I turned away and dropped the pot into the sink. “My house isn’t as comfortable as this place,” I said, thinking of the living room on Astor Street with its cathedral ceiling, the oak center-hall staircase, the checkerboard wood pattern of the lacquered library floor. “It was my parents’ place.” Full of ghosts and memories. I was still afraid to use the good china, still reluctant to track mud on the patterned wool runner. “I live in two rooms, the bedroom and the den. Sometimes I feel like I’m just visiting, home from college for the weekend and they’re away at the lake house.”
There, I’d said the words, though it seemed so ungrateful. “I must sound spoiled. It’s a beautiful house, really, and you’ve probably read that I’ve got pots of money. I could redecorate like that.” I snapped my fingers. “But I can’t. I haven’t quite figured that one out yet.”
“There’s no rush.” He pulled me against him, surrounding me with his arms. “You’ve got time, and you’re welcome to stay here, always.”
I breathed in the fabric-softener scent of his sweatshirt, grateful to have found this man. Of course, I didn’t want to think about how my parents would have reacted to my involvement with a “Christmas hire” that was a bit of snobbery I’d put behind me. This conscientious, hardworking man was far more lovable than any of the society kids I’d been pushed to date.
“Guess I won’t be getting invited to a sleepover anytime soon,” he teased. “Which is probably good, since I don’t own a pair of pajamas. Haven’t had one since my aunt got me that pair with a Batman cape.”
“Better watch it or you’ll reveal your secret identity. And to think, all this time I might have been sleeping with Bruce Wayne.”
The last full weekend before Christmas brought crowds and camera crews that had most of the Santaland staff working overtime. By Monday morning I felt as if someone had bonked my head with one of those giant cartoon hammers. Turning over in bed, I pressed against Nick, sucking up enough warmth to make the cold dash to the shower.
“Don’t go,” he said. “Stay in bed and go in later with me.”
“Can’t.” I sighed, nuzzling my face against his chest. “The board meeting is Wednesday. I’ve got to prepare.”
“You’ve been preparing for that sucker all your life,” he teased. “If they don’t choose you, they’re blithering fools.”
“I gotta go.”
As I drove to work a few flakes began to fall. I turned on the wipers, gripped the steering wheel, and tried to stave off the tremble that threatened to rock my body. My fear of driving in snow conditions wasn’t quite irrational, but it was highly impractical living in Chicago. I made plans to hire a driver that evening. Ever since my parents’ accident Uncle Len had wanted me to use his service, but it seemed so extravagant to have a driver in a black limo take me everywhere.
I spent the morning in my office, printing presentations that would be covered and bound for Wednesday’s meeting. I grabbed a quick lunch in the store café, then changed into my Mrs. Claus suit.
The accumulating snow had slowed some of our customers, but Santaland was crowded with preschoolers in shiny vinyl boots and puffy coats who dropped mittens and twisted hats as they waited in line. As I moved along the path, talking with the children, I wondered why the line was moving so slowly. When I made it to the front, it was apparent that something had broken down. Gia was sitting cross-legged, leading some kids in a game of rock, paper, scissors, and Kevin nodded as Jennifer from Personnel pointed at a clipboard.
“Finally.” Gia beamed a smile up at me. “Some sanity has arrived.”
“There you are. We just called up to your office but you were gone.” Jennifer grabbed the clipboard from Kevin and thrust it at me. “Here’s a list of some possible replacements. If you want to choose two or three, I’ll call them in immediately.”
“Replacements for what?” I asked, fighting back the feeling of dread.
“For Mr. Smith. He called this morning, said he couldn’t be here during this next week.”
“Mr. Smith?” I wasn’t tracking, but then Jennifer wasn’t winning any communications awards.
She lowered her voice, so the kids wouldn’t hear. “One of your S-A-N-T-A-S.”
“Nick?” The dread twisted into a sharp pain. “What happened?”
“He was a great Santa,” Kevin offered.
“I know, I know,” Jennifer said sadly. “It’s a shame, but we’ll do our best to fill his shoes, and quickly.”
I tried to fight the panic that moved through me, toxic as poison. Where was Nick? What had happened? What could have possibly changed since this morning when I leaned over his bed to kiss him good-bye?
The snow… Could he have been injured? But he was going to take the el to work…
One of the other elves signaled, and Gia jumped up and led two kids from her group in to see Santa. “This is slowing us down already, and it’ll only get worse,” Gia said, moving closer to the rest of us. “Can we put someone like Kevin here into Nick’s place? Then hire an elf?”
Kevin’s face burned red. “Thanks, Gia.”
“That’s a great idea,” Jennifer said. “Should we go with that?”
“Yes,” I said quickly, unable to look at the names on the clipboard. “Go on, Kevin. Get someone to help you find his costume, and Jennifer will take it from there.”
I rushed up to my office to call Nick’s apartment, but there was no answer. And he didn’t have a cell phone.
I paced behind my desk, wondering what could have happened, trying to ignore the sense that this was trouble. Something was wrong. Otherwise, he would be here, down in Santaland, listening to children and making them smile.
