The Hundred Gifts

by Jennifer Scott

“This is not about the kids. This is about us.”

  “What about us?”

  “We don’t know each other anymore. We don’t spend time together. We don’t talk. Don’t you miss talking? I miss talking.”

  A few drumbeats wafted up the stairs. “The guys are waiting. Can’t we do this later?”

  Bren pursed her lips. This was definitely not going the way she’d planned. In fact, it was going absolutely nowhere. She had managed only to feel worse now than she had before they’d ever started talking. She reached back and picked up the crystal bowl that she’d filled with the roasted pecans. It still had John’s fist-shaped dent in the center. She thrust the bowl at Gary.

  “Fine.”

  He gave that clueless look that she so loathed. “You mad?”

  Of course I am, she snapped inside her mind. I’m more than mad. I’m the furniture. The ignored. The phone call when one of the kids can squeeze me into their busy schedules. The chef good enough to cook your food and laundress good enough to wash your shorts but not the wife good enough to actually pay attention to. Yes, I’m mad. I’m beyond mad.

  I’m hurt.

  “No, it’s fine,” she said instead, though she hoped—unreasonably, she knew—that he would see in her body language that she was not fine. That she was wounded. That she needed him.

  He squinted, the nuts pressed into his chest. “You sure?”

  “The guys are waiting for you,” she said, evading the question in her best passive-aggressive maneuver, sneering the words the guys just in case he should miss the bricks-over-the-head clues she was leaving. Come on, Gare, the guilt is right there in front of you. Do the right thing. Pick it up and grovel. Beg for forgiveness.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll bring up the bowls when we’re done.” And he was gone, actually trotting down the stairs like a damn teenager racing to a girlfriend.

  “No, you won’t,” she mumbled. She’d been living with him long enough to know that he would say he would do it and would maybe even intend to do it. But two days from now she would be looking for the crystal bowl for something else and would eventually track it down to wherever Gary’d had it last. Because she was also good enough to be his maid.

  She made her way back to the kitchen island and sank onto a stool, placing her head in her hand. What had she thought was going to happen? That she would ask Gary for a date night, and that his face would light up with possibility? That he’d ask her to take his black suit to the cleaners so he could spoil her with that fancy place downtown—the one with the dim lighting and the amuse-bouche and the palate-cleansing sorbet before the main course and the snooty sommelier? That she’d plan her day tomorrow around shopping for a new dress, get her hair cut, and maybe even spring for a manicure? That she’d even decide a pedi wouldn’t be too much extravagance for a big date night, a big rekindle, an intimate holiday reconnection heavy with the scent of pine needles and melted butter and cinnamon candles? That she’d even splurge on a negligee, and that Gary would be so thrilled with all of it, he’d forget about his stupid band or dune buggy or archery lessons or whatever the hell else was occupying his mind for one night and would remember he’d once looked forward to the day it would be just the two of them? That he’d dance with her in candlelight, an old Kenny G CD unearthed and spinning in the bedroom stereo? That she would become his new hobby?

  Yes, sadly, there was a part of her that had thought those things might happen. Or maybe she’d just longed for it, the same way she longed for Kelsey to change her mind about Thailand or Kevin to settle down and pick a college already or any of the other million things she longed for that didn’t come to fruition.

  “Hello, hello!” she heard from the front door. Heels clicked on the entryway tile.

  “In here,” Bren called, jumping up from her stool, as if sitting there would betray her dismal thoughts to the world.

  Rosa peeked around the corner and gave a shy wave. “Hey there!”

  It was weird. Of course things between them would be weird after the way practice had ended last time. Bren was fairly certain that Rosa thought she was a nutcase at best. Maybe a dangerous lunatic, or the terminally depressed, and who would blame her? Here she was, walking in on yet another moment of Bren’s insecurity and failure.

  Dear God, was she a nutcase? Was she terminally depressed? Well, not terminally, no. But depressed? She shook her head. She wouldn’t think about it.

  “Hello,” Bren said as cheerfully as possible, hurrying to the fridge. “Wine?”

  “No, I couldn’t,” Rosa said. “I’m here to drag Gil away. We’ve got plans tonight.”

