The Side of the Angels (31 page)

The town did not forget us at this festive time of year, either. Sts. Jude and Rita had already set up a Santa's workshop in the basement of the rectory, where strikers' kids could buy donated toys for a dime each. Tokens of encouragement kept pouring in: a Christmas tree from Clare's uncle who had a tree farm in Vermont, a basket of gourmet coffees that the office coffeemaker transformed into the usual rusty water, a carton of paper clips and binders in Christmas green and red from a sympathetic office supply store down the street. The defunct doughnut counter in the strike office was still laden with baked hams and layer cakes. Outwardly, we were fighting the good fight.

But our people were starting to get weary. The picket lines thinned
a little. We were trudging along out there, and the cold was a horrible reminder of what the hospital said in their letters: Come back in, where it's warm. Come back in, where people need you. All is forgiven. Six nurses crossed the line in the first week of December. Tony reminded us that we hadn't yet lost even the 20 percent we had predicted would cross, but it was depressing all the same.

There were a few diehards. Lester still stood out on the traffic island every morning, and the cars that passed him still honked and waved thumbs-up. Margaret still snapped endless photos on every conceivable occasion, so that none of us would forget these times of our life. We even managed to ignore the unsettling incidents that kept occurring.

One morning we arrived to a horrible odor and found that a hunk of Gorgonzola had been taken out of a gift basket of cheeses and salamis that had been sent from the IBEW a few days before. It had been left in bits and pieces in various hidden places around the office. Another night, Margaret left three rolls of film on her desk to remind herself to take them for developing, and in the morning they'd been pulled open and the spoiled contents looped festively over the men's room stall doors.

Seeing Bennett Winslow humming and hawing in the news like an actor who's muffing his lines, I found it hard to believe that he was authorizing such petty persecutions. Puny gestures like these weren't Finchley and Crouse's style, either. By all accounts, if they intended to scare you, they made sure they really scared you. The mysterious occurrences seemed to wear away at our last reserves of energy and optimism. Clare was taciturn with weariness, saving all her energy for bucking up the picket line and meeting with politicos and the press. Tony's knee healed, but it still pained him; you could see it when he stood up suddenly or insisted on carrying a box or moving a piece of furniture. I had a cold that seemed to be in the running for immortality. And Kate was low, though keeping up a good front.

“How's your friend Eileen?” I asked her as we came in from our picketing shift and huddled over coffee on a particularly bleak afternoon in early December. We were soaked and shivering from a driving
cold rain that turned to ice at intervals. For the past hour, it had been blown straight into our faces by a fierce northeast wind. A nor'easter, they called such storms up here.

It had been too many days since I'd thought to ask Kate about her friend. She never mentioned Eileen.

“Not so good,” said Kate. “She went home for a week, but now she's coughing and rasping and they put her back in the hospital, in case of pneumonia. The pain meds make her pretty woozy. Sometimes I'm not sure she knows who I am when I call.”

“God, Kate.”

“Those nurses up there. I don't know how they can even call themselves nurses. Barry, her husband, tells me that he'll go there after he gives the kids dinner and ask her when a nurse was last in and she'll say, two hours ago. You and I know how low that damn census is now. They have the time to check on her. ICU is a ghost town compared to what it was. And Eileen's no introvert. She doesn't want to lie in that hospital bed reviewing her life. She needs human contact.”

“Do her other friends visit?”

“Oh, sure. But everyone has lives. Children to pick up from school, and work deadlines, and family holidays. If I could be there, it would make a difference. I'm sorry to complain, Nicky. I get down about it all.”

“Kate, go see her. Everyone on this side would understand.”

“Even if they did, the hospital would probably kick me out in ten minutes.”

“Is your face that well known?”

“Not by most of the managers, but my own charge nurse knows me, of course, and Winslow, and Louanne Reilly, the director of nursing.”

“You have to chance it.”

“And risk a scene with my being escorted out of Eileen's room by security guards? She's been through enough.”

“You're the last one I thought would patronize her just because she's sick. She sounds like she'd get a kick out of it. And they can't arrest you. Even if they did, Clare would understand. We'd hold a candlelight vigil outside your cell window. Talk about great press.”

