Don't Call Me Christina Kringle (2 page)

She'd been rolling her eyes all morning long.

Her grandfather had collected so many Christmas lights and ornaments and doodads over the past fifty years, his storefront sucked down more wattage than most medium-sized cities. The shoe shop's blazingly illuminated window was guaranteed to stop passing pedestrians. In fact, the window was so amazingly hideous it froze people in their tracks. They couldn't help gawk—mostly because the decorations were such a congested mish-mash: wise men kneeling in front of reindeer who seemed to be sniffing toy soldiers flanked by gingerbread men who might be lighting a Hanukkah menorah.

Rudolph glowing, Grandpa turned his attention to two motorized mannequins tucked into the corner in a bed of cotton wool.

“Ah! The elves! I love the elves!”

Of
course
you do
, Christina thought.

The two elves had faded felt caps and scraggly beards that used to be white but now were kind of sooty, smoggy grey, the color of gutter slush, because they were at least thirty years old. When plugged in, their tiny motors humming, one elf would hammer the same nail over and over into a shoe; the other elf would paint the same red stripe over and over on a candy cane. Before they could go to work, however, Grandpa had to jam their plugs into the extension cord, which was plugged into another extension cord (for the hundreds of lights—big and small, white and multi-colored, blinking and still), which was plugged into a three-way outlet deal, which was plugged into the wall and connected to all the other extension cords snaking through the shoe shop.

They'd definitely blow about two-dozen fuses before December 25.

Oh, and Grandpa always dressed for the annual store-decorating event: a bright red sweater with prancing reindeer knitted all over it. The sweater Christina's father had given Guiseppe ten years earlier—when Christina was born. When Christina's mother died.

Seeing the sweater made her remember all that and that made her even sadder. So, she snapped on the little radio they kept under the counter—hoping for a traffic report or a weather bulletin or a meteor attack, anything loud enough to drown out Grandpa's cheery carol humming.

“It's the
day
after Thanksgiving,”
said a voice even cheerier than Grandpa's.
“Black Friday. You know what that means—shop 'til you drop!”

The deejay jangled his jingle bells and Ho-Ho-Hoed and Christina heard the twanging guitar that signaled the introduction to the one song that more or less summed up the whole holiday: “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.”

“I love this song!” exclaimed Grandpa, who always thought the singer was, somehow, talking about him.

Christina turned to a framed photograph sitting next to the cash register. A fireman with rosy cheeks and a broad smile that illuminated his whole happy face.

“I gotta tell you, Dad,” she whispered to the picture, “I really,
really
hate Christmas.”

Grandpa climbed out of the window and stood in the middle of the store snapping his fingers and singing along with the radio. It was horrible.

Christina snapped the radio off.

“Hey!” Grandpa shouted playfully, his left leg bent in what must have been a move from some sort of Prancer-and-Dancer dance he thought went along with the reindeer song. Frozen in his pose, he looked poised to punt the aluminum Christmas tree planted in a pot near the front window. If he did give the skinny tree a swift kick, its velvet balls would bounce off the cardboard nativity characters taped all over the walls and take out a ceramic angel or two, too.

“It's lunch time,” said Christina. “We have turkey leftovers and—”

“Soon, Christina. Soon. But, first, we must put the shoes on the tree!”

“Right,” Christina said sarcastically. “What's a shoe repair shop without a shoe tree?”

“Exactly!”

Guiseppe placed a pair of bronze baby shoes on a spindly aluminum branch.

Christina rolled her eyes again. Then she sighed.

Man, she hated Christmas.

Just about everybody else in the city where Christina and her grandfather lived
loved
Christmas.

Especially the shopkeepers.

Especially the shopkeepers who owned shops on the other, swankier side of town. Over where they swept their sidewalks every morning and vacuumed the red carpets rolled out in front of their gleaming brass-handled doors. Over where people had so much money coming out of their noses they were always looking for shiny new things to throw it at. Their money. Not their noses.

