***
For the rest of that autumn, Mum worked her civilized, sit-down job at the college while Jeff and I made fast food, and Dad kept stacking bales of raw wool in a dark little warehouse by the railroad tracks. As high school students, unskilled, physical work was all Jeff and I could hope to find. But it pulled my heart apart to see my clever firecracker of a father breaking his back all day. The way he stuck to the warehouse job despite the low wages and rough conditions was a lesson for all of us. Every prayer uttered in our home that fall contained a word or two about Dad being able to find a better job – and soon.
Eventually, the miles and miles of grain and hay around Upton was all cut to stubble and covered with a thin coat of dusty, windblown snow. Not long after, Dad sat us all down on the yellow velour furniture in our grandparents’ living room to make an announcement. He’d finished the long, rigorous screening process and had finally been accepted to the training program for Canadian border guards. The work would be steady, challenging, and even though it wouldn’t pay as much as we used to earn on the east coast, it would be far more lucrative than his warehouse wages. It was a real career with a promising future. Dad would be leaving for the training centre right after Christmas.
With Dad’s new wages, in a few months Mum and Dad would be back on top of all their bills. At the sound of the news, Jeff let out his breath in a noisy gust. It felt as if he’d been holding it in ever since things went wrong for us during the summer. Mum hooked her arm around his neck, pulled his head into hers, and cried a little bit.
The family’s short term plans still required that Jeff and I work, so we did – driving over the tracts of dry, blowing snow between Upton and the city at least three times a week.
The TacoTown dining room had just been decorated with stringy, foil garlands and coloured Christmas lights the day Sandy came through the kitchen door bareheaded. She held her uniform hat upside down in her hand and waved it under my nose.
“Pick a name,” she ordered.
I stuck my hand into her hat and pulled out a small slip of paper. “It says ‘Bert,’” I told her. “Now what?”
“Now you have to bring a present for him to the staff Christmas party next weekend. It’s no big deal. The price limit’s ten dollars – or two packs of smokes,” she teased me.
Since I certainly was not going to buy Bert cigarettes at Christmas or any other time, I had to go to the discount department store across the street from TacoTown to find something he might not hate to get as a present. And there it was, in the toy department – the perfect gift. It was a stuffed toy made to look like a puppet character from a children’s television show we all knew. Of course, the character was also named Bert. Crystal laughed when I brought it to her house to show it to her.
She’d drawn Sandy’s name out of the hat and bought her a pre-wrapped, fancy basket of fruity smelling lotions and soaps. “It’s totally lame, I know,” Crystal apologized as I read the labels through the cellophane wrapping. “I’m sure Sandy would have rather had one of the daytime staff ladies draw her name. You know, someone old enough to go Christmas shopping in a liquor store.”
I grimaced. “Nasty. Well, if she’s that thirsty she can always drink the pomegranate lotion. It’s probably less harmful for her than booze anyway.”
Crystal laughed. “And it says on the label it’s full of nourishing fruit extracts.”
“Yummy,” I snickered. “I sure hope I don’t end up with any Christmas alcohol to pour out in a snow bank on the way home. Oh well, at least I’d get to keep the bottle deposit. Hey, do you know who got my name in the Christmas draw?”
Crystal coughed and twitched her shoulders. “Uh, yeah, I do know.”
“And?”
“It was Wayne. But he traded. So now Darren has your name.” She blurted it out like a confession.
Her nervousness made me nervous too. “That’s kind of funny,” I said.
“It wasn’t Wayne’s idea to trade,” she said, hanging her head like she was in some kind of mild pain. “It was Darren’s.”
I raised both my eyebrows. “That’s even weirder, isn’t it?”
Crystal stood up and looked both ways down the hallway outside her bedroom before she closed the door. “Not really, no,” she said. “Darren – well, you’ve never seen him at school but he’s really shy there. He kind of lets Wayne have all the personality for both of them. So he’s never had a girlfriend – plenty of crushes but no real relationships.”
“What’s any of that got to do with me?” I felt like my hair was starting to stand on end.
“Well, you’re really nice to Darren. I’ve never seen him more comfortable with a girl – besides me, of course, but I’m just like his sister so we could never go out.” She actually shuddered.
