by Donna Ball
Derrick ran toward the stairs with the bottle in his hand, and Lindsay grabbed his arm. “Don’t throw alcohol on it!”
“Are you insane? This bottle cost seventy-five dollars!” But he looked for a moment at a loss for what to do.
“The hose!” cried Paul, turning toward the door. “Where’s your garden hose?”
“The outside water is turned off!” Lindsay raced to the cellar to turn on the valve while Paul and Derrick clattered down the front steps in search of the garden hose.
Cici whirled around, grabbed a vase full of evergreen and red carnations and tossed the contents on the tree. The Christmas tree, now dripping with red carnations, still smoked. She thrust the vase at Bridget and cried, “More water!” She ran back across the landing to her room and returned with an antique porcelain washbasin filled with water, sloshing most of it on the floor before she reached the tree. Bridget tossed another vase full of water on the branches and raced back to refill it.
Cici said, “We’ve got to get it away from the wall! That wallpaper will go up as fast as the pine branches do.”
“Cici, don’t get too close!” Bridget said.
“Hold on! We’ve got it! We’re coming!”
Derrick and Paul burst through the front door like something out of a scene from a Ron Howard film, each of them holding a section of garden hose as they charged up the stairs. Cici grabbed a branch of the wet, smoking tree and dragged it away from the wall just as the length of the garden hose ran out, stopping Derrick’s forward momentum abruptly three steps from the landing . Cici turned toward him and said, “Wait, I think—”
Just then the water came on full blast, spraying from the garden hose like a geyser that soaked Cici from head to foot, knocking her back into the tree. She sputtered and flailed for balance, and the tree, now leaning precariously against the railing, began to tip over. They all watched in helpless horror as it fell, with a steaming, sizzling crash, onto the floor below just as Lindsay came through the door from the cellar.
For a long moment no one said anything. Bridget and Cici moved to the railing and peered cautiously down at the disaster. Lindsay stood stock still, just staring. Water dripped from the landing and splashed into the puddle that was beginning to form on the polished floor around the tree.
Paul dragged his gaze away from the broken mass of damp evergreen and looked at Derrick without expression. “Remind me again,” he said, “why we don’t visit more often.”
Bridget emptied the last dustpan of soggy evergreen needles and broken ornaments into the trash, Lindsay carried the last armload of wet towels to the laundry and Cici emptied out the bucket of sooty, soapy water into the yard. Paul returned from dragging the Christmas tree to the mulch pile behind the barn, brushing futilely at the stains and splotches on his shirt. Derrick wadded up the newspaper he had been using to clean the smoke off the windows and stuffed it into the kindling bin beside the fireplace.
Cici sank into her rocking chair. She had changed out of her soaked clothes into a fresh pair of shorts and a teeshirt with a picture of a dancing elf on it. Both were now smudged with sap and stained with sweat, and her hair, which she’d drawn up into a topknot to dry, was now straggling wetly over her cheeks. “The house still smells like a wet campfire,” she said.
Paul sank down on the top step, leaning back against a pillar. “You could always light some candles.”
“Very funny.” Bridget sat down with a sigh. “Well, at least we can all relax now. It wouldn’t be Christmas at Ladybug Farm without a disaster, and now we’ve had it. We’re good for the duration.”
“You’re awfully optimistic,” Lindsay said, “to limit our holiday luck to one disaster.”
Paul said, “You know the best stories are always when things go wrong. And so are the best memories.” He chuckled a little. “Cici, if you could have seen your face when the water came on.”
She glared at him and he threw up his hands defensively. “Who knew the water pressure would be that high?”
Lindsay grinned. “You’ve got to admit, it was kind of funny. I mean, in retrospect. Now that the house didn’t burn down or anything.”
Cici turned on her, but her lips twitched with repressed mirth. “You should have seen your face when the Christmas tree fell from the sky and practically landed at your feet.”
Lindsay started to giggle, and so did Cici, and then Bridget. Then Bridget sat forward, wiping her eyes, and placed her hands firmly on her knees. “Well, it’s almost one and you all must be starved. I’ll start lunch.”
