“Excellent choices,” I say, scooping them up and taking them to the register. It’s ten cubes in all, so another thirty dollars of profit today. Woohoo!
I wrap up the gift and make it look pretty, then I let him borrow a pen so he can sign the card to his mom, which I also sold him from our card section. ($5.00)
“Thank you so much for stopping by,” I say as I hand him his receipt. This time my cheerful smile isn’t just some fake charade I put on in the name of customer service. I’m truly thrilled that he chose to spend a ton of money here.
“No, thank you,” he says. “You saved my ass today.
You saved my ass too, I think. An eighty dollar sale is a big deal to us these days. Most days we don’t even sell close to a hundred dollars total. “If your mom likes it, make sure to tell her about the store,” I say. “In fact…tell everyone you know.”
He laughs and gives me a little salute. “Will do. Have a good night.”
“You too!” I call out as he leaves the store, the bells on the door handle jingling behind him. I can’t remember the last time I had such an easy sale, and for so much money. We’ve always marketed to the trinket-loving crowd, and our customers are mostly middle-aged women and teachers, but maybe we should shift our marketing strategy.
Are you a shitty child to your hard working parents? Buy them gifts at The Magpie! We even gift wrap so you don’t have to do a thing but collect the praise from your overworked parents!
I chuckle to myself as I flip off the lights and lock up the store. The Vintage is a popular strip along the boardwalk in Sterling, Texas. It’s been here since the fifties, and it used to be pretty famous, but then some of the stores got old and run down and people stopped coming. In the eighties, someone revitalized the strip and businesses stared moving in again. There are restaurants and gift shops and unique hobby stores for people who like model trains and comic books and stuff. A couple of the restaurants have even been featured on TV shows about quirky or unique eateries. Lately though, a few stores have had to shut down because of the shitty economy, and this rich guy named Jack Brown bought them up and turned them into businesses.
Not cool businesses like stores or restaurants, but stupid things like real estate offices or dental offices or something lame. It doesn’t make any sense because people come to the boardwalk to hang out and shop, not to go see their dentist. A lot of the older store owners are annoyed by it, but my mom says there’s nothing you can do. Once the little shop goes out of business, anyone can buy it and turn it into anything they want.
My mom opened The Magpie in 2001 with my dad just after I was born. Well, he’s not really my dad. He’s not even my step dad anymore, since they divorced a few years ago. I was the product of a one night stand, and my mom says she has no idea who my real dad is. She’d met and married Ed Reese when I was a year old, and he was the only dad I’ve ever known.
But now I’m glad we’re not related. After the divorce, he stopped coming around. Stopped calling me. Stopped even caring that I exist. Some dad. I don’t know the specifics of what made them decide to divorce, and Mom has never talked about it. Most of my friends are relieved when their parents split up because they’d been fighting for months and it was obvious they wouldn’t resolve things, but that’s not how it worked for me. Mom and Dad never fought, at least not in front of me. Sure, they were kind of boring, spending their evenings watching TV on the couch, but I didn’t even know anything was wrong. One day I came home from working at the store and Mom was sitting on the kitchen table.
“It’s over,” she’d said.
“What?” For a moment, I feared she was going to close the store. Sales had been doing downhill for months and it was a constant worry on my mind.
“Ed’s gone.”
“Oh my God,” I said, fear trickling down my spine. Did the only dad I’d ever known decide to leave? Was this really happening?
Mom shrugged, her eyes never leaving the table in front of her. “It was mutual. We’re getting divorced.”
“Oh,” I’d said, studying her face for any sign that she was heartbroken. This was a life changing thing, and it was one of those capital B Big Deals. There was nothing sad about her though. Just my mom’s normal expression; bored and a little annoyed, her short brown hair frizzy on the sides because she hadn’t bothered brushing it. In the blink of an eye, my step dad was out of my life and I never saw him again. We never talked about it. Mom just went on with life as if he’d never been there at all.
I heave a sigh as I walk home from work. My dad can disappear forever for all I care. Mom and I don’t need him. And I definitely shouldn’t be wasting my life thinking about him and wondering what he’s up to. I have bigger people to worry about.
Like Jack Brown.
Chapter 2
I pull my jacket tightly closed. Here in Texas, it’s usually hot all the time, and it’s easy to forget that sometimes we actually do get cold weather. It’s the third week of February, which isn’t quite considered spring yet, and it’s gotten much colder since the sun went down. I did not think about this fact of weather and daylight when I offered to keep the store open another hour. In the summer, the sun stays out until at least eight. Sometimes I’ll head to the beach after the store closes and then walk home, and I’ve never had trouble in the past. But today it’s freezing, and I am an idiot. I’m wearing jeans that can hardly be called denim because the material is so thin, and a T-shirt that’s even thinner than that. My sweater is more like an over shirt with long sleeves, made from a slightly thicker cotton fabric. Ugh.
My teeth chatter as I make my way up the boardwalk and down a side street toward the north side of Sterling. We live about three miles away, which is a fun leisurely walk in the summer time and an even quicker bike ride.
Right now I have neither bike or leisure. I suck it up though, not wanting to call Mom to come get me. She’s probably soaking in the tub by now, drinking a glass of red wine that’s become as comforting to her as her late night TV shows. Of all the ways we’ve had to cut back on expenses in the last couple of years, the cheap bottles of wine are always still on the grocery list.
Mom’s not a drunk or anything. It’s more of a lonely habit for her, I think. She acted fine when she split from my dad, but it’s been nearly three years since then and every day she seems a little sadder. The lines on her forehead deepen ever so slightly, and her hair gets a little grayer when I’m not paying attention. Right now my mom looks like the sad woman she should have been when she got divorced. I wonder if it’s all catching up to her.
Not to mention the stress of the store. I knew the struggles of a small business back when my parents were married because they’d occasionally complain about how Wal-Mart ruins the little people and how big chains undercut them on prices. But things were good. We went on a vacation each summer and I got great birthday gifts each year. It probably helped that my step-dad had his own job on the side working for the electric company.
But now all of that is gone, and our stability hangs on each month based on how many people come into the store and choose to buy something. I think that’s probably the real reason Mom is in this funk lately. It’s like the more the store suffers, the less she cares. She no longer puts everything she has into keeping it running. Instead, she mopes around the place, doing a half assed job of everything.
It’s been left up to me to pick up the slack. When I’m not stuck at school or working at The Magpie, I’m online, searching up ways to save a dying business. I’m learning marketing and promotion and advertising. Unfortunately, most of those things cost money. I recently had the genius idea to buy us a billboard that overlooks the beach.
Until I realized those things cost six thousand dollars.
I cringe just thinking about that day. It was two weeks ago and I was sitting on one of the benches near the boardwalk while on lunch break from the store. The billboard directly above me used to advertise the Smoothie King across the street, but now it was empty, with a big “Advertise Here” sign on it. I called the number and talked to a woman who sounded like I’d just woken her up from a nap at one in the afternoon.
