Chapter 3 #2
She had loved him her whole life. She had protected him for three years.
When the store was going under, she had sat with him at the kitchen table at two in the morning while he cried over the numbers.
When Connor put in the money, she had watched her father shake Connor’s hand for so long it got awkward.
She had never once said to her father, you gave him our store.
She had never let herself think it all the way through.
She thought it now.
“Thank you, Dad,” she said. “I know you’re trying to help.”
She picked up the radio off her desk and keyed it.
“Luz.”
“I’m here.”
“I need every holiday employee in the atrium at nine forty-five. Everybody. Floor, stock, gift-wrap, the dock, the Santa crew. Everybody who’s on the schedule today.”
A short pause. “Copy. Nine forty-five. Everybody.”
Caroline set the radio down. She stood up and took her red scarf off the back of her chair and wrapped it around her neck.
“Excuse me,” she said to the room. “I have a store to open.”
* * *
At nine forty-five, the atrium was full again.
It was a different crowd from last night.
There were no kids on shoulders, no grandmothers with folding stools.
It was two hundred people in black clothes and red Hadley’s aprons, standing on the marble floor with coffee cups in their hands.
The girls from cosmetics stood with the boys from the stockroom.
The gift-wrap ladies stood in a tight row, like a church choir.
Jamal from the dock was at the back, with his hat in his hands.
The Santa crew had come down in full costume, three Santas and six elves, because they had been in the middle of getting dressed.
The front doors were still locked. Through the glass, Caroline could see the reporters on the sidewalk, and a line of shoppers already forming down the block.
Above everyone, the mistletoe turned slowly on its wire.
Caroline came down the mezzanine stairs. The staff moved aside for her. She walked through the middle of them, across the marble, and she didn’t stop until she was standing on the gold star in the center of the floor.
People noticed. The room made a small sound, like a breath going through it.
She looked up once. On the mezzanine, at the rail, stood her husband and her father and Brittany Vail. Barry hovered behind them. Caroline looked at them for exactly one second, and then she turned her back on them and faced her staff.
She didn’t use a microphone. She didn’t need one. The dome carried her voice.
“Good morning,” she said.
“Good morning,” two hundred people said back, raggedly.
“Most of you were here last night.” She kept her hands at her sides. “And those of you who weren’t have probably seen it on your phone. Some of you have seen it more than once. That’s okay. I’d have looked too.”
A couple of people laughed, nervous and surprised.
“Last night, on this spot, my husband kissed another woman,” Caroline said. “In front of all of you. In front of my father. In front of the whole city.”
Nobody laughed now. The atrium was so quiet that she could hear the tree lights hum.
“I’m not going to talk about my marriage. Not today. Not with you, and not with the people outside on that sidewalk.” She took a breath. “But I’m going to tell you what’s going to happen, so that nobody has to guess, and nobody has to whisper about it in the break room.”
She looked at them. She knew most of their names. She knew whose kid had the flu and who was saving for a car and which of the Santas had a bad knee.
“I’m running this season,” she said. “Start to finish. Every day, from this morning until we lock those doors at five o’clock on Christmas Eve.
Nobody is taking over this floor for me.
Nobody is running it while I hide upstairs.
It’s my floor. It has been for eight years. It’ll be my floor this year, too.”
She didn’t look up at the mezzanine. She didn’t need to.
“If a reporter comes in and asks you about my marriage, you send them to me. You don’t have to be polite about it.
If a customer asks you, you tell them you’d be happy to help them find a sweater.
” A few smiles. “And if you want to talk about my marriage—and I know some of you do, because I would too—you do it on your own time. On my floor, we sell Christmas.”
She stopped. Her throat was tight. She swallowed.
“That’s all,” she said. “Thank you for last night. Thank you for being here today. Let’s open the doors.”
For a second, nobody moved.
Then, at the back, Jamal put his hat under his arm and clapped.
Luz, beside the candy counter, clapped too, hard and loud.
Then the gift-wrap ladies. Then cosmetics.
Then the Santas, in their white gloves, which made a soft thumping sound.
It spread across the atrium and up the marble walls, and it grew, until two hundred people in red aprons were clapping on the floor of Hadley’s, and a few of them were cheering, and one of the elves was crying.
Caroline stood on the gold star and did not cry.
She nodded to them. She nodded to Luz. Then she walked to the front doors and took the big brass key out of her pocket, the key that had opened these doors every morning since 1924, and she unlocked Hadley’s for the day.
Behind her, she didn’t turn around to see who was still at the mezzanine rail.
* * *
It was a long day.
Two reporters came in pretending to be shoppers.
The first one asked a girl at the perfume counter how Mrs. Bradshaw was holding up, and the girl sprayed her in the face with a tester and apologized very sweetly.
The second one found Caroline herself, by the toy department. He had a phone in his hand, recording.
“Mrs. Bradshaw, does your husband have anything to say about—”
“Toys are on this floor,” Caroline said. “Books are on three. The men’s room is by the elevators, if you need a minute to think about your life.”
He went red. Somebody behind him laughed.
Santa arrived at ten. The line for Santa went around the atrium twice.
The lady from the children’s hospital came at noon to talk about seating for the Snow Ball, and she cried, as she did every year.
This year she cried about Caroline instead of about the sick kids, and Caroline had to hold her hand and give her tissues and talk her through the seating chart twice.
Brittany left before lunch.
Luz told her about it at one o’clock, in the stockroom, over half a turkey sandwich. “She tried to walk the floor,” Luz said. “She stood by the Santa line and told the elves to move faster for the cameras. The head elf told her he reports to you.”
“Which one is the head elf?”
“Homer. The tall one. Seventy-two years old. He was a union steward at the Navy Yard for thirty years.” Luz almost smiled.
“She tried to go up to the lighting booth next. I had it locked. Then she tried the office. I had that locked too. She stood in the middle of the mezzanine for about a minute looking at her phone. Then she left out the side door.”
“And Connor?”
“He left right after your speech. With his people.” Luz paused. “Your dad went home. He said to tell you he loves you.”
Caroline looked at her sandwich.
“He does,” Luz said. “Whatever else. He does.”
“I know,” Caroline said. “That’s what makes it hard.”
* * *
Stephanie was waiting on the Sansom Street loading dock at six, in her old green parka with her car running, like a getaway driver. She drove them back to Fishtown and made Caroline eat a whole bowl of soup before she was allowed to talk. Then, at seven, somebody knocked on the apartment door.