  Bren pulled the wine out of the refrigerator anyway, then hoisted up onto her tiptoes to reach the glasses, which Gary had put on the highest possible shelf. She couldn’t help noticing how out-of-date and dull her kitchen looked compared to the Kitchen Classroom. She was still pulling things out of a white refrigerator—where was her stainless steel? “Plans? I hope it’s not an office Christmas party or anything boring like that.” She pulled the cork and tipped an inch of wine into each glass.

  “Ugh, no, that’s in a couple of weeks, after Thanksgiving. I’m dreading it. Gilly’s boss is such a pompous ass. And he thinks he’s a real ladies’ man. Very proud of his assets, if you know what I mean.” Bren nodded, though she wasn’t one hundred percent sure what Rosa meant; she was only one hundred percent sure that she didn’t want to know. “No, tonight we are going out, just the two of us. Going to try Le Foyer, the new French place downtown? It’s supposed to be amazing. Have you been?”

  Bren picked up her wine and slugged it all back in one swallow, trying not to feel insult-to-injury-ish. “Not yet. Gary and I will wait until the crowds die down. Maybe”—when hell freezes over—“after the holidays.” She pushed Rosa’s wineglass toward her and refilled her own.

  “That’s a good plan,” Rosa said. “Gilly’s just such a sap. He can’t wait that long. Once he gets an idea in his head, there’s no stopping him.”

  “How very romantic,” Bren said, wondering if the bitterness she felt on her tongue was seeping through her words. She noticed the telephone pad and pencil on the countertop near her wineglass, and had the sudden urge to write Le Foyer on it. Something else to look up. Another way to live vicariously through someone while getting nowhere herself. Her notepad was so exciting!

  Maybe the urge was to snatch up the stupid pad and rip it in half like those musclemen did with telephone books, instead.

  “So how did the class go?” Rosa asked.

  Bren took another drink, forcing herself to sip. “Oh, it had its moments,” she said. “We made the pie.”

  “Wonderful! How did it come out?”

  Bren shrugged. The comfort she’d felt leaning against her car that night was gone, and now her desperate attempts to create a holiday recipe that was meaningful seemed like a huge waste of time. “Everyone took one home,” she said.

  “So, what’s the next lesson?”

  Bren drained her glass again—my, how she must look like a complete alcoholic to Rosa at this point—and chuckled. And then the chuckle turned to a giggle, the giggle to a laugh, and soon she was crossing her legs for fear that she might laugh a pee right out of herself. She held a hand out, trying to calm herself and to assure Rosa that she was okay, and not the lunatic that was appearing before her. Rosa’s eyes looked huge in her bobblehead on top of her tiny little body.

  It really was all so ridiculous, when she thought about it. After all, everyone had left with a pie. And a damn good one. Why on earth would she let the onetime griping of a cranky old biddy unnerve her so much?

  “I’m sorry,” she said, gulping for air. “Appetizers, but I’m afraid the boys have snatched them and run. I guess it’s a good sign. They’re edible.”

  “I don’t know,” Rosa said, turning her lips down. “Gil will eat pretty much anything.”
>
  Bren let out another gulp of laughter. “Good point. I suppose those three men aren’t the definition of selective. I could have served them any old slop.”

  “Oh, that’s not what I meant! I’m so sorry! That came out so rude!”

  Bren, still laughing, wiping tears from her eyes, nodded. “It really did. But maybe they saved you some. Feel free to go on down. Don’t forget to search John’s shirt for some nuts.” And then the laughter renewed itself.

  “I won’t,” Rosa said, her voice jovial, as if she wanted to join in Bren’s cheer, but her face showing the same wariness she’d worn when escaping Bren’s kitchen before. It wouldn’t be long before Rosa wouldn’t want to come inside the house at all, a prospect that worried Bren on one level, but thrilled her on another. She didn’t care for adorable Rosa and her date nights at Le Foyer, but she liked the idea of Rosa being able to tell her friends about the laughing, depressed alcoholic married to her husband’s guitarist even less.

