Christmas on Honeysuckle Lane

by Mary McDonough

  Bob and Rumi had gone to a movie theater in Somerstown to see a screening of Holiday Inn, and Sophia and Marco were spending the afternoon with their Spinelli cousins. So it was just the four of them at Norma’s, Daniel and Anna Maria, Andie and Emma. The room in which the party was being held—the “ballroom”—was vast. Three enormous chandeliers, dripping faceted crystals, hung in a row from the center of the ceiling. Between the tall rectangular windows along the right wall stood massive urns filled with artful arrangements of red and white roses, feathery pine boughs, and red and white poinsettias. Over the doorway to the ballroom—and at the entrance to the house—were hung large sprigs of mistletoe.

  Per usual, Norma Campbell had hired a band to play standards from the American songbook, including what Daniel remembered to be some of his parents’ favorite songs—“Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” and “Moon River” and “The Twelfth of Never.” And, of course, there were the holiday standards—“I’ll Be Home for Christmas” and “Blue Christmas” and “White Christmas”—sung by a man whose voice, Daniel thought, was perfectly suited to handle the songs the famous crooners of the forties and fifties had performed so beautifully.

  And the food! The term “groaning board” came to Daniel’s mind. There were tables and tables laden with food. Roast beef. Roast turkey. Baked ham. There were baskets overflowing with breads and rolls of all descriptions, from brioche to baguettes. There were chafing dishes of savory baked vegetables and a large selection of cheeses, from the soft to the hard, from mild to pungent. And the desserts . . . Daniel had never been a fan of chocolate fountains, but Norma’s guests seemed to be enjoying this one, and the mounds of insanely large strawberries to go with it. There were traditional Christmas puddings complete with brandy sauce, and good old American fruitcake. Four elaborate gingerbread houses stood side by side, surrounded by plates of cookies of every description. Waiters in white shirts, black pants and vests, circulated with finger foods and glasses of champagne. Daniel didn’t know where Norma Campbell got her money, but she certainly was generous with it.

  “I don’t mean to be critical . . .” Daniel peered suspiciously at the mini quiche he held in his hand.

  “Yes, you do,” Emma said with a smile.

  “All right then, I do. But this food doesn’t stand up to what Anna Maria and I do. It’s not awful by any means, but . . .”

  Emma nodded. “I agree. The turkey is a bit dry and the broccoli casserole is a bit soggy.”

  “To be fair, it’s not easy catering a party this big,” Anna Maria pointed out.

  “But we could do better,” Daniel said. “I know we could.”

  “You’ll just have to work on getting Norma’s business, Danny,” Andie said. “Spread the word of your excellence.”

  Daniel raised an eyebrow at his sister. “I didn’t think that you of all people would advocate bragging. Aren’t you a fan of humility?”

  “Yes, but I’m not talking about bragging,” Andie corrected. “I’m talking about simply stating the truth. Telling someone that you do good work. There’s nothing wrong with being justly proud of your achievements.”

  Daniel didn’t argue with his sister. He couldn’t. Andie had actually used the word “excellence” and Andie wasn’t one to choose her words casually. He was moved. “Thanks, Andie,” he said. “You’re right.”

  “Don’t look now,” Emma whispered, “but it’s the Fitzgibbons senior descending upon us.”

  Mary Bernadette Fitzgibbon was wearing a skirt suit in a soft gray, with an even paler gray silk blouse. There was a small diamond stick pin in her right lapel. The woman, Daniel thought, fairly emanated elegance and resolve. Mary Bernadette’s husband, Paddy, wore a suit in a conservative cut, with a white shirt and red tie. Daniel was sorry to see that Mr. Fitzgibbon had visibly aged in the past few months. Well, Daniel thought, age comes to us all. If we’re lucky.

  “It’s nice to see the Reynolds siblings all together again,” Mrs. Fitzgibbon said, flashing her trademark dazzling smile. Daniel, though used to the smile, could still sometimes find himself weakening in its presence, ready to give Mrs. Fitzgibbon whatever it was she wanted of him, even a discount on his catering services. But not his mother’s treasured Regency desk.

