The Christmas Strike. Nikki Rivers

more garish out in the cold afternoon. And now I was really running late. I had two more clients to drop in on and I still wanted to start my Christmas shopping.

      As did everyone else in the county, apparently. When I finally got there, the discount store was packed. I lost a fingernail nabbing the last of the most popular video game of the year off the shelf for Matt and I’d hovered near a woman who was deciding over a sweater that I knew would be perfect for Natalie. When she put it back down and looked away, I swooped in like a hawk on a field mouse. Before I got into line at the checkout counter, on impulse I turned down the music aisle and started to search. There it was—our prom theme—on a compilation disk of seventies soft rock. I dropped it into my cart.

      The checkout lines were long. By the time I made it back to the car, I was exhausted, but I wrestled with the frustrating CD packaging anyway, losing another nail tip in the process. I wanted to hear that song again. Now.

      I sat in the parking lot, puffs of my warm breath visible in the cold car, and listened to the song. Twice. I felt like I wanted to cry. Was it for the loss of the girl who’d danced with such hope in her heart? Was it for the woman who I was supposed to have become who’d never quite materialized?

      God, this was insane, I thought. Sitting in a cold car—a rusty station wagon no less—listening to love songs from my high school years.

      I popped the CD out of the player. It immediately switched to a radio station playing all Christmas music. I bit the bottom of my lip and shook my head. “Abby,” I whispered into the icy air, “you picked a great time to have a midlife crisis.”

      I drove home, hauled the packages into the house, stowed them in the front hall closet and went into the living room.

      “Well, it’s about time,” Gwen said from the sofa. “I’m starving.”

      Natalie looked up from her magazine. “I’m starving, too. And, Ma, the kids keep asking me when you’re going to decorate for Christmas.”

      “Yeah, don’t you usually have a tree by now, Mother? By the way,” Gwen added, a secret little smile on her face, “David called seven times today. I think your answering machine is almost full.”

      The kids suddenly ran down the stairs, squealing, and Nat shushed them. “Daddy’s napping.”

      You know that saying I saw red? Well, it’s true. I saw red. And we’re not talking festive lights here. I think it was the red of my blood boiling up to my eyeballs.

      “What does Daddy have to nap for?” I asked testily. “He’s not working. And he’s certainly not doing anything around here.”

      Natalie got up and quickly glanced at the stairs. “Ma—shh, he’ll hear you.”

      “Nat, I think Jeremy already knows he’s not working. And he sure as hell knows he’s not doing anything around here.”

      She cocked her hip. “What the hell has gotten into you?”

      “That’s another thing. Will you please watch your mouth? You gripe if anyone else uses bad language in front of the kids but you’re the worst of all.”

      Gwen, wearing yet another expensive nightgown and robe ensemble, snickered from the sofa.

      I swung around to face her. “And you. You’re a grown woman. Isn’t it time you got dressed and started doing something around here, too? Like maybe, for instance, making dinner?”

      From the look on her face you’d think I’d asked her to sign up for boot camp.

      Nat gave a short laugh. “Princess Gwen doesn’t cook, Ma. She orders.”

      “Then what about you? You can’t make a damn box of macaroni and cheese for your kids?”

      As if they’d been cued from offstage, the kids came running through the living room again.

      “Grandma! When can we get a Christmas tree?”

      “Do you know where my skates are?”

      “Can I have a sleepover this weekend?”

      “Aren’t you going to put stuff up outside this year, Grandma?”

      “You know what,” I said as I eyed the other adults in the room, “I think you’d better start asking your parents those questions—or Auntie Gwen—because as of right now, Grandma is on strike.”

      “What?” Both Nat and Gwen asked in unison.

      “I am going on strike,” I enunciated clearly. It wasn’t something I’d planned to say. But while my blood boiled, the story Mike had told us on Friday at the diner bubbled up with it. If a man could go on strike against his wife for lack of affection, why couldn’t a woman go on strike against her family for lack of cooperation? “As of this moment, all of you are on your own. For meals. For laundry. For Christmas.”

      There was a collective gasp.

      “That’s right,” I reiterated. “No tree. No decorations. No cookies. I. Am. On. Strike.”

      I crossed the hall, passed through the dining room, went through to the kitchen, grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerator, poured cereal into a bowl, added milk, grabbed a spoon and took it into the maid’s room where I sat in my mother’s old rocking chair and dined on Special K and silence.

      Except the cereal lasted longer than the silence. Soon the kitchen just outside my door erupted into the noise of six hungry people who weren’t even sure where the butter was kept. I listened to them as I crunched, willing myself not to go to their rescue. One question kept running over and over again in my brain. When a woman finally decides that her time has come, where the hell is she supposed to spend it?

      CHAPTER 3

      By the second day of my strike I knew I was in trouble. It was going to be impossible to keep from crossing the picket line if I stayed under the same roof as the rest of my family. For one thing, the maid’s room was far from soundproof. I could hear the chaos going on around me as I rocked in my mother’s old rocking chair, trying to talk myself into staying put.

      Mealtimes were the worst. I tried to secrete myself in my office before anyone showed up looking for food. But I was forced to be an auditory witness to breakfast for two days in a row now because I’d overslept. It was like listening to a bad sitcom without the picture. I kept wondering why I didn’t just go out there and make them all some damned eggs. Although maybe Natalie got some of her defiance from me because, ultimately, I refused to budge, unpleasant as it was.

      My family needed to learn a lesson and I needed—what did I need? Space, certainly. Although the confines of the tiny room weren’t exactly what I had in mind. I needed to not be taken for granted. And, above all, I needed to not be needed for a change. To just be. Peace and quiet. Ah, what a luxury that would be I thought just as the doorbell rang.

      I was on strike so I didn’t make a move to answer it.

      It kept ringing.

      I kept rocking.

      Finally, whoever it was started to bang on the front door. Where was everybody? I looked at the alarm clock on the small table next to the bed. It was already after nine in the morning so the kids were probably in school. Nat was probably working an early shift or running to the store for a few more gallons of peanut butter. That still left Jeremy and Gwen. Gwen was undoubtedly up in her room waiting for me to come to my senses and show up with a tray of food and some sympathy. And if Jeremy wasn’t slumped on the sofa, he had his head in the refrigerator. One of them would eventually act, wouldn’t they?

      The pounding went on.

      “All right, all right,” I yelled. “I’m coming!”

      I didn’t run into anyone while I made my way to the front hall. Someone could be upstairs yet I’d never know it because of the racket our visitor was making on the front porch.

      I flung the front