“I thought so,” Gary said. “Although we can’t really get fried okra here like we would have at Lucky’s Cafeteria.”
“I’ll make you some fried okra next week,” she said. “This is Christmas Eve. Look! A guy just proposed at that table over there. Oh, gosh, Gary, why didn’t we do this sooner?”
He buttered a piece of bread and bit into it, resting his elbow on the table. “Because we always had those kids hanging around,” he said.
Bren rested her chin in her palm. “You really have been looking forward to your empty nest, haven’t you?”
“Absolutely. Think about it. We have money now, Bren. Actual money.”
“It has been a long time since we had that, hasn’t it?” she said wistfully. “In that case, I’m going to want another bottle of this.” She turned the bottle to read the label, but it was all in French. “Whatever this is.”
“Drink up, my lady; Santa has a little something in his bag for you later.” He waggled his eyebrows up and down.
Bren giggled again. It was a naughty thought, but in a way she wished John had kissed her long ago. It had awakened something in Gary.
“Do you miss the band?” she asked. “I mean, I know it’s only been a day, but do you miss playing? Are you disappointed about the gig?”
He studied his bread, took another bite. “Not really. I was kind of nervous about the gig anyway. Truth is, we weren’t very good.”
Bren arched her eyebrows, tried to look surprised.
“It was exciting to think that maybe we could get that good, but I honestly have been thinking about kayaks.”
Bren sputtered around her wine. “Kayaks?”
He nodded vigorously, dropping his bread onto his bread plate. “Have you seen the guys who do that? They’re ripped. I’d have chest muscles on top of chest muscles.”
“But it’s December.”
“Yeah?”
“In Missouri.”
“Yeah?”
“A little cold for kayaking. Unless there’s some sort of ice-kayaking that I don’t know about.”
“Well, I would wait until the water is warmer, of course. And I thought we could even go out to maybe Colorado next summer, do some river kayaking.”
Bren tried to imagine herself on a kayak. She couldn’t do it. “And until then? There’re a lot of months between now and summer.”
“Until then . . .” He thought about it. “I have you, I guess.” He held up his wineglass and they clinked.
So Bren knew that come summer, she would become a kayak widow, just as she had been a golf widow and a dune buggy widow and a band widow, but for now she had him, and she would worry about those months when they came.
“So what about you?” he asked, rooting in the bread basket for another piece. “Do you miss the cooking class?”
She smiled. “Why, Gary. I didn’t realize you even knew I was doing that.”
“Of course I knew. I was just too busy to talk about it. So do you miss it?”
Of course she missed it. She ached for it. Wondered what Tammy Lynn and Lulu and Teresa and Rebecca were doing at that moment. Wished every day that she were planning her New Year course.
But also . . . strangely . . . she missed Virginia Mash. That miserable old cuss. Bren had really thought that maybe she’d been coming around. Just a little. She’d truly believed that she could have helped that along with her project. Despite all of the evidence she had to the contrary, she couldn’t help wondering if just a little more effort might have accomplished their goal.
If only we’d gotten to one hundred gifts, Bren thought, and then, How irrational is that? To think that eighty-eight wouldn’t do it, but one hundred would? How silly do I sound right now?
Not to mention, it was all done now anyway. Christmas was tomorrow, and she couldn’t make twelve gifts herself. The only thing she could make twelve of was . . .
She sat up straighter, holding her wineglass midway to her mouth. “Gary. What do you think about stopping at the store on the way home?”
He chuckled. “You’re not going to get enough food here?”
“Oh yes, this was wonderful. It’s just that . . . I’d like to make a twelve-course meal.”
This time his eyebrows shot up nearly into his hairline as he gaped at her. “You’re serious?” She nodded. “But why?” He didn’t let her respond. He wadded his napkin and tossed it on the table. “I don’t get it. I have done everything I can to make this evening a relaxed and special night for you. I even gave up sweatpants and cafeteria bread pudding. And you know how much I love my cafeteria bread pudding, Bren.”
