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THE THIEF, by Bev Rees

The mall is brightly lit for Christmas, though it’s just three weeks past Halloween. Plastic wreaths hang down on wires, full of shiny balls and blinking lights. Gert O’Bannon comes through the door at precisely half-past ten, a little creaky, but you could set your watches by her.

She passes the laughing Santa, ho, ho, ho, and his belly, girded by a shiny plastic belt, shakes like a bowl of jelly. Occasionally his batteries run down and his ho, ho, hos turn into one long groan, until he is completely silent. Gert is glad for the change of scenery; enough of witches’ hats and orange jack-o’-lanterns, enough of waxy little puritans with wicks sprouting from their dreary heads.

Gert has a route she follows up the center of the mall. She passes the entrances to ladies’ garments, displayed on anorexic mannequins. Mouths pout on heads thrust forward, and bony hips do likewise. She moseys past “The Casual Man.” Jeans and tee-shirts are tacked on headless wire forms, and look like they’ve been washed a hundred times, and never ironed. Gert addresses her reflection in the plate glass window. In my day, when you bought something, you wanted it to look brand spanking new. Not all wrinkled up and faded like some old cast-off of an older sibling.

She always finds the kitchen shop challenging. All kinds of newfangled gadgets, displayed in the window, stare back at her. Gert hates to admit it, but she hasn’t the slightest notion what they are for. But she isn’t going in the shop and embarrass herself by asking. She enjoys looking at the fancy dishes though, and she never gives the computer store a passing glance. Why should she? The Internet is not a part of her life. She wanders past the nail salon, cupping her hand over her mouth and nose. She is fascinated by the women who sit there, all shapes and sizes, as nails get pasted on by gloved hands and masked faces.

Right on schedule she goes straight to “Cindy’s Cinnamon,” just about the best part of her day. The sugary icing clings to her lips like a gift from Heaven. She takes three creamers, pulls off the tiny paper covers, and watches the cream twirl this way and that way as it hits the hot black liquid. She watches the sugar crystals drizzle out of the packet and disappear into the coffee. This ritual over, she settles down and watches all the people, amazed at how different they all are––and yet, how much the same.

* * * *

Gert O’Bannon’s life was never easy. She grew up in Pennsylvania on a miserly, rock-strewn farm where the winters are bitter. A long and sorry tale of cold and hunger. When she thinks of it, which she tries hard not to do, she considers it a miracle that any of them survived.

She and her sisters grew up half-starved in more ways than one: an alcoholic father, a defeated mother, and the truant officer forever pounding on the door. She marvels that she’s outlived the whole damn bunch of them. And what did she do but turn around and marry another heavy drinker, whose pilot light, early on, blew out. She had thought she was escaping, but she jumped from the pot in to the frying pan. Her only child was in prison, and at seventy-two what was a mother to do?

Walk the mall and eat cinnamon buns, that’s what. A year ago she nearly died of pneumonia, the best stroke of luck she ever had. A caring doctor alerted the Social Services, and that’s how she got out of that cold rat-trap of a house. At Senior Towers the registers spewed glorious hot-air day and night.

* * * *

Christmas Eve arrives with snow, no blizzard or anything like that; just a sky as thick as pudding, releasing scattered snow flakes. Gert wakes up feeling blue; the weight of the coming holiday sits heavy on her head. She turns off the carols bursting forth on the radio. She does not want to be reminded of Christmases past on that farm of deep despair. This day is no different than the others, she firmly tells herself, and after all, she’s got her schedule––Christmas Eve or not.

She pulls her boots on, slips into an extra sweater, and into the balding Mackinaw an old guy at the Senior Center gave her. A green chenille hat is pulled down on her forehead, as far as she can get it and still see. Before she leaves, she glances at her corrugated face in the mirror hanging by the kitchen sink. Well, she says, the truth is I’m no beauty, but at least I’m warm. She waits outside the entrance by the van stop. The frigid air slaps her in the face.

Today, the van is almost empty. Many seniors prefer to keep to their armchairs and skip Christmas altogether. Memories of Christmases so long ago, good or bad, can be unbearable.

