A Very Merry Christmas

  I thought I was going to cry.

  I motioned for everyone to come into the parlor and shut the front door. When we were in the parlor, I shut that door, too, so my guests wouldn’t wake up.

  I do not feel up to this job of parenting. I am overwhelmed and outgunned. I am lost.

  Sarah scowled at me. She was wearing about eight layers of makeup, a mini skirt that barely covered her you know what, tights, and her snow boots. She had a jacket on but had not bothered to zip it, and as she had taken to wearing her shirts unbuttoned way too far down, I instinctively reached to yank her shirt up.

  “Aunt Meredith!” she said, appalled. She slapped my hand away.

  “Sarah, you pull that shirt up and cover yourself like a lady, or we will stand here and wait all night. You get your boobs back under your shirt right this minute.”

  “I can do what I want! I told you I’m not going to be constrained by the rules of a Puritanical society anymore, I’m not going to be locked up in a box and do what everyone else in suburbia does, I’m not going to become a cultural zombie—”

  “No one asked you to be a zombie,” I said, semi-shouting. “We asked that you not sneak out at night and run into alleys with the police behind you.”

  “I wasn’t sneaking. I was exercising my right to be an independent person, make my own decisions, and be who I want to be!”

  “Gee, Sarah. We all want to be who we want to be, but hopefully that does not involve the police!”

  It was at that moment that Sarah’s face, up until now defiant and furious, crumbled. “I’m sick of this! Sick of my life. Sick of it here. Sick of everything.”

  My initial reaction was to feel sorry for her, but I bucked up. Letting someone wallow in self-pity never helps anyone. “Sarah, you are to apologize to the officers for being out late.” I crossed my arms, stared meaningfully at Juan and Sato, and decided to get tough. This was one too many times to be brought home by police. “Is she staying here tonight or are you taking her to jail?”

  Juan and Sato understood what I was saying immediately. Juan turned to Sato. “I think this is it. We can’t have her continuing to break curfew.” He cleared his throat. “We came by, Meredith, uh, as a courtesy. She needs to change into something more conservative, like a sweatshirt. We don’t want her inviting problems in jail.”

  Sato nodded as Sarah’s face went white.

  “There’s a couple of tough gals in there we picked up earlier tonight,” Sato said, chest out. “One had the knife, remember? Sharp knife. And she’s covered in tattoos. She’s from Los Angeles. I think she’s still drunk as a skunk. Man, she’s got a temper. The other gal’s pretty calm, but she was in for murder a few years ago. . . .”

  “Can’t we separate Sarah from them?” I asked, the solicitous aunt.

  Sato and Juan regretfully shook their heads. “Probably not. The gals in the other cell are even worse.”

  Sarah was having trouble breathing, her breath coming in hiccupping gasps.

  “We can’t bend the rules for anyone, Meredith. Even if she’s a minor,” Juan said. “She was out late again, she shouldn’t have been, now she has to pay the consequences.”

  “I understand. I’ll get her sweatshirt. I’m sorry, gentlemen.”

  “No problem, Meredith. It’s exhausting dealing with a difficult teenager,” Sato said. “We’ll take her on into the jail, let you rest. Come and get her tomorrow about two in the afternoon. Sarah, when we get to the jail, I’ll have Larinda teach you some self-defense moves. They’re not foolproof, but they’ll help if she gets busy at the desk and one of the other women comes after you—”

  “No! No!” Sarah cried. “Oh no! I don’t want to go to jail, oh, please, Aunt Meredith, I won’t sneak out at night again, I promise, please . . .”

  We let her blather on, petrified down to her toes, for some time, with talk thrown in of “You’ve broken the law. . . . Your aunt can’t control you, so we will.... No one’s died in the jails here; you won’t either.... Clench your fists up tight before you box your cellmate, it’ll be a better hit. . . .” Then Sato glared at Sarah. Juan kept shaking his head back and forth. I tapped my foot and said, “She needs a lesson. . . .”

  Sarah dissolved.

  Sato sighed. “Last time, young lady, then we’re taking you in. And if we pick you up on a Friday, you’re not out ’til Monday, especially since it’s the Christmas season and there’s all those Christmas parties. We won’t be able to get a judge to let you out.”

