Twist of the Magi Page 2

  Dear Miss Havers,

  Thank you for your recent submission. Unfortunately…

  She closed the refrigerator door and stood in the dark. Sighing, she folded the letters and placed them in a kitchen drawer with all the others. She saw her answering machine light was blinking. Taking the precaution of turning the volume down first, she pushed the button.

  “Hi, honey. We missed you at Thanksgiving. I hope you’re not working too hard. We thought we might be able to come to Ohio for Christmas, but your dad just found out the plant is running extra shifts, so he’ll have to work. Your gift is on its way. You go to your aunt’s for Christmas Day, you hear? She’s expecting you. We’ll talk to you soon. We love you.”

  Penny stood there staring at the answering machine for a long time. Chester finished eating and wound around her ankles, meowing. She bent over and picked him up. “One bit of good news after another. Bah humbug.”

  “Penny, aren’t you done with that yet?”

  Penny snapped to. “Almost, Mrs. Reinholtz.” She hurriedly bent to lift another bird’s nest from the box at her feet and carefully placed it in the Christmas tree situated in the middle of the store. Mrs. Reinholtz imported real birds’ nests to sell as good luck ornaments. Nearby, Candace was squatted down, searching for the box for a Lenox bird figurine a customer was buying to go with one of the bird’s nests. Her perfect backside was visible through the branches of Penny’s Christmas tree, a narrow strip of white, smooth skin visible between the waistband of her pants and the hem of her sweater. Penny paused to admire the view again.

  “Want a camera so you can take a picture?”

  Penny jumped at the sound of Mary’s voice in her ear. “Geez, you scared me! Stop doing that.”

  Mary shook her head, her arms laden with Christmas stockings to replace the ones that had sold. “She doesn’t even know you’re alive.”

  Penny bent over. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said to the box of birds’ nests.

  “Right.”

  Waiting until she was sure Mary had gone, Penny peered again in Candace’s direction, watching as she smiled at the customer, a handsome man buying his wife a Christmas present. She laughed at something he said and laid her hand on his arm, allowing him to walk her to the front of the store. Penny sighed and rubbed her own arm. What would it feel like to have Candace touch her like that?

  Penny picked up her empty bird nest box and carried it back to the stockroom to break down and fold flat in case it was needed later. “We never know what’s going to sell and what we’ll have to store,” Mrs. Reinholtz always said.

  Candace came back into the stockroom with the Lenox box. “I have another customer waiting. Could you wrap this for me?” She tilted her head and gave Penny a smile.

  “Sure,” Penny said. She felt a tingle as she accepted the box from Candace’s hands and they touched briefly. She set about selecting the best wrapping paper they had and took extra care as she cut and folded it, making the corners nice and neat.

  “Who’s that for?” Mary asked, coming back to wrap another boxed ornament.

  “Candace,” Penny said. “She asked me to wrap it for her.”

  Mary looked over sharply. “Why isn’t she wrapping it herself? She sold it.”

  Penny shrugged. “I don’t mind.” She selected a nice ribbon and snugged it around the box, adding a matching bow. She held it up to inspect it.

  “Where is that –” Candace hurried into the stockroom as Penny held the box up for her. Candace grabbed it and hurried back out to the store where Mrs. Reinholtz’s voice could be heard saying, “What a beautiful wrapping you did, Candace.”

  Penny gathered together the trimmed scraps of wrapping paper as Candace said, “Thank you, Mrs. Reinholtz.”

  “You heard that, right?” Mary said, glancing at Penny as she finished tying the ribbon on her own package.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Penny mumbled.

  Mary carried her ornament out to the customer waiting for it while Penny swept the floor. “Mrs. Reinholtz wants us to take our break now,” Mary said when she returned.

  She and Penny donned their jackets and headed out into the cold.

  “So, why aren’t you in grad school?” Mary said as they walked to the sandwich shop.

  Penny ducked her chin deeper into the scarf wrapped around her neck. “I told you. I’ve been too busy writing.”

