“I can’t wait till Angelica is a little older,” Erica said. “Wilson’s a lot easier to deal with than my sister. And smarter.”
“He is?” Heidi found him baffling.
“Sure—he already knows my name. Don’t you, Wil?”
Wilson smiled. “Ca!”
She looked over at Heidi. “See?”
“Does he know my name?”
Erica asked him. “Wilson, who’s that?”
“Mizzletoed!”
Heidi laughed.
Erica was trying to get him to say Heidi’s name when the phone rang. It was William, Erica’s father. Heidi recognized his voice right away and did her best as “advance man” to smooth things over. “Erica’s doing great—it’s so fun to see her. Can you believe she made it here all on her own? That was
amazing.
You must be so—”
“I’d like to speak to her,” William grumbled.
“And she’s being so helpful,” Heidi said. “I don’t know what I would have done without her this afternoon. I—”
William interrupted in a spiky, impatient voice. “Can you put her on the phone, please?”
Reluctantly, Heidi handed the phone over to Erica, who took it with a look of dread.
“Hey, Dad.”
A full two minutes passed before she got another chance to speak. Heidi turned away, pretending not to listen, but shutting out the conversation in such a small space was impossible.
“But what does it matter?” Erica lifted her arm in an impatient shrug, as if her father could actually see her. “I got here okay, didn’t I? I’d think you’d be relieved!”
That angle, apparently, didn’t go over well.
“But nothing
did
happen.” Erica listened for another long stretch, then said, “I’ll pay Leanne back. I swear. You can hold back my allowance for two years, and the debt will all be paid off. I promise.”
When Erica finally hung up, she looked depressed. Her dad must have agreed to her terms. “Well, looks like I’m broke for the forseeable future.”
“Welcome to the club,” Heidi said.
While they ate a small dinner of leftover soup and saltines, Heidi filled Erica in on all the things that had happened in the past day before she showed up.
“What are you going to do if you never find the money?” Erica asked.
“I’m assuming at this point that I never will.”
“That’s terrible!”
Strangely, it felt good to have someone say that. Someone to commiserate with.
“So when’s Wilson’s mom going to come home?” Erica asked.
“I don’t know. She hasn’t responded to any of the messages I left for her in Africa, or on the number of her phone I have listed for her here, or the e-mail I sent her at the address Martine gave me. If she doesn’t show up tonight, I guess I should leave a note on her door telling her I’ve got Wilson down here, in case she comes back in the middle of the night and freaks out that he’s gone.”
They cleaned up the dishes and deliberated on what to do for the rest of the evening. “It’s Christmas Eve,” Heidi said. “You’ve come all this way to New York. We should do something special. We could go to a caroling service at one of the big churches.”
Erica’s nose wrinkled. “I have to go to church at home. Plus, what would we do with Wilson? He’d get fussy in a church, I’ll bet.”
“Oh, right.” That thought hadn’t occurred to her.
“What did you have planned?” Erica asked her. “I mean, maybe you have parties or something to go to.”
“No, I don’t.”
“But you must have had something in mind for the holiday.”
It was time to fess up.
“Have you ever seen
Avatar
?”
“That movie that came out years ago? About the blue people?”
Heidi explained that she’d been too busy with the restaurant to completely catch up with her Netflix queue. Then a troubling thought occurred to her and she hurried over to check the box. “I better check to make sure it’s not R. I wouldn’t want your father to be mad ...”
Erica laughed. “After I’ve run away from home and stolen six hundred twenty-eight dollars? I don’t think he’s going to worry about me seeing a movie that’s not PG-13.” Erica scurried to her backpack and rummaged around until she came up with a gigantic chocolate bar. “I brought you this. I’m saving your big present for tomorrow, but we can have some of this with the movie.”
The bar was big enough that she would be munching on it during movies for weeks, but Heidi adhered to the philosophy that a person could never have too much chocolate. She accepted the present with a hug, then a worried frown. “I mailed your present to East Texas. You probably didn’t get it yet.”
“That’s okay. I’ll have something to open when I get home. I’ll probably need something to cheer me up.”
They prepped for the movie. First, they got Wilson ready for bed. Once he was in his jammies, they plopped him down in the center of the futon, where he promptly fell asleep. God knows the day had probably been more stressful for him than it had been for them. They wrapped themselves in blankets and sat on either side of him.
The moment he heard the chocolate bar being opened, Marcello jumped up to join them.
“Dogs can’t have chocolate,” Erica warned Heidi.
“Right,” Heidi said. “I knew that.”
But would she have remembered it if Erica hadn’t been here?
