Dinah Rollings came up to Mary after the next rehearsal, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Nicely done. You handled those two well. Even the best horse trainers would have been breaking a sweat over Howard and Mac tonight.”
Mary sighed, pushing the stress out of her shoulders with the breath. “They were prickly, weren’t they?”
“Well, pricklier than usual.” She walked with Mary through the sanctuary as they began shutting off the banks of lights. “This mayor thing is turning out a whole lot more complicated than anyone thought it’d be. I give Mac credit, though, for doing it at all. Most of us wouldn’t have had the nerve.”
“It’s my fault,” Mary conceded. “It’s asking a lot of him to spend Christmas Eve at the church.”
Dinah stopped and turned to look at Mary. “You are not. You’re asking him to rethink ideas and take hold of a better one. I think the Christmas Eve thing is a fabulous idea—course, you already know that. But the way I see it, you’re not asking anything different than he’s asking of the town to think about voting him in as mayor.” She furrowed her brow for a moment, considering. “Come to think of it, that may be why it bugs him so much. Cuts a little too close to home.”
“No one wants to get stressed out at Christmas.”
“And no one wants to be alone—okay, maybe except for Mac, but we already know he’s odd. I mean, look at that bird. The guy needs a normal pet, don’t you think?”
Mary laughed. “Well, that may have had something to do with it, too. I don’t think it’s done wonders for Mac’s stress level to have Curly belting out nonstop opera. And now…”
“Culture’s good for guys.” She hesitated for a moment. “And what do you mean by ‘and now’?”
Mary shut off the last of the lights. “He hasn’t told you?”
“I haven’t talked to him much this week. Come on, what’s behind the ‘and now,’ Mary?”
“Mac’s been playing the radio to try and find Curly something new to sing. Well, Curly found something, but even Mac’d consider it worse than the first.”
“Curly’s got a new song, hm?”
“The Chipmunks’ ‘Christmas Song.’” It really was hysterical when you thought about it. Every time Mary tried to imagine Curly’s screeching tenor rendering the squeaky, cheesy tune, she burst out laughing. If she didn’t think he’d find it so offensive, Mary would have asked for a command performance.
Dinah’s eyes grew wide. “No. You’re kidding!”
“That’s what he said.”
Dinah erupted into giggles alongside Mary. “That’s rich. That’s just priceless. Oh, I think I’d pay to hear that. I might even pay to watch Mac listen to that.”
“Don’t ask him. Please. It’d just make things worse.”
“Oh, I don’t know. This is just so delicious. Curly. Singing chipmunks. I couldn’t make this stuff up. Oh, Mary, you just made my day. And don’t worry about Mac. He and Howard will get over themselves in time to get everyone on board for Christmas. And you’ve got me—and Janet, and Emily—on your side. That’s got to be worth three grumpy mayors at least.”
They’d reached Mary’s office and she locked up for the night. “Thanks. I hope you’re right.”
“I am. You just stick to your guns.”
Mary looked up from the box of props she was sorting when she heard the knock on the church storage room door. The last person Mary expected to see in the open doorway when she looked up was Howard Epson. “Hard at work, I see?” he said a little stiffly.
“Lots to do,” she proclaimed, pushing the box back into its place on the shelves. “Nice to see you, Howard.”
“Do you have a moment, Miss Thorpe?” he asked formally, officially. As if he’d prefer to have this conversation somewhere more conventional than a storage room.
“Please, you can call me Mary. I was just on my way to the kitchen for some coffee. May I pour you a cup? We can talk in my office.” She still loved being able to say that phrase “in my office.” Freelancers and musicians just didn’t have offices. Most of her work got done on her kitchen table, in ad agency conference rooms and in rehearsal halls. It felt marvelously homey to have even the tiniest of offices.
“That’d be fine.”
They collected their coffees and settled into Mary’s small office. “Mary,” Howard spoke, setting his mug down on her desk carefully, “I’ve come to talk about the Christmas Eve potluck.” His manner had become, if possible, even more official. She wondered, at that moment, if she’d ever seen him laugh. Smile, yes, but she couldn’t recall hearing the big old man laugh.
