by McMan, Ann;
I looked down at Alvin. He gazed back at me with his wide, dark eyes.
“I hope you picked the boxer shorts. Those briefs tend to creep up on you after a while.”
He nodded.
“Come on. Let’s get your shoes.
Santa’s Crystal Snow Palace was unfortunately situated smack dab in the middle of Towson Town Center mall. It was a twenty-five minute drive under the best circumstances, but tonight wasn’t remotely like the best circumstances. It was the night before Christmas, and two-thirds of the population of Baltimore was out cramming all of the highways and byways in last-minute shopping frenzies. The aggregate lack of enthusiasm for these endeavors was evident in the general absence of driving courtesies.
People were cranky, in a hurry, and eager to be anyplace but in their cars stuck in holiday traffic.
The boys were all strapped securely into their car seats. Clarissa seemed to have greater facility navigating the mechanics of those than I did. In retrospect, that shouldn’t really have surprised me. I recalled watching her truss a goose once. It was hypnotic—and it was the only reason I consented to try another one for this year’s Christmas dinner. She did it so quickly and easily that I had to wonder about where she acquired such a skill. It sure didn’t seem like anything she’d have picked up at Princeton. But I reasoned that since she’d always had an uncanny ability to tie my ass up in knots, this probably was just the logical extension of a natural talent.
The biggest hurdle we had to navigate in preparation for tonight’s great, unplanned Santa pilgrimage—after we got everyone to pee…twice…was what to do with the dogs.
The dogs.
Not since “Ted Cruz” had any pair of words filled me with so much dread, and the promise of certain disaster.
We went back and forth about what to do with them while we were out of the house. Clarissa seemed content to lock them up on the back porch. Maris had arrived with her customary bevy of cashmere winter coats, so she’d be fine in the crisp night air for a couple of hours. Sadie, on the other hand, had fur that was thick enough to attract hunters and trappers from the Yukon.
Still, I worried about the wisdom of leaving the Harry Houdini of dogs alone in a largely unsecured enclosure.
Where was razor wire when you needed it?
Salvation arrived in the form of Christa Schröder, my German neighbor. Her son, Karl, was arriving tomorrow to take her back to North Carolina to spend the rest of the holiday with him, his wife Maisy, and their four children. Christa had been baking all day to prepare for the trip. She appeared at our door just as we had about decided that our safest option was to take the dogs along with us. She was bearing a fresh loaf of Stollen. She thrust the hot, sweet bread into my hands and bent down to coo at the dogs, who were dancing around her feet like puppies.
“My precious beauties.” She wrapped them both up in her large arms. “What bundles of joy are.”
Clarissa and I exchanged glances.
Christa was now softly singing to the dogs in German.
“Um. Christa?” I asked.
She looked up at me with her sky blue eyes. Incredibly, the dogs were already half asleep.
“Ya?” she asked.
I gestured toward the boys, who were watching the spectacle with as much amazement as the two of us.
“Marty is sick and we have his kids. We’re just heading out to take them to see Santa Claus. Would you mind watching the dogs for us? It should only be for a couple of hours.”
“Sure.” She waved a hand toward the wall that separated our row houses. “I can feed them some schnitzel.” She dropped her gaze back to the dogs. “You would like that, wouldn’t you, my pretties?”
Problem solved. If we played our cards right, maybe Christa would offer to keep them overnight, too. It was Christmastime, after all. Miracles were to be expected.
We’d finally reached the turnoff for Towson Town Center. Clarissa gasped when she got a look at the parking lot.
“This looks worse than Epcot Center on the fourth of July.”
I tried to put a positive spin on it. “It’s not that bad. I bet we find something close to the entrance.”
Fat chance. There were long lines of cars trolling bumper-to-bumper in a hunt for any sliver of car-sized space. We crawled around for about ten minutes. The snow was still coming down, and the big, fat flakes swirled around in the beams from the headlights. It was like watching an epic pillow fight at the North Pole.
“I think we should give this up.”
