"Have some Cinzano," her mother said, enjoying tiny glasses at a time of the sweet fortified wine. She liked to indulge a little when she was slaving over a big family dinner, and she had been slaving since mid-morning.
"It's not my favourite," Violet said, screwing up her nose.
"It's Christmas. Have something."
Violet took a palm full of slivered almonds that were meant for the cherry tarts. Her mother, just arriving at tipsy, disapproved of the spoilsporting. "Now what else can I do?" Violet asked, holding firm.
"Peel the potatoes. That's what we had kids for."
"Did you and Dad go to church last night?"
"We didn't stay too long. I feel kind of sorry for Father Ernie. Ever since they opened that huge prayer palace on Remy St., midnight mass has migrated. They televise it on local cable."
"I flipped past it. I thought it was an infomercial for big hats."
"Well, I like our little church. I like that it has a lawn instead of a parking lot."
"Yes, I've seen that nativity scene."
"Isn't it awful? That angel swinging from the window looks like he's been hanged. And I don't know if you've noticed, but the Joseph is just another Mary with a beard stuck on and her robes painted brown."
"I'll have to take a closer look."
"Your father has a picture of it on his phone. It reminds me of the time your grandmother was taking art classes and got inspired to paint clothes on all the marble nudes we had in the foyer. All the women got togas and the two male statues looked like the David in Bermuda shorts."
"Are we going to wait for Olivia and Lee to get here before we call Grandma?"
"That's what I figured. Mom's probably in the car with your uncle right now. And your sister and Lee will be at his parents' until around five o'clock. I hope they're not too stuffed. We could feed an army with all this food."
"An army still wouldn't eat those turnips."
Evelyn March smacked her lips. The love of turnips was hers alone and no amount of butter or salt could change the fact. As for the rest of the holiday meal - the turkey, mashed potatoes, veggies and salad, two kinds of stuffing no less, (both traditional bread with sage and sausage and herb varieties), not to mention all the cheese and olive platters before and all the pecan pie and cherry tarts afterwards - it was all fair game. Only one year had leftovers ever lasted past the next day and that was because a guest had made pasta. If any armies were passing by the March home this Christmas or any other, they'd be lucky to get their hands on some dinner rolls to ration out and it wouldn't happen without a skirmish.
"I hope those two get here a little earlier," Violet said. "I want to open my presents."
"You don't have to wait. Open one up."
"But then I'll have one less to open while everyone else is unwrapping theirs. That's no fun."
"I hope you like what we got you."
"I'm sure I will. Sometimes, when I'm looking at things, I don't know if I like them because they are my taste or because they remind me of yours."
"What a nice thing to say."
Violet's mother certainly had an enviable sense of style, and it was no secret she was proud of it.
The telephone rang. Violet gave a little jump and the potato she gripped slipped out of her hand and into the sink. Her mother picked up the kitchen phone but kept an eye on her daughter. "It's Aunt Eileen," she whispered like she did when she wanted the girls to keep quiet to spare them a long winded gripe. The conversation lasted through the entire bag of potatoes.
"Well, she's done it again," Evelyn said.
"She's not coming?"
"She started in right away on why I was sending a stranger to pick her up."
"Lee's been in the family for five years. When is she going to stop referring to him as a stranger?"
"She tips him well so I know she likes him. No, the problem is I told her Henry and Sheila were coming for dinner and that they might bring Jude."
"Jude?" Violet balked. Olivia had once had an intense but short-lived romance with the son of long time family friends, the Collinses, long before Lee was in the picture. He was an obnoxiously good looking, overly flirtatious trouble maker who would say anything at the dinner table, as he had done the year before at his parents' anniversary party, to make Olivia blush, Violet uncomfortable, and Lee plain old angry.
"Sheila phoned me this morning and said he couldn't make it anyway. He has to pick up his girlfriends' parents at the airport."
"Oh, good. I'd hate to sit there and watch Lee consider his fastest fist all night."
