, during which the woman on the other side of the door knocked again, only this knock sounded suspiciously like a pound.

  “Ma’am, there is a line out here. I’m afraid if you don’t come out, I’ll have to call security.”

  “I’m naked, okay?” Bren shouted, and then blushed with embarrassment again as the silence from Kevin’s end grew even longer.

  “Listen, Mom. About me and Pavy. It was a crazy time, and I meant to tell you about it. But we couldn’t wait. We are just so connected to the universe together. You know what I mean? It was a whim. I barely even told Kelsey.”

  “Told Kelsey what? What crazy time?”

  There was a longer pause, during which the pounding on the other side of the door seemed to get echoey and faraway. In that moment, Bren wouldn’t have cared if the woman busted down the whole door. She slid from the bench to the floor, aware that anyone looking under the door could see her nearly bare bum and not caring. She attempted to hug her knees to her chest, but her stomach made that impossible, so she simply bent them, pressing her back into the mirror.

  “What crazy time?” she repeated, this time her voice low and cold as it left her lips.

  “Mom,” Kevin said, and she had a wild moment of wondering where his patronizing laugh was now. Was craving it, really. Hoping he would chuckle and tell her she’d misunderstood everything. “Pavy and I, um . . . well, we kind of got married already. Maybe.”

  Bren tingled from top to bottom. Suddenly she was cold, too cold, and her vision felt wonky, like she might faint. “Married? And your sister knew?” was all she could whisper.

  “Barely,” he repeated.

  Bren felt the hold slip on her calm. It didn’t help that the Saints clerk was still hammering away at the fitting room door, and that Bren possibly might have also been hearing voices of other women—impatient shoppers—out there. “How can someone barely know something? Either she knew or she didn’t. And how does someone kind of maybe get married, anyway?” she snapped.

  “We’re not even sure if it’s totally legit,” he said. “Me being American, her being Czech, neither of us being Italian. I told you it was crazy.” He laughed again, but it had lost some of its cockiness. At least he had the decency for that. “It’s not a big deal, Mom.”

  He sounded like a little boy. Like a little boy, guilty of something. Like the time he cracked Gary’s windshield with a baseball. Or the time he put a hole in his bedroom wall. Guilty and afraid to admit what he’d done, trying to downplay it by making Bren sound so unreasonable.

  It was enough to send her completely over the edge.

  “Ma’am, I’ve called security,” the voice said.

  Bren struggled to standing, whipped the door open, and snarled, “Call the FBI for all I care. I’ve got bigger problems than whether or not I’m hogging the dressing room.” She slammed the door on the clerk’s shocked face, barely even registering the glares of at least a half dozen women clutching armloads of clothes standing just behind her. She pulled the lock and put the phone back to her ear.

  “How can you say it’s not a big deal, Kevin Joseph? Marriage is a very, very big deal. And you’re barely eighteen years old.”

  “I didn’t mean that—”

  “And the fact that you don’t think it’s a big deal makes it plain that you are too young to be married. Not to say anything of the fact that you think you are only sort of and that your sister barely knew. Do you even hear yourself talking right now? Do you sound like a married man?”

  “Mom, you’re freaking out about—”

  “No, you don’t. You sound like a boy. And I don’t care how connected you and Pavy and whoever the others are to each other or to the universe or to a cow in the river.”

  “What others? Calm dow—”

  “And I don’t care how romantic it was or wasn’t in Spain or if your time in Rome was crazy or if monkeys are giving you goddamned piggyback rides in Cozy Chang. The fact that you could even sort of get married without your mother there is . . .”

  Bren trailed off. She didn’t even know what word would be the right one to finish with. Bad wasn’t strong enough. She needed something more like reprehensible, only with less of an admonishment-in-court sound to it. Careless? Irresponsible? Mystifying?

  “Hurtful,” she finally said. She gulped, realizing that tears would be coming. Once she was able to wrap her head around this properly, surely they would flow. She was a mother-in-law now. To someone named Pavy who didn’t like shoes. “I’m hurt, Kevin. You’ve hurt me.”

  There was a long silence, in which Bren was aware of two things: one, her breath sounded like thunder in the phone, and two, the knocking had ceased. Both of these things alarmed her, but neither more than the thought that Kevin may have hung up on her.

  “Hello? Are you still there?” she asked, then added, “Young man,” to keep some of her angry edge.

  Finally, he spoke. “Mother Teresa said when you love until it hurts, there is no more hurt, only more love,” he said.

  Bren blinked. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “Listen, Mom, my battery’s about to die. I’ve got to go. We’ll call you when we get to Kelsey’s, okay? We can talk more then.”

  But Bren knew the men of her family. We’ll talk more about this later meant We will never, ever talk about this. She sank back down onto the bench.

  “Okay,” she said. “That’s fine.”

  “And I’ll e-mail you and Dad a picture of Pavy,” he said, and he had the gall to sound completely happy about it. The word hurt might never have been bandied about at all. It had had no effect on him whatsoever.

  “Sure, all right,” she said.

