This Christmas (24 page)

Once I had demolished the kitchen and had something that looked reasonably like batter, I felt better. In fact, I really had the feeling that I could hold this Christmas together out of sheer determination and generous amounts of cinnamon and nutmeg. Why not?

The next person I saw that morning was Jason. He came bounding into the kitchen in sweats and sneakers and kissed my forehead. “What’s this?” he asked, his gaze naturally drawn to the orange glop I was obsessively stirring.

“Pumpkin pancakes.”

“Cool—I thought I’d take a run around your neighborhood before breakfast. Do I have time?”

Okay, I’ll admit to a tiny sag of disappointment just then. I had imagined Jason bounding down to the kitchen and helping me. Or at least diving for the breakfast table and getting ready to scarf down two short stacks. I hadn’t expected him to dash out into the freezing cold and get himself all sweaty first.

I didn’t even know he was a jogger.

Not that I
really
minded. Anyway, I wasn’t going to let him know it. “No! Great!” I practically singsonged.

He awarded me another peck and dashed out the door. I started making coffee and getting things ready. I turned on the griddle, I dug up a red and green tablecloth with little stick snowmen embroidered on it and threw it on the table, and I unearthed the Christmas Spode and set the table in record time. I put out a pitcher of milk for coffee, and the butter, and then started searching through the cabinets for syrup.

But there was no syrup.

Not a drop.

A wave of panic hit me. I had felt pretty cocksure while I was making those pancakes, if only because I knew that some grade A maple syrup covered a multitude of culinary sins. But without it that orange glop looked more threatening. I tried to think what to do. I could plead with my mother to unearth some syrup or run to the store, but she would probably just make another snide Fannie Farmer comment. Jason was jogging—and besides, he was the person I was trying to impress. Ted…

Well, Ted probably wasn’t in any shape to be running errands.

After a few moments of standing frozen in front of a wall of opened cabinets, I finally gathered my wits about me. What was syrup? Sugar and water. Mrs. Butterworth didn’t bother with maple trees. Homemade in this case wasn’t ideal…but I could get it done while the pancakes were cooking…and spice it up with a little cinnamon and nutmeg.

Quick like a bunny, I yanked a saucepan off a shelf and tossed in four cups of sugar and a cup of water. To my surprise, it seemed to work. That is, the sugar began to dissolve.

Someone knocked at the side door, and I dashed over to open it. I was expecting Jason, but instead, Isaac blew in. “My God, it’s cold,” he said, teeth chattering. He stopped, looked around the kitchen, and deposited a paper grocery bag on the kitchen table. “Where is everybody?”

“Jason’s jogging, Mom’s studying indefinite articles, and everyone else is asleep.”

“Jason’s
jogging?
” he asked. “Holidays exist so we don’t have to do stuff like that.”

As if he
ever
jogged.

“That’s how cardiovascular slackers think. Jason’s different.”

“Right, a pillar among men.” Isaac looked around. He took off his hat, muffler, and coat and dropped them on a chair. “What are you up to here?”

“I’m making breakfast.”

Deep lines furrowed his forehead as he inspected my bowl of batter. “And it’s going to be…?”

“Pancakes,”
I said.

“I like pancakes,” he said, then added, “usually.”

I was grudgingly about to invite him to stay, when suddenly a hissing noise got my attention. My syrup was bubbling over. I dove to turn the heat down on it. Isaac was right next to me.

“Oh, are we having glue for breakfast, too?” he asked.

My confidence, already shaky, wavered some more. It didn’t look right—sort of thick and white. “Syrup.”

“Holly…”

“Could you hand me the cinnamon, please?” I said, cutting him off. The last thing I needed right now was nay-saying. I started shoveling spices into what was beginning to look like sugar cement.

“Maybe you should add something else?” Isaac ventured.

“What?”

“Butter? That usually helps.”

“I can’t use fat, because of Dad.”

Real alarm spread across Isaac’s face and he nervously eyeballed the orange sludge in the bowl at his elbow. “What’s in that batter?”

“Would you just sit down and relax? I had this all under control before you showed up.” I glanced at the bag he’d left on the table. “What did you bring?”