“But that’s not what this is about,” she said, setting her wine down. She was too excited to be offended by his response, or even worried by the aggravation in his voice. “I want to make a meal for Virginia Mash.”
He gave his head a shake. “Who in Sam Hill is that?”
“The cranky old lady who lives above the kitchen,” Bren said. “It’s perfect, Gary. We wanted to make one hundred gifts. We made eighty-eight. If I make her a twelve-course Christmas meal, we will have hit our goal.”
“And why would you want to do that?”
Bren couldn’t explain it. She couldn’t articulate it any more than Bob Cratchit could explain why he wanted to toast old Scrooge on Christmas Day in that classic Dickens tale.
“It’s Christmas, Gary,” she said, echoing Mr. Cratchit. “She has no one.”
“And is it any wonder?” he asked.
No, it wasn’t. But Bren had begun to wonder if it was a chicken-and-egg issue with Virginia Mash. Was she alone because she was mean and ugly, or was she mean and ugly because she was alone?
Gary must have sensed what she was thinking. He sighed, his eyes drifting to the old-fashioned Christmas tree in the corner, lit up with twinkling white lights and adorned with a twisting red and gold velvet ribbon. “I suppose there’s no stopping you.”
She shook her head slowly.
His plate arrived, and he picked up a fork in one hand and a knife in the other. “I suppose it’s also what I love about you,” he said.
Bren could barely eat her dinner; she was too busy planning her recipes.
• • •
Brisket with barbecue sauce. Corn casserole. Macaroni and cheese, steaming and creamy. Green bean casserole, with the crunchy little onions on top. Homemade rolls smeared with melted butter. Loaded mashed potatoes, both sweet and regular. Cauliflower, beautiful, whole, smothered with cheese. Pumpkin, pecan, and custard pies—one of each. She even put together a batch of bread pudding, just for Gary.
Bren came to bed, sweating, covered with flour and sugar, smelling like food. Her hair was limp and her legs sore, and yet the brisket was still in the oven, slow cooking until morning. She tiptoed through the darkened room and went straight into the bathroom, where she shed her funky clothes and dove into the hottest and most fulfilling shower she’d had in months.
Everything was wrapped and boxed and put together. She would take it to the apartment first thing in the morning. She would drop it, knock, and run. She could hardly wait.
She had just rinsed the shampoo out of her hair when a shape appeared on the other side of the shower door, startling her. She jumped, her hand slapping over her heart. The door opened, and Gary’s face appeared.
“You scared the hell out of me,” she said, flapping a hand at him. Little pustules of suds flew from her fingertips and landed on his chest.
His naked chest.
Which was on top of a whole lot of naked Gary.
“Is there room for one more?” he asked, squinting against the shower spray.
“Are you serious?” Bren couldn’t remember the last time she and Gary had showered together. The truth was, with her newfound addiction to doughnuts, she wasn’t entirely sure there was room for one more. “I’m fil
thy.”
He opened the door farther. Bren couldn’t help letting her eyes slide down the length of him. He was still fairly fit for a man his age. Much more fit than she was. Maybe his inane hobbies had served to keep him young after all. “I don’t care,” he said.
She took a step away from the door, pressed her back against the cold shower wall, trying not to feel self-conscious about her own body, trying to shield herself with her arms while still looking natural. “There’s room,” she said.
He first disappeared away from the shower door, and next thing Bren knew the bathroom was bathed in darkness. When he came back, he was upon her, hands first, and then lips, his skin soft and warm and bristling with goose bumps.
Bren let him kiss her. And, yes, she moaned.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The first Christmas after Jamie died was not the worst.
It was actually the first Christmas after she was diagnosed that was the worst.
Everything they did—every tradition they upheld, every morsel of food they ate, every family member they visited—was done under a cloud of doom. Not grief—grief would come later. Grief would be a relief. Grief would happen when it was supposed to and grief would ultimately get them through the loss.
