The Social Climber of Davenport Heights (12 page)

T
HE WEEKS BETWEEN
Thanksgiving and Christmas were jam-packed with doing-good opportunities. I began tallying up my scores at the end of the day, at first just trying to hit a daily minimum of fifteen points. As that got easier, I tried to hit my all-time high scores, besting my best. But even in the season of giving, giving was not without its complications.

I donated to a holiday toy drive. The money and gifts simply poured in. Everybody loves children. And Christmas and children were the perfect combination to touch the heart of the stingiest Scrooge. I was uplifted. That is, until I made the mistake of being on hand for the distribution.

Perhaps it was the fault of my own presumption. I envisioned humble and grateful adults choosing the one gift that they were not able to get for their child. Instead, I saw a near riot. The whole family came, everyone with their lists, yelling, pushing, demanding all the newest, hottest, most expensive items. And, in a hurry! These people didn’t have all day to wait on a bunch of slack volunteers who couldn’t get what they wanted fast enough.

The angelic underprivileged child I imagined, lovingly
clutching the toy that they might never have had, was instead a screaming brat, stomping her foot and demanding, “I want the purple one!”

It was supposed to be Toys for the Needy. It didn’t take me long to suggest that they change the name to Toys for the Greedy.

“Don’t let them get to you,” a veteran volunteer said, trying to cheer me after a parent, to whom I’d handed a CD player that was not the most popular brand, had berated me for giving her “this fucking piece of junk!”

“Nobody likes to take charity,” the veteran explained. “So they pretend that it’s a right, not a gift.”

I decided that giving to thankless people who despise you ought to have a place on my list, so I gave myself a 4.5. Though, by the end of the day, it didn’t seem all that onerous. In fact, the attitudes and atmosphere were actually familiar.

I could recall many holiday seasons when Brynn’s letter to Santa read more like a list of demands. The year she’d turned sixteen she’d announced that she wanted a red Humvee. David had tried to reason with her—how unhandy the vehicle was for passengers, how terrible the gas mileage, and how difficult to park—but Brynn was adamant.

“If you won’t get me a Hummer, then just don’t get me anything,” she’d declared dramatically. “Because nothing else could make me happy.”

We bought her a little red Jeep. It was just as impractical as the Humvee, but not as big. She never liked it, not even the first day. She traded it in within six months and chose a bright pink Mustang that looked like something Barbie would drive.

I decided that needy people were simply people. And some of them, like some in my own family, weren’t particularly good at receiving.

The Respite Care Christmas party, held a couple of days later, was a stark contrast. The handicapped, from tiny babies to age-old crones, seemed delighted to even be having Christmas. They sat and watched with awed attention as a series of teenage beauty queens sang and danced and twirled batons onstage. Then they ate their Santa cookies and opened their presents.

Cries of thrilled delight were heard everywhere as each and every attendee got a red sweatshirt that said Merry Christmas from Mervin County Health and Welfare. It was a fashion faux pas that was unparalleled, but no one noticed. Within moments, half the sweatshirts had been excitedly donned. I watched the guests’ happy faces and listened to their animated thanks, and secretly wished I had some of those generic CD players and toys in the wrong color.

It was later, as the crowd was thinning, that I first heard about the new battered families safe house. Apparently there were so many women and children seeking shelter that a new property had been purchased and had opened only weeks earlier.

“The foundation has been so busy furnishing the place and making sure all the children were going to be remembered at Christmas, that we forgot about decorating the place,” a board member informed me.

“I’d be happy to do it,” I piped in quickly.

The woman hesitated.

“The locations of safe houses are a closely guarded secret,” she said.

“I would never tell anyone,” I assured her.

“Well, you can’t just hire someone to do the decorating,” she said. “If you take on the work, you’ll have to do it yourself. With no help from anyone but the residents.”

She gave me the number for Loretta Campbell, the contact
person, and by that afternoon I had permission, plus the date and time, to show up with a Christmas tree. I wanted to buy a twelve-foot Noble fir, like the one I’d had put up in my own living room. But I certainly couldn’t manage a tree of that size by myself. And Loretta had stipulated the purchase of an artificial tree. It was not only a fire-safety issue, she’d said, but one of practicality, as well. The house could use it year after year.