  “Okay, love you, Mom.”

  “Love you, too, Kevin,” she said, though the words were coming out automatically, her thoughts so jumbled she was barely aware of speaking. “And, Kevin?” she asked at the last moment.

  “Yeah?”

  “She’s not sort of pregnant, is she?”

  He laughed, the haughtiness right back in place. “Of course she’s not.”

  “Well, at least there’s that,” Bren said.

  She sat for another long moment after they’d hung up, staring at his contact photo. He was such a handsome young man. No wonder Pavy wanted to sink her claws into him. She’d led him astray. Bren knew that as well as she’d known anything. What type of girl would think it’s okay to marry a man without his family there? A girl who didn’t care a whit about family, that’s what type. Already Bren didn’t like her. She would look at the photo he sent tonight, but it wouldn’t change anything.

  Finally, Bren slid her phone back into her purse and picked up her crumpled jeans from the dressing room floor. They were too tight—she could barely breathe in them—but she no longer cared about rectifying that situation.

  She left the jeans she’d been trying on discarded in a crumpled wad on the floor, stepping into her shoes and shouldering her purse, and then opening the dressing room door and casually walking out as if nothing had ever happened.

  Three ladies stood by, scowling at her with arms crossed angrily and hips cocked to one side.

  “Next,” Bren said, pasting a smile on her face.

  It wasn’t until she was in her car, pulling out of the parking lot, that it dawned on her that all of those women had se
en her in her underwear.

  She stopped the car, leaned her forehead against the steering wheel, and laughed until she cried.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  It was when the square was quiet that she liked it the best. When she and Chuy could take their walk without having to dodge worker bees and snooty shoppers or choke on exhaust. When Chuy could do his business without the fear of some nosy Nelly wanting to put their intrusive hands all over him. It was like nobody understood that a dog his age had to work slowly up to a good poo, that the slightest distraction could make his business creep right back up inside his intestines and that it might be hours before he could find the nerve to have a go at it again. Or, worse, that the nerve would strike suddenly and at a most inopportune time. The only thing that smelled worse than those dratted doughnuts was a spare bedroom full of dog doody.

  At times, Virginia Mash felt guilty about her “relationship” with the shop owners and shoppers around the square. She was hardly an ambassador of goodwill, welcoming one and all to her fine city. But, really, there was so much more city to shop in. The highway led to strip malls, and twenty minutes away, in Kansas City proper, there were shops galore. Twenty more minutes would have them in their beloved suburban malls. They loved their cars so much, why not sit in them on their way to their shopping sprees? Imagine the bliss of juggling cell phone and traffic while headed to a parade of glorious price tags, just waiting to be owned.

  But, reason and rationale aside, she did feel guilty at times. She did worry that she would drive away good business by acting bad. She did know that some of the shop owners—that short, dark-haired woman who owned the children’s boutique on the southeast corner, for example—had children to support. She knew that some of them—the shoe repair couple directly across the way—were trying to carry on generations-old family businesses. She knew that some of them—Bill, the surly antique restorer on the other side of the Hole Shebang—were living out a lifelong dream, after decades of toiling away at faceless corporate jobs until retirement. She knew these things, and they ate at her, and yet she couldn’t help wishing, just a little, on the inside, that their businesses would fail. That they would all pack up shop and leave her be.

  But on days like these, when the square was dead—just a few courthouse government drones smoking on the lawn, the random deliveryman rushing in and out of city hall—Virginia Mash kind of loved it. It was cold outside, true. Too cold, really, for walking around. Even the most dedicated to Vargo chose warmth over supporting local commerce. But the cold didn’t bother Virginia. She could handle much colder than this. Had done so on many occasions, in fact.

  Had done so on the worst occasion.

  But she didn’t like to think about that.

  This day, she’d donned her quilted flannel shirt, the brown and red one that reminded her of Thanksgiving. Hard to believe that just tomorrow, families would be gathering together over their turkeys and stuffing. She had bought Chuy a special can of food, the expensive kind he never usually got. She’d bought herself a frozen turkey dinner. She didn’t see any reason to go out of her way for just the one of her.

  Ernie, oh, how he’d loved Thanksgiving. It was his favorite holiday, truth be told. It didn’t have the hectic overcommercialization of Christmas, he’d always said. It was relaxed and cozy. And there was football. He loved sitting in his robe after dinner watching football, a pie plate balanced on his stomach, a coffee with Baileys steaming on the end table.

  She didn’t often miss Ernie. Or, more accurately, she only ever missed him as he was when they first met. He was kind to her, kind to everyone. But they’d lived through too much together. It had all begun to fall apart at the end. They’d lost each other. To be specific, he’d lost her, but she couldn’t find herself, so how was she to come back to him? She was sorry to see him go—so sorry—and she grieved him deeply. But her heart had already been broken before he went. She didn’t have the capacity to grieve him the most.

  He’d gone quickly and easily in his sleep. He’d looked peaceful when she woke up the following morning and found him there. She’d wondered who he’d found waiting for him on the other side. She was ashamed of herself for being a little bit jealous that he got to know first.

