Snow Angels (28 page)

A few blocks away Joe and Mack are ticketing illegal parkers on Main Street, the four-lane street that cuts through Flushing like a central artery. Generally Joe would prefer root canal to writing parkers; it irks him that the city uses cops like him to fill their coffers. But he and Mack are writing the double-parkers, people who leave their cars dead in the street, clogging traffic and blocking buses. Double-parkers are morons.

He flips to the next ticket in his memo book and starts writing a gold Caddy with stuffed animals on the dashboard. For idiots like this, there is no mercy just because it’s the holidays. Hell, he should charge extra just for the poodle tchotchkes blocking the rear window. He fills in the plate number, the date, checks the boxes on the ticket form. He’s tucking the copy of the ticket under the car’s wiper blade when a heap of wiry white hair in a matted red cape comes whirling out of the J&J newsstand.

Mrs. Claus? No, just the Cadillac’s owner, spitting mad. “What the hell are you doing, touching my car?”

One quick look at her dark-rimmed eyes and wild hair tells Joe she hasn’t had the best of days. “Double-parked, ma’am.”

“What, are you kidding me? I go into the store for two minutes and you bang me?” Lifting the ticket from the car, she unfurls a string of curses. She may look like Mrs. Claus, but she talks like a truck driver.

People look over. A man runs out of the card store and jumps into his vehicle a few cars ahead to avoid a ticket.

Joe steps back onto the curb without a word. Long ago he learned that some battles are a waste of words.

“This is low! You got some nerve, hitting people on Christmas Eve.” The irate woman waves the ticket at him. “I should tear this up.”

Actually, you should park out of the street next time
.

“Don’t walk away while I’m talking to you!”

Screaming is more like it
.

“I hope you have a rotten Christmas!”

“Yeah, back at you,” Joe mutters in a voice only Mack can hear.

Mack, who has observed the whole thing, cocks an eyebrow and slips into his proper King’s English. “Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?”

“Shut up.” Joe’s in no mood. Already he’s dealt with two fare-beaters, an elderly woman who couldn’t find her way home, and a hopped-up kid with earrings up one side of his head singing “Marshmallow World” at the top of his lungs. The street’s lined with double-parkers, illegal vendors clog the sidewalks with their faux cashmere scarves, fake designer bags, and Rolex knockoffs.

All in a day’s work, but what’s the point? Nothing he does makes a difference. Write the fare-beaters a fine, but that won’t stop them from doing it again when backs are turned. Help the old lady get home, but she’ll be lost again tomorrow. Chase off the illegal vendors and they’ll be back within the hour.

As he and Mack write their way to the underpass, Joe sinks into the doldrums. How did this become his life, shoveling crap against the tide?

Speaking of crap…the smell of the encampment stings his nostrils as, under the trestle from the number seven train that runs overhead, a sheet of cardboard shifts and Crazy Mary emerges from her hovel.

“Here comes Santy Claus!” she crows, soot darkening her cheeks. With her ill-fitting coat and watch cap, Mary looks to be in her sixties, though Joe wonders if she might be his age under all that gunk.

“What are you doing back here, Mary?” Mack scolds her.

“It’s getting cold out.” Joe worries about the old woman. If the forecast is right, it’ll drop to below twenty tonight. “I thought we got you a ride to the Flushing shelter yesterday.”

“I went, I went, but you know. Got to la-dee-dee and so and so.”

“Is that right?” Joe tries to keep her talking while he checks her makeshift lean-to for other tenants.

“Oh, look! Here comes Santy Claus!” Her eyes go wide as she points to the red Santa cap worn by a young man with a briefcase. Probably an office joke, but still.

“Maybe Crazy Mary isn’t so crazy after all,” Mack observes.

Joe gets on his cell to call the Homeless Ride Service. “We’re getting you a roof over your head for tonight, Mary.”

“Well, hallelujah, but no thank you, boys. Can’t leave my spot here or Santa will never find me.”

“Makes sense to me,” Mack mutters. “I’m telling you, Mary’s more grounded than Sergeant Minovich. Making us write parkers on Christmas Eve…”

“Mary needs to spend the night inside.” Joe shifts his phone, says he’ll hold. “We’ll get you somewhere warm, Mary. A nice cozy bed.”

