by Solly, Clare
Chapter Fifteen
And he would have succeeded in doing just that if the other Christmas Tree hadn’t fallen off of Dottie’s car as she peeled out of his driveway in her car. He stared out the window at the tree for a while. An innocent bystander, the poor tree didn’t deserve to just be left out in the cold. It was almost completely covered in snow before he decided what to do. The brilliant idea would work. But he needed help. Grabbing his coat from the hook and his keys and cell phone off of the front table, he threw his coat on and dialed. This was the move he should have made years ago.
* * *
Dottie drove off pressing the gas deeply into the floor. She felt the car kick in the snow. Blind with anger or passion, Dottie thought it was the car and the snow that kicked as she drove at speeds, she didn’t know her father’s old car could go.
It wasn’t until she had parked the car, marched up the stairs to her apartment, opened a bottle of wine, poured a glass and took her first sip that she realized what happened.
“Crap!” she hollered so loudly that Mrs. Johnson next door probably heard it. “Sorry, Mrs. Johnson, she said in a singsong whisper, hoping the essence of the apology would float through the wall. The tree she had bought for the museum was now probably in Joe’s front lawn covered with snow or smashed with bits on the road.
Well, who cared? She certainly didn’t she told herself. There were other Christmas Trees in the farm! And she slammed back her glass of wine to punctuate the thought. She poured another glass. Trying to calm herself, she went and sat on her sofa, crossed her legs and took another sip. It didn’t help. She jumped up and started pacing the room like a caged tiger.
“How dare he decide for the both of us!” she said out loud, echoing the sentiment she felt earlier.
Dottie’s quiet life was upended. To find out that her big dream wasn’t really hers at all, but Harold’s. And then to find out that Harold had known Joe liked her and asked her out.
“Hetty!” Dottie growled her friend’s name in anger. “She’s known all along!” She paced and drank her wine as she tried to unravel her thoughts, feeling like everyone was against her and out to get her all of her life.
“Ok, wait. Think this through,” Dottie kept talking to herself, taking in a deep breath through her nose, making her nostrils flare. She set her glass down on the table. Paper. She needed paper. Doing a quick gaze around her living room, she spied her box of wrapping paper laying on the floor. She popped open the top and grabbed a roll. Then she took three steps to the junk drawer in the kitchen and grabbed a handful of permanent markers that were there. This small apartment was perfect for finding many things quickly. She picked up her glass, paper and markers, then swept everything else off the coffee table to the floor. It was a very dramatic gesture, but in reality, it was two coasters, a remote control and a magazine that proclaimed it could tell you the secrets of worriless holiday decorating.
“Yeah, don’t try decorating someone from your past’s house!” Dottie said to the magazine. With a practiced air she crossed her ankles and sank to the ground cross legged. Dottie was down on the floor in two seconds. The markers she tossed on the floor next to her knee, and took the paper set it on one end of the table with the white side up and let it roll away, so the table was now covered in paper. The cardboard tube skittered across the floor being free of the paper and hit the wall. Taking a red marker, Dottie started writing in no particular order or placement:
Joe has had feelings for me since??
Harold knew all along.
HETTY knew all along.
If I were Hetty would I have told me?
Joe left, so apparently his feelings weren’t that big.
Harold wants me to move to New York.
Did I ever want to live in a big city?
What is my dream?
Picking up the green marker she started to write answers next to the questions or just somewhere on the paper.
NO, if I were Hetty, I would have known it would be better to figure out for myself. Besides, she is Joe’s friend too. Maybe he asked her to keep it a secret.
Harold knew, and he always had a rivalry with Joe. Maybe I’m just a prize?
No. I don’t want to move to New York. I don’t think I want to move anywhere. Except maybe the New York Public Library.
My dream is…
My dream is…
My dream is… to travel to places, but to return home and teach others about them.
If someone loves you, they give you enough space to make your own decisions.
