The Christmas Strike

“We were here first,” Natalie said tightly. “Let her go to a hotel. She can afford it.”

“That’s not fair! My marriage is crumbling and you want me to go to a hotel? Why shouldn’t Mother be here for me, too?”

“Yeah, your marriage is crumbling because your husband put off a trip to the Bahamas to make another million. Excuse me while I don’t cry.”

“You are such a bitch!”

“Hey—little pitchers,” Nat said sternly as she nodded toward her trio of minors. They were watching the sisters with their mouths dropped open nearly to the table.

Suddenly, Ashley jumped from her chair and ran up to me to clutch my leg. “Why are they yelling?” she whispered as she peered anxiously up at me. “Do Mommy and Auntie Gwen hate each other?”

I smoothed her hair back from her little concerned face. “Do you hate your brothers when you yell at them?”

Ashley solemnly shook her head. “Not really.”

“Then I guess your mommy and your auntie are just acting like children.”

“Would it kill anyone to try to see my side of things, here?” Gwen demanded before she flounced out of the room.

By now the kitchen table was a mess of cereal, spilled milk and whatever other chaos grade school children can cause in a kitchen on a Saturday morning. I went over to the sink and turned on the faucet, waiting for the water in the old pipes to get hot. The kids must have sensed more trouble brewing because they soon drifted off to wreak havoc in the living room.

I shot Nat a look. “You know, you’re not helping matters any.”

She had the grace to look shamefaced, something that always raised patches of bright red on her pale cheeks. “I’m sorry. I guess it’s just that after losing your house it’s a little hard to have sympathy for someone who has to postpone a cruise.”

I put my arm around her shoulders. “Honey, I know. But this is still real to her. She feels let down by her husband. She feels—”

“Abandoned,” Natalie finished for me. “I know. But she’s not the only one who lost her father, you know.”

I squeezed her shoulder. “We all deal with things differently, Nat.” Was now the time to reminded her of her overprotective-ness of Jeremy? Probably not, I decided.

“Mother?”

Gwen had quietly come back into the kitchen. In her long rose-sprigged flannel nightgown with matching robe, her hair in a tangled mess and her eyes red from crying, she looked so much like the girl she’d once been. So when she asked in a small, plaintive voice, “Would you make me some pancakes?” I, naturally, said yes.

She smiled weakly. “I’ll have them in my room.”

“Oh, brother,” said Natalie.

“So you’re late for the Prisoners of Willow Creek Enrichment Society outing because you were serving your daughter pancakes in bed?” Iris asked. “Your thirty-year-old daughter, I might add.”

I grimaced. “You might, but I wish you wouldn’t.”

Iris dipped the tip of her brush in pink paint. “Aren’t we supposed to be escaping our bondage?”

“Yes, of course—”

“Well, I’m seeing you pretty tethered to the ground, honey,” Iris said.

“Well, what am I supposed to do?”

“Kick them out on their asses and tell them to grow up?” Iris suggested tenderly.

“It’s just not that easy,” I whined.

“Oh, don’t pay any attention to her,” Jo said. “She’s never had kids.”

“Making me the smartest woman at this table,” Iris stated.

We’d driven an hour in the snow to sit in the back room of an overheated ceramics shop and paint designs on large coffee cups. I was starting to think that none of the women at this table were very smart.

“This is a stupid way to spend a Saturday,” I blurted out.

Some women at the advanced class’s table who were working on painting little elves swung their heads our way, their faces registering disapproval.

“You trying to get us beat up or something?” Jo hissed.

“They do look a little hard-core,” Iris said.

I started to giggle at the thought of hard-core ceramic junkies. More disapproving looks came our way. I wasn’t sure if it was our conversation or the fact that none of us was wearing a sweatshirt with a barnyard animal, a snowman or sprigs of holly on it.

“Why do I get the feeling,” Jo said out of the corner of her mouth, “that we’re about to get kicked out of here?”

“Just as long as we don’t have to serve detention,” I said.

Iris threw down her paintbrush. “Let’s get the hell out of here. I want a margarita.”

There was a small gasp from a chubby woman at the next table, who was wearing a sweatshirt that featured a row of geese, each with a red ribbon tied in a bow at its throat.

“What’s the matter, lady, would you rather have a rum and Coke?”

“Well, I never—” the woman said.

“Yeah, I’m betting you haven’t,” Iris quipped.

“I think now is the time to leave,” Jo said.

I didn’t argue.

Amid much giggling, we left our half-finished latte mugs where they were, went up front, paid what we owed and headed back to Willow Creek and the only Mexican restaurant in the area.

I ordered a regular margarita on the rocks, no salt, Jo ordered a blended strawberry one and Iris, skipping the niceties, ordered a double shot of tequila.

We were as different as our drink orders—Jo, Iris and I. Always had been.

Jo, the tomboy and the first of us to date, had been on the girls’ hockey team in high school. She was the kind of girl who joined in a game of football with the guys at the park on Saturday afternoons, thus getting to know all the jocks and giving her the inside dating edge. Iris’s high school claim to fame was getting caught smoking in the girls’ room more often than any other girl of the graduating class of 1972. I was the studious, practical one. The one on the debating team. The one who usually followed all the rules.

The unlikely friendship had started when we’d all refused to dissect a frog in freshman biology. We’d all gotten detention as punishment for our stand on animal cruelty. Although I’ve secretly always felt that with Iris, it was more of a stand against the smell of formaldehyde. Jo and I, clearly out of our element, had glued ourselves to Iris, who was more than familiar with the drill and who was friends with nearly every scary boy in the detention room. Afterwards, we’d walked home in the dark together—it had been late fall and the smell of burning leaves had been in the air—griping about the unfairness of the world. We’d been best friends ever since.