The Hundred Gifts

by Jennifer Scott

  “Maybe someday soon,” Bren said. What she always said. With the same feeling that she always felt while saying it—the feeling of lying to her own daughter.

  “Well, you just let me know. We have lots of room for you and Daddy, and lots of places to show you. How is Daddy, by the way?”

  As if on cue, there was a bumbling string of thumps and pounds from downstairs, along with a series of nonsensical guitar notes.

  “He’s in a band now,” Bren said plainly, hoping Kelsey could hear through her tone how ridiculous this was and would agree with her.

  “A band? That’s so cool!” Kelsey exclaimed instead. Bren sank into a chair, pulling the telephone notepad over. “What’s he doing in it?”

  “Making noise, mostly,” Bren said.

  Kelsey laughed. “Oh, Mommy.”

  “On a guitar,” Bren continued. “Right now it’s just two of them. A guitar and drums. I don’t think either of them are attempting to sing. Thank God. You know your father’s voice. He can’t carry a tune in a bucket.”

  “True. But he could probably learn. The mind is everything. What you think, you become.” She said this last bit with an air of recitation.

  “What is that?” Bren asked. “A song lyric?”

  “A Buddhist quote, actually,” Kelsey said. “We’ve learned a lot about Buddhism since we moved here. It’s quite beautiful, actually.”

  Bren wrote down You are what you think, wondering why it was that everything in Thailand was so damn beautiful. Couldn’t just one time she hear how the smell was atrocious or the people rude or the bugs deadly?

  “You’re becoming a Buddhist now?” Bren asked instead.

  “Not necessarily,” Kelsey said, and Bren wrote Learn Buddhism on the pad. “Anyway, I actually can’t stay on the phone very long, Mommy.”

  Of course, Bren thought. She never could anymore. She was always running off to the beach or getting ready for work or hoping to go see a sunset with Dean. Beautiful sunsets here, Mommy. So very beautiful. Yes, yes, they were. Because the sunsets in Missouri were hideous and boring and oh so Midwest.

  “I called to tell you some exciting news about Christmas.”

  Bren perked up, wrote Christmas on the pad without even thinking about it, and followed it with several exclamation points. “You’re coming home? Oh, Kelsey, that’s great news! We still have plenty of time to put together a great Christmas. Tons of time. You won’t get to see your grandmother, but you can come to my new class! Did you know I’m teaching a holiday cooking class? I start tomorrow. Maybe I’ll save a cookie lesson for when you’re here. I know how much you love Christmas cookies. I’ll break out the secret ingredients.” She wrote sour cream on the pad, even though she knew very well what her secret ingredients were and they were most definitely not foreign words she’d need to look up later.

  “No, no, sorry, Mommy, I’m not coming home for Christmas. I thought I told you that.”

  “Oh.” Bren tried not to feel her heart sink all the way to her slippers. Tried not to let the disappointment lace her voice too much. Tried not to get tearful. And tried not to feel the blasted itching on her shoulder again. “Yes, you told me. I forgot.”

  “But I have really good news about Kevin. He called me last night. He’s in Tagbilaran.”

  “Tagbil what?” Bren poised the pencil over the pad, unsure where to even begin on that one.

  “Tagbilaran. In the Philippines, Mommy.”

  “The Philippines? What’s he doing there? Are there people in this Tagbeelaron place? Are there . . . things?” Or just malaria and snakes and foot-long centipedes? she didn’t finish.

  “Yes, of course there are people there. And things. What kinds of questions are those? Are you okay, Mommy?”

  Bren wrote, Are you okay? then scratched a line through it, afraid she would answer honestly. The fact that she was writing it down at all was an answer in itself. “Of course I’m okay. I’ve just never heard of this place.”

  “Well, it’s actually not that far. Only about fifteen hundred miles.”

  “Fifteen hundred miles is pretty far.”

  “Not when you’re Kevin. He’s traveled all the way to Tagbilaran, what’s another fifteen hundred, right? Anyway, so what I was getting at? The really exciting news. Kevin is coming home for Christmas! Home to my house. Can you believe it?”