“I figured you had,” she offered, trying to sound as encouraging as possible. His formality was more than a bit intimidating. Did he know that and wield it, or was it just an unavoidable by-product of his take-charge personality?
He adjusted the buttons on the cardigan sweater—standard grandfather issue to go along with his white hair, round build and silver glasses. “I’ve been giving a lot of thought to this.”
“I’m glad,” she commented, remembering she’d asked both him and Mac to consider the idea carefully before rejecting it outright as they seemed ready to do. “Please, go ahead.”
“I feel a certain obligation,” Howard began, folding his hands across his lap, “toward your success here. It was my idea to bring you on board because I felt this town was in grave danger of a deep division. One of the reasons we’re investing in this little drama is to help renew the town’s community spirit. I take this town’s best interests to heart every day. I take my mayoral calling very seriously.”
That was obvious. “I’m sure you do. I think that says a lot about you, Howard. And a lot about Middleburg.”
“So I’ve decided that a higher level of civil service is required. I’ve prayed about this, long and hard, and I’ve decided that if I’m serious about my commitment to town unity, if I started this by bringing you here and if you believe this potluck is going to achieve that goal…well then, I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t sacrifice my family’s private celebrations for the greater good.”
He pronounced the words as if she’d asked him to undertake a suicide mission. He looked down and folded his hands across his lap with grave resignation. Howard was so tremendously, deeply serious that she didn’t dare smile, even though she found his attitude a bit absurd. It was, after all, just a holiday potluck supper.
But Howard—and half of Middleburg, for that matter—didn’t see it that simply.
“Howard, I admire your willingness to give this a try.” She tried to make her voice as formal as Howard’s even though it felt foolish. “I think that’s very…civic of you. I appreciate it more than you know. I’m sure you won’t regret it.”
“It’s my prayer that you’re right, Miss Thorpe. The last thing this town needs is another reason to argue. Especially at Christmas.”
“I appreciate that, sir.” Mary didn’t know where the urge to call him sir came from, but he seemed to like it. “I’ll do my best to make good on the trust that you’ve given me.”
His declaration made, Howard rose and took his coat from where he’d folded it across the back of his chair. “Middleburg is an astounding place, Miss Thorpe. A rare, wonderful place.” She could see that he meant every dramatic word. The man really loved his hometown.
Mary extended her hand warmly. “I hope I come to love it as much as you do, Howard. I’m sure I will.”
“See you at rehearsal.” He shook her hand with a public official’s firm grip. “I’ve all my lines memorized already, ahead of schedule.”
As God/Narrator, Howard had no need to memorize his lines as he would “read” his part out of a giant prop Bible. She’d told him that, twice, but she swallowed her point and smiled. “That’s wonderful.”
“Good day.”
It wasn’t until he’d left the room that Mary realized he’d never touched a drop of his coffee. What an odd, surprising fellow Howard Epson was.
Mac hit Enter, thinking there was something supremely wrong with the world when a grown man paid that much money for a blue singing teddy bear. He knew Bippo Bears were just the fad of the hour, and that if he went over to his sister’s house in January and asked Robby to show him his Bippo Bear, the boy might not even remember where he put it. Mac knew all this. He knew the evils of consumerism, he knew the craving was purely a profit-seeking game the toy retailers played every year. None of that stopped him from doing whatever it took to make Robby happy. Maybe it was that they’d come so close to losing him on his first Christmas. Mac could just never stomach the thought of disappointing that boy at the holidays. His role was indulgent Uncle Mac, and maybe that was best. Mac, you have no spine. You’d make a lousy parent.
He shut down his computer and closed up the office for the day. After an errand or two, he’d settle down for a relaxing night memorizing the last of his lines for the play. Curly had fallen off his passion for chipmunk tunes, and things were feeling almost normal around his house. As a matter of fact, Ma had only harped on him once this week about his approaching thirtieth birthday.
