On Strike for Christmas (22 page)

But wait. The siren was getting closer.

Suddenly he saw a minivan blowing up the street, a patrol car in hot pursuit. Who did the clown think he was, O. J. Simpson? Was he ever going to stop? Wait a minute. That minivan looked familiar. Forgetting all about feeling like a traitor, Rick took off across the parking lot. This picture wouldn't exactly measure up to Olympic gold, but it was as close to gold as he was going to come here in Holly.

 

“Officer, I can explain,” Glen started to say to the angry cop approaching his window. And then he recognized that square jaw and the thin lips. “Oh, no.”

The thin lips got even thinner and pulled down into a frown. “What was it this time, Mr. Fredericks? Did you run out of eggnog?”

“I got the wrong costume for the school program. My little girl's gonna be the only one who's not wearing leaves. They're starting any minute.” The cop didn't look like he believed Glen. “I've got it right here,” Glen rushed on and started to reach for the bag next to him.

“Keep your hands where I can see them,” barked the cop.

“Oh, man, look. I'm not lying. And you know I'm not a criminal. You already ran my license twice, for God's sake. You can check my story for yourself if you don't believe me. The bag's right there.”

“I'm going to ask you to please step out of the car, sir.” Hand on his gun, the officer stepped back.

As Glen got out he caught sight of that damned photographer from the
Herald
, across the street, snapping pictures. “Great. This is just great,” he muttered.

The officer leaned in the car and snagged the bag. He opened it and looked inside, then tossed the bag back on the seat with a disgusted frown.

“Okay, can I please go to the school now?” Glen pleaded.

“As soon as I give you a ticket. Please get back in the car. I'll need your license and driver's registration.”

“Oh, come on!” Glen cried. “The program's going to start. I promised my kid.”

“The sooner you get that information for me the sooner you can go.”

“Oh, man. How about a little sympathy here?” Glen begged as he dug out his license. “You've got kids. What would you have done if you were me?”

“Checked the bag before I left home.”

Glen handed over his license and registration, then swore under his breath as Barney Fife went back to his patrol car. He drummed the wheel while the cop did his thing. His heart was thumping like he was racing down a football field.
Come on, come on, come on!
He was starting to sweat now. He looked at his watch. Okay, the program had started. If the cop gave him his ticket in the next sixty seconds, then if he made it into the parking lot in under a minute, if he ran down the hall…he'd still be almost fifteen minutes late.
Please don't have started on time.

The officer came back with yet another present from the Holly P.D. “You might want to remember that I'm right behind you when you pull out.”

“Thanks,” Glen said between clenched teeth. This was police brutality. Or something. He was going to report this guy.

He pulled out. Slowly. Went down the street. One mile under the limit. Signaled. Turned into the school parking lot. And parked his car in a load zone.

He grabbed the bag with the costume and bolted into the school. Down the hall, turn the corner, past the principal's office, down one more hall, heart pumping, lungs stinging. There was Mrs. Green's room.

And no one was in it.

“Noooo,” Glen bellowed, and collapsed on a little desk. The thing crumpled under his weight and tipped him on his butt. It was the final straw. He lifted his eyes heavenward and roared, “Why me?”

But deep down, he knew. This was like some huge, cosmic plot to ruin him. God was punishing him. First he'd taken his wife for granted, then, only last week he'd…He had to get to confession. He'd go tomorrow, he resolved. If he lived through tonight.

He picked up both himself and the desk, then left the room for the auditorium, where Laura would be waiting to kill him.

The kindergarten class was just filing off the stage when Glen made his way down a row of irritated parents, muttering, “'Scuze me.”

Laura frowned up at him. “Why didn't you answer your cell?” she hissed as he fell onto the seat next to her.

“I was kind of busy,” he hissed back. He looked at the departing forest of trees. “Where's Amy? Did she get to go on?”

