I grunted an affirmative, because I barely had the energy to use real words. “But don’t worry. I’ll be by to pick you up like I promised.”
“No need. The trip is cancelled.”
“Why?”
“Both of my parents and half my siblings have the flu. They said to stay away and I’m not arguing with them. Not a big fan of the flu.”
“That’s great!” I shouted, gaining some energy with the news.
Colt didn’t seem as excited as me. “In what way, exactly?”
“Not great for them or you. That’s awful—really it is. I’m sorry. But now you can come here for Christmas and then I only need to find one more guest!”
“Is your mother coming?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know—”
“Coltrane Amadeus Baron, you’re coming and that’s all there is to it.”
“If I say yes, will you promise never to call me that again?”
“Of course.”
“And can I sit at the kids’ table? It’s more fun there.”
“Where else would I put you?”
***
The rest of Christmas Eve day was spent wrapping presents, double-checking the recipes with the ingredients to make sure I had everything on hand for the big day, making sure Howard picked up his mother and friends from the train station, making guest beds, calling my mother and confirming that she was bringing the pies, getting the keys from my neighbors, the Perkins, so I could use their oven as well (they were travelling early in the morning to spend the day with their kids and grandkids in Southern Virginia), making sure my new and perfect Christmas Day ensemble was wrinkle-free, and finally, painting my nails a glorious glossy red. By one o’clock I felt I was as prepared as I could be, and sat down on the couch to take a breather. I’d completed every item on my list and had some time to spare before showtime. I easily had an hour before Howard returned from the train station with our house guests. I laid back and closed my eyes. Wine, I thought. I could use a glass of wine right now. No, I thought again. I could use a nap right now. I was already drifting off into heavenly slumber when my ten-year-old daughter, Bethany, plopped down next to me and whispered in my ear.
“I sure hope you got Amber that Glinda-the-Good-Witch costume that she asked Santa for, because if you didn’t, none of us will hear the end of it. If she doesn’t stop talking about that costume, I’m going to scream.”
My eyes popped open and I released an involuntary scream of my own. “Santa!” I howled.
Bethany’s face went pale. “Mom? Please tell me you got it.”
Disoriented, I stood up and then wobbled as a dizzy spell took hold. “Where’s Amber?”
“You took her to the Horners’ to play with Emily, remember?”
Of course I didn’t remember. I was a zoned-out idiot mother who had become overwhelmed with planning Christmas dinner and had completely forgotten to buy the Santa gifts.
Bethany had caught onto the Santa game very early in life—she was just too logical to buy into the ruse. And Callie, of course, was in high school. She’d left Santa behind years earlier. But Amber was only five and not only did she believe in Santa, she had no reason to think there was even a choice in believing or not believing. Santa simply was. He existed, and she had told him when she’d sat on his lap at the mall that she wanted the Glinda-the-Good-Witch costume, Limited Edition, complete with the lighted bubble-making wand. With the exception of the baby elephant she’d asked for last year, Santa had always granted her wishes. He’d always put exactly the right presents under the tree. As for the baby elephant, well, he left her a certificate proving that a baby elephant in Africa had been named Amber, in honor of the lovely Amber Marr. Along with the certificate was a personal, handwritten note by the man himself, explaining that the mama elephant and baby elephant just could not be parted, no matter how good of a mother he knew Amber would be, and that he knew Amber would understand. She did, of course, and most of Rustic Woods had been told about the baby elephant in Africa named Amber and what a great and wise man Santa Claus was.
Until now.
When the room stopped spinning, I tried to round up some semblance of composure. The only course of action was to get my tooshie to a toy store and find that Glinda costume, and find it fast. Like a drill sergeant on uppers, I barked out a round of orders to Bethany for handling the house and then shot out the door, keys and purse in hand. “I’ll be back in an hour. Hour and a half at the most,” I said. “Call Daddy and tell him to pick Amber up on his way home from the train station.”
