Double Deck the Halls Page 2

  I stepped into a white living room. Everything pure white. There were lots of white seats, a white fireplace, white bookshelves lined with white books, and a Christmas tree made entirely of white poinsettias.

  I needed my clip-on shades.

  These people had more money than the bank.

  “Bianca!”

  She didn’t answer.

  There was an open door across the room. From where I was, I could make out a big white Princess and the Pea canopy bed with sheer white curtains flowing from the top all the way around it.

  That was one big bed.

  Cyril and I slept in twin beds. Like Lucy and Ricky. And let me tell you something—Cyril Bunker was no Ricky Ricardo.

  I walked across the white carpet and stuck my head in the bedroom door. “Bianca?” Her bedroom was white too. Everything white as the driven snow.

  She wasn’t in the bed. No one was in the bed.

  Where in the world was she?

  I looked around.

  I found her.

  She was on the other side of the bed. All the way across the room, past a white desk, were two white chairs as big as thrones. Bianca was in one of them.

  I could barely see her blonde head—that chair swallowed her whole—and what I could see didn’t look so good. Her face was whiter than the chair. Her eyes were wild, wide open, and darting around. And she had something across her face.

  “Bianca? What’s the matter with you?”

  None of her was moving. She was stiff as a board except for her wild eyes. And when I made it to the first bedpost I could see the something in her mouth was a scarf, silk, I think. It was white too, tied tight across her mouth and behind her head.

  What in the wide world?

  I made it to the next bedpost. That’s when I saw it. There were four shiny red bricks held together with green wires covering Bianca’s middle. I knew what I was looking at. I’d seen the Get Smart.

  Bianca had a bomb on her.

  I swung my head around when I heard a squeaky voice from behind.

  It was the Christmas elf. On Bianca’s TV. The squirrely-looking skinny little man dressed in a Shamrock green suit with red cuffs and a thick red belt who’d been smiling for the camera with Sugar and Sugar. The elf Davis sent to get Bianca.

  He got her.

  He said, “Have a seat, old lady.”

  He got me too.

  What we had here was a pickle.

  I’d been in pickles before. You can’t live seventy-six pickle-free years. Most people don’t live twenty pickle-free years.

  Once I stole a truck and got in a high-speed chase with the police.

  Like O.J. Simpson.

  I’d walked across the street to my cousin June Carol the Crier’s—she cried all the time over nothing; she’d cry over a bruised banana—to see her new drapes. June Carol was married to Soup Stringer, who was rotten to his bones and wasn’t worth wasting the bullet it’d take to shoot him. June Carol never should’ve married Soup. He was from Georgia, around Atlanta.

  June Carol had saved up her Green Stamps for a year to buy new drapes for her sitting room, and the day she hung them up, Soup came in the door after his shift at the paper plant and ripped them down. Said he didn’t give her permission to use the Green Stamps on drapes. The way I saw it, they were June Carol’s Green Stamps to do with what she pleased. She was the one who saved them up. She was the one who did all that licking. She was the one who’d pasted them in the books. Soup didn’t see it that way. He threw those drapes in the back of his truck and was on his way to the Green Stamp store with them. He said drapes were a waste of good stamps when she could’ve gotten him a new easy chair.

  All I did was walk across the street to see June Carol’s new drapes and I wound up in the middle of it.

  And I had news for him. The Green Stamp store closed at three o’clock.

  Soup went to the kitchen to get a few beers for his drive, hollering he was going to wring her neck when he got back with his easy chair. June Carol just sat there bawling her eyes out. I grabbed her up, threw her in Soup’s truck, and we high-tailed it out of there with the drapes. Soup hopped the fence and went next door to Junior Carter’s. He stole Junior’s truck and chased me and June Carol down twenty miles of Old 41, another panel of June Carol’s new drapes flying out of the bed of that truck about every two miles. Soon enough, the police were chasing Soup, who was chasing us, and next thing we knew we were all three behind bars in the Monroe County Jail.

  You talk about a pickle.

  They let us go after a night, and I think it was because they were tired of June Carol’s wailing. I know I was. The whole time, Soup was saying, “This is your fault, Dee. I’m going to wring both your necks when we get out of here.” Every time I said, “Yeah? Come on, Soup. Let’s see what you got.”

  Back then, I could’ve put a hurt on him.

  For the one and only jail dinner of my life, I had beef stew, cornbread, cherry pie, and hot coffee. All made by the sheriff’s wife and served on a red-checkered tablecloth.

  “Old lady?”

  These days, my mind wandered.

  “Are you deaf?”

  That didn’t sit too well with me.

  I held onto the bedpost and turned around to the television. “You listen here, you little pipsqueak. I don’t know who you think you are, but you can stop calling me old lady. And then you can tell me why you’ve got this getup on Bianca.”

  I whispered to Bianca, “Bianca, is your baby boy okay?”

  She blinked wild eyes at me. I hoped that meant yes.

  “No whispering,” the elf said.

  Talk about somebody who needed a neck-wringing.

  “And I told you to sit down. You see that empty chair? Put your old butt in it.”

  I gave him the bird.

  “You’re cute, old woman.”

