The Hundred Gifts

by Jennifer Scott

  “We wanted food. There’s never food in this house.”

  Bren had to work to keep her eyes from bugging. “No food?”

  “Duck’s done,” John said. He set the knife down and turned to face Bren proudly. His smile faltered when he saw her face.

  “No food?” she repeated. “Are you kidding me? I’m a cooking teacher, Gary.”

  “That’s why John is doing this for you,” he said. He elbowed Gil and snickered. Bren narrowed her eyes at him.

  The tips of John’s ears reddened, and he turned toward the sink, where he commenced to washing his hands, scrubbing so vigorously, Bren feared he might throw out a joint.

  “He’s not doing it for me,” Bren said, although she knew it was kind of true that he was, in fact, doing it for her. “Well, I didn’t ask him to,” she amended. “I’ve never made a turducken, Gary. Have you?”

  “I thought you made tons of them before we were married.”

  “Never mind.”

  “What in the world is a turducken?” Gil asked.

  “It’s one of those things where you squish a bunch of poultry together,” Gary said.

  Gil pondered for a moment. “Sounds like it needs bacon.”

  Gary gestured toward Gil in a See? This is what I’m talking about sort of gesture. “Bacon,” he said. “That’s the kind of food we need here. Jerky. Beer. Not froufrou poultry and pies with berries and seafood sawdust cups.”

  He laughed in the kind of way Gary was wont to laugh whenever he was showing off for friends. Bren knew the laugh well—of course she did, after so many years of marriage. But he also knew when his wife was not finding his humor the least bit funny.

  The mood in the room turned heavy. Gil skittered down the basement steps without a word, grabbing two of the plastic bags on his way. John ripped off a paper towel, the sound loud as a firecracker, as Bren and Gary stared each other down.

  “I’ll just . . . you should . . . um,” John said, stutter-stepping toward them.

  “I just meant that we wanted real food,” Gary said, gulping. “Man food.”

  “I think you meant junk food,” Bren said. “Jerky and beer and cheese curls. That’s not real food; it’s junk food.”

  “Okay, fine. Junk food, then,” he said. “We wanted junk food. Sue us.” There was a thump as Gil sat down at his drum set downstairs. Gary glanced over his shoulder. “Don’t take it so personally.” He turned, grabbed the last three plastic sacks, and headed toward the basement. “Come on, John. We’ve got to work on ‘Jingle Bell Rock’ some more,” he said from the stairwell.

  There was a beat, during which Bren and John both stood stock-still in the middle of the kitchen. Bren knew she should feel embarrassment or humiliation over Gary’s friends—her friends—having witnessed that. To her, it was painfully obvious that she and Gary had lost touch with each other, and she wondered if they would ever find each other again. She wondered if John and Gil could see the same thing. If they sided with Gary. If they felt sorry for her at all. She wondered if they even cared, or if they were judging her. God, she didn’t want to be judged. Not by guys like these.

  She walked over to the kitchen table and sank into a chair. She stared through the archway into the living room, gazing at the fireplace, which was completely bare. Normally, it would be draped with garland and white lights, the kids’ old stockings clinging to it. Kelsey’s was the typical red felt getup, the white cuff around the top tinged yellow, the “y” rubbed off her name. Kevin’s was knitted, from back when her mother and Aunt Cathy used to do that, and had been snagged by one of Kelsey’s cats, creating a hole in the toe that let M&M’s escape. Bren had vowed for years to do something about that hole, but she’d never gotten around to it. And now it was too late. Now she didn’t know if she’d ever hang a stocking for Kevin again. Or Kelsey, for that matter. Did you hang stockings for your married children? This seemed a bit of Christmas etiquette nobody had ever passed on to her.

  Ordinarily, a huge tree would be standing next to the fireplace as well. A real one, its needles falling off at an alarming and frustrating rate, clogging Bren’s vacuum cleaner, sticking to her bare feet. It, too, would be draped with all-white lights, although she had toyed the past couple of years with the idea of switching over to colorful ones. The LED types that were so bright they didn’t look real.

