Ch1

Chapter 1

The day dawned bleak and overcast, a typical gloomy winter day. I glanced out the window at the innocent looking clouds and wondered if this would be the year we’d have a brown Christmas. For some reason, the thought of missing out on snow this Christmas bothered me. It bothered me a lot, and that bothered me. I hated the snow and cold, after all, so why did it matter?

As I was contemplating getting out of bed, my fuzz ball of a house cat, Nell, jumped on the bed in a cacophony of purring and kneading claws. She was always so disgustingly perky in the mornings, a sharp contrast to my permascowl. I gave her a perfunctory pat on the head while I untangled myself from the sheets and headed to the fount of life, the coffee maker.

While coffee was brewing—why did it always seem to take three times as long in the morning?—I dumped some kibble in Nell’s bowl and picked out my clothes for work. I enjoyed going to work. It broke up the monotony of my days and helped time pass more quickly. These days, time passing more quickly was about all I asked for.

It’s not that life was bad, necessarily, but it definitely wasn’t good. At 28, I was single, basically friendless and living in a tiny town in northern Idaho. Wallace didn’t have much of anything, but its one saving grace was the dirt cheap rent I paid. For a mere $300, I had a one bedroom converted apartment over the top of Bill and Judy Messing’s garage, and that included utilities. Bill and Judy were early retirees and spent a lot of their time traveling the world. When they were home, they doted on me like anxious grandparents, always offering to feed me. They even went so far as to try to set me up with Bill’s nephew once, a mistake all of us hoped they wouldn’t try to repeat.

I dressed quickly in my standard uniform, a semi-nice shirt and some comfortable blue jeans. My boss was blessedly casual about work dress. I wanted to care about how I looked, but the way I figured, nice clothes won’t hide the fat so why waste money?

I wolfed down a big bowl of special K, envisioning as always the supermodel skinny I hoped to obtain by eating it. So far, I was 0 for 30 pounds in my weight loss goal, but at some point my metabolism would take over and a miracle would happen, right? I filled up my travel mug of coffee, grabbed the sack lunch I’d packed the night before, and headed out the door to my awaiting chariot, a ‘99 Kia Sephia, complete with hail dimples all over the hood and trunk from the freak storm last year.

Work was a quick jaunt on the freeway from Wallace to Kellogg. I pulled into the perpetually empty parking lot outside the office, a travel agency called Travel with Leslie and owned by—you’re never going to guess it—a woman named Leslie Connor. I’d never been able to figure out the mystery of the parking lot. It was just a small area that used to be a side yard for the house now occupied by the travel agency, but no matter how many people came through the doors of the office, I couldn’t remember ever seeing a car park there. What did most travelers do, fly in by broom? Leslie thought I was ridiculous, but she had been forced to admit that she’d never seen a car park in the parking lot, either. These are the things you contemplate on a long, slow day at work when Facebook has nothing new to offer and you’ve Googled everything you’ve ever wanted to know.

As I walked through the door to the front room, I was greeted by the now highly annoying tune of Jingle Bells from the motion activated Santa camped out on the porch. Not that there was anything wrong with Santa, or Jingle Bells, or Christmas, but the way they started playing carols on the radio and decorating at big stores back in October these days meant that by the time Christmas actually arrived, I was so sick of it I could have voted to cancel it…indefinitely.

Hearing the incessant Santa heralding my arrival, Leslie called a distracted, “Good morning, Marjory!” from the corner desk of the front room, or at least I assumed that’s where she was. I couldn’t see her—or any surface in the room, for that matter—for the heaping mound of toys covering the desk I knew must still be there in front of her. Bless her heart, I thought to myself, imagining I sounded like an old lady gossiping in a salon, she’s helping again. The sarcasm dripped from my internal voice, but thankfully the greeting I called out to her sounded cheerful and sincere in my ears, “Hey, Leslie! What are you working on this time?”

Popping out like a well-manicured Jack in the box, Leslie sighed in exasperation and explained, “The Kellogg 4 Kids group needed someone to help wrap presents for the Christmas toy drive. We’re so busy at the office right now, but how could I turn them down? They needed me.”

In three years of working here, I don’t think I’d ever seen Leslie looking anything other than perfect. In her mid-40s, she had a sense of style and fashion that was timeless. I secretly envied her perfection - makeup that looked done by a professional and hair that was never out of place. As if all that perfection weren’t enough, she was also one of the kindest, most caring people I’d ever met, which meant there was always some charity, fundraiser or something she was working on. The residents of Kellogg had her pegged - she was the first one they turned to when things needed to be accomplished.