  “My name is Dorothy Bunker. You call me Mrs. Bunker or don’t talk to me.”

  Bianca was making cat-stuck-behind-the-oven noises while this was going on.

  “Old Woman Bunker, sit down. And if you don’t want to be blown into a million bits, you’d better sit down easy. Your friend Bianca is wearing a pound of C-4 wired with proximity sensors. If they detect movement—” The elf’s fists flew open and his fingers splayed out like a starburst. “Bye bye!”

  I adjusted my trifocals for distance, so I could see his beady little eyes behind the black squares of his eyeglasses. Was he telling the truth? I’d moved. I’d walked all the way through the room. The bomb hadn’t detected me. I leaned over a little and whispered to Bianca, “He’s lying.”

  “NO WHISPERING!”

  “There’s some more good news,” I told her. “He can’t hear us.”

  “SIT DOWN, GRANDMA!”

  I never met an elf with worse manners.

  “GO!”

  ’Course, I hadn’t met that many elves.

  Bianca’s eyes tracking me the whole time, I started for the chair. Not because I was minding the little man with the big attitude. But because I needed to sit down. This was more than I bargained for when I said I’d go scare up Bianca.

  I’d about scared up myself.

  For sure, Bianca was scared.

  Where was I?

  The chair.

  I was careful. And I went slow. I went pretty slow anyway, but considering I was two feet from a bomb, I went real slow. When I was about one foot there, the elf piped up. “Sweet baby Jesus, old timer. Get your flat ass in the chair.”

  I stopped. “You watch your mouth,” I told him. “And don’t be blaspheming.”

  “It’s Christmas, you old goat. It’s all about baby Jesus. He’s the reason for the season.”

  He didn’t say it like he meant it. In fact, every word he’d said so far was smart alecky, disrespect
ful, and rude.

  I shook my fist at the television. “Somebody needs to pop you one.”

  He said, “Do you have Alzheimer’s? Can you not remember what I told you to do two minutes ago?”

  Truth be told, I didn’t.

  Oh, the chair.

  I shuffled.

  I sat down easy.

  It took a minute.

  It was comfortable, for a chair with such a low seat and such high arms. I think the fabric was velvet. Now that I was in it, I could see it was more the color of fresh buttermilk than stark white and three of me could have fit in it. I was right up next to Bianca. I could touch her if I wanted to. I could touch the bomb if I wanted to.

  I didn’t want to.

  “Thank you!” the elf said.

  “You’re not welcome.”

  “Put your hands where I can see them.”

  Where was that? On my head? And how was it he could he see me or my hands?

  I took stock.

  In front of us was a desk. A big white desk. There was nothing on the desk but a letter opener with an ivory handle beside a short stack of mail, a white lamp with a white lampshade, and another television, that one no bigger than a minute. It was turned on, but I couldn’t see that far. It was no time for shows, so I kept going.

  Behind the desk were big French glass doors that led to a patio. On the patio were white sunning chairs around a big swimming pool. And I mean big. I’d never seen a swimming pool full of water in the dead of winter, and I’d never seen a bedroom and a swimming pool together. Looked like something out of Good Housekeeping. Or in Bianca’s case, Great Housekeeping. It was no time for swimming, so I kept going.

  To my left was a solid wall. In the middle of the wall was a giant white chifforobe dresser with a black movie camera on top staring straight at me and Bianca in the big white chairs. It looked out of place, because it was black. If it was supposed to be in this room, it’d be white.

  That’s how the elf was watching us.

  I wondered how that not-even-five-foot-nothing man got it up there.

  The chifforobe dresser doors were open. On one side was the television with the elf on it, and the other side, where clothes would normally hang, there was a safe. A big white iron safe. In the middle was a round white pad with numbers. It looked like the kind of safe you’d keep your valuables in. Money. And jewelry. And maybe a shotgun.

  I could use a shotgun about now.

  And that must be what the elf was after. Whatever was in that safe.

  Beside me, noises were coming from deep in Bianca’s throat that sounded like squealing tires. I whispered, “Bianca, you settle down. Granny Dee’s here now and I’m going to get us out of this mess. You hear?”

  She blinked wild eyes.

  “Oh, hell, no!” from the television.

  I looked at the TV. “Do you need your mouth washed out with soap?”

  “Do you have dementia? You’re sitting next to a bomb talking to me about soap.”

  “Because you need your mouth washed out with it. Lye soap. Or Borax. You’re a smart-mouth runt and you need to learn how to speak respectfully to your elders.”

  “Do not call me a runt. I’m a grown man.”

  “Well, obviously, you didn’t grow enough.”

  His face turned as red as his elf hat.

  “And you’re mad about it, aren’t you, little man?”

  I could almost see smoke coming out of his elf ears.

  “I know your type,” I told him. “Short man, tall dreams you can’t reach, so you make up for it by acting ugly.”

  He leaned in to where his red face filled up the whole television. “I’m going to blow you to smithereens just for the fun of it.”

  Bianca cried in her throat.

  “Pipe down, Bianca,” I whispered.

  “HEY!” from the television.

  With one eye on him, I moved my mouth like I was talking to Bianca.

