Jingle Boy (5 page)

I pushed myself off the couch, prompting the head rush of the century, and staggered, half blind, over to the entertainment center. I braced my hands on top of the cabinet for a second and waited for the fog in my brain to clear, then dropped down and opened the deep drawer under the flat-screen TV. Inside were a couple of rows of videos that my parents had collected over the years. My mom’s favorites:
Grease, Xanadu,
Gone with the Wind, Mr. Mom.
My dad’s favorites:
Beverly Hills Cop, Star Wars, Zulu.
(Don’t ask.) Then, of course, there was our Christmas movie collection. Everything from
Christmas Vacation
to
Miracle on 34th
Street
(both the original and the newer one with that dude from
The Practice
and that woman from
Big
).

I slipped out the tape of
It’s a Wonderful Life
and popped it into the VCR, causing the screen to go blue right in the middle of the minigolf montage of
Overboard.
Grabbing up the remote as I backed into the couch once again, I started to feel a little bit better. I was taking control. I was being proactive. I was not going to let outside forces get me down. And I was not going to let my mind wander back to our night at the movies again just because
I
was
watching
a movie. No. This was the new me.

I picked up my cell phone just to make sure Sarah hadn’t called and the thing had neglected to ring (it happens!), then put it aside and hit the Play button on the remote.

I started to lie down again but stopped myself. No. I was going to sit up straight like a human being whose entire life had not been trashed less than twenty-four hours ago. I was going to watch my movie and cheer the hell up.

One hour later I was ready to put my bare foot through the television.
This
was supposed to be uplifting? What was wrong with Frank Capra, anyway? All poor Jimmy Stewart wanted to do was get out of his little nothing of a town and see the world! Why wouldn’t they let him
do
it? Couldn’t he just have gone on his little trip with his big monster trunk, come back, and
then
married Mary? And I have a hard time believing that a babe like Donna Reed ends up a lonely spinster librarian just because George Bailey doesn’t exist. Come on! Were the rest of the guys in town born without
eyes
or something?

This movie was so contrived! It was so false! It was clearly made just to snow the viewing public into believing that their tiny little coupon-cutting, lawn-mowing lives were something more than they actually were so that they would keep going back to their dead-end jobs making money for big business and stuffing the bank accounts of the wealthy—the people who actually knew better.

And for God’s sake, how the hell did Jimmy Stewart keep himself from strangling that annoying little Zuzu, anyway? I would’ve taken a shovel to her head somewhere in the middle of the first act.

I picked up the remote and flicked off the television in disgust. Maybe I would go to Blockbuster and rent
The Nightmare Before Christmas.
I’d always boycotted it on principle, but now I was kind of curious. Maybe Holly would let me borrow her copy.

Suddenly the front door opened and slammed and I sat up straight, startled. My eyes darted to the clock. It was only a little after three. My mother wasn’t supposed to be home for a couple of hours. I was about to get up and go into the kitchen when I heard the distinct sound of my mother weeping and I stopped, my heart seizing up. Like I said, my mother rarely lost it, so when she did, it was kind of a scary thing. A scary thing I wasn’t quite sure how to handle.

But my father, the one who knew exactly what to do in these situations, wasn’t available. It was going to have to be me.

I stood up shakily, letting the fleece blanket I’d wrapped around my legs fall to the ground, and tip-toed toward the kitchen, half hoping my mother would hear me and get ahold of herself. What was I supposed to do? I hated seeing my mother cry.

When I got to the kitchen, I hovered in the doorway for a moment. My mother had put a kettle of water on the stove and was pulling out the cocoa powder from above the microwave. She was wearing a knee-length skirt, a silk shirt, and heels, and she was all coiffed, just like she always was for work. Was there some problem with our insurance? Or was something wrong with Dad?

“Mom?” I said tentatively.

She dropped the measuring spoon into the cocoa can and turned around, wiping under her eyes with both hands.

“Paul! You startled me!” she said, faking a smile. Her eyes traveled down my body. “Are you still in your pajamas?”

Guilt settled over me like an iron blanket. “Yeah,” I said. “Sorry. I just—”

“It’s all right,” she said, waving her hand and turning back to her cocoa. “Maybe it’s a good idea. I just might join you. . . .”

