Carrie smiled, letting the door swing closed behind her. “Jo, take it easy. It’s at least an hour before we open for business. Plus no one in their right mind’s going to show up until an hour after that. Trust me, Abbotsvillians are not early risers on weekends. Sit down and have a bagel. I bet you haven’t had a bit of solid food.”
“You mean today, or this week?”
Carrie tsked disapprovingly, then moved behind the checkout counter and began spreading out the goodies she’d brought. “You won’t impress customers, you know, if you pass out face-first into the punch. Take a breather. Everything’s going to be fine.”
Jo set down the autumn leaves and pumpkins and sank onto a tall stool beside the cash register.
“Guaranteed?”
“There’s no guarantees in life, sweetie. You should know that by now.”
Jo sighed. “Yes, I do.” She grabbed one of Carrie’s breakfast treats and breathed in its delicious freshness. “But at least there’s blueberry bagels. Thanks, Carrie.”
Carrie shrugged, her way of accepting gratitude for as long as Jo had known her, which was years—since her first day at Thomas Jefferson High, to be exact, when they encountered each other in the girls’ bathroom. The meeting was not one she would have expected to produce a lasting friendship—Carrie had walked in to the sound of Jo retching prodigiously in one of the stalls. But instead of a hasty retreat, Carrie had called over the door, “Scared out of your gourd, huh?”
Jo, startled enough to pause in mid-heave, had managed a shaky, “Uh-huh.”
What followed, once she splashed enough cold water on her face to risk frostbite, was Jo spilling out her fears to a sympathetic Carrie about not knowing a soul in this terrifyingly huge school, which Jo’s parents had enrolled her in after transplanting them all to Maryland not one week before. Carrie had proceeded to take her in hand, earning Jo’s undying gratitude and friendship.
Interestingly, in the years following, it was Jo who was the more adventurous one, going out for cheerleading and drama, activities largely dominated by “cool” cliques to which she never belonged, then signing up for challenging art courses, followed by art school, and eventually heading off to New York to begin life as a starving artist.
Carrie made quieter choices, playing second piccolo in the band, signing up for Home Ec courses, and later marrying her high school sweetheart and moving with him to Abbotsville, not far from, nor much different from the town they grew up in, to begin her chosen career as wife and mother.
But, whereas Jo’s life was full of drama, spiked with highs and lows, Carrie’s seemed a calm sea of contentment, managed with a quiet strength that showed itself only when needed. It was never needed more by Jo than after Mike’s horrible accident. When Jo, dragging herself out of the ashes of her life, had searched for a way to go on, knowing she couldn’t manage on what her jewelry making alone had been bringing in, Carrie suggested a craft store in Abbotsville.
The idea slowly took root, its attractiveness, Jo realized, owing much to the distance it would put between her and the painful memories of her loss. Jo’s mom, now living out her widowhood in a retirement community in Florida, had urged her to come there. But setting up anew near her old friend, who also volunteered to give up time from her comfortable life and add her considerable skills at needlework to the store’s offerings, carried the most weight.
“Eat!” Carrie ordered, breaking into Jo’s reverie, and Jo realized she had been staring into space.
She hastily bit into the chewy treat. When she could again speak, she asked, “Why did you come in so early? I thought we agreed you’d get here at ten.
“Carrie grinned and fiddled with the end of her long blond braid. “I woke up early and started thinking you should have a bigger Halloween display near the door.”
Jo grinned back. “Great minds, huh?”
“For sure.”
Carrie got to work setting up a rack for the display, and Jo, nibbling at her bagel, joined in, bringing straw to nestle around the plastic pumpkins and gourds, and draping orange and black material behind a grinning scarecrow. As Carrie sprayed canned cobwebs around the edges, Jo went back to the storeroom to look for more acrylic paints that could be used for decorating costumes and masks.
The storeroom was jammed with boxes, some stacked on shelves six feet high. All this stock, she thought, gazing at it with amazement. Would she ever sell it? Who would have guessed that she would ever be running a business? She, who had always scorned the more practical things in life to flourish in what she did best—art. Now she would be keeping books on inventory and toting up sales, and grateful to have sales to tote up. She ran her finger down the rows of boxes, checking labels for acrylic paint, and worried: would this town have enough interest in arts and crafts to keep her in business? Carrie seemed convinced of it, and Carrie certainly knew the local market better than she did.