“Oh, no, no.” Mary’s face puckers with distaste. “Beds for lazybones. No bag a bones. Bagabond. Sagapond…”

Joe holds up his hand to stop her rant. “Not this place. You’re gonna like it, Mary. I guarantee.” His last words were drowned out by the roar of the number seven train overhead. A moment later, people begin to stream down the stairs.

Mack shifts from one foot to another, shoots Joe a look.

“Still on hold,” he tells him.

“Please God, don’t let them take forever. We got the precinct Christmas party at four. Sheila’s bringing the kids, right?”

“Yeah, right.”

They are hit by a new cloud of stink. A round man appears on the stairs, dragging a filthy athletic bag. His beady eyes glimmer as he eyes them, then checks the cardboard shanty. With a grunt he drags the sack past the two cops and into the hole.

“You can’t stay here.” Mack’s voice thunders through the hollow space under the trestle. “Don’t get too cozy in there.”

Mary’s eyes go wide with indignity; her arms cross as she glares into the hovel. “Like two peas in a cod!”

Sometimes she almost makes sense
, Joe thinks.

“Sure smells like cod,” Mack agrees.

“This is what my life has come to.” Joe shakes his head, lets out a snicker. “I’ve become a sanitation engineer. We’re the garbagemen of humanity. That’s our job.”

“Nah. That would be too easy.” Mack rubs his hands together, trying to keep warm. “If it were that simple I’d have half of Flushing wrapped up in a big old Hefty bag.”

With the stroller in one arm and Patrick Joseph in the other, Sheila clambers down the stairs of the bus and steps into an Arctic blast on Main Street. Her two sweaters are useless in this cold. She hustles over to the sidewalk where Katie has planted herself, good little soldier that she is, and struggles to unfold the stroller in the finger-nipping wind.

“Phew! That was a workout.” She unfolds the stroller and motions for PJ to climb aboard. “You’re soon going to have to start walking yourself, little man.” Without acknowledging her, he plunks into the canvas seat and curls his legs up. “Oh, I get it. Why walk when you can ride like the Grand Pooh-Bah?”

Katie laughs. “He’s not a Poopah. He’s a Tigger.” She hooks her little mitten onto the stroller and keeps pace as Sheila starts pushing.

When they pause at the intersection, Sheila hooks her scarf over her head for warmth while Katie looks around suspiciously. “But Daddy’s precinct is there, down
that
street.” She points toward Union Street.

“I know, honey, but we have to stop and pick up some food to donate.” A ten-dollar bill from the cookie jar is tucked into the pocket of Sheila’s jeans, and though Joe might disagree, Sheila is going to use it to teach her kids an important lesson. They need to think of others less fortunate. They need to share what they have.

“Couldn’t we bring food from home?” Katie asks.

“We could, but I didn’t want to lug it. Besides, I thought you would like picking something out yourself. Something a little girl would like to eat.”

“Yeah, I can do that.” They walk in silence, then Katie adds: “Am I going to give the girl the food today?”

“We’ll put it in a basket or a box, and someone else will take the food to the poor people another day.”

“I hope they take it to the girl by tomorrow. She might need it for Christmas.”

“Good point.” Sheila extends her finger to the small food mart ahead called the Shuka. “We’ll stop in here and get a few things. It’ll only take a minute.”

“Okay, Mommy.”

Such a good kid, Sheila thinks. Patrick Joseph had better take a few pointers from his big sis. Sheila is so glad the kids have each other. She’d love to have more, but Joe worries about money. Yeah, she worries, too, but he doesn’t have to know that.

She wheels the stroller toward the Shuka’s entrance and the automatic door rolls open. “Come on, toots,” she calls to Katie, who has stalled at the gumball and trinket machines lined up outside the store. The combined smells of roasting meat and garlic, clove and cinnamon remind her of her mother’s kitchen. These are the smells of Christmas. For a moment Sheila is worlds away, propped on a chair at the kitchen counter so she can help roll the strudel cookies.

“Mommy, help!”

Her daughter’s voice startles Sheila from her daydream. She whirls and finds Katie caught in the door, the metal bar repeatedly banging her into the wall as it tries to close.

“Oh, my God!” Rushing over, Sheila wedges her hands between the door and wall and gives the frame a shove. Immediately the door pops open, freeing Katie.

“Don’t break it! Please!” someone inside the store growls.

“Oh, honey, are you okay?” Sheila hunches down, examines her daughter, then pulls her into her arms. “Scary, huh?”

