The Unlikely Romance of Kate Bjorkman

by Louise Plummer

  “Well.” Richard recovered himself. “Sure,” he said to Ashley. “That’ll be fun.”

  “Oh good,” she said. “Have some more cocoa.” She poured some from the thermos into his cup. “Do you want more, Kate?”

  Pushing my glasses back on my nose, I shook my head. I’d had enough poison for one day.

  * * *

  IN THE AFTERNOON, Fleur and Richard went shopping. Bjorn took Trish to meet some of his old friends.

  I helped Mother set the table for dinner in the dining room and then, turning on the tree lights, lay wrapped in a Christmas quilt, which my mother brought out every year, on the sofa in the living room. From Dad’s study came the strains of “All We like Sheep” from the Messiah. I hummed softly along, while “a bitter cold despair dwelt in the caves of my lonely soul.” A quote from The Romance Writer’s Phrase Book. Really! Does anyone in America talk that way? Caves of my lonely soul?

  But I was sad about the disparity between reality and fantasy where Richard was concerned. “Am I wrong?” he had asked, teasing me on the stairs that morning. Am I wrong to think you like me? That’s what he was asking.

  Does it make a difference?

  I felt sad that my friendship with Ashley was over. I had been an expendable sidekick to her. Me Tonto.

  Mother stood in the archway. “Tea?”

  I nodded.

  She left and returned with a steaming cup on a saucer—the good china—and a red linen napkin. I sat up, my legs still stretched out on the sofa. She sat by my feet, rubbing them through the wool socks. “Merry Christmas,” she said.

  “Merry Christmas, best mother of mine.” I smiled. The steam from the tea fogged my glasses. “I need windshield wipers,” I said, looking at her through the mist.

  She nodded.

  The tea, hot and strong, along with my mother massaging my feet and Handel’s music wafting from Dad’s study, loosened something in me. Something that had been tight. Something I had kept hidden but that now surfaced. Tears unexpectedly burned at the edges of my eyelids. I blinked them back. The tree lights blurred. It’s funny how sometimes the smallest unexpected kindness—my mother rubbing my feet, for example—can call forth the most hidden sadness.

  I sipped the hot tea. “I wish I were beautiful,” I said.

  Mother smoothed the corduroy against my leg. I loved her for not trying to argue me out of anything. She pulled on the hem of the slacks.

  “I just wish I were beautiful.”

  She sat with me until the afternoon turned gray, until the oven timer went off and she had to finish the Christmas Eve dinner in the kitchen.

  THE TRADITIONAL CHRISTMAS EVE dinner at our house is an authentic Swedish smorgasbord that my mother spreads out across the buffet in silver and fine china. There are, of course, meatballs made with sausage and ham, cheese, at least three kinds of pickled herring, a pork roast, lutefisk with white sauce, and saffron buns. The dining room is lit with candles only—candles on the buffet and on the table, and candles in a spectacular wreath of greens, especially mistletoe, that my father suspends over the dining room table from the ceiling with wide red ribbon just before dinner. It is our family’s nod to the Festival of Lights. The wreath is the width of the dining table—my mother’s design. Fleur and Trish oohed and aahed when they saw it for the first time. They had come down the stairs dressed to the teeth. I didn’t look bad either. Mother had said earlier, “Wear what makes you comfortable,” but Bjorn had interpreted: “She likes us dressed up.”

  “But not uncomfortably dressed up,” Mother had said.

  “No formal wear,” Bjorn had interpreted.

  Mother had turned from the kitchen sink, where she was washing her hands, and, purposely splattering water on Bjorn, said, “Am I not speaking English?”

  All the men wore jackets and ties. My stomach curled when I saw Richard in a charcoal-tweed coat with a crisp blue oxford shirt. Silent sighing and accelerated pulse all over the place.

  “When did that gorgeous wreath go up?” Trish wanted to know.

  “Don’t know,” Dad said. “Keebler elves.” He kissed her cheek. “Mistletoe.” He pointed at the wreath.

  Soon everyone was kissing. Trish and Fleur kissed Dad on each cheek at the same time. “Merry Christmas, Professor Bjorkman,” Fleur said, grinning. His ears colored shamelessly. Mother passed out drinks and received kisses from all the men.

