Christmas at Grey Sage

by Phyllis Clark Nichols

  Kent faced her and looked intently into her eyes. “Christmas, the season of miracles, and the most beautiful girl in the world has just agreed to see me again.” He pulled her close and bent to bury his face in her soft hair before gently kissing her. “You’re my moonflower, Emily. My fragrant blossom in the darkness.”

  She looked up at him and was about to speak when Lita popped her head through the doorway. “Oh, you two, you make my heart sing. I should have told you this place can cast quite a spell on young lovers. You keep on enjoying this place and each other. I’m just here to bring you some warm cookies right out of the oven and to warm up your cups of apple cider.” Lita set the plate of cookies down on the art table, and poured hot cider into their cups. “Like I said, no better place on earth and no better time of the year to find love—right here at Grey Sage.”

  Kent winked at Lita. “I’d say that’s true. And the moonflowers that grow around here are beyond spectacular.”

  Lita looked puzzled, shook her head, laughed her heartiest laugh, and walked back down the hallway.

  Emily sipped her cider. “Do you think maybe we should join the group now?”

  “Oh, please don’t make me. I’m terrible at figuring out my Scrabble score even with my three-letter words, and I’m worse at trivia of any kind.” He moved his stool once again to the end of the drawing table. “Could I bother you for a sheet of drawing paper and a couple of charcoal pencils?”

  “Do you draw?”

  “A little.” They sat comfortably and quietly with only the sound of their pencils against the paper disturbing their silence. More than half an hour passed, and Kent put his pencil down. “My afternoon’s masterpiece.” He handed his drawing to Emily. “A study in darkness and light.”

  She took the paper. The likeness was surprisingly well executed—her profile against stark darkness with a myriad of tiny bright stars encircling her head. Most prominent was the moonflower in her hair.

  Lita stirred the pasta sauce, taking another spoon to taste for seasoning. Laura tossed her salad. “Lita, I can’t believe all these years I’ve made salad and never made homemade salad dressing. You’ve made it so easy, I may never buy dressing again.”

  “Salads are great. A mixture of greens is like one of Maude’s blank canvases, and you can add a splash of this and a smear of that, and soon you have a work of salad art. I’ll wager our guests will be very surprised this evening at what you have created.”

  Lita walked by and patted Laura on the shoulder. “Tell me about Ted. You’ve told me about your family, but not his.”

  Laura was chopping black olives now. “Ted grew up in Ann Arbor, too, but we didn’t know each other until college. When his family wasn’t traveling the world, he grew up in their basement with his chemistry set. He says as he grew, so did his lab. Chemistry and research have always been his passions, and maybe I should add art to that as well. After our first date, we just were comfortable and never dated anyone else.”

  Lita added more Parmesan cheese to her sauce. “A chemist and a musician? Seems like an odd match to me.”

  “I suppose we were, but we were both only children with highly educated parents, and our parents were older than most of our friends’ parents. And they had high expectations of their offspring. We just understood each other.” Laura sprinkled the large bowl of greens with sunflower seeds.

  “So your parents must be gone since you’re not with them at Christmas?”

  “Yes, all of them are gone, died years ago. So now we live on the family estate where Ted grew up, and we inherited their art collection. Since we have no heirs, we’re making arrangements now to transfer the collection to the University of Michigan.”

  Lita knew she might be touching a spot that would cause an eruption or a shutdown, but she felt it needed to be asked. “What about children?”

  Laura was slow to respond. “That’s a deep sadness in my life. We tried when we were much younger, but things didn’t work out for us. We spoke about adoption, but Ted wasn’t so keen on that idea, and his parents abhorred the thought. So I gave in, and we decided to give our lives to our work and invest ourselves in a few students along the way—students who needed financial help to get through school.”

  “That was a generous and unselfish thing to do. I can imagine you still get visits and calls from these students.”

  “We do, and we’re even godparents to two of their children.” She paused. “Basically, Ted and I are alone in the world, rambling around in a historic mansion surrounded by beautiful things and manicured gardens. But I’d trade it all for a Doli or Catori.” She wiped her hands on her apron.

