Christmas Overload

Story Info
A second job can be one too many at Christmas.
2.1k words
4.73
10.8k
3
Share this Story

Font Size

Default Font Size

Font Spacing

Default Font Spacing

Font Face

Default Font Face

Reading Theme

Default Theme (White)
You need to Log In or Sign Up to have your customization saved in your Literotica profile.
PUBLIC BETA

Note: You can change font size, font face, and turn on dark mode by clicking the "A" icon tab in the Story Info Box.

You can temporarily switch back to a Classic Literotica® experience during our ongoing public Beta testing. Please consider leaving feedback on issues you experience or suggest improvements.

Click here
olivias
olivias
36 Followers

Joyce had barely made it back to the apartment from the grocery store where she worked as a checkout clerk and tucked the ham she'd brought home—the last one in the store—before it was time to go pick up the Christmas cake she'd ordered from Gleesons before they closed. She had already been cutting her time short—she still had to go buy a tree and figure out where she'd stashed the ornaments and lights—and she hadn't gotten off shift when she expected to. She kicked herself for not remembering that Christmas Eve could be a mad house in the grocery store, particularly since they closed at 8:00 PM that night even though they usually stayed open around the clock.

She could have left on time, but they were shorthanded and the other clerks looked so frazzled with the last-minute rush. She'd decided to stay an extra fifteen minutes, and the next time she had looked up it was an hour later.

Now she was as frazzled as any of the other clerks and running terribly behind on setting up for Christmas. Christina would be getting in from her college late tonight, and Joyce wanted her otherwise dreary apartment to be all aglow with Christmas for her daughter.

She had jammed the ham in the refrigerator and was heading for the door when her cell phone buzzed. Joyce looked at the caller ID. It was Mrs. Franklin. No way she couldn't take this call.

Mrs. Franklin was one of Joyce's regulars from her other job—her second job. The job that provided the money that Joyce lived on. The money from her regular, full-time job all when to keeping Christina in college.

"Hello, Mrs. Franklin," she said as she exited the apartment and started down the two flights of stairs to the parking lot. "And a Merry Christmas to you."

"I don't know what I'll do, Joyce. I managed to pull the tree out of the attic, but I can't get it down the stairs—and I have no idea at all how to set it up. I told George just to put a plastic bag over it after last year, not to break it down. But there it is all boxed back up, and it's Christmas Eve, and I don't know how . . ."

"Hang on and don't try to pull it down the stairs yourself, Mrs. Franklin. I'll be right over."

It was this second job that was going to kill Joyce, she always thought. But then, each time she thought that, she bit her tongue. It was the second job—the people she helped—that had kept her going ever since Christina went off to college and, without knowing it, ripped that big hole in Joyce's life. Joyce couldn't any more let Mrs. Franklin drag a tree down to her living room and try to figure out how to put it together than she was able to say "You should have done this weeks ago" to Mrs. Devan earlier this afternoon when Joyce was going to make cookies but had been called out instead to take Mrs. Devan to do her Christmas shopping. Mrs. Franklin's life had been a fluttering "I didn't know that had to be done" ever since her George had died back in the spring.

So the cookies weren't made. Joyce had brought some home from the grocery store that were at least store made, although she knew Christina wouldn't be fooled into thinking they were homemade.

This happened to Joyce a lot since she'd taken on this second job. The service was called Helping Hand, and the people who worked for it had a list of clients—mostly the old and the infirm—who could, and did, call on them night and day to help with whatever they needed doing, from opening a tight-lidded jelly jar to wading around in a flooded basement looking for a water cutoff.

Joyce had thought it was a nifty idea and a needed service—and she still thought that. And she thought it was very nice that, on an hourly basis, it paid better than her grocery store clerk job. She had found, however, that, on the whole, it was more demanding and challenging than the grocery store job. It also, though, was more personally rewarding.

Mrs. Franklin didn't only want the tree put together; she needed someone—Joyce being that someone—to put the lights and ornaments on it and to do some more decorating of the living room as well.

