Christmas at Heartbreak Hotel

In June of 1974, my husband packed a suitcase and left. I had no family living in the state, no job and with a broken foot encased in plaster up to my knee I had few prospects. On the asset side of the ledger I did have a seven year old daughter, a small house with two mortgages and a very old car that was so out of tune it actually shot flames out of its tail pipe when it back fired. By the time the winter holidays rolled around, we were no longer alone; I was the proprietor of heartbreak hotel. First my friend Millie asked if she could stay with me for a few weeks, she had left her husband of twenty years and had no where to go. Then, before she moved out, my brother flew in from New Mexico. He had all his worldly belongings in a borrowed suitcase, his wife had left him. I seemed to be the only woman in the 1970’s that got “left”; I was way behind the times. I had been working at Norwalk Transit for several months but was still an “on-call, part time employee” that meant no benefits and no guaranteed hours. It was feast or famine there. We had two dispatchers that made out the work schedule on alternate weeks. Gwen Jones liked me, in me she saw a younger version of herself and gave me as much work as I could handle but on the next week the schedule would be made by Virginia Calvert and I was given almost no hours at all, only the occasional last minute shift when someone called in sick. The rivalry and animosity between those two women was quite clear and I was at their mercy. At the end of month I only averaged about twenty hours per week and on the months when my child support check bounced, as it was known to do, I sank below the poverty level. The help of the residents of Heartbreak Hotel was sometimes all that kept my head above water. Helen Reddy was singing, “I am Woman Hear me Roar” but you could only hear a whimper out of me. Transit was a good place for me to work, the bus terminal was walking distance from my house and all of the drivers were hired and trained by CETA funds. CETA stood for California, Employment Training Act. It was state funding for the unemployed and under employed so we were all on a pretty even economic playing field, I met many other struggling parents and I no longer felt so alone. Still, as Christmas approached it was a grim time for many of us. That year money was so tight that I bought my daughter a used stereo for Christmas; I bought it from another driver whose husband had just lost his job. Add to that a few gaily wrapped packages of underwear and socks and that was pretty much, Erin’s Christmas. But really, we were fine, we had a small tree and stockings hung by the fire, we baked cookies, we listened to carols on the radio, it was Christmas and we were together and that was all that mattered, or so I kept telling myself. The truth is, I wasn’t feeling it; I dreaded Christmas Eve; on Christmas Eve Erin’s Dad would take her to his parent’s house, the place where I had spent my last ten Christmas Eves. This year they would go without me and I would be left home to wait with my brother. As for him, the holiday drew closer and my brother grew more and more despondent. He had four little girls in New Mexico that he missed like an aching hole in his heart. Every day he became a little more withdrawn, he went to work, he chain smoked and he slept. I tried to talk with him but he was pretty unresponsive and, truth be told, I was kind of wrapped up in my own pain. In the beginning of December a new group of trainees were hired at work and by the time Christmas rolled around, they were doing their on-the-job training. They drove our buses while we rode along evaluating and coaching them. We got to know them pretty well. There was one guy who just came out to California from Oklahoma with his wife and three kids in a beat up old car. They had run out of unemployment benefits and had just enough money to rent a house and not much more. This class was only going to get one paycheck before Christmas and the word in the break room was that he needed that for rent; there would be no Christmas at his house. That was just the thing we needed to hear, a kick in our collective yuletide pants. We passed the hat collecting over $200.00, pretty good for people only making $4.25 per hour and we didn’t stop there. We bought dime store toys and wrapped them in bright paper, we brought in boxes of homemade goodies and someone even donated a Christmas ham. Since I was the only one who didn’t have plans on Christmas Eve, I was elected to play Santa Claus. I loaded up my car and went home and told Tim that we were on a mission for the North Pole. I expected no response or maybe just a grunt but he surprised me with an offer of a twenty and we immediately starting talking about how we were going to pull this off. The one thing we did not want to do was to embarrass the family; the surprise had to be from Santa and Santa alone. We drove by the house several times finally finding the best place to park, across the street behind a large truck. We had all the gifts packed in a large trash bag tied up with a big red bow. We put the money in an envelope addressed to the family with greetings from Santa and taped it to the top of the bag. We waited for dark, their car was in the driveway, the lights in the living room were turned on I scooted down in the driver’s seat, peeking out the bottom of the windshield as my brother tip toed to the door, laid the sack down, rang the doorbell and ran like the wind. I hadn’t seen him move like that since he was a kid! Tim was back in the car hunched over in the front seat before the porch light even came on. My co-worker came out picked up the envelope, read it and then opened it, we could see his mouth fall open and hear him call to his wife. He looked up and down the street but I’m sure he didn’t see us. Finally dragging the bag they went back in the house closing the door. “Merry Christmas fellow” whispered by brother in a voice raspy with emotion. This little adventure was our personal Christmas miracle, our salvation; this and a bottle of wine were the only things that got us through that night.