I love
Dottie didn’t get to finish her last thought because there was a knock at the door. It’s Joe! She thought. He knocked again. Her heart raced with the thought he was just outside her door. Wait, why was she suddenly excited? Shouldn’t she still be angry, she thought. A knock pulled her out of her introspection.
“Just a minute,” she said toward the door as she quickly balled up the paper and tossed it over into a corner. She didn’t realize until after she had tossed it, it was the size of a large snowball. As it hit the wall and rolled, it was falling open already. He knocked again, louder and faster this time. She grabbed the markers, tossed them on the kitchen counter, and ran to the door.
“I’m so glad you came over Jo—Harold!” quickly correcting herself as she actually looked at who was behind the door.
“Hey, Dot,” he said as he walked in past her. “Oh good, you have wine open already.” Harold set the poster boards down that he was carrying, leaning them against the back of the sofa and walking to the kitchen. He grabbed himself a wine glass, and the bottle with the same hand. He took Dottie’s hand with his free one and led her to the sofa, adeptly setting her down and pouring wine into both glasses. Hers was a little shorter pour than his, she noticed. But it was the end of the bottle. She was focused on the fact that he didn’t bother to even the glasses, but instead leaned over the back of the sofa and grabbed the poster boards and set them leaning against the far side of the coffee table, out of reach of Dottie. Harold then picked up both glasses, handing one to her and then clinking.
“We’re celebrating, baby!” he took a quick gulp, set his glass down on the table, and clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “Now, you might be wondering why I’m over here so late.” Dottie tried to look around to the microwave to see what time it was but was at the wrong side of the sofa to see it. Deciding it was best to just go along, she noncommittally said, “sure.”
“Well, I hope you don’t mind, but while I was at the interview for my new company, I told them about your cookies. Turns out they have a company who wants a new baked good, and—” he said with great dramatic pause, and turning to grab a poster, “They want to buy ‘Grandma Dottie’s Ginger Chew Cookies’!” He said flipping a poster around and showing Dottie a hand drawn picture of an elderly lady with crinkly eyes and gray hair sneaking a bite of a cookie with one hand and holding a plate out to the viewer with one missing with the other hand.
With a mixture of confusion and dissatisfaction Dottie looked from the poster to Harold’s face and back to the poster. She opened and shut her mouth, and then took a large swig of wine.
“I know the photo looks nothing like you, but research shows that people would rather buy cookies from a sweet grandmother then from—” Harold went on and on. He showed her the other three posters that showed profit margins, a commercial mock-up and a plan for launching the cookies. His voice droned in the background and Hetty caught highlights.
Interwoven while he spoke, her own thoughts poured out. At first, she was self-effacing thinking the cookies weren’t good enough to be a national product. Then she was angry at Harold taking the idea to his new company without asking her first. Suddenly she realized that she could use the money to save the museum and caught Harold’s excitement. The cookies really were the solution to keeping the museum open! She thought quickly through the origin of the recipe and wondered if any of her maternal ancestors would mind if she passed
it along. Her mother’s voice came through like a bell, “If it will save something you care about, we will always support you.”
“How soon?” Dottie asked stopping Harold in his persuasive speech.
“What?” he did a double take. “Well, I… Dottie, don’t you see that this is a great opportunity you have here? With the money—”
“Yes.” Dottie said looking at him expectantly.
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, I see that it is a great opportunity.” Harold turned toward her with his hands on his hips. A baffled look crossed his face. “Well, I—” his hands fell limply at his sides. Poor thing, Dottie thought. Harold had his big plan to try to convince me, and I didn’t need as much persuasion as he planned. He is adorable, she thought as she looked at him. No, she corrected her own thought, he actually looks a bit weasley and plotting. She wondered if this was the same feeling Joe had all of those years ago about Harold. Joe…she shook him out of her head and became present in the room again. Harold’s excitement snapped her back completely.