  She used to love sitting with the Christmas tree late at night, sipping a cup of tea, flipping through a catalogue or wrapping gifts on the floor.

  “There’s no tree,” Bren said softly.

  “I’m sorry?” John asked, looking more uncomfortable than ever.

  Bren shifted back into reality. “Oh, sorry, John,” she said. “I didn’t realize you were still here. They’ve all gone down.”

  “I know, but you were saying something about a tree?”

  She waved her hand. “I’m being silly,” she said, and swallowed when she realized there was a lump in her throat. “I was just realizing that Gary and I didn’t bother to put up a tree this year. How awful is that?”

  “Not awful,” he said. “You’re busy with your new job.”

  Her lips drew into a hard line. “If only that were it.” Music started up downstairs, the first few bars of “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.” “I think that’s your cue, Santa.”

  “Sure is,” he said. “Listen. About the turducken. You’re going to want to only partially bone the turkey. That way it’ll still look like a real turkey once you have it all stuffed together. Otherwise, you’re good to go.”

  Bren had forgotten all about the turducken. How could she have forgotten? The food argument was what had caused this whole thing. She could still smell raw poultry in the air. “Thanks for your help, Johnny,” she said. She stood and put her hand on his arm. “You’re so kind.”

  She felt something then. A jolt of what might have been electricity. She pulled her hand away, mystified, when she realized John was gazing at her, his face gone all slack and serious. He licked his lips. “Any—,” he started, but the rest of the word seemed to get caught in his throat. He cleared it and tried again. “Anytime.”

  Bren took a step back, a weird feeling coursing through her—something embarrassing and wrong. She turned toward the poultry, her face pointed to the floor, and started slicing into the turkey, unsure what she was doing or where she was cutting.

  Surely her mind was playing tricks on her. She’d known John for decades. She was friends with his wife. He was best friends with Gary. Anything she felt transfer between the two of them was a mistake. A bad, bad mistake.

  By the time she looked up again, and gathered enough courage to glance over her shoulder, he was gone.

  A few minutes later, she heard his amplified voice singing backup, something about Christmas in the jailhouse. He sounded extra energized.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “So you still haven’t told him about it,” Nan said, tapping Bren’s shoulder with her comb. The touch made it begin itching anew.

  “I still haven’t gone to the doctor,” Bren answered. “The specialist.”

  “You know, it could be psoriasis or something. Bend your head down.”

  Bren did as instructed and felt Nan comb out another swatch of hair, tuck a piece of foil under it, paint it, and fold the foil over. “That’s why I haven’t gone. Why waste money on a copay when it’s most likely nothing?”

  “Not true.” Nan combed up another swatch of hair. “I’ve known you a long time, Bren Epperson, and you are so lying right now. You’re scared of it, and that’s why you haven’t gone.”

  Bren pretended to consider this as a new thought, but she knew Nan was right. Ever since she’d found the eraser-sized brown spot high up on her shoulder, she’d been terrified. In fact, she was relatively certain that the damn thing didn’t actually itch. It only prickled when she was thinking about it, or thinking about oth
er things that made her nervous and scared. Then it bristled like a son of a bitch. And, of course, since she was already worried or nervous or scared in the moments that it began nagging her. . . well, it wasn’t a terribly long leap to her death by melanoma.

  “It’s probably nothing. You use sunscreen, don’t you?”

  “Not always.”

  Nan stopped, leaned over so she was looking into Bren’s face. “You don’t?”

  “Who does?”

  “Everyone does.”

  “Well, I try. But it’s impossible to always be prepared.” Plus, she thought, there were all those careless days in college, the ones where she and the girls would go to the dock with nothing but their underpants to keep the sun off their skin.

  “I’m sure you’re fine regardless,” Nan said. “But you really should start wearing sunscreen.”

  “Oh, trust me, I will,” Bren said. She’d more than once thought if she renewed her vows to healthy skin care, maybe the spot would go away. But that didn’t appear to be how life, and the universe, worked.

  “So how’s the class going?”

