“That was so awesome! The producers won’t let me out on that thing anymore. Insurance costs. But I’ve got some ATVs that are even more fun. You should come out sometime.”
“No. Thanks. But Tyler would probably love that,” I said, tamping down the fear of my little boy bouncing off a wild open vehicle. Was there an age limit on those things? “Or something tamer. He’s a good swimmer, and you’ve got that great pool. That water slide. And the rock waterfall would absolutely blow him away. And do you still flood that field in the winter for an ice rink?”
“Every winter. I still host that hockey game on New Year’s Eve.”
“Perfect. Tyler would probably take to ice skating quickly. He’s a great learner.”
“I’m sure he’s a great kid, Cassie, but still. He’s a kid, and I’m not a babysitter. I don’t have the time or the inclination to take on a new generation.”
“I’m not asking you to embrace a generation,” I said. “Just one kid. Reach out to your son. He’s such a good boy, wise for his years and excellent company. Tyler is old enough to have a real relationship with you.”
“Not on my terms.”
“Have you heard nothing I’ve said? You both like toys. You’ll find some common ground.”
“Would you stop badgering me? You know I hate that.” TJ winced, pretending to wipe sweat from his forehead. “Look, we’ll talk about that when he’s drinking age. For now, there’s the matter of you looking pretty darned sassy and me being one lonely guy.” He extended a hand toward me, his eyes glimmering with invitation. How many times had I fallen for those eyes? “What do you say, Cass?”
A knock on the door made TJ flinch.
“TJ?” came a woman’s voice. His head-writer’s voice. Melissa the viper.
“Shit!” He stumbled back, as if he’d been knocked back by a bolt of lightning. Guilt lightning.
I bit back a grin. “Sounds like somebody’s in trouble.”
“Shh. Keep it down.” He motioned me away, frantic. “You can’t be seen in here. Not by Melissa. She knows our history and, well, she’s pretty damned jealous.”
“Is she?”
“Quick. In the closet. Or behind the sofa.”
“No, thanks.” I crossed my arms, amused by his freak-out. This was the reaction of a man who had everything to hide. “Didn’t you say you weren’t involved with anyone?”
“You always were a stickler for detail.” He gestured toward the closet. “Please . . . Just stay in there for two minutes, and I’ll get rid of her.”
“No, thanks.” I raked my hair back and reached down to pick up the foam basketball. “I’m done playing by your rules. Give me a call when you’re ready to talk about Tyler. He needs you, TJ.” I opened the locked door, coming face-to-face with the pert, smooth face of Melissa Diamant, her rhinestone-studded designer glasses reflecting my own angry, red face. She’d risen to head writer and executive producer in the time since I’d left, and Bree and I blamed her for making the show’s atmosphere too cutthroat for Bree to sign a new contract.
“Cassie?” Her hand flew to her face in a dramatic gesture. “Oh, sorry, sweetie. I didn’t know you were here.”
The hell you didn’t.
“We were just discussing the Coit Tower as a phallic symbol,” I said. “What a bold design for your new set. Has that subliminal seduction thing panned out in your ratings, or are people put off by the lack of subtlety?”
She blinked. “We wanted something new for sweeps week.”
Ha! A non-answer, if ever there was one. I turned to TJ and launched the foam ball at him. “We’ll talk later.”
He caught the ball and squeezed it in his hand, having the good grace to look sheepish, for once.
As I walked toward the bus stop, I felt my throat choke with tears, and I wasn’t exactly sure why. Maybe the sex wasn’t worth the entanglement with TJ. Maybe it was disappointment that he wasn’t taking the initiative to be a father to our son. Or maybe it was the realization that my cheerful, madcap home at TJ’s Night no longer existed.
Another family dispersed like dust in the wind.
6
“Mice, Mom! They’ve got mice!” Tyler’s eyes opened wide. His voice was breathless, his moves frantic with adrenaline as he hunkered down under the clothes rack and scrambled toward the scampering creature. Hardly surprising to find mice in this windowless room used for storage at Rossman’s, but Tyler didn’t understand that this was not a playground.