  “QUIT IT!” the elf said.

  “You quit it,” I said. “You come out from inside that television and unhook this contraption off Bianca.”

  “Can’t,” he said. “I have to go find someone’s granddaughter since she didn’t come find me.”

  Bianca didn’t have a granddaughter.

  I did.

  He was talking about Davis.

  He meant for Davis to be in this seat.

  He thought Davis would come for Bianca.

  I was sitting in Davis’s bomb chair.

  Well, better me than her. She had her whole life to live and two babies to raise. I’d already lived my life, and a good one at that. If today was the day for me to meet my maker, so be it.

  I looked over at Bianca.

  Her face was still as white as the chair. She’d been crying. I could see tear streaks from her eyes that led to the scarf tied tight across her mouth. Her eyes were glued on the little television on the desk.

  I looked closer.

  A tall dark-haired girl was on the little television. She was in a children’s playroom, pacing the floor and looking at her watch.

  I adjusted my trifocals.

  There was a little tyke on the television too. He was playing at the girl’s feet. He was dressed in a Christmas suit—short pants, a cute little jacket, and a red bow tie.

  That was Bianca’s little boy.

  And that meant it wasn’t Bianca’s day either.

  No, it wasn’t.

  She might keep her nose so high in the air you’d think an airplane would have knocked it off by now, but she didn’t deserve to die so young. And that little boy on the television needed his mother just like Sugar and Sugar needed theirs.

  “Hey! Geritol! Are you taking a nap?”

  I stuck my tongue out at that rude elf.

  He had the ugliest laugh I’d ever heard in my life. “You’re funny, you old dinosaur. Sit there and be funny with Bianca while I track down your granddaughter. Unless you know how to get in the safe.”

  I was right. He wanted in that safe. I didn’t have the first clue how to get in it, and if I did, he was the last person I’d tell.

  “Don’t trash talk me while I’m gone.” He smiled an evil smile. “And if it were me, I’d sit still.”

  The television went black.

  Davis was in Bradley’s office. For the time being, she and the babies were safe.

  Bianca wasn’t.

  Or me either.

  I’ll tell you one reason I didn’t want to die today—I hadn’t figured out who my heaven husband would be.

  I had two up there waiting on me already. I don’t think my second dead husband, Floyd Johnson, made it through the pearly gates. He was probably you-know-where. That one had the mean streak. And Cyril, my husband now, had the ornery streak, so he could go either way. Which meant I already had two, and might end up with three heaven husbands.

  I’d been married enough to know that one husband was a full-time job.

  I didn’t want to get to heaven and have two, maybe three full-time jobs.

  I’d asked the question of every preacher I’d met through the years and not a one of them had an answer for me. Until I found a preacher who could tell me beyond a shadow of a doubt who my heaven husband would be, I planned on staying put.

  Bianca was breathing fast, too fast, and her hands, tied at the wrists to the arms of the chair with white scarfs, just like the one across her face, were clenched up so tight her fingers were blue. She was wound tighter than a two-dollar watch.

  Oh, boy.

  She needed to settle down.

  I’d have to figure out a way to settle her down.

  Which, considering how upset she was, might be a big job.

  And we already had a big job.

  The bomb.

  I thought o
f everything I knew about bombs.

  They went kaboom.

  That was all I knew.

  The bomb on Bianca was colorful. Or maybe it was that everything else was so white. The red bricks across her middle were each about the size of a stick of butter. Lined up in a row and held together with green wires coming out of a flat center about the size of a matchbox. She was still in her pajamas, if you could call what she was wearing pajamas. It was more like a short nightgown with a few little red holly berries.

  Maybe those weren’t holly berries.

  I adjusted my trifocals for up close.

  They were dots.

  Why did Bianca have dots on her?

  The elf said sensors. I believed I was looking at them.

  Those red dots were coming from the middle of the bomb. Thin red lights led to dots, and I bet they were marking the space where she couldn’t move or the bomb would go off. Which was why it didn’t go off when I was walking across the room or sitting down. I hadn’t moved in the marked-off patch.

  I said, “Bianca. Let’s me and you talk. I’m going to tell you something and I don’t want you flying off the handle when I tell you.”

  She cut crazy eyes at me.

  “You know how when you mark off your tomatoes with dandelions?”

  She rolled crazy eyes at me.

  “Because you don’t want the rabbits eating your tomatoes?”

  She closed her crazy eyes tight. Maybe she was praying.

  “When you don’t want the rabbits eating your tomatoes, you plant dandelions around them. Rabbits like dandelions better than they like tomatoes.”

  If a person could breathe mad, she was doing it.

  “You don’t mark off your whole yard,” I explained. “Who wants to look at a yard full of dandelions?”

  If looks could kill, I’d have been dead right then and there.

  I let it slide, considering.

  “Bianca, you’re marked off with dandelions.”

  Her wild eyes popped open.

  “You’ve got four little red dots on you. You can’t see the dots, but I can. You’ve got two at the bottom of your neck. Right on your collar bones. You’ve got two more about the bottom of your—” I didn’t know what to call what she was wearing “—nightie.”