Uncharted Fate (4 page)

Chapter 3

Thanksgiving had been depressing and dismal. At first, Anna attempted to make the holiday without Mike as normal as possible. However, nothing went right. She prepared a turkey dinner as usual but the bird overcooked because she forgot to put the dressing in and the meat had fallen off the bone. It did taste good but no one had an appetite for dinner without Mike.

Because of the debacle that was Thanksgiving, Anna gave up and called her mother to ask if they could all come there for Christmas. Her mother was thrilled. She often got a little lonely at Christmas since Anna’s father suffered a heart attack five years earlier.

Despite not being home for Christmas Eve through Boxing Day, Anna decided they should at least decorate. She'd bought a tree, something Mike always did, and the kids helped her put it up the week before Christmas. It’d taken her over an hour to get the trunk straight by adjusting the screws in the tree holder. Everyone went through the motions of decorating it and they tried to get into the spirit, but no one seemed to be able to, despite the Christmas carols she’d insisted on putting on the stereo.

Then they’d awoken the next morning to find the tree sprawled across the peacock-blue carpet, with the tinsel, lights, and ornaments in a tangled heap beneath it. Anna had sat, crossed-legged in the middle of the floor, sobbing over the fragments of a tiny glass ball she and Mike bought for their first Christmas tree fifteen years ago. She and the children managed to re-stand the tree and tighten the screws again. But, after the fall, no matter how much she fussed with the tree, it looked as if it’d been caught in guerilla cross-fire.

She’d also cried over returning the beautiful powder-blue cashmere sweater she’d bought for Mike in early November. If she hadn’t needed the money that badly, she could never have made herself return it. Dreadfully short of cash, she had no choice.

The day before Christmas, Anna gave up trying to maintain the façade of a happy family holiday, and took the children cross-town to stay with her mom. Things improved some after that. At least around her mother’s house there were not as many memories of Mike and of Christmases with him.

Her mother had only partially decorated her tree and she asked the kids to help her finish. Anna groaned, remembering their dismal attempt with their own tree, and how sad it had made each of them feel.

She sat Mallory and Brian down on the couch and gave them a humongous bowl of popcorn to string. They’d often done this when they were little. Mallory's eyes sought hers with desperation and, while Anna understood how her daughter felt, she couldn't do much without hurting her own mother's feelings. She gave Mallory a small shrug and shook her head.

Her mother brought them needles already fitted with long pieces of thread. Brian and Mallory gamely started to thread popcorn and Anna got her own smaller bowl and needle to help out. From the kitchen, they could smell mincemeat and apple pies her mother was finishing.

For a while they all strung popcorn, creating longer and longer strings. The kids even started to talk a little. Anna ignored the occasional kernel of popcorn Mallory flicked at Brian because he flung them back at her just as often. At least they were acting like siblings.

Brian had about six feet strung and Mallory eight, when she flung a handful of popcorn right in his face. She laughed but he yelled, brushing popcorn off his shirt. The handful he threw at her wasn't as effective as hers because he had smaller hands. So he grabbed two handfuls and hurled them at his sister. Popcorn flew everywhere.

Mallory squealed and tossed more at him, scooping it up from the bowl as if it was water to splash him with.

"Hey!" he yelled, and tried to stuff kernels into her mouth.

"You little scuzzball! Stop that." She grabbed his waist and pulled him to the floor and kept shoving popcorn everywhere she could find—his mouth, under his shirt, down his pants.

"Stop that. Cut it out. Mo-om!" They rolled around on the floor wrestling and screaming and laughing, popcorn flying everywhere.

Anna was laughing as hard as they were but decided it was time to intercede before they ruined her mother's carpet completely. "Hey, you two. Up." She grabbed them by their shirts to pull them apart, but was laughing too hard to accomplish much.

Her two hooligans, instinctively smelling weakness like a wild dog searching for the runt of a litter of rabbits, looked at each other and attacked her as one unit. Knowing how ticklish she was, they went right for her most vulnerable area. Anna let out a loud yelp when Mallory got hold of her foot, took off her sneaker and held it steady while Brian tickled her sole.

