The Christmas Strike

Iris groaned. “I’ve got a great idea. Let’s sleep.”

Jo gave her a look of reproach. We’d formed the Prisoners Enrichment Society several years ago when it became clear that none of us was likely to escape Willow Creek a second time. We may be stuck in Willow Creek but we didn’t plan on becoming stagnant.

“Okay, okay.” Iris gave in under Jo’s look. “Just let’s not go bowling again.”

“If this snow keeps up, why don’t we plan on a hike along the creek?” I suggested. “It’ll be gorgeous.”

“It’ll be cold,” Iris said.

“Besides, Iris doesn’t own a pair of boots with heels under three inches,” Jo pointed out. “Why don’t we drive over to that new ceramics shop near Lake Geneva? They’re having an introductory class. For ten bucks you get to paint your own latte cup.”

“Yippeee,” Iris drawled sarcastically as she lit another cigarette.

“That reminds me,” I asked Jo, “how’s the cappuccino war going?”

Jo was currently working on Mike to buy a cappuccino maker. She had dreams of turning the diner into a café. She felt it would give the town a little dash. We were in an area about halfway between Milwaukee and Chicago and surrounded by towns that had become weekend spots for the upper middle class from both cities. Willow Creek had remained just a small town while many of the neighboring ones had become favorites of tourists looking for a bucolic, small town experience but who didn’t want to travel far from home.

Many in Willow Creek saw the town’s anonymity as a victory and were happy with less intrusion from the outside world. Jo wasn’t one of them. She was constantly battling with Mike to turn the diner into the kind of place that would pull in business from tourists. But I had a feeling that if she ever won we would all miss the geometric-patterned gray Formica countertops, the red fake-leather-covered booths and the old fashioned soda fountain behind the curved counter with its chrome and red stools that spun in place. We’d all been coming here since Mike’s parents were probably younger than we were now—unsettling thought that that was. Most of the girls in town had done a stint as a waitress at Dempsey’s. That’s how Jo first fell in love with Mike.

“Mike still thinks the diner, like his mother, is perfect,” Jo said. “He says why tamper with success. Which is exactly what his mother always said. But, frankly, with all three kids in college, we could use a little more success.” She took a moment to make sure Mike was out of earshot. “I’m sneaking a pasta dish on the menu next week,” she whispered. “And he doesn’t know it yet, but I’m thinking about putting our Christmas club money into a new sign out on the highway.”

“The assault begins,” Iris pronounced.

“I don’t care who wins,” I said, “as long as you don’t switch coffee suppliers or take the donuts off the menu.”

The diner only offered one kind of donut—a plain cake one—but they were made fresh several times daily. The outsides were always just slightly crunchy while the insides were so tender they melted in your mouth. Nearly the entire town was addicted to them.

“So,” I said as I zipped up my parka, “ceramics class tomorrow?”

We both looked at Iris. She took a second drag on the new cigarette then stamped it out in the black plastic ashtray in front of her.

“I can hardly wait,” she said.

Face it, I wasn’t exactly enthralled with the idea of painting flowers on a latte cup, either. But at least it would get me out of the house on a Saturday.

When we first formed the Prisoner’s Enrichment Society, we’d had loftier goals than ceramics or bowling in mind. We’d even planned a trip to Europe once. Went so far as to get our passports. Then my daughter Natalie found out she was pregnant with her second child on the same day Jeremy got laid off from the auto plant two towns over. Suddenly my Europe fund had other, more important places to go. The farthest the Society had ever taken us was a weekend trip to Chicago two years ago. But at least we hadn’t given up completely.

It was snowing lightly when I left the diner. Dark enough, in fact, on this December afternoon for the Christmas lights hanging from lampposts along Main Street to already be lit. I tried to muster up some Christmas spirit at the sight. Who knows? Maybe the snowfall put Jeremy in the mood and he’d gotten off the sofa long enough to put up our outdoor Christmas lights like he’d been promising to do since the day after Thanksgiving.

Luckily, the wind was at my back as I walked the few blocks to my car. I yanked open the door of my slightly rusting station wagon, wincing at the screech, and slid behind the wheel while I sent a silent wish into the frosty air that the wagon would start on the first try. It didn’t. I resisted the urge to pump the gas and tried again. The engine caught and I smiled and patted the dashboard. “Good girl. Now just get us to the grade school then home and I’ll tuck you in for the rest of the night.”