  Bjorn smacked a wet one on my nose, followed by another wet one on my cheek. “Like being kissed by a Saint Bernard.” I laughed and, turning, faced Richard.

  He raised his glass to mine. “Merry Christmas, Kate,” he said, using my name for the first time. He kissed me lightly, gently, on the lips. Our eyes held.

  “Merry Christmas, Richard,” I said and, catching myself, said, “I mean Rich.”

  “I like Richard,” he said.

  “I like Kate.”

  He smiled. “I’ll try to remember,” he said, and he kissed me ever so lightly again. “Kate.”

  I thought I would melt into the carpet.

  Mother encouraged us to try everything. Trish passed up all three varieties of herring, but Bjorn spooned some on her plate along with chopped onions. “The Swedes call it sill,” he said. He also spooned a little lutefisk on her plate. “Cod,” he said. He didn’t say anything about the lye marinade. “You’ll love it.”

  Fleur was interested in all the food, asking Mother if various dishes were hard to make, if she’d thought of writing a Christmas cookbook.

  “I’m sure it’s all been done,” Mother said.

  “No,” Fleur said. “Not just food recipes, but directions for making the wreath, for all the homemade things you have to decorate the house—all of it.”

  “You think it would work?” Mother asked.

  Dad and Richard talked graduate schools. “You want to continue in comp. lit.?” Dad asked.

  Richard shook his head. “American studies,” he said, ladling Swedish meatballs from the chafing dish.

  “Well then, Minnesota ought to be a consideration.”

  “It is.”

  “Good,” Dad said.

  The thought that Richard might move back to Minnesota raised powerful emotions in me. I had not even thought about going to the University of Minnesota. I wanted to go to school in the East, but if Richard was coming home, then I was staying here for school. Only The Romance Writer’s Phrase Book could describe my feelings in the chapter on emotions, under the subheading “Happiness, Joy.” Here’s a list: (1) Joy bubbled in her laugh and shone in her eyes. (2) She felt a bottomless peace and satisfaction. (3) Tonight there were no shadows across her heart. (4) Her heart sang with delight. (5) She was blissfully happy, fully alive. And my favorite: (6) She was wrapped in a silken cocoon of euphoria.

  We had the traditional rice pudding for dessert, and Fleur almost broke a tooth on the almond hidden in her serving.

  “Oh, I forgot to warn you!” Mother looked truly sorry. “There’s always an almond hidden in the pudding, and whoever gets it will be married in the next year.”

  Fleur removed the almond from her mouth and set it delicately on the edge of her plate. “No way,” she said.

  “Take it home to your mother,” I said.

  “She must run into almonds in everything she eats,” Fleur said.

  After dinner Mother brought out a basket of tiny presents wrapped in glossy red-and-green paper. “There’s one for everyone,” she said. We opened them to find colored metal windup bugs. Mine was a ladybug, Richard’s a spider, Trish’s a grasshopper, Bjorn’s a beetle, and so on. We wound them up and let them crawl around the table and then raced them and ran them into each other.

  “Ideas like this should go into the cookbook too,” Fleur told Mother.

  “Are you going to help?” Mother asked.

  “Absolutely,” Fleur said.

  Later in the living room, Dad read the Christmas story from the King James Bible. I sat next to him, my head resting on his shoulder. Once in a
while I would look up to find Richard considering me from across the room. Maybe it was wishful thinking. No, his lips compressed into a definite smile.

  Richard and Bjorn wanted to go to midnight Mass at the Cathedral of St. Paul. They weren’t Catholic, but they wanted to sit in the cathedral, one of St. Paul’s grandest landmarks.

  Mother hesitated—there was so much to clean up, she said. But we said we’d do the cleaning up for her and Dad, since they—especially Mother—had prepared the meal. They agreed to go. We crowded together in a pew on the far side near the back. Across the aisle I saw Mr. Sims, his fingers nervously tapping the prayer book in his lap. He seemed to be there alone. I smiled at him, but he was too caught up in his own thoughts to notice. There had been a Mrs. Sims, I was sure of it. I thought of the Midgelys, who had had happier Christmas Eves in the past, and I knew that, life being what it was, “the full spectrum of tragedy and comedy,” as Midgely had said, this night with my family and with friends who felt like family was a gift, and I said a silent prayer of gratitude.