And then she started crying again, her shoulders shaking. I couldn’t take it anymore.

“Mom? What’s wrong?” I asked, walking into the kitchen and leaning into the back of one of the wooden chairs around the table.

“Ooooh . . . I was fired,” my mother said. Actually, she almost sang it in her high-pitched voice. Like she was saying, “Ooooh . . . I’m so happeeeeeee!”

“What?” I blurted out. “Why?”

My mother shrugged as she measured out enough cocoa to warm a wagon train in the dead of winter on the plains. She shook her head as she talked, spooning powder into mugs. I wondered if she was expecting someone or if she actually had cracked. I had a sinking feeling it was the latter.

“That Awful Woman saw me taking your return without the receipt and instead of
asking
me what I was doing and maybe
waiting
for an explanation, she went directly to Mr. Steiger and told him she’d seen me taking an illegal return.” She dropped her spoon and turned to me, her eyes wide and red. “She used the word ‘illegal’! Like I’m some kind of common criminal!”

“I don’t believe this,” I said, my heart hardening into a heavy, cold stone. I pulled out the chair and dropped into it, resting my head in my hands. “That Awful Woman” was the euphemism my mother used for Marge Horvath, the assistant manager who had made me pry the pendant out of her bony little fingers the day before. Well, actually, made
Holly
pry it out of her fingers.

“Mr. Steiger called me into his office and told me that my conduct was unacceptable, and then he started telling me that there has been some money missing from registers recently and he was going to call a meeting about it tonight, anyway, but that since the money is always missing after my shifts, they were pretty certain that they had their culprit and this solidified it.”

My mother was babbling now, her voice steadily rising in pitch until it could be heard only by mice and small dogs. All I could do was stare down at the holly-bordered place mats on the table and listen to the little voice in my head taunting me.
“This is all
your fault, all your fault, all your fault.”
The voice sounded suspiciously like the elves from my prefire nightmare.

“They think I’m a thief, Paul! They think I’ve been stealing from them!”

Suddenly my mother seemed to realize that she had measured out half the can of cocoa and that there was nobody here to drink it. Her shoulders collapsed and she brought her hand to her head.

“It’s gonna be okay, Mom,” I said, even though I had no proof that this was in any way true.

“I’m sorry, sweetie,” she said, sniffling. She sat down at the table right across from me and picked at the corner of the place mat in front of her, looking like a forlorn little girl. It’s pretty weird when you see your mother so vulnerable. It kind of makes you feel like you aren’t a kid anymore.

I got up, walked around behind her, and wrapped my arms around her back. She reached up and patted my forearms, then took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“What would I do without you?” she said quietly.

Then I
really
didn’t feel like a kid. I wanted to say something to make her feel better. Anything encouraging. But nothing came to mind. It seemed like the spirit of Scrooge had settled in over our once Christmas-spirited household and I had no idea how to make it go away.

For the first time in my life, Christmas Sucked with a capital S.

“Make it fast, man. We gotta get to the gym before the rush,” Marcus told me as I jumped out of his car in front of the Foot Locker at Paramus Park on Monday afternoon.

“I’m gonna be two seconds,” I told him, slamming the door.

I ran around the car and dodged a few shoppers to get to the automatic sliding door. The last place in the world I wanted to be at that moment was the mall—the proverbial scene of the crime—but I’d promised my mother I would pick up her last paycheck. There was no way she wanted to face That Awful Woman or Mr. Steiger again and I was glad I could do something for her. I just wanted to do it as quickly as humanly possible.

The mall was packed, as it would be every day until Christmas from here on out. I tried not to pay attention to the Muzak playing overhead or notice any of the bright decorations all around me. It had taken two days to entirely change the way I felt about this mall. Friday I’d been, let’s face it, aglow. Today I was Mr. Sneer—the guy I hated. That person who stormed through the mall at Christmastime with that look on his face like it was a chore rather than a special yearly ritual to be savored and cherished.

I loathed myself.