  Bren nearly dropped her pencil. Or snapped it in half. Or snapped it in half and dropped both pieces. He was coming home for Christmas, only home was now on the other side of the earth? Home was where his own mother most decidedly was not? When the hell did this become okay?

  “Mommy? Did you hear me? Hello?”

  Bren jumped, scrawled 1,500 miles on the pad just to ground her back into reality. “Yes, yes, I heard. How . . . wonderful that the two of you will get to spend Christmas together.”

  “I know, right?” Kelsey practically squealed. Bren wondered if Dean was still trying to sleep and if her daughter’s squeals had awakened him. Or if a beautiful sunrise had already done that for her? “I’ll be honest, I was feeling really sad about not being around my family this holiday season. I was half considering just going for it and buying a plane ticket home. But now I don’t have to. Home is coming to me! I’m just so excited. Do you think he looks the same?”

  Bren’s mind had blanked out on the words half considering just going for it and buying a plane ticket home. Damn Kevin and his rambling travels.

  “He can’t look that different. He’s only been gone four months. Maybe some facial hair. Maybe a little skinnier. I don’t know how he’s been eating.”

  “Well, I will fatten him up. I’m already planning my menu. I’m going to make satay and fish cakes and coconut rice. Going to go all out.”

  Bren didn’t bother to write those things down. To think she had been worrying about serving brisket for Christmas dinner. Who the hell ate a fish cake on purpose? Fish and cake were two words that shouldn’t even be in the same sentence together, much less on a plate for a Christmas dinner.

  “It’s going to be so fun, Mommy. Can you imagine? We’ll open presents and listen to Bing Crosby and it’ll be just like being home. I can’t wait.”

  “You have Bing Crosby to listen to?”

  “Well, no, but that’s not the point. I can get Bing Crosby to listen to. I’ll order it today. The point is the family is going to be together for the holidays. It’s so great, isn’t it?” Bren said nothing. She was too busy feeling like someone had reached into her chest and ripped her heart right out. Was “the family” so easily represented by just two of them? Was she herself so easily replaced?

  There was a time that Kelsey and Kevin couldn’t even be in the same room together without fighting. Real knock-down, drag-out sibling hate fests, they were. Lasted for what seemed like forever, Kevin calling Kelsey fat and Kelsey hitting Kevin with a shoe. They pretty much completely avoided each other in high school, not even bothering to say hello as they passed each other in the hallways. Kevin was forbidden from coming within ten feet of Kelsey’s bedroom, especially if she had girlfriends over.

  Not that he cared. Kevin was so into himself, he couldn’t be bothered to notice that Kelsey even had friends, much less whether they were worth ogling in their slumber party pajamas.

  To think it had bugged Bren to no end to see her children be so distant from each other. How she’d nagged and bitched and whined and punished. How she’d begged them to forge a relationship. Someday you’ll need each other, she’d said on so many occasions. Someday Daddy and I will be gone and all you’ll have is each other. Someday the only other person in this whole world who will know your whole life story will be each other. Think about it. Quite the attempt to be both guilt-inducing and philosophical, Bren thought, but it didn’t work. They didn’t care about each other’s life stories.

  So why, now that the two were reaching out to e
ach other during the holidays—the most important family time, if you asked Bren—did she hate it?

  She knew why. Because she was jealous, plain and simple.

  “Mommy? Are you still there?”

  “Yes,” Bren said, rattling out of her old memories. “I’m here.”

  “I said don’t you think he’ll like that?”

  “Sure, sure,” Bren said, having no idea what it was that she was committing Kevin to liking, but also not caring much. It was his penance for going away away. “It all sounds just”—she glanced at the notepad—“beautiful.”

  “I know, right?” Kelsey sounded way too squealy and eager for so early in the morning. Bren idly wondered how Dean possibly stood such cheer at the crack of dawn. She wondered how she’d done it for all those years. Well, she’d done it out of pure mother’s love. Dean most likely did it because he found it charming and wonderful and was probably every bit as cheery himself first thing in the morning. “I can hardly wait for Christmas to get here now. It’ll be so good to see him.”