I was a little disappointed. Artificial trees were not my favorite, and there was not much creativity involved in selecting one. I got a fancy silk one, prelit with little candle-shaped lights. And consoled myself with the purchase of decorations.

Since the house was all women and children, I decided pink would be a great color. Not traditional, but definitely festive. I bought a dozen strands of bright pink beads and yards and yards of silver tinsel. That was quick and easy. But I selected each ornament individually and with great care.

It took me two whole days of scouring holiday displays to find everything I wanted. They all had to have some tie-in to the color scheme and the mother-and-children theme I’d decided upon.

The pièce de résistance was a huge but fragile stylized star of pink blown glass for the top of the tree. I’d seen it, dusty and unheralded on a second-floor shelf at Yesteryear Emporium. I was delighted to find it still there. It had a couple of hairline cracks, but they didn’t detract from its beauty or character.

I had carried it to the counter a little less than enthusiastically, distinctly remembering my last encounter with the proprietor, my old school chum. He was cranky and self-involved, but his opinion of me was right on target. I had been less than fair with him and I wanted to change. He wasn’t going to make it that easy.

The best course of action, I decided, was to quietly pay the marked price with no comment or discussion. Unfortunately, the pink glass tree topper was not priced at all.

He was whistling, a distinct difference from the last time I was in his store.

“Good morning,” I said.

“Ah…” he said, smiling as he shuffled over toward me. “It’s Janey Domschke, or I suppose I should say, Mrs….ah, Mrs….”

“Lofton.”

“Mrs. Lofton,” he repeated. “What amazing feat of shopping expertise are you up to this morning?”

His cheerful mood and teasing words were a sharp contrast to our last meeting, but I wasn’t interested in resuming a tête-à-tête of any kind.

“I want to buy this, but it’s not marked,” I stated simply.

He picked up the ornament and eyed it critically for a couple of moments.

“What is it?” he asked.

“It’s a Christmas-tree topper.”

“Really?”

Holding up the decoration, he examined the hole in the bottom of it and frowned. “How much is a thing like this worth?” he asked.

I didn’t really know. It was a 1960s piece, made for one of those campy silver-metallic trees, the first of the artificial species. It was not the kind of thing that would appeal to many people. I suspected its value wouldn’t be more than fifty dollars. But it wasn’t my responsibility to appraise his inventory.

“I just want to buy it,” I told him. “It doesn’t matter what it costs.”

“Okay,” he said, nodding slowly. “Twenty thousand dollars.”

“What!”

“You said it didn’t matter what it costs,” he pointed out. “For all I know, it’s a priceless piece of art deco.”

“It’s not,” I assured him. “It’s handblown, which is good, but it’s not that old or particularly collectible.”

“How do I know that?” he said.

“Because I told you so,” I answered.

“And I can trust you, Janey?”

There was the rub. Truthfully, he couldn’t trust me. At least he couldn’t in the past. Now, however, things were different.

“Okay, it’s confession time,” I announced bravely. “I’ve been buying stuff from you here for years. I took great pride in getting great things for next to nothing.”

He looked neither shocked nor angered. My secret intrigue apparently didn’t come as a surprise.

“It can’t have been that much of a challenge,” he pointed out.

“Well, no, now that you mention it, I guess it wasn’t,” I said. “Half the time I probably could have shoplifted an anvil through the front door and you wouldn’t have noticed.”

He feigned a pained grimace. “Guilty as charged,” he admitted.

“Anyway, I’m not interested in doing that anymore,” I told him.

“Why not?” he asked. “Changed your philosophy of consumerism?”

“Not exactly.”

I just stood there looking at him, wondering how to explain. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was admit to a stranger that I had been transformed by a brush with death and a desperate promise.

“You can trust me,” I said, determined to make it true.

“Scott,” he prompted.

“You can trust me, Scott.”