Twenty minutes later, I was rushing up and down the aisles of Toys Ahoy, searching for the box Amber had pointed out more than once. I wasn’t too worried when I didn’t find it immediately—I mean, Glinda-the-Good-Witch costumes couldn’t be in that much demand, right? Surely there’d still be a few left on the shelves. Empty Barbie shelves I could understand; empty Baby-Alive shelves were expected (despite the fact that, personally, the whole doll-that-poops-and-pees thing grosses me out); even empty Tickle Me Teenage Ninja Turtle shelves I could understand. But Glinda-the-Good-Witch costumes? Who’s really into The Wizard of Oz any more? I figured Amber had to be one of few.
I’d figured wrong.
Evidently there was a whole modern revival of The Wizard of Oz thanks to that silly Broadway play, and according to the laughing man in the Toys Ahoy uniform, you couldn’t find a Glinda-the-Good-Witch costume this side of the Rocky Mountains. He ventured to guess that they didn’t exist on the other side, either.
Not to be discouraged, I motored my way to three more toy stores, only to receive the same answer—Glinda-the-Good-Witch costumes were gone, gone, gone with the wind. Desperate for something remotely similar, I nabbed a sparkly princess crown, a sequined, flouncy dress, and a bubble gun at the last store, and headed home, chiding myself the entire way for falling down on my Santa duties. I doubted that Tru Diamond would perform so dismally.
When I finally stepped back into the house, it smelled deliciously of goulash. I knew who’d been cooking in my kitchen—that had to be Howard’s mother, whom we lovingly referred to as Mama Marr. She was born and raised in Pennsylvania, but somehow talked with a thick Polish accent just like her own mother, whose hometown was Gdansk. Everyone loved Mama Marr’s goulash, and the fact that she was cooking meant I could rest up for the impending workout of tomorrow’s feast.
Howard greeted me at the door with a glass of wine. “Merry Christmas Eve,” he said. “Come meet my mother’s friends.”
I took the wine without objection and shoved the Santa gift into the hall closet to handle after Amber went to bed.
Seated on my living room couch was a bent woman with a very interesting sort of red-orange hair sitting next to a chubby Chihuahua that growled at me when I stepped near its owner to shake hands. “Oh, don’t worry about her,” smiled widow number one, whose name was Marion. “This is Chimichanga and she’s just grumpy after that long train ride. Settle, Chimi—mind your manners for our kind guest.” Marion’s hair was a little scary and her dog was terrifying, but she had a sweet smile and singsongy voice that warmed my heart immediately.
Leaning into Howard, I whispered with some concern, “Where are the cats?”
“Put them in the basement,” he whispered back.
Disaster averted. Indiana Jones and Mildred Pierce kitties weren’t likely to roll out the welcome wagon for this fido. “Welcome to our home,” I said, attempting another handshake. When Chimichanga’s lips curled and revealed a set of sharp canines that rivaled Cujo’s, I decided to move on to widow number two.
“Nice to meetcha,” said the round woman with a crew cut. Okay, maybe it wasn’t a crew cut, but it was . . . short. “I’m Delilah, but you can call me Butch.”
I thought maybe I’d misheard her. “Butch?”
She nodded. “Nickname from my days in the Army.”
Chimichanga-the-killer-chihuahua growled again. Maybe she favored the Navy—who knows?
Butch growled back. “Ah, shut your snout, you little testy taco. Honestly, Marion, can’t you put that rabid rat in its box? It’s ruining the Christmas mood here.”
Marion smiled. “Our hostess doesn’t seem to mind. Do you mind, Barbie?”
I did fear for the life of my children, but I shook my head “no.” A Dunder-Bull wife would be happy to host a pack of snarling beasts, right?
“See, she doesn’t mind. Really, Butch, you’ve just been so darned crabby since you quit smoking!”
Knowing that Butch had been a smoker explained her gruff, raspy voice. In a dimly-lit room I might have mistaken her for Ed Asner. “When did you quit, Butch?”
“Three years ago,” she said with a frown.
Marion added her two cents. “She’s been crabby a long time.”
“You finished that fast,” Howard said, nodding at my empty wine glass.
“Wow, I did, didn’t I?” I handed him the glass. “Mind refilling me?”
Howard was a good husband and did as I asked, while I spent a few more minutes asking the ladies about their train ride and whether their guest rooms were comfortable.