“No, wait!” I cried. “There might be some traps set. Tyler, be careful!” I hitched up my Mrs. Claus skirt and dove under the clothing rack after him. “Tyler, come back now, honey!” Heavy raincoats slapped at my face as I crawled after him.
“Aaaw! He got away,” he groaned.
Ducking my head, I moved in the direction of his voice and crawled out from under the hanging clothes to a pair of shiny black boots. Not Tyler’s cute little curled-toe elfin booties, but man-sized boots topped by red velvet pants.
I sat up and smoothed my hair back, expecting to find one of our Santas. But it was Mr. Buchman, dressed in a Santa suit.
“There’s a little mouse in here, brown and gray. I saw him,” Tyler was telling the corporate hatchet man. “I tried to catch him but he got away.”
“Mmm. They’re known to move rather quickly.”
I stood up and dusted off my Mrs. Claus skirt. “Tyler, you can’t just go chasing a mouse like that. Cornered animals tend to lash out. He could have bitten you. And maybe it was a rat.”
“He was tiny, Mom.” He cupped his little hands down to the size of a walnut. “He won’t bite me.”
“Besides, there might be mouse poison on the floor, or traps set.”
“I think not,” Mr. Buchman said, looking like a lean Santa with his hands on his narrow hips. “There was no mention of infestation in the last maintenance report. I’ll get Mr. Chalmers on it immediately.”
“Can I have it?” Tyler asked both of us. “Can I keep the mouse? Please, Mom.”
“Honey, they have to trap it first. And it’s not like the mice in the pet store. It’s a wild mouse.”
“A wild city mouse.” Mr. Buchman squatted down so that he was face-to-face with Tyler. “A sarcastic, jaded mouse. It probably takes to the streets at dusk and spends its night gallivanting on the town.”
I bit my lips to keep from cracking a smile. So Buchman actually had a sense of humor and a certain way with kids.
“I can help you trap it.” Tyler spread his hands out to Buchman, making his pitch. “I can trap it in a safe way. Like . . . I’ll put a piece of cheese under a box, and the box gets propped up by a stick. And when the mouse goes inside the box, I’ll pull the stick out and the mouse will be trapped in the box.”
Buchman scratched his chin thoughtfully. “A clever design. A humane trap.”
“But you would have to wait here all night until the mouse got to the right spot,” I said.
“Mom . . .” Tyler moaned. “I don’t care. I can do it.”
My son should have been born during Little Rascals times, in the days when kids built wheely carts out of old milk crates instead of sitting catatonic in front of a television to work the joystick of a computer game. He’s so full of inventions, of ways to trap animals so that he can study and love them, of a million uses for the old tires abandoned in alleys or empty cardboard boxes, discarded wooden planks, or the endless Styrofoam packing peanuts that shed tiny electrostatic cling-ons over our carpet, clothes, and skin.
“Young man, I like the way you think,” Buchman was saying. “Would it be possible to take a look at one or two of your designs for this mousetrap?” He swung around to me. “I imagine I can delay notifying maintenance until after we’ve tried a humane approach.”
I winced slightly, imagining the reaction among the salesclerks when word got out that we were having an infestation.
“Now, Mum . . .” Mr. Buchman cocked an eyebrow. “You can’t blame the boy for trying to build a better mou
setrap.”
“I can do it,” Tyler vowed. “I’ll start working on it right now.”
“Excellent.”
A group of clerks rolled a rack in through the door, and the three of us turned toward them with conspiratorial grins.
“Well, then . . .” Mr. Buchman straightened his red coat. “Santaland awaits, doesn’t it?”
It was November 25, the day after Thanksgiving. Not only the busiest shopping day of the year, but also the opening of Rossman’s Santaland. Definitely an odd time for the hatchet man from Chicago to be playing Santa.
“Mom, do you have any sticks?” Tyler dropped to the floor to look under the racks again—one last search for the mouse. “What about boxes?”
“We’ll see.” I pulled him up, put my hands on his shoulders, and guided him alongside Buchman toward the door. “I’m surprised to see you suited up, Mr. Buchman, especially on the biggest shopping day of the year. Is this part of the Rossman’s challenge?”
