[title subtitle=”words: Marla Cantrell “][/title]
The snow had started by then, but just barely. The flakes were tiny, like dandruff shaken from a giant’s hair is how Celeste thought of it. Who knew if it would stick.
She sat behind the wheel of her Kia, in the parking lot of Tandem Grocery, and watched. Christmas music played so loudly, Celeste decided someone had installed speakers on the grocery cart corrals that set at regular intervals on each row of parking. The temperature had dropped twelve degrees since she’d left home twenty minutes before, but in the car with the heater set at ninety degrees, it seemed like someone else’s problem.
Celeste’s grocery list was as small as the snowflakes: bread, peanut butter, granola. She’d tried to think of more, but since she’d been laid off five weeks ago, her mind operated like a one-lane bridge. If one thought needed to cross it, all the others had to wait, and in that waiting, many of them turned around and drove home.
She also needed oranges.
The thought of oranges sent her back to childhood, to the tiny church with the linoleum floors, with pews that smelled like orange oil. Maude Dodson, the oldest member at eighty-three, cleaned the church on Saturdays using only concoctions she made herself. On Sundays, she’d sit next to Celeste, hiding her worker-bee hands in white gloves.
Maude kept hard candy in her purse, and cough drops that smelled like cloves.
Celeste coughed. Touched her forehead with her heated hand. It was summer inside her car; still, she might be getting sick. She added aspirin to her list.
Until five weeks ago, she’d worked as the office manager for Fischer Construction, where she used color-coded spreadsheets to keep up with where the concrete trucks were on any given day, where the sheet rockers were working, where the plumbers were hiding out. At thirty-five, this was the best job she’d ever had.
She worried that getting laid off said something terrible about her character. Since no one else was let go, she wondered if “laid off” was really “fired.”
Three little boys and their mom darted in front of her parked car. The mom was tugging the arm of the youngest one, who was maybe three, urging him on against the wind that drove a cardboard box across the parking lot like a racecar. The boys were dressed in blue and green with stocking caps to match. The mother wore a headband made to look like the antlers of a reindeer.
Inside the store, Celeste roamed the aisles. She’d gotten everything on her list plus a box of chocolate covered cherries, a six-pack of Kleenex, and was now picking up four cans of tomato soup. “Joy to the World” was playing, but the clerks stocking the shelves looked grim.
“Been listening to this stuff since October,” one of the stockers, a twenty-something with rosy cheeks, said to the other, whose gel-filled hair stood in spikes that looked like shark fins rising from the ocean. “When I quit here, I’m never listening to Christmas music again.”
“Tell me about it,” shark-head said. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket, ran his thumb across it to bring it to life. “We may not have to listen much longer today. They’re predicting three-inches of snow and possibly sleet.”
Rosy-cheeks high-fived him, and said, “Snow day, dude!”
She had been standing with a can of soup in one hand, staring at the two. Celeste remembered grousing with Amber, the executive assistant at Fischer who still had a job. There was nothing better than having someone who felt like you did, who could indicate the mood of your boss with an eye-roll.
She should probably head home.
But, if the weather turned, Celeste would need more food. She knew the balance in her checking account without looking, and it wasn’t good. Still, she maneuvered her cart down the aisles, seeing the same tan linoleum as was in her childhood church. She’d been in a Christmas play on a floor like this, dressed as an angel, when she was six. Her mom made the gown from an old shower curtain. Her wings and halo from a tinsel-wrapped coat hanger her father bent just so.
Her parents lived in Florida now, so far away from Arkansas, it seemed as if they’d fallen down a rabbit hole. She’d yet to tell them about her lost job.
The clerk at the checkout line chewed gum and wore mistletoe in her hair. “Not a good day to be out,” she said. “Not good at all,” Celeste said, and the girl shrugged.
“I got two little ones at the daycare across the way,” the clerk said. “Six months is the girl. My boy is five.”
“Good ages,” Celeste said, although she had no idea if that were true.
“My son, Darius, he wants an honest-to-gosh toolbox like his daddy’s for Christmas. We’re gonna get him one and put a bunch of toy tools inside it.”
Celeste watched her smile and wondered if she’d ever be that happy. She shivered, more from emotion than cold. She could see the parking lot from here. The snow was picking up. The automatic door near the cash registers opened, and six people walked in. “See that?” the clerk asked. “The crowds are coming. In fifteen minutes, this place will be full.”