  Chuy had a nearly matching brown and orange flannel dog coat. It was goofy, and too short, not really made for a dachshund, but he was old and his arthritis didn’t always love the cold, even if he himself didn’t mind it. Plus, he was maybe a little bit cute in clothes.

  Virginia wanted to take a long walk today. The kind of walk that stretched out of the square and all the way up toward the business park off State Route 1. If worse came to worst, she would carry Chuy, wrap him up in her shirt. They would keep each other warm that way. But she didn’t think it would come to that. She and Chuy had walked that route many, many times before.

  She hadn’t done it in a long time, though. Maybe since the winter before, even. She couldn’t remember making this trek in the heat recently, which meant that they must not have gone over the summer at all. Funny how Thanksgiving seemed to bring out the nostalgia in her, seemed to make her want to relive old memories. Even the terrible ones.

  As if she didn’t relive the terrible memories enough right in her very own apartment every single day.

  Traffic picked up as she got out of the square, past the majestic historic homes, past the smaller homes in various states of disrepair, dogs, also in various states of disrepair, barking at Chuy, their muzzles pushed through the diamonds of chain-link fences. Chuy occasionally stopped, his ears perked, sniffing the air in their direction, but he rarely barked back. When he did, it had a definite raspy, cantankerous Who do you think you are, talking to me like that? quality to it that made Virginia oddly proud.

  “Okay, boy,” she would mutter after letting him have his say. “No need to be rude just because they are,” and she’d give his leash a soft tug, prodding him to keep moving. “In one ear and out the other.” And on they would continue through the neighborhood and toward the main thoroughfare.

  Truth be told, Virginia Mash preferred the neighborhood surrounding the square over any of the subdivisions in Vargo. The subdivisions were filled with carbon copies of the same house occupied by manicured types, always tapping something into their cell phones. They were the rude ones, the ones who took cooking classes and burned things, thinking nothing of how it would make her apartment smell. She’d had to sleep with the fans running that night, but did any of those women care? Had a single one of them stopped in to apologize? Not that she would have answered the door even if they had, but it was the principle of it.

  She’d called, of course, and left messages for that owner, that red-haired Paula. Several messages. So many that Paula no longer so much as paused when Virginia shouted after her on the sidewalk the few occasions she’d seen her locking up the building and heading home for the night. So many that Paula, when she was finally cornered, Virginia and Chuy taking up camp behind her car, which just happened to be emitting exhaust that would float right up into her living room window, had she been able to pry it open, had called Virginia’s efforts at communication “harassment,” and had threatened to get the police involved.

  Virginia could scarcely believe it. Getting the police involved was her threat. She didn’t love the way it felt coming at her instead of from her. Terrible feeling, actually.

  Not that she was scared of the police. She was an old woman living alone with her geriatric dog—the kind of person police treated like their own grandmothers. Not to mention, she’d complained to them about so many things over the years, they were all on a first-name basis anyway.

  The enormous oak trees thinned out as Virginia and Chuy passed the last house—a brown gingerbread-style house with peeling paint and one shutter missing—and then they turned onto Missouri Trafficway, the business park laid out before them at the bottom of the hill.

  Virginia’s heart began t
o thump harder, and despite her cold fingers, she could feel sweat break out under the flannel. She didn’t like to even look at the building, so why on earth did she make herself come here? Why had she moved to an apartment so near it in the first place?

  As if he could read her thoughts (and she wouldn’t have been surprised to find that he could), Chuy paused and gazed over his shoulder at her. He knew exactly why she’d moved so near it, and so did she.

  “Yes, sir, we are going down there. Don’t look at me like that,” she said.

  He seemed to accept this unpleasant fate and continued his slow march. Virginia followed him, trying to log details about their walk to keep herself distracted. The elementary school had gotten a new slide on their playground since she’d last walked past. Looked like half the school was hanging off of it—she couldn’t make out the kids, but could hear their squeals and see their silhouettes in the sun—which didn’t seem extraordinarily safe to her. The MRI center had gone out of business, as had the little Chinese restaurant next to it. It had been an odd location for a Chinese restaurant, anyway, she’d thought, and they’d put peas in their egg drop soup the one and only time she’d ever ordered it, about seven years ago. Who in their right mind would eat peas in egg drop soup?

  There were three houses in a line on the other side of the street. But they were up high, separated from Missouri Trafficway by a tiny outer road that served only those houses. One of them had been painted recently. And the color was terrible. Baby puke brown, if Virginia had to put a name to it.

  She looked for other things—a new sign marking the beginning of the walking trail that took pedestrians off into the (unsafe, in her opinion) woods, the grand opening of a veterinary center (looked too expensive), and the price of gas at a local gas station (ridiculous)—but no matter how hard she tried not to notice that she was coming up on the cancer center, she couldn’t help feeling it, a tugging in her gut, a dread in her throat, a burning behind her eyes that had nothing to do with the cold or the wind or even the glare of sun high up in the crisp sky.