She punched PLAY on the DVD player and they settled back for an evening’s entertainment. This was good. She’d planned to be alone, relaxing, but it was nice to have Erica here. Heck, it would have been nice with just Marcello for company. Another warm body, even a dog body, made the place seem homier.
Maybe she should get a cat.
Or a boyfriend.
The memory of the hurt in Patrick’s eyes when he’d seen her and Sal together under the mistletoe flashed through her mind. Oh well. That probably wouldn’t have worked out. A cat would be a lot easier to maintain than a boyfriend, anyway.
For now, she wasn’t going to worry about it. She wasn’t going to fret over the money, either. Or anything. She was going to have a good Christmas and hope that nothing else bad happened.
After the third preview, there was a sharp
click
and the world went black.
“What was that?” Erica asked, invisible in the darkness.
Heidi folded her arms. “That was the electricity going out.”
They remained on the couch, waiting for the lights to snap back on. When a minute passed and nothing happened, Heidi got up and started rummaging around for matches. She lit the only two candles she had.
Erica tugged her blanket more tightly around herself. “Is this a blackout?”
“Uh ... I guess so. I suppose something’s happened to the line because of the ice.”
Brilliant deduction, Sherlock.
Heidi half expected Erica to sneer at her, but when she looked at the girl’s face in the flickering candlelight, her brow was pillowed in thought. “It was already cold in here, but I can feel the temperature dropping by the second. Can’t you?”
Now that she mentioned it ... Heidi jumped up and walked to the ancient radiator that sat under the front window. The thing was an iceberg.
“Is the heat electric?” Erica asked.
“I think it’s steam ...” She tried to tamp down panic, but any effort to sound knowledgeable failed. She didn’t know squat about stuff like this, and Mrs. DiBenedetto was gone. “Maybe it’s not on because of the boiler ...” She wasn’t even sure where it was, or how to get to it.
After a moment of silence, Erica asked, “So, how cold does it have to get before bad things start happening?”
“Bad things like what?”
“Like ... freezing to death?”
“We’ll be fine,” Heidi assured her.
After another half hour, however, she decided it was time to pack up everybody and find refuge somewhere else. She didn’t get any arguments from Erica.
“Where are we going?” she asked while Heidi loaded a sleepy, fussy Wilson into the stroller.
“The café.” Even if the electricity was out there, at least they could use the fireplace.
Erica shivered. “I might have known I’d end up spending Christmas in Sweetgum, one way or another.”
Chapter 9
“I think my dad’s more angry about the money than anything.”
“I doubt that’s true,” Heidi assured Erica as they trudged toward the café.
Brooklyn had never felt more eerie. Some streets would have been plunged into inky shadow and rendered utterly unnavigable if the world hadn’t been a glistening white. Despite the clouds overhead, there was enough atmospheric light, or spillover from the rest of the city that still had power, to make the sidewalks almost seem to glow. A group of snowmen stood as rigid sentry in the neighborhood park, vestiges of the fluffy snow from the storm’s early hours. No kids played outside now, of course, and trees released groans as the bitter wind hit their ice-coated branches.
At least the sleet had stopped.
The strip of Court Street nearest the café had lights, but the road itself was a mess. Cars people had attempted to parallel park jutted into the street like crooked teeth. The city’s salt was doing battle with the ice, but not always coming up the winner. Only the most intrepid vehicles were still out.
Of the few people they encountered during their trek, the happiest was a man in mountaineering attire cross-country skiing down the unplowed side streets of Carroll Gardens.
Kids might be staying up in hopes of getting a peek at Santa’s sleigh this evening, but Heidi imagined their parents would prefer to see the lights of a Con Edison truck. She wouldn’t place any bets on which was likelier to show up.
Erica edged her way along the sidewalk in thoughtful silence. When she spoke again, her words indicated she was still preoccupied by her family troubles. “My dad spends lots of money, but whenever I want to buy some little thing, he goes nuts.”
“Well, a plane ticket’s not exactly a little thing,” Heidi pointed out.
“No, I guess not,” she admitted.
Erica’s problems led Heidi to think of her own. In the months since the café opened, she’d tried not to dwell on the fact that she owed more money than she’d ever earned in her life, or that the café barely broke even most months. Keeping her head in the sand would become harder now. Eleven hundred dollars didn’t seem like all that much compared to the amount she’d borrowed, but it still left a gaping hole in her finances. What if it proved to be the tipping point? If every journey began with a single step, surely every bankruptcy commenced with a single irretrievable dollar. She had over eleven hundred of them. Perhaps next Christmas there would be no Sweetgum Café.