  Bren sighed and absently rubbed the scratchy spot on her shoulder. From one sore subject straight to another. Why did she even come to Nan, anyway? Nan was nosy. Maybe she should start seeing a stylist somewhere else, someone who didn’t know her. Someone who liked silence. She could lie—make herself out to be someone way more fabulous and less pathetic than she was.

  “It’s going, I suppose,” she said. “Going right into the toilet.”

  “Aren’t you just full of Christmas cheer these days?”

  “Nothing to be cheerful about,” Bren answered. Nan turned her, so now she was looking at an old lady getting curled two chairs down. The old lady had a serene smile on her face, her eyes half closed. “It has its really good things, you know? The students are fun. Most of them. Not my aunt. She’s a pain in the butt. But the other students are fun. And they like to cook. And they don’t seem to complain too much when I mess up.”

  “You mess up?”

  “A lot. Oops, sorry.” She’d realized she’d been nodding, and Nan was chasing her hair with the bleach brush.

  “So it sounds great. What’s the problem?”

  Bren sighed. “This woman upstairs. She lives alone with her dog, and she’s so sour and nasty. It’s like she lives to complain about us. We can’t get through a whole class without her crashing it, threatening to call the police, to have us shut down. It really dampens the whole mood.”

  “Wow. That is some kind of crabby. Look down again.”

  “Yeah,” Bren said as she lowered her chin again, thinking about the last class. The old lady had come in with eyes a-blazing and had clomped right up to Tammy Lynn’s station. Before Tammy Lynn could do anything to shield herself, that dog had sneezed all over her turducken . . . or her turducken-like bird wad. All hell had broken loose then, with Aunt Cathy swearing her throat was closing up, Joan trying to wipe invisible dog snot off everyone’s birds, Tammy Lynn squawking with her palms up at her shoulders, Lulu and Teresa launching into preach it, sister mode, wagging their manicured nails at the old woman, the dog yapping its ever-loving head off, the old woman going on and on about code violations, and Rebecca calmly writing in her notebook. “She is definitely some kind of crabby, that is for sure.”

  “Maybe she’s just lonely,” Nan suggested. “Maybe griping at your class is her only form of entertainment.”

  “I don’t know,” Bren said. “She sure has a way of trying to make friends, if loneliness is her problem. And I don’t think it is. Not entirely. I think there’s more to it.”

  “Like what?”

  But that was what Bren had been asking herself lately. More like worrying herself over, actually. Because it had occurred to her that maybe the old woman didn’t have anyone else in her life. And maybe someday that would be Bren. Kelsey in Thailand, Kevin and wild-night Pavlina God knew where, Gary on some sort of motorcycle tour of Australia or studying kung fu on a mountaintop, or maybe just out in the garage not speaking to her for the umpteenth year in a row. And there she would be—grumpy old Bren, tottering around on a cane with her natty old cat wedged under her arm like a football. I’ll sue you. And I’ll sue you. And I’ll sue you and you and you, too, she imagined herself saying. What a bleak image of the future.

  “I don’t know what exactly is behind it. But something not good,” she said.

  • • •

  That night they worked on sweet potatoes. Three ways, as if there were even one way to make sweet potatoes taste good, in Bren’s opinion. She hated the things. Never made them.

  Which made her decision to teach an entire class on cooking them correctly seem really, really stupid.

  And the old woman had wasted no time complaining. Had practically been lying in wait for it, bursting in and waving what she claimed was a cease-and-desist letter above her head. Could have been a grocery list, for all Bren knew, but it didn’t matter. She’d been shaken by the interruption once again. Gary was right about one thing—she wasn’t a good enough cook to teach others how to make sweet potatoes one way, much less three. And that was when she wasn’t rattled.

  The first way—mashed and loaded—came out gloppy and stringy. The second way—baked, with butter, brown sugar, apples, and walnuts—should have been a no-brainer, except Bren forgot to bring the bakers’ potatoes themselves. And she couldn’t even remember what third way she’d had planned.