  Revision Notes

  I got so excited to be able to write about Richard kissing me lightly on Christmas Eve and calling me Kate that I rushed through the chapter, forgetting an important scene with Fleur. I’m going to have to go back and stick it in. It happened before the kiss, before dinner.

  We were up in my bedroom dressing for dinner. That is, she was dressing, and I was trying on everything I owned and rejecting each outfit. It didn’t help that Fleur wore this glittery white beaded sweater that made her look like Aphrodite or one of those other spell-casting goddesses.

  “This isn’t any good either,” I said, throwing down a cream silk dress that normally looked wonderful on me but not that night. My bed was piled high with discards.

  “This is great!” Fleur said, retrieving the dress.

  “Mother brought the material back from India and had it made up for me.” My voice was sullen and defeated. I sat on the bed in my underwear. “Might as well go down like this.”

  Fleur turned and seemed to see me for the first time that evening. “Who are you dressing for? You’re so nervous.”

  “Nobody.” It came out in a squeak. “That is—Mother likes us to look nice. I—I—”

  Fleur pulled on her nose. “Wrong, but thank you for playing.”

  I smiled. “It’s all the company, I guess—”

  “Me? I’m the only one you didn’t know already.”

  “Oh no, not you—I like you—you’re terrific. It’s just th-that—” Stammer, stammer. “I’m having my period.” It was a lie but a good one. I smiled, pleased.

  Fleur held the cream dress up to herself in front of the mirror. Her back was toward me, but I saw her face reflected. “I think,” she said, “that Rich really likes you. I mean, really, really likes you.”

  I was on my feet, dancing back and forth. “No way,” I said. “I think he likes you.” I grabbed the silk dress from her. “This is good enough. I’ll wear this.” And struggled into it as fast as I could, glad to hide my searing face in the fabric for a few seconds.

  When I emerged, Fleur’s mouth gaped broadly. “Me and Rich? Are you hallucinating?”

  “You’re such an obvious match.” I buttoned buttons, relieved not to have to look at her. “I’m glad you two are dating. I like you and I’ve always liked Rich.” I searched in the closet for the belt to the dress.

  “Believe me,” Fleur said, “I am not dating Mr. Radio. We’re just friends.”

  “Mr. Radio? Rich?”

  “Haven’t you heard us call him that?”

  “No.”

  “Haven’t you seen how he always seems to have just the right thing to say—”

  “I don’t see anything wrong with—”

  “There isn’t. It’s just that sometimes—you know—he’s so smooth. Like a radio announcer.”

  Or like a used-car salesman?

  Fleur handed me the belt I needed. “I don’t mean anything negative by it. It’s just the way Rich is: golden-throated, glib. You know.”

  “I would just say he was articulate.”

  Fleur smiled at me. “You like Rich a lot, don’t you?”

  I felt as if I were in a movie—The Sound of Music. I was Maria, and Fleur was the baroness. That bedroom scene, only I couldn’t escape to the abbey and Mother Superior. “I can’t like him when you’re dating him,” I said. The faulty logic did not escape me.

  Fleur grabbed me by the shoulders. “We’re not dating. We’ve never dated. We’re really just friends. Honest.”

  She looked honest enough. In the mirror I could see that my buttons were in the wrong holes. I looked insane. “Then why did you come with him? Why are you here?”

  “Because for years Bjorn and Rich have been talking about this neighborhood and their families. It sounded idyllic. I wanted to see it for myself. I wanted to meet your parents and you. I wanted to see this block, this house.”

  I must have looked skeptical, because she added, “Do you know that I don’t know any parents who have stayed married until their children were grown? Not one couple. Your family seems magical to me.” Her head lowered. Was she going to cry?

  “Don’t you think we’re boring?”

  “If that’s boring, I envy it.” Then she saw my buttons and laughed. “I don’t think you really want to wear that dress,” she said.

  When we went downstairs, I was wearing a white beaded sweater that made me feel like a glittering goddess and Fleur was dressed in a cream silk dress that came almost to her ankles. Her generosity was the kind of gesture I had hoped for from Ashley.

