How to Host a Holiday (The Prequel to Ivy Stratton & the Time Machine)

by Kathleen Kitson

  I can hear faint laughter and the sound of the television coming from inside Mindy and Cooper’s house, and I close the door and go back upstairs to my own little Christmas cove.

  The television is on, creating an odd harmony with the sounds of my Christmas music in the background. I try to ignore the fact that my house feels so empty, a sensation that reminds me of holidays during my childhood.

  I head back to the kitchen, and rinse and refrigerate the mountain of potatoes Stella and I just peeled. Then, I cover and seal everything else that’s already been cooked, turn off the oven, and clean the kitchen.

  I’m definitely behind in my meal preparations, but the fatigue of this long day has settled over me, and I just want to sit still and relax for a bit.

  I make myself a cup of peppermint hot cocoa and sit down in the living room in front of the television, searching for a distraction.

  I flip channels until I come across an old holiday favorite, White Christmas. Rosemary Clooney is singing “Count Your Blessings” in the pivotal scene where she and Bing Crosby realize they love each other while pretending they are interested in ham sandwiches and buttermilk.

  If only it were that easy, I muse.

  A scene like this would never happen with me and Giuseppe, because for one thing, the man hates ham. And yet, in complete and utter contradiction, he loves bacon. If a ham sandwich was anywhere in his vicinity, he would make a big deal about why he thinks ham is utterly gross, and the moment would be lost.

  I watch Rosemary and Bing end the song and share a kiss. Back when we were young teens, Stella and I invented a name for moments like this: The Kiss That Changes Everything. This is the moment when the hero and heroine first kiss, and suddenly, the entire world shifts for those two people, as they realize they have fallen in love.

  I remember talking to my mom about falling in love when I was younger, and asking when I would know--from the bottom of my heart--that I was in love with the right person.

  It was a bit of a somber moment, because she had actually lost the love of her own life a few weeks before I was born. I never knew him, and she didn’t talk about him all that much. But as I grew older and found reminders of him around the house in books, photos, pieces of clothing, and other assorted mementos, I could sense how deeply she loved him.

  When I asked her about the specifics of falling in love, she looked me straight in the eye and gave me a simple answer that I will never forget. “Ivy, when you meet the right man, all questions and doubts will fade away for both of you. It won’t be lopsided because you’ll both feel the same way about each other and neither of you will have to work to convince the other to love you back. It will be easy and natural, and you’ll know when it happens.”

  Not fully convinced, I pleaded with her to give me more specifics. Did you have to kiss to know for sure? Would I hear music in the background? Was a kiss more romantic if you did so outside under a full moon? Was love more real if the guy saved me from a disaster or something first?

  “Trust, me, Ivy,” she’d answered firmly. “You’ll know.”

  I’m thirty now, and I still don’t know if I know just yet. I’ve certainly never heard music or seen stars or rainbows whenever I’ve been kissed--not even back when Giuseppe and I dated.

  Now I wonder if I was way too idealistic when I broke up with him, citing that I didn’t feel anything special when we kissed as one of the reasons when I didn’t want to be his girlfriend any longer.

  At this age, when a lot of your friends have already moved past marriage and are starting to have kids, you tend to think back and analyze every relationship opportunity you passed over in the past--even down to the kid in kindergarten who stole your paste when you weren’t looking.

  I feel now, more strongly than ever, that I passed over Giuseppe too quickly, assuming that, at almost twenty years old, there were plenty of other knights in shining armor who would eventually cross my path. The last thing I wanted back then was to be shackled to a good friend and forsake all other options for romance for the rest of my life.

  Ten years wiser, I’m reconsidering that notion, and feeling more than a bit frustrated that the tables have turned. Now it seems that G feels that there are lots of damsels in distress in his future, and I’m nothing more than a friend.

  I turn off the television and get ready for bed. Though I’m incredibly weary when I finally get myself tucked under my covers, my thoughts immediately shift back to Giuseppe.