The doom was far worse than the grief.
“It won’t be your last,” Virginia continually told her daughter, whenever she was brooding. “You’re young. You have so much fight in you.”
But, of course, she hadn’t had as much fight as Virginia thought, and maybe Virginia and Ernie even knew that way back then. Maybe they’d sensed it, that she wouldn’t fight it, or at least not enough to beat it. That the first Christmas after the diagnosis would, indeed, be the last.
Jamie had died on December 23, exactly eleven years before old Chuy gave up the ghost himself. Almost another Christmas to put in the old memory book, but no. Just short of it.
They were prepared. Well, prepared and not prepared. A mother could never be fully prepared for burying her child. Even if that child had been wasting away slowly, sadly, for months. They knew it was coming nonetheless.
So why, Virginia Mash had asked herself a billion times, had she gone shopping? Of all things, shopping. Why had she driven herself to the mall to buy a lousy coat for her daughter for Christmas on that day of all days?
She’d gotten the call just as she was leaving the mall.
“Gin?” It was her husband.
“Yeah?”
“Where are you?” His voice sounded thin and faraway, and she instantly knew, in her gut, why he was calling, even if she continued to deny it, to make him spell it out.
“I’m at the mall. I got Jamie an adorable coat. You know how she’s always so cold these days.”
“Gin . . .”
“What is it? Is she having a pain issue again? I’ll be there in about twenty minutes.” The truth was, Jamie hadn’t had a pain issue in days. Virginia had known that no pain, in this case, wasn’t a good thing. No pain simply meant the home nurse was keeping the morphine flowing round the clock now.
“Honey.”
“Just give her the pain pillow. It helps.” She felt a tear roll down her cheek, even if she didn’t quite know yet why.
“She’s gone, Virginia,” he’d said softly.
She’d been at a stop sign when he said this, but now she couldn’t move. Couldn’t pry her foot from the brake pedal no matter how hard she tried. The message left her brain but never quite reached her foot. It was intercepted by those words—She’s gone, Virginia. A car honked behind her and she glanced into the rearview mirror, but still she didn’t move.
“Honey? Did you hear me?” There were tears in his voice, too, and now that she registered the fact, she realized there had been since she’d answered the phone. “Gin? Are you okay?”
The car honked again, but this time she didn’t bother to look. It careened around her, the man behind the wheel taking the time to flip her the bird before peeling away from the stop sign. How odd, she thought, that he’d just flipped off a mother who’d just been told her child was dead.
Dead.
Oh God, dead.
“Gin? I need you to talk to me. Where are you? I can come get you.”
But he couldn’t. Ernie couldn’t get to her then. Nobody could. She’d been busy disappearing down such a long, dark tunnel, he’d never reach her again.
“I’m here,” she said, though the words didn’t feel like real words. “I bought her a new coat for Christmas.” It was a helpless plea to the universe, but to Ernie it must have sounded ridiculous.
“I know,” he said, his voice growing thicker.
“I’m at the fucking mall!” she shouted suddenly into the phone. “I’m at the mall, buying her a coat!”
“I know,” he said again. He paused, hitched, then sniffed, a huge windy sound into the phone. “Come on home now, okay? You can see her before they . . .”
He trailed off, but she knew what he wasn’t saying. She knew it in pictures and images in her head—awful ones. You can see her before they take her away. Before they took her away and wheeled her to the morgue and put her on a cold slab. Before they put her in a box or cremated her or whatever it was they would decide to do with her. And it seemed ridiculous, utterly ridiculous, to her that they had never decided in months of watching their daughter die what they would do with her after. It had seemed like maybe she couldn’t die, not if they hadn’t figured out how to handle her remains.
“Okay,” she said mildly into the phone. “Okay.” She hung up but still sat at the stop sign, not bothering to move, not bothering to acknowledge other cars that streamed around her, all of their drivers wearing looks of annoyance.
