Mary Bailey’s Christmas Week To-Do List

Clean the house because of the “miracle” (I didn’t know the entire town was coming over and they were going to drag all the snow in and SING)
Send thank you notes to everyone we’ve ever met, I guess. Even Sam “still-with-the-hee-haw?” Wainwright
Have a heart-to-heart with George to see if he’s okay. Also talk to Pete, Janie, and Tommy. And whoever at the Building & Loan lets Uncle Billy keep a pet squirrel
Prep another full turkey dinner. Apparently
Make more cookies? Violet is still passed out in my mudroom
It’s just—we live in upstate New York, and everyone forgot to stomp the snow off their boots before coming in?
Who the heck is Clarence?

Take a breath. Think more positively
Be grateful that, when the whole town starts singing in my living room, I know someone named “Mr. Martini” who carries around crates of wine
Make the meals. Sew the clothes. Refinish the floors
But I’ve known George since he was a twelve-year-old working at a pharmacy—the one where they leave big bottles of poison on the counter right next to the medicine—and he’s never mentioned a “Clarence”
I know I tune out George sometimes (“Train whistles!” “Hot dog!”), but I think I’d remember him mentioning his buddy the “angel” who’s “friends with Mark Twain”

Shovel the walk again, since George is still running around yelling at buildings
Reminisce about our honeymoon. HAHAHAHA
Check on Zuzu—she seems to have forgotten how flowers work?
Help people in need. See if I can give some money to a family that didn’t accidentally hand eight thousand dollars to the town asshole
I made a ROTISSERIE CHICKEN in a CRUMBLING FIREPLACE using a RECORD PLAYER

Put up wallpaper. Re-shingle the roof
Go to the doctor. (Didn’t button my coat and immediately got pneumonia)
I know how to single-handedly renovate a dilapidated Victorian in wartime with a baby on my hip. Clearly, I’m not fixing that broken banister knob on purpose
No one bothered to tell me that we also need a new car?

Get out the New Year’s Eve noisemakers
Go back in time and help George make a plan for the future more specific than “build things”
Which reminds me—I just found out “Clarence” told George that if he’d never existed, I’d be an “old maid” librarian with glasses. So, just so we’re clear, on top of George being literally the only person in the world who would want to marry me, he makes my vision better?
Why is Janie STILL playing the piano?

Start planning for next Christmas. Or not. Why plan anything? Christmas, New Year’s, having babies while running the USO, doing the Charleston at the school dance without falling into a swimming pool, having to crawl out of the bushes naked in front of that weird neighbor after someone steals your bathrobe. I DON’T know what I’m doing tomorrow or the next day, or later this afternoon. THE WORLD IS CHAOS

by Sarah Schmelling