Snow Angels (26 page)

R
OSALIND
N
OONAN

For Mike,
one of the good guys.
Truly the Finest
.

“Snow.” The white stuff starts coming down as Officer Joe Cody turns onto Main Street. It floats in the air like confetti, skittering over the hood of the patrol car. “I’d love to know what genius decided snow was festive.”

“Looks like we might have a white Christmas.” His partner, a baby-faced black cop so tall he seems to be folded into the vehicle, opens his window and stretches his right hand out to catch some flakes. “You can take the kids sledding, Cody. Snow angels and snowmen. All that winter wonderland stuff.”

“Let’s hope not. Snow snarls traffic. Screws up street parking and throws a wrench in everybody’s plans.” Joe shakes his head, his dark gaze never leaving the road. It’s the day before Christmas and downtown Flushing, New York, is full of pedestrians, packed with cars, yellow cabs, and buses. Colored lights blink in storefronts and giant snowflakes hang over the center of the street, neon white etched in the pearl gray sky. The streets are a swarm of vendors’ carts and people, mostly shoppers and commuters streaming toward the subway station. Women with strollers and teens glad to be out of school. Joe scowls at the open window. “Would you close that? We’ll be out in it soon enough.”

“Sorry, Mr. Scrooge,” Mack says in a fake British accent. “It’s just that…tomorrow’s Christmas and I’d really like another lump of coal for the furnace.”

Mack always does that; cracks Joe up just as his temper’s rising. It’s one reason Joe chose to work with the rookie cop. Maurice Womack, Mack to anyone on the job, is an observant cop, but he doesn’t take much seriously. And Joe knows you can’t survive in this job without a sense of humor.

“Shut up.” Joe fights back a grin as he inches the car down Main Street.

“Come on, now. Shake off that mood. It’s Christmas Eve, Cody. You gonna be a buzzkill straight through ’till New Year’s?”

“That’s the plan. When you’re strapped to the nuts with bills, Christmas is a non-issue.”

“Don’t you ‘bah, humbug’ me. You got two little kids at home who are counting on Santa Claus to deliver.”

Joe pulls the car onto the sidewalk, a half-assed parking job, but that’s the beauty of driving an NYPD vehicle. “We’re making your stop, picking up the ring and all, so keep the theatrics to a minimum.”

“God bless you, Ebenezer.”

“And we’re spending Christmas together?” Joe cuts the engine and swings out of the car. “How’d I get so lucky.”

“Just the day tour, man. My nights are reserved for Nayasia.” Mack hands him the radio and leads the way toward the jewelry store, his giant strides eating up the speckled sidewalk.

“Right. The bride-to-be.” Joe straightens his jacket and forces a smile as they pass by two girls clinging to Grandma’s hands—twins, from the look of them. “You sure you’re ready for this? It’s a big commitment.”

“What’s that mean?” Mack asks without breaking stride. “Don’t treat me like I’m eight years old and sleeping in Batman Underoos.”

Joe holds up his hands. “You said it, not me.”

“Besides, commitment isn’t the ‘C’ word it used to be. Astute men like myself know that the evolved human creature seeks a monogamous mate.”

“Monogamous? I’m proud of you Mack. Some of that college rubbed off.”

“Don’t go changing the subject. I’m ready for this, Cody. Besides, I never hear you complain about it.”

“Yeah, well, marriage suits me just fine. Got myself a great girl, beautiful smart kids. Life is good.”

“Really? Then why are you so cranky lately?”

Joe winces. “I’m not cranky; just honest.” It’s a bald-faced lie and he knows it, but that doesn’t mean he’s got to spill the details to Mack. Really. Mack may be his partner, but if the two of them get any more personal, they’ll have to take their story to one of those touchy-feely talk shows like
Oprah
or
Ellen
.

“You’re in denial, man.” Mack stabs a finger in the air, nearly poking a woman swinging through the door of Macy’s. “Sorry, ma’am.”

“Whatevah.” She shifts her packages and darts around them.

Mack turns back to Joe. “I don’t know what’s eating at you, but you’d better deal with it and move on so you can enjoy some eggnog with Mrs. Claus under the tree. You know what I’m saying? You got to step up to Christmas or else you’ll open your eyes tonight and find three ghouls coming at you with flashbacks and predictions that’ll scare the bejeevers out of you.”

