by Laura Alden
Frantically I tried to think of when I’d ever promised anyone that the Christmas books would be out on Deer Day. “I’m sorry you feel that way, Mrs. Tolliver. Is there—” The stack of books in my arms suddenly shifted. I took a dancing step to my left, trying to keep them from tumbling to the ground in an untidy heap.
One step . . . almost there . . . another step . . . and that’s when I ran into Mrs. Tolliver. The books cascaded onto her, onto me, and onto the floor. After them fluttered a packing slip.
The quiet that followed was a very loud one. I couldn’t tear my gaze away from Mrs. Tolliver’s shiny black boots, their toes covered with a thin layer of books. I closed my eyes and waited for the storm to break.
“Hah!” Auntie May rolled herself forward. “Where’s a video camera when you need one? Funniest thing I’ve seen in weeks. Young Beth there looked like a vaudeville routine, and Adelaide, your eyes were big as the night your daddy caught you on the front porch swing with Johnny Schwartz.”
Adelaide? I’d never even known she had a first name.
“I’ll thank you to never mention that again, May.” Mrs. Tolliver smiled thinly. “There is no reason to dredge up old tales.”
“Hoo, hoo, look who’s talking.” Auntie May peered up at her with sharp eyes that had seen everything from iceboxes to iPhones. Her skin had the transparent sheen of age, but it was surprisingly unlined. She’d been raised in a place and time where ladies wore hats and gloves, keeping their faces and hands white, and it showed.
Auntie May must have rolled in the door when the books were dropping to the ground, and here she was distracting Mrs. Tolliver from crushing me with caustic comments. For the first time ever I was grateful that Sunny Rest Assisted Living was within wheelchair-pushing distance.
“Aren’t you the one,” Auntie May went on in her thin but strong voice, “who didn’t let go of that story about Marlene Upshaw?”
Mrs. Tolliver’s chin went up. “That was decades ago, and it was a different situation altogether.”
I looked at Lois. “Marlene Upshaw?” I mouthed. I’d never heard of her.
“Before my time,” Lois whispered.
“Hah!” Auntie May thumped her fist on the arm of her wheelchair. “Like heck it’s different. Marlene’s life was ruined because you wouldn’t stop telling everyone in town that she was no better than she should be. No wonder she couldn’t get married.” Thump. “No wonder she couldn’t get a job.” Thump. “No wonder she had to leave town.”
Mrs. Tolliver smoothed her gloves. “If I recall correctly, and I’m sure I do, she married quite well. I shed no tears for her.”
Lois and Sara and I flipped our attention back to Auntie May, attendees at a riveting game of gossip.
“He was fat, bald, and thirty years older than she was.” She pointed a knobby-knuckled finger at Mrs. Tolliver. “Are you still fool enough to think all his money could make her happy? What she wanted was to marry Dale Crowley, but you put a stop to that, didn’t you? And then when Eddie Tolliver decides you might be good enough for him, you toss poor Dale away like a dirty handkerchief. What good came of all that gossip?” She leaned forward and fixed her victim with a hawklike stare. “What good?”
Mrs. Tolliver gave a genteel sigh. “And what good comes of dredging up the events of decades past?”
“Good?” Auntie May cackled. “None. I just like seeing you squirm.”
Underneath the expertly applied Tolliver makeup, red spotted her cheeks. Her chest rose and fell and I got the inevitable feeling you get when watching a bad comedy—the feeling that this was going to turn ugly in a hurry.
Mrs. Tolliver drew herself tall and opened her mouth. I winced. Lois winced. Sara closed her eyes. Auntie May smiled. But before she could utter a word, a smooth voice interrupted the incipient storm.
“Oh, dear.” A slim dark-haired woman darted between Auntie May and Mrs. Tolliver. “You’ve dropped some books. Let me help.” She stooped and gathered a few into her hands. “Is this yours?” She stood and handed Mrs. Tolliver The Gift of the Magi. “And this looks like it could be yours.” She slid a copy of A Child’s Christmas in Wales onto Auntie May’s lap.