At Mister Fred's Fine and Fancy Footwearerie (which really wasn't a word but Mister Fred, the owner, who wasn't French but wished he was, thought it sounded French and, therefore, high-class—like
menagerie
or
rotisserie
our
oui-oui
), women in wolfish fur coats were whacking one another with alligator handbags as they fought over pumps and puttees, flats and flip-flops, Wallabees, wellingtons, and wafflestompers.

These were not simply shoes.

These were
Shoes
, darling. Splendiferously exquisite masterpieces that cost more money than most flat-screen high-definition TVs—and worth every penny, or so the ladies duking it out in the aisles thought. These one-of-a-kind designer shoes were well worth a well-placed elbow to a fellow shopper's ribs if it meant getting the plush purple pair she snatched before you could snag them. A good kidney punch would pop them out of her paws and teach her a good Christmas lesson, too!

That lesson? It is better to give up one's shoes than to receive a punch in one's kidneys.

At King Tony's Toy Castle, over-caffeinated parents pushing strollers and dragging toddlers were lined up around the block, begging for a chance to squeeze inside the jam-packed store and pay several hundred dollars for the year's “must-have” toy.

Rumor had it, the two giant teddy bears guarding the front door could be bought. The teddy bears were actually out-of-work actors wearing costumes that made them look like the more militaristic members of an enchanted forest's high-school marching band. They wore stovepipe hats with feathered plumes and slanty visors, riding breeches and tasseled shoulder streamers. They also wore big goofy smiles on their faces because the cartoon bear heads were molded that way. Rumor also had it that the guard bears preferred bribes that involved cold cash and colder beverages because it was a constant ninety-five degrees inside their giant plastic heads.

The burly bears needed to guard King Tony's Toy Castle because the waiting line started forming at three a.m. the morning after Thanksgiving. Every child in town had to have what King Tony had to sell. His toys were that good—remarkable really, almost magical—and nobody else in the whole world had them. Not even people in China and Taiwan, where most toys were made. King Tony's toys, however, were built right in the store, down in the basement—but nobody except King Tony and a certain lanky Scotsman knew about that.

Mr. Kasselhopf, the candy-cane factory owner, was very thankful the day after Thanksgiving! As promised, red-and-white-striped candy canes were tumbling off the assembly line at his factory—faster than they had tumbled in fifty years.

Mr. Kasselhopf beamed as he reached into an overflowing bin to sample his wares.

He peeled back the cellophane, admired the marvelously symmetrical swirl pattern expertly painted into the curl-topped stick. He sniffed the cane the way a bee sniffs a flower. Then he sniffed it some more.

“Mmm, most exquisite bouquet,” he muttered. “A refreshingly piquant, pithy, and potent peppermint.”

When he ran out of adjectives, he took his first lick.

Joy shuddered through his body.

“Delicious.”

The little man had never tasted a better-tasting candy cane in his whole life and he had been tasting candy canes ever since he was a little baby bouncing up and down on his German grand-papa's knee while listening to the local oompah-pah band playing “Stille Nachte (Silent Night)” on tubas in their lederhosen.

Everything was also going wonderfully well back on Christina's side of town in one particular store, a place called Ye Olde Christmas Shoppe, which spelled “olde” with an
E
and “shoppe” with two
Ps
plus another
E
at the end so everybody would know just how high its prices were.

Ye Olde Christmas Shoppe sold ye olde Christmas ornaments all year long. They never closed. Not even on Christmas Day, because you never knew when one might need one more outrageously expensive ball, bauble, or bangle to hang on one's tree.

Ye Olde Christmas Shoppe had the most spectacular selection of hand-blown glass ornaments. They sparkled and shimmered and seemed to glow. People called them “magical” and “enchanted” and, to tell the truth, they weren't exactly wrong.

The Shoppe was, as usual, doing a brisk business on the Friday after Thanksgiving but it had a problem—the same problem it had every day, all year long, Thanksgiving, Christmas or Groundhog Day.

It was located right next door to Guiseppe's Old World Shoe Repair Shop—only one
P
, no
E
at the end.

The store with the ugliest, most horrendous, most hideously gaudy gaggle of Christmas gewgaws ever displayed in a shop window anywhere except, maybe, on Mars.