"Your great aunt's claiming to have forgotten what day it is and says she already put her dinner in the oven and that she will not have the sin and shame of wasting a perfectly good meal on her conscience while people in the world are starving. We both know she's not coming because she doesn't want to get dressed. She'll go to the hairdresser's in her housecoat so why she feels she'll have to dress up for dinner here is beyond me. Anyway, it's three-thirty and she's in her nightgown so the subject is closed for discussion. Move over, would you?"
Evelyn hip checked Violet at the counter so that there was room for two to dice the potatoes for the boiling pot. The phone rang again. This time, Violet jumped a little less. Her father answered from another part of the house.
"He doesn't have this number does he?" Evelyn asked.
"No, and I forgot my phone at home," Violet said, shaking her head.
"That's probably Eileen giving Byron her side of the story in case I 'twist her words'."
Violet half smiled. "It's so stupid. I've been jumping like that for the last four days. Every time the phone rings. If John hasn't called by now I guess he won't."
"I bet he didn't get the message. Or something got lost in translation. He's got to call you for Christmas. You're going to go home and find that he's been calling all day."
Violet was less optimistic. "I don't know what's wrong with me," she sighed. "I messed everything up."
"It's better for a relationship to be difficult in the beginning than at the end," her mother said reassuringly.
"Olivia says the same thing. She's supposed to be the baby of the family."
"She speaks from experience and lots of it. Your sister had to go out with a lot of Bozos, including Jude, before she found Lee. You were never a just-for-laughs kind of girl. Life should be easier when you know who you are, but it isn't." Evelyn's description of Violet's own character naturally made her think of John's alter ego with a pang of regret. "This thing with John is complicated, but," her mother insisted, "it'll get straightened out. He'll fix it. You have some pretty good taste too. Cinzano?"
"A small one."
The doorbell was ringing incessantly when Violet's dad raced over and peered through the front glass. "We've got a pile-up out here!" he announced. Olivia and Lee and Sheila and Henry Collins had arrived on the front steps of the house at the same time and were demanding with jokey impatience to be let in immediately. Byron threw open the door and said, "Well, if I knew you were coming I'd have ironed my socks!"
Henry Collins flapped the pockets of his overcoat acting out a jolt of surprise. "If I'd known that you'd be here I'd have worn some pants!"
Olivia kissed her father and bounded inside holding a plastic wrapped bowl of some congealed pinkish mass.
"What is it?" her mother asked suspiciously, kissing her cold, rosy cheeks.
"Why, if it isn't Parsley!" Byron exclaimed from the front hall alerting Evelyn and Violet to the fact that the Collinses had brought their dog.
"Lee's mother sent over this stuffing. It's an old family recipe."
"How old?" Violet asked, eyeballing the bowl with some distrust.
"Are there candy sprinkles in it?" Evelyn asked, concerned.
Olivia's shoulder went up. "I think the paprika makes it pink or something. Honestly, it's not that bad."
The food critics broke up to make way for the dog. "That's right, Parse!" Byron said. "Make yourself at home."
He had a soft spot for Parsley, a large fuss-pot weimaraner the colour of dirty corduroys, not really grey, not really brown. He had a face so perpetually long and serious that it gave the impression that he had low self-esteem. These qualities, combined with his fastidiousness for, ahem, up close inspections, meant that a person was less likely to shoo him away than to simply cross legs and turn so as not to give the dog a bigger complex. If being a meticulous sniffer was any way to get elected to Alpha dog, Parsley would win by a nose. He made his rounds ignoring the embarrassed reprimands of his mistress.
"We've already met," Lee said to him.
Sheila was shown to the dining room where she unwrapped a tray of baked offerings for the table. "Evelyn, this looks amazing. Thank you so much for having us."
"She's been starving me all day for this," Henry called.
Violet and Olivia very generously agreed to put off opening presents until the post-gorge, pre-dessert portion of dinner so that the whole group could move into the dining room and take their seats at the table.
Byron carved the bird masterfully. When he reached the wishbone he set it aside to dry on the new table cloth which alleviated Lee's guilt for having spilled gravy on it with his first spoonful. Plates were passed around, or in some cases, passed over.