“Don’t you just love Christmas?” she asked, smiling out of skin almost too white to be real. “And the books this time of year are so beautiful. Now, The Polar Express is nice, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the classics. Do you know The Pint of Judgment?” She looked at the two combatants expectantly. “My mother read it to me every year. It’s one of my earliest memories. What was yours?” And then they were sharing stories of childhood Christmases.
We watched, mouths agape. No one had ever successfully ended an Auntie May vs. Mrs. Tolliver battle. To the best of my knowledge, no one had even tried since 1987.
“Who is she?” I whispered. But Lois shook her head.
We marveled as she had the two women interacting without verbal jabs, then chatting together, and then—wonder of wonders—laughing. I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard Mrs. Tolliver laugh. It had a rusty sound, but was pleasant enough.
“It sounds as if you two ladies had wonderful childhoods,” said our knight-ess in shining armor. “Thank you for sharing your stories. And speaking of stories and books, it seems as if today is a big day in this store.” Her brown eyes smiled into mine.
I swallowed. Maybe she could wade into deep waters without a qualm, but I wasn’t that brave. “We usually have all the Christmas books out by midafternoon, but we’re, um, a little shorthanded these days.”
“Is Marcia taking time off again?” Mrs. Tolliver asked.
“No,” I said. “Well, yes. Kind of. She quit. Kind of.”
“Fired her, is what I hear.”
Auntie May chuckled. Or a noise that I assumed was a chuckle. If it wasn’t a chuckle, she was probably choking to death, and it had been a long time since I’d had any first aid training. “Marcia Trommler,” Auntie May said. “That girl is a piece of work.”
“Goodness knows why you kept her on this long,” Mrs. Tolliver said. “If I owned this store, she would have been let go ages back.”
“Really? I thought . . .” In truth, I’d thought Marcia had been such a fixture in Rynwood that firing her would cause irreparable damage to the store’s profit margin. It sounded stupid, even in my head. Saying it out loud in front of the town’s two rival matriarchs would be equivalent to a social death sentence.
Auntie May cackled. “Bethie, honey, if you don’t like someone, you have to figure you’re not the only one.”
“Words of wisdom,” Mrs. Tolliver said.
I cast a cautious glance heavenward. If there was ever cause for the world to end, it was Mrs. Tolliver paying her sworn enemy a compliment.
“Ah, shucks.” Auntie May grinned, revealing dentureless gums. “That Marcia was a giggler from the time she was two. Can’t abide giggling in girls, let alone grown women. Makes our whole breed look silly.”
“Marcia babysat my children once,” Mrs. Tolliver mused. “But just once. Bernice Klein recommended her.”
Auntie May shook her head. “Bernice was a dab hand in the garden, but she was never going to win the Mother of the Year award.”
“I was much younger then.” Mrs. Tolliver slipped her gloves into her coat pocket. “I’d been taught to respect my elders, and Bernice was a decade older than myself.” She looked at the frail woman in the wheelchair. “Shall we look at what Christmas books the girls have put out? I’m sure they’ll finish in due time.”
“Long as I get a copy of How the Grinch Stole Christmas before leaving,” Auntie May said. Mrs. Tolliver took firm hold of the wheelchair handles and the two moved off, chatting as if they’d been friends for years.
Our angel of mercy looked at the stack of books she was holding. “These are from the floor. Where do they go?”
“Oh, you don’t need to . . .” I glanced at the beckoning empty shelves. “I mean, here, I’ll . . .” Flustered was my new middle name.
“Here?” S
he set them on the shelf, fanned them out expertly, and started alphabetizing. “I love the Tomie de-Paola books, don’t you? Such wonderful illustrations. Here, let me take those.” She reached for the stack Lois held. “All picture books, right? On these displays?”
I watched, mesmerized, as she unerringly put Patricia Polacco before Elise Primavera and M. Christina Butler after Jennifer Liu Bryan, chattering away about the merits of each book and the life of each author. When she alphabetized Fran Manushkin ahead of Angela McAllister, I found my voice.
“Do you want a job?”
Her eyes widened, showing white all around the brown irises. Small veins of red marred the pale color in a way that seemed wrong. A woman this capable of taming brutal adversaries should have perfectly white whites.
“Well . . . I . . . well . . . that is . . .” The power that had granted her the perfect thing to say seemed to have deserted her.