  Are you ready for the three-paragraph kiss? It happens in this chapter, Chapter Eight. In The Romance Writer’s Phrase Book, “Kisses” is a subheading in the chapter on sex, which is the second-longest chapter in the book, the chapter on emotions being the longest. I suppose this is because the entire romance novel is a description of emotions punctuated by three-paragraph kisses and, in many cases, lovemaking. Don’t get your hopes up, though. There is no lovemaking in this book.

  While cleaning up the dishes after Mass the night before, Richard persuaded everyone to go skating before breakfast Christmas morning, even Mother and Dad. Even Fleur, who at the initial suggestion said, “Let’s not, and say we did.”

  We agreed to go at seven.

  I was glad Richard had been cut off with this idea earlier in the day in the warming house, by Ashley no less, because now she wouldn’t be there.

  Which all brings me to this: have you ever had one of those times when you knew that the gods, or in my case goddesses, were on your side? A time when the stars and planets converged to make things happen your way? A time when, like a gypsy, you could see the immediate future with a startling clarity? And it was good?

  It happened that way early Christmas morning. Even before I put on my glasses, I knew that Richard and I would be the only ones going skating. I knew that no matter how much I cajoled Fleur and shook her and promised her coffee, she would not get up.

  And I was not surprised, when stepping out into the hallway, to hear Bjorn from behind a narrow opening in his door telling Richard that he and Trish were too tired to go.

  “Wimps,” Richard said softly as Bjorn closed the door.

  “Same here,” Mother said, leaning her head out of their bedroom door. “Do you mind very much?”

  “You deserve a rest,” Richard said, smiling.

  She blew him a kiss and shut the door quietly.

  Already knowing the future, I could afford to say, “Fleur refuses to wake up. Would you rather not go?”

  He put his arm around my shoulder, his fingers lightly touching my neck, and guided me toward the stairs. “Two is still company,” he said.

  I wondered if I should have worn lip gloss.

  There was coffee brewing in the coffeemaker, which we poured into a thermos; then we started a fresh pot for the others.

  Out in the garage, Richard’s eyes landed on the convertible. “
Let’s take it,” he said. “With the top down.”

  I pushed the garage door opener. “I’ll get the keys.” Strains of one of Dad’s favorite Christmas melodies, “In dulci jubilo”—Praetorius, I think—welled inside me. I hummed it finding the keys, hummed it pulling two quilts out of the linen closet. It was Christmas morning. I was a brass ensemble.

  We drove, top down, windows up, folded blankets on our laps, the heater struggling to warm our feet. We drove, giggling at our “one-horse open sleigh,” as Richard called it, past Ashley’s house. I wished she could see me now.

  The warming house was closed, the park not officially open until nine. We changed into our skates at the edge of the ice, wrapping our boots in one of the quilts. The thermos of coffee we wrapped in the second quilt.

  I followed Richard out onto the ice, which had the barest dusting of snow on it. “Isn’t it great?” he said, making a wide sweep across the rink, while I repeated figure eights in the center. The morning was gray, the sun not yet above the horizon.

  “My favorite Christmas was spent here.” He was skating alongside me now. “It was when I was five.” His breath appeared in hot bursts of little clouds in front of his mouth.

  I wished I could remember Richard at five. “Here?”

  He nodded. “The year I got my first pair of hockey skates, black, like my dad’s.”

  We had skated around the edge of the rink and now cut through the center.

  “He brought me here right after we opened the presents and it was like this—like now—just the two of us on the ice, and he gave me my first skating lesson.” His elbow nudged me slightly, directing me out of the center to the left.

  “You must have been good at it right away. I hated my first skating lesson.” I was beginning to puff a little.

  “I don’t know. It was just nice, you know, to be alone with my dad.” He colored slightly.

  “Without Melissa there to call the shots?” Melissa was his older sister.

  “You got it.” We had quite naturally taken a couple’s position holding left hands in front, his right arm around my waist, right hands clasped at the side. We skated faster, more uniformly that way, cutting wide sweeps of eights. It was fun to skate with him. He was taller than I was, for one thing, a rarity in my case. We shared a kind of synchronized rhythm. Sometimes when you skate with a guy, you’re always bumping hips and elbows, colliding, and nothing can fix it. Richard and I glided easily, anticipating corners, leaning together.