  A few minutes later I walked a teary, radically relieved ex-zombie up the stairs, her shoulders slumped, and insisted she take a shower.

  When she came into my bedroom, in her pink bunny pajamas, no caked-on black makeup, she looked like a kid again.

  When I saw the tears on her cheeks as she slept, I finally cried.

  I can’t handle my own life. It is truly bigger than me and my capabilities.

  * * *

  “I am enormous,” Mary, my very pregnant employee, said cheerfully as she pushed open the swinging doors to our kitchen with used plates. “I am the size of a tank. I think I have five kids hiding in my stomach, and the gorgeous cowboy in the corner eating your Meredith’s Sock It To You Pancakes wants to talk to you. Hee haw!”

  My hand shook on the spatula. “No. He doesn’t. You’re kidding. And you are not the size of a tank.”

  “I’m not kidding.” Mary waddled over to the fridge for a pitcher of fresh-squeezed orange juice. She is twenty years old, married, studying to be a teacher, and seven and a half months pregnant but looks sixteen months pregnant. “He asked for you. Said he needed to talk to you about buying proper cowboy hats since you know so much about them. By the way I do like the one you’re wearing today. Green with jewels suits you. It’s very holiday-ish.”

  Logan Taylor was in my dining room next to the Christmas tree I’d decorated with pink and white angels and pink lights. I was so nervous I cut through a strawberry and almost cut off my finger. I poured whipping cream in a bowl and half of it dripped down the cabinets. I flipped a pancake and it dropped to the floor because my hands were trembling. “I can’t talk to him.”

  “Why not?” Martha asked. Martha is Mary’s sister, and she is always busy, busy, busy, whereas Mary will sit down and enjoy life now and then. Currently Martha was darting around the kitchen, refilling a bowl with powdered sugar, whipping up eggs, and arranging our Rockin’ and Rollin’ Chocolate Raspberry Stuffed Croissants.

  “Because I don’t want to talk to him.” What was I supposed to say? I can’t talk to him because he makes me sizzle in special secret spots?

  “That’s not a good reason, out you go. Everyone says he saved you at Barry Lynn’s, so go be nice. You know how to be nice, right?” Mary shooed me out. “Don’t be a chicken.”

  “He didn’t save me and I’m not a chicken and I can be nice sometimes.”

  The sisters made clucky chicken noises at me, then got louder and louder as I refused to go. I started worrying that Logan could hear them so, nonchalantly, as if I didn’t have a care in the world, I grabbed a glass pitcher, pushed through the swinging doors of the kitchen, and began to pour orange juice for my customers.

  Many had stayed overnight. They all gushed. About the house (“charming”), their rooms (“decorated beautifully, so authentic to the period”), the breakfast. (“These pancakes make me want to sing,” one woman told me. “Please don’t,” her companion said. “You’ll ruin breakfast.”) One man told me he felt like he was in a finely decorated nineteenth century brothel. “It almost feels . . . seductive in my room, I don’t know why.” I did not take offense.

  Others were from town. Three of the priests from the cathedral were discussing professional football teams at the same table as two professors from the local college. One professor taught Elizabethan literature; the other was a hard-core scientist. They had a visiting professor with them today, a man named Chinaza, from Nigeria.

  The Old Timers Still Kickin’ Band, a grou
p of four older gentlemen, including Norm and Howard, the World War II vets, plus their two friends, Charlie and Davis, were playing two games of backgammon. I’d never heard their band, but I’d heard they were good. When they saw me I heard Davis count out, “One, two, three,” then they all yelled, “Merry Meredith!”

  The guests jumped; the people from town laughed. That’s my nickname, “Merry Meredith.” I get that nickname because I make people laugh with my food. On Davis’s seventy-fifth birthday, I put seventy-five candles on a huge stack of pancakes. On Charlie and Mabel’s anniversary I made them a white cake in the shape of a mountain and smothered it in whipped cream because they’d met at the top of a snowy mountain. Though I take my cooking seriously, I believe that food should also be served up with humor. Hence, Merry Meredith. They all think they’re hilarious.