  “It’s nice to be back in Oliver’s Well,” Emma said. “Danny’s been treating us like royalty.”

  Daniel felt himself color slightly. “I wouldn’t go that far,” he said.

  “Norma puts on a pretty good shindig, doesn’t she?” Paddy laughed and patted his stomach. “And she certainly doesn’t skimp on the food! There’s even Yorkshire pudding!”

  Daniel smiled at the older man. He might be aging, but he certainly hadn’t lost his good humor and pleasant personality. It wasn’t surprising that Cliff Reynolds had deeply liked and admired Paddy Fitzgibbon.

  “Have you tried the strawberry tarts, Mr. Fitzgibbon?” Andie asked. “I’ve already had two!”

  Before Paddy Fitzgibbon could reply, his wife was talking. “Have you given any further thought to the future of the George Bullock desk?” Mary Bernadette asked the siblings. “Did you know that in 1805 Mr. Bullock supplied furniture for Cholmondeley Castle?“

  Paddy beamed proudly. “My Mary is the most persistent person I know! And she certainly knows her history!”

  Daniel restrained an impulse to answer brusquely. “I’m afraid the desk is still not available, Mrs. Fitzgibbon,” he said politely. “It will remain in the family as my mother wanted it to.”

  Amazingly, Daniel thought, Mary Bernadette didn’t persist, merely bowed her head in acknowledgment.

  Paddy put his hands in the front pocket of his pants. “You know,” he said, “just the other day I was thinking about how I met your father. It was so many years ago now, back when he was starting his business and wanted to get involved in the Chamber of Commerce.”

  “You were a great help to Dad,” Andie said. “You taught him a lot.”

  Daniel smiled. “Dad often used to say your advice was worth more than what some people paid for in business school.”

  “I don’t know about that!” Paddy demurred. “But I do know we had some fun.” Mr. Fitzgibbon lowered his voice and leaned in closer to Daniel and his family. “We used to sneak away from some of those chamber meetings and go to this little pub in Smithstown and talk about how we’d gotten to where we were in our lives.” Paddy laughed. “Your father used to tell me how he worked two or three jobs at a time while he put himself through college. In the afternoon he washed dishes in the school’s cafeteria, and at nights he worked at a packing plant, driving a forklift. Oh, and for a short time he mowed the lawns of the professors who lived near campus, until the work got too much for him. But you kids must know all that.”

  Daniel felt tears threaten. He hadn’t known any of it.

  “This is the first I’m hearing of Dad’s part-time jobs,” Emma replied.

  “Me, too,” Andie said.

  Mary Bernadette shook her head. “Clifford Reynolds had such a zest for life. He never let that silly heart problem slow him down.” Her attention seemed to be caught by someone or something behind Daniel’s right shoulder. “Excuse me,” she said then. “I must go and greet Father Robert.”

  Mrs. Fitzgibbon sailed off, her husband at her side, like a stately ocean liner with her trusty tugboat companion, Daniel thought. He stood there for a long moment feeling oddly dislocated and left out. He thought he knew everything there was to know about his parents. He—

  “Danny, are you there?”

  It was Emma. “Sorry,” he said, forcing a smile and a jovial tone. “I was just thinking. Can you see Dad washing dishes? He never did a bit of housework when we were growing up! The house was totally Mom’s domain.”

  “She wouldn’t let him near her domestic arrangements,” Andie pointed out. “I’m sure he would have pitched in if she’d let him.”

  “And driving a forklift in a packing plant.” Emma shook her head.

  “Well, Cliff nev
er was afraid of hard work,” Anna Maria said. “I’m not surprised he took what jobs he could to get by, even the job mowing lawns. That must have stressed his heart, but he gave it a go.”

  “Yes,” Daniel said. “Dad was a hard worker.”

  Emma lowered her voice. “I’ll never forget the times when Mom and Mary Bernadette found themselves in the same room, like when one of them gave a party. It was Queen Elizabeth and Mary Queen of Scots all over again, not that those two ever met in person. The two rival rulers of Oliver’s Well society.”

  “Mom always came out on top, of course,” Daniel said firmly. “Though I’m not sure Mary Bernadette—or her husband—would agree.”