I glanced over at Clarissa. “We can’t. We have to take the kids to see Santa.”
“Not that.” She met my eyes. “This. We’re never going to find a space in here.”
“What do you think we should do?”
“Get out of this maze and head over to Goucher College. We can park in one of their lots.”
“Won’t we get towed?”
“The day before Christmas? I doubt it.”
I sighed. “Even if I can succeed in getting us out of here before Epiphany—which right now looks extremely unlikely—how on earth will going over there help us? We can’t walk that far with the kids.”
Clarissa held up her cell phone.
“We won’t be walking. I’ll get us an Uber.”
An Uber?
“My god. You’re brilliant.”
She smiled at me.
“And gorgeous. Have I told you that lately?”
“Gross.”
I looked in the rearview mirror. Simon was staring back at us.
“You guys should get a room,” he added.
“Hey, wise guy.” I wagged a finger at him. “We have a room. And if memory serves, you were pretty comfortable in there just about an hour ago. So mind your P’s and Q’s.”
“What-ever.” He looked down at his electronic Sudoku game.
“I’m hungry.” Teddy kicked the back of my seat.
“I know, dude. So am I. We’ll stop for some dinner after we see Santa.”
“I wouldn’t count on it,” Clarissa muttered.
“What do you mean?” I was piloting the van down one of the long avenues that led to the Goucher campus.
“Did you see the lines of people outside all those restaurants?”
“I have to pee.” Alvin decided to join the conversation.
Clarissa swiveled around on her seat and glared at him. “Don’t. Even. Think. About. It.”
“Dude,” Simon chimed in. “If I were you, I’d hold it.”
“Cross your legs,” Teddy added.
I turned into the visitor lot. “Where should we park?”
Clarissa pointed at a white vehicle parked beneath a streetlight. It seemed to blend into the snow flying around it. “How about right beside that?”
“The minivan?”
She nodded. “It’s our Uber.”
“You got us a minivan?”
“Of course. Kids. Car seats.” She held up her cell phone. “It’s called UberFAMILY.”
I was amazed. “I didn’t even think of that.”
“They did a feature about this last week on Bloomberg,” Simon volunteered. “I predict it will go public before the end of the second quarter. You heard it here first.”
I looked at Clarissa and jerked a thumb toward the back seat. “Is this kid really Marty’s?”
“It does beg the question,” she agreed.
“Okay.” I put the van in park. “Let’s offload and get this show on the road.”
Within ten minutes, we were all crammed inside our Uber, and navigating our way back to Towson Town Center mall. The driver dropped us off at the entrance closest to Santa’s Crystal Snow Palace. I think he took pity on us. It was pretty clear that we were completely out of our league with this errand.
“You folks don’t really have kids, do you?” he asked, after watching us struggle to get all three of the boys back out of his van.
“What tipped you off?” I was sucking on the tip of the thumb I had nearly pinched o
ff while trying to unsnap Alvin’s seatbelt.
“Call it a hunch,” he said. He looked at Clarissa. “Look. We’re really not supposed to do this, but how about you just give me a call on my cell when you’re ready to head back to your car?” He handed her a slip of paper.
Clarissa took it from him. “Thank you, but how do you know you’ll be available when we’re through?”
“You’re taking them to see Santa, right?”
She nodded.
“At seven o’clock on Christmas Eve?”
She sighed. “Ridiculous, right?”
“More like suicidal.” He looked at his watch. “I predict you’ll be out of there in about four hours.”
Four hours? Okay, so I’d been in denial that our plans for a quiet wedding had already been trampled underfoot by that steamroller some people call fate. But this information brought the unhappy truth crashing down on me like a Steinway falling from the top of the Transamerica Tower. And to add insult to devastating injury, I’d now be spending four hours in a mall—on Christmas Eve. I knew myself. I’d never last four hours in a mall. The last time I had to go shopping in one I nearly bought an Uzi at Toys R Us and went on a rampage to bust myself out.