  Rosa disappeared downstairs, and soon the music—which might have been a rough extraction of Bob Seger’s “Sock It to Me Santa,” if that song were played by drunken apes—petered out. A smile spread across Bren’s face as she imagined teeny, adorable Rosa bringing down the hammer and busting up the fun for a stuffy date night. Take that, Gary. Thought you’d weaseled your way out of it, didn’t you?

  Bren poured herself another glass of wine and took a long sip. She stared at the tomatoes left on her windowsill—shockingly red for November. She might as well start cooking again. The ladies would like these appetizers. She could only imagine what Aunt Cathy would relate to the crab cups, and what stories would come out of her mouth.

  She had just dumped the tomatoes into a colander when she felt a soft tap on her shoulder. She jumped, turning, to find John there, looking pink-faced as ever. He was holding the crystal bowl out to her.

  “Oh, John. You scared me. Just put that on the counter. I’ll get it in a minute. You liked them?”

  He nodded slowly, his eyelids drooping as if he were half drugged. “They were great. Thank you.”

  Bren’s eyebrows scrunched together as she took him in. “Sure, Johnny, anytime. You like some wine or anything?”

  “I shouldn’t.”

  The water ran over Bren’s fingers, cold out of the tap, turning them numb. Why was he looking at her so strangely? “You okay?”

  She noticed a flicker behind his eyes. Discomfort? Embarrassment? Gas?

  “I’m really good,” he said. “Those nuts were fantastic, Bren.”

  He cleared his throat before leveling his gaze at her again. The water continued over her fingers, little sprays kicking up the rotting-food smell of their decade-old garbage disposal. She needed to toss a lemon rind down there. Below, she could hear the others, talking, heading toward the stairs.

  “Good,” she said, the crease in between her eyebrows deepening. Was he okay? Did he have a nut allergy she didn’t know about?

  Rosa could clomp up a flight of stairs pretty fast in such high heels, but for a change Bren was glad of it, as the noise seemed to jolt the awkwardness out of the room.

  “Let’s go, my princess,” Gil said, swooping through the door so close to Rosa they almost appeared to be one person. Rosa giggled and slapped at his hands and ran through the kitchen on her tiptoes. Nauseatingly cute. Even Kelsey would have had a hard time finding anything beautiful in an overweight, middle-aged man chasing after his hot young wife in a crowd. Well, if you could call Bren and John a crowd. Which you really couldn’t, but John had been making the room feel very crowded.

  “See ya tomorrow, Gare!” Gil yelled down the stairwell.

  “Yup,” she heard Gary call back, just before the clanging of something dropped on the hard basement floor.

  “Thanks for the snacks, Brenny,” Gil said, leaning over and placing the pistachio cream bowl on the counter.

  “Yeah, bye, Bren! Enjoy your class,” Rosa said, pulling Gil’s hand and leading him out of the kitchen.

  “You bet. Enjoy your . . . escargot.”

  “Ew, snails,” Rosa said. “I wouldn’t dare.”

  “I would,” Gil said. “If I got to eat them out of your belly button.” He nibbled on Rosa’s ear. Bren wanted to gag.

  “Okay, see you later,” she called loudly, turning off the water and shaking the colander with too much force for tomatoes. She couldn’t help herself; she wanted to shake the ick off of the conversation.

  “Bye. Thanks!” they called in unison, heading toward the front door.

  “Yes, thank you,” John said. He reached over and put his hand on hers as she tried to dry it off, the paper towel caught between them.

  “You’re welcome,” she said, aware that it came out of her mouth as a question rather than a statement.

  “Thank you . . . for everything,” he said.

  More of the awkward staring.

  “You’re welcome . . . for everything,” she said, a dim fear seeping into her that perhaps John was having a stroke. At their age, you had to be vigilant for signs.

  He grinned—was that a wink or had a flick of water gone into his eye?—bit his bottom lip, and then slid out of the room, leaving Bren standing by the sink holding a dripping colander full of slightly battered cherry tomatoes.

  He whistled a familiar tune as he walked. “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.”

  She stood rooted in her spot until long after the front door had shut behind him. Gary was making more noises downstairs. It almost sounded like he was trying to play the drums now. He was actually—God knew how—worse on those than he was on the guitar.