“That's what I was trying to call you about. Mrs. Green had an extra costume that she keeps for emergencies. You didn't need to leave.”

He'd risked heart failure, broken the sound barrier, gotten another ticket, and sent his car insurance rates through the roof for nothing. And he'd missed seeing Amy make her speech. He crossed his arms in front of him and began to quietly turn the air blue.

“Glen.” Laura glared at him.

He shut up, polite on the outside, cursing on the inside.

“Hey, sorry you missed seeing your kid,” Mac said to him after the program was over. “At least your wife got pictures of it.” He stuck his cell phone in Glen's face, showing Glen a picture of his son. It was impossible to tell whether or not the kid in the picture was Mac's. Mostly it looked like a brown cardboard tower with legs under it.

They collected Amy, who, like all the other kids was already bouncing in anticipation of cookies and punch. “Did you see me, Daddy?”

Laura was looking at him in disgust. He felt like the world's biggest doof. “You were great,” he said. No lie there. He was sure she was.

They ate cookies and drank gross red punch with the other parents for a while. But then Tyler managed to dump punch all over another kid and it was time to go.

They found the minivan right where Glen had left it. No ticket, thank God. Maybe he just wouldn't tell Laura about the one he got tonight. She'd find out soon enough, and she already had plenty to get on him about. And she was gearing up for it. He could tell by the way she was snapping her gum. He climbed in behind the wheel and braced for the assault.

Sure enough. “Glen, I thought you checked the bag.”

Was every woman given a lifetime supply of salt at birth to rub in a guy's wounds? “Don't start with me,” he warned as they drove out of the parking lot.

“It's probably going be in the paper, you know. Rosemary Charles and the photographer were here tonight.”

“I know,” Glen said between gritted teeth. That would be front page news. And tomorrow she'd have something to say about that, too. Like he needed her telling him he'd screwed up. Like he couldn't see that for himself. Like he didn't already feel rotten. Like this wasn't all her fault in the first place, her and her damned strike. He kept his gaze straight ahead. If he even so much as looked at Laura right now he knew his head would pop off.

“I should have checked the bag.”

Because, of course, she knew her dumb shit husband would screw up? Okay. That was it. He screeched the minivan to a curbside halt and turned to face his wife. “Hey, I'm doing the best I can.” He stabbed a finger at her. “You want things to go the way you want them? You end this dumb-ass strike of yours. Otherwise, you take what you get.”

Laura blinked, then clamped her lips tightly together. From the back seat Amy softly said, “Daddy?”

Great. Now he was like George Bailey in
It's a Wonderful Life,
having a complete meltdown. “It's okay, baby girl. Daddy and Mommy are just having a little talk,” he said calmly, and put them back on the road.

Next to him, Laura looked ready to pop like a string of Christmas lights. Merry Christmas, Glen thought glumly.

They completed the trip home in silence. Glen broke it as they walked in the door. “I'll put Amy to bed.”

“Fine.” Laura bit off the word like it was his head and walked away with Tyler.

He put Amy in her princess jammies, then supervised the tooth-brushing ritual. He almost cried when she said her prayers asking God to bless Daddy. Daddy didn't exactly deserve blessing right now.

Glen tucked her in and stayed on his knees by the bed. It was so small, covered with pink blankets and pillows and stuffed animals. Kneeling there he felt big and clumsy. And dumb—a big, dumb doof.

“Daddy's sorry he blew it and you didn't get to wear the tree costume Grammy made for you tonight,” he said miserably.

She smiled at him, such details unimportant. “I liked being a holly bush.”

“I think Santa's going to have to bring you something special for doing such a good job saying your part. What do you think?”

“I just want my Shopping Babe doll Santa promised,” she said sleepily and snuggled into her pillow.

“Then I know you'll get it. I love you, baby girl,” he whispered and kissed her forehead. That was one thing he wouldn't screw up anyway.