He seemed to have forgotten it. “Oh! My mom’s been making gingerbread houses this year.” He pulled out a picture-perfect example of confectionary architecture. “Happy holidays from the Millsteins to the Ellises.”

I have to admit, after my pancake gambit, I felt almost jealous of it. It looked like something out of a children’s picture book. “That was so nice of her!”

Dad shuffled in, dressed in his usual uniform of khakis, dress shirt, and cardigan. He peered over the counter to see what I was doing and a hint of worry crossed his face. When I shot him a warning glance, he offered, “
Smells
good.”

Mom sauntered back in, inspected what I was doing, then hummed something Wagnerian and gloomy as she refilled her coffee. Then she caught sight of the gingerbread house, which she positioned in the center of the table. “Just darling!” she exclaimed. “I’ll have to call Leona up this morning to thank her.”

By the time Jason came bounding back from his jog, cheeks rosy with health, not even breaking a sweat, it was obvious a disaster was in the making. He looked at the pancake lumps squatting on the griddle and exclaimed, “Gosh, you shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble! I could have just had cereal.”

When Ted came down twenty minutes later looking like death warmed over, everyone was slumped stonily over their inedible pancakes, which sat like leaden pumpkin cowpies on everyone’s plates. Let’s just say that folks weren’t digging in. There was nothing to be done with them, either, since the syrup I had prepared had somehow turned into a sugar brick on the way from the stove to the table. They were all too polite to suggest alternatives just yet.

Ted sank into a chair. Immediately, the rest of us straightened and attempted to lift his spirits by sheer force of will.

“I didn’t expect to see you this morning,” I joked.

Ted stared bleary-eyed at me.

“You were up late, remember?” To jog his memory, I added, “QVC.”

“Oh. Right.” He buried his head in his hands. “Oh no!”

“What is it?” we asked.

“QVC. I thought it was a nightmare.”

Having lost entire weekends zombified in front of home-shopping networks, I could sympathize. “We’ve all been there,” I said, trying to comfort him.

“Not the way I was.” His eyes seemed full of anguish. “I bought those cat plates.”

“What?” Dad asked.

“Collector’s plates with cats on them. They were on sale—I think I bought some for everybody. Twelve sets.”

We gaped at him.

“Merry Christmas,” he said.

This news only added to the general gloom. As the minutes dragged by and people only picked around the (burnt) edges of their servings, I felt myself sinking lower in my chair. Even I was longing for a bowl of shredded wheat along about that time.

I was about to utter the word of surrender—IHOP—when Dad, in desperation, reached over and snapped the chimney off Mrs. Millstein’s gingerbread house.

“Laird!” my mother scolded.

“Well, it’s food, isn’t it?” Dad chewed quickly. “Tastes good!”

Ted suddenly yanked off a little of the roof and popped it in his mouth.

I couldn’t blame them. They were hungry, and breakfast was inedible. Even Jason, who had piled pancakes on his plate out of loyalty to me, was eyeing that gingerbread house longingly. In resignation, I nudged it toward him. Avoiding my gaze, he hurriedly chipped off a shutter.

I looked over at Isaac.
He
wasn’t eating the centerpiece. (Then again, he wasn’t eating my pancakes, either.) “Did you hear about the mistletoe blight?”

“No.”

“Apparently there’s no mistletoe this year,” I said.

“I’ll bet I could find some,” he said. “I’ll poke around near my house and see.”

For a moment, my spirits lifted. “You would do that for me?”

My hero!
Even if his mother’s gingerbread house
had
stolen the thunder from my pancakes.

Speaking of stealing thunder, at that moment, the door flew open, letting in a gust of wind. And my little sister.

Maddie was dressed in one of those nylon goose down–stuffed vests that would have made me look like a marshmallow. On her it looked adorable. (Everything did.) It was minty blue and matched the helmet she was carrying jauntily under her arm.

When she blew into the house, the atmosphere shifted radically. Mount Doom turned into Munch-kinland. The very floor seemed to lift beneath our feet; I wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised if we had all started talking in high helium voices. Mom became more like her old self, and Dad dropped ten years in two seconds. Maddie’s arrival even seemed to perk Ted up momentarily. As he looked at her, his grim countenance cracked into a dopey smile.