“Forget lunch,” said Lindsay, and her laughter faded into a small groan, “What I need is a drink.”
Perfectly on cue, Derrick pushed through the door with a tray in his hands. “Ladies,” he announced, “it has to be five o’clock somewhere. Merry Christmas.”
The tray contained five holly-patterned glasses filled with creamy eggnog, a plate of dates, cheeses, olives and crackers, and another plate of Christmas cookies. He set it on the table to a chorus of cheers and eager scrambling for glasses.
Lindsay took a sip and her eyes widened as she swallowed. “That,” she pronounced, “is eggnog. If there were any justice in this world, you would be a god.”
He inclined his head modestly. “I couldn’t agree more.”
Bridget took a sip. “If this isn’t one of the seven deadly sins, it should be.”
Cici tasted hers. “Oh, my,” was all she said.
Paul lifted his glass. “To good stories,” he said, “and great memories. There’s never a shortage of either at Ladybug Farm.”
“Hear, hear,” replied Derrick. They all leaned forward to touch glasses, and they drank.
Cici leaned back in her rocking chair, laughing softly. The others looked at her. “Sorry,” she said. “I can never drink eggnog without remembering my first Christmas as a married woman. Talk about disasters…”
A grin spread from Paul to Derrick to Bridget to Lindsay, and they all settled back, sipping eggnog and nibbling cookies, to listen.
Chapter Six
Ghosts of Christmas Past: Cici
Richard and I had only been married six months, and we were living in this awful little apartment just outside of D.C.—you know the kind with plywood cabinets and Formica countertops and a leaky toilet. You had to close the dishwasher to open the oven, and two people couldn’t move past each other in the kitchen. It had olive green carpet and a burn mark on the fake-marble bathroom vanity in the shape of a cigarette. Our bed was a mattress and box spring on the floor, not because we didn’t have a real bed frame but because if we set it up we wouldn’t be able to open the bedroom door. The windows were these odd little slits that reminded me of gun ports. I tried to dress them up with curtains but that only made them look more ridiculous.
Richard was finishing up law school and I was working full time downtown with a consulting firm, so neither one of us had much time to spend on fixing up the place, or much energy left to even care, really. But then we got the word: Richard’s parents were coming to town to spend Christmas with their only son and his new bride. You can just imagine how thrilled I was.
My mother-in-law was the most intimidating, person I’d ever met, and the only good thing about living in that hideous little apartment was that it was nine hundred miles away from her. She had a way of smiling at me that somehow made it abundantly clear I would never be good enough for her son, and she never gave a compliment without an edge. “Darling, what a sweet haircut. I’m sure it will grow out.” Or, “I love your blouse, dear. It almost looks like real silk, doesn’t it?” That kind of thing. Everytime she hugged me I looked for a knife in her hand. And her husband wasn’t much better. He chewed on a pipe—never lit it, mind you, just chewed on the stem—and spoke in grunts. The very thought of spending an entire Christmas with them gave me cold chills.
The good news was that there wasn’t enough room in that apartment for a cat, much less two more adults, so they made reservations in a hotel. An
d Richard was a little too quick to promise me that we’d have Christmas dinner at a restaurant so I wouldn’t have to worry about cooking, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out that what he really wanted was to make sure I didn’t embarrass him in front of his parents. Well, granted, between my job and Richard’s crazy hours at school, I hadn’t had a lot of time to practice my skills in the kitchen, but I took that as a personal challenge. I was not going to give Richard’s mother one more reason to think I wasn’t good enough for her son. I was going to make them a Christmas dinner they’d never forget.
I spent practically my entire pay check on Christmas decorations. I made red velvet curtains for those awful little windows, and a red velvet runner for my white linen wedding tablecloth, and big red-velvet bows for our garage-sale dining chairs. I got a four-foot Scotch pine from the lot across the street, and by the time I got it set up in front of the window and decorated with twenty feet of red garland and five boxes of red glass balls, I have to admit that apartment looked almost pretty. Of course, you couldn’t see the television and you had to crawl over the back of the sofa to get to the bathroom, but even Richard agreed it was worth it. We would sit on the sofa at night with all the lights off except the Christmas tree lights and snuggle and talk and let one thing lead to another, and it was definitely worth it.