His birthday. Only weeks away now. It did bug him that he was turning thirty, but not in the way others seemed to think it did. He wasn’t having some sort of benchmark-year crisis, but he didn’t want to enter his fourth decade on earth just sliding into some bland expected path. He’d always felt wired differently than everyone else—as if doing things differently were part of his nature. And while other folks might think of that as odd, Mac thought of it as being equipped for God’s more unique tasks. He could take more heat, swim upstream, go against the grain and be creative better than anyone he knew. Someone like that just doesn’t do the “settle down with a spouse and kids and an Irish setter” lifestyle that his sister had done. He loved Robby, but always thought he was more suited for the adventurous bachelor uncle than any kind of stable homestead.
He walked down the street toward Bishop Hardware, admiring the Christmas tree in the park along Ballad Road as he went. The town really was at its best for the holiday season. The season’s first snowfall was forecast, and it would just dust everything with a painting-worthy coat of white. The place would look like a Christmas card scene over the weekend. Not only was that nice to look at, it brought the tourists out in droves, and tourists spent money. Charming weather meant chiming cash registers, and Mac knew many of the retailers in town were counting on a good holiday season this year.
He was just finishing his purchase when he caught sight of Mary Thorpe in the aisle where Janet kept her small selection of Christmas lights. They hadn’t left things well at their last encounter, and he couldn’t decide whether or not to get back on better terms. She’d jumped down his throat. Then again, he’d done whatever the musical version of eavesdropping could be called.
She walked up to him. “Hey, Mac.” She had a “Can we start over?” expression on her face.
“Hi. Adding to the decorations on your tree?”
She managed a smile. “No, the tree’s actually pretty full. Emily’s been busy. I think I’ve only paid for about one tenth of the stuff on my tree. She’s calling it overstock, but I don’t believe her.”
“She loves that stuff. And she loves doing things for other people. She went a little nuts when I first moved into my house. I thought she was going to throw me one of those shower things women do, she kept bringing me so many household gadgets. I’m here to tell you, men do not need a garlic press. We smash garlic with knives.” He was running on at the mouth, nervous about how they’d gotten down each other’s throats so quickly at their last meeting. She made him antsy, and he wasn’t used to that.
“Look,” she offered, “I wasn’t very nice to you the other day. I guess I’m a little wired up about this holiday and you hit a nerve or something.”
“I wasn’t too friendly, either. Seems there are a lot of people on their last nerve.” He thought about the last customer service rep he’d talked to earlier this morning in his endless search to score a Bippo Bear for something less than three times the manufacturer’s price. That poor employee sounded like she wasn’t going to make it through the day, much less the remainder of the holiday shopping frenzy. “That was unfair, listening in on you like that. But really, I wasn’t snooping or anything. Your voice just caught me by surprise.”
“Violin, I do in public. My singing is more personal. But you couldn’t have known that.” She drew in a deep breath. “I’d like to make a peace offering. Pie at Deacon’s? That is, if you’re not busy. I’d understand if you had work to do and all. But seeing as you’re already out…”
His first impulse was to decline. They seemed to be able to rile up each other too easily. Not only that, but small-town eyes would catch the two of them together, one-on-one, and might start small-town tongues to wagging. He definitely wasn’t ready to give anyone reason to pair them off. Still, for all his thought of being the more “mature” in his faith, it was her extending the olive branch when he’d hesitated to do so.
She was putting in an effort, and they really did need to clear the air between them. You’d be a louse to say no, he told himself. No one in their right mind said no to pie at Deacon’s, anyway—she’d picked up on the local habits right quick. “I think that’d be fine. Nothin’ waiting for me back at the office but more reports, anyway. A little pie might be just the ticket to get me over what I just forked out for the nephew’s Christmas present.”
“Do you have any little people you have to buy for this Christmas?” Mac started the conversation as they slid into a booth at Deacon’s Grill.
“My brother is married, but they’re not the family type. He and his wife travel all over the world for his exporting business. No kids, no plans for kids. I don’t think I’ll get the chance to be an aunt anytime soon.”
“Well, this year, count yourself in good standing. I just paid an unnatural sum for one of those Bippo Bears, even though I knew better. Those advertising people should have their heads examined.”
