The Gift, Mary H. Collins [electronic reader .txt] 📗

THE GIFT
a short story by Mary H. Collins

It was beginning to snow when Kimberly got off work. She loved it and remembered how excited as a child she used to get when it would snow. She tried to muster up some of that excitement now, but with no one to share things with, it wasn't as exciting as it once was. Memories of the holidays at home came rushing to mind and brought a hint of a smile to her face, but it was too painful to dwell on the memory.
She ran into the street to hail a taxi, but wasn't fast enough. A man came out of nowhere and jumped into the cab and it sped away. Well so much for riding home in a nice warm car...I'll just walk, she thought.
She kicked snow with the toe of her shoe as she walked, now she was wishing she'd worn a pair of boots, her toes were freezing already, and she still had six blocks to go. She thought of Chad and wondered how he would be spending the holidays. She still missed him and wondered if she would ever get over him and love again.
The temperature here in New York was much colder than in Tennessee. Sometimes it snowed in her home town of Chattanooga, but usually didn't lay for long. She missed Tennessee and the southern hospitality there. Everyone was so impersonal here, after living here for three years she still hadn't made many friends. The only people she knew were the girls in the office and a few of the people in her apartment building. Back in Chattanooga she knew almost everyone, or at least everyone that she needed to know.
A car blowing it's horn brought Kimberly back to the present; the snow was coming down so hard she didn't see the car and stepped off the curb right in front of it.
“Are you crazy? Watch where you're going,” a man yelled at her. Another sign of how obnoxious people are here in New York. She knew it was her fault for almost walking in front of the car, but a toot of the horn was enough to scare her out of her mind, she didn't need the harsh remark. She was sick of this town, and wanted to go home. Tears spilled down her cheeks and felt like icicles in the cold wind.
Her feet and hands were numb by the time she reached her tiny apartment in Astoria, she could barely move her fingers to put the key into the lock, but finally after a few minutes she turned the door knob and felt the heat hit her like a warm cloud. How wonderful it felt. She walked inside, feeling secure in the coziness of her little apartment, but knowing she would never get used to the coldness of the city outside of it.
Kimberly turned on her laptop which was sitting on the counter between the kitchenette and the small living area where the sofa let out to serve also as a bed. She didn't especially like the apartment, but it was all she could afford right now. Her job as a photographer didn't pay that much, at least not yet. She came to New York in hopes of finding herself, dreaming of becoming a famous fashion
photographer, but as of yet all she'd found was a cheap place to live and a job as a glamour photographer in a small studio. She hoped soon to be discovered and sign a contract with one of the top fashion magazines.
When she wasn't working in the studio, Kimberly was constantly attending seminars or capturing shots to send into magazines. She entered every contest she could find and had won a few small amounts of money, but nothing big yet.
Being from a small town just outside of Chattanooga, Tennessee, she knew she would have to travel away from home to realize her dream of becoming famous. When she was in high school, she had done some contract work for several of the photography companies around town, and had been offered permanent jobs, but Kimberly wasn't interested, she knew what she wanted and she would do whatever she had to do to get it. The only thing she regretted was that Chad wouldn't be a part of that dream.
She had never been popular in school, as a matter of fact she was known as a dork by the other kids. When she turned sixteen and was a junior in high school, she had her first real date. Actually she'd had a crush on Chad Farmer since they were in the fifth grade, but he didn't notice her until her junior year. They'd met through their parents. Her mother and father became friends with the Farmers when they'd met at a church social. They introduced her to Chad and the two of them hit it off. After a few months of casual dating, they were inseparable. They dated through their junior and senior years of high school, and she thought they'd be together for life.
She and Chad had a lot in common, they were both nerds, or at least that's what the other kids called them. They were both engrossed in their studies, and getting their education was top priority for them. They cared deeply for each other, but unlike the other kids weren't having sex, they wanted to save that for marriage. Chad had never told her that he loved her, but had led her to believe that he did, and Kimberly knew that she loved him. He was the man that she wanted to spend her life with, but after graduation Chad left for college and she didn't hear from him again, she was heartbroken. A month later she left home and moved to New York.