In the kitchen, I was handed my second glass of wine after giving a big bear hug to Mama Marr, who was stirring a bubbling skillet of goulash. Mama met the textbook definition of a Polish grandmother—small, round body; short, gray hair; and spectacles on a bulbous nose.
“Mama, you didn’t have to fix dinner,” I scolded, even though I was uber exuberant. Her goulash could win blue ribbons.
“Yes, I did—the poor children are so hungry! I come in the door and they cry for the food.” She patted me on the hand. “But this is okay, Barbara. You are very busy with the grand dinner tomorrow. This is probably why you do not clean so well.” She came in close for a whisper. “I hope you don’t mind I helped you there, too.” I loved Mama Marr, but she had a subtle way of fueling my insecurities.
I spied my two turkeys sitting out on the kitchen counter. “Who put those out?”
She winked at me. “I did. They are still a teentsy, weentsy bit frozen.” She paused. “Well, a big bit frozen, if we are telling the truth. This will thaw them right.”
I drained my second glass of wine.
Glasses three and four went down during dinner, as the girls begged to open just one present before going to bed and I worried about the pathetic Santa gift and my ability to pull off an edible meal the next day.
***
Now I really do want to make it clear that I’m not a heavy drinker. I sip on wine every now and then, but never get drunk or even tipsy, really. So imagine my surprise when the living room started spinning as the girls opened their one present. In fact, the spinning was the last thing I remembered until six o’clock the next morning, when Howard shook me as I lay drooling on my pillow.
“Barb. Barb. Wake up.”
Grunt.
“Are you awake?”
Grunt.
“Amber wants to know if it’s okay to go downstairs and open presents.”
My eyes flew open at the same time that I registered the throbbing under my scalp. Opening my eyes that fast was painful, and I moaned. When I tried to speak, the cotton in my mouth prevented words from forming.
“Barb, what do I tell her?”
Finally I managed to mumble out a croaky “no.”
“No?”
“Yeah.”
“I can’t just tell her ‘no’. When can they go down and start opening presents?”
“How about tomorrow? I should be over this hangover by then.”
He shook me again.
“Okay, okay. Stall her—tell her to go back to her bedroom. I need to go put out her Santa gift.”
“Singular? Doesn’t Santa usually put out more than one present?”
I glared him down. “You’re sounding awfully judgmental for someone who’s never done any Santa present shopping.”
While he talked to Amber, I stumbled into the bathroom and splashed some water on my face. The reflection in the mirror was sad. My skin was pale, and deep, dark circles hung under my Beelzebub-red eyes. And if I looked like the walking dead, I felt even worse. Like I’d been a victim in a bad game of Whac-A-Mole.
As I slithered down the stairs and hid the “costume,” I had a flash of foreboding. Something told me my day wasn’t going to go as smoothly as I’d planned. I put on a pot of coffee (extra strong), then took a few free minutes to take the wrapping off the turkeys, pull out the innards, and rub the turkeys in butter just as the book instructed. Okay, that wasn’t so bad. Maybe the foreboding was just that wine still festering in my gut.
I took cups of steaming coffee to Mama Marr and Howard, who were watching the girls dig into their packages like hyenas digging into a fresh kill. Mama said that Marion and Butch were still in the room they were sharing, but would be down soon. I sipped my brew and savored. The headache was starting to subside.
I heard a thump from the kitchen. “What was that?” I asked.
No one heard me. They were swimming in a sea of wrapping paper. Mama Marr was oohing and ahhing over her new hand-knit sweater from the girls, and Howard was fiddling with the digital photo frame I got him.
And Amber found her Santa present.
She quietly inspected it—the dress first, then the crown, and finally the bubble gun, which seemed to puzzle her more than the other two items. “Mommy, what do you suppose this is?”
Bless her heart, Amber was never one to get whiny or cry over disappointments.
“Well, I’m thinking that’s the Glinda costume, Sweetie.”
She chewed on that one for a minute or two. “You think so?” she asked finally.
Another thump sounded from the kitchen.
“Yes,” I coughed. “I do think that’s what it is.”
