the special elevator in the corner that went to the Schlumberger department on the second floor. She reappeared ten minutes later with a small Tiffany blue shopping bag and then scuttled out the front door and veered left into Bonwit Teller. After purchasing several pairs of gloves, a couple of wallets, and an ugly costume jewelry necklace, she fought her way to the back of the store and into one of the elevators. I had no trouble staying out of sight because the place was crammed with shoppers, but I was clueless as to what floor she was headed to, though by this point I shouldn’t have been. I took the next elevator, but almost threw up between Ladies’ Sportswear and Ladies’ Lingerie because the white-gloved black lady operating it was throwing the lever so hard she was making the thing bounce up and down like a yo-yo. I got out and dragged the poodles down the stairs, and we waited for Ann Rose behind the Max Factor counter on the ground floor.
When she reemerged, she had a couple of long dress boxes under her arms. I could tell one of them was from the children’s department because I’d seen my share of them. She was out the door and swimming back upstream through the tourists to FAO Schwarz, where I watched her buy three Steiff animals, a Mouse Trap game, an Easy-Bake Oven, a Wham-O Air Blaster, some Slinkys, a couple of trolls, a G.I. Joe doll, and a Tonka toy jeep. She could hardly move she had so many bags, but I sure wasn’t going to help her. I was having that clammy feeling you get when it’s just dawning on you that you’ve discovered something really bad. George the Nazi suddenly appeared with the car, and he bundled her and her thirty-five bags and boxes into the back of the limo, and they headed across Fifty-eighth Street. Back to the North Pole, I thought, with something like pins pricking my eyeballs. The poodles were chattering with frostbite, and so we slogged back up Fifth to Sixty-third, and finally turned under the awning of 820, and I collapsed in the little corner seat in the elevator for the ten-second ride up to the sixth floor.
The light shone late under the door of Ann Rose’s office over the next few days, but when I looked around in the mornings before she had come into work, there was no evidence, other than an extra roll of Scotch tape on the desk, a few tiny triangles of snipped curling ribbon, and the telltale drift of gift card glitter. I couldn’t figure out who to be angry at. Had I really thought my grandparents ran around town getting the zillions of things that Will and I pleaded for, and that they then sat up into the night wrapping them? Yes. Yes, I had.
I was so incensed by the Betrayal that I nearly blurted it out to my mother when she called the next morning from Nassau to tell me that if “Santa” got me the Easy-Bake Oven I had asked for, I was not, repeat NOT, to place anything in it that was a) alive, b) a troll, or c) an item belonging to either of my brothers. Which was her way of saying it was a done deal.
“Thanks for the tip-off,” I said.
“Oh, don’t thank me, Toots, thank Santa,” my mother replied.
“Oh yeah. Santa. Of course . I’ll start my thank-you note to him right now.”
When I let Will in on my discovery, he had little to say, as usual. We were watching The Outer Limits, which always gave me the creeps, right from the moment the Control Voice introduced each broadcast.
There is nothing wrong with your television set . . .
“Guess what,” I said.
Do not attempt to adjust the picture . . .
“What?” said Will.
“ANN ROSE IS SANTA!”
“So?”
“So? Whaddaya mean so ? Listen, it’s Ann Rose who goes and buys all the presents and toys and stuff, and then wraps them all up, and then puts them under the tree and in the stockings and everything. I saw her! ”
My brother turned and gave me a look that said, You pathetic idealist (or nine-and-a-half-year-old words to that effect), so I had no recourse but to slap him, and
When she reemerged, she had a couple of long dress boxes under her arms. I could tell one of them was from the children’s department because I’d seen my share of them. She was out the door and swimming back upstream through the tourists to FAO Schwarz, where I watched her buy three Steiff animals, a Mouse Trap game, an Easy-Bake Oven, a Wham-O Air Blaster, some Slinkys, a couple of trolls, a G.I. Joe doll, and a Tonka toy jeep. She could hardly move she had so many bags, but I sure wasn’t going to help her. I was having that clammy feeling you get when it’s just dawning on you that you’ve discovered something really bad. George the Nazi suddenly appeared with the car, and he bundled her and her thirty-five bags and boxes into the back of the limo, and they headed across Fifty-eighth Street. Back to the North Pole, I thought, with something like pins pricking my eyeballs. The poodles were chattering with frostbite, and so we slogged back up Fifth to Sixty-third, and finally turned under the awning of 820, and I collapsed in the little corner seat in the elevator for the ten-second ride up to the sixth floor.
The light shone late under the door of Ann Rose’s office over the next few days, but when I looked around in the mornings before she had come into work, there was no evidence, other than an extra roll of Scotch tape on the desk, a few tiny triangles of snipped curling ribbon, and the telltale drift of gift card glitter. I couldn’t figure out who to be angry at. Had I really thought my grandparents ran around town getting the zillions of things that Will and I pleaded for, and that they then sat up into the night wrapping them? Yes. Yes, I had.
I was so incensed by the Betrayal that I nearly blurted it out to my mother when she called the next morning from Nassau to tell me that if “Santa” got me the Easy-Bake Oven I had asked for, I was not, repeat NOT, to place anything in it that was a) alive, b) a troll, or c) an item belonging to either of my brothers. Which was her way of saying it was a done deal.
“Thanks for the tip-off,” I said.
“Oh, don’t thank me, Toots, thank Santa,” my mother replied.
“Oh yeah. Santa. Of course . I’ll start my thank-you note to him right now.”
When I let Will in on my discovery, he had little to say, as usual. We were watching The Outer Limits, which always gave me the creeps, right from the moment the Control Voice introduced each broadcast.
There is nothing wrong with your television set . . .
“Guess what,” I said.
Do not attempt to adjust the picture . . .
“What?” said Will.
“ANN ROSE IS SANTA!”
“So?”
“So? Whaddaya mean so ? Listen, it’s Ann Rose who goes and buys all the presents and toys and stuff, and then wraps them all up, and then puts them under the tree and in the stockings and everything. I saw her! ”
My brother turned and gave me a look that said, You pathetic idealist (or nine-and-a-half-year-old words to that effect), so I had no recourse but to slap him, and
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