  “I’m sorry about that, Laura. I think you would have been a wonderful mother. But you and Ted have made quite a nice life for yourselves. I can imagine you have interesting friends, and you’ve seen places I’ve only read about.” Lita poured the pasta from the boiling water into a colander. “Enough sad talk. I’m about to mix this pasta and sauce together, and you need to finish tossing that salad. These folks will be whining like hungry babies if we don’t get them fed on time.”

  As she worked, Lita imagined Ted and Laura’s life—academia, art, architecture, eccentric friends, catered meals, lectures, and travels. A life that suited them. But apparently nothing about their life suited them for Christmas. Lita preferred her adobe house, with its rough-hewn beams and tile floors and pictures of her grandchildren on the refrigerator, and cooking large pots of deliciousness to express her love for her family. Thoughts of leaving home at Christmas were beyond her.

  At six fifteen, Lita and Laura, with Maude’s help, were ready to serve the meal. Every member of the Unlikely Christmas Party was seated in the seats Lita had assigned them for their very first meal on Tuesday evening.

  Before the serving began, Kent requested, “Miss Lita, I’ve been waiting all afternoon to see you standing at the head of the table, announcing the delicious fare you prepared for us. We’ve already sampled your cookies this afternoon. You really spoil us, ma’am. I’ve been eating in the mess hall so long that just hearing you describe your food is like a fanfare and makes my mouth water. So, would you please tell us what we’ll be eating this evening?”

  Lita, remembering the scene in the studio, said, “You two were so busy this afternoon. I hope you had time to sample the cookies.”

  “Yes, ma’am, we did.” Kent nodded, looking grateful she had kept their secret.

  Lita began. “I must tell you, Laura made the cookies. I could never have pulled off cookies and dinner without her help. She also made the salad with a variety of greens, chopped olives, sunflower seeds, sliced mushrooms, and shredded jicama with her homemade vinaigrette with my secret ingredient. And for the second course, we have made pasta with a green chili and corn cream sauce with grilled chicken strips.”

  Maude and Laura began the procession and delivery of salad plates.

  “This meal could be called Hopi-Italian-Lita fusion. The Hopi part, of course, is the green chili cream sauce and something special that Laura has made—Indian fry bread.”

  Laura put two heaping baskets of hot bread on the table. Maude came behind her with two small pitchers of honey and dishes of butter.

  “You may enjoy the fry bread with butter as you would a roll, or you may enjoy it like a sopapilla with honey at the end of your meal. Either way, I think you’ll find it slightly crispy on the outside and oh-so-soft in the middle, and you should be thanking Laura for its perfection.”

  Lita raised both hands, inviting them to eat. “Bon appétit, my friends.”

  Conversation around the table ranged from Henry’s fascination with Alo’s ways of predicting weather to Silas’s report of more snow blowing in to Lily’s whining over how unfair the Christmas trivia game had been.

  Beatrice stopped Lily mid-sentence, interrupting the table with her raised voice. “You’re just angry because you were losing. You didn’t even know the answer about the Sugar Plum Fairy after I practically performed it th
e other night. And then you left and spent all afternoon on the telephone. I can’t imagine who you were talking to all that time. You’re not very easy to talk to, you know.”

  Eyes narrowed, Lily rescued the conversation and asked if everyone had seen The Nutcracker. They all began naming the cities where they had seen the ballet, and Lily tallied them up. “You people must love the ballet. Altogether we’ve seen the ballet in nineteen cities across the country. Since most of have lived in Chicago all our lives, we can thank Bea for dancing her way across America.”

  Beatrice beamed.

  Lily stood up. “Now that we all have full and happy tummies, what do you say, Party people, shall we make our way to the gathering room? I think Alo has a roaring fire. And since Beatrice has already shared a story about a Christmas in her past as a ballerina, why don’t we each share about a memorable Christmas in our lives?”