Laura was still in with Tyler when Glen came out of Amy's room, so he went downstairs and hid out in the family room, aiming his remote at the TV like a gun and flipping channels. She never came downstairs and he didn't go up. When he finally went to bed, she was turned with her back to his side. He doubted she was asleep, but he didn't ask. Instead, he just slipped into bed and lay with his back to hers. He didn't like lying facing this way. It felt unnatural. So, what else was new? His whole life felt unnatural.

Horrible dreams chased him through the night. In one he was in stocks in the Green, wearing nothing but a pair of red long johns. Everyone he knew had gathered there to throw snowballs at him, and Laura stood at the head of the line, stuffing a rock inside her snowball. Right in back of her stood his mom, who scolded, “I went to all that trouble to make costumes for you and look what you did!” And then he was out of the stocks and floating alone on an ice floe somewhere in the Arctic. All he had was his burned Christmas cookies. He kept hollering for Laura, and his voice got hoarser and weaker. Finally he lay down on the ice floe. “Just let me die.”

The words were still on his lips when he woke up. And the bed was empty.

He pulled on socks and jeans, grabbed a T-shirt, and went downstairs, anxious to negotiate a truce. They'd never before gone to bed mad. This had to get fixed.

The kids were in the family room, doing their Saturday morning cartoon ritual, and Laura was in the kitchen, on the phone, probably talking to that reporter from the
Herald
. She glared at him, effectively zapping his desire to make up. She'd thrown him in the deep end of the pool and now she was acting like it was his fault he couldn't swim.

If he stayed here one more minute, he was going to…Okay, time to leave, right now. He stormed out of the kitchen, grabbed his coat and car keys, and went out the door.

It was snowing outside and it looked like it was going to stick, a sure guarantee to bring out all the bad drivers. The way things were going it would be just his luck to run off the road and hit somebody's tree. He got in the minivan. Destination: church.

He drove by the Green on his way and saw there was already a good crowd collecting for the Hollydays arts and crafts fair. It looked like one of the school PTOs had set up a booth to sell Krispy Kreme doughnuts again this year, and they were already doing a brisk business. Couples strolled among the booths, holding hands. Some men were alone, wandering aimlessly like they were lost—obviously the guys who hadn't used Bob's Internet shopper. Thank God he'd at least done that right, Glen thought. Amy would have her Shopping Babe doll.

The memory of the previous night's debacle jumped on him like a mugger, making him feel almost sick.

Ten minutes later he was at church, in the confessional with Father Thomas. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It's been two weeks since my last confession.”

Glen began to go down the list. “I've taken the Lord's name in vain, I've had impure thoughts. And I wanted to kill my wife.”

There was a long silence on the other side of the screen.

Glen suddenly wished he were a Protestant. They didn't have to do this stuff. “Just for a second, though,” he rushed on. “I mean, it was one of those thoughts that goes through a guy's head when he's going nuts, just one of those I-could-kill-that-woman kind of thoughts. I wasn't really going to.” He wasn't making it better trying to explain. No matter how he said it, it still sounded bad. Anyway, how could you explain to a man who didn't have a wife how insane women could make a guy? Glen gave up. “I can't take it, Father,” he said. “This strike is making me crazy. I'm a guy. I'm not wired to do all this woman stuff.”

“But you committed yourself to go along with it. You promised to do everything on your wife's list. Isn't that what I read in the paper?”

Whose side was Father Thomas on, anyway? Glen frowned. “Look, Father, I know I shouldn't have had that thought. I love my wife. I really do, and I'm not planning on bumping her off. Just give me my penance, okay?” A million Hail Marys ought to do it. He'd go find a nice, quiet bowling alley to say them and stay away all day.

“Go home and do everything your wife asks you with a smile,” Father Thomas instructed him.

Glen almost fell off the seat. “What?”

“I think that will be penance enough,” said Father, and shut the window.