She got that odd look on her face again, growing quiet. Finally, he saw her make a mental decision of sorts.
“Yeah, about that….”
“About what?”
He couldn’t quite place her expression. It was a trapped, end-of-my-rope kind of look in her eyes, but then again not. A half nervousness, half ashamed, cornered look that seemed completely out of place for their circumstances.
“About the Bippo Bears. I…um…well, there’s something you should know about me and Bippo Bears.”
He didn’t think she’d asked him out to pie to talk about Bippo Bears. What did this year’s toy fad have to do with anything? Why did she have such an odd, pained look on her face?
“You’re a closet Bippo Bear fan and you wanted to know where I scored mine?” He tried to lighten the mood, unsettled by how tense she was.
Mary laughed casually, but it came out a bit choked and forced. “No, not at all. It’s more the other end of that.”
“You’re morally opposed to Bippo Bears? Or uncles splurging for unwary five-year-olds?”
At that point Gina arrived to take their order. Mac ordered his usual, with ice cream, and Mary went for the triple berry. Once Gina left, Mary spread her hands on the table. “I’m trying to figure out how to explain this. I suppose you don’t even have to know, but, well, I suppose someone should know. The whole Bippo Bear thing,” she went on, looking supremely uncomfortable, “well, I’m partially responsible. Actually, I feel like I’m a lot responsible. I suppose that’s debatable, but not really to me.”
She wasn’t making sense. “Mary, what are you trying to say?”
“It’s what I used to do before I came here, Mac. I wrote…” she winced on the word “…I used to write jingles, and I wrote the Bippo Bear song. The reason all those kids can sing that song endlessly to their parents? That’s me. The reason you felt like you had to shell out whatever it took to buy one of those? It’s me. I wrote the song, I created the frenzy.”
She wasn’t explaining, she was confessing. She squinted her eyes shut, as if some force would come out of the blue and knock her over for her crimes. “You? You’re the evil Bippo Bear mastermind? No offense, but you just don’t look the type.” Sitting endlessly on hold, he had imagined the guy behind Bippo Bears as a cross between Ebenezer Scrooge and the Grinch. A slimy guy in a shiny suit punching triple-digit profits into his laptop. Not a soft-spoken blonde who barely topped five and a half feet tall.
“I’m just the mastermind behind the Bippo Bear song.” She said it as if it would brand a scarlet B onto her chest.
“That silly song? That incredibly annoyingly silly song? That’s yours? You wrote that?” He stared at her, still trying to put the information into some kind of context that made sense. “Well, if you’re working on commission, I can see how you can afford to live on what MCC can afford to pay you.” He regretted that remark the minute it left his mouth. That was a lousy thing to say. No one held a gun to your head to make you plunk down that money for that bear, Mac. You’re to blame for how much you spent, not her. He’d said something wounding at a vulnerable moment. He’d done that more than once now, hadn’t he? What is it with this woman that brings out the worst in me?
“I’m not particularly proud of myself, if it makes you feel any better.” Her voice sounded definitely hurt. “Yes, I seem to be able to write tunes that stick in people’s heads. I’m very good at it. And before…before I woke up to faith, as I like to put it…it didn’t bother me at all, because I made a lot of money in music, which was something I loved. I had the kind of job other people dreamed about. I could do as much or as little work for the ad agency as I wanted, depending on my schedule with the orchestra. I could support myself as a musician, and not a lot of people can say that.”
“I suppose that is an accomplishment. Sounds like a pretty sweet deal.”
“Like most sweet deals, it tends to get to you after a while.” The pie arrived, providing irony and a bit of a break in the serious nature of the conversation. Mac was having a serious conversation about Bippo Bears. It was just too odd. “Well, at least it got to me,” she went on. “The funny thing is, once I realized how big Bippo Bears were going to be, once I realized what was going on and what I was helping to create, I couldn’t stomach it anymore. Now that I’ve learned what Christmas is supposed to be about, I couldn’t be part of the buy this, buy that, put yourself in debt to give your kids ten seconds of hollow bliss machine. That sounds simplistic, but it was like I was choking on my own work. I was getting physically ill. I couldn’t sleep at night. I’d cringe anytime I heard the commercial—I still do. And so while it wasn’t exactly a brilliant plan, the best thing I could do was just leave.”