“I’m Beth Kennedy, the store owner.” I smiled, feeling a trifle relieved that she could, in fact, be caught off guard. Oh, the ugliness of humanity.
“Yvonne Ganassi.”
“Nice to meet you, Yvonne.” I held out my hand. “If you give me a minute I’ll print out a certificate for you.”
“A . . . what?”
“A proclamation of courage for preventing open warfare.” I looked over my shoulder at the two women, who were happily debating the merits of illustrators Brian Selznick and Barbara Lehman. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Oh.” She let out a long, shaky breath. “It just seemed like the thing to do.” She glanced at the happy pair. “It won’t last, though,” she said in a low voice.
“Cease-fires never do. But we can enjoy the peace while it lasts, right?” I grinned, and, though it took some time, a smile spread across her features, changing her face from wan, pinched, and pale to pretty and pale.
“So how about it?” I asked. “Are you looking for a job? Low pay, long hours, and you get to work with the finest citizens of Rynwood.” I tipped my head toward Auntie May and her new sidekick. “No benefits, naturally, and the only perk is you get to read any book in the store.”
The phone rang. I looked around. Lois wasn’t in sight and Sara was headed this way, weighed down with more books than she should be carrying. “Excuse me.” One of these days I’d have to get the book cart’s broken caster fixed. Right after I got the car’s oil changed. Which would come right after I mended Jenna’s hockey sweater. But, really, did a hockey jersey need to be mended? I mulled over the allure of a tattered sports uniform as I hurried to the phone.
“Good afternoon, Children’s Bookshelf.”
“Yo, Beth.”
I held the phone a few inches from my head. After I’d pushed the volume button half a dozen times, I put it back against my ear. “Hey, Marina.”
“Hey, yourself. Is she there?”
“My store is packed with people, O Red-haired Ray of Sunshine. Please be more specific.”
“Perky today, aren’t we? Did we have lunch with the handsome Mr. Garrett?”
“No, we did not. Today is Christmas book day.”
“I forgot all about that.”
I lowered my voice. “It was ugly for a while, but a small miracle happened and all is well.”
“Miracle? Tell me all.”
“Later. I’m trying to interview someone, and I really want to hire—”
“But you can’t!” Marina wailed. “I told you. I know the perfect person for your store.”
“And I have the perfect person standing fifteen feet away from me. Yours will have to find another job.”
“No, listen to me. She’ll be great, I know she will. She’s smart and personable and knows a lot about books and—”
“And she’s too late. I’ve made up my mind, Marina,” I said firmly.
“But you can’t do that!”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. The morning headache I’d staved off with ibuprofen was coming back. “Marina, this is my store. Last I checked, I get to make the decisions.”
“Well, sure, unless they’re stupid ones, and I’m telling you—”
“Marina, I’ve decided.”
“Won’t you even talk to her?”
“Not if Yvonne takes the job.”
“Fine,” she snapped. “Then you might lose the chance of getting your best employee ever. Yvonne would be . . .” She finally listened to what her ears were hearing. “Did you say you want to hire a woman named Yvonne? Is she really pale and about five feet tall?”
All was becoming clear. “Dark-haired and softspoken.”
Marina’s sigh blew loud in my ear. “I don’t know whether to kiss you or cut you off from my brownies.”
“Oliver says kisses are yucky.”
“Then a kiss it is.” She smooched a long wet one into the phone. “Got to go, kiddo. Love ya!”
I replaced the receiver. Yvonne was on her knees, helping to shelve fluffy polar bears. Though I’d decided to hire her the minute she’d picked the copy of Carl’s Christmas off Mrs. Tolliver’s feet, there was something a little off about her.
Her difference wasn’t in the way she dressed: Her jeans were standard denim, her shoes were dark brown trail boots of the type ninety-nine out of ninety-nine adults wore through Wisconsin winters, and her coat was the standard Lands’ End navy blue.
I watched her chat with Sara. What was different was the nearly infinitesimal pause that came before she said anything. The swift mental calculation that could only come from a history of saying the wrong thing.
There was something else about Yvonne, too, and it tugged at my mothering instincts. She had that bruised look, the look kids get when they’ve had too much to bear. It was in the set of her shoulders, in the way she held her hands close to her body, in the wariness of her gaze. A thousand things could have caused this, but all I wanted to do was help make it go away.