  I’m sure my mother was right about it being easy to know when you fall in love.

  However, there’s no law that says you can’t help set the tone and maybe speed up the pace with the right atmosphere. Instead of counting my blessings, I mentally scroll through items on my to-do list for the next morning.

  I’m determined to set the most perfect, warm, backdrop for G to change his mind about me with my dinner tomorrow.

  This will be The Christmas Party That Changes Everything…and hopefully the prelude to The Kiss that Changes Everything for me and Giuseppe.

  FIVE

  The next morning, my alarm goes off at 6, and I’m tempted to hit the snooze button, but my goal of hosting the perfect Christmas dinner propels me out of bed. My first stop is the window, where I assess the effects of last night’s snow.

  It looks like we got about six inches, but from my view of the window, the roads look perfectly clear. Operation Christmas Dinner is still on track.

  My first order of business is to flip the turkey inside of the bag of brine. My tried and true recipe suggests brining the bird for 16-24 hours, and it still has another 6 hours to go before it reaches 17 hours.

  I’ll start roasting the turkey at noon, and it should be done by 4, which will give the meat about an hour to rest before we carve it.

  It’s a tight schedule because I have to get everything else that needs to be baked done before noon, but I’m up to the challenge. While I’m in the kitchen, I add the ingredients for rolls into my bread machine and then head back to my room to hop in the shower.

  By 7:30 A.M., I’m showered, alert and separating bread dough into individual balls to rise for a while.

  I’m moving on to my vegetable dishes when the phone rings.

  “Hello?”

  “Ivy, it’s Sy.”

  I’ve talked to Sy, my boss, every day for nearly nine years, and he always begins his phone calls the same way.

  “Merry Christmas!” I exclaim.

  “Merry Christmas to you too,” he says.

  “About the dinner tonight,” he begins, and my heart sinks, wondering if he’s going to skip my party. Sy is not anti-social, by any means--he is great friends with the neighbors who live in his condominium building, and he has built solid friendships with the customers we deal with at the bookshop, but he’s also a great fan of his own personal space and quiet time.

  In eight years of being his assistant at Volumes Ltd., his rare and antique book shop, he has remained vigorously independent, and sometimes downright secretive with some of the particulars of his daily schedule. There are long stretches of time each day that he disappears and leaves me to run the shop alone, and he refuses to tell me where he goes.

  Stella, G, and I have long speculated about what exactly Sy does during these hours, and the most plausible explanation is that he’s probably just taking a nap. After all, he is in his eighties.

  “You’re not going to cancel on me, are you?” I say, teasing him.

  Sy chuckles, “Oh no. I’ll be there with bells on.”

  “My neighbor, Cooper is going to come and pick you up around 4:00. I’ll serve dinner at five, so that’ll give you some time to get settled in and visit with everyone. Is that okay with you?” Sy doesn’t drive unless he absolutely has to. His primary mode of transportation is the Metrolink, or having me drive his car to take him on errands.

  Since Stella and G are coming straight from other Christmas parties, a few weeks ago, I made arrangements for Cooper to drive Sy to dinner.
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  “That’s fine, but I wanted to ask you a favor. You know Milton, my new attorney?”

  I hesitate for a moment, because I can sense exactly what’s happening. Sy and his previous attorney, Milton Boyd II, were friends for nearly 50 years.

  When Milton II died earlier this year, he passed his practice on to his withdrawn, quiet, all-work-and-no-play, cold fish of a son, Milton III--or M3, as I like to call him.

  “Yes…” I trail off, trying to brace myself for what’s coming next. Is M3 hosting his own Christmas dinner and is Sy planning to split his time between the two? Or, worse yet, is Sy trying to invite M3 to my party?

  “Well, I talked to him last night about some paperwork, and he mentioned that he didn’t have any plans for today. Can you imagine?”

  “Hmm,” I say, trying to keep calm. The thing is, Sy has been trying valiantly to set the two of us up for several months. On the one hand, I’m appreciative of his efforts. In many ways, Sy has been a fatherly figure to me, and I can see him trying to do the same for M3 since his father passed away.

