Mary Chapman stared in the mirror and was brokenhearted at what she saw. Her eyes were red and puffy from crying. Her once-clear skin was sprinkled with blotches. Even her face revealed that she had gained twenty five pounds. She was thirty-four years old, unmarried, and nine months pregnant.

She was amazed that she had made it this far. She would be the first to admit that she was not an especially brave person. Only the encouragement from Pastor Don had carried her through. He was the most remarkable man she had ever met, even kinder and more compassionate than her father.

The radio newscast told her it was time to leave for work. She reached over to the bathroom shelf and switched off the radio. As she hurried through the living room, she grabbed her coat from the back of the sofa and tugged it on. A woman at church had loaned it to her. It was long, bright red and made her feel as big as a fire engine, but she had no choice. She had outgrown most of her own clothes months ago.

Before she turned off the lights and locked the door, she took one last glance through her apartment. She hadn’t had the strength to go down to the basement storage area, lug her artificial Christmas tree to the elevator and set it up. The corner where it had sat the last six holidays looked lonely. A few ornaments and plastic Santa Claus figurines were the only signs that Christmas would arrive next week.

The train ride into the city seemed endless. An elderly man had smiled, got up and gave her his seat. He was tall, thin, and had a kind face that was reddened from the cold December winds. He wore a long camel hair overcoat and an old style black homburg hat. When Mary had settled into the seat, a woman across the aisle noticed she wore no wedding ring and gave her a disapproving scowl. Even though Mary had encountered that kind of judgment many times in the past several months, it still hurt.

When she finally got to the office, Mary found her friend Jill Novak already at her desk, typing on her computer keyboard so furiously that it sounded like a castanet concert.

“Whoa, Jill. That can’t be work you’re doing at that pace,” Mary said.

“And good morning to you, too,” Jill said back, doing a little dance with her shoulders. “I’m just shooting another email off to my latest prospect.” Jill, two years younger than Mary, was practically addicted to an online dating service.

“You really think you’re going to find somebody worthwhile with that?” Mary was extremely cautious in the city. It was Jill who had taught her that the same rules didn’t apply here in Chicago as the ones in Lincoln, Nebraska. Mary had adapted quickly.

Jill paused just long enough to toss a reply over her shoulder. “Listen, Mary. The numbers are online. It’s all about the numbers, right? I’ve got a bigger pool of frogs to kiss here, so therefore my odds are better of finding him.”

“You want to find a frog?” Mary struggled out of her borrowed coat, hung it on the rack in the corner of the office and returned to her cubicle, about ten feet from Jill’s.

“I’m thinking a frog wouldn’t be so bad, y’know? Who wants a prince anyway? I wouldn’t have to worry about cooking. Just give him a couple dead flies and he’s happy. I’d get to do all the talking, pick what videos we watch, pick where we’d go on vacation.”

Mary sat down and booted up her own computer. “Yeah, I can see the two of you walking on the beach now…or you walking and him hopping. Hand in…what? Paw? Flipper? What do frogs even have, anyway?”

“Did you sleep through high school biology? Don’t they dissect frogs out in Nebraska? They have hands. Little teeny-weeny hands.”

“What if, what if when you dissected that frog in high school, it was maybe his Uncle Leo? What if you dissected a relative of your new significant other?” “You have a warped mind, Mary Chapman.”

“Duh. Look who I hang around with.”

“Did you get those cost projections done for Elizabeth?” Jill asked. “With the price of natural gas and diesel fuel going up so much, we’re going to have to pass that on to our customers eventually.”

Mary brought the spreadsheet up on her screen and checked it again before printing it out. “It doesn’t look good, that’s for sure. How can Midwest Milling keep underbidding our competition? The only thing saving us is that their fuel costs have gone up, too.”

Midwest Milling, where Mary and Jill worked, produced store brand and generic breakfast cereal that tasted the same as the major national brands but sold for less than half because the company did absolutely no advertising. Most of Midwest’s customers were grocery wholesalers, but the firm also dealt directly with some of the discount, you-bag-it supermarket chains.

“Well, you better make sure your numbers are solid, Mary. Elizabeth’s been on a rip the past couple weeks. She chewed out Paul yesterday because he was five minutes late getting in. He’s supposed to kill himself driving on these icy streets when he gets caught in a traffic jam?”