It was while Joyce was finishing this up that she got the call from old Mr. Strang.

"I need you over here right now. It's an emergency."

Mr. Strang was never the one to waste words.

"What is it? What do you need done, Mr. S.?" Joyce asked.

"Can't say over the phone. But it's an emergency."

Everything was an emergency with Mr. Strang, but Joyce remembered that one time when he'd been this abrupt and unhelpful and Joyce had arrived to find him stuck in the bathtub—for two days before thinking of using the telephone his daughter had had installed right beside the tub. He hadn't put it there, he said. So why should he have to remember that someone else had?

"Don't bother to take off your coat. You have to take me out. It's an emergency." Mr. Strang was standing just inside his door, all bundled up, when Joyce arrived.

"What is it? Are you not feeling well. Palpitations? A tightness in your chest?" Mr. Strang was prone to believing he had any disease he heard of. But as far as Joyce could tell he was as healthy as a man twenty-five years younger. But, then, a sixty-year-old man could have a good reason to suddenly need to go to the emergency room.

"Need a ham. A pretty big one."

"You need a ham?"

"Yep. In case you haven't noticed, it's Christmas Eve."

"Yes, I'm aware of that, Mr. S. And being as how it's Christmas Eve—9:00 o'clock Christmas Eve now—I'm afraid we aren't going to find a grocery store open."

"How do ya know that?" Mr. Strang was giving Joyce a highly suspicious look. "Maybe you just don't want to make the effort to help me find a Christmas ham."

As well as being a slight hypochondriac, Mr. Strang was not particularly trusting or diplomatic. Joyce had broken through his cantankerous shell a long time ago, though, and found a fascinating man who had been both a rake and an adventurer in his youth.

"I'm a grocery clerk in my other life, Mr. S. You know that. I think that qualifies me for knowing what grocery stores carrying hams will be open at 9:00 o'clock on Christmas Eve. None of them, I'm afraid. I got the last ham at our store this evening myself, as a matter of fact."

He wasn't taking off his coat. He was just standing there, looking at Joyce expectantly.

This wasn't the greatest time for him to suddenly put his full trust in her, she thought. And then she also thought about what she'd just told him—that she'd bought the last ham her store had that very evening.

"Take your coat off and go back to your easy chair, Mr. S. I know where I can get a ham. I'll go get it and bring it to you."

Joyce was almost all the way back to Mr. Strang's apartment with her ham sitting on the car seat next to her, when her cell phone buzzed again. Joyce had a sudden impulse to roll the car window down and toss the phone out. It was Ms. Barden, her old elementary school teacher, who had found out that Joyce had gone to work for Helping Hands and then had insisted that her former student be assigned to her account.

Ms. Barden was a sweety, but she never had been able to keep track of where her eye glasses were or to be fully prepared for much of anything.

This evening was no exception.

"I have to have a cake baked in an hour for a party and I find I don't have everything I need. Can you help?"

"Sure, Ms. Barden," Joyce said with a sigh. The sigh wasn't really for Eve Barden. It was in remembrance that Joyce hadn't made it to Gleesons before closing to pick up that special cake she had told Christina she'd ordered. It had once been a tradition in their family—when they had been a happy family. Every Christmas Eve they'd get Christina whatever special cake Gleesons was making that year.

They hadn't done that for years, not since Eddie died, really. But Christina had mentioned it when she'd called about plans on getting home for Christmas, and Joyce had said they'd do that again. So she'd decided to splurge and ordered a special Gleesons Christmas cake. The cakes were so popular that people who hadn't made their order in time stood around at closing time, hoping that someone wouldn't pick up their cake. Some other family was probably already eating Christina's cake.

Joyce felt like crying, but she pulled herself together. She had a job to do. These old folks depended on her and she wouldn't let them down. It was too late not to let Christina down. And it wasn't just the cake. It was after nine, and Joyce didn't even have a tree yet.

Well, she'd see about a tree on the way home to get whatever Ms. Barden needed for her cake.