“No, actually, it’s more like triage. When Ms. Hayden informed me that we had two Santas down with the flu, I didn’t see any alternative but to suit up, as you so aptly put it. I do practice what I preach, you know.”
“Well, good luck deciphering the wishes of good boys and girls,” I told him.
He smiled, gesturing for Tyler and me to go on the escalator ahead of him. “Ah, but the bad ones are much more challenging, are they not, Ms. Derringer?” This man was surprisingly fresh. He leaned closer to Tyler and asked, “And what do you want for Christmas this year, young man?”
Tyler turned back, grinned, and answered, “There’s nothing like cash.” Just like Sally Brown in my favorite video.
Tyler’s answer and Buchman’s horrified expression made me laugh out loud. “He’s echoing Sally in the Peanuts show. You know, A Charlie Brown Christmas?”
“Peanuts?”
“You know . . .” I helped him out. Maybe they didn’t have Peanuts in England. “Snoopy and Charlie Brown?”
“Ah . . . yes, the rap singers.”
“No, they’re not!” Tyler giggled as he leaped from the top of the escalator to the landing. “They’re cartoon characters.”
“Of course they are. Charlie Brown is the boy who owns Mickey Mouse, is he not?”
Tyler giggled again.
“I have to ask, Mr. Buchman. Are you married?”
“My grandmother would call that a cheeky question, but the answer is no. Not anymore.”
Which meant that he had been married. Always better. Divorced men usually weren’t so idealistic about relationships. “Any children?”
“Not that I know of.” He coughed, then glancing up the escalator at Tyler, pursed his lips together. “Actually, that’s not true. There are none, I’m certain of that.” He coughed again. “Why do you ask?”
“It’s just that you seem to know how to talk with kids. You seem to have experience.”
“Yes, well, my sisters will be pleased to hear that all the forced exposure to their little buggers has amounted to something.”
Tyler jumped off the escalator at the top and whirled toward us. “I know! I can use one of those cardboard things from toilet paper.”
“Beg pardon?” Buchman squinted.
“The mousetrap, he’s still trying to think of ways to build it.”
“Ah. You need a dowel or a spindle.” Buchman nodded. “So then, we must fetch you some toilet paper.”
A family with grade-school-age kids turned and stared at us, Mr. and Mrs. Claus and an elf, and I realized how odd it must look, this North Pole family with Santa shouting something about toilet paper. I bit my lower lip to keep from smiling, keep from enjoying Mr. Buchman’s sense of humor. If I didn’t watch out, I’d actually have myself believing that he was a nice guy.
7
Over the next few days a festive atmosphere took over Santaland, with Mr. Buchman leading the way, counseling and cajoling children. He thought of ways to move the queue faster when the line grew long. He made arrangements so that each child would receive a free Rossman’s balloon at the end of the line. He ignored overbearing parents but wasn’t beyond acting silly to make their children feel comfortable. Two other Santas also saw children around the other side of the Christmas ice mountain, comforting older men, both with grandchildren of their own, but something about Santa Buchman kept drawing me back to his side of the mountain.
When a little girl brought a long wish list with toys cross-referenced with page numbers from the Neiman Marcus catalog, he squinted at the pages, pretending that the mention of the rival store hurt his eyes.
After she jumped off his lap, I took her aside to talk about the real meaning of Christmas. Not that I had a definitive answer, but I knew that Christmas wasn’t about receiving twenty-eight doll sets and electronic robots, and I hated to see this little girl setting herself up for major disappointment.
“Jenny’s a planner,” her mother said. “You can see she’s got strong sense of organization.”
“That’s a great skill, and I’m sure Santa appreciates the work you put into this,” I said, staring intently at Jenny. “But can you try to picture Christmas morning? What one toy would you like to see under the tree? What toys will you play with, day after day?”
Jenny picked the two dolls at the top of her list. “But I do want them all,” she said. “I really do.”
“She knows what she wants,” her mother said proudly.