I squeezed her forearm tentatively, uneasy with the gesture since she never invited reassurance or sympathy. Kate looked out the window. We could hear the icy rain hissing and spattering, and a rumble of winter thunder.

“We could go in the middle of evening visiting hours,” she said. “Less conspicuous.”

“We?”

“Come with me, Nicky. Please. I can't ask Mike. He'd do it, but he's a doctor and this is a small town. I don't want any grudges held against him when this is over.”

“Kate, Winslow's met me in person. And Reilly's seen me outside, talking to the press, several times now.”

“Winslow's never around that late. He goes home for cocktails at six
P.M.
sharp. It's legendary. And Reilly's hardly ever on the floor. She prefers paperwork and management meetings.”

“Kate … I have no credentials in this situation. She's not my friend. If I'm caught with you, it will look weird.”

“We can sneak in through the staff entrance, the one at the side, not the one Winslow uses.”

In the end, I said I'd do it. I had never crossed a picket line in my life. It was worse, in my family's book, than eating meat on a Friday during Lent or leaving your chewing gum in your mouth when you went up to take Communion. But this was an undercover mission, not a white-flag-waving surrender. We'd be going in behind enemy lines, for the best of reasons.

It is almost impossible to refuse a request, wrung from awful circumstances, of someone who rarely asks for help. If Kate was asking me—our flippant, self-reliant Kate—it was because she had no other choice.

“And Nicky,” she said, “can you do it at a moment's notice?”

“Sure.”

“Because it might have to be soon.”

The same day, Margaret announced her latest plan to raise our spirits.

“We're going to do Secret Santas,” she said, appearing before me
with an ancient fedora in which scraps of folded typing paper were jumbled. “We regulars.”

“Margaret, do they say Secret Santa anymore?”

“Oh, I'm publicly calling it Holiday Elves.”

“I really don't have time for this, no offense. Give me a pass, could you?”

Margaret shook the hat.

“Everyone else is participating,” she said. “You know how it works, right? Pick a name, then for the next two weeks before Christmas you do little nice things for that person. It really lifts morale. We're putting on a thirty-dollar limit. Me, you, Clare, Tony, Lester, Kate, Doug, Mary Grunewald, and Marjorie.”

“Who's Marjorie?”

“The UPS gal. She's here every day, I can't believe you don't know her name. Most of us are friendly with her so we thought we'd include her.”

I had seen Marjorie, and fervently prayed I didn't draw her name. She was a solid, beefy marine reserve captain with a tattoo on her left bicep that read, “Death before dishonor.” She had no line of chaffing camaraderie, as the overnight mail people usually did, and no matter how lovely or exciting the seasonal gifts she'd begun to bring, she was unflappable and silent. I was, frankly, afraid of her.

“Come on,” said Margaret. “And don't try to see the names, Nicky.” She shuffled the hat again.

“Close your eyes and pick,” she commanded.

The scrap read “Doug,” in Margaret's schoolgirl handwriting.

“Doug! Let me pick again, Margaret. You know we can't stand each other. Let me have Marjorie.”

“If you can't stand each other, this will break the ice.”

“I don't want the ice broken.”

“Sorry, no do-overs,” said Margaret.

It was not motivating, being Doug's Holiday Elf. Over the next week, I showered all varieties of small gifts and good deeds on him, gritting my teeth. I sneaked out and cleaned his car after a light snow, and he
complained to Margaret the next morning that his Elf had maimed one of his windshield wipers. I left a milk chocolate Saint Nick on his desk and he ate the head and picked out the sugar eyes and belt buckle, leaving the headless corpse lying there for days until Eric consumed it. The travel mini-shaving kit I bought him from the local drugstore was dismissed under his breath as “cheesy,” though I'd intended it as a delicate compliment on his new clean-shaven look. Other tokens met with similar disdain. Doug had clearly had great hopes of his Holiday Elf. Ridiculously, I began to dread his childlike disappointment in my offerings.

I had no idea what I'd buy him for the big finale.

“Your problem is that you're not having enough fun with it,” said Margaret.