Two shoppers waited in line behind Celeste, so she paid for her groceries and left. In the parking lot, a gray-haired woman stood with a grocery bag in each hand. She looked like she was freezing.
Celeste walked to her car. So far, no sleet had fallen, the wind had died down. She pushed the button on her keychain, and the door opened. After putting her bags in the trunk, she watched the woman, who looked left to right, as if she were expecting someone to arrive.
Celeste’s small car warmed up quickly, and she sat behind the wheel, wondering what to do. If the woman was disoriented, Celeste might have to do more than just drive her home. And what if she was a scammer? You never knew.
Snow was collecting on the woman’s dark coat, and the sight of it caused a thousand needles to hit Celeste’s heart. She got out of the car, walked to the woman, and offered her a ride.
“I catch city bus number seven,” the woman said. “It should have been here fifteen minutes ago.”
“It’s probably the weather,” Celeste said. “Let me take your bags to my car, and then I’ll drive back and get you.”
Once Celeste had eased out of the parking lot, she learned the woman’s name was Sheena. And as she drove toward Sheena’s address, she found out even more. Sheena was a retired school secretary who had just turned seventy-eight. She liked to listen to Coldplay. She once had a bumper sticker that read, You just passed a wild and crazy Episcopalian. She’d outlived two husbands, Harold and Albert.
When Sheena asked about Celeste, she said, “I got let go from my job as an office manager a little over a month ago. I know it shouldn’t have made me this sad, but since then, I can’t seem to do much more than get out of bed in the morning. Some days, I don’t even get dressed.”
Sheena was dressed in dark slacks, low-heeled boots, a white scarf that looked hand-knit. She wore pearl earrings that showed when she ran her fingers through her silver hair. “Well,” she said, “the USA doesn’t much want its citizens to be unhappy. The TV has all those shows with laugh tracks behind them, and commercials with attractive people buying obscenely expensive gifts for one another. But it is okay to feel the way you do. If you loved your job, and I’m guessing you did, it’s perfectly fine to miss it.”
Celeste felt a bit of pressure inside her release, as if someone had taken the lid off a boiling saucepan.
“I gave you the highlights of my life, dear,” Sheena said. “I left out a few details. For instance, sometimes I wasn’t a very good friend. I could be rather dismissive of other people’s worries. I had opinions I shared too loudly and too frequently, even with the administration at my school, who really didn’t need my advice. It wasn’t until I lost my Harold, and later dear Albert, that I softened up, more from having been beaten up by life than anything else.”
Celeste turned slowly on Anchor Avenue, and again on Chelsea Street. The snow was making the world soft. “I’m going to Florida for Christmas to see my parents. I haven’t told them I lost my job. I think they think I’m a screw-up most of the time.”
Sheena patted Celeste’s shoulder. “Let me tell you what I see. I see a lovely young woman who is going through an exceptionally hard time. The holidays make everything tougher. You probably had to force yourself to drive to the store today, am I right?”
Celeste nodded.
“But you went anyway. And then you saw me, distressed and near tears if you want to know the truth, and you could have said, ‘That old woman is not my problem.’ But instead, you rescued me. I didn’t bring my phone today, and I was flummoxed as to what to do. Twenty people passed me before you did, and no one offered to help.”
“The weather people said it might sleet,” Celeste said.
Sheena laughed. “The weather people build their fortunes on extreme predictions. My Albert used to say that all the time. He also said that you could tell who a person really was by seeing if they could be charitable when they needed charity themselves.”
Celeste smiled as she turned on to Sheena’s street. The entire block had been decorated for Christmas. A six-foot-tall Grinch stood in one yard. In the next, a manger scene, the baby Jesus wearing a blanket of snow. Sheena’s apartment was a duplex, with twinkling blue lights around every window and door.
When she stopped her car, Sheena hugged her. “Remember who you are, dear. A good soul with an even better heart.”
After Sheena was safely inside, Celeste said good-bye, winding her way carefully through snow-filled streets. The world and everything in it felt washed clean. Celeste felt tears come as she passed a church with candles burning in the window, remembering herself as that little girl dressed in a homemade costume, pretending to be an angel. How dear she was then. But maybe she was just as dear now. It felt like it might be true.
Marla is teaching a short story class at Chapters on Main in January. Visit chaptersonmain.com for details.