  And since M3’s father died and I have no other family to speak of, what better way to help both of us than by tossing us together and hoping that we fall for each other and live happily ever after?

  I know Sy means well. I totally understand the sentiment of she’s-30-and-still-single-so-WHO-can-we-set-her-up-with?

  I’ve had my fair share of random blind dates. And if I were married, I’d probably be doing my fair share of suggesting completely ridiculous dates for my single friends.

  But one thing is for certain. I have no interest whatsoever in M3, and I don’t care to know if he has feelings for me--one way or the other.

  But the excitement in Sy’s voice tells me I can’t prevent the man from coming tonight. As a person who has little family (save some distant cousins of my mother’s who live in Alaska--yes, Alaska, so I don’t get to see them very often) to visit, I well understand the feeling of being lonely at holidays, which is the reason I’ve worked so hard to create my own traditions, like my Christmas dinner. I wouldn’t wish a lonely holiday on my worst enemy.

  I swallow my frustration and try to sound as cheerful as possible. “Sy, please tell Milton he’s welcome to join us. In fact, I won’t take no for an answer.”

  “That’s wonderful news. And tell your friend Cooper to stay put; I’ll have Milton drive me over. Four o’clock, right?”

  “Four o’clock it is. See you then.”

  I hang up the phone and frown at the bowl of Brussels sprouts in front of me while I try to wrap my mind around this latest development. It figures that while I’m trying to set the stage for romance with Giuseppe, my boss throws a wrench in the plans and invites a date for me.

  I push the Brussels sprouts aside for the time being and put on a pot of water to boil the potatoes I’m planning to mash. As I’m salting the water, inspiration strikes.

  The only way to sort through this conundrum is to nail down the place settings. Right now.

  I pull a bunch of plates from the cabinet and march into the dining room, determined to make this work. I’d planned to put Sy at the head of the table, and I decided to work from there.

  Stella and Grant can sit across from each other. Then I’ll line up Cooper and Mindy across from each other. Mindy had said she and Cooper would feed the babies early, and they would likely be napping by the time dinner started, so I didn’t need to plan out a spot for them. I did, however, push my antique hutch aside to make room for the playpen Mindy said she’d bring.

  This leaves me, G and M3. I couldn’t be obvious and put myself and G across from each other like the other couples. And I couldn’t shove M3 back to the other end of the table. If I’d gotten this news two or three days earlier, I could have invited one more person--preferably a woman, so M3 wouldn’t make things so lopsided. But by now, all of my friends had their own holiday plans.

  So, the only thing to do now is work with what I have. The best option to make sure M3 doesn’t feel like the third wheel and to ensure G doesn’t realize I’m trying to set the two of us up is to put M3 across from myself and give G the seat at the opposite end of the table across from Sy.

  I quickly draw up some place cards and step back to admire my quick thinking. The dining room table was meant to comfortably hold ten. Because my party is only eight people, I spend a couple of minutes shifting the chairs to give everyone a bit more elbow room. After that, I remove the two extra chairs and put them in the living room for extra seating.

  Feeling satisfied, I close my eyes and envision the room at 5:00…I’ll have some holiday music softly playing in the background--something classic with artists like Doris Day, Bing Crosby, and Frank Sinatra.

  Then I’ll turn on all of the Christmas lights in the living and dining room, light the candles and dim the overhead lights just so, to give the room a warm glow. I can envision the turkey and all of the trimmings on the table, and everyone laughing and talking.

  And, surprisingly, this whole setup with me across from M3 and Giuseppe at my right is working out well. M3 and I are chatting comfortably, and G is leaning into our conversation. I think he’s starting to realize that maybe I won’t sit around waiting for him forever. I’m just as single and eligible as he is, and he needs to work for my attention from now on.

  I’m pulled out of my daydream by the ringing of the kitchen timer, alerting me to add the potatoes to the boiling water.