“The only thing waking me up in the middle of my night is my son cutting a tooth.” Joe stretches his neck, trying to get the kink out. “In fact, PJ was up again last night, two AM.”

“Poor kid.”

“Poor me. I took the shift.”

“Whatever, big daddy. See, that’s the kind of thing I’m looking forward to. A house and a family. I’m getting a dog, too.”

“Good luck with that. Sheila and I have enough trouble trying to get the kids housebroken.” Joe spots the jewelry store just beyond Macy’s. Thank God. “Does Nayasia know she’s getting a ring?”

“It’s a surprise, but I do know she wants a marquise-cut stone. She’s told me enough times.”

Joe touches his chin, reminded that he doesn’t have a gift for his wife. Christmas Eve and he’s got nothing. Sucked so dry by a mortgage that he can’t scrape together a few extra dollars. You try to do the right thing, work overtime, and put a roof over the kids’ heads, and still there’s nothing left at the end of the day.

Mack tugs open the jeweler’s door. “You coming in?”

“This is one job you need to do on your own. Besides, if I see the prices in there I might lapse into a coma or something.”

Cocking one eyebrow, Mack ducks inside. Big, sentimental lug. Joe doesn’t know Nayasia well, but he figures her for a lucky woman.

The dispatcher calls for a unit in Sector Adam to assist an ambulance. Joe turns the volume down on the radio and moves back toward Macy’s. In front of the store he presses his back to the wall to keep an eye on the street activity. This is a good spot to soak it all up: the colors, the energy, the twinkle of Christmas. A lacy carol piped over the store’s PA system mixes with staccato horns and groaning city buses. Yeah, the city makes an effort at Christmastime. Plenty of sparkle and even the surliest New Yorkers soften a bit.

But this year all reminders of the holidays are like a punch in the gut.

It’s the mortgage. An albatross. Noose around his neck.

These days, money is a hot button issue between Sheila and him. Yeah, they both wanted to live in Bayside, a good neighborhood, excellent schools and all that. They bought the house this year, plunked all their savings into the skinny row house with a stone age kitchen and a driveway as a front yard. Now they are saddled with a mortgage payment that has them eating Ramen noodles.

No dinners out. No sitters. No cable. No fun. Sheila’s talking about serving potato soup for Christmas dinner.

“We’ll get by,” Sheila always says. And then she goes and puts something on a card.

It didn’t take long to max out the Visa. They were well on their way to hitting the limit on American Express when Joe called Sheila off. “If we keep spending like this, we’ll never bail ourselves out,” he told her.

So she agreed to give up her card. No more credit. Clothes and gifts and such would come from cash leftover after the bills were paid.

Which isn’t much. Certainly not enough for the two of them to exchange gifts this year. Last time he checked, there was a twenty and a few singles in the cookie jar. So they came up with a no-gift policy between the two of them, but knowing his wife, he doesn’t trust her.

He glances to the display window on his right. Three mannequins posed in a snow scene draped with fat gold ribbon. The dummy in the center wears a quilted red jacket. A thick jacket, tapered at the waist.

It’s the perfect gift.

Sheila needs a jacket. How many times has he told her that, and she just shrugs it off. “I’ll just be out for a second,” she says. Or “I’ll get by without it.” And then she loads on a sweater and scarf and goes pushing PJ’s stroller to the pharmacy or walking Katie to school, out there in the freezing cold.

She would love that red quilted one. Joe knows that, even though he’s no shopper. Red goes well with her whiskey brown eyes and dark hair, brings out the pink in her cheeks. And that’s the shame of it. He finally finds the perfect gift, something she would love and use, and he doesn’t have the money to buy it.

He sets his jaw and turns away from the window display. He could work all the overtime in the world and still be broke. The store’s music is nauseatingly cheerful; cherubic voices singing, “Angels we have heard on high, sweetly singing o’er the plains…”

Mack emerges from the jewelry store with a blue velvet box and a huge grin. “I got it.”

“Great. Can we go now?”

“Wait. Aren’t you going to ask me how it looks?”

“It’s a diamond ring. How the hell is it supposed to look?” Joe motions Mack toward the car. “Come on, Mack. Next you’ll be wanting me to try it on.”

“Would you mind?”

Joe scowls. “Get the hell out of here.”

“You are in one foul mood, my friend. Least you could do is be happy for me.”

“I’m ecstatic. I’m just really good at hiding my emotions.”