 

A sleepless night, two cups of coffee, and one good talk with her mother had helped Laura see that she'd been wrong. Of course it wasn't fair to blame Glen for an honest mistake, one she could have fixed by just taking a sneak peak in that bag, and it had been both mean and stupid to keep harping on it. Yes, she'd started this strike because she wanted to prove a point, but she sure hadn't wanted to prove it at her child's expense. And if it hadn't been for Mrs. Green, Amy would have paid the price. Somehow, when Laura went on strike, she'd seen it as really involving only her and Glen. She'd been wrong and that mess the night before was as much her fault as his. No, more. She was a rotten mother, a rotten wife, and a rotten person.

She dumped the morning edition of the
Herald
with its incriminating picture of Glen and the cop in the garbage—someone would wave it in his face before the weekend was over, but it wasn't going to be her—then left the kids in the family room playing under the blanket tent she'd made them and wandered into the living room to watch by the window for him. While she waited, she studied the tree he'd decorated with them. He hadn't done a half-bad job. In fact, if she were honest, she'd have to admit he'd done a pretty good job of decorating both the tree and the house. He'd done a pretty good job at most everything she'd dumped on him, especially considering the fact that he'd gone into the whole experience completely clueless.

Which, of course, had been her point when they started this. But whose fault was that, really? Who always picked up the slack, making it easy for Glen to do nothing? She'd ask him to help, but then, when he didn't get around to doing it fast enough, she'd just step in and take over. No wonder Glen thought all the parties and dinners he dumped on her were no big deal. She'd made it no big deal for him. And by being his little holiday enabler, she'd stoked the coals of her own aggravation.

She heard a car door shut and looked out the window to see him coming up the walk. She jumped off the couch and rushed to the front door, ready to tell him she was sorry for putting both Amy and him in such a humiliating situation and that the strike was done. She'd had enough. She got to the front hall just as he came in.

He looked at her sheepishly. “Hey, baby.”

She rushed him and threw her arms around him. He was such a big goof, the world's biggest kid, really. And she loved him to death. Her throat tightened, and for a minute she couldn't speak.

“I guess this means you're not pissed anymore, huh?”

“You big goof,” she said tenderly.

He grinned. “So, what am I doing today?”

He was ready for more, after last night? “Doing?” she repeated.

“I've got a lot to make up for. I'm ready.”

“Well, I'm not. I think we need to end this.”

He frowned down at her. “Hey, I can handle it. Anyway, I need to. I'm under orders.”

“What are you talking about? Whose orders?”

“God's.”

“What?”

Glen frowned. “Don't ask.”

Oh, boy. He was cracking up. He looked so determined she didn't have the heart to insult him by telling him she didn't think he could cut it. At least there wasn't much left he could mess up, she told herself. Well, except the shopping, the cooking, Christmas morning. It was a lot to risk. “I don't know,” she said.

“I can handle it,” he insisted, but she noticed he left off his usual cocky “piece of cake.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely. Anything you dish out, I'll eat.”

“All right,” she said, unable to hide the skepticism in her voice. “You're going to get the full holiday experience.” To herself, she added, but from here on, boy, you'll be working with a safety net.

 

Joy and Carol strolled the Green, visiting the various arts and crafts booths and sipping hot chocolate. Other people passed them, bundled into winter clothes. Joy saw a lot of hand-knit scarves, hats, and mittens, testimony to the women of Holly's new fascination with knitting. Multicolored lights festooned the bandstand at the center of the Green, and a bunch of kids were running around it, laughing and throwing snowballs at each other. All the booths were swathed in red and green bunting. The snowflakes drifting down on the whole scene made Joy think of snow globes.

“I think this snow's going to stick around,” Carol said.

“I hope not,” said Joy. “We're picking Bobby up at the airport later this afternoon, and I hate driving in the snow.”

“Won't Bob be driving?”

“Yes, and that's why I hate driving in the snow.”

Carol chuckled. “So, are you excited to see your baby?”