The closer the big day came, the more determined I was to make this an event like no other. I started the countdown two weeks in advance. I drew up a flow chart. I sprayed pine boughs and holly sprigs with floor wax so they wouldn’t dry out and bought up every red candle in town. The place started to look like a cathedral—or maybe a wedding chapel for woodland elves. Every time Richcard came home he had to duck his head to avoid some new hanging evergreen spray or weave around a tower of peppermint candies. He was a good sport about it though. He knew as well as I did that the more bows and wreaths I hung, the less noticeable the stained walls and cracked tiles became.
The one thing Richard was not so supportive about was my cooking the entire meal from scratch. He kept bringing home deli fliers that advertised “complete Christmas dinner, fully prepared and delivered piping hot to your home” and he cut out menus that the local restaurants placed in the newspaper to advertise their Christmas dinner specials. I was undeterred. I started thawing the turkey three days in advance in the refrigerator, just like the package instructions advised. I made a batch of sausage cheese balls from the recipe on the back of the biscuit mix package and put them in the freezer, ready to pop into the oven half an hour before company arrived. I made a trifle with ladyfingers and cherry jam, and decorated it with mint leaves and cranberries that looked like a holly sprig. I made scalloped potatoes and green bean casserole and sausage stuffing, and wrapped them all up and stacked them in the refrigerator in the order they were supposed to go in the oven. I’m telling you, the invasion of Normandy couldn’t have been planned better.
I was up at dawn, polishing and fluffing and shining and buffing. I stuffed the turkey and got it in the oven. I set the table and lit the candles. I chilled the wine. And then I realized I’d forgotten to make the eggnog. Well, of course we had to have eggnog while we were sitting around the Christmas tree opening presents after my beautiful meal. That was the plan, and my plan was not to be tampered with. There was nothing to do but send Richard out to the convenience store at the last minute for eggnog. What he came back with tasted like glue, but I could fix it. I poured it in a punch bowl, folded in some whipped topping from a spray can and a splash or two of rum, and covered the whole thing with grated nutmeg. It looked like the real thing. Almost.
Richard’s parents arrived at noon, dressed to the nines and looking like visiting royalty in our tiny apartment, and weighted down with so many shopping bags and wrapped presents that you’d think they were bringing Christmas to orphans in a third world country. She was wearing a fur coat and diamond earrings and her hair was so perfectly done she looked like she’d just come from the beauty parlor that morning. She kissed the air beside my cheek and said, “Cecilia, you look exhausted!” There was no point in reminding her that my name was Celia. It wasn’t that she didn’t know what my name was; she just didn’t like it. “I hope you didn’t go to too much trouble. We would much rather have eaten out.”
I told her it was no trouble at all and wished I’d had time to put on more lipstick. Of course I was exhausted, overheated, rumpled, and worn down to my last nerve. With four people, fifteen candles, a huge Christmas tree and a roasting turkey the apartment felt like a packing crate left on a dock in July, and the cute little red velveteen jumper and jacket I’d decided to wear didn’t seem like such a good idea any more.
Once all the packages were piled under the tree the last of the floor space in the living room was used up, so there was no option except to line everyone up on the sofa and pass drinks and sausage balls to them over the counter from the kitchen. Richard’s mother made a face when she tasted the wine and didn’t touch the sausage balls, but kept a running dialogue going about all the people from Richard’s past that I didn’t know. Richard’s father chewed his pipe and grunted now and then, and I stayed in the kitchen, sweating like a pig and growing sick of the smell of turkey. Naturally, I figured the best way to cool down and calm down was to sneak a quick cup of eggnog. It was a lot better than I had expected. In fact, it was the best store-bought eggnog I’d ever had. By the time the turkey was ready to serve, my mother-in-law’s veiled insults were rolling off me like water off a duck’s back. Even my father-in-law’s stale joke about the three wise men was hilarious to me. I guess I was a little tipsy, which I couldn’t understand because I had hardly put any rum in the eggnog at all.