  The group obliged and pushed away from the table to make their way into the gathering room, which looked entirely different tonight. Lights blinked on the Christmas tree, candles glowed in the windows and on the mantle, and the smell of pine and cedar wafted through the room. There was even a scattering of Beatrice’s tagged Christmas gifts under the tree.

  While Alo waited for the guests to take their seats, he and Lita stood near the tree and looked out the window. Shaking his head, he whispered to Lita, “Did you bring your nightgown? I’m thinking we should just stay the night here. Not a blizzard, but getting close. The snow’s blowing sideways out there. Hard to tell if it’s coming down or if the wind is blowing the loose snow from the ground up.” He noticed the frown on Lita’s face.

  “I think you’re right. Trying to get home and then back again in the morning if it does this all night might be more trouble than it’s worth. I’ll borrow a gown from Maude.”

  Alo watched the colonel take his seat in the wing chair next to the fireplace and pull out his pipe. He played with it as though it were a ritual that relaxed him, like Alo sharpening his knife.

  Lily turned to Henry. “Colonel, I don’t think it would embarrass you if I said that you’ve seen more Christmases than anyone else here. I was hoping that you would tell us about a Christmas in your past, one that was especially memorable.”

  Henry’s chuckle was low pitched and gravelly. “No embarrassment at all, Lily. At my age and with what I’ve seen, I’m not certain even you could embarrass me.” He removed the leather tobacco pouch from the inside pocket of his tweed jacket, filled the bowl of the briarwood pipe, and tamped it down. “Well, like all of you, I’ve had many Christmases with my family in our family home—Christmases like they were meant to be, like the one Bing Crosby sings about.” He paused. “But I think I’ll tell you about the Christmas of 1944. I remember more about that Christmas than I care to, and since many of you weren’t even born then, I know you haven’t experienced a Christmas like that one.”

  Alo was too young to have memories of those somber days during the war’s holiday seasons, but he remembered reading about them and hearing his parents discuss those times. He had never heard a firsthand account from someone who had fought in the war.

  Lily sat down next to Beatrice on the sofa. “Oh, please do, Colonel. Sounds most interesting.”

  Henry tamped down more tobacco in his pipe before striking a match on the stone hearth. He lit the tobacco, took a smooth draw, stared into the fire, and began his story. “Well, I was a young captain in the army in 1944. Our unit had about eighty men—fifteen officers with about sixty-five enlisted men, mostly from Kentucky and Tennessee. Just good old mountain boys. Our small unit was one of several in charge of the air defense of Paris, and our job was to deploy anti-aircraft artillery battalions. Compared to our frontline infantry, we had it pretty good. Our headquarters was a six-story château northwest of Paris.”

  He took another long draw on his pipe. “We arrived there about a month before Christmas, so we had time to establish communications and settle in.” He looked back to the group. “Now if you know your history, you’ll remember that the Battle of the Bulge was raging during Christmas of that year, and our American boys were taking the brunt of that siege. Our unit was extra busy at Christmas. We didn’t have a chaplain, so there was no service of any kind. We didn’t have time for a service anyway.” He rubbed the stem of his pipe across his lips.

  “But what I do remember about Christmas was the longing for home and the way we were just all a bit nicer to each other—for a day or two anyway. And I remember our Christmas dinner. No C rations or K rations that day. Some of the locals offered us food, and we were glad for it—roast turkey and dressing, mashed potatoes, peas and carrots, and apple cobbler for dessert. Strange that I would remember that detail, but I do. They even brought us some kind of nuts. I guess it had something to do with the way the French eat at Christmas.

  “I remember that meal, and I remember having a hard time swallowing it because I knew what was going on a couple of hundred miles north of us. Our boys were fighting hard, lying in the snow and taking fire from the Germans.”