Inside the mall she makes her rounds, ending up at Cindy’s Cinnamon. Following her ritual to the letter, she settles down to watch the last minute shoppers. The young flitter around like birds to the tune of Christmas ditties. Their elders, dead serious with time so short, are burdened with the responsibility of putting the merry into Christmas.

As she sits there, an obscure hymn from her childhood, uninvited, comes drifting in. Yield not to temptation, for yielding is sin, each victory will help you, another one win––the tune keeps rolling around in her head and the words keep coming out of nowhere. Why? Why after all these years? Why now?

Puzzled, she begins to ponder the strangeness of things. For instance, why has she long been too timid to walk into any of the shops? Why has she settled for just peering in the windows? After all, she has never considered herself bashful. But why can’t she do it? Isn’t she as good as anybody? True, she admits, she doesn’t look like your average shopper. And true, she doesn’t own a credit card for the simple reason she doesn’t have any credit.

That’s it, she muses––you’ve got to have a credit card to count for something in this world. But she’s got a right to be who she is, hasn’t she? Credit card or not, hasn’t she has the right to walk around and look at all the pretty things like everybody else? A sudden spurt of defiance propels her to the kitchen shop. She walks in cautiously looking all around, and nobody pays her the least bit of attention as she picks up a garlic squeezer, and then a grapefruit spoon. Nobody comes up and says, “Can I help you, ma’am?”

Feeling rather heady, she tours the toy store. In the “Sport Depot,” a young man stares at her as she examines a snowshoe, but he soon turns his attention to another shopper. She hurries past the bookstore and into La Belle Femme, and dreamily wanders among the dresses. She gently touches the lovely satin nightgowns trimmed with dainty appliqué, and plushy robes the color of emeralds. There’s a constant din of conversation all around her: May I help you?––Perhaps your wife would like these, sir?––Charge it please and send it on to wrapping.

At this point, she begins to realize nobody is paying the least bit of attention to her. After all, what must she look like? An old woman wandering around in a discarded jacket and a hat that looks like a flowerpot turned upside down. She fingers skimpy black lace undies, half puzzled, half amused, and nobody cares. And then it hits her: Gert is struck by the fact she is, indeed––Invisible!

This revelation gives her confidence. She proceeds to the cosmetic counters, where they are currently doing a brisk business in expensive perfumes. On the backside of a large display she comes upon a rack of lipsticks in the most beautiful carved gold tubes. In her younger days she had often seen women with these fancy lipsticks, but hers, by necessity, were always in plain plastic tubes, always a dull green or an unpromising beige.

She picks one up and looks at the label: Foxy Fuchsia. Another? Hot Cinnamon, and so on until she comes to Spanish Carnation. Sure now, that nobody sees her, she releases the seal, pushes the stick up, and encounters the pink of her dreams, contained in one small glistening pillar. Like a flash she comes to her senses, and terrified, recaps the thing. Standing there frozen, she hesitates; Then gripping it tightly, she heads for the restrooms.

When all the hand-washers have departed, she opens the lipstick with unsteady hands, and applies it. And behold, the face she once knew, youthful and shining, smiles back at her. She steps away quickly before the image vanishes.

She sits in a booth, and tries to analyze her situation, and damn, if that hymn doesn’t wing its way back again. Yield not to temptation, for yielding is sin, la, la, la. Quite depressed now, and possibly angry, she sits there and makes her decision. She drops the tube into her handbag, and click––it is hers.

Riding home in the van, her secret concealed in the purse on her lap, she suddenly starts feeling giddy. Like a schoolgirl about to come down with the giggles. Perhaps, I’ll go to the Senior Center tomorrow, after all. Maybe I’ll even stand ‘round the piano with all the other old farts, and sing Frosty the Snowman. And why not enjoy a sugary cookie or two?

“And yes,” she says to the hat directly in front of her, “I will definitely ask Norman to come back in the van for a splash of Old Smuggler.”

“What did you say?” The neck of the head was too stiff to turn around fully.

“I said, ‘I’m gonna take Norman up to my room for a snort.’”

“Oh, that will be nice,” the hat says.