Mac felt like whacking his forehead. “And since you’ve met me, I’ve spent a good chunk of time railing against the sinister fiends who made little kids want Bippo Bears. Mighty hospitable of me. Look, I’m sorry. If I’d have known…”
“You’d what?”
She had him there. “Well, I might have kept my mouth shut for starters.”
She eyed him, a little bit of that spine he saw over the potluck coming back. “You don’t strike me as the kind of guy who holds back an opinion on anything.”
“Still, I might have used nicer adjectives than ‘idiotic.’ You were just doing your job. You were hired to sell bears, and believe me, you’re selling bears. Your little song just duped me out of a hundred and fifty dollars plus shipping and handling.”
She pointed at him with her fork. “See? That’s just why I left. Yes, I was doing my job, and people pay lip service to the idea at first, but then there comes some remark about how my song took their money. You did it yourself.” Mary speared her pie with a little too much emphasis. “Most people draw a very thin line between advertising and manipulation, and I’ll tell you, it’s no fun living on the dark side of that line. That’s why I don’t tell people. That’s why I had to get away.” She shook her head. “The funniest thing of all is that I came to Middleburg to find someplace where all the commercialism and fighting over Christmas didn’t reach. And I found you forking more than one hundred dollars for a Bippo Bear and a town fighting over mayors. Where’s this simple life I keep reading about?”
Mac felt stung by the lecture, mostly because she was dead on. He could have easily said no to Robby’s nonstop requests for the bear. Probably should have. And yet he had attached her talent to his weakness—personally—the moment he’d found out. Suddenly, her former employment didn’t seem such a dumb secret to keep after all. “Simple life? Here in Middleburg? No such thing. We like to make everything complicated.” He looked at her. “Why tell me? Couldn’t have been my overwhelming sensitivity. I know I wouldn’t have told me if I were in your shoes.”
She seemed stumped by the question. “Actually, I’m not sure. Probably just to get you to stop complaining about it, I suppose. You and I do seem to have a talent for stomping on each other’s last nerve.” She dragged her fork through the huge dollop of whipped cream Gina had doused onto her pie. “You paid how much for that bear?”
“A hundred and fifty plus shipping and handling.” He’d felt pained but victorious when he’d secured the bear. Now he just felt conned and stupid.
She managed a smile. “Thornton lives for people like you.”
“Thornton?”
“My boss. My ex-boss, that is. Thornton hired me out of grad school, thinking he could get a few catchy tunes out of a music major. I can blame him for discovering my dark talent for earworms.”
“Earworms? Sounds gross.”
“Earworms are those tunes you can’t get out of your head. Jingles, television show themes, that sort of thing. They’re an incredibly powerful marketing tool because you can’t get rid of them even when you want to.” She pointed to herself. “And that, sir, is what I seem to be able to do better than anyone in the Midwest.” Her hands dropped, and her shoulders with them. This really did bug her. She definitely classified this as a curse rather than a talent.
Suddenly he had to know. “What else have you done? Are there others I would know?”
She blushed. Actually turned crimson right there in front of him. And he realized what a mean question that was. “I mean, you don’t actually have to tell me,” he backpedaled. “It’s your business.”
She looked down at her pie for a moment, then said quietly, “Jones Bars.”
“The ice cream bar?” That song had been so effective ice cream trucks had taken it up as the tune they played as they came down the street. “The ice cream truck song? Whoa, I know parents who would do you bodily harm.”
She grimaced. “I got a double Christmas bonus for that one. And a weekend in Bermuda. And then there’s Paulie’s Pizza.”
Even his nephew could sing the Paulie’s Pizza song. And yes, it was annoying. But, like she said, almost anyone could dial the Paulie’s Pizza 1–800 number from memory.
“See?” she said with a lopsided, bittersweet grin, “I’ve got a résumé that would make your ears burn.”