As they approached the café’s block, Heidi’s heart beat a little faster in suspense. Would there be lights? So much of the neighborhood was dark, she braced herself for disappointment. Even with the fireplace, the café would still be cold with no electricity, but it might keep them from having to seek refuge at an emergency shelter. The idea of crowding into a church basement with a teenager, a toddler, and a dog seemed grim. Plus, a shelter might not let her bring Marcello, and she had promised Mrs. DiBenedetto she would look after him.
She turned the corner onto the street where the café was situated, and almost wept in relief. The entire block appeared surprisingly normal. Tree lights twinkled through windows and from stoops that owners had taken pains to decorate.
In the café they took a moment to absorb the wonderful heat—the sixty-five degrees Heidi had set the thermostat to seemed almost sultry. She released Wilson from his wheeled prison and unhooked Marcello’s leash. Both boy and dog immediately started running.
Erica hopped the feeling back into her feet and then flopped into a chair. “I don’t think I’ve been warm since we left this place four hours ago.” She eyed the fireplace greedily. “Can we have a fire? Please?”
“Of course.”
“I can do it,” Erica said. “I make them at the farm sometimes.”
“Knock yourself out.”
At Erica’s suggestion, Heidi had grabbed several toys and picture books from the duffel Martine had brought down for Wilson. Now while Erica was stacking firewood with scientific precision, Heidi unpacked a clunky Thomas train from a tote bag and let Wilson push it around on the rug running from the door to the cash register.
She fired up the drip coffeemaker for herself and put some milk on low heat on a burner. Despite being pulled away from her place on Christmas Eve, she wasn’t unhappy. In a way, the café felt more like a home to her now than her apartment. She put in a CD, and when Louis Armstrong started singing “Christmas Night in Harlem,” Erica jumped up excitedly.
“I
love
this song!” she said. “I haven’t heard it since—”
Heidi nodded. She might have known this had been one of Rue’s favorites. Funny, she had never imagined what the farm had been like at Christmastime while Rue lived there in later years. When Heidi had been there as a teenager, during her mom’s short-lived marriage to Laura and Rue’s cranky dad, the farm had been a joy vacuum. But in later years Rue had snapped the place up and given it new life. That’s how Heidi tried to remember it now.
“What did you guys usually do on Christmas Eve at the farm?” she asked Erica.
Erica draped her torso over the counter. “Mom always fixed this really great shortbread. With pecans. It was
so good,
and it made the entire house smell like butter. I helped her a couple of times, but I wouldn’t remember how to do it.”
Heidi smiled and tilted her head toward a lone shelf on the wall. On it, in a place of honor, sat the recipe box Rue had given to Heidi before she died. “We don’t have to remember. We’ll let her tell us.”
Erica’s face lit up. “Can we make some? Do you have all the stuff for it?”
“Oh, honey, I’ve got enough ingredients here to make all of Brooklyn smell like butter.”
The doorknob rattled and Marcello exploded. He made like a furry bullet for the door and barked himself hoarse at the threatening figure of Clay peeking through the glass. Heidi tried to calm him down and let Clay in.
“I saw the light on,” he said, scooting inside. “You open?”
“Not exactly, but come on in. I’ve got a fresh pot brewing.” She introduced Erica to Clay, adding, “You’ll probably be seeing a lot of him.”
Clay stomped his feet on the carpet. “This is crazy, isn’t it? I hope Di’s okay.”
“Did her train leave on time?”
“It was delayed—she made me take off after an hour. I bought her some sandwiches to take on the train.”
“Sandwiches?”
He shrugged. “Vermont’s a long way. What if the train got stuck somewhere?”
“Then she’ll freeze to death and won’t need the sandwiches.”
“That’s what I figured,” Clay said. “So I also got her one of those cashmere pashmina shawls. And wool socks. And mittens.”
“Clay ...”
“What?” he asked. “Mittens are warmer than gloves.”
“Maybe you should have loaded her up with a portable stove and Sterno cans while you were at it.”
He shook his head as he helped himself to coffee. “They don’t sell anything like that in Penn Station. Place has more magazines than you can shake a stick at, but nothing really practical.”
She laughed. “On trains, reading material sometimes comes in handy.”
He shrugged, then glanced over at the baking project in progress. “Hey—what are y’all doing?”
“Making pecan shortbread,” Erica said. She was getting ready to grind pecans in the food processor.
“Can I lend a hand?”
