Remembering Christmas (12 page)

“Yes, but I need to explain something.” Fran held up one of the figurines. “This one, I’ll take with me. But this one . . .” She held up another, looked like a little Indian or an angel. “I’d like you to give this to your mom from me. Well, say it’s from Molly and me.”

Rick looked at Molly, who winked at him behind Fran’s back.

Fran turned it over. “Make sure she sees what it says on the bottom. See? ‘His Burden Is Light.’”

Rick rang everything up and said, “Have a nice day. I’ll make sure my mom gets this. I’m sure she’ll love it.” They both patted Rick on the hand as they turned to leave. He felt sure they wanted to exchange hugs. But he stood still and they started for the door.

Molly led the way. As she turned the doorknob, she stopped and said, “Good heavens, Fran. I almost forgot, while you were shopping Rick asked if we’d like to stay for coffee.”

Thankfully, Rick’s coffee break with Molly and Fran had been cut short by a rush of lunchtime customers. Thinking on it now, he had to admit the ladies were as sweet as they were odd, and he was grateful they didn’t require any help from him to keep the conversation flowing. He had sat through one almost-childish spat, after Fran insisted Molly had a crush on Ronald Reagan, the new president. Molly flatly denied it.

Most of the time had been spent talking about who shot JR, which had been revealed on
Dallas
last week. They couldn’t fathom how anyone in the civilized world could have missed such an historic moment. Fran said that episode had the highest ratings of any television show in history. It said so in
TV Guide
.

Wasn’t that something.

Rick looked around. The store was empty again. A Christmas cassette played through the store. Mr. Coffee was slowly brewing a fresh pot of coffee in the back. Rick ate a second slice of banana nut bread one of the customers had left. She’d asked him to bring it to his mother at the hospital. But it was after 1:00 p.m. and he’d forgotten his lunch. He knew his mom believed in sharing.

Rick stared at the telephone. Before he lost the nerve, he picked it up, dialed the number, and gave a brief summary to his boss’s secretary. She quickly put him through.

“Rick, how’s it going, my man? How’d your skiing trip go? Was it Aspen this time?”

His boss was in a good mood; his lunch appointment must have gone his way. “I’m doing fine, Mr. Rainey, but . . . well, things didn’t turn out the way I planned. Hope you had a nice Thanksgiving.”

“Food was good, company was tolerable. This year it was my wife’s family’s turn, so we were down in Mobile. So . . . what happened to you?”

Rick filled him in about Art and how that had abruptly changed Rick’s holiday plans. “The thing is now . . . the doctors are saying he needs surgery, but his brain is still too swollen to operate.”

“So you’re going to have to stay down there another, what, two or three days?”

“Actually, I’m going to need to stay at least the rest of the week.”

“Really?”

Rick didn’t like the tone in that reply. “I’m sorry to spring this on you, sir. But I don’t see any other way. It’s a small store, but it’s their whole livelihood, and she doesn’t have anyone else who can fill in. You know how retail is the weeks just after Thanksgiving. It’s their highest sales volume.”

“But . . . it is just a retail job, right? Can’t they call a temp service?”

“I checked. Town’s too small. They don’t even have one.”

“Well, it’s your vacation time, Rick. You know our policy. It’s yours to use as you please, long as our clients’ needs come first. I’m assuming you had a pretty full schedule set for this week. We’re heading into year’s end, things heat up pretty—”

“I know, Mr. Rainey.” Rick sighed. “It’s a terrible time for this to happen.”

“Just thinking of you, Rick. I’ll take a look at your appointments this week, see who can fill in.”

“Actually, sir, I’ve already figured something out. I was going to call my secretary next and see how many appointments I can bump till next week. For those who can’t, I’ll call other associates to support them, see if they can keep the plates spinning till I get back.” If Rick had to get anyone else involved with his clients, he wanted to pick them.

“That’s good, Rick. You already thought it through then. Well, do what you have to do down there. We’ll see you back here next week.”

“Thanks, Mr. Rainey.”

“Don’t come back with too much of a tan,” he said. “Folks might doubt your cover story.”

“Right, sir.” Rick hung up.

He hadn’t solved his problem, just bought himself a little time. Rick knew Art wouldn’t be up and about by next week. Not with open-cranial surgery. He’d be down at least this week and the next.

If he survived at all.

After the lunchtime rush, things quieted down again. He looked at his watch. Andrea should be coming in an hour or two from now. Seemed like a safe time to head back to Art’s office and do some paperwork. Maybe telephone the vendors on Andrea’s reorder list.

He looked up at the front door and made a mental note to buy some kind of bell, something to let him know when people came in. He stopped at the cassette player, turned the volume down, then walked to the office, stood in the doorway.

Really, this wasn’t an office.

It was barely bigger than a broom closet. The desktop was an interior door, cut in half and wedged in a corner. The other end rested on a rusty two-drawer file cabinet. In the middle sat a swivel chair that didn’t swivel, the back wrapped in duct tape to keep a rip from getting worse. Paint was chipping off one wall. The paneling on the other was warped and pulling away. Nothing matched. Rick sat down and slid the reorder sheet from the inbox.