There was a knock on the door, and Gia poked her head in. “Mind if I come in? Wow, these digs are not very impressive. You’d think they’d do better for the store manager.”
“The Rossmans don’t go for frills. We pass the savings on to the customer,” I said without looking up from my cell phone.
“And you look awful.” She stepped closer, cocking her head to stare at me. “What happened? Where’s Nick?”
I crossed my arms, hugging myself. “I don’t know.”
“Did you two have a fight?”
“No, nothing like that. I left him sleeping at his place this morning and now…” I shook my head. “He’s disappeared.”
Gia nodded sympathetically. “What an asshole.”
“Looking back, I’m thinking I’m the asshole.”
“It’s not your fault. Granted, we knew there was something mysterious about him. But really, to just disappear when he could be a man and break up to your face.”
“Do you think that’s it? He doesn’t want to see me again?”
She winced. “I don’t know, Meredith. That, or he got called in by his parole officer. Or his wife threatened suicide if he doesn’t come home.”
I moaned, sinking into the leather chair.
“What are you going to do?”
“I want to go over to his apartment right now, see if he’s okay, but since he’s not answering the phone, I doubt he’s there.”
“So what are you going to do?”
I rested my elbows on my desk, sinking into the lowest of lows. “I don’t know. I’m a Rossman. I guess I just go on.”
“I would have a good cry,” Gia said. “You know, sometimes being a Rossman must really suck.”
“It does. It definitely does.”
By the time I left work that night it had stopped snowing. As the driver headed south I could see that most of the side streets had been plowed, sometimes leaving a wall of snow over parked cars. People were out, bundled in hats and mittens and boots, digging out their cars, stomping ice chunks, scraping snow from their sidewalks.
As the driver turned onto Nick’s street, I took out my cell phone, thinking that I’d call Nick one more time, just in case he was inside the apartment. I flipped it open to make the call, then noticed that the volume had been turned down and that I had a messa
ge.
A message from early this afternoon.
“This is the address, Ms. Rossman,” the driver said, turning toward me.
I grabbed my purse and moved toward the door. “Can you wait for me here, please? I don’t know if he’s home.”
The driveway and walk were not shoveled, covered with a pristine sheet of white. My boots sank into a foot of frozen fluff, the Italian leather too thin to provide much protection. I should’ve invested in some Rossman’s vinyl snow boots.
The porch light shone yellow over Nick’s entrance. I headed that way, pressing my cell phone to my ear to listen to the message.
It was him.
“Meredith, honey, I’m so sorry to have to tell you this in a phone message…”
My boots scraped up the steps, marking the virgin snow.
“There’s something I need to do. Something I have to take care of, and it’s going to take a few days.”
I slid my key in the lock and popped the door open to the dark, still kitchen. The only light was a pale glow from the digital clock on the stove, the only noise the hum of the old refrigerator. I stamped the snow from my boots just inside the door and pressed inside. I had to know if Nick had taken his things…if he would really be coming back.
“It came up suddenly and…You gotta know I hate to cut out on you like this. I made the commitment to Rossman’s, and I know it’s a busy time there. I feel bad about flaking on that, but this part is sort of beyond my control.”
His laptop was gone. The mound of papers that covered the desk was removed.
The bathroom counter was bare.
I felt sick. Had I been duped? Was I the deluded one?
“I’ll be back, Meredith. I’ll be back for Christmas. And then I’ll be able to tell you everything.”
“Oh, sure.” My breath formed puffs in the blue darkness as I cast about his bedroom, looking for something, anything that might show he was coming back.
The closet held an empty suitcase and boxes. The top dresser drawer was empty, but the others held jeans, socks, and sweatshirts… his beloved sweatshirts.
I took out his favorite, the red one with Nick’s Bicycle Shop printed on the front. He wouldn’t leave this behind. He was coming back. He’d promised.
The sudden blast of bass guitar riffs startled me. Oscar. A swell of warmth in this very empty apartment.
I tucked the shirt under my arm and headed back to the car. Hadn’t I promised that I’d wait for Nick?
I didn’t like the way he’d handled this, and I was going to give him hell about it when he came back. But for now, I would wait. I would wear Nick’s sweatshirt to bed and hope that he’d be back to reclaim it. Oscar played me out as I locked the door and sank down the snowy steps.
11
“I don’t want to tell you this…” Gia began.
“But you will,” I said without looking away from the computer monitor. I was trying to weed through my e-mail before this morning’s presentation to the board, and I knew it would be better to forget Nick and focus on the meeting right now, but I couldn’t help myself. “Go on, lay it on me.”
“Well, I talked with Jennifer in Personnel, and she says Nick left a message for his final check to be forwarded. To some address in Pennsylvania.”
“Pennsylvania? But he said he grew up in the Midwest. Where in Pennsylvania?”
“Jenny-pie wouldn’t give me the address, of course, but I’m sure she’ll roll over for you.”
Pennsylvania. The only things that came to mind were Dutch pretzels, Amish people riding in buggies, and William Penn, the colonial. And once I’d flown over Pittsburgh and the pilot had pointed out where the three rivers met.
I pressed my fingers to my temples. “I can’t be thinking about Dutch pretzels when I’m presenting to the board.”