  “You okay?” Tammy Lynn had asked, as she passed Bren’s station on her way to the pantry to put away the unused brown sugar. Bren was sitting on her platform, her head in her hands, wondering how she would break it to Paula that she was quitting, and how much Gary was going to gloat when she did.

  Tammy Lynn eased down onto the riser next to her with a grunt, her cosmic-patterned culottes hitching up over her knees. She’d painted her nails deep plum to match.

  “Well, now you have to tell me, since it will take two men and a truck to get me up off this floor,” she said.

  Bren let out a listless chuckle. “I suppose she’s getting to me.”

  “I suppose she’s getting to all of us. Lulu said next time she comes in, she’s going to call the police herself, for her disturbing the peace. Teresa’s talked to the owner about it, and the owner is at her wits’ end. Costs her money every time that old kook has her attorney send a nasty gram. And Cathy’s threatening to—”

  Bren held out her hand. “Please don’t tell me what my aunt is threatening to do. I’m stressed enough already. She’s been dying to firebomb somebody since the mid-sixties.”

  “Oh, honey, don’t be stressed,” Tammy Lynn said, reaching over to pat Bren’s knee. “We’re all having a blast, even if things get burned and don’t come out right and a dog sneezes into our food. None of us here are chefs. Well, except maybe Lulu. I haven’t quite figured that out yet. We’re all just trying something new.”

  “You know what would be new?” a voice said, and Bren looked up just in time to see Aunt Cathy lowering herself to the floor beside Tammy Lynn. “Whiskey.”

  “Whiskey isn’t new,” Joan said, eyeing the ground as if she wanted to join the others but didn’t quite trust making a trip that far down.

  “Mom, don’t. We’ll stand up,” Bren said, but Joan was already lowering herself, and had made it to the floor without incident. She looked very pleased with herself for having done so. She laboriously kicked off her house shoes and wiggled her stockinged toes.

  “Whiskey is old as the hills,” Joan repeated. “And so is drinking it while you’re cooking. I’m onto you, Catherine. I know exactly what you’re thinking, and the answer is no.”

  “But drinking it while we’re cooking here would be new,” Aunt Cathy said. Her glasses had slipped down to the end of her nose, and she looked schoolmarmish, gazing at her sister over them. If a schoolmarm wore f
loor-length denim skirts with peace-sign appliqués, that is.

  “We could do a shot every time that woman and her dog showed up,” Lulu said. She and Teresa had joined them, their matching Christmas sweaters dazzling Bren’s eyes with their reds and greens and golds.

  “We’d all be borracha before we put a single thing in the oven,” Teresa said.

  Lulu giggled. “Which would be a good thing when it comes to you, Teresa.”

  Teresa flung her palms up. “I’m learning; what more do you want, perra? I think some whiskey might improve your attitude.”

  “And who would drive us all home?” Bren asked. “Thanks, ladies, but no, thanks. I’m just . . . I think she’s won. You know?”

  “Who?” Tammy Lynn asked. “You don’t mean that hateful woman?”

  Bren nodded. “Yeah. I can’t concentrate—not that it’s all her fault—and I can’t seem to make a single thing. You all saw the turduckens.”

  Aunt Cathy snickered. “I won ten bucks off that fiasco.”

  “I’m so happy for you, Aunt Cathy. But I bought five hundred dollars’ worth of dead bird, and did anyone go home with something edible?”

  The ladies all exchanged glances. Just when Bren was about to drive her point home, a voice piped up from the back of the room.

  “I did.”

  They all straightened and peered over the stations, looking like a pack of meerkats poking their heads up out of a hole to watch for intruders.

  Rebecca stood from her stool, flipping her notebook closed, and pushing it into the back pocket of her corduroys.

  “Mine came out just fine,” she said, taking a few steps toward them.

  “Who is that? I can’t see,” Aunt Cathy said.

  “Well, who do you think it is?” Joan answered. “It’s that girl in the back of the room.” She whispered very loudly and slowly, “The reeepooorterrr.” Bren rolled her eyes. How her mother and Aunt Cathy got around on a normal day, she would never know. She would just thank God that they somehow made it into their beds safe and sound each night.