“But you’ll have to have something for everyone, Jo,” she’d said, when Jo first wanted the store to concentrate on what she knew best—jewelry making.
Good advice, but it required such a huge stretch for Jo. She had been involved in her specialty so long, she had to relearn, or in some cases discover anew, many of the other aspects of arts and crafts. Soon she would be expected to be the knowledgeable source of information for her customers on all corners. Could she handle it?
“Jo, while you’re back there, can you grab the broom?” Carrie called out.
Now that, at least, she could handle. “What’d you spill?” Jo called back.
“Oh, nothing much. Uh, do we really need to have all the beads separated by color?”
“What!” Jo shot out the door.
“Just kidding.” Carrie stood near a revolving rack of craft magazines. “But you might want to pick up a mousetrap or two later on.”
“Uh-oh.” Jo trotted over and looked down at a corner niche Carrie pointed to. Several black, disgusting mouse droppings lay there.
“Ugh! Think I can get the landlord to take care of it?”
“Well, probably not as quickly as you’ll need. You don’t want little mousies setting up nests in your lovely yarns, there. I can get Dan to do it.”
“No, Dan’s done enough.” Carrie’s husband had pitched in to set up Jo’s fixtures and racks, running his tools for hours, saving Jo a bundle. “I’ll take care of it.” Jo said it bravely, adding emptying a mousetrap to her list of things that as a single woman she now needed to do, but would really, really rather not.
Carrie lifted an eyebrow, but said, “Okay,” and proceeded to sweep up the little mess.
“Oh! I just remembered,” Jo cried. “My wreath! I haven’t hung my autumn wreath on the front door yet!” She went to the back of the store to her office cubicle, where she had left the carefully wrought creation.
“It’s beautiful,” Carrie commented as Jo carried it forward. “And the perfect thing to welcome your arts and crafts customers. It’s like having a sign that says, ‘You too can make this—come in and learn how.’”
Jo smiled. “I thought it turned out rather well. I plan to have new ones for each season.” She took the wreath outside and hung it on the brass hook that Dan had already installed for her, then stepped back to look, pleased with the arrangement of dried flowers and berries, all in lovely autumn colors on a circle of graceful leaves. Her eyes roamed contentedly over the entire storefront.
Her
storefront, with her name on it: Jo’s Craft Corner. She let out a satisfied sigh. Until her brain registered the clock just inside the window.
“Oh, Lord, look at the time!” Jo hurried back inside, dashing to the storeroom for the forgotten paints. “When did we tell the clown to show up?” she called out to Carrie.
“Not until eleven.”
“Good. Hopefully the Abbotsvillian slug-a-beds will start straggling in by then. At what I’m paying him per hour, I’d hate to waste too many of his minutes.”
“Charlie would have been glad to do it.”
Jo remembered the look on Carrie’s fifteen-year-old when his mother first suggested it: the flash of horror and panic quickly masked by his usual gloomy disdain. What an interesting clown he would have made.
“Being a clown is hard, Carrie. It takes a lot of training,” Jo said, restating much of what she had said that first time to save Charlie from what he clearly considered a fate worse than death. “The guy the agency’s sending is a pro. He’ll be great.”
“These shoes are killing me,” Cuddles the Clown moaned through his painted smile. “And the heat out there! Nobody told me you wouldn’t have an awning! These costumes don’t come air-conditioned, you know.”
“Here, have some more cold punch.” Jo handed him what must have been his fifth cup, and he’d only been working an hour. At this rate she might have to run out in the middle of the day for more. Cuddles should have called himself SpongeBob. But at least he had the sense to limit his complaining to the lulls between customers.
Shrill screeches sounded from the sidewalk as a family with twin toddlers made its way to the door. Jo handed Cuddles his basket of freebie handouts and flyers, and took back the empty punch cup.
Cuddles’s shoulders drooped. “Great. Two of them. Wonder which one will kick me first.”
