"Mrs. Santa", a story I wrote in 2020

 © Ruth Latta, 2020, 2022

MRS. SANTA

When Tess hears the train whistle behind her in the mall she jumps and turns. It’s a train all right, a child-size one. The driver, in a conductor’s uniform with holly in his cap, guides the sleek, black locomotive past the shoppers. It’s a disguised garden tractor but it keeps its secret well. Children’s faces, and an occasional adult’s, as well, beam from the two brightly painted cars and red caboose.  

The train makes its way around the food court where Tess is heading for coffee. Though still unnerved by the way it crept up on her, she thinks it’s awfully cute.  If Leo, Jax and Lacey lived near, she’d bribe them to go on it with her, but her grandchildren live half a continent away and except for seven year old Lacey, are a bit too old for kiddy rides.

Sipping her coffee, she hears the whistle again, in the distance, but coming closer. The train is retracing its route instead of circling through the mall in a circle. A man at a nearby table who looks a little like her friend Mel, sings: “I hear the train a’comin’/ it’s comin’ round the bend,” and the people close by, including Tess, who know Johnny Cash’s famous song, burst out laughing. Then the train does come around the potted ficuses, and the children wave.

As Tess waves she blinks back tears. She misses the kids. She gathers up her parcels, which will have to be mailed pronto if the children are to receive them December 25th. 

The mall, near Tess’s condo, is home to many services she uses, including a dentist, hair dresser and pharmacy, but not a postal outlet. She doesn’t return to the mall for several days, though, as she is back at the library filling in. Though retired, she gets called to substitute for full-time library staff on leave.  She used to manage this branch library and knows many of the clients by name. 

She met Mel when he sought her help with an interlibrary loan, and they’ve been seeing each other these past few months outside of the library. When he comes in they are both very formal with each other; in private, much less so.  He doesn’t come in that day, but a book club participant pauses to praise Tess’s last column in the local magazine, On the Town.  Tess thanks her, saying that now, in retirement, she has time to write. As she speaks, she realizes that the Santa train could be her next topic. Sure it’s designed to draw parents - shoppers -  to the mall, but it gives children, parents and onlookers real joy. Other enclosed malls  should have holiday trains.

During her break, Tess phones her editor and gets an O.K., so the following morning  she goes to the train’s embarkation point in the mall. Already, a handful of mothers and children are lined up to buy tickets from a young woman in an elf costume. The driver poses for a photo in front of the engine, then hops in  and sings out, “All aboard!”

“Wait!” calls a voice down the mall. All eyes turn to a jolly-looking woman in a red sweater and black tights. Although her short white hair stands up all over her head like a dandelion gone to seed,  she wears a sparkling headband that matches her corsage. Her feet also sparkle, in red-sequined sneakers. The driver and elf-woman look surprised.

“You can’t leave without Mrs. Santa!” puffs the woman as she climbs into the caboose with a mother and little boy.  As the train starts, the child asks, “Are you really Mrs. Santa?”

“Absolutely.  Santa’s so busy  that he asked me to come and ride the train and ask children what they’d like for Christmas.”

The little lad’s eyes widen. “I want a Tonka backhoe,” he declares, as the train rolls away.

Tess waits and when the train returns ten minutes later, she goes up to Mrs. Santa and introduces herself as an  On the Town columnist.

“Have you worked here long?” she asks.

“Oh, I’m just a volunteer. Call me Joy. I love making kids happy because I miss my grandchildren so much.”

“I miss mine too,” Tess confesses, “but you’ve found a wonderful way to channel your feelings.”

Joy will be perfect as the focal point of Tess’s article.

“After my husband died I tried various volunteer activities,” Joy explains. “I went through the police record check in order to volunteer in a school, but there I was assigned to prepare snacks and do photocopying. Not much contact with the kids.  I’ve packed baskets for the needy and repaired donated toys, but what I really love is interacting with little ones. I love the Santa train. The other day, one of the kiddies called me  ‘Grandma’.  Climb aboard, won’t you?” 

Crowded in the caboose with Joy, Tess finds conversation impossible, drowned out by piped-in music and shoppers’ voices, so she  just enjoys the ride. At the end of the journey, children gather around Joy, so Tess says she’ll  be back tomorrow around noon to interview her and take a picture. Surrounded by kids, Joy beams and nods.

The following morning Tess goes to the hairdresser, as that evening, she and Mel are going as a couple to a festive pot-luck at her  church. For years after her divorce, until her daughter, Sam, grew up, she avoided men except as colleagues. Then Mel turned up at the library. After their first conversation, sorting out the interlibrary loan problem, he went through the arduous process to qualify as a  library volunteer. Then he volunteered to mentor students in the library’s homework club. Whenever he was in the library he always said hello to Tess, and one day, after she’d been absent for a while, he said he’d missed her.  As she explained that she was retired, just a part-timer called in occasionally now, it occurred to her that he might be coming to the library to see her. 

When he paid her for a used copy of Brooklyn from the “For Sale” shelf, he asked if she’d seen the movie. Lying, she said, “No,” and when he invited her to see it at a second run theatre on Bank Street, she said she’d love to. They’ve been going out long enough now to laugh at his timidity and her obtuseness. She  looks forward to telling him about the terrific story idea she got at the mall.

After leaving the hair salon, she hurries to the train stop and finds the engineer and the elf-girl chatting. Joy isn’t there yet. They’re happy to pose for a photo and talk about their work, but they’re not as colourful as Mrs. Santa.  Children and parents start lining up. Tess starts to leave the area, then, then spies Joy coming out of a store just as the whistle blows.  As Joy waves and bounds toward the train, Tess gets ready to snap a picture. Joy springs into one of the coaches, and  as Tess presses the shutter, she bends to coo at a baby, and her face is hidden.

Tess finds a bench and  waits, but when the train returns, Joy isn’t on it. 

“What happened to Mrs. Santa?” she asks the driver.

“Who?”

“The woman with the  red sweater and sparkling sneakers.”

“Oh,” says the elf, “she got out over on the other side of the building, near the washrooms.”

“Is she coming back to work today?”

“I don’t know her schedule. She’s new.”

They advise Tess to go to the mall service desk, where she says she wants to interview Joy, the volunteer playing Mrs. Santa on the toy train. If she leaves her phone number, will the mall management ask Joy to contact her?

The receptionist looks mystified. 

“Volunteers? There are no volunteers, only paid employees. And there’s no Mrs. Santa this year, just Santa and elves.”

Tess gasps.  Joy, so engaging, so caring, so confident, has taken on a role with no authorization. In this day and age, is she crazy?

She seemed sincere in her delight in the company of the young train riders. Maybe she truly misses her grandchildren and yearns for kids, but  clearly it has got out of hand. Will she snatch an infant from the train?  Should that mother with the baby have tightened her grip on it when Joy was near?

She goes back to the train depot, sits on a bench, and clasps her hands to stop them from shaking.  She felt an instant rapport with Joy; they seemed like birds of a feather, and God help her, maybe they are. The line that separates her yearning for her kids, and what Joy has done, is a fine one.  She misses her grandchildren terribly, and can see how  someone with little going on in her life might loop the loop. She wonders why Joy doesn’t see her grandkids.  Maybe she’s forbidden by law to come near them.

“I’m just having a blue Christmas without them,” she tells herself. She knows she’ll see her grandchildren again.  She Zooms with them all the time. She knows it was best for Sam and Chris to move to Vancouver last year when Chris got that fabulous job offer.  Flying back east for Christmas would be time consuming and expensive, and it’s only fair that the other grandparents in Kelowna have a family Christmas this year, since Tess has had more than her share of Christmases with the kids up until now. Still, the thought of not seeing them at this special time of year makes her eyes blur with tears.

That evening she acts cheerful at the potluck dinner, but afterwards, when Mel drives her home, he asks what’s bothering her. At home she tells him about Mrs. Santa Claus on the train.

“I had no idea she was a nut-case, ” she says.  “I felt a kinship with her, because I miss my own grandchildren so much. It makes me shiver that I understand Joy so well, if that’s even her name.” 

Mel reaches for her hand. “When do your daughter and her family get back to Vancouver from Kelowna?”

“I think on December 27th.”

“Why don’t we go and see them?” he says. “We’ll have Christmas together as planned, then fly out and stay in a hotel. My treat.”

Tess starts to cry. Between sobs she tells him he’s the best man on earth.

In the new year,  Mel moves into her condo, and while they’re getting settled she turns down opportunities to fill in at the library. In late February, however, she responds to a call and goes in,  because the kids are coming east for March break and she wants a bit of extra money.

Before the library opens to the public that day, the young branch manager tells Tess about a change in schedule. Mom-and-tot story hour has been moved to  10:00 that morning.

“ We have a wonderful new volunteer who has taken charge of it,” she says. “A perky grandmother who loves children  and dresses in such cheerful colours.” 

Tess stops breathing for a moment. What if it’s Joy?

But it isn’t. It’s a friendly-looking woman with shoulder-length, platinum hair, in a hot pink blazer with matching running shoes.  Peeping in at the meeting room door, Tess is relieved, yet at the same time, strangely disappointed.