Never one to disappoint, Leslie pulled events together like some sort of urban soccer mom magician. You could almost always tell the events that Leslie had coordinated; they were nearly perfect. Which is why she was constantly busy, because everyone wanted to hook Leslie and drag her into their project.

In addition to helping with all of this charity work, my job was to (wo)man the front desk. It wasn’t like there was a ton of traffic and Leslie spent much of her time on the phone. I answered phones, greeted newcomers and wrote updates on the official blog of Travel with Leslie. Work was rarely busy, but the time passed pleasantly enough. If there were no customers, I’d surf the web, play games on Facebook and pursue my one passion in life - spinning yarn. Most of the regular customers were used to my spinning wheel camped out in what passed for our lobby, but its presence was always good for a few minutes of conversation with new clients.

I know what you’re probably thinking: “Oh, she’s one of those types.” Yeah, yeah, I have a cat and a lot of yarn, but I think I’m too young to be a crazy cat lady. At least I hope so. Let’s revisit this topic if I ever have 19 cats. But in all seriousness, if you have never tried spinning yarn, you’re missing out on something pretty special. It’s like meditation; you get to clear your mind and relax, but in the end you have a prize—finished yarn—instead of just a sore butt from sitting on a yoga mat, or whatever it is meditating people do. I guess you could envy them the yoga pants at least.

Before I could sit down and check work emails and see what was happening on the travel blog, I was going to have to clear the heap of shiny plastic toys off of my desk. And my chair. And the top of my computer. With a resigned sigh, I scouted around for the wrapping paper organizer.

While we worked, Leslie and I chatted, exchanging idle gossip. Since we saw each other every day, we didn’t feel the need to fill the air with constant chatter, but apparently there was something worth talking about this morning.

Leslie started out, “Tom down at the auto shop had a customer come in the other day in a Lamborghini. I guess he was finishing up an invoice and didn’t walk outside to greet the lady, so she honked her horn at him, laying it on until he came out.”

I snorted, knowing Tom. “Oh, I bet that went over really well.”

Leslie smirked at me before responding, “Oh, you know Tom. He finally headed out there, walking as if he was on a lazy Sunday stroll, watching that woman’s face turn redder and redder with every step…”

The telephone interrupted Leslie’s story. Exasperated, I hunted around for it. I knew where it should be, but it took a couple of rings before I could excavate it from the now teetering pile of toys. While I was helping the Wilsons book their annual Christmas cruise, belatedly I might add, Leslie flipped on the TV to CNN, where a live feed showed three workers in full Hazmat suits hovering outside an urban house.

I finished up the phone call and turned my curious stare to the TV. Leslie quickly turned up the volume in time for us to hear the tail end of what would later be considered one of the most pivotal news stories in the history of America. A 24 year old aid worker, freshly returned to New York from Sierra Leone in Africa, had been diagnosed with the first case of Ebola in the United States.

I had heard the story of Ebola for months now, but it was so distant. Africa was a world away, both in terms of geography and culture, so while I was aware of the outbreak there, I knew very little and, though maybe that makes me selfish, hadn’t really cared much. Of course I felt bad for all of those suffering with the disease, but in reality, it didn’t affect me much in my little world.

With its arrival in the United States, Ebola suddenly seemed much more personal. A quick jolt of fear shot through me and was almost as quickly dismissed. New York was still basically a world away and it was just one case, so there was nothing to worry about, right? That this cold day in December was Friday the 13th briefly crossed my mind. What an appropriate day for bad news like this. I remember hearing that some Africans were calling Ebola a curse from God, so what better day to have it land here, in arguably one of the most morally shaky places in the world?

After that brief foray into world changing events, the news channel returned to its regularly scheduled tales of doom and gloom about such delightful topics as plunging stock markets, political whodunits and that ever present ghoul in the closet, terrorism. Leslie and I half listened while we resumed wrapping, each quiet in our own thoughts.

The rest of the day passed quickly between sticky tape, colorful paper and the constant ringing of the telephone as last minute planners tried, pretty much unsuccessfully at this point, to get great deals on Christmas travel. I hadn’t forgotten about the news but I wasn’t actively thinking about it, either. There would be time enough tonight to ask the Google gods what to make of this new development.

As 5 o’clock approached, Leslie and I wrapped up the last of the LEGO, Barbie and Disney toys - oh, and one Radio Flyer that had to content itself with a big red bow instead of gaudy wrapping paper. Glancing around at the completed stack of Christmas cheer, I felt a sense of accomplishment.

“How many toys do you think we wrapped today?” I asked Leslie.

Consulting her iPhone (am I the only person in the world who doesn’t get the appeal of those things?), she replied, “A hundred and thirty! Well, 133 if you want to be exact.”