  Andie shook her head. “How silly, competing over social standing.”

  “It’s not silly,” Daniel argued. “You have to understand Mom’s context. In many ways the rarified world into which she was born had already passed. It must have been difficult for her to adjust to such radically changing social mores.”

  “Of course.” Andie said. “You’re right, Danny. I didn’t mean to be critical.”

  “Well, you sounded critical. You—”

  Anna Maria laid a hand on Daniel’s arm, and he refrained from finishing his comment.

  “You know,” Emma said, “since being back in Oliver’s Well this Christmas season, I’ve learned so much about Mom and Dad that I never knew. I was talking to Maureen the other day and—”

  “And what?” Daniel interrupted. “What did Maureen have to say?”

  “It seems she unearthed Mom’s keen interest in politics and civic duty. I’m not even sure I knew that Mom voted!”

  “When did this happen?” Daniel demanded. “When did Maureen talk to Mom alone?”

  “She told me she visited Mom a few times in her last months,” Emma explained. “And they talked about all sorts of things. Didn’t you know they used to meet?”

  “No,” Daniel said shortly, realizing that he was frowning. He felt . . . He felt upset that Maureen Kline, a relative stranger, should know about his mother’s interest in politics while he had been left in the dark. It was one thing for his father not to have shared every detail of his early life with his children; men like Cliff Reynolds were often silent on the subject of the struggles they had endured for the sake of building a career. But for his own mother not to have shared with her son something she considered important . . .

  “Danny?” Emma asked. “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Just thinking.”

  “Well, it’s a party,” Anna Maria said robustly. “Try not to think so much and just enjoy.”

  Daniel forced a smile and lifted his glass. “A toast to Mom and Dad’s memory,” he said. Anna Maria, Andie, and Emma lifted their glasses to his. And as they each sipped their drinks, Daniel added silently, To the people I thought that I knew.

  CHAPTER 40

  Shortly after the Fitzgibbons had gone off to greet Father Robert, Andie wandered away from the others to look more closely at one of the large landscape paintings that hung in the ballroom. The painting depicted a rugged mountain scene with a spectacular waterfall cascading violently to the plunge pool below. It was a powerful and atmospheric image, like those wonderfully romantic paintings done by artists of the Hudson River School. Andie wondered vaguely where Norma Campbell had found it.

  It was terribly nice of Norma to open her house to the entire community. Andie had always believed that generosity was an innate quality. It was hard to learn how to be truly generous unless it really came from the heart. Giving with no strings. She and Bob had always believed that and had taught it to their daughter....

  Not that Rumi always followed her parents’ good advice, like honoring the importance of forgiveness. In the past few hours Andie had left Rumi a voice mail and sent a text and an e-mail, all of which had gone unanswered. And she knew that Bob had tried several times to get Rumi to apologize to Andie for having stormed off the other day and for having been a no-show at dinner, but Rumi was refusing to budge. Andie sighed. You couldn’t force someone to forgive, or to let go of her grief. Still, if there was some way she could help her daughter to move forward into a happier place, she would.

  Andie turned from the painting and spotted Emma chatting with Lucy Burrows, one of their neighbors on Honeysuckle Lane. She couldn’t imagine what the two women might have to talk about. Lucy Burrows, in her cobalt blue velveteen tracksuit, was as unlike Emma, in her winter white sweater and slacks, as another woman could be. But both were nice people and niceness could bridge almost any divide, if only temporarily.

  Poor Emma, Andie thought. Her sister had taken their mother’s clothing to the resale shop that morning and it had proved far more difficult than she’d imagined. “I found myself unabashedly crying in the store,” she told Andie before they left for Norma’s party. “And then again once I was outside.”

  “Do you think it was a cathartic experience?” Andie had asked, to which her sister had shrugged.

  “I honestly can’t say. I felt so horribly aware of what I’ve lost. Is it ever cathartic to realize how much and how often you’ve failed the people you love?”

  Andie hadn’t been able to find the words to answer her sister’s question. Her own sadness over her daughter’s unprecedented rejection was weighing on her too heavily to allow clear thought.

