Must Love Mistletoe

Digging her nails into her palms, she turned away from him. What was she supposed to say? “Do you have a better reason?”

“No.” He laughed again, without amusement. “Fuck no. I wouldn’t be that stupid, now that I’m a college- educated man and all.”

She didn’t know how to respond to that either. So she stuck to practicalities. “We’ll have to sneak you out the back door so none of the kids see you. I think they’d recognize the eye patch and we don’t want to blow your Santa cover.”

“Yeah. Fine. Whatever.”

With her hand on the door, though, he halted her, his fingers over hers. “Tell the tall brunette at the front of the store where to find me, will you? The one with the twins? We’re going out for coffee.”

She stared at him over her shoulder. “You made a date with a mother while you were wearing a Santa suit?”

He smiled, that ol’ bad-boy smile she was so familiar with. “What can I say, sweetheart? I’m good. And for your information, she’s a nanny. She’s off at noon and doesn’t have to watch the rug-rats again until tomorrow morning.”

Just another good reason to keep her mind off him and on business.

Fifteen minutes later, Bailey realized she’d been doing such a good job at that-all her attention on the customers lined up at the cash register-that she’d forgotten to tell the beanpole brunette nanny where she could find Finn. Oh darn.

Thirty minutes after that, from her perch on a stepladder in a small room on the second floor, she caught sight of the couple strolling down the Coronado street. The beanpole carried an iced latte with two straws. Bailey dropped the vintage heart-shaped glass ornament she was in the process of hanging. It broke into five sharp pieces.

Figured. There went $32.50. See, self? Finn was bad for business.

Tracy sat perched on the bed in Harry’s dark room, trying to figure out her future and what to do about Dan. Instead, though, her gaze kept returning to her son’s empty chair and the open space on the desk where his laptop used to sit. In her mind’s eye she could see his wide but bony shoulders, his shaggy hair, the arpeggio of his fingers flying over the keys. She and Dan used to shake their heads, Tracy wondering if their straight-A son was really plotting to take over the world from that computer since he would always switch the screen to something else when they walked by the open door.

Dan would elbow her and whisper “Porn,” the rat, because that would set her to worrying. She’d pause about fifteen times in the making of sloppy joes, or tacos, or tuna-noodle casserole-all favorites of the starving teenager- slash-global dictator upstairs-to look at Dan and say, “Do you think?”

And he’d laugh and say, “Of course I think,” and she’d throw a dishtowel at him and he’d duck, then grab her around the waist and whisper they’d be looking at naked bodies together later too. When the starving teenager- slash-global dictator-slash-possible deviant came downstairs for dinner, the three of them would sit around the table and she’d have to avoid Dan’s eyes so that she wouldn’t laugh or blush or both.

After dinner, Tracy would have to run out to a meeting or type up some meeting minutes, or be making phone calls regarding some upcoming meeting and then it would be late. She would be tired and Harry would still be up, fingers tap-tap-tapping on that keyboard, so that when Dan turned off his computer or CSI: Akron or Tucson or whatever the latest iteration was and turned to her in their bedroom for that naked-body viewing-her naked body and his-she would be too tired and feel too constrained by the idea of their son awake and alert across the hall. “Not tonight,” she would say.

And Dan would turn away and she would turn away and somewhere between then and the teeth whitening her husband was gone.

“Mom!” Downstairs, the front door slammed and Bailey stomped into the house. “Just answer me this,” she yelled out. “Whose nifty idea was it to subsidize the electric company this season?”

Tracy’s knees creaked as she pushed off Harry’s bed and moved to the top of the stairs to look down at her daughter. “What are you talking about?”

Bailey’s annoyed expression was a duplicate of the one she’d worn as a child, when she couldn’t get her little brother or her best friend, Trin, to listen to “reason”-Bailey’s version, that is. “The corner house has a helicopter hovering with an inflatable Santa inside holding an American flag. I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean.”

“We live in a military town? It’s Christmas?”

Bailey shook her head, then her eyes narrowed. “You know what’s wrong?”

“I’ve no doubt you’re going to tell me.”

“We both look pasty,” her daughter declared. “We need roses in our cheeks and highlights in our hair.”

“What?”

“We’re not making the most out of our natural coloring. Brunettes won’t stand a chance against us after a little foil and peroxide.”

“Didn’t you mention ‘natural’?”

Bailey waved an impatient hand. “Don’t get technical on me. Let’s go.”

Tracy didn’t want to go anywhere, but her daughter had been stubborn since babyhood. After making a research phone call to Trin, Bailey dragged Tracy through the front door.

She glanced over her shoulder as she was pulled toward Bailey’s car. “Is that a wreath on the front door?” It was fresh, with a pretty gold ribbon threaded through it and a tiny glass hummingbird sitting right on top.

“Mmm,” Bailey said, pushing her into the passenger seat. Once she was behind the wheel, she handed over a pair of sunglasses, even though it was full dark. “Sorry, but I don’t have earplugs.”

The decorations on the block were outrageous. Bailey shielded her eyes with her hand and muttered in complaint as they crawled behind other cars cruising the scene.

Tracy smiled, not only at her daughter’s typical Christmas-curmudgeon-ness, but because the ostentation lifted her heart a little. There were so many sad times, so many tragedies in a year and in a life, why shouldn’t people feel free to go over the top on occasion? There should be no shame or sin in lighting up their lives with every bright bauble that the season offered, not because there weren’t dark times, but because there were.

It was the spirit with which The Perfect Christmas was built.

A pang of longing took aim at Tracy’s heart. For a moment she wanted to be back in the store-dusting the Victorian villages, adjusting the positions of the Santa figurines in the front window, straightening the pinafores of the angelic Christmas dolls. Then she thought of Dan and the longing dried to dust.

She’d told Bailey she couldn’t go into The Perfect Christmas because she didn’t want to see her husband there. But the fact was, worse than facing him within the confines of the store would be facing the truth that he wasn’t in the store at all.

If Dan wasn’t busy in the back room making coffee, if he wasn’t inspecting the track of the North Pole Express that ran along the ceiling of the bottom floor, if he wasn’t greeting the children who came into the store with wondering eyes as big as lollipops, then the place would only feel lonely and bitter.

Oh no, that was she.

Tracy and Bailey finally made it to the hair salon that Trin had recommended. The windows were painted with a colorful winter theme. A surfing snowman in red and green boardshorts held a sign that proclaimed they stayed open late and welcomed walk-ins. When Tracy demurred as they entered, concerned about submitting to an unknown stylist, Bailey just issued orders.

“Sit.”

“Stay.”

To the first available hairdresser. “Dump my mom’s gray. Brighten the blond.”

Half an hour later, they were in side-by-side chairs, their hair in leaflike layers of tinfoil. It created a sort of silvery, sci-fi Afro effect.

“Do you do this often?” Tracy asked. Frankly, she thought the look more than a little scary. “If men saw women like this, maybe they wouldn’t cause us so much trouble.”

Bailey made a snorting sound that communicated something between “Fat chance” and “Men are dogs.”