“Where are your customers, Guiseppe?” asked the man in the dark-blue suit.

“Shopping?”

“Exactly. Shopping in other stores!”

Christina didn't like the man in the dark-blue suit. He was a banker. Mr. Bailey. From what she could make out from the words he tossed around—words like “mortgage,” “payments,” “arrears,” “default,” “bad credit risk,” and “eviction notice”—Grandpa Giuseppe had forgotten to pay the bank some money he owed them. He had forgotten for several months. Maybe all year.

“Please, Mr. Bailey,” said Grandpa, practically begging, “I work here forty years. This same location.”

Mr. Bailey snapped his briefcase shut. “Then you've earned a vacation. Move to Florida. Retire.”

“Retire? But I am too young. …”

“You're seventy-three. You should've retired years ago. Pay what you owe or we will repossess this property. Good day, Mr. Lucci.”

Mr. Bailey opened the front door. The jingle bells jangled but they sounded tinny; a rattling string of empty cranberry cans.

Grandpa, who had always been trim and spry and full of vim and vigor, never actually looked all that old to Christina. But today he suddenly seemed ancient. His big red holiday sweater swallowed him up and made him look shrunken and frail. Defeated.

“Hungry, Grandpa?” Christina asked with the happiest voice she could muster. “I made cold turkey sandwiches with cranberry jelly.”

Grandpa turned and smiled at Christina. He always had a smile for her, no matter how much hurt he had inside.

“I think maybe I eat later,” he said softly. “Okay?”

“Sure.”

“I think maybe I take a little nap, now. The decorating—it always wears me out.”

Grandpa shuffled around the counter and headed for the small curtained-off back room where he worked on the shoes. He had an old army cot back there, too.

“I'll keep your sandwich cold!” Christina joked.

“Grazie. Tutto bene. Thank you, Christina.” Guiseppe pulled open the heavy curtains and disappeared.

“Mind if I watch a little TV?” Christina called after him.

Guiseppe didn't answer.

So Christina switched on the black-and-white television with the five-inch screen they kept on the front counter. When business was slow, Grandpa would watch baseball games on the TV. Given the current state of his financial troubles, Christina guessed he caught every game last season. She lowered the volume so the television wouldn't disturb Grandpa's nap.

When the screen finally filled, it was a commercial.

“Great,” said Christina who had been hoping for a cartoon. Maybe an old movie. Instead, she got two hyperactive Hollywood kids playing with what looked like a dinosaur crossed with a dump truck.

“It's a dump truck,” said one of the boys.

“No, it's a dinosaur!” screamed the other.

“Dump truck!”

“Dinosaur!”

That's when Santa Claus strolled into the scene.

“Ho, ho, ho,” he said. “You're both right, children! It's a dinosaur
and
a dump truck! It's the new Dumping Dino Truckasaurus.”

“I want Dumping Dino!” the kids shouted with glee.

“Then tell your parents to hurry down to King Tony's Toy Castle, the only toy store that has a Dumping Dino this holiday season.”

“Is that because King Tony is the King of Christmas?” asked the boy who happened to be the worst actor.

“He sure is!” said the hard-sell Santa. Then he turned to talk directly into the camera. “Remember moms and dads: to make sure your children have the merriest Christmas ever: Forget me, go see King T!”

The two kids started tugging on the toy.

“I want Dumping Dino! I want Dumping Dino!”

“And I want you both to disappear.” Christina clicked off the TV. “Wow, my Christmas wish actually came true.”

She unwrapped one of the turkey sandwiches she had fixed earlier. She always liked Thanksgiving leftovers better than the main event, the big deal dinner on Thursday. This year, since it was just Grandpa and her, she bought the turkey in slices from the corner deli. Everything else came in cans. Except the mashed potatoes and gravy. Those came from the fried-chicken place up the block.

As Christina took her first bite, the store bells jingled.

A very angry man in a tan trench coat stormed into the store.

“Where is he?”

Christina held up her hand to ask for just a minute to finish chewing the turkey and cranberry and mayonnaise and bread currently in her mouth.