For the next thirty minutes, he called each of the vendors on the list. It was a humiliating experience. Half the vendors turned him down. All for the same reason.
“I’m sorry. We can’t send you any new inventory until we receive payment for orders already received.”

“How much do you need before you can process the order?” he’d asked. He wrote the various amounts down on a separate sheet of paper, then totaled it up.

Just over eight hundred dollars.

Didn’t seem like much at first. Pocket change back in Charlotte. Rick searched around and found the store’s checkbook. He flipped to the last check stub to see how much money they had in the bank. He couldn’t believe it; there was no balance. He turned back through pages of stubs to find the last time a balance had been recorded. Over three weeks ago. And there were all kinds of handwritten notes scribbled in the margin, arrows drawn here and there, referencing one check number or another. Several times, balances had been crossed out and new figures written in above them.

He reached for Art’s bookkeeping journal and opened it, hoping it might shed some light. It was even worse. Looking at it more closely, he knew one thing for sure: Art routinely operated with a negative balance. There was almost as much red ink as black, and the last eight balance entries were red.

The whole thing was a mess.

He looked up from the desk. This office was a dump. The store was a dump. Art’s books were trash. This was no way to run a business. Rick hated to add to his mom’s stress, but he needed to call her and make her aware of this, get her permission to sort this all out.

It was that bad.

Leanne was almost getting used to the new routine. Wake up stiff and sore, both back and hips. Glance at Art, then his numbers. Fold up the sheets and blanket, put the chair-bed back together. Glance at Art, then his numbers. Brush down the parts of her hair that stuck out the worst, try not to look at her face in the mirror while doing so. Look back at Art through the mirror. Brush her teeth. Walk over and kiss Art on the forehead. Carry her bag, robe, and towel to the room they provided nearby for a shower. And as quickly as possible, try to make herself presentable in case Art woke up.

After the morning routine, she’d come back to sit, pray, and read for most of the day. Every so often, look up at Art and pray some more. Oh yes, eat hospital food three times a day. Breakfast this morning had been a poached egg, dry toast, and a banana. For lunch: macaroni and cheese, vanilla pudding. It wasn’t so bad, not like everyone says. More than anything, she missed her coffee. They had coffee here, but it was awful. Art always said hers was the best.

She looked up at Art, checked his numbers again. His vital signs had remained stable today, and that was a good thing. Dr. Halper seemed pleased. He’d been in just after lunch and said the swelling in Art’s brain was decreasing some. Another day or two and he felt Art might be strong enough to move to Shands.

This was the only upside in Leanne’s life at the moment.

She felt so lonely. Mostly for Art. The desire to talk with him gnawed inside her like hunger pangs. She also missed Andrea and little Amy, especially now; Amy was so delightful to be with at Christmastime. And Leanne missed all the customers who filled her days with so much conversation and adventure.

She was glad for one thing: the Lord did seem close to her, even closer than usual. But she could only grab a few precious moments alone here and there. The hospital staff was treating her so well, but with these big glass partitions, it felt like living in an aquarium.

Something caught her eye. She looked up; a nurse waved at her through the glass. She made a hand signal suggesting she had a phone call. Leanne looked at Art then set her book on the chair and hurried to the doorway.

“You have a phone call in the waiting room. Your son, Rick.”

“Thank you.” Rick didn’t call often. She hoped everything was okay. She walked quickly to the waiting room, glad to find it empty. “Hi, Rick. How’s it going, your first day on your own?”

“Pretty smooth. It was a little slow in the morning, but very steady during lunch. Those ladies came in again, Molly and Fran.”

Leanne smiled, imagining the scene. “They are quite a pair.”

“They brought me up to speed on
Dallas
.”

“Did they?”

“Did you know someone shot JR?”

Leanne laughed. “I’d heard something about that.”

“Yeah, well . . . guess I better get to why I called. I had some time before Andrea comes in, thought I’d reorder some things today, hoping they might get here by the weekend.”

“Thanks for doing that. Did you find everything you need? I know Art’s got his own system. I’ve never understood it.”

“Well, that’s the thing. I ran into some snags. One pretty big one.”

“What’s the matter?” She sighed. She knew so little about how Art handled the paperwork.

“Did Art say anything to you about how much money the store has in the bank?”

“I don’t . . . well, I know we pay everything but the book vendors on time. He has some kind of system worked out about when to pay them. Why, what’s the problem?”

Rick spent the next five minutes explaining the mess he’d found trying to make sense of Art’s “system.” Her stomach was starting to turn. She didn’t need this right now. “What can we do?”

“I’m pretty good at this, Mom. If you’ll trust me, I think I can dig out of this, then let you know where things are at.”

“Oh, Rick.” She was tearing up. “Of course, I trust you. Do whatever you have to.”

“What about when Art wakes up? He might not like me messing with his system.”

“Don’t worry. I’m going to do everything I can to keep his mind off anything like that. If you can make sense of it, and get to where you can write checks to the vendors, go right ahead and I’ll sign them.”

“All right, I’ll see what I can do.”