I drove over to the school, contemplating what to fix for dinner. Natalie, my twenty-nine-year-old daughter, and her husband, Jeremy, had moved in nearly four months ago when Jeremy’s unemployment ran out and the bank foreclosed on their house, but I still wasn’t used to planning family meals again. I’d grown accustomed to just grabbing a bowl of cereal or heating up some soup. Now meals were a big, noisy, messy deal again. Not that I didn’t love my grandkids. I loved them like crazy even when they made me crazy.

I pulled up behind a row of cars in front of the elementary school and waited. As usual, eight-year-old Tyler, dark haired and green eyed with a wrestler’s body like his father’s, was the first one to reach the car. “Shotgun!” he yelled while ten-year-old Matt, tall, lanky and sandy haired like his grandfather, tried to shove him out of the way.

“Knock it off, Matt,” I said.

“No fair,” Matt grumbled. “Tyler got shotgun yesterday.”

“You’re right. Tyler, get in the back, it’s Matty’s turn to ride up front.”

“Aww—” Tyler groused as he gave in.

“Where’s your sister?” I asked, craning my neck to get a look at the steady stream of kids coming out of the school.

“Probably giggling with those two morons she hangs around with,” said Matt.

I was just about to send one of the boys to look for her when Ashley broke from the pack and started skipping toward the car, her long blunt-cut auburn hair swinging from beneath her winter hat.

“Hi, Grandma,” she said as she got into the backseat. She threw her arms around my neck from behind and gave me a kiss on the cheek. She was the only one of my grandchildren who still showed me affection in public.

“Get on your own side of the car,” Tyler yelled.

“Dork,” Ashley said with all the indignity a six-year-old can muster.

“Ha! Dork? That the best you can do, loser?”

No doubt about it, Ashley sometimes had a tough time being the only girl.

“Hey,” she squealed, “stop elbowing me!”

Matt turned around and threw his cap at Ashley. “Quit screaming in my ear, weirdo.”

I stuck two fingers in my mouth and whistled. That got their attention. “The next one of you who says anything nasty or pokes, prods, elbows or otherwise harasses anyone gets to do the dishes tonight. All. By. Themselves.”

There were moans of varying degrees, but the dishes deterrent never failed. The three of them settled down. I turned on the radio, perpetually set on an oldies station, and everyone started singing along to “Sweet Caroline.” By the time we got home, we were mutilating the lyrics to “Brown Eyed Girl.”

Home was still the two-story Victorian with a wraparound porch in perpetual need of painting that had once belonged to my parents. I had just gotten around to the idea of selling it when Nat and Jeremy lost their house almost four months ago. What could I do? They needed a roof over their heads and I was still the mom, a role that no longer suited me as much as it used to. I was the grandmother. I was supposed to get to do the fun things with my grandchildren. Instead, I’d become the one who wiped up the spilled milk and broke up the fights.

The kids tumbled out of the car while I checked for any sign of Christmas light activity on the bare branches of the barberry bushes lining the front porch. Not one string was strung. I didn’t see any of the electric candles I’d asked him to put in the front windows, either.

I followed the kids up the stairs and into the house where they kicked off boots and parkas and threw them in the direction of the cobbler’s bench lining one side of the entrance hall. There was a sweatshirt thrown over the banister of the open staircase and a basket full of clean laundry sitting on the bottom step.

The living room was to the left of the entrance hall, while the dining room was to the right. The big family-style kitchen was behind the dining room.

The kids, as usual, clattered through the dining room to the kitchen to raid the cookie jar. I followed to make sure none of them took more than two cookies—homemade oatmeal that Natalie cleverly laced with wheat germ and sunflower seeds—poured milk and got them seated at the table with their homework. Then I headed back to the living room.

Sure enough, Jeremy was still in his flannel pajama pants and an old football jersey, slumped on one of the two matching sofas, his bare feet up on the coffee table between them, his eyes glazed over from watching too much daytime television.

“Jeremy, we need to talk,” I said.

“I’ve already applied every place I can think of, Abby,” he said dully without taking his eyes off the television.

“I know that and that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about anyway.”

His eyes drifted toward mine.

“I just think that maybe it’d be better if you got dressed every day and did something around here. Even just one thing. That’s all I ask, Jeremy. ’Cause I think you’re slipping into a depression.”