Free Carol for Another Christmas by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough Page A

okay.”
    â€œThey wouldn’t, though,” Monica told Scrooge. “We had to move into a tiny apartment. Doug was the one who went to college. He got so many scholarships that his education was covered at least. But he was only thirteen and too young to stay on campus, so we lived together in that cramped little place. And you know the hell of it? He didn’t even seem to mind.
    â€œIn fact, he almost seemed to enjoy himself, even though Mom and Dad were dead and they’d given him everything, every thing. I realized very fast how much it took to support just the two of us and he never even seemed to care. At least I learned what I needed during that time. Security. Not the kind some boy could offer in a few years. Besides, I didn’t know any boys my age, anymore. I knew I needed security right then, and I needed to get it by myself so I could count on it. I needed that something to fall back on that Mom was always talking about. Fortunately, I had taken typing and filing in school. So when I saw the ad, I had the skills.”
    The scene shifted again, this time to an office, much different from Scrooge’s old rooms in London. This one was more like the offices he had seen here, but much, much larger. It was so large, and so characterless, so utterly bleak and grim, that it made his old office, with its ledgers and cobwebs and the grate always too cold, seem positively cozy by comparison.
    A lone woman, Monica much as she was now but without the gray in her hair, sat at a desk, one hand on a keyboard and the other holding a telephone. “I don’t care if it is Christmas, Mrs. Fuentes. You did not pay your taxes this year. It’s very unfortunate that your husband ran off with another woman, but the government must be compensated. You have property. Sell that. I can’t discuss raising your children with you, Mrs. Fuentes, even if there are eight of them. My business is to see to it that you pay your taxes. Your husband made a great deal of money last year and, filing a joint return, you bear equal responsibility for the tax. No, I’m sorry, but that’s the law. Perhaps you should have married someone else.”
    Scrooge cringed to hear how much this Monica sounded like himself in the old days. She had said it was Christmas and not a single card, wreath, bit of mistletoe, or greenery brightened that efficient and ruthless place. A stern picture of some American gentleman, no doubt the president, and the flag of the United States on a pole near the entrance were the room’s only ornaments.
    The calls continued in the same fashion, businesslike, passionless, but stern, very stern. Ah, what the old Scrooge wouldn’t have given for a clerk such as Monica Banks!
    Finally the lone figure, mouth turned down, curls drooping, shoulders sloping, picked up her bag and descended the steps of the office building to the ground floor, where she waited in the rain at a bus stop.
    â€œI was so tired I forgot the bus wouldn’t come on Christmas,” she said. “Some holiday. A poor woman works all day long to put food on the table and then has to hike home because the buses use the excuse to let the lazy drivers make everyone walk.”
    By this time, the younger Monica was indeed walking, block after weary block. She had an umbrella with her, but halfway across the street from the bus stop the wind snapped it inside out, and she turned her coat collar up against the weather but walked on, her shoes soaking through and rain streaming down her face. When she arrived at last at her destination, and squooshed in her wet shoes into the lobby of the apartment building, she groaned. There was an “out of order” sign on the lift, which was little more than a floor with an iron fence on three sides and a gate across the front. From sheer exhaustion, she sat down and cried, her tears almost un noticable in the general dampness of her person.
    Scrooge was about to make some