  With that done, I turn my attention to making pie crusts for pecan and pumpkin pies. I really should have baked these last night, but after the excitement with the unexpected snowstorm, I was just too tired to spend another second in the kitchen.

  But, I can power through this today if I focus. I shuffle through my Christmas playlists and shift to more contemporary artists. Over the years I’ve learned that choosing a cooking playlist is really similar to picking a playlist for a workout. The faster the music, the faster you move, and nothing increases the pace like listening to Mariah Carey singing “All I Want For Christmas Is You.”

  The next few hours pass in a blur, with me juggling the timing of mashing potatoes, and then baking pies and rolls, along with green bean casserole, roasted Brussels sprouts, and my special medley of spiced sweet potatoes, squash, and parsnips.

  By one o’clock (a little behind schedule, thanks to those pies), I’m preparing to remove the turkey from the brine and start the roasting process, when Stella calls.

  “Merry Christmas!” she says cheerily.

  “Merry Christmas to you too! How’s the family dinner coming along?” I click over to speakerphone and place the phone on the counter so I can rinse the brine off of the turkey.

  “Great! And guess what my parents gave me?”

  “What?”

  “One thousand dollars for my braces savings fund!”

  “Are you serious? That’s fantastic!” I carefully shift the rinsed turkey to the large roasting pan and place it on the roasting rack.

  “I know. I’m getting so close to my perfect teeth,” she says, sighing happily. “So…I’m hearing rumors about some more snow this afternoon,” she says, sounding nervous.

  “What? Not again.” I tuck the wings under the bird and cover the entire turkey with foil and slip the pan into the oven.

  “Yeah, maybe starting around four,” she says. “And possibly some freezing rain. But Grant has an SUV, and he picked me up this morning, so he’s in charge of driving today.”

  “Crisis averted,” I say jokingly and head to window to get a glimpse of the skies.

  “But we may show up before four,” she says. “Just so we’re not on the roads if the weather gets bad. And I can help you finish cooking. How are things coming along?”

  The skies are bright and sunny, and I don’t see any sign of an impending snowstorm on the horizon as I scan the landscape. “Come as early as you like. Everything’s done but the turkey, and it looks like it won’t ready until closer to five. But Mindy’s volunteered her ove
n to reheat the other dishes while the turkey’s cooking, so everything will be hot and ready when the turkey’s finished.”

  “Wow, you really do have everything under control,” she says. “Very impressive.”

  “Thanks. But not quite.” I fill her in on the details of Sy inviting M3, and though she’s appalled at first, by the end of the story, she agrees with me that this might not be such a bad thing.

  “You’re right. Maybe G will finally stop taking you for granted if he senses some competition on the scene.”

  “You never know,” I say, still peering out of my windows. Many of the neighborhood kids are running around outside, building snowmen and trying out new bikes as best as they can in six inches of snow. The roads are still clear, and so far, the weather seems pretty mild, but that’s the thing with Missouri weather--it’s hard to determine what’s coming next.

  “Listen,” says Stella. “I have to run, but we’ll see you in a few hours.

  After hanging up with Stella, I sit down on my couch to just relax and soak in some Christmas atmosphere. Several holiday movies are on TV, and I settle on an old favorite, It’s a Wonderful Life.

  My early morning is catching up with me, so I grab a blanket, stretch out, and prop my head up with a pillow to watch the movie. And by the time Jimmy Stewart’s character dances into a swimming pool, I decide to indulge in a quick power nap.

  SIX

  Someone is pounding on the walls and calling my name.

  “Ivy?”

  Mindy’s voice is muffled as I sit up and force myself to push through the grogginess I feel.

  “Ivy?”

  I hear Mindy’s voice again, along with several sharp raps on my front door.

  I jump to my feet and run to the kitchen, panic rising in my throat.

  Inside the oven, all is well.

  The turkey still has more than two hours to go, which means I’ve been asleep for a little over an hour.