Heidi zapped a few bricks of butter in the microwave to soften it up. “If you want, you could unload that coffee into one of the thermoses by the sink. And fill one with hot water.” In case the café lost power, too.
“Good thinking!” Clay hopped to it, and in fact filled two thermoses with coffee, which struck Heidi as overkill. It was already after nine. How much could they drink?
It began to seem more practical after a few people filtered in. These weren’t necessarily regulars, but people Heidi recognized from the neighborhood. All came loaded with stories about being stuck in their dark apartments, some without heat, unable to track down friends or family in luckier, less electricity-deprived areas.
Heidi placed steaming cups of coffee in front of them. She turned the television on and switched to the news station, where a man in a parka was standing in downtown Brooklyn with a microphone, announcing that sections of the borough were without electricity, and that people should be careful because the ice was slippery.
“They should stop calling it
the news
and rename it
the obvious,
” Heidi said.
The first batch of shortbread came out of the oven as an old man entered the café. He was bundled up and carrying a blanket and a plastic sack that contained his pillow and a dopp kit. He’d been heading to his church to see if they’d set up a shelter yet, but had seen the lights on in the café and decided to stop. Heidi handed him a steaming mug and a plate of cookies.
“How much?” the man asked. “You’ve got a situation ripe for price gouging here, you know.”
What an idea. “I could change the name from the Sweetgum Café to Scrooge’s.”
“You could clean up,” he told her.
“And in a few years, I’d have ghosts giving me guilt trips. No thanks—put your money away.” Eleven hundred dollars plus change, she’d already lost. What the heck—it was Christmas. She’d kick
go for broke
up to a whole new level.
“Everything’s on the house,” she announced.
A little after eleven o’clock, her cell phone rang. She leapt for it, hoping it would be Wilson’s mom, but instead Dinah’s name appeared.
“Where are you?” Heidi asked.
“Back in my apartment.” She sounded demoralized. “My apartment, where there is
no electricity.
I was better off in Penn Station with the irate Amtrak customers and the homeless man who smelled like a discarded Styrofoam meat tray sleeping next to me.”
“What happened to Vermont?”
“I got tired of waiting for my train to board. Every other train seemed to leave eventually except mine. I started to wonder if Clay had paid off Amtrak to keep me here.”
Heidi smiled. “You can ask him, if you want. He’s standing right here.”
“Clay’s in your apartment?”
“No, we’re at the café. There’s electricity here. We’re drawing quite a crowd, actually.”
“Really? What is this crowd doing?”
Heidi looked around the room. Wilson had crawled back into his stroller and fallen asleep. Two people were dozing in the comfy chairs by the fire, and about half the tables had people at them. Some were eating, some were watching the movie
Holiday Inn
on the television, and, at one table, a couple was playing backgammon.
“Mostly they’re just hanging out.”
“Do you need help?”
“I don’t know ...” She looked over at Clay, who had installed himself in the kitchen. “Clay is acting as short-order cook right now.”
“
Clay?
Clay is a CPA.”
“I know—a CPA who makes a mean grilled cheese.”
“This I have to see.”
Heidi made a tour of the kitchen, checking on supplies. Because she had planned to be closed on Christmas, she hadn’t restocked the perishables that day. She did have a lot of eggs, and two gallons of milk. But as far as vegetables went, she only had onions and two tomatoes. She doubted anywhere in the neighborhood would be open tomorrow ... but hopefully the electricity would be back on by then anyway.
Just in case it wasn’t, she was making dough in preparation for the next morning, when Patrick and Marcus came by.
“What’s going on?” Marcus asked. “You running a mission now?”
“Sort of.”
Patrick glanced around the kitchen for a moment, pausing to squint at Clay, before turning his usual smile on her. She wondered if he’d been scanning the premises for Sal.
“These aren’t your usual hours,” he said.
“It’s not a usual day—well, night. My apartment didn’t have any electricity, so I brought Wilson and Erica over here.”
“Erica?” he asked.
Heidi nodded to the figure curled up in an armchair by the fire. “That’s Erica.” Then she pointed to a picture on the fridge of Erica with her horse, Milkshake. “From Texas. She’s staying with me over the holidays.”
“Kidnapped another one, did you?” Marcus asked. When her mouth dropped, he smiled and added, “Uh-huh. Patrick told me.”
“She just showed up,” Heidi said in her own defense.
Patrick laughed. “Your ‘stay cay’ of solitude is history, I guess.”
“History that never was.”
Marcus studied the people sitting at the tables. “Do these customers plan on staying here all night?”
Heidi shrugged. “They’re not really customers. And I’m not going to kick them out.”