The turkey turned out beautifully, if I do say so. Golden brown and shiny on top, crispy moist stuffing spilling from the cavity, it was a flawless first attempt. The table was gorgeous, set with our wedding china and silver, with a candle nestled in a champagne glass filled with cranberries in front of each place setting and an entire row of white pillar candles on evergreen bows running down the center of the table. Of course those candles did give off a lot of heat, so I helped myself to more eggnog as I was serving up the sides.
Richard’s mother settled in at the table and declared, “How lovely everything looks, dear. And I’m so glad you felt comfortable enough with us not to bring out your good crystal. After all, we’re family.”
I didn’t have a complete set of crystal yet, which she might have known if she had bothered to check our wedding registry, and the glasses I did have had been used to serve the wine. So I just smiled and took another slug of eggnog.
Richard squeezed into the kitchen to help carry the turkey. He took one look at me and was horrified. “You’re drunk!” he accused in a stage whisper.
“I am not. All I’ve had is eggnog and I only put half a cup of rum in it.”
He stared at me. “Rum?” He snatched my glass away. “I put half a bottle of brandy in it!”
It’s funny how you don’t realize how drunk you are until somebody tells you. I really started feeling woozy then.
Somehow we got the side dishes to the table and the turkey situated in front of Richard’s father, who was given the honor of carving it. He was one of those men who liked to make a big show of sharpening the knife and making the expert butcher cuts, just like a pro. He made his first cut and I heard the distinctive crackle of plastic. Rookie mistake. I had forgotten to remove the little plastic bag of neck and giblets from the turkey cavity.
The look on everyone’s face—especially Richard’s—when his father pulled out that crunchy, charred-up bag of turkey organs struck me as funny, and I started to giggle. Then there was a big debate as to whether the rest of the turkey was edible, or whether the plastic might have poisoned the meat. That was even funnier. I couldn’t stop laughing. Of course the parents were outraged and Richard was humiliated, but the best was yet to come.
Richard’s father, whom I started to like a little better after that day, insisted t
he rest of the turkey was fine and started carving it up. His mother refused to allow the meat to be served until she inspected it. She leaned over to examine the platter, and when she did her perfectly styled hair brushed against the candle flame. It must have been loaded with hairspray, because it caught immediately—just a little flare, but it could have been a disaster. I threw the contents of my wine glass at her hair and before I could even register the look on her face—which, in retrospect, was worth everything—Richard jumped up and started beating out the smoke with his hands. I took the biggest breath I could manage and frantically blew out every candle on the table. Wax went everywhere—on the potatoes, the dinner rolls, into the green bean casserole, all over the turkey. When it was all over there was nothing left but the look of horror on my mother-in-law’s face, and the smell of burned hair and hot wax in the air.
But the best was yet to come.
I felt just awful. The impression I had worked so hard to make was ruined. My mother-in-law had almost gone up in flames, every morsel of edible food was now covered in candle wax, my husband thought I was an idiot, and my head was throbbing. I started to cry. And then the most remarkable thing happened.
My mother-in-law came around the table and hugged me. It was a real hug, too, not one of those fake Hollywood hugs I was used to from her. She patted my back and told me not to fret, Christmas dinner was overrated anyway, and besides, there was plenty of dessert and that was the best part of Christmas. Then she told me about her first holiday dinner, a Spam casserole in which she had managed to burn the Spam, and I began to think there might actually come a day—maybe sooner than I’d ever thought—when we would be friends.
That was when I threw up all over her silk blouse.
It wasn’t all bad news, though. Two weeks later I found out I was expecting Lori. My mother-in-law and I did eventually become friends, too, but not until Richard and I were divorced. They would come out for the holidays every year while Lori was young, and every year she would tell Lori the story about the best Christmas ever: the Christmas we first knew that Lori was on the way.