Dad and Mom jumped up for hugs. When I noticed Isaac queuing up for same, I gave him a playful punch. “Down boy,” I whispered.

But he had been noticed. Maddie put her arms around him, shaking out her elbow-length blond hair. “Isaac, you old lunatic! How the heck have you been?”

Isaac squirmed with delight, making a sickening spectacle of himself. I had to hold myself back from miming little retching gestures, but then I was swept up in Maddie’s serial helloing, too. “And Holly! Holly!” she cried, giving me a brief boa constrictor working over. “When did you get home? What did you do to yourself to make yourself look so good?” I was still trying to decide which question I should tackle first when she swatted both away. “Oh, never mind! What do you think of my outfit?” she asked, handing the helmet to me. Becoming her Jeeves, I took it obediently and then helped her struggle out of her coat. “It matches my Vespa. You’ve
got
to get one, Hol, they’re just—”

“You color coordinated with your motorbike?” I asked.

“Very Evil Knievel of you,” Isaac said.

She laughed and kept moving down the line. “Ted? How are you?” she asked, her brow wrinkling in concern. Obviously she had heard about the disaster in his life. Maddie was always in the know.

At Ted’s shrug, she gave him another hug and moved down the line. She was about to throw her arms around Jason when she suddenly stopped and blurted out a laugh. “Hey—I don’t know you!”

I zipped over. “This is Jason.”

“Oh!” She took him in with open appreciation. I felt a wave of satisfaction.
Finally
someone was acknowledging my good fortune. “Wow. He’s your Christmas present to us this year?”

Everyone chortled at her little joke.

Isaac and I looked toward the kitchen door. Weren’t we missing someone?

“Uh…Maddie?” I asked. She blinked at me. “Are you alone?”

Her mouth dropped open and she gasped dramatically. “Omigosh! I
completely
forgot!”

She yanked open the door and pulled in a half-frozen soul carrying two large backpacks. “Folks, this is Vlad!” She added, “Vlad drives a Harley. We toodled down together.”

Vlad grimaced uncomfortably at us all; he looked like one of those guys who was unused to smiling. The heavy lines in the corners of his mouth were not laugh lines. Our slack-jawed response to him probably wasn’t very cheering, either. But he just wasn’t what any of us could have expected.

For one thing, his clothes: a black leather jacket and ripped jeans. Something T-shirty and unwashed smelling underneath. Definitely not Brooks Brothers. When he took off his helmet, he revealed a black knit cap with a white skull knit onto it. Earrings circled from the top of one ear all the way around to the lobe. When he reached out to shake hands with one of us, the top of his hand revealed a hissing tattooed snake.

My dad recovered from his instant of shock sooner than the rest of us. “Glad to have you, Vlad.”

“Thank you very much,” Vlad said. His voice was so heavily accented there was a brief delay before everyone understood even that simple response and nodded.

“I met Vlad at the hospital,” Maddie said. Then she let out an exaggerated shiver. “I don’t suppose I could trouble anyone for a warm beverage.”

Predictably, three people fell over themselves to get her a cup of coffee.

The group reassembled around the table. “Isn’t this great?” Maddie asked. “I just love Christmas!”

I handed Vlad a cup of coffee. “Thank you very much,” he said, winking at me.

Maddie held everyone spellbound describing her and Vlad’s adventure. Apparently they had had trouble in Delaware, which is where Vlad had intended to go, but his friends weren’t home.

“Their house was all boarded up,” Maddie said. “So I just said, no problem, Vlad, come on home with me.”

His friends’ house was boarded up?

So Vlad wasn’t
supposed
to be here? He wasn’t a fiancé? Isaac and I exchanged bemused glances.

“I’m so glad you did, Vlad!” my mom exclaimed brightly. “We’re glad to have you.”

“Thank you very much,” he said.

“Food!” Maddie’s eyes widened when she took in the gingerbread house. She cracked off a piece of wall for herself. “I’m starved.”