  “ ‘The sky where we live,’ ” she whispered to herself, “ ‘is no place to lose your wings, so love, love, love.’ ” But Hafiz’s words of encouragement were of no help in blocking out the sudden wave of unhappiness that swept through her, alone among the crowd in Norma Campbell’s ballroom.

  “Mommy? What is that?”

  Andie turned back to see a woman and her daughter, about five or six years old, Andie guessed, standing before the image of the waterfall. The mother quietly began to talk to the child about the picture before them. The girl, wearing a pink velvet dress with a matching ribbon in her hair, was clutching a giant cookie. Her eyes were wide with wonder as she listened to her mother. And Andie suddenly recalled a time when Rumi was about that age and they had gone to see a show of traveling acrobats in Lawrenceville. Rumi had been transfixed by the performers, to the point of bursting out in tears when the show was over. But that was so long ago....

  Andie turned away from the mother and her little girl, her heart sore, to be confronted by two women passing not yards away, champagne glasses in hand. “Mom,” the younger woman said, linking her arm through her mother’s, “why don’t we say hello to Doctor Herbert. She was so good to you last month when you fell, wasn’t she?” The older woman smiled and nodded, and together they went off, still arm in arm, to where Jenna Herbert, Joe’s wife, was talking with three women wearing garish holiday-themed sweaters.

  Andie felt her throat tighten. Would she and Rumi ever be there for each other as time brought inevitable challenges along with joys, sorrows along with celebrations? Suddenly Andie felt besieged by the memory of the happiness that had been and tortured by the fear of what unhappiness might come.

  The clinking of glasses, the din of the crowd, the determinedly nostalgic selection of music was too much for Andie. Sweat began to break out on her chest. She realized that she badly needed to be alone. She had driven to the party on her own, so she was free to go whenever she wanted. She would go straight back to the house and try to work on the article she was preparing for the inaugural issue of a small magazine. Work, thought, prayer, and imagination were all saving graces.

  Andie scanned the crowded ballroom. She couldn’t locate Emma among the guests, but she did spot her brother and sister-in-law; they were facing away from her but it was unmistakably them. At least she could tell Daniel that she was leaving the party. She made her way toward them, and when she was close Daniel suddenly turned so that she could see his profile. Once again, he was frowning. And then she heard her brother say in a loud, angry whisper, “I don’t know why I bothered to ask Andie to come home for Christmas. She’s been of no help whatsoever
in finalizing Mom’s estate. She doesn’t have a practical bone in her body.”

  “Daniel,” Anna Maria hissed. “That’s entirely untrue. Really, sometimes you go too far.”

  Fighting nausea, Andie turned and walked almost blindly toward the door of the ballroom. She felt humiliated. She felt like a fool. And after the nice evening they had shared over the meal she had prepared . . . Had her brother’s good mood toward her last evening all been just a lie? Andie tried to take a deep, slow breath. Daniel’s unkind words said more about him than they did about her. She knew that, but still, the words hurt. “The wound is the place where the light enters you. . . .”

  Norma Campbell, resplendent in a red silk dress, was chatting with a man Andie didn’t recognize. It was rude to leave without thanking the host, but at that moment Andie simply didn’t have it in her to play the part of gracious guest. She would send Norma a handwritten note of thanks and hope that it sufficed.

  As she approached the front hall and the massive doors to the house, Andie began to run.

  CHAPTER 41

  Emma discreetly wiped a bit of cream from the corner of her mouth with a paper cocktail napkin. Whatever valid criticisms Daniel might have of the catering service, she doubted he could fault the pastry chef. The mini profiteroles were the most delicious Emma had ever tasted.

  After her totally unforeseen breakdown that morning at the resale shop in Lawrenceville, Emma had wondered if she would be able to enjoy Norma Campbell’s open house, but she had succumbed to its festive spirit with ease. Earlier in the day Andie had asked her if what she had experienced giving away their mother’s belongings had been a cathartic experience, and at the time Emma hadn’t been able to say. But now, a few hours later, filled with good food and surrounded by happy people, Emma thought that maybe it had been a cathartic experience. Difficult but cathartic.