Kimberly got out of her clothes and put on her old flannel bath robe, and a pair of fluffy house shoes. She went over to the cabinet and took a packet of cocoa out of the box, she then mixed it with hot water and put it into the microwave to heat. She walked over to the coffee table took the remote and turned on the TV. She listened to the six o'clock news while reading her email, which were mostly junk from different sites she'd joined.
The hot chocolate took the chill out of her bones and soon she was relaxed and watching reruns of 'Rosanne' on 'Fox Network'. This was her nightly routine, she didn't mind it, but she wanted so much more. She'd dreamed of coming to New York and being discovered right away, she never dreamed she would still be living in the tiny studio apartment and working in the same little studio for three years. The only good thing in her life at this time was that she was taking some assignments on the side and saving the extra money. Her parent's had offered her money, but she wanted to make it on her own, besides she knew they didn't have the extra money, since her mother had to quit her job due to her rheumatoid arthritis, they were barely scraping by themselves. Her father had a good paying job, but with all the medical bills, his insurance had canceled their policy and the cost of her mother's medicine was hundreds of dollars a month. She hoped to be able to help them out one day.
Thinking of her parents made her sad, she always missed them around this time of year. With the holidays coming and knowing that while everyone else had plans to be with family, she would be alone. The only people she ever got to be with, on holidays, were the ones like her that met at Benny's, the little bar at the end of the street. They were there most every day, but she only went there when she was bored and had nothing else to do. She felt sorry for them and knew that someday she would have a better life, but that's all they had to look forward to. Sometimes she would day dream of becoming famous and making lots of money to bring back and give then all gifts. She would love to give Maggie, the old lady that came in there with her small dog in her purse, a new coat, the one she always wore, had holes in both elbows. And then there was Pete, the old man who had lost his wife to cancer a few years back, her sickness had taken all of his money and he could use a new pair of glasses. She would watch him sit at the bar and try to read the newspaper, sometimes he would get frustrated, throw the paper down and say, “Oh...what the hell?”
It was 10:00 when Kimberly finally got up and opened a can of tuna for her dinner, after eating it, she got into the shower, she wanted to get some sleep because she had a photo shoot early the next morning before going to the studio. It was at a daycare and she was dreading it, she'd photographed lots of school pictures, but the kids got on her nerves. She preferred doing glamour photography.
She arrived at the daycare at 6:30, just as they were opening the doors for the children whose parents had to be at work early. She set up her camera and worked solid for two hours before packing up and going to the studio. She photographed twenty kids and expected to make a few hundred dollars from the shoot, that would give her money to buy Christmas presents for her parents and the few friends she had at work. She wanted to give her mother a bracelet that she'd seen in the window of Fuller's Jewelry store. It was 14 carat gold with small hearts on it. Her mother loved jewelry, but her father couldn't afford to buy any for her. For her father she would buy a new pair of thermal underwear, that's what she always gave him, because he worked for the water company, and most of the time was out in the cold.
Kimberly wished she could give her parent's more and someday she would. She knew how hard they'd worked to give her what she'd needed growing up. But then when her mother's condition got so bad, it put a hardship on them, but they never let her know how hard they were having it, until she got older and figured it out by herself. That's when she decided to find work, so she could earn the money to move to New York and pursue her dream.
Kimberly worked from 9:00 to 5:00 in the studio, and then she clocked out and headed for the photography lab, she had to get the pictures printed from her photo shoot that morning. She wanted to put the packages together and drop them off at the daycare the next day before going to work. She knew the parent's would buy the pictures and leave her a check with the daycare provider.
After going by the lab and waiting until the pictures were printed from the digital card, it was 8:00 when Kimberly arrived home that evening. She warmed a can of soup