“It’s happy time, Cuddles,” Carrie called out. “Just keep thinking of that paycheck at the end of the day.”
Cuddles muttered, and tramped over to the front door. “Hey, kids!” he cried, flinging it open and inducing frightened screams.
Carrie rolled her eyes at Jo.
“He’s better with the older ones,” Jo said, smiling weakly.
“At least he hasn’t actually chased anyone down the street. Yet.”
“It’s probably too hard to run in those floppy shoes.”
“And he’d get sooo hot in that costume, too. Good morning!” Carrie greeted the latest arrivals. “Welcome to Jo’s Craft Corner.”
The young mother, who showed a remarkable ability to tune out the screams of her children, looked around with delight and declared, “I’ve been just
dying
for you to finally open. There’s nothing like this around for
miles.
Do you have stuff for scrapbooking? I have piles of pictures of the twins, and I saw what my cousin Ali did with her photos and I want to try it too.”
“We have a whole section over here,” Jo said, struggling not to flinch at the continuing shrieks.
“And we’ll be starting classes on scrapbooking next week. Tuesdays, at seven,” Carrie added, as Jo led her customer to the scrapbooking area.
“Oooh, that’d be terrific!” the woman chirped. “Honey,” she called to her husband, who had been left holding on to the wailing toddlers, “put my name on the list, will you?”
As she browsed through the scrapbooking area, more people walked in, heads bobbing to the circus music that played outside, thanks to Dan’s sound-system setup. They glanced around the store with pleased oohs and ahs, and before long Jo was busier than she could have dreamed, showing customers around, explaining about various decorative items, ringing up sales.
The
ca-ching
sound was music to her ears, but just as important was the steadily growing list of women interested in taking her various workshops. This wasn’t going to be a one-day wonder. She was actually drawing what might become regular customers. She caught Carrie’s eye at one point, as they crossed paths in mid-bustle, and Carrie gave her a thumbs-up sign.
Things were going great—except, that is, for the miserable clown. He was in and out continuously with complaints: the music drove him nuts; the kids, the heat, the shoes drove him nuts; if his regular job paid him a decent wage he wouldn’t have to take these kinds of gigs. Carrie’s sullen teenager, Jo thought, would have been a regular David Letterman next to him.
Amazingly, though, Cuddles didn’t seem to be having a negative effect—except on Jo’s patience. His presence alone in his colorful costume, combined with the cheery music, appeared to be enough for the brief time her customers came in contact with him. One woman, astonishingly, even asked her for his name, explaining she’d like to have him for her child’s next birthday party. Jo stared at the woman openmouthed, suspicions of child abuse leaping to mind. But wide eyes returned her gaze innocently, so Jo suggested she ask Cuddles himself for his card, and hoped the prospect of another job might lighten him up some.
She continued to be busy enough to forget about this regrettable accessory to her grand opening, until, at two minutes to four, Cuddles came dragging in.
“My time’s up,” he announced, leaning one weary elbow on the counter.
“So it is,” Jo agreed in surprise after glancing up at the clock, whose hands, as far as she was concerned anyway, seemed to have spun around madly. She handed her latest customer her bagged purchase with thanks, and pulled open a drawer for her checkbook. “Who shall I make it out to?” The entertainment agency in Baltimore had never actually told her this man’s real name, and she presumed he wouldn’t want “Cuddles” written on the check.
“Kyle Sandborn.”
Jo looked up. Somehow she’d never have picked him for a Kyle.
He misread her expression, saying, “You might have heard the name. I’ve acted at the Abbotsville Playhouse a lot.”
“Really? No, I’m new here, and haven’t been to the theater yet. But I’ll certainly look for you in future productions.”
Kyle/Cuddles gave her his first genuine smile of the day, though it seemed to require his last reserve of energy, and reached for the check. “Mind if I change in your back room?” he asked, barely waiting for her answer before turning in that direction.
“No, go right ahead.”
He left the basket of handouts with her and flopped toward the stockroom in his big shoes. Jo’s attention was quickly moved to another customer—a woman who, joyfully, had filled the store’s hand-carry shopping basket to the brim with items, many of them foam balls and cones, and packets of sequins and ribbons in Christmas colors.