One loud screech brought out her mother, who stood gaping at the slaughter before her. She calmly watched Anna get massacred, shrugged, and went back into the kitchen without glancing once at the mess on her expensive carpet. "We still keep the vacuum in the front closet," she called over her shoulder, wiping flour on her apron.

After the children realized Anna could barely breathe, they let up on her and, unsteady, she stood. Her knees were wobbly and her breath came hard. Mallory and Brian sat cross-legged, both proud of their conquest. They gave each other a high five as Anna sank into the nearest chair.

Then they looked at the carnage of their popcorn battle—kernels everywhere, especially ground into the rug. Their grandmother's favorite white afghan lay on the floor, also covered with popcorn. Books and magazines from under the table beside the couch were strewn with abandon amongst the rest of the mess.

"You heard your grandmother. The vacuum is in the closet. I'll straighten everything else up and you two vacuum up all that popcorn," Anna instructed.

With an obedience she hadn't seen in years, they cleaned up everything and even got on their hands and knees to pick out small kernels that didn't vacuum up from the carpet. They went to their rooms to give Anna and her mother some peace and quiet and time to prepare the traditional Christmas Eve dinner.

After dinner, her mother insisted on singing religious carols and asked Mallory to read the story of Jesus' birth from the Bible. It was something they had done with their grandparents since the children could remember, but this was the first reading without their father. Anna could tell that Mallory didn't want to do it. But she gave her daughter a look, and the teen accepted the Bible from her grandmother.

The kids' presents were in her trunk and she fetched them and put them under the tree, along with a few for her mother. It was slim pickings for gifts went this year because she'd been forced to get the kids practical necessities like underwear and sweaters. She managed one frivolous gift for each but that was the extent of her funds for "toy" presents.

They all woke up early Christmas morning and whizzed through the present opening since the numbers were down a little bit. Her mother made a yummy holiday brunch with a hand-made stöllen and a fancy egg strata.

Mallory had been acting hostile toward Anna since they woke up. Anna knew it was her daughter’s grief over the family holiday Mike loved. She toned it down, though, whenever her grandmother was within earshot.

In the afternoon, Mallory fixed herself a snack of some Christmas cookies and a glass of diet Coke, then left the cookies out uncovered and the two-liter bottle of soda without its cap. Anna called her back downstairs to clean up her mess.

Clomping down the stairs like an elephant on rampage, Mallory had thrown her a long-suffering look and said, "Be real. You could have done it as easy as calling me all the way down from the bedroom. Geez." Then she'd flounced off to clean the mess she'd made.

Mallory's grandmother had witnessed the entire episode and spoke sharply to her when she came into the kitchen. "Mallory."

The girl jumped six inches off the floor as she swept her head around, threatening whiplash.

"Do you always treat your mother like that?" Anna’s mother asked.

Anna could see the wheels turning as Mallory tried to come up with an answer that would satisfy her grandmother. She didn't think fast enough.

"I thought so. It's since your father died, isn't it?"

Mallory nodded mutely, her shame palpable.

"We all understand that you're going through a difficult time. What you have to realize is that everyone else is hurting, too. Your brother is hurting and more than anyone else, your mother is hurting. She suddenly has responsibility for herself plus you and your brother and she's going to have to go to work and manage a difficult financial situation now that she doesn't have your father's salary. Did you ever think of it like that?"

"No," Mallory said in a tiny voice.

"Are you going to apologize to her?"

Mallory's head drooped to her chest. "I'm sorry, Mom."

"And you'll try to do better?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Okay, then. Clean up your mess and then you can go on upstairs and relax and listen to the new CDs I got you." Trusting that Mallory felt chastened enough to clean the counter without supervision, Anna and her mother left the kitchen.

Mallory soon ensconced herself in her bedroom with the iPod she’d brought, and her two new CDs, for hour after hour of ear-splitting "music." After the incident over the mess in the kitchen, Anna let her be for the most part, and didn’t give her the usual lectures on turning the sound down to preserve her eardrums.