Watching them go, I felt a twinge of guilt over the fact that I couldn’t afford to get Tyler the two video games he wanted. Couldn’t afford them but also didn’t want to perpetuate an electronic Christmas that cost more than a hundred dollars for two small disks for a five-year-old. I worried that I was failing my son, that he’d be disappointed on Christmas morning. In years to come, would he look back on this Christmas and talk longingly of the gift that Santa forgot, the toy that didn’t arrive? The real question was, what did a parent need to give her child for Christmas?
Buchman stepped down from his platform, escorting a boy down the stairs. “Can’t save them all, though, it’s a pity,” he said in my ear.
I realized he was right, but there was one Christmas gift my son needed . . . something that he would remember and cherish in years to come, and if I was going to provide that, I needed to make some arrangements.
I decided to take Tyler out of school and take him right to TJ’s studio—a forced meeting, but even TJ wouldn’t be so coldhearted as to deny a little boy to his face. I wanted a commitment from TJ, a promise to spend one afternoon a week with his son, and a plan for them to do something special at Christmastime, a memory Tyler could hold on to forever.
That night, after we’d changed out of our costumes, I guided Tyler toward the escalators, putting an arm over his shoulders. “I have a surprise for tomorrow. Instead of school, we’re going to go to your dad’s studio. You’ve always liked that, right?”
“Sure,” he said. “But the most important thing . . . Can we stop and check my mousetrap on the way out? I’m sure there must be something there.”
So far he’d gone four days without a nibble on the dried-out cube of cheddar. “Okay,” I said, mentally calculating that it wouldn’t hurt to catch the next streetcar, since we could sleep a little later tomorrow.
On our way into the storeroom we ran into Buchman, who seemed to be on his way out. “Ah, Master Tyler, it appears your invention has made some progress.”
Tyler’s eyes popped wide. “I got him? Is he there?”
“Not quite yet.” Buchman winced. “But he’s made off with your cheese.”
“He took the bait?”
“Come have a look,” Buchman said, leading Tyler off to the corner, like two naturalists tracking elk through the plains.
As they hunkered over Tyler’s trap and speculated over ways to secure the bait, pondered other types of bait, and tried to track which route the mouse had exited, I considered the dilemma I’d be in if they did catch this mouse. Small dogs wer
e allowed in our building, but I could only imagine the reaction of my landlady to the adoption of a department-store mouse.
Then again, my son had constructed a trap out of cardboard, tape, and string—hardly a solid, mouse-proof trap, despite Tyler’s labors to double-tape everything and surround it all with a circle of Elmer’s glue. Although the trap was flimsy, I was proud of my son’s efforts and ingenuity. This was something TJ needed to experience for himself, to marvel over the enthusiasm and craft of a five-year-old inventor. Once TJ got to know the little person Tyler was becoming, I knew he would fall in love with him, too.
The next day started lazily as thick fog rolled in and seeped onto neighborhood streets, turning the bright purple storefront of a Haight Street store into a milky pink and covering the signs for Cha Cha Cha and the Red Victorian Hotel that Tyler always tried to read through the fog as we passed. As we rode the streetcar to the studio I rehearsed my formal speech for TJ, determined to hit on all the important points as I pleaded Tyler’s case.
In some ways I felt like I was in for the battle of my life, securing a father for my son. But I knew how important it was; I remembered how much I missed having a father. It still hit me at times. A few years ago when I attended a wedding with TJ, the band started playing “Daddy’s Little Girl” and the bride rushed into her father’s arms on the dance floor. I stood alone, watching with a lump in my throat. So corny for everyone to watch as they swayed and talked into each other’s ears, but it took me back to that empty feeling, the nights when I’d stretched out in bed and stared up at the ceiling and imagined my father a prince or at least a wealthy, kind man who would come and whisk me away from the crazy instability that orbited Agate.
I’d shared those fantasies a few times, telling Bree and Jaimie about the scenarios I’d made up of Dad flying us off to a ski resort in the Swiss Alps or a Caribbean island for an exciting vacation. Jaimie was always sympathetic, Bree not so enthused.
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