I smirked, knowing full well that Leslie wanted to be exact. “Not bad for a day’s work. Are they all going to fit in your car? For that matter, how did they all get here in the first place?”

“Not in my car, that’s for sure. Jay at the hardware store delivered them in his pickup. The K4K will make the rounds tomorrow to pick them up. Let’s just stack them by the door, okay?”

Smiling at the thought of all the kids whose Christmas just became a little happier, I helped Leslie create a mountain of toys inside the door. Standing back to look at our handiwork, I felt bad for the unsuspecting soul who happened to be beneath that pile if it toppled.

Wishing Leslie a good night, I gathered my things and headed to the door, carefully skirting the booby trapped toy mountain.

“Have a great weekend, Marjory. See you Monday!”

Walking through the still deserted parking lot, I felt the delicate kisses of a dozen snowflakes and, glancing up at the sky, lost myself briefly in the beautiful sight of the thickly falling snow. While I may not enjoy being out in the snow, I just loved watching the way the snow, falling so heavily, was lit up like another universe in the dim glow from the streetlights.

With a brief grin of delight, I realized that my white Christmas was saved and hoped for inches to pile up overnight.

My cold car, resentful at first, started up and sputtered a grumbling complaint against the frigid temperatures. I could hardly blame it and sat there rubbing my gloved hands together while I gave it a few minutes to warm up. Pretty soon, the snow would insulate the world and it would almost feel balmy again.

On the way home, the news from today crashed back into my thoughts and I mused about what it might mean to me, to America, as I carefully navigated the busy freeway back to Wallace.

A blissful Nell greeted me as I flipped the lights on and scrounged through the fridge for something edible. Then I realized it was Friday and grabbed a pizza from the freezer. Friday beer and pizza was a family tradition at least as old as I was and I continued it, sans the beer at first, when I moved into my own place. My 21st birthday had landed on a Friday and I celebrated at home with a cold one and a rare treat - delivery pizza. Seven years later, the thrill was gone but the tradition held on strong. Maybe someday I would share it with my own kids. Yeah, not likely.

Hot pizza and cold beer in hand, I plopped down at my desk, flipped on my ancient laptop and begin questioning the oracle known as Google. While I ate, barely noticing the taste, I took a crash course in Ebola. Halfway through my second piece, I set it back down on the plate and kept reading, hunger forgotten.

The outbreak in Africa was about as ugly as it could get. Images burned into my mind of orphaned children, lost and alone in a world so overwhelmed with death that it forgot about them. Reports of bodies piling up in the streets seemed so…third world and unimaginable. Thankfully, there weren’t a lot of photos of that particular reality of Ebola. I think all this was made more personal because it had landed in my country, but my heart broke a little bit that night as I surfed through articles, images and news stories about what reporters were calling “the deadliest outbreak in modern history.”

I tried—and failed—to imagine a place where hundreds of sick people lined up in the streets, waiting for their turn to die in the handful of hospital beds available. Groups like the World Health Organization talked about how there were most likely thousands of cases that weren’t being reported because the locals mistrusted outsiders and because there simply weren’t enough health care workers to diagnose all the potential cases before they died or, more rarely, were healed. In some cities, infected human waste was dumped right into the river, a main drinking water source, because people either didn’t know or weren’t able to dispose of it any other way.

Looking back, I wonder now what I would have done if I had known that here in America, our fate would be even worse.

After my depressing research project, my last task before turning off the computer for the night was to snag up some gear on Amazon. While I didn’t think I would need it anytime soon, I felt a whole lot better getting a few supplies to protect me if Ebola ever made its way here. My research told me a few things so my shopping list, while small, was adequate enough for now: N-100 face masks, a couple boxes of latex examination gloves, a big honking bottle of hand sanitizer and three bottles of Clorox. That free shipping sure did come in handy!

As it turned out, I wasn’t the only one with that shopping list; I had to click on three different mask links to find some that weren’t already sold out. The Amazon top seller list for health had my shopping list, verbatim, in the top spots. It was strangely comforting to know that other people were paying attention too. I told myself I wasn’t really worried, but I could definitely see a reason to be cautious.

Closing the lid on my laptop, I wandered over to the couch, dubbed Brokeback Couchtain because it had a definite old age swayback. If it were a horse, I reflected, time would be running short for the old beast. BC might have been ugly as sin, but it was as comfortable as a mountain of down pillows floating on a lake. I let out a brief moan of pleasure as I sank into its comforting embrace and hit the power button on the TV remote. While it was loading, I dragged my spinning wheel over and settled in for a night of tube watching and yarn spinning.