  And then there was Logan.

  Leaning back in his chair, beige shirt, worn jeans, cowboy boots, smiling at me with those white teeth. His hair looked as if it had been lovingly ruffled by the wind, the sun had kissed his face, and the mountains around Telena had stamped him with a manly man look.

  I felt sizzly all over, and instantly nervous, the breath swooshing from my body, and then I did something particularly special.

  I dropped the pitcher. The noise was deafening, and glass splattered everywhere.

  * * *

  “Please sit down with me, Meredith.”

  “No, and what are you doing here anyhow?” I stared up at Logan. He had gallantly leaped up, as had other customers, and Mary and Martha, to help me clean up the shattered mess.

  “I’m here because I wanted to eat the best breakfast Telena has to offer, and I want to apologize.”

  Why did his voice have to be so low and manly and velvety? Why couldn’t it be high and squeaky? I swear, each word rolled through my body like liquid chocolate. “What do you want to apologize for?” I snapped.

  “I want to apologize for the other night.”

  “For interfering? For making me look weak?”

  “I am not sorry for interfering, but I am sorry for how it made you feel. I really am.”

  “You’re not sorry for interfering?”

  He glanced away for a sec. “No, Meredith, I could no more sit back and watch that scene than I could tie my ankles up with a rope and hitch them to the saddle of a galloping horse, but I’m sorry how you ended up feeling about the whole thing. That, absolutely, was not my intention.”

  Men hardly ever apologize. No man I’d been with had apologized, even after saying such hurtful things, labeling me so harshly, I’d been left reeling. And here was Logan, apologizing because I had ended up feeling bad when he’d gallantly protected me.

  I sniffled. I felt warm. I felt my heart crack, and then these darn tears came out of nowhere and filled my eyes.

  “Enjoy your breakfast,” I choked out then turned to leave. He blocked my exit. It did not escape me that I was now the center of attention.

  “I would like to enjoy breakfast with you.”

  I couldn’t. I’d probably cry on the man. I shook my head.

  “Go ahead and sit down,” Mary called out, waving her chicken wings.

  “Yes, do, Meredith,” Martha said, making a soft clucking chicken sound. “We can handle everything in the kitchen.”

  “No—”

  “Sit, sit!” Chinaza called. One day I’d arranged blueberries in whipped cream cheese and made the outline of Nigeria for him. “You work hard too much. Please. I tired watching you.”

  “Yes, Meredith,” Davis intoned. He owns much of the downtown property in Telena. “I’ll control the boys here, and you have a seat. That man saved you at Barry Lynn’s, least you can do is have breakfast with him.”

  “He did not save me, I do not need saving, I can save myself,” I harrumphed. Sheesh! Knowing this banter was not going to cease, I grudgingly sat down at Logan’s table, next to the Christmas tree with the pink and white angels. Maybe the angels could save me from this torture, or at least divert my attention from how truly hot this man was.

  “They look pretty together,” Charlie mused. He recites poetry beautifully, but he is part-deaf. When he was in the military the guns blew out part of his hearing.

  “Yes, they are an attractive couple,” Howard boomed. “She needs to lay down her battle arms and get married.”

  “No, she doesn’t,” Davis croaked out. “If she does I can’t flirt with her anymore. I’m still holding out on that marriage proposal I offered her.”

  “She shouldn’t get married. It’ll lead to captivity,” Ranna May called out. She is a former opera singer. Her husband owns a fly fishing store here in Telena. “Captivity, Meredith. Think: captivity.”

  “Good morning,” Logan said to me.

  I glared and willed the tears back in my eyes.

  “How are you?”

  I glared again. Go back in, tears! Why was I crying anyhow? Because you’re attracted to him and know you can’t have him because of you know what.

  “I’m fine, too,” Logan said, with a smile, a handsome and kind smile. “Thank you.”

  Third time: glare.

  “In the morning I like to talk about the weather, what I’m going to do that day, what you’re going to do that day, news features . . .”

  “I am sure you have had plenty of experience talking to women at breakfast, Logan, but I don’t have that much experience talking to men. Please excuse me if my abilities at morning chit chat are not at your level.” For some truly blighted reason, his speaking to other women at breakfast ticked me off.

