Valerie Malmont - Death, Snow, and Mistletoe

“I really have to speak to him, Mrs. Miller.”

She sighed, and soon Luscious was on the line.

I told him about Mr. Poffenberger trying to play Santa Claus in the barbecue grill.

“He's stuck… where?”

“You heard me. You'll have to get him out of there soon, Luscious, or he's liable to die from exposure.”

“Aw, Tori. My mom'll kill me if I miss church.”

I felt like a slimeball, but I said what I knew would get him moving. “Garnet would do it.”

“I'm leaving now.”

“Thanks, Luscious… and Merry Christmas.”

“You, too.”

I returned to the living room, where tables borrowed from the local fire hall were being brought in from the back porch. This required participation by everybody there. The men to carry them in, the women to wipe them off, and the children to cover them with tablecloths. When they were finished, we all admired the patchwork-quilt effect-every woman there, but me, had brought her favorite tablecloth from home and none of them matched.

Greta organized us into a line, and we filed into the kitchen through one door. There, we filled our Styro-foam plates from the mountains of food that covered the counters, then exited through the other door, where Great-aunt Gladys handed each of us silverware rolled up in a red paper napkin.

I was glad when Ginnie brought her plate over and took the chair next to me. “Thought it would be nice for both of us to sit with someone we know,” she whispered.

“Bless you,” I said. “I've met so many people I am totally confused. Am I wrong, or is everyone here named Zeke?”

“Only the ones who aren't named Gladys,” Ginnie said with a sly smile.

I unwrapped my plastic silverware and tasted the oyster stuffing. It was wonderful. Ginnie nudged me with her elbow, and I noticed that nobody else was eating.

“Grace,” Ginnie warned. “They're going to say grace.”

“Oops!” I put the fork down and hoped nobody had noticed my faux pas. I was too used to eating alone in front of a TV.

Great-uncle Zeke came by filling our jelly glasses with nonalcoholic sparkling grape juice. “Sorry about this,” he whispered to each person confidentially. “It's because of Greta and A.A.”

“No need to apologize,” I told him when he stopped at my place. I was glad that Greta was taking her involvement in A.A. seriously.

At last everyone was seated, and another Uncle Zeke said grace.

The food was turning cold, and I was aching to eat, but it was not yet time. Buchanan McCleary stood up and tapped on his water glass with a spoon to attract everyone's attention.

Several dozen Gochenauer and Carbaugh heads turned to stare at him.

Buchanan raised his jelly glass. “I propose a toast,” he said. “A toast to our hostess, my lovely bride-to-be, Greta Carbaugh.”

Greta blushed and looked up at him adoringly with dewy teenage eyes. The family members gasped, coughed, and even managed a few choked words of congratulations.

“It's going to be a June wedding,” Greta said, cheerfully ignoring the minor furor Buchanan's announcement had caused. “And you're all invited.” She reached for her glass, which wasn't there. “Uncle Zeke, you're drinking my juice,” she said with a smile.

“Oh! Sorry,” the old man on her left said. “I never remember, is mine the one on the right or the one on the left?”

“It doesn't matter,” Greta said, planting a kiss on his wrinkled cheek. “At my wedding dinner, I'll see that you have two glasses of your very own.”

“Nothing like young love,” Ginnie said with an exaggerated sigh.

“They're young at heart.” With that gentle chastisement, I took another bite of my stuffing and found it no longer tasted as good as I first thought. While I didn't resent Greta's happiness, I was ashamed that my first thought had been, It should have been Garnet and I.

Ginnie innocently rubbed salt into my wounds by saying, “Maybe you and Garnet can make it a double wedding.”

I tried the turkey and found it tasteless. How could she be expected to know? The problem with always keeping your feelings to yourself is that nobody is there to help out when you really need it.

I fooled around with the food on my plate and listened to several of the uncles discuss the pros and cons of round hay bales as opposed to the old-fashioned square ones. “They can be dangerous,” one said, referring to the round ones. “Just last year, Farmer Stone got crushed by one. Ruined his tractor, too.”

“How much do they weigh?” I asked, thinking of the little square bales associated with hayrides.

“Fifteen hundred pounds, at least,” he told me.

“Sure, you gotta handle them with a little care, but they save money,” another uncle argued. “I can do it all myself-used to be I needed a crew to make square bales.”

“Ain't no big deal,” chimed in another. “Just keep the bales close to the ground, and you don't tip over.”

Someone tapped me on the shoulder, and I turned to see one of the aunts smiling at me. “I'll bet those men are boring you to death,” she said.

“Well…” I began.

“You just turn around and join us gals, Tori. We're talking about the Quilt Guild.”

The scintillating dinner conversation ended when the pies were brought in. The choices were endless: mincemeat, cheesecake, cherry, apple, and pumpkin. Greta put several small pieces of several different flavors on a plate and passed it down to me. I ate it all. Funny how I can lose my appetite for nutritional foods, but hand me dessert and there's no stopping me.

After several servings of pie, a few of the men began to groan and undo their belts. That seemed to be the signal for some of the children to clear the tables. Within fifteen or twenty minutes, the room was back to its predinner look, with the tables stacked up once more on the back porch.

“Everybody gather round the piano,” Greta ordered. “We're going to sing Christmas carols.” She passed among us, handing out mimeographed song sheets that looked like they'd been used for at least forty years.

An aunt whose hair bun was covered by a starched white net bonnet sat down at the piano and began to play “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.” A few of the women began to sing, and soon the men joined in.

Something had been nagging at me since the start of dinner. I tried to focus on the song sheet before me, but somehow I couldn't concentrate