"What is that?" Byron puzzled over Lee's family's stuffing.
"I'll have you know my mother won a prize for that recipe in a magazine," Lee said.
"It looks like a bowling ball," Byron said. "On Disco night."
"It's made with herbed potatoes and gourds," said Olivia.
"You know I hate that word," her father squirmed.
"Gooouurrds," she repeated slowly.
"It's delicious," Lee said. "It's tradition."
"In some cultures it's tradition to see how many bugs you can eat before they crawl out of a pita, but I'm not about to try it."
"Turnips, dear?" Evelyn offered.
"No, thank you."
They stuffed themselves with just about every other dish before them. They laughed and rehashed favourite family stories. Henry and Sheila had just come back from a cruise to the Caribbean and had pictures to show later. Their son Jude was about to propose to his girlfriend, they thought. When were Olivia and Lee going to have babies, all wondered. Did anyone have room for dessert?
Byron dangled pieces of dark meat from the table for Parsley. The dog halted him with hand-sized paw and inspected the meat carefully before chewing it with teeth on tongue. The phone rang and Olivia looked instantly to Violet before rushing up to answer it.
"How did you get this number?" she asked.
Evelyn looked at Violet with sudden expectation. Violet cleared her mouth with a sip of water. Olivia put the phone down and said, "Lee, it's Mike. Why is he calling my house?"
"This isn't your house. Our house is your house," Lee complained. "Mike's family's got some ongoing trivia tournament. He needs to ask me a question I'll bet. I left my charger at home. Our home."
Lee took the line and Olivia took her seat again next to her sister. She kicked her ankle under the table in solidarity.
Lee covered the receiver and shouted, "Does anyone know what brand of soap they wash the kid's mouth out with in that Christmas movie?"
"Isn't it Palmolive?" Sheila said.
"It's a red bar of soap, I remember that," Violet said.
"Ogilvie?" Olivia tried.
"She's thinking about Ovaltine," Henry said.
"Ovaltine's a drink," Lee argued.
"But Ogilvie's a soap," Evelyn said.
"Try Palmolive," Lee said to Mike before hanging up.
When he came back to the table the group once again voted no to dessert right away. Byron slapped his gut and sighed satisfied. "I guess that means presents," he said.
Olivia and Violet both took off like shots, speeding to the living room where the gifts were stacked under the tree. Evelyn and Sheila went to the kitchen to put on some coffee and the men did up their belt buckles begrudgingly.
After the voracious assault on miles of gift wrap, ribbons and tape, a post-presents glow fell across the room. Olivia stretched out on the sofa like a queen on her chaise, fanning herself euphorically with all of her store gift cards. Violet decided to leave Lee on the floor where they had been lavishing lots of attention on Parsley's floppy ears and letting the dog poke around crumbled bundles of wrapping paper. She took it upon herself to prepare the pecan pie and ice cream for dessert now that, finally, her mother was relaxing and looking at photos from the Collinses' cruise. When she was done she called everyone back to the table. Her father tested the wishbone to see if it was dry enough to snap, but it was still rubbery. Olivia went to the kitchen to fetch a few more scoops of ice cream when the phone rang again. It did not go over Violet's head that this time Sheila had joined the women in being just a little jittery. Byron noticed too.
"What's with you guys?"
"Nothing, Dad," Violet said, feeling a little silly.
"That was Mike," Olivia said, coming back to the table disappointed. "He said the soap was Lifebuoy."
"Lifebuoy!" the table erupted in sweet realization.
From his fort of litter in the living room, one must imagine Parsley only heard the word 'Boy'. As if activated by a drill, he made a bee-line for the dining room and began sniffing tenaciously underneath the table for anything awry.
"Picking out the Christmas tree was an all day event," Sheila said.
"The lot dealer thought we were sent by the City," Henry added.
Dinner concluded with an ad-libbed version of the Twelve Days of Christmas ending with "three kinds of stuffing and a Parsley peering up knees!"