  He leaned back in his chair. “Actually, Meredith, I don’t have much experience at all talking to women at breakfast.”

  “No?” I raised an eyebrow.

  “No. I was talking about you and I.”

  “There is no you and I. I’m sitting with you until I can make an escape back to my kitchen.”

  “We did not meet under the best of circumstances, and I’m sorry about that, too.” We shared one of those long, heated glances until I looked away because my insides were way hotter than they should have been.

  “I would like to take you horseback riding on my ranch.”

  Of all the things I thought he’d say, that was at the end.

  “No, thank you.” I leaned back in my chair. “I’m busy.”

  “Please.”

  “No.”

  He glanced out the window, then those green eyes pinned me back down. I had a momentary flash of being under that man’s body, being kissed by him, with maple syrup pancakes floating around our heads. See what I mean about an odd sense of humor with food?

  “You do ride?”

  I scoffed. “Of course I ride.” I’d spent years on horses growing up on our property outside Telena.

  “It’s a date then.”

  “No date.” I leaned forward. “Logan, may I be clear? I’m not looking to spend more time with you.”

  “Well I’m looking to spend more time with a woman who wears red cowboy hats. Know anyone?”

  “The woman who wears red cowgirl hats says no, she’s sorry, but you’re too much.” Oh, now darn it! Why did I have to say that!

  “Too much? What do you mean by that?”

  I envisioned whipping myself with a string of garlic. “You’re too much. Too much to handle. Too ferociously male, too take-controlly. I have enough . . .” I struggled with the wording here, “stuff going on in my life without adding a cowboy.”

  “That’s a shame.” He winked at me, but the rest of his serious expression didn’t change. Why did I have the feeling this man was playing me? It was at that moment that Jacob launched into the well known notes of a popular love song. I cleared my throat.

  I could tell that Logan was working hard not to laugh.

  “So, I’ll pick you up Monday at 1:00. We’ll go out to my ranch, I’ll have lunch ready for us, and we’ll ride horses. How does that sound?”

  “No.” I loved riding horses, hadn’t ridden in yea
rs. I imagined Logan on a horse. For some reason the horse had sausages for legs and a peppermint saddle.

  “I have to get going, I have some work to do, but I’ll look forward to seeing you.”

  “I said no. Aren’t you listening?”

  “I have the perfect horse for you. She’s strong and fast.”

  “Hello?”

  He picked up my hand, no kidding, and kissed it. My hand. Like a prince or something. “It’s been a pleasure, thank you,” he said, then he got up and left as I watched, stunned. Perplexed. Confused. Sizzling. A vision of lying on top of Logan while pink cookie hearts swirled around our heads entered my mind....

  Jacob’s love song crescendoed. Logan laughed, deep and growly.

  As soon as the door shut, my customers, Martha, and Mary applauded.

  “Merry Meredith has a date!” one of the priests said, grinning. He gave me a thumbs up.

  “Merry Meredith, don’t be lured into captivity!” the ex-opera singer insisted.

  “It doesn’t mean she won’t marry me!” Davis yelled, to laughter.

  I buried my head in my arms.

  I cannot handle my own life, that I know for sure.

  Chapter 4

  As I made my way back to the kitchen I stopped at Simon’s table.

  Simon comes in every morning. He is a small, fluttery man who always wears a worried expression on his face. His hands tremble; he’s pale. Simon is polite, but he likes his routines to be exact. He sits at the same table, at the back of the dining room, near the window, every day. We reserve his table for him. His decaffeinated coffee is to be served with two squares of sugar, no more, and cream in a silver pitcher on the side. He has three pieces of toast, cut in triangles, lightly buttered, scrambled eggs, no cheese, and five apple slices. None of his food can touch other food on his plate. There is to be no pepper or hot sauce on the table; both make him nauseous. I am to serve him, no one else, no offense, please.

  “Good morning, Simon, how are you?”

  “I’m well, Meredith. I was so relieved to see that you weren’t hurt when you dropped the pitcher.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “But the whole thing, the noise, the confusion, worrying about you, it was upsetting for me.”