The bells had jingled while I was on the phone with Marina. By the time I tracked down a special order and finished helping a substitute teacher find the perfect book to calm unruly children, Sara and Lois and Yvonne had finished displaying all of the Christmas gewgaws and most of the picture books. After I’d answered the phone another half dozen times, rung up a few sales, and wrapped two books in Christmas wrapping paper, it was four o’clock and the Christmas display was complete.
“Well, looky there.” Lois flung her arms wide. “It’s done. Two hours late, but no one died, and the Ladies Who Tongue-Lash went away happy.”
“It looks marvelous,” I said, and it did. We didn’t have room to display all the books face out, but they’d picked and chosen the most attractive covers to display prominently. Dancing snowflakes hobnobbed with a jolly Santa who looked benevolently upon a baby Jesus who was making a Christmas tree chuckle with delight. “If this doesn’t help people feel Christmasy,” I said, “nothing will. You’ve done an outstanding job.”
“It was all her.” Lois jerked her head at Yvonne. “I don’t have an artistic bone out of my two hundred and six. Are you going to hire her, or what?”
“I’ve already asked, Ms. Manager.”
“And she said what?” Lois demanded.
In fact, she hadn’t said anything; the phone call from Marina had interrupted the offer I’d been underselling.
Yvonne was toying with the collar of her crewneck sweater. “You want the job,” Lois barked. “What could be better than working for minimum wage evenings and weekends? And holidays. Low man on the totem pole gets holidays, you know.”
I caught Lois’s eye and frowned, shaking my head. She was acting as if Yvonne was already a long-term employee, and I didn’t even have a W-4 for her. As that thought came and went, another took its place.” “You are an American citizen, aren’t you?”
Yvonne started. “I what? Oh . . . yes.” Her smile was small and brief. “Born and raised.”
“Not around here,” Lois said. “You don’t have an accent accent, but the way you talk isn’t quite ri
ght.”
“Lois,” I said.
“What?”
Honestly, sometimes she was as bad as Marina. “Yvonne hasn’t said if she wants the job.”
Lois gazed at the tin ceiling. “Of course she does.” She shifted her gaze and skewered Yvonne with a laserlike glare. “Don’t you?”
Yvonne’s shoulders lifted and fell. “I . . . I just . . .”
“Take it,” Lois commanded. “You’ll regret it every time you open your paycheck, but”—her voice softened—“you’ll love every minute you’re in this store. It’s a magical place.”
“I . . .” Yvonne clasped her hands, then unclasped them, then clasped them again, wringing her hands in classic nineteenth-century gothic style. She looked up at me. “Can I talk to you?”
“Um, sure. I know just the place.” I glanced around at the empty store. “Can I bring back a cookie for anyone? Chocolate chip?”
Sara grinned. “Yes, please.”
Lois heaved a martyred sigh. “Oatmeal raisin. Two of them.”
Five minutes later, Yvonne and I were seated at a small round table, our shoulder blades resting uncomfortably against heart-shaped wire chair backs. We were surrounded by antiques of all shapes, sizes, and prices. The Rynwood Antique Mall was run by my friends Alice and Alan, and half the population came here on a daily basis to eat Alice’s glorious cookies. “I cook ’em like I like ’em,” she always said, and the couple was making more money from cookies than from selling antiques.
I’d told Alice I was gaining more weight from her cookies than from all the other food groups combined. What was she going to do about that? She’d laughed and said, “Have another cookie. The coconut chocolate chip turned out really good today.”
Yvonne broke her M&M’s cookie into four pieces, picked up one, and covered the other bits with her napkin. She finished the first piece and reached for the second. Though she’d said she needed to talk to me, she didn’t seem eager to begin the conversation.
Which could only mean there was something she didn’t want to tell me. I considered possibilities. Due to seasonal affective disorder, she never smiled when it was cloudy. Or, thanks to family issues, she’d need to bring—I scanned her face, trying to estimate her age—her daughter to work three times a week. Or, due to a bizarre medical problem, her doctor had said she shouldn’t operate a computer keyboard. Or—