As they pass Macy’s, Mack sings along with the Christmas song, a long extension of o’s that ultimately forms the word “Gloria.”

“Please,” Joe says under his breath, “you’re embarrassing yourself.”

But Mack keeps singing. “
In excelsis Deo
…”

People are looking now, heads snapping toward the big black singing cop. Joe does not make eye contact with them; this is the sort of spectacle he can do without. “Cut it out.”

Mack sighs as they venture out of range of the music. “I never did understand that song. Who’s Gloria, and what does she have to do with the birth of Jesus?”

“Gloria’s not a person. It’s Latin for…something.” In eight years of Catholic school Joe learned the basics about the Nativity story, but Latin was beyond him.

Fortunately the crackle of the radio interrupts: “Nine-Charlie?”

Joe pulls the radio from his belt and clicks to speak. “This is Nine-Charlie.”

“Nine-Charlie, respond to a ten twenty-one. Past burglary at the Shuka Market.” The dispatcher gives the address and a call-back number. Joe knows the small grocery store just a dozen blocks away. A middle-eastern market.

Immediately Mack stops humming, the goofball expression fading from his eyes.

It’s not a crime-in-progress; no need to rush. Still, you never know what you’re going to find out there. Anticipation thrums in Joe’s chest as they approach their patrol car.

“You ready to roll?” Mack asks.

Joe opens the cruiser door. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

Working her way through a display of miniature sweaters that would be oh-so-cute but oh-so-impractical for PJ, Sheila Cody presses her lips together and tries to get a grip. She must restrain herself. Keep the urges at bay. Ignore the AmEx card in her jeans’ pocket, the slender, shiny plastic that would be the easy answer to this shopping dilemma.

What can she get for the kids with twenty-three dollars and seventy-five cents? That’s all the cash she has left to buy Christmas gifts. Damn.

The traditional Christmas Eve shopping trip with her sister is turning out to be a bust this year. There’s Jennifer a few aisles away, toting around half a dozen bags of gifts and still looking to acquire more, while Sheila has politely declined every suggestion of a purchase. Jen must realize something is wrong, but since it’s Christmas she doesn’t want to approach a sensitive subject with Sheila. As in, why don’t you get a job, Sheila? As in, why didn’t you and Joe stay in that rattrap apartment instead of pouring all your money into a house?

Moving on from the little sweaters, Sheila pauses at an elaborate toy train set up in the children’s department to entertain children. At this early hour there’s only one sleepy preschooler running a caboose over the track while his older sister, a teen in a St. Francis Prep sweatshirt, looks on.

“Cool train,” Sheila says, more to herself.

The little boy looks up at her, then back at the track as Sheila takes it all in…the elaborate train station. The bridge over the lake. The miniature trees and cars and houses. PJ will love this.

Well, he
would
, but he’s not getting it.

Way too expensive, and besides, this set isn’t for sale, though she’s sure they carry it upstairs in the toy department.

Toys. She swallows over the knot in her throat. She knows her son; if there could be only one toy under the Christmas tree, it would be a toy police car, a “peeze car,” as he calls it, just like Daddy’s. She reaches for her back pocket; feels the hard corners of the card. The toy department upstairs would have something like that.

She turns away, takes a deep breath. No. She promised Joe. She promised herself.

There are ten gifts for the kids to unwrap under the tree. Granted, it’s all crap from the Dollar Store, things like a statue of a skating bear, a bubble necklace, and a dry erase board for Katie. A ball, a foam sword, and some tub toys for PJ. It’s the sort of junk she won’t let them buy because it clutters the house, but faced with the prospect of a Christmas without toys, well, she went for the junk.

She lets her breath out. Okay. It’s going to be fine. The kids are getting junk for Christmas, but it will be their junk. Junk that won’t send Joe and her to bankruptcy court. Besides, Christmas is about more than toys and merchandise, and they might as well get that across to the kids now. They’ll certainly see that when they notice there are no gifts under the tree for Mommy and Daddy. Sheila and Joe have agreed not to exchange gifts, though Sheila still feels guilty about that. Nothing for her Joe, and he works so hard all year, snapping up overtime at work and being a father to the kids whenever he’s home, getting down on the floor with PJ or helping Katie with her homework.

A surge of emotion threatens to make her all misty-eyed. Her Joe is a good guy. Well, she’ll just have to show him how much she loves him in a different way. Something more…personal.