“Have some, Vlad,” Mom said, shoving the partially demolished centerpiece toward him.

Three guesses what he said.

“Was this your family you were trying to visit in Delaware, Vlad?” I asked him.

“Friends,” Maddie jumped in to answer. “Vlad’s from Russia.”

Oos
and
ahs
greeted this news flash.

“He was trying to deliver a package to his friends, but they must be visiting family.”

Right
. I know I always board up windows before I leave for the weekend. I looked suspiciously at the backpack leaning against the kitchen cabinets by the door. The black one, not the minty blue one. Wonder what “package” he was trying to deliver.

Isaac looked over at me. “So I’m to go on a mistletoe hunt?”

Maddie gasped. “Mistletoe hunt? Fun!”

“Isaac volunteered for that. I was going to take Jason out….”

“Where?” Maddie asked.

“Um, I’m not sure….”

She let out a sputtering series of breaths, like a kid in a classroom bursting with the correct answer. “Yes, Maddie?” I asked in my best teacher voice.

“The zoo!” she said, beaming a million-watt smile at us all. “Doesn’t that sound fun?”

Standing out in the freezing cold staring at displaced wildlife, fun?

“Sounds great!” Jason chimed.

“You do realize there’s bad weather moving through, don’t you?” I asked Maddie. “They’re predicting ice….”

Her blue eyes widened. “You’re right. We should probably hurry before it gets worse.”

“Good idea,” Mom said. “You all run along.”

“Wait.” It was Christmas Eve, and Jason and I needed
some
quality time. Not to mention, we had to sort out when he and I would exchange gifts. I didn’t want this to happen during the present madness of Christmas morning. “Don’t you need some help with dinner, Mom?”

Mom waved off my concern. “No, you kids go ahead. Have fun. It’s all under control.”

“It is?”
So far I hadn’t seen any evidence of a big dinner in the making. No crown pork roast, no huge ham. Nothing.

“Okay!” Maddie hopped up, ready to marshall us out the door. “Let’s go!”

“Do we even know if the zoo will be open?” I asked, still dragging my heels.

“I’ll call!” She bounded out of the room.

I started to trail after her; then I remembered something and turned back to Mom. “I brought up the snow village from the basement, but I didn’t quite get around to putting it all together. It’s in the hallway.”

“That’s fine,” Mom said. “Your father can take it back down to the basement this morning.”

“Actually, I thought you might—”

“You mean I’m not going to the zoo?” Dad interrupted, crestfallen.

Mom rolled her eyes. “Laird, you’re going to Jeffrey’s house for drinks!”

“Oh.”

“Anyway, you hate the zoo,” Mom said. “You always say it’s horrible to watch those beautiful creatures all caged up, enslaved for a bunch of gawking humans.”

I winced as I looked over at Isaac. “You wanna come gawk at enslaved animals?”

“I’ve got to go on my mistletoe hunt, remember?”

“Oh, right.”

“Of course, I could come back later…say around dinnertime?”

Isaac always had Christmas Eve dinner with us. I’d forgotten to formally invite him this year, but Mom picked up the hint. “Do come have dinner with us!” she exclaimed. “If you aren’t sick of us already.”

“I’ll be there with bells on.”

“And mistletoe in hand,” I reminded him.

“Cool car!” Maddie exclaimed from the backseat. “I just love Saabs.”

Jason looked pleased. I should have been, too. My choice in boyfriend was finally garnering the approbation I craved. Unfortunately, I was a little distracted at the moment. We were still huddled shivering in the car, idling in the driveway. The heater hadn’t quite kicked in yet. I swung around to ask, “Where’s Vlad?”

Maddie looked surprised. “Inside. I don’t think this would be his thing at all.”

“What
would
his thing be?”

She laughed. “Who knows? Drive on, Jason.”

Jason seemed happy enough to get us under way.

“Are you two serious?” I asked Maddie, sounding like a mother hen.

Her brow puckered at me. “Serious what?”

“You know,” I said, “
serious
.”

She looked dumbstruck for a moment, then started giggling.

“What’s so funny?”

“Vlad and me,” she said. “Serious. We just met.”

“You said you knew him from the hospital,” I reminded her.