  “Did he say anything else about what’s going on in his life?” Bren asked.

  “Only that he is totally in love with Pavlina. I think he might propose to her, Mommy. Wouldn’t it be something if he did it while they were here?”

  “He’s bringing her?”

  “Yes! They go everywhere together now. She’s left the university to follow his travels. What a beautiful commitment, don’t you think? How could you say I love you any better?”

  “By at least one of you having a job so you could pay for all those love bills?” Bren ventured, realizing too late how bitter and cynical she sounded.

  “Mommy!” Kelsey sounded shocked. “Money is like water. Try to grab it and it flows away.”

  Bren sketched down a few of the words, losing most of them before her pencil could draw them out. “Is that another Buddhist quote?”

  “Yes! How did you know?”

  Because it sounds like you’re reading from a Woodstock leaflet, Bren wanted to say, but didn’t. “Good guess, I suppose.”

  “They will be fine, Mommy. Have faith. Kevin is smart enough to know when he’s broke and needs to come home. But I honestly think they’ve been finding odd jobs here and there, selling things, whatever. I’ll have much more info for you after their visit. And maybe pictures of Pavlina’s engagement ring. I hope, I hope!”

  Bren drew a rudimentary solitaire ring on the pad and tried to imagine how crushed she would feel to have missed her son’s Christmas Day proposal to a woman she’d never laid eyes on at her own daughter’s house. She couldn’t even wrap her head around all of the sadness, so she let it go.

  “We can only hope,” she said, the words feeling false coming out of her mouth, but they must have sounded genuine, because Kelsey continued to rattle on about her plans without so much as a pause.

  Gary played a riff that sounded amazingly close to the beginning of “Revolution.” Bren fought the urge to scream the opening Lennon shriek. Wouldn’t that get Kelsey to stop talking about the beautiful this and the fish cake that and the brilliantly deep Buddhist quotes?

  But eventually, Bren could hear shuffling in the background, and the sound of a man clearing his throat.

  “I should go, Mommy,” Kelsey said. “Should get my day started, even though I’m going to be so distracted now. I have so many plans to make.”

  “Well, please tell Kevin I said hello if you speak to him again,” Bren said.

  “Oh, I don’t think I will. He said something about spending some time on the peninsula on his way here.”

  What peninsula? Bren penciled onto the notepad.

  “But we will definitely call you when he gets here.”

  “Okay, sounds like a plan,” Bren said, although she didn’t add what kind of plan. A cruel plan. A shitty plan. A plan that would likely make her want to choke to death on her cafeteria potatoes and fall face-first right into her Sara Lee pumpkin pie.

  With the perfect crust, every time.

  “I love you, Mommy! Have a great day!” Kelsey chirped in her ear.

  “I love you, too, honey. And I will.”

  Bren hung up the phone. On cue, she heard a few bangs and twangs and then a warbly voice starting up “Good Day Sunshine.”

  Rosa’s voice.

  And it wasn’t so bad, actually.

  That bitch.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Even after all of the practice runs, Bren could have kicked herself for choosing a pie for opening night.

  But the filling was so good, she’d decided to stick with it, even if she ended up with cardboard crust beneath it. She unloaded her tub. Cranberries, pears, cherries, sugar, flour, butter, eggs, oranges, and one perfect unbaked pie that she’d finished only that morning, complete with a crust she was half proud of, half terrified of. She popped it into the oven, hoping that the tiny holly leaves she’d fashioned out of leftover scraps of dough would be beautiful enough for everyone to forgive if the flavor was off. Or, even better, to assume that they were the ones who had gotten it wrong.

  That was, if anyone other than her mother and Aunt Cathy even bothered to show up.

  The Kitchen Classroom was really coming together. Paula had added faux-brick walls to which she’d attached wine racks and little bundles of garlic and old black-and-white photographs of women in their kitchens. The cooking stations shone, polished stainless steel ovens and black granite countertops reflecting the overhead spotlights. The pantry racks had been well stocked, the vegetables looking every bit as shiny as the appliances. Paula was back in her office and came bustling out when she heard Bren arrive.