“Go out?”
Crystal looked at her feet. “Go out, like together.”
I coughed. “Crystal, I know it sounds snotty and elitist and all that stuff, but I don’t date guys who aren’t Mormons. Remember how all my misgivings about seeing that zombie movie were totally right? Well, this is the same kind of thing. It’s important to me. It keeps me happy.”
She didn’t seem to hear me. “I know Darren’s not super good looking –”
“That has nothing to do with it,” I interrupted. “Look at me. Do I look like someone who’s hung up on physical appearances?”
Crystal was still ignoring me. “– But he’s tall and clean and it’s not like he’s vile or anything. Come on, Mack. You guys seem to get along so well.”
She was right. Darren was smart and funny and I enjoyed spending time with him whether it was storming out of a movie or just standing over an industrial sink full of dishes at work. The sight of his overly prominent Adam’s apple didn’t even bother me anymore. I was starting to suspect that, if Tom had still been around, he might be calling Wayne, Crystal, Darren and me the quadruplets by now. But none of it changed the strong notion I had that Darren was outside my chosen dating pool. Even when we lived in a much smaller Church community in a much bigger city on the east coast, the only boys to ever take me on dates there were the few Mormon boys living in the area.
Crystal was still talking. “I wasn’t going to tell you this but Darren and Wayne have already been out shopping for your Christmas present and...” She didn’t finish.
“And what?”
She folded her arms over her middle. “All I’m saying is – you should probably brace yourself.”
I pounced on Crystal. “What did they get me for a present?”
She pushed me away but I had already clamped my arm around her in a head-lock. It wasn’t very scary. She was just laughing at me as I shook my fist at her. “Get off me, Mack. I’m not telling you anything else. I’m already going to be in trouble.”
With one decisive shove, Crystal broke my weak hold and I let myself be knocked over. I tumbled off her bed with a thud, sending her cat, Taffy, darting for cover underneath it. The racket even caused her gloomy mom, down in the living room beneath the floor of Crystal’s bedroom, to look up from her video-taped soap opera and call up the stairs. “Crystal? What’s going on up there?”
Crystal threw a rolled up pair of socks at me as I lay trying to stifle my laughter on the floor. “Nothing, Mom. I’m just disciplining Mack.”
Her mom seemed to have lost interest in us by the time Crystal answered and we didn’t hear anything more. I sat up on the carpet and tossed the socks back at Crystal. “I really don’t think your mom likes me.”
“Sure she does,” Crystal sighed. “She’s just afraid you’re going to try to make me into a Mormon.”
I faked an ominous laugh. “Oh, but I am.”
Jeff came to pick me up after he finished work. Between its balding tires and its rear wheel drive, the station wagon got stuck in the icy gutter in front of Crystal’s house – like it always did when there was fresh snow. I had to get o
ut of the car, lean against its bumper, and push until it slid free. Back in the car, I sat in the front seat while the slush from the gutter melted through my shoes. I watched the empty, black landscape pass outside the windows as we drove back to Upton. The twins must have misunderstood Darren’s Christmas shopping, I told myself. What could Darren possibly do within Sandy’s ten dollar price limit that would be powerful enough for me to need to brace myself for it? In a few days, the whole thing will blow over and everything will go back to normal. Won’t it?
A few nights later, I stowed Bert’s wrapped present under the tiny, artificial Christmas tree propped in the corner of Sandy’s office. It wasn’t the first package to be deposited there so I took a moment to gingerly snoop around beneath the wire branches, looking for a parcel addressed to me. While I was looking, Darren himself walked into the office.
“Hey, no peeking,” he scolded.
“At what? There’s nothing under here for me anyway,” I answered, pretending to be ignorant as I straightened myself up. “Whoever drew my name must have decided I don’t deserve any Christmas presents.”
Darren shrugged, reflecting all my false ignorance right back at me. “Yeah, probably. Maybe it’s one of those people who think Mormons don’t celebrate Christmas and they didn’t want to offend you with a present.”
I yelled out a scoffing laugh. “No Christmas? As if. Well, I hope you find that person and set him straight,” I said as I pushed past Darren, standing in the doorway. He didn’t get nearly far enough out of my way.