“Paul should leave home earlier,” Mary replied. “Sometimes the holidays can be hard on people. Elizabeth may have problems we don’t know about.” “Her problem is that she and Kevin can’t have children and you’re ready to deliver any day now. She’s jealous of you, kiddo, and she’s taking it out on the rest of us.”

Jill finished and sent her email as the clock hit 8 a.m., then settled into her own work. She coordinated projects with freelance designers, oversaw the printing of the paperboard cereal cartons and made sure they and the plastic box liners were delivered to Midwest’s plants on schedule.

She glanced up from her desk just in time to see Elizabeth McAllister walking toward them in the hall that led to other offices. Jill coughed twice, a secret signal to Mary that their boss was approaching.

Elizabeth had come up through the ranks at Midwest Milling and knew every phase of the business. She was tall, stylishly thin, and wore her dark brunette hair in a short, feathery cut. Jill thought she was in her late thirties but was unsure of her exact age. Lately something had been wearing on her. Elizabeth’s once attractive face was drawn and tight, as if the normal stress of the workplace had

gotten the better of her.

“Do you have the cost projections done?” she asked Mary, without bothering to say good morning.

“They’re printing out now.”

“Okay. Bring them into my office as soon as they’re done.” Elizabeth turned and walked down another short hall to her office.

“Did somebody open a window?” Jill cracked, once the boss was out of earshot.

“Awfully chilly in here.”

“Why don’t you cut her some slack?” Mary replied, irritation in her voice. She pulled the last page from the printer and headed for Elizabeth’s office.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you, Nebraska,” Jill said, using her teasing nickname for Mary. “If you need help, just throw a paperweight through her office window.”

Mary walked down the short, carpeted hall to Elizabeth McAllister’s office. The director of Midwest Milling’s Finance Department, Elizabeth supervised a staff of ten in the company’s headquarters in Chicago, and had a half-dozen other staff members in the factories scattered across the country. She was an efficient, highly intelligent woman who rarely showed any sense of humor. Although she

had been fair in the past, Mary sensed that she had some grudge against her now.

Mary didn’t want to believe that it was because she was pregnant. She tried to see the best in everyone, an attitude that Jill found naive.

As usual, Mary rapped on the office door, even though she had an appointment.

Elizabeth told her to come in. Mary laid Elizabeth’s copy of the financial projections on the desk and eased herself into a chair. She sometimes felt as if the baby would make her tip over if she bent the wrong way.

“Let’s see what you’ve got,” Elizabeth said flatly, avoiding any small talk. She picked up her copy of the report and scanned the pages rapidly. Mary had learned to cover herself several ways to prevent a critical lecture. Sometimes it approached paranoia, but she churned inside every time Elizabeth picked at her work.

“These are projections at best,” Mary reminded. “Nobody can predict where some of these costs will go in the coming year.”

“I did budget projections long before you came here. Our job is to come as close as possible so there are no surprises.” Mary kept her reply to herself. If she could accurately predict where costs would be a year from now, she’d be earning a hundred times her current salary.

Budgeting always entailed an unavoidable degree of guesswork.

“Where’d you get these figures for diesel fuel?” Elizabeth inquired.

“I have end notes on my sources,” Mary replied. “I used this year’s figures and added the same rate of inflation as we had this year. I double checked with the Lundberg Survey, the Department of Energy, and twenty-two diesel wholesalers within one hundred mile radius circles of our plants. Of course, I can’t project how the Iran situation might affect prices a year from now, and neither could any of my sources.”

Elizabeth frowned. Mary knew she’d won that one. Nothing to pick apart there.

“I don’t like these natural gas figures,” Elizabeth countered. She produced a red pen and made four slashes and question marks at various points on the page.

Then she handed the entire report back to Mary. “Do that part over. That’s one of our largest production costs. If we lowball that, Miller will nail me to the wall.”

Ted Miller, one of the vice presidents, had a reputation for being vengeful. He was not Elizabeth’s boss but could make things difficult for her if costs ran over and dragged profits down.

“When do you need this back?” Mary glanced around but didn’t see a calendar anywhere in the office. Elizabeth would have considered that tacky.

“This afternoon.”