“No, I said I’d
met
him at the hospital. I treated him in the ER.”

“What for?” I asked.

She lifted her shoulders. “He came in for a head wound…but, of course, you couldn’t see the scar through his cap.” She allowed herself a smug smirk. “Also, I did a terrific job stitching him up, if I do say so myself.”

“When was this?” I asked, still trying to piece it all together.

“Last weekend.”

I freaked. “
What?
You just met this dude with a head wound and invited him home right off?” Which, now that I thought about it, was practically what I had done with Jason. Minus the head wound, of course.

“It wasn’t like that. I was stitching him up, and you know, because I know a little Russian, we got to talking. And he has a motorcycle, and I have my Vespa, which had a leaky tire that he offered to fix. And then later we got to talking and decided to drive down together. I felt safer having someone with me, frankly.”

I crossed my arms. So he wasn’t a fiancé. Which was probably a good thing, all things considered. I hated to think of my little sister going out with some nut. I’m no reactionary, but this guy looked hard core. It wouldn’t have surprised me to learn he was some kind of international drug trafficker.

“I swear, Holly, he’s not some coke-snorting fiend.”

I jumped. Was I that easy to read?

Jason laughed. When I looked over at him, he explained carefully, “If he
were
a coke-snorting fiend, we could call him Vlad the Inhaler.”

Maddie cracked up, then noticed I was
not
laughing.

“Look at you.” Maddie gave the back of the seat a poke. “Miss Uptight. After all the skeevies you’ve been out with!”

I flinched. “I just think you’re behaving recklessly. You show up late, and with some kind of Slavic slum boy in tow….”

Maddeningly, she laughed off my criticism and leaned forward to give Jason an approving pat. “You must be good for her. I’ve never seen her worried about things like appearances or punctuality before. And you look great, Hol! You finally took my advice and found a good stylist.”

That’s the trouble with family. They keep you from projecting who you want to be by reminding everyone who you actually are.

I snapped on the radio. Ella Fitzgerald was singing “Frosty the Snowman.”

Jason shuddered. “Oh, not this again.”

“I
love
this song!” Maddie said.

Jason grinned at her through the rearview mirror. “Your sister and Isaac spent half the trip from New York arguing about who sang ‘Frosty the Snowman’ in the TV special.”

“It wasn’t half the trip,” I said.

He laughed. “Just most of the way through Pennsylvania.”

Maddie leaned forward. “That’s Holly and Isaac. They’re like an old married couple.”

I objected violently to that characterization. “I just don’t believe in letting people walk around with wrong ideas in their heads, like Burl Ives singing ‘Frosty the Snowman.’”

Maddie frowned. “But he
did
sing ‘Frosty the Snowman.’”

Jason groaned.

Was the world filled with people conflating their Christmas specials? “It was Jimmy Durante.”

“
Who?
” Maddie asked.

I could have cried.

By the time we got to the zoo, the temperature seemed to have dipped another ten degrees. The air felt heavy, expectant. No doubt about it, soon there would be annoying people running around proclaiming how great it was to have a white Christmas.

We got out and stomped around paved trails looking for wildlife, but most of the animals that weren’t huddled in their naturalized concrete enclosures and burrows looked severely pissed off at having been transported from their subtropical worlds to this frigid one. Even the polar bears pacing around their pool didn’t seem very enthusiastic about their conditions, from what I could tell, as I peered out at them through the slit created from where my scarf ended and my hat brim began.

My phone rang, and I walked a few paces from Maddie and Jason to answer it. It was Isaac.

“I’m at Barcroft Park,” he said. “It’s cold, and I don’t see mistletoe, and even if I did, I don’t know what I’d do about it. I think all my fingers have frostbite.”

Whiner. “Remind me not to bring you along when I summit Everest.”

“Everest?” He hooted so loudly I had to hold the phone away from my ear. “You get winded summiting the three flights of stairs to my apartment.”

“Yeah, but on Everest they give you an oxygen tank and chocolate bars.”

“I’ll try to remember that the next time you’re puffing past the second floor landing. Anyway, I just thought of something. What is this mistletoe for?”