I crossed the mall quickly, averting my eyes from the North Pole, and was about to duck right into Fortunoff and back to the counter in front of the office, but I stopped short, my sneakers squeaking on the linoleum. This was not happening. Sarah was not standing with Lainie Lefkowitz and That Awful Woman at the counter in the front of the store.

I stood there for a moment, unsure of how to proceed. Did I just walk by them, pretending they weren’t even there as Sarah had done to me
all day long
in school? (I’d tried to talk to her during choir, but she’d told me she wasn’t good with breakups and it would just be better if I left her alone right now. Please.) Did I act like the bigger person and just walk over there and say hello? Or did I, as the more sadistic part of my brain was prompting me to do, break open the emergency fire hose case next to me and douse all three of them with a nice, freezing-cold blast of water?

As I stood hovering, my decision was made for me by the none-too-subtle Lainie. She saw me standing there, elbowed Sarah on the arm, and lifted her chin in my direction. I quickly ran my hands through my hair and tucked in the front hem of my shirt. Sarah turned, paled, and swallowed.

“Uh . . . hi, Paul,” she said.

“Oh, so I guess I’m not invisible outside of school,” I said. Damn! Did I really
say
that? Way to act cool, buddy. I walked the few steps it took to join them and pointedly looked away from That Awful Woman. But from the corner of my eye I could see her with a wicked smirk on her pointy little face. Was she gloating over my booted mother or did she somehow, with her evil radar, know that I was a dumpee, standing next to my dumper?

“I heard about your house, Paul. I’m really sorry,” Sarah said, her blue eyes sympathetic. Ugh! Why not just shoot a poisoned arrow through my heart? “Were you able to save any of your things?”

“Some of it. Thanks for asking,” I said as I tried to avoid That Awful Woman’s amused gaze. “What are you buying?” I asked. There was a small silver Fortunoff box sitting on the counter in front of Sarah.

“Oh . . . well . . . Scooby gave me this present this afternoon and I was just bringing it back here to have it cleaned,” Sarah said, her skin growing attractively pink. (Stop thinking that way!) “It was a little smudged. . . .”

Against my will, my brain was skipping around, jabbering about how pretty she was, how sweet she was to ask about my stuff, and how cute it was that she was embarrassed to be caught with another gift. That had to mean she cared about me, right? If she cared about the fire? If it mattered to her how I felt about another Scooby gift? It wasn’t like she didn’t think about me at—

My happy-thought train hit a brick wall when Sarah opened the little box and pulled out a delicate gold chain with a one-of-a-kind gold-and-ruby heart pendant dangling from the end.

“Isn’t it gorgeous?” Lainie Lefkowitz gushed.

That was when I knew. Christmas wasn’t just punishing me. It was out to destroy me. And it was enjoying the process.

I turned and faced the counter, looked Marge Horvath directly in her dirt-colored eyes, and said, “My mom’s paycheck, please.”

“I have it right here,” she said, the smirk growing smirkier. She hit a few buttons on the register behind her and the drawer clanged open. She hadn’t even fully turned around again before I’d snatched the envelope from between her claws and was halfway across the mall.

I was shocked at my ability to walk away. I really thought that either my legs were going to go out from under me or my entire head was going to explode all over the Oriental Ornament cart. How was it possible that Scooby had bought the exact same necklace I’d chosen? There were about a million pieces of jewelry in that place. I mean, was he psychic? Was he some kind of sadistic mind-reading wanna-be rapper who’d been sent by Christmas to destroy me the moment I’d lost my Santa hat?

This time I wasn’t going to avoid the North Pole. I wanted to look my enemy dead in the eye. I wanted to see if he had a nice big
666
painted across his forehead that I had somehow missed. But the closer I got to the Santa Shack and Scooby’s velvet throne, the more my vision blurred. I had never felt such a surge of vindictive anger before in my life. I imagined myself morphed into a Godzilla-sized Paul, stalking through the center of the mall and crushing the Santa Shack, the whole North Pole, and Scooby underneath my massive feet.

There he sat with a couple of twin girls on his knees, bouncing them up and down and letting out a seriously lame excuse for a “ho ho ho.” My hands clenched into fists, crushing the envelope that held my mother’s paycheck. There was only one thought in my mind.