“I… I… I think we can get it out and rolling soon, I just need… contracts, and…” Harold started fumbling around her small living room, gathering up the posters. As he grabbed the last one, he grabbed for his wine glass to toast Dottie again. Then tipping the glass back to drain it, he dropped all of the poster boards. In regathering them, he noticed the wad of Christmas paper and picked it up. “Interesting decorating,” he said holding it up and looking at it. The thing was unfolding and about the size of a large mixing bowl now. Dottie cringed as she hoped he wouldn’t notice any of the writing on it. He looked around the room, doing a small circle in place, “Babe,” she winced as he called her the pet name, “Why don’t you have your decorations up yet? Don’t you always give the guys at the hardware store a run for their money? Usually yours are up before December.”
“Well, there just hasn’t been time, what with trying to help the museum and baking the cookies and—”
“Cookies, right! Well, there will be plenty of time for decorating soon.” He tossed the ball of wrapping paper at her then gave her a quick peck on the top of her head. “I’m going to get out of here before you change your mind. Call you tomorrow with the details.”
And with that he was gone. Dottie hadn’t moved from the sofa the entire time. She should feel better since one of her problems was solved, shouldn’t she? But what about Joe, her brain prodded. What about New York? What about the museum? If you move to New York, who will run it? More questions poured through the floodgates that had been opened. She reached for her glass, but finding it was empty stood up, wadded up the ball of paper more, and tossed it toward the boxes of decorations.
Looking around for her phone because she felt the urge to call Hetty. Then she stopped because at this moment she felt Hetty to be a traitor.
Dottie didn’t want to talk to her mother about any of this either. Instead she plugged the phone in and set it on the kitchen counter. Turning around to face the living room, she sunk even lower thinking about how she hadn’t made time to decorate. Then, it was almost if the box twinkled at her, the idea to set up the miniature town and the train set hit her. Normally she set it up under the tree as the last thing. But she really wanted to put out the miniatures, even if she didn’t have a tree yet. If she set it up around the tree holder, she could just plop the tree in when she picked it up later this week and she’d get an answer for the museum! She could avoid Joe.
The evening passed as she set up all of the buildings, the trees and the miniature people all around the tree skirt. Her troubles dissipated as she drifted into the memories of collecting and setting this up every year with her father. The red train was a North Pole Express. It was a vintage looking train with an older black locomotive and pulled red and green passenger cars. It had a flatbed car that she always put at the end where Santa, in his sleigh, was being pulled by reindeer. Dasher and Dancer already flying into the air. When she finished, she grabbed a pillow from the sofa and lay on the floor. She put her head down on the cozy pillow admiring her work and in wonder watched the train go around and round the track, until it lulled her to sleep.
Chapter Sixteen
When the alarm went off the next morning, Dottie found herself fully clothed in her bed. She vaguely remembered waking up at some point during the night, turning off the train and climbing in bed. Shuffling to the shower, Dottie peeled off yesterday’s clothes and the irritation of the day as she climbed in and let the warm water wash all the worries away.
Feeling revived, and hopping into her cozy robe, she shuffled to the kitchen and started a cup of coffee to brew. Coffee erased all kinds of ills. As soon as the coffee started to drip into her cup, she dashed to her room to get dressed. Always one to sleep until the last possible moment, Dottie only allowed herself about twenty minutes in the morning to get ready, and she jumped in jeans and a shirt and threw a nice sweater over. She was headed to the high school first today to do more yearbook research on the horseshoe competition. In her normal pace, she was up and out the door, coffee in hand in twenty minutes.
Arriving at Bacon High School, she went to Robert’s office and waited for the first bell to ring and his morning announcements to finish.