“Fun is the last thing I want to have with Doug, Margaret. He's hardly been gracious. I heard him tell Kate that he wished he had
her
Elf.”

Margaret beamed. We all knew she was Kate's Elf, actually. The homemade orange-and-clove pomanders had tipped us off, along with the découpaged pencil holder.

“I can't help it if I don't have a flair for this sort of thing,” I whined.

“Here, take a half hour tonight and go shopping with me. I'll show you.”

Margaret dragged me to Beach's Emporium, a novelty-and-sundry store out on the old two-lane business route that held every wish of the human imagination. It had an aisle of ribbons, thread, and skeins of yarn, another of plastic tablecloths and machine-crocheted place mats, and still another of children's toys and coloring books, some of which appeared to have been gathering dust since the previous generation stopped believing in Santa Claus. Margaret led me down a short flight of stairs into a stifling back room marked “Gifts.”

“How much money do you have left in your Elf budget?” she inquired.

“Twenty dollars or so.”

“You're lying.”

“Okay, about fifteen dollars.”

“You can absolutely go to town in this place for fifteen dollars.”

Ten minutes later she had filled my basket with the following surprises for the unsuspecting Doug:

A hundred-page crossword puzzle book. (“I've seen him do them, Nicky. Crossword addicts are always running out.”) A pair of Groucho glasses and mustache. (“He has a playful side, Nicky…. No, everyone does.”) A paddle with a rubber ball attached to it with an elastic string. A game that consisted of a pocket-size frame in which square plastic numbers had to be moved around until they were put in their proper sequence. A bag of Tootsie Pops. (“He's quitting smoking, Nicky, he'll love them.”) A snow globe depicting a miniature castle surrounded by a blue enamel moat. Red wool socks with individual toe holes. And, to top it all off, a pair of singing lobsters mounted on a fake sand dune (the sand was depicted by glued-on sawdust). The lobsters wore name tags that read “Clawrence” and “Shelley.” The Shelley lobster wore two pink bows on her feelers.

“Clawrence and Shelley, get it?” said Margaret. The Shelley lobster was the girl, she explained, in case I didn't catch the significance of the bows.

Clawrence sang “By the Beautiful Sea,” and Shelley sang “Under the Boardwalk,” in tinny, Martian voices. They set me back three dollars. In total, my purchases came to nine dollars, and the owner threw in a bunch of plastic mistletoe for free.

“You still have about six left over for your final present,” said Margaret. “I'll put my thinking cap on.”

“Thank you, Margaret. Will he like these? He's kind of picky.”

“Anyone would like these,” said Margaret confidently.

Humiliatingly, Margaret was right. Doug had turned up his nose at my tin of Almond Rocha, but he was soon never seen without a Tootsie Pop hanging out the side of his mouth.

“This is more like it,” he exclaimed when he opened the Groucho glasses. He even wore them to a staff meeting. He became expert at the paddleball game, annoying all of us with the thuck-thuck-thuck sound of the ball against the wood. And he took to Clawrence and Shelley from the moment he saw them, setting them in the place of honor at the front of his desk and pulling their singing strings every ten minutes.

“You see?” said Margaret. “He just wanted to be a kid again. Pretty cute.”

I was taken aback by Doug's childish delight in his presents. When I thought about it, I realized that all he'd wanted was to be treated as one of the gang, a likable guy whom coworkers referred to with the words “good old” in front of his name. Margaret had seen this, but I had not. Margaret, whom I liked to make fun of because she was so mercilessly bustling and practical, had turned out to be a better student of human nature than I was. More than any other event of the strike, this shook my faith in myself. Doug's glee was a constant reproach. I began to pray, after the fiftieth rendition of “Under the Boardwalk,” that a sad accident would befall Clawrence and Shelley.

Our days dragged on, full of chores and events but empty of real progress toward ending the strike. Eileen took a brief turn for the better. Over the phone, she told Kate she'd be home in the next day or two. Twelve hours later, she was too ill to take telephone calls and the doctors were shaking their heads. They weren't even promising that Eileen would make it much past New Year's.