For a moment I considered getting up to check on those noises, but given that most of the people in the house were in the living room and the rest were still upstairs, I stayed to monitor the Amber situation.
She dug around under the tree one more time, moving the piles of wrapping paper around. Then she came back to the “costume.”
“Hmm,” she said finally, with a very sad face.
“What, sweetie? What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking that Santa must be off his game this year.”
My heart shattered, but any attempt I might have made to mend things was interrupted by Chimichanga, who was flying down the stairs in a yapping frenzy. He yapped in everyone’s faces for about three seconds and then tore off into the kitchen. Marion was yelling after him, but her legs didn’t move as quickly down the stairs. Before I could register that a problem might be brewing, the cats started howling. They were in the kitchen with Chimichanga. There was howling and there was growling and suddenly it all became very clear.
“Who let the cats out of the basement?” I screamed.
“I did,” said Bethany. “Why?”
“Did you feed them?”
“No—that’s Callie’s job this week.”
When Indiana Jones and Mildred Pierce don’t get fed in what they consider to be a timely manner, they go in search of food themselves, and that includes jumping on the kitchen counter looking for scraps. If my sick-to-my-stomach suspicions were correct, they’d found my turkeys, and the thumping I’d heard was the fowl hitting the floor.
I was first on the crime scene, followed by Howard, Mama Marr, Bethany and Callie. Indie and Millie were licking and nibbling on one bird, while Chimi ravaged the other.
Instinctively, I moved in to shoo them away, but the truth was, those turkeys were goners and everyone knew it. We wouldn’t have the pleasure of choosing white or dark meat this Christmas. Howard and I managed to scoot the cats away with a fair amount of ease, but Chimichanga wasn’t letting anyone near his prize. Marion had finally made her way down the stairs and was crying because her sweet Chimi was chowing down on raw turkey meat. Butch followed on Marion’s heels. Once she registered what all of
the hubbub was about, she grabbed a nearby blanket and threw it and herself on top of the dog as if she were throwing herself over a live grenade.
Amber was the last to wander into the kitchen, but her mind wasn’t on turkeys.
“Mommy, Daddy,” she stated simply. “It occurs to me that Santa must have had a whole lot of very poor children to visit this year, and maybe that’s why he didn’t give me the real Glinda-the-Good-Witch costume like I asked, and that’s okay, because I really have lots of really nice things anyway. Besides, the bubble gun is kind of cool.” Then she held up the gun and filled the air with bubbles.
***
After the birds were thrown out and the floor mopped up of butter mixed in with turkey and bubble goo, I washed my hands and dried them with a green and red hand towel. “Well, at least we have the ham,” I sighed.
“Oh, dear,” gasped Mama Marr. “You don’t mean that leetle ham in the ’frigerator? The one I used for the goulash?”
To avoid a total meltdown, I closed my eyes and took three deep, cleansing breaths. After the third breath, I opened my eyes again, renewed with hope. “How about mashed potatoes and sausage stuffing for Christmas dinner? We still get our starch and protein.”
I didn’t have to see Mama Marr’s face to understand the meaning of the “uh-oh” that followed.
Evidently, most of our Christmas dinner had found its way into the goulash. If I’d been in the right frame of mind, I might have let it roll off me like water on a duck’s back—just be happy in the fact that we’d all had a wonderful Christmas Eve dinner, and leave it at that. But I wasn’t in that frame of mind—I was in a “keeping up with the Dunder-Bulls” frame of mind, and my entire day of playing the quintessential wife, mother, daughter-in-law and friend had just been killed.
Things get a little fuzzy for me after Mama Marr’s “Uh-oh.”
I remember seeing Chimichanga barf all over the bags of table setting items I’d stowed in the corner on the dining room floor, the room spinning again, people yelling for me to stop, and then I was in my van and the windshield wipers were on full tilt because it was sleeting. I must have been driving on Purple Poplar Way, because the next thing I knew, the van was impaled on the large oak tree near Purple Poplar Creek. Crawling out of the driver’s seat, I quickly determined that the only way this van was moving was with the help of a tow truck.
It's a Dunder-Bull Wife Page 2