Page 7 of The Grumpiest Elf

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“How was work today?” Mom asks when I get home.

“Good.” I pause, taking off my boots, then hanging up my coat and scarf, carrying my tote bag to my room.

“I’ve got a beef stew on the stove and rolls in the oven!” Mom calls down the hall.

“Sounds delicious. Let me change and I’ll be right out!”

I swap out my striped tights and green velvet dress for soft gray lounge pants and a Fair Isle print thermal, adding fuzzy red socks to keep my toes warm. It’s snowing again, but my hat kept my hair dry and my ears warm, though my cheeks and nose are still pink from the cold walk home. I don’t mind, though. With the snow falling like we’re in the last scene of a Hallmark Christmas movie, it’s magical.

Growing up in Seattle, snow was a rare and dubious treat. Being so close to the coast keeps the winters warmer and the summers cooler—usually—so when it snows, it’s the just-barely-below-freezing-really-wet-and-really-slick kind. And it snows just enough to cover everything and make the hills into a bobsled run, sending cars careening all over and crashing into each other.

But also—snow! I always thought the snow gave a magical fairytale quality to the world when it happened. It was just best to stay home on those days if you could.

I always loved when it snowed, but my parents never quite shared my enthusiasm. Which is why it’s kinda funny Mom moved somewhere that it snows so much. But she seems to have adapted. “They have the infrastructure,” she said when I brought it up the other day. “Deicer and snow plows and people who know how to drive in it. It’s a whole different experience. Besides, I grew up in Montana. I’m used to snow.”

And that’s why I love the snow so much, too, I guess. We’d go visit my grandparents in Kalispell for Christmas every couple of years, and I’d get to build snowmen and go sledding and do all the fun snow activities I never got to do at home. Itwasmagical.

Once, Grandpa took me out snowshoeing under the trees after dinner, and that’s still one of my favorite memories, crunching across the snow under the light of an almost-full moon, the snow reflecting the moon’s glow enough that we could see just fine, the hush of the woods at the back of their property, the contrast of the warmth of my snow gear and the cold, December air while their boxer ran along beside us, darting away and back again.

Sighing at the memory, I head into the kitchen where Mom’s stirring the pot of stew. She turns at my approach, a smile lighting her face as she holds out an arm for a hug. She has a section of her shoulder length bob clipped back with a small sparkly barrette, showing off the gray streak in her otherwise dark hair. At fifty, she’s decided that she’d show off the silver in her hair, accenting it with the blingy silver barrettes, rather than try to hide it. With her dedication to sunscreen and skincare, she has that ageless look about her, which is underscored by her choice of classic styles that show off her trim figure, though right now she’s also wearing soft lounge pants—in navy instead of gray—and an open, knee-length robe of the same fabric over a soft pink V-neck tee.

I slip under Mom’s arm, giving her a quick squeeze before getting down bowls for the stew. She left all our old dishes with Dad, opting to get a new set for her new place. These are dark purple, which set off nicely against her off-white and natural linen placemats and napkins when we bother to set the table, which she did the first night I was here. But since then we’ve developed an easier routine of eating on the couch, chatting about our days and then picking out a Hallmark Holiday movie to watch to unwind.

“Tell me one good thing and one bad thing about your day,” Mom says as she pulls the rolls out of the oven.

I smile, setting the bowls on the counter and getting out two of the cloth napkins she keeps neatly folded in a drawer. We’ve been doing this since I was a kid at school. At dinner, we’d all go around and share one good thing and one bad thing about our days.

“Hmm. It’s hard to pick just one good thing.”

Mom gives me a warm look. “I’m glad you’re enjoying your job. I’m sure it can get stressful with so many families and little kids, but that doesn’t seem to bother you at all.”

I shake my head. “So far, so good. I haven’t had any truly awful parents to deal with and the kids …” I shrug. “They’re just kids. Like you said, it’s stressful and overwhelming, and they don’t really know how to deal with that. I like when I can get a smile out of a kid who’s been upset.” I smile, thinking about the kid today who really made me work for his shy grin. I ended up doing my version of the tango with the elf puppet, singing and doing dramatic steps. It distracted the kid enough to stop crying, and when I whipped my head around and made a silly face, he grinned, and I pushed the button in my hand and captured the image. It was perfect.

“What are you thinking about?” Mom prompts. “That seems like the good thing.”

When I tell her the story, she laughs as I demonstrate my tango in the kitchen using a wooden spoon in place of the puppet.

“The bad thing,” I say, letting the humor fall away, wistfulness taking its place as I put the wooden spoon back in the crock next to the stove, “is my newest coworker. Or I guess, I’mhisnewest coworker, as his parents are the ones who own Santa’s Workshop and act as Santa and Mrs. Claus.”

Mom’s eyebrows raise, and she hands me my bowl of stew, ushering us into the living room, the rolls in a small, napkin covered basket in her other hand. “What happened?”

I shrug, carefully setting my bowl on the coffee table before flopping onto the couch. “He’s just …” I shrug again, sorting through all my feelings and impressions about him. Grumpy? Hot? Annoyingly watchful? I couldn’t quite decipher the face he made when I caught his eye after the impromptu tango, but it didn’t look positive. That plus his lunch comments about me needing to tone down the ‘cheerful elf routine’ left a sour taste in my mouth, and I’d left at the end of the day with a cursory goodbye that pushed the bounds of politeness.

“He doesn’t want to be there,” I say at last. “And it shows.”

“Oh no,” Mom says after swallowing a mouthful of stew. “Is he mean to the kids or something? Because that’ll just make your job more difficult. I can see why that would make him the bad part of the day.”

Brows crimping together, I shake my head. “No, he’s actually really good at interacting with the families, though I don’t think he’s as good at getting the kids to smile—especially the shy or upset ones—and he knows it, because once he determined I knew how to use the camera, he told me I could do that and he’d do the other part.”

“That doesn’t sound bad, though,” Mom says. “You like taking the pictures, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“But?” she prompts at my unenthusiastic agreement.

Another shrug. It seems like all I can do about Dylan is shrug. Honestly, that’s pretty accurate. A shrug means so many things—acceptance, confusion, uncertainty, resigned ambivalence—and it encapsulates all my feelings so well. “But it’s more fun when Nora’s working. Sure, she’s a little more flighty than Dylan—who I pissed off the minute we met by calling him Elfie—” Mom bursts out laughing, and I hold up my hands in self defense. “That’s how he was listed on the schedule! I didn’t know his real name or that being called Elfie would make him mad! If it pisses him off so much,whyis it on the schedule?” I run a hand through my hair, giving the strands a tug, and I know it makes them stand up, because Mom reaches up and smooths them down.

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