  “And working in a store,” Mary said doggedly. “That’s a career maker.”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “Don’t be mad,” Mary said. “I just wanted to know more about you.”

  They had arrived at the shop. They waited silently in line to place their orders. When they were seated, Mary picked up where she’d left off.

  “So, how old are you?”

  “What?”

  “How old are you?”

  Penny sipped a steaming spoonful of her soup. “Twenty-three.”

  “And you’re living here on your own?”

  Penny frowned. “Do you always ask so many questions?”

  “Engineering,” Mary reminded her. “I like to figure out what makes things tick. So, yes. I do. Where’s your family?”

  “My parents and my younger brothers and sisters had to move to Iowa last year for my Dad’s work,” Penny said.

  “Really? What does he do?”

  “Um, I don’t really understand what he does. Something with airplane manufacturing. He was in the Air Force, stationed at Wright-Patterson. When the military downsized, he had to look for civilian work, but –”

  Mary looked up, her cheeks stuffed with rye and turkey. She looked like a squirrel – why does she always remind me of an animal? Penny took another spoonful of soup to cover her smile and promptly scalded her tongue.

  Mary swallowed with difficulty. “But what?”

  Penny’s face burned. “His new job doesn’t pay as much, and there are still six of us at home…”

  “You have six younger brothers and sisters?”

  Penny nodded.

  “Why didn’t you go with them?” Mary asked, reaching for her drink.

  “I didn’t want to leave Ohio,” Penny said. “I was already enrolled at Ohio State, and I wanted to stay here.” She glared at Mary. “I won’t be working at the store forever. Just until I get a book contract.”

  “Sure.” Mary paused her questions to allow both of them time to eat, but she couldn’t seem to be quiet for long.

  “Are you going to Iowa for Christmas?”

  “No,” Penny said. “I can’t af–”

  She stopped abruptly.

  “And they can’t come back here?” Mary was watching her closely.

  Penny shook her head. “My dad has to work.”

  “Oh.”

  They finished their lunch and cleared their table.

  “Tell me more about what you’re writing,” Mary said unexpectedly as they walked back to the Christmas Shoppe.

  “Well,” Penny said hesitantly, “I’ve finished a novel. I’m expecting to hear back from agents any time about that. And I’m just finishing a series of short stories. They’ll be published as a collection.” She looked to see if Mary was laughing at her.

  “What are they about?”

  “Kind of about my family, growing up with my brothers and sisters,” Penny said vaguely, her ears turning red.

  “Could I read them?”

  Penny coughed. “Sorry. You want to read them?”

  Mary looked at her. “Yes. Isn’t that why writers write? To have people read their work?”

  “Well, it’s just that, no one ever has. Read my work.”

  Mary grinned at her. “Then I’ll be your first.”

  Penny heard footsteps in the stairwell above her. Mrs. Sewell was waiting for her, probably taping another note to her door. She pulled her mail from her box and forced a smile onto her face as she climbed the stairs.

  “There you are, Mrs. Sewell. I’ve been hoping to run into you. I’ve had m
y rent for the last few days.”

  The tactic worked. The scowl on Mrs. Sewell’s face softened. “You’ve had the rent?”

  “Oh, yes. I hate to just slide it under the door in case it gets lost,” Penny lied. She had just come from cashing her paycheck. “Here you go.”

  “Thank you, Penny.” Mrs. Sewell looked in bewilderment from the envelope to Penny’s face and back again.

  Penny turned to unlock her apartment as the landlady began descending the steps. “Oh, they’re calling for more snow overnight,” Penny said. “Would you like me to shovel the walk in the morning?”

  “That… that would be lovely, Penny. Thank you.” Mrs. Sewell actually gave her a smile before closing her own door.

  Penny sagged against her door, exhaling a relieved breath. She reached into her pocket where the remaining twenty dollars from her paycheck was carefully folded. She was going to have to get another job. There was just no way around it. She could hear Chester meowing for her as she opened her door.

  “Were you lonely?” she asked, scooping him up and feeling him immediately start to purr as he nuzzled into her neck.