  Bren set the colander back in the sink, grabbed her wineglass, and emptied the bottle into it, filling it so full she had to bend over and slurp some off the top, before picking up the glass and holding it in her pruny and numb hand, John’s whistling and wink-grin running over and over through her mind.

  “What in the hell was that?” she said aloud, and then dumped her wine into the sink, grabbed a paring knife, and started coring.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  As expected, Aunt Cathy seemed to have a hell of a time pressing the dough into the muffin tin.

  “You know what I think?” she exclaimed. “I think you bought yours, that’s what I think. You’re just trying to make us all look bad. Nobody could get this crab cup nonsense to work. Why does it have to be in a cup anyway? Can’t you just put the fish on a cracker like everyone else?”

  “I got mine,” Joan said. “See?” She held up her muffin tin, which looked like it had been hit with an explosion of flour and eggs and dough. Revolting. Maybe Bren should have rethought the complexity of this dish. Though, to be fair, how complex was flour and egg, really?

  But the tomato thing had gone so poorly, especially after Aunt Cathy had loudly compared the pistachio filling to “a Christmas sneeze” and Tammy Lynn had laughed so hard a false eyelash had fallen into her cream cheese. Only Rebecca had been able to get her tomatoes stuffed, and Bren had eventually just moved on.

  She should have started with the nuts. Those were toss-and-bake.

  “Oh, look at hers,” Tammy Lynn said, pointing to Rebecca’s muffin tin, which was perhaps even more perfect than Bren’s had been. Rebecca reddened and shrank back onto her stool.

  “She cheated,” Aunt Cathy said. “She brought those from home.”

  “Aunt Cathy, she did not cheat,” Bren said, hurrying to their station. She lowered her voice, leaning into Joan’s space. There was flour all down the front of Joan’s Christmas sweater, which was blocked red and white rectangles with kittens in various poses of garland entwining appliquéd to the front. Bren really needed to talk to her sister-in-law about buying those awful things for Joan every year—amIright? “Mother, can’t you do something about her?”

  Joan shrugged. “Don’t you think if I could I would have by now? She’s
been this way her whole life. No changing now. You just have to live with it. Like taxes.”

  “Or a cold,” Tammy Lynn added.

  “Or genital warts,” Aunt Cathy crowed. “Say, she’s writing again.” She pointed at Rebecca, who had taken a break, perched on the stool with her notebook placed on her knee. “What are you writing in that thing? Nasty newspaper exposé? Or maybe for one of those what-do-you-call-’em?” She turned to Joan for help.

  “Tablet magazines.”

  Aunt Cathy snapped her fingers. “That’s right, the tablets. Maybe one of you is secretly sleeping with George Clooney and she’s tracking you down. My money’s on one of you two.” She pointed at the two ladies behind her.

  “She’s probably writing down the recipe,” Lulu said. Teresa nodded in agreement. Lulu leveled her stare at her sister. “Something you should be doing, hermana.” Teresa clicked her tongue and looked away, her arms folded across her chest.

  “No, she’s writing a steamy romance novel,” Tammy Lynn said. “Wouldn’t that be a kick? She could title it Heat Me Up.” She brushed her hands together, a plume of flour fogging the air in front of her.

  “She could call it Caliente Cook,” Teresa said.

  “Oh, nothing hotter than a Latino chef,” Lulu added. “Hijo de puta, these cups.”

  Joan held a rolling pin in the air. Why was she using a rolling pin? This required no rolling pin. “Or she could call it Kiss the Chef.”

  “Or Nookie in the Cookies,” Aunt Cathy added, and everyone groaned.

  Everyone except Rebecca, that was. She simply wrote more furiously, her fingers gripping the pen so tightly it appeared to have started to bend under the pressure. Her eyes flicked up only once, accusatorily, Bren thought, and then she went back to her intensive scribbling.

  What was she writing? Bren wondered. She hardly ever spoke, didn’t even crack so much as a grin during the search for the missing eyelash, and she was forever jotting notes into that book. Aunt Cathy was right—it was unnerving.

  “You know, why don’t we go ahead and get our cups in the oven?” Bren said, heading for her station. “And we’ll start glazing our nuts while they cook.”