“So good to see you Dottie, welcome back!” Robert said. He wasn’t the principal when she was in school, he was too young. But he was a fixture at this institution. “I’ll walk you down to the library and we can stop in on Mrs. Rhuel, she oversees the yearbook,” he said as he walked down the hall, commenting over his shoulder. Dottie didn’t make it out to the high school much, she had only been here twice since graduating, but the place didn’t age. The bricks and the smells and the carpets all looked the same. Voices from the past rang in her ears as they walked past the cafeteria and her old homeroom. As Robert stopped to talk to a teacher, Dottie looked over to see she was standing in front of her junior year locker. Crystal clear, the memory of that day played in her head. She had worn overalls that day with a pink collared polo shirt. Her purple three ring binder clasped to her chest; the inside cover had Joe’s baseball number doodled repeatedly. She remembered Hetty standing right next to her as Harold walked up and asked her to the dance. Feeling the bile of fear rise up in her throat again. Remembering Hetty’s face cringe as Dottie looked to her for reassurance. Guiltily, she remembered everything slowing as her brain churned. Back then she thought that maybe if she said yes it would make Joe jealous. That was a funny thing to remember. Why would she want to make Joe jealous, she wondered?
“Dottie?” Robert said as he looked at her questioningly. “Everything ok?”
“Oh, yeah.” she smiled. Just remembering this was my old locker and how I got stuck—”
Robert interrupted her misunderstanding and chuckling, “Yes, those old lockers did stick. We put new mechanisms in them a couple of years ago. So many students were using the ‘my locker was stuck’ excuse to be late to class. We tested all of the lockers that summer to find out they were right.” He smiled at his own effectiveness over the change. “Well, shall we move on?”
Leading her down the hall, Robert stopped and held the door for Dottie to enter into a classroom. The bell had just rung so second period had started. An introduction to Mrs. Rhuel and her beginning journalism class was brief. There was a quick announcement that Dottie was visiting, a mention of the museum, and then the class started on an assignment.
Robert escorted Dottie aside and Mrs. Rhuel joined them. She told Dottie, “If you come back around fifth period, I have only my editors then. As we aren’t on a deadline at the moment, we all can help you sort through the digital versions of the yearbooks.”
“Digital?” Dottie asked.
“Yes. A few years ago, one of my more industrial classes suggested we scan every yearbook we had so we could have a digital back up. It’s become a great research tool and we would love to make it more accessible to everyone. We tried to do a fundraiser to get a website but couldn’t raise enough. It costs a
lot to have a server hold that much data that is accessible from anywhere. So, we have them on the hard drives here only.” Mrs. Rhuel said a little disheartened. “It also isn’t completely catalogued. I have students come in from time to time, those who are interested or those who need to get their grades up,” she winked at Dottie, “to do extra credit. It’s a big job, but it will be a great resource when its finished.”
“Sounds like it. I wish we had something like that at the museum!” Dottie said. “I’m sure I could get you more volunteers to help catalogue it.”
“I thought you didn’t get a lot of traffic,” Robert said.
“That is true. We don’t get a lot of paying customers, or people wanting to rent the place for events. I do get a lot of people, especially retirees, that want to volunteer. There is now a “cleaning day” once a week, and a book organizing day. People come in, help for a couple of hours and leave. It’s to the point I have so much help, I make things up to do around the museum because I don’t want to turn them away,” Dottie shrugged.
“Well, then,” Robert replied to move things along, “we should get over to the library so you can make headway.”
“Right. I’ll see you in a bit Mrs. Rhuel,” Dottie waved as they walked out of the classroom.
The library was only a few more feet down the hall. Robert started to push the door open, and then he stopped and turned toward Dottie. “Do you have your cell phone with you?”
Dottie nodded.
“Would you mind turning it to airplane mode or off? We have a no cell phone policy on campus, except in the cafeteria or outside of the building.”
“Sure, sure,” Dottie replied, fumbling for the phone in her jeans pocket. She was practiced at hitting the two buttons to turn it off so by the time she raised it to her face it was the “are you sure you want to turn off your phone” screen. She swiped right and powered down.