With new resolve she turns from the train set and heads back to the men’s department, where she left her sister browsing. She skirts around a display of men’s cologne—man perfume, Joe calls it—and finds Jennifer trying on a silly stocking cap from an outerwear rack.

“Isn’t this great?” Holding the braids of the cap, Jen kicks out her feet and bobs back and forth, an offbeat clog dance that makes her look like a scarecrow. Thin, tall, and blond, Jen is the polar opposite of her petite, brunette sister. At times Sheila gets peeved that Jen can eat anything and not gain weight while she has to be careful, though Joe says he’s always had a weakness for more “shapely” girls.

“Cute,” Sheila agrees, “but it’s not you. It doesn’t go too well with your briefcase and cashmere coat.”

“I’m not that nerdy.” Jen flicks a braid toward her. “But I was thinking of it for Ian. Lots of students at Juilliard wear these hats. It’s the new big thing. I see them all over campus.” Jen works in the admissions office at Juilliard, a great job, except that she regrets leaving her three-year-old at day care five days a week.

“Okay.” Sheila picks up a blue and gray knit cap. It is beautifully crafted, but a little dopey, a braid dangling from each earflap and a pom-pom on the top. “But Ian is three. Has this style hit preschool yet?”

“Don’t be silly. Ian isn’t a fashion-follower.”

“I hope not. At three you should have the freedom to buck the OshKosh B’Gosh pressure.”

Jen snatches a pink hat from the stack and plunks it on Sheila’s head. “Oh, it’s priceless. Don’t you love it? It’d be so adorable on Katie, don’t you think? And see how warm it is? You can get one for PJ! The kid won’t get an ear infection with a hat like this on his head.”

“I don’t know…”

“Come on, Sheila. We’ve been here since the doors opened at seven and you’ve found something wrong with everything I find.”

“It’s not really a necessity, and I told you, Joe and I agreed to buy just the bare necessities this Christmas.”

“Oh my gosh, since when is a hat nonessential? Our kids need these. Think about it, Sheila. You’re going to let Katie go out in the snow without a hat? She walks to school, right? You know how the wind whistles down Fifty-third Avenue in the winter.”

Sheila can see it: her little Katie tromping through a snowdrift, her downy hair tossed by the wind. Her little ears beet red from cold.

And PJ. Are his chronic ear infections brought on because he doesn’t own a warm hat like this? Of course he has hats, but none of them handmade in—she checks the label—Ireland, no less. Her Irish grandmother will be so proud, but…

Her gaze lights on the price tag. Fifty. Fifty dollars?

She can’t afford it, even though a good, responsible parent would buy these hats for her children.

But Sheila can’t. She’s a failure as a mother. A stay-at-home mom who can’t pull together the cash for a roast for Christmas dinner or knit caps to keep her own children warm.

Tears sting her eyes, tears of disappointment and shame. She pulls the pink hat off and turns away before her sister can catch her crying.

“Sheila?” When she doesn’t answer, Jen continues. “What’s wrong?”

“We can’t afford it.” Her voice is tight, strained, and she can’t face her sister. “We have a budget.”

“Forget about the budget; it’s Christmas.”

“I can’t.” A sob steals Sheila’s breath away. “Everyone isn’t loaded like you.” It’s rotten to snap at Jen like that, but Sheila can’t help it.

A moment later she feels a hand on her arm; her sister is turning her around. One look at Jen’s face makes Sheila burst into tears, full force.

“Oh, honey…” Jen pulls her into her arms.

“I’m a terrible mother,” Sheila sobs. “I can’t afford to take care of my own kids.”

“You take great care of them.” Jen’s voice sounds fragile, like a thin panel of glass. “I’m the bad mother, spending so much time away from Ian. I love my job but…maybe you can’t have it all. He hates me working.”

“How do you know? He’s three, Jen.”

“But he’s sending me a clear message. Every morning when I drop him off at day care he crawls under the teacher’s desk and yells for me not to leave him. Every morning. And it tears my heart out, but I button my coat and go. I just leave him there. Every day.” Her voice quavers. “I’m a terrible mother.”

“Me, too,” Sheila sobs.

And for a moment their sobs turn to laughter, then back to sobs as the two sisters hug each other and hold on tight in the men’s department of the crowded store. Two not-so-terrible mothers having a sister moment.