  The colonel paused. “Not much Christmas on the battlefield. But as I told you, those enlisted men in our unit, well, they were just fellows from the mountains of Tennessee, and they had good hearts. I don’t know how they did it, didn’t need to know, but those boys cut down some puny-looking tree and put it in the great hall of that grand château. Had to decorate the spindly thing with bits and pieces of tinfoil. No lights or colored bulbs, you know. It was a sight, not so much for my eyes as it was for my heart, because it said something, something important. It said there’s a longing and a need for Christmas in all of us.”

  Henry continued. “Oh, did I miss my family that Christmas! Guess it was a good thing we were working so hard. Kept me busy. Two days after Christmas, we were reassigned to Heerlen, Holland. Took us three days to make the move in some mighty cold, snowy weather, kind of like we’re seeing tonight. Drove so close to the Bulge that we could hear the artillery fire.

  “We got to Holland, and the conditions weren’t so good as in Paris. We set up our command center in a school there in the middle of the little town, and we shared housing with the Catholic priests and nuns who lived down the road. They were gracious to us. The first floor of that building was where they kept their animals—some cows and pigs. As I recall, they had a donkey, and of course some chickens. Then we lived upstairs. Only came there to sleep and clean up.”

  Thinking of their own comfortable surroundings, Alo glanced around the room. None of the listeners moved even a muscle. They were totally engrossed in Henry’s detailed recounting of decades ago.

  “But New Year’s Eve was something. The priests invited us officers to dine with them. Don’t remember much about the meal, but I do remember sitting in their quarters hearing Hitler on the radio after we ate. One of the priests translated. Something very different about the way Hitler spoke that night. We could hear it in the tone of his voice and in what he said.

  “The next day, New Year’s Day, Hitler unleashed hell, filling the air with German airplanes. Our anti-aircraft battalions took down over three hundred German planes in one day, but it wasn’t without loss on our side. There was no Happy New Year for those men that day.”

  Henry leaned forward in his chair. “One of the pictures I still have in my head was of the Germans a few days later. They were encamped on the east side of the Ruhr River, and we were just across the river to the west. We used scopes to watch what they were doing. Interesting. They were doing the same things we were, walking around, eating, huddled together in small groups around a campfire. We all had our jobs to do, the Germans too, and not a one of us really wanted to be where we were or doing what we were doing. But duty called us all.

  “Yet it was hope that kept us going. Hope that one day soon this war would be over, and we’d be back home with our families again. Somehow, I think that’s what Christmas is all about, giving us hope that one day we will be home, really home, the home we were made for, and w
e’ll be with the one who made us and the ones he gave us to love.”

  He looked at Kent, who was staring intently back at him. “Son, you’ve been there. To war, I mean. Wars were fought differently sixty years ago. No such thing as calling home or seeing your family on the computer like you can now, and so many of our wounded died before they could be treated. But war is still hell, no matter where or when it’s fought.”

  The colonel looked back at the fire, its flames dying down. “I wish I had a happier Christmas story to tell you, but this was one that needed telling.”

  No one spoke because no one had words. Only Kent dared break the silence. “Yes, sir, Colonel. It needed telling, and we needed to hear it. You’re so right, sir. Our war is different, but it is still hell. I don’t want to take anything away from what you told us, sir, but with your permission, I’d like to talk about my last Christmas.”

  Henry looked at Kent and nodded his head. “Sounds like there’s another story that needs telling. Go ahead, son.”

  Kent cleared his throat. “I was serving in Iraq this time last year. My unit served with a medical team outside Baghdad, and I remember the grime—the sand and dirt, sweat when it was hot, and there was always the smell of something burning. You probably think of the desert as being hot all the time, but it was bitter cold. And nothing to stop that bitter wind last Christmas.”

  Kent felt the growing distance between him and the others as his memories ushered him back to Iraq. “There is always this intense longing when you’re on the battlefield—knowing that you’re in this hellhole and you don’t belong there. And you long for this one place where you desperately want to be, and you’re not there, and you can’t get there. Seemed worse at Christmas—”

  A sudden popping sound from outside startled Kent into silence. A distant rifle shot. He looked around the room, noting from the puzzled expressions that others had heard it too. But the sound didn’t repeat, so he continued.