“It wouldn’t let go of me.” Katie’s words are muffled by Sheila’s sweater.

“If you please, stay away from the door.” The older gentleman is stern, unapologetic.

Sheila straightens and sucks in a breath, ready to defend her youngster. “Excuse me, but did you see what your door just did to this child? Oh, my God. It could have taken her head off. It kept trying to close on her. Or did you not see that? You need to get this thing fixed. You’d better report this to the manager.”

“Lady, I am the owner. And I say there’s no need to fix it. It’s not broken.” He steps up to the door, runs his hand over a scanner about four feet above the floor, and the door rolls open. “You see? It works perfectly.”

“Not for her.” Sheila squeezes her daughter’s shoulders. “It could have crushed her.”

“Pshaw! She’s fine, isn’t she?” He tips his chin to his chest, staring at Katie over his reading glasses. “Little girl, are you all right?”

Katie presses into Sheila’s legs, a timid lamb. “I guess so.”

“You see? No harm done.”

“Not exactly.” Sheila stands her ground as retorts rise in her throat.
Are you crazy? That door is going to kill someone! I’m calling a lawyer! We’ll sue!

But something stops her from giving voice to those threats. Despite his officious demeanor there is something forlorn about the store owner; it’s as if he is wounded inside.

“Now then…” He shoots a razor sharp glance toward PJ. “I’ll thank you to keep that one in his buggy while you’re shopping in my Shuka. No more calamities. Are we clear on that, Miss?”

Sheila hurries Katie over to the stroller and wheels it toward the produce aisle. “Don’t worry, we’ll keep it short.”

The nerve! She hustles the kids behind a huge bin of Fujis and takes a calming breath. The man has a steel pair! She’s tempted to walk out, but she can’t let her temper get in the way of this teaching moment about the real meaning of Christmas: the spirit of giving.

“Mommy, he was rude,” Katie offers, her eyes wide from her glimpse of adult matters.

“Yes, he was. So let’s get our food and get out of here. Have you thought about what you’d like to get for a donation?”

Katie crosses the aisle to a mound of chocolate covered caramel corn and pats one cellophane bag. “How about this?”

“Not nutritious enough.”

Katie purses her lips. “Do we have to give her spinach?”

“No.” Sheila loves that Katie imagines the recipient to be a girl like herself. “But we need something that can be stored for a long time, so canned foods are good. How about tuna? It’s loaded with protein.”

Katie’s tiny nose wrinkles. “Like the tuna you eat? It’s too smelly. And why was that man so mean?”

“Sometimes you just don’t know what other people are going through. Maybe he’s having a sad day.”

Together they decide on mandarin oranges and garbanzo beans. As they approach the checkout counter the man steps out from behind the clerk, and Katie cowers. This time Sheila notices the bitter curl of his lips and redness around his eyes. Definitely a sad day.

As Sheila fishes out her ten-dollar bill for the cashier, PJ stirs in his stroller.
Hold still, please
…Sheila wills him to behave for one more minute. When she glances down, she sees that he is smiling his drooly, single-tooth grin and trying to hand his baggie full of Cheerios to the cranky man.

“Oh, PJ…” She reaches down to stop him, but the man is already bending down to him, smiling.

“Thank you very much, young man,” he says, accepting a piece of cereal. When he looks up at Sheila, his brown eyes are warm. “Please, if you have a moment…you cannot leave without some of our award-winning baklava. Take some home to enjoy for your holidays. And for the children…” He reaches into a bin behind him and produces a shiny orange clementine. “Do you like orange?” he asks Katie.

Her lips seem buttoned shut, but she nods.

“Very good, then.” He places the clementine in her hand, then ducks behind the pastry counter. Sheila feels like she’s won the Lotto. The honeyed pastries will add elegance to the platter of very simple sugar cookies she’s been baking for the holidays. At a time when she could never afford the ingredients for something this lavish, the baklava is truly a gift.

By the time he emerges with the small white box, Sheila is fairly choked with emotion by the man’s sudden turn of disposition. Chalk it up to Christmas, she thinks.

Katie thanks the man and zips her pink parka. “We have to go give chickpeas to a little girl.”

Suddenly Sheila wishes there were something she could do for him. “Merry Christmas,” she says.

He just nods, watching her little family as they pass carefully out the door.