Brian got the
Heart of a Samurai
from his grandmother for Christmas, and spent most of his time sprawled on her sofa with a book in one hand and a cookie in the other. He avoided his sister and barely talked to anyone.

After a delicious roast beef dinner, her mother put on a DVD of "It's a Wonderful Life" and Anna noticed that even Mallory wiped a tear from her eye under the guise of straightening her hair.

They came back home on Boxing Day. When the kids returned to school, Anna didn’t know whether to be relieved because they weren’t around to get on her nerves, or depressed because without them the house was too quiet.

Rose, wearing her workaday outfit of wool slacks and sweater, came over as Anna was poring over the ‘help wanted’ ads in the newspaper she’d bought at the Stop-N-Go store last night. Anna was still in her bathrobe.

"You really ought to sign up with one of the employment agencies," Rose said. She helped herself to a cup of coffee and sat down at the table. "The jobs in the paper aren’t the best jobs. You don’t want to bus tables. You want a professional-type job."

Anna stopped skimming the ads. "Don’t you have to pay them a portion of your salary for a while?"

Rose set her coffee cup on one of the folded papers. "Sometimes. The best jobs are fee-paid and employment agencies have better jobs listed than the newspaper. It’s worth it, though, even if you end up paying the fees.”

"They're usually temp jobs, aren't they?"

"Yes, but many of them do turn into permanent jobs. A lot of times, companies hire temps to see if they work out and then hire them on permanently if they do."

"But I need money right now. There’s only a few hundred in the checking account and next-to-nothing in the savings account."

"But you must have gobs of insurance money coming in."

Anna’s smile probably looked as weary as she felt. "Not gobs. I've been told we were underinsured. And what we do have coming won’t be here for another month at least. These insurance companies have a fit if you're one day late with your payment and then it takes them three months to 'process' your benefit check. Meanwhile, the kids are taking peanut butter and jelly to school every day and we eat hot dogs and spaghetti. With no meatballs. I’ve cancelled the cable TV, the garbage service, and my weekly hair appointments. I don’t do my volunteer work anymore because I can’t afford the gas."

Rose leaned across the table, her eyes concerned. "I'd no idea things were that bad. I’d like to lend you some money to hold you over."

"No, please." Anna set her mouth in a firm line. "I appreciate the offer, but I need to do this alone. All my life people have been trying to make things easier for me. It’s time—more than time—I stood on my own two feet. We might not eat like we used to for a while and I may make mistakes before I get good enough at running my own life, but I have to do it. There’s no one to help me anymore." Her fingers clenched the pencil in her hand. "I’m on my own. And I’m going to make it work. I have to."

"I’m glad, Anna. But if things get bad enough you have no money at all for food, you call me, pride or no pride. You’re my friend and I’m not going to sit by and watch you starve."

"All right. I promise you if it’s a question of starving, I’ll call you. Though I hope it won’t get that bad. The kids’ve got a bit in their savings accounts, and I haven’t wanted to ask them for it, but if I have to, I will. And I’m letting all the payments lapse until the insurance check comes in. I only hope it gets here before they shut off my heat. Mr. Lemelin said he’d call the gas company and explain my situation. He said they’d probably wait for their money as long as they receive it sometime."

Anna drained the last of the lukewarm coffee from her red mug and set it on the table with a clunk. She smoothed out the Sunday classifieds. "Back to work. I think I’ll try to get a job on my own for now, and then after the insurance money comes and I’ve got a little cushion, I’ll sign up with an employment agency to find a better job."

"I suppose." Rose peered over at the paper Anna was holding. "What sort of ads were you looking at?"

"First off, I tried going to social services because Mr. Lemelin figured my volunteer work in senior centers might help me get a foot in the door."

"That was a good idea. What’d they say?"

"They told me you need a degree for that kind of work. Ha. You don’t need a degree to spend hour after hour helping those people on your own. You need one, however, if you want to get paid for it."

"You know a lot about helping those people after the time you put in. Doesn’t sound fair to me."

"No. It isn’t fair. It’s just the way it is."

"Isn’t there anything else you can think of that you know how to do?"