  “Hello, hello, hello, are you ready?” Paula asked, barreling in full of energy and excitement. “My God, I smell something wonderful already!” She switched on the oven light and peered through the oven window at the pie inside. “Oh, this is good. This is going to be very, very good.” She flicked off the light. “I should put out balloons or something. Do you think? Balloons? Streamers? For the front of the store? Maybe I should have bought a Grand Opening sign. You know, to celebrate and get interest. Maybe a lot of people don’t really know we exist yet? Though that doughnut shop brings in a lot of business. We’ve had a lot of walk-bys this week. All eating doughnuts. Delicious doughnuts, I might add. Is it too late to get a Grand Opening sign? What are your thoughts? I love the look of that pie. Gorgeous. Good enough to eat. Ha-ha, get it? To eat? What do you think the turnout will be? Good? I’ve gotten good responses. Thoughts?”

  Bren’s head swam a little. She really ought to introduce Paula to Kelsey, and see if they could literally suck all of the oxygen out of a room in one conversation.

  “I hope so,” Bren answered, tying an apron—red and green for Christmas, of course—around her waist. “I’m nervous.”

  “Oh.” Paula waved her off. “Don’t be. This is going to be so successful. I was thinking we could even extend into the new year if you wanted. I’m not worried. But I sure wish I’d bought balloons.”

  “The new year?” Bren’s hand was frozen around her apron tie.

  “We can talk about it later; you’re right. You just concentrate on wowing the masses.” Paula headed back toward her office. “Let me know if you need anything.”

  “Masses?”

  “Oh yes, you’ve got six students signed up. I didn’t tell you? It’s practically a full house. Congratulations!”

  “Thank you,” Bren said through numb lips. Six students? Was it possible that her mother and aunt Cathy had managed to sign up three times? With the two of them, anything was possible.

  The door opened, and in walked the two devils, despite her repeated warnings not to arrive too early. “There she is! Are we late?” Joan asked. “What smells so good?”

  Bren nearly laughed out loud, the stress taking an unexpected giddy course through her body. “Nope, r
ight on time, Mom. Only forty minutes early.”

  “The traffic was a disaster,” Aunt Cathy said. “Good thing we left when we did. We liked to never get here. So many honkers, too. Why do you suppose everyone was so glued to their horns today, Joan?”

  “Well, I have no idea,” Joan said, though Bren suspected she could guess. Joan had been a towering five foot one during her young glory days. Now she barely cleared five feet on a good day. And of course she still drove Bren’s father’s old Lincoln—a hulking giant of a beast with doors so heavy nobody could open one without an oof, and a steering wheel that Joan’s head didn’t technically clear. She was a menace on the road, driving as if there were no other cars around her. Probably because she couldn’t see them.

  One of these days, Bren would need to have a talk with her mom about hanging up the old car keys. But today wasn’t that day. Today was the day she talked to her mom only about cranberries and cherries and how to get a nice, smooth texture to a pie filling. Which her mother, like all women born in the 1940s, probably already knew when she came out of the womb.

  “Can we be helpful, Brenda?” Joan asked, dropping the commute conversation. She was old, but she hadn’t lost her wisdom on when to change the subject. Not just yet.

  “You can help me distribute these ingredients,” Bren said. “I think I should have about six students.”

  Joan brightened. “Six! My, look at you! Chef Brenda. We’ll be seeing you on one of those cooking reality shows before you know it. You’ll be rubbing shoulders with that Emeril fellow.”

  God love moms. “Well, I’m not exactly ready to put on a chef jacket yet, but if we could just put two pears and a bowl of each of the berries at every station, that would be great.”

  “Did you hear that, Cathy? Six students,” Joan said, turning away with a disappointing single pear in her hand. This was going to take forever. Which was probably good, given how early they were.

  The hour lead time that Bren had given herself seemed to eat itself up like magic. She’d only barely gotten all the ingredients passed out and was still trying to figure out the video system that would show an aerial view of what she was doing on a screen behind her when the first two students arrived, their words rising over one another in half Spanish, half English.