“I love those giant pretzels, the hot ones, with lots of salt.” Gia perched on the edge of my desk. “They’re so yummy.”
I shot her a look. “This isn’t about pretzels. Do you have something else to tell me?”
She bit her lower lip, her gold loop earrings jangling as she nodded. The earrings were a bit much for an elf, but at least she’d stuck with the emerald nose stud. “There was this report about an escaped prisoner on TV. And it got me thinking. I went on-line and did some research, and it turns out this guy escaped from prison in Pennsylvania, right around the time Nick and I were hired. Like a week before. You can check it out on-line. The name of the prison is—”
“Don’t you need to get back to Santaland?” I interrupted.
“Yeah, but… Are you saying you don’t want to hear this stuff?”
“I can’t think about it, Gia. It may sound naïve, but I promised Nick that I’d wait for him, wait for his explanation of everything, and that’s what I’m going to do.”
“Oh.” She straightened. “Oh. I get it. You fell in love with him.”
“You need to get back to work,” I told her, logging off my e-mail. “And so do I. I’m next to present to the board.”
“You look like hell,” she said. “Nothing personal.”
“Aren’t you supposed to tell me to give ’em hell?”
Over the years I had developed an ability to switch to autopilot in business matters; I was able to tamp my emotions down and keep them suppressed while I operated at full tilt, presenting a program, thinking on my feet, juggling numbers in my head.
Autopilot helped as I presented my Christmas charity campaign. I made it through the presentation with a modicum of enthusiasm. Even without Nick, my support of our charity programs would not waver. The wish tree had transformed the spirit in our store, and our support of foster children and children from families with financial difficulties took the power of Rossman’s far beyond anything I’d ever imagined.
When I’d finished the presentation and fielded a few questions, Uncle PJ lowered the boom.
“My problem with all of this is the element of social services, which is not germane to the business of retail,” he said, his face emotionless behind the globes of his eyeglasses.
A few other members joined in, sharing his concerns about cost, reputation, and focus of our corporate mission.
“Really, Meredith, if you want to save lives, join the Peace Corps.” That from Marcus Aldridge, who seemed to live in Uncle PJ’s back pocket.
“I’m quite familiar with the business of retail,” I said. “Ultimately, much of our business comes in because of our reputation for giving. But this issue is about more than dollars and cents. It’s about Rossman’s place in the Chicago community…in the world community.”
Uncle PJ frowned. Clearly I was losing him. “Honestly, Meredith, your parents were much more frugal. I’m not sure that they would have approved the sort of spending you’ve already authorized here. Really, darling, you’ve gone overboard here.”
Uncle PJ loved to call me “darling” in that derogatory way.
“Did you even once stop to think what your parents would have said about all this?”
“Actually, PJ, I did.”
Everyone seemed to suck in their breath at my quick reply. Nobody snapped back at PJ Rossman, not even politely.
“My mother was a very pragmatic person. She did not approve of many of the excesses in American society. However, she would not have been able to tolerate the thought of a child going without a single toy at Christmas. If Rossman’s didn’t fund the toys for those foster children, my mother would have taken the money out of our own family budget and paid it gladly.”
PJ’s eyes were unreadable beyond the watery reflection of his wide glasses, so I turned to Uncle Len. “You know that’s true.”
“Yes, yes, that’s how she was.” There was a slight catch in his voice. “Evelyn would have stopped at nothing to make sure the right thing was done.”
“She had a big heart,” Uncle PJ charged. “Not like your father.”
“Actually, I believe my father was the real softy in the relationship. I remember when
I was going off to college. I was accepted at Stanford, but at the last minute I found out that I didn’t get the scholarship I’d applied for. It was an essay competition, and my work wasn’t the best. I worried about how much money this would require of my parents. A huge expense. My mother agreed that it was a pricey institution, but my father just laughed and told me he couldn’t be prouder. He was proud that I got in. As for the expense, he said, ‘It’s only money; we’ll make more.’”
A few of the members laughed.
“I remember him saying that,” Nella Greeley said.
“That was Karl,” Uncle Leonard said. “I used to ask him if he was going to print it in his basement.”
“Yes, well…” When Uncle PJ spoke, the room went dead. “I must say, you’ve certainly presented a substantial body of material to make your case. I suppose your father was right.” His glasses flashed as he turned to me. “It was worth the tuition.”
I blinked, realizing that he was complimenting me, probably for the first time ever.
“Yes, that was an excellent presentation,” Nella agreed.
“Leonard will let you know the results of our votes after we finish up,” someone else added.
The door was opened and I was suddenly thanking them, gathering up my portfolio, and exiting to the hall, where Gia was pacing, the bells on her curly-toed shoes jangling. “Finally, you’re done!”
“Did you come to cheer me on?” I asked.
“Oh my God, no! I wanted to come in and get you, but the secretary wouldn’t let me.” She scowled at Helen, who didn’t seem to notice.
I held my portfolio to my chest. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s Nick. He’s out on Michigan Avenue, acting like an asshole.”
Just as she said the word, my two uncles spilled out of the conference room, followed by a few of the board members.
The Secret Life of Mrs. Claus Page 31