Eventually, when it seemed like Ernie would wonder what had happened to her, she pulled away and calmly pointed her car toward the highway that would take her up north, the coat she’d chosen—patchwork with little gold sequins and buttons sewn here and there; oh, how Jamie would have loved it!—shivering in the trunk.
It would stay in the trunk until spring, when Ernie cleaned out the car. He’d come inside, holding the plastic bag curiously.
“What’s this?” he’d asked, standing in the doorway of the bedroom, where Virginia had spent most of her days, sitting in the rocking chair, staring out the window, like some stereotypical grieving mother. She’d barely glanced over her shoulder—she had a feeling she knew what it was without even looking.
“A coat,” she said. “It’s nothing.”
Recognition lined his face then, and he went somber. He’d pretty much been walking on eggshells around her since the day of the phone call, but there were certain subjects, he knew, that just couldn’t be safely broached. “What should I do with it?” he asked.
“Give it away,” she said, so quickly her words were almost riding over his.
“Okay.”
He’d started to leave the room, but she’d jumped up. “In fact . . . ,” she said, moving so quickly toward the closet door, she lost a slipper. She walked on without it. “Give them all away.” She yanked open the closet door and dove far into the left corner, where she kept all of her coats, whipped them off their hangers, and tossed them at her husband.
He blinked as they hit him in the chest, one by one. “What are you doing?”
“Getting rid of things,” she said. She moved into the hallway, opened the coat closet, and pulled out the two coats stored there. “Take them. Get them out of my sight.”
He dropped those two, they were coming at him so quickly. “Virginia,” he was saying, “Gin. Honey. Now, you’re going to need those.”
“No.” She swirled around to glare at him, directing every ounce of her anger over having lost her daughter at him. She knew it was unfair, unkind, but she couldn’t help herself. “She needed a coat, and somehow she managed without one. Now it’s my turn.”
“Oh, come on, now, Gin, you’re being unreasonable.”
But just like that, seeing him standing there with an armload of clothing, two jackets pooled at his feet, her anger was gone. All she could think of was sitting down. No, lying down. Stretching out and resting her eyes. Her eyes were so tired. “Get them out of my sight,” she said.
She’d gone back to her room then, kicked off the remaining slipper, and sunk into bed. It’d felt like years before she’d come out again.
She hadn’t worn a coat, visited a mall, or even driven a car since.
Virginia Mash didn’t expect to feel the same kind of loss over a dog. And when she’d left Noah’s Ark and climbed back into the cab, ordered him to take her home, she’d felt strong. The circle of life and all.
But she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the day with the coats. She hadn’t been able to get up from her chair by the window, gazing out at nothing, her mind, her internal eyes gazing back eleven years.
Chuy had been her constant companion in that rocking chair. He’d been right by her side in that bed. It had been as if he were mourning right along with her.
But now she was mourning alone, and she was mourning both of them. And maybe she was even mourning Ernie, who’d probably been dealt an even shittier hand than she had, because when he lost his daughter, he lost Virginia, too. Surely he’d been lonely.
She missed hearing Chuy’s little toenails tapping on the wood floor as he got up in the morning and began prowling to see how the apartment had fared during the night. She missed when he stood on his hind legs to see out the front window and yapped away at the strangers on the street—although he hadn’t done that in a long, long while.
And, though if she said it out loud, she would sound stupid, she missed that he was the only other person left in this world who knew and loved Jamie like she did.
Virginia Mash thought these things as she bagged up Chuy’s things—his leash, his squeaky toys, his little plaid coat—finding him in more places throughout the apartment than she’d have ever thought she would. She threw away the unusable things and put the rest in a grocery shopping bag, though she wondered idly what she would do with it once she had it all together. Take it to Noah’s Ark, perhaps. Donate it to the animal shelter or some such.
The Hundred Gifts Page 27