Mary’s first reaction was to object, but she knew that would do her no good. Elizabeth was a demanding person to work for and had gotten worse in the past

few months.

“I’ll get right on it,” Mary said, as she struggled out of the chair.

“If you’re…in the hospital, life still goes on here,” Elizabeth told her, by way of explanation. “I don’t want to turn this over to anyone else, and I don’t have time to do it myself.”

“Okay. You’ll have it before close of business today.”

Mary retreated to her desk, feeling a dull headache coming on. Meetings with Elizabeth often produced some sort of malady.

“She emerges with no visible wounds and a back remarkably free of daggers,”

Jill commented. “What’s the matter, Mary? She off her game today?”

“No. I have to redo the section on natural gas. She couldn’t find anything wrong with the rest of it.”

Jill shook her head. “If I know you, kid, there’s nothing wrong with the natural

gas section either. She’s playing head games with you.”

“Yeah, well, she’s the boss, so I’ve got to fix it and get it back to her today. I’ll be doing the vending machine thing at lunch.”

Jill frowned. “We were supposed to go out today. Besides, how’s little Clementine going to like all those chemicals and preservatives?” Jill had named the baby Clementine Chapman when Mary learned she was carrying a girl.

“Oh, right. Like we would’ve been going to a health food restaurant for lunch anyway,” Mary returned. “Your idea of the four food groups is burgers, fries, cookies and M&Ms.”

“Don’t forget Haagen-Dasz.”

“I’ve got to get back to work.” Mary’s subtle hint let Jill know not to bother her again the rest of the day. Both women returned to their computers and phones. Just before lunch time, Jill put on her coat and picked up her small purse. “I’m going out. You want me to bring you anything back?”

“No, thanks anyway. Maybe we can go tomorrow?”

“Sure. See you later.”

Despite expanding her source information, Mary was unable to come up with different projections for natural gas costs than she had before. She put in a call to Mildred Stansky in the Omaha plant but found that she was out to lunch. Mary left a voice mail message and decided to take a break.

A native of Nebraska, Mary had started her career at Midwest Milling in the Omaha plant, under Mildred’s guidance. Mildred had been like a second mother to her, especially after Mary’s mother and father had been killed in a traffic accident six years ago. The only photo Mary had on her desk was of Mildred, a plump, constantly laughing red-haired woman who had advised her against transferring to the company’s headquarters in Chicago.

Mary was a small-town girl, reared on a farm just outside Wahoo, Nebraska, a town of only 4,000 people, about a forty minute drive from Omaha. Mildred had told Mary she wouldn’t be happy in Chicago, and in some respects she’d been right. Other than Jill, Mary had few friends. She had met some kind people at her church but everyone seemed so busy that they never saw each other outside of

church activities.

That her short-lived romance with Eric—and the one time they had had unprotected sex–had been mistakes was the understatement of her life. As soon asMary told him she was pregnant, he moved without even saying goodbye. She made no attempt to track him down.

In shame and humiliation she told the story to Pastor Don and cried her way through an entire box of tissues in an hour. Before she went to see him, she had already decided that abortion was out of the question. She wanted to give the baby up for adoption. She knew she didn’t have the strength to raise a child on her own.

In his calm, fatherly manner, Pastor Don later spoke with the Women’s Outreach Group in the church and by the time Mary went to the next meeting, she was met with hugs and unanimous words of support. It still brought tears to her eyes every time she thought of it.

Right now, however, the task at hand was how to explain to Elizabeth that her first projections on natural gas had been correct and that try as she might, she couldn’t make any changes.

Mary tried her hardest not to judge people, but Elizabeth could be unfair at times. The last thing she needed right now was to lose her job. Mary caught herself before she started to cry. Her nerves were as fragile as a Christmas ornament.

[Chapter 1] [Chapter 2] [Chapter 3] [Chapter 4] [Chapter 5] [Chapter 6] [Chapter 7] [Chapter 8] [Chapter 9] [Chapter 10]

- Jack Zavada

©2006 by www.inspiration-for-singles.com

This a just a chapter of a free ebook entitled “Mary’s Christmas Gift” which can be downloaded from http://www.inspiration-for-singles.com/mary.html

Jack Zavada’s new ebook, Single and Sure, not only shows single people how to rescue themselves, but how to become a happier, more confident person in the process.