“Come on.” Clarissa yanked the sleeve of my jacket. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
The five of us linked hands and made our serpentine way into the mall. The interior was ablaze with light. Above the throngs of people I could see scores of giant, red candy canes and Styrofoam snow flakes the size of manhole covers. The cloying scent of cinnamon was overwhelming. Christmas music was blasting over hidden loudspeakers. At least, I think it was Christmas music. It was kind of hard to tell with all the ambient screaming going on.
I began to feel woozy.
“Clar?” I began.
She ignored me. “Over there.” She pointed at something.
I looked around. “What?”
“Between Cinnabon and The Sunglass Hut,” she clarified. “The men’s restroom.”
Alvin was insistently tugging at my hand. “I have to pee!”
I looked at Clarissa. “The men’s restroom?”
“You can pull it off.” She tossed her mane of red hair. “Channel your inner Rachel Maddow. We’ll wait for you by the Sunglass Hut.” She looked down at Simon and Teddy. “Won’t we guys?”
They began to protest.
She sweetened the deal. “I’ll buy you some Ray-Bans.”
Simon shoved Teddy out of the way. “Move it lard-ass.”
They took off toward the kiosk.
I sighed and embraced my fate. After all, how bad could it be?
I was about to find out.
Alvin and I stood in a long line that stretched out along the corridor that led to the men’s room. There were men and boys in every shape, size, each sporting varying levels of discomfort. Most of them were complaining about how long it was taking to inch forward. A large guy in front of me was dictating text messages into his cell phone.
Loudly.
He was built like a linebacker and was wearing a Ravens hoodie that was about five sizes too small for his massive frame. He kept backing up while bellowing into his phone, so I had to keep yanking Alvin out of harm’s way.
“Tell that skanky bitch she’d better be gone when I get back to the office.” Pause. “Period.”
Maybe the guy didn’t realize how loud he was, and that there were kids all around us. I cleared my throat.
He turned around to glower at me.
“You got a problem?”
I shook my head. “No. But there are kids everyplace.”
“Who gives a shit?” He turned back around and resumed his colorful dictation. “Carla is a cunt.” Pause. “Exclamation point.” He grunted and held his phone closer to his mouth. “Not fucking can’t,” he corrected. “Cunt. C-U-N-T.”
Alvin looked up at me.
“What’s a cunt, Diz?”
I was not having this conversation. Particularly not when a wall of surliness loomed just in front of us. I bent down to whisper to him. “We’ll talk about it later, okay?”
Apparently, some guy in line behind us had another idea. “Why don’t you watch your mouth, asshole?”
I straightened up just in time for Dick Butkus to wheel back around.
“Did you just call me an asshole?” he demanded. He stepped closer. His breath smelled like stale beer.
I stared up at him. “No. I don’t believe I called you anything,” I paused. “Ellipsis.”
He narrowed his already beady eyes. “Are you being a smartass?”
Before I could compliment him on his powers of discernment, Alvin stepped into the void.
“Hey mister,” Alvin tugged on the purple sleeve of his hoodie. “What’s a cunt?”
Butkus glared down at him, then back at me. “You let your kid talk like that?” He jerked a fat thumb toward Alvin.
“No,” I replied. “And he’s not my kid.”
Butkus wasn’t buying it. “I recognize you, now.” He continued to look me up and down. It made me feel itchy inside my clothes. “You’re that bossy dyke from TV.” He elbowed the guy standing beside him. “It’s that liberal news bitch. What’s her name?”
“Rachel Maddow,” an alto voice behind me supplied.
I felt a tingle run up my spine—and it wasn’t the good kind.
Clarissa.
I turned around to face her.
She was giving me that measured look of hers—the one that said, “What the hell have you done now?” I noticed that she had Simon and Teddy in tow—both wearing snappy new shades. Simon had Aviators. Teddy was sporting Wayfarers. They looked too cool for this corridor.
Alvin shifted his gaze to Clarissa. “What’s a cunt?”
I raised a hand to my forehead. This was going to end badly.