"What do you need, Ms. Barden? I'll bring it to you if I can find it at home."

"Flour and sugar mainly. And maybe a few eggs. Oh, and do you happen to have any vanilla?"

"I think I can rustle that up," Joyce answered with a little sigh.

"Oh, and I suppose it should have some icing. Maybe you have whatever goes into that."

"Yes, of course, Ms. Barden. I'll be right over."

"You might bring a recipe book too. I'm a little rusty at this. In fact, I'm not sure I've ever made a cake."

Joyce stopped at three tree lots—three mostly empty Christmas tree lots—on her way home to get the ingredients and a recipe book for Ms. Barden's Christmas cake.

And when she got home with a scrawny little tree with bare branches on one side she was fuming at herself for not having bought something at the first stand and then having run out of time. Christina would be home about midnight, and there was barely time to get to Ms. Barden's, make the cake, and then drive Ms. Barden to her party. The woman had dropped the fact that the party wasn't at her house, and Ms. Barden didn't drive.

It was 11:15 when Joyce got Ms. Barden and her Christmas cake to her party, which turned out to be at Mrs. Franklin's house.

"Here you are, Ms. Barden. Hope you have a great party."

"Could you carry the cake in for me, dear? I'm so afraid I'll drop it."

More likely you'll forget to take it, is was Joyce was thinking. But she was so resigned to having completely failed to get Christmas set up for Christina—having remembered when she thought back on taking Mrs. Devan Christmas shopping that afternoon that she'd forgotten to buy the gift for Christina she'd thought so long and hard on getting—that she merely smiled and opened her car door. "Sure thing, Mrs. Barden. You go on up to the door, and I'll bring in the cake."

When Joyce reached the door, so preoccupied was she with searching her mind on what she'd do with the tree in the fifteen minutes she'd probably have between getting home and Christina arriving, that the three-part harmony "Surprise!" that rang out from inside Mrs. Franklin's living room didn't register at first.

What registered first was wondering what Christina was doing in Mrs. Franklin's parlor, her smile lighting up the room, and holding one of the Gleesons special Christmas cakes. Joyce's eyes then swept the room, picking out Mrs. Franklin standing in the light of the tree that they'd both decorated earlier that evening; Mr. Strang, holding his—no, her—ham on a platter; Mrs. Devan, with an armful of wrapped presents; and even a couple of her checkout clerk girlfriends from the grocery store.

Christina spoke into the void that Joyce, throat choked with emotion, couldn't fill with her own voice.

"I hope you don't mind, Mom. Your friends here contacted me and told me what a help you'd been to them all year and that they wanted to do something special for you on Christmas Eve. I told them I couldn't be happier than to share my Christmas with you with your larger family."

olivias
olivias
36 Followers
Please rate this story
The author would appreciate your feedback.
  • COMMENTS
Anonymous
Our Comments Policy is available in the Lit FAQ
Post as:
Anonymous
6 Comments
chytownchytownover 1 year ago

*****Something is in my eyes must be dust or something💝💝💝. Great read. Thanks for sharing

AnonymousAnonymousabout 7 years ago
OMG

You make me cry...

AnonymousAnonymousover 9 years ago
Awesome

This was excellent.

memorable_eventmemorable_eventabout 11 years ago
Great story

I really enjoyed this story. Thanks for reminding us of what matters most in life.

TXanyTXanyabout 12 years ago
Isn't fun to get your own stuff back as a gift?

The best going away gift is to take a painting off someone's wall, and then wrap it up and give it to them when the go! Exciting, huh?....kinda like getting your own ham back and the cake you made with your ingredients....oh well, they were only really doing it to keep you busy...

I did like the story!

Show More
Share this Story

Similar Stories

Josiah, Emergent Sometimes love is the only reason to heal.in Romance
The Expat A man falls in love with a mother and her child.in Romance
A Summer Without End Reid finds more than tranquility at his parent's beach house.in Romance
Pennies It was a chance meeting.in Romance
Her Fairy-Tale Life She saves his life and he transforms hers.in Romance
More Stories