“If you tell me that I can, Janey,” he said, “then I will.”

He held up the pink glass. “How much?”

“Fifty dollars.”

I left the store pleased, and so proud of myself. And I was thrilled about my plans for the tree. These women and their children had probably never in their lives seen a Christmas tree that was truly decorative art. I could still recall with disdain the tacky trees my mother and I had always had in our house. Tiny little shrubs of greenery perched on the table in front of the living-room window. They had been adorned each year, late and hastily, with the cheap multicolored offerings of the local five-and-dime. My mother had always seemed a little embarrassed about Christmas. As if it somehow made her lack of family and friends more obvious than usual.

I was going to see that these mothers and children, who undoubtedly felt their lack of family and friends this holiday, had more than a spindly three-foot fir to celebrate around.

I loaded the decorations, filling the Z3 roadster’s trunk. At the last minute I included a box of big pink candy canes. I put the top down and loaded the long rectangular-boxed tree, sitting up in the passenger seat beside me, securing it with the seat belt and shoulder harness.

I arrived right on time. Loretta and a half-dozen eager little faces met me at the door.

“We’re so excited!” she told me.

I could have easily guessed that from the noisy, boisterous reception I received.

“Not any more excited than me,” I assured them. “And I have a big surprise.”

“We’ve got a sap-pwise, too!” a little girl with a nose full of freckles and missing front teeth declared.

I was introduced all around. Children were of every color.
The little girls varied in age from infants to preteens. The boys were all less than ten. Most of the women were young, but some were my age, one woman was old enough to be my mother. I think I’d expected them to be shy, cowering, even wimpy. That was not the impression I got. And when I thought about it, I supposed I should have known that running away from abuse, seeking shelter, took tremendous courage.

Loretta and I had to bring the tree from the car without any help from the residents. The women and children, I learned, were not encouraged to be seen in the front yard. What made the safe house safe was the fact that their spouses didn’t know where they were. A high privacy fence around the back enclosed a patio for lounging and smoking, and a place for the children to play, keeping the anonymity of the residents secure.

“I thought you had more women here than this,” I told her.

“We do,” she said. “And we will. As Christmas approaches, the husbands and boyfriends are on their best behavior. The women begin hoping for a new start. They want their children to have a beautiful family Christmas full of happy tradition and Kodak moments.”

“That’s wonderful,” I said.

Loretta shook her head. “The holidays invariably bring disappointment, drinking and ultimately more abuse. By the afternoon of the twenty-fifth we’ll begin filling up. We’ll be bursting at the seams and doubling up before New Year’s.”

“Oh, that’s awful.”

She shrugged. “We can’t control any of that,” she said. “All we can do is plan to give them the best Christmas we can manage.”

I was determined to be a part of that.

When we got the clumsy rectangular box inside, everyone helped us open it, big kids, little kids, moms. Of course, I’d assumed we would save the cardboard to store the tree in
January, but the eager and enthusiastic ripping and tearing quickly dissuaded me of that idea.

It was fun somehow just getting the tree out of the box. Once it was lying in pieces all over the living room, I began to read the instructions. That, however, wasn’t really necessary. One of the mom’s, Nedra, a young, very thin woman in her late twenties, had obviously never seen anything she couldn’t put together. Without so much as a hesitation or misstep, she had the thing assembled, in place and plugged into the electrical outlet in ten minutes.

The kids started applauding and the rest of us joined in with them. She took an exaggerated bow, which the children loved even more.

“Now, do you want to show Miss Jane what you made for the tree?” Loretta asked the kids.

The little ones required no further encouragement as they hurried noisily out of the room and promptly returned, loaded down with Christmas booty.

“See what I made! See what I made!”

There were bells made out of foam cups and chains of red and green construction paper. They’d covered their round plastic Pokémon balls with glitter. And had cut out reindeer figures from Christmas cards to hang on ribbons. There were tiny snowmen made from cotton balls and stars formed from macaroni and Elmer’s glue.

“We worked all day,” the freckled, toothless girl told me.