Clarissa was chewing the inside of her cheek.
Butkus wasn’t backing down, either. But I did notice he was having a hard time keeping his eyes off Clarissa.
She decided to defuse the situation by giving him her best, full-frontal Rita Hayworth.
“I’d like to apologize for the rudeness of my friend here. She isn’t used to dealing with little boys in distress.” She indicated Alvin, who now was holding onto his crotch with both hands. Clarissa gave Butkus a brilliant, just-between-us smile. “I’m sure you understand.”
Butkus backed up and spread out his beefy arms. “Make way, everybody. This little lady has an emergency.”
Clarissa beamed at him and took hold of Alvin’s hand.
“Thank you, most kindly.”
They pushed their way forward to the head of the line.
Butkus and I watched them go.
“Now that’s a nice piece of ass,” he said.
Although I wanted to punch his lights out, I was hard-pressed to disagree.
I dropped my gaze to Simon and Teddy, who looked like pygmy members of McGarrett’s Five-O Task Force.
“Did you guys pick out some sunglasses for Alvin?”
Teddy nodded and held up a bag.
“Lemme see.”
I took the bag and pulled out a pair of blinding white frames that contained lenses the size of dinner plates. “Coco Chanel?” I asked. “Seriously?”
Teddy shrugged.
Simon waved a hand. “He’s a pervert. They’ll go great with those Jimmy Choo’s.”
I couldn’t really argue with him.
The line to Santa’s Crystal Snow Palace snaked around the mall in an endless series of loops and doglegs. It was about a zillion degrees in that joint—and it was more crowded than a Mumbai commuter train.
I was hungry and my stomach kept growling.
“This is the fourth time we’ve passed that same Chick-fil-A,” I complained.
“Deal with it. We’re not giving up our place in line.”
I sighed and decided to try another approach. Bribery.
I leaned closer to Clarissa. “How about we blow this pop stand and just
take the kids to…” I looked around for the nearest store that would be likely to have an outside entrance. “Cabela’s. We can buy them anything they want.”
“Good idea.” Clarissa raised a red eyebrow. “I’m sure the boys are running low on ammo.”
I blew out an exasperated breath. “Come on, Clar. We’re going to be stuck in this line for the rest of our natural lives.”
“Diz.” She glared at me unapologetically. “You’re whining more than any of the kids in this line. Suck it up and deal with it.”
It was true. I stubbed the toe of my shoe into the base of an obnoxious and overdone Styrofoam snowman that was staring down at me with a maniacal smile. It toppled over like a stack of Jenga blocks and took out an entire stand of cardboard spruce trees on its way down. Fake snow flew everywhere.
A kid behind us started screaming. “That man hurt Frosty!”
Oh shit.
Clarissa fixed me with a murderous gaze. “What did you do now?”
“She eighty-sixed the snowman,” Simon explained.
“Hey? Shrimp boat?” I bent toward Simon and made rapid slashing motions beneath my chin. “Not helping.”
The kid behind us was still screaming. Soon other tired, hungry and impatient kids joined in. It spread through the line like a wave. A chorus of yuletide rage drowned out the ambient Best of Manheim Steamroller tunes that had been playing for the last three hours.
I tried to placate the ringleader. She was still screaming and she had lungs like Ethel Merman on opening night.
“It’s okay,” I explained. “Frosty isn’t hurt. He’s just—lying down. He’s tired. Like we all are.”
Ethel wasn’t buying it. Neither was her mother.
“What’s the matter with you?” She hissed at me and picked up her yodeling spawn. “If you hate Christmas so much, then you shouldn’t be here spoiling it for everyone else.”
Hate Christmas? Me?
“Hey. Wait a second, lady,” I began.
Clarissa took hold of my arm. “Diz?”
I shook her off. I’d had just about enough of this.
“Look lady, I didn’t ask to be stuck in this sweltering line with five-hundred howling, midget refugees from hell.”
“Daaaaaaddddyyyyyy!” her kid was screaming. “A mean man is attacking mama!”