  She set him down and leafed through the mail. There were no more letters from agents or publishers, but her heart leapt when she saw a padded envelope addressed in her mother’s familiar handwriting. She tore the flap open and pulled out an envelope and a wrapped package with a big DO NOT OPEN UNTIL CHRISTMAS tag dangling from the ribbon. It felt soft and squishy. A hand-knitted sweater. She opened the envelope. Inside was a check for twenty-five dollars and a note.

  Wish it could be more. Treat yourself to a nice dinner. Love you, Mom and Dad

  Blinking hard, she sat at the table, a powerful wave of homesickness washing over her. Chester leapt awkwardly into her lap. There, on the kitchen table, lay her handwritten pages, stacked up story by story. “Mary wants to read them,” she said to the cat who was watching her expectantly. “I’ve never let anyone read my writing. What do you think?”

  Chester meowed.

  She sighed. “Let’s get dinner.” She scooped a little wet food from a can and mixed it with some dry food before setting it down on the floor. “This has to last us a while.” She did the same for herself with a can of tuna, mixing it with a lot of mayonnaise and spreading it thin between two slices of bread. She sat down at the table. “Someday, my stories will sell and we’ll have more money.”

  “Now girls,” Mrs. Reinholtz paced in front of them like a general inspecting her troops, “these last two weeks before Christmas will be extra busy. We must be extra diligent.”

  Mrs. Reinholtz liked the word “extra”, working it into her pep talks multiple times a day.

  “We will have to be extra quick with wrapping presents, so I’ve decided we will have one person in the back doing all the wrapping. You’ll rotate an hour at a time while the others work the floor and help me with the cash register.”

  The store was now packed most of the day with so many customers that it was difficult to move around without knocking something over. Between keeping the shelves stocked, waiting on customers and wrapping gifts, the four of them were kept busy from open to close.

  Christmas music played constantly on the stereo – though after listening to the same discs over and over, Penny was certain she never wanted to hear Mannheim Steamroller ever again. Every few seconds there was the sound of a bell, either the bell on the door or on the old-fashioned cash register every time the drawer was opened.

  “Every time a bell rings…” Candace said for the millionth time, ferrying a wrapped present out to a customer. Penny laughed – as she did every time Candace said it – but Mary scowled.

  “I’d like to gag her with a bell,” she grumbled as she brought a large Nativity candle pyramid back to be wrapped. “I swear if she quotes another line from a movie, I just might.”

  “Don’t be a Scrooge,” Penny admonished. It was her hour to wrap. She’d given Mary her short stories to read over a week ago. “Hey, have you –”

  “I told you,” Mary cut in. “I’ll give you feedback when I’m done reading, not before.”

  Penny nodded and hurried off to find a box and get the pyramid wrapped. Back in the stockroom, all was chaos, despite Mrs. Reinholtz’s attempts at maintaining order and neatness. Rolls of wrapping paper were everywhere – standing in corners, rolling across the floor. Spare pieces of wrapping paper littered the worktable – “use them for smaller packages if they fit,” Mrs. Reinholtz told them repeatedly, fretting that they might run out in the middle of a busy spurt.

  Penny reached for a full roll, knowing she would need quite a bit of paper for the pyramid. The roll fell and tumbled across the floor, toward the coats. Penny raced after it, squatting down to pick it up from where it had come to rest under Candace’s wool coat. Penny looked around to make sure the stockroom was empty. She leaned closer. The coat smelled like Candace. She stood with the roll of paper and lifted Candace’s scarf to her face.

  “What are you doing?”

  Penny whipped around, her face burning. “Nothing. The paper rolled over here.”

  “Were you smelling her scarf?” Mary demanded, holding a boxed pen to be wrapped next.

  “No,” Penny lied, turning her back on Mary and pulling a length of paper off the roll, spreading it on the worktable to cut it.

  Mary stood there in silence for so long that Penny turned to look at her. There was a curious mix of pity and – “something else,” Penny would think later, but she couldn’t say what it was.

  “You realize she barely knows anyone else exists besides her, right?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Penny said, but her shoulders hunched defensively, fending off Mary’s words. Her fingers fumbled with the tape. The wrapping looked terrible, but she tied up a length of ribbon anyhow and stuck a bow on the box. “I have to…” She pushed the box into Mary’s hands and snatched the pen to start wrapping it, listening for Mary to leave. She opened the box to gaze longingly at the wooden pen lying on the velvet. She ran her fingers along the smooth walnut, hand-turned into a shape that fit perfectly in her hand.

  “I could write great stories with a pen like this,” she murmured. She knew that made no sense. A pen was just a pen and one wrote like another, but still… she twisted it to bring the point out and scribbled a few words on a scrap of wrapping paper.

  She jumped as she heard Mrs. Reinholtz’s voice asking where the pen was and hurriedly placed it back in its box to wrap it.

  Penny spent the rest of the day avoiding Mary as much as she could within the confines of the store, but she could feel Mary watching her. Near the end of the day, Mary caught her back in the stockroom.

  “What are you doing for dinner tonight?” Mary asked her when Penny had to bring something back to the stockroom to be wrapped.

  “Nothing,” Penny said, startled. “Why?”

  “It’s Friday,” Mary said. “Want to get something?”

  “Oh, um…” Penny stalled, knowing she only had seven dollars left in her wallet until they got paid again the next Friday.

  “It’s okay,” Mary said quickly. “You don’t have to. I just thought –”

  “Maybe next Friday,” Penny said.

  Mary turned back to the package she was wrapping. “Sure.”

  Penny sat cross-legged on the couch in her living room. She had moved the coffee table over against one wall where it now held her grandmother’s old Nativity set sitting next to her little artificial tree. She finished writing with a flourish. She re-stacked a small sheaf of hand-written pages and leafed through them. “You think she’ll like it?”

  Chester meowed and swished his tail as he lay like a Sphinx on the arm of the couch, his front feet tucked neatly under him.

  “Okay.” She carefully rolled the pages into a scroll and tied them with a ribbon. She tucked them inside her backpack and zipped it up. “You be good, kitty cat. Later.”

  She put on her jacket and went down to her car. Mrs. Sew
ell was watching from her window. Penny gave her a smile and a wave as she got into the Pinto. She had to turn the key three times before the starter caught. She found a parking space a block from the shop and hurried to the back alley.

  She brought her backpack in with her, hanging it under her jacket. It had become impossible to do much cleaning with the store so busy, so “for this last week before Christmas,” Mrs. Reinholtz had told them yesterday, “I want you all to come in a half hour before the store opens and we’ll clean and dust extra well before the customers come in.”

  Penny stalled in the back room, taking her time sweeping the floor and straightening the shelves as she waited. To her disappointment, Mary and Candace came in together. Penny reached into her backpack and retrieved her bound pages as Candace was talking about her family’s house in Upper Arlington, with their ten-foot tree and the formal holiday party her parents were giving this coming Saturday.

  “What’s that?” Mary, inquisitive as ever, saw the pages in Penny’s hand.

  “Nothing.” Penny stuffed them back into her bag and headed out to start cleaning.

  The other two donned their aprons and scattered around the store.

  “Oh, I know what I’m getting,” Candace chatted to no one in particular – “except she thinks everybody’s listening to her,” Mary had whispered more than once to Penny – as she waved her feather duster over a shelf of porcelain angels. “I saw a marvelous Gucci bag that I really want, and I’m sure my mother is getting it for me. And I found the cutest baby blue down vest that will look really good with my eyes. Oh, and some diamond earrings.”

  Mary turned and looked at her with her mouth agape. “You could feed an entire family for a month on what those things will cost.”

  “Why should I care about feeding some other family?” Candace demanded indignantly. “We work for what we’ve got. Let them do the same.”

  Penny could feel her face burn as she thought of her parents feeding six kids. She turned back to her own dusting of the nesting dolls.