Standing in the Rainbow - Fannie Flagg [77]
On the way back home they passed the Civitan lot again just in time to meet Norma and Macky Warren coming out with the pink Christmas tree. “Hi,” Norma said cheerfully. “Look what we just got. Isn’t it the cutest thing you have ever seen?”
Mother Smith was speechless for the moment but Dorothy jumped in. “Oh, it is. We were looking at it earlier this evening ourselves,” she said, not telling a lie.
Norma said, “Please tell Anna Lee to call me when she gets home.”
“We will.”
After they had gone on, Mother Smith remarked, “I’d give a million dollars to see Ida Jenkins’s face when she sees that thing in Norma’s living room.”
When they got home everyone was tired and went straight to bed and Bobby dreamed about the Christmas window all night. He was inside ice-skating on the mirror pond, twirling around and around, with the pretty little girl in the short red skirt and white skates, but in his dreams she looked a lot like Claudia Albetta, the little girl that sat in front of him in class.
Three days before, Jimmy had wandered around Morgan Brothers department store looking for last-minute presents but had found that he was having trouble. A saleswoman watched him as he picked up one thing after another and put it back down. Finally, she went over to him. “Jimmy, why don’t you tell me what you are looking for,” she said. “Maybe I can help you.”
“Well . . .”
“Who are you trying to buy something for?”
Jimmy was too embarrassed to tell her but did manage to say that he needed the help. “It’s for a lady.”
“I see. Well, how about a nice scarf?” she said. “A scarf is always nice. What color hair does she have?”
“Brown,” he murmured as he followed her over to the scarf counter.
The Christmas Show
After school the next day, Betty Raye and Bobby started unwrapping the Christmas ornaments and Doc came home with three new strings of glass candle lights that bubbled. He thought bubbling ones would look nice with the blinking lights they already had.
When Jimmy came in, he and Doc hung on the front door the splendid fresh holly Christmas wreath that one of Dorothy’s sponsors, Cecil Figgs, had sent. After dinner they all went into the living room and started to decorate—all except Mother Smith. It was her job to sit on the sofa and point out what was needed and where. By nine o’clock that night, cream-colored cardboard candleholders with blue lights were in every window, with strings of red cutout paper letters that said MERRY CHRISTMAS hung over all the doors, and the tree in the corner was covered with green and red satin balls, and shiny red and dark blue ones with white frosted strips around them. They finished it off with silver tinsel, strings of popcorn, and, on top, a cocker spaniel angel with wings, which one of Dorothy’s listeners had sent her in honor of Princess Mary Margaret.
The next morning at 8:54 A.M. Dixie Cahill led all sixteen of her dance students in full costume and makeup down the stairs of the Dixie Cahill School of Tap and Twirl and out onto the sidewalk. She lined them up single file, blew her whistle, and marched them through town and over to The Neighbor Dorothy Show to make their annual Christmas appearance. Since they were all wearing bells on their tap shoes, they made quite a racket as they marched down the street. Ed the barber said they sounded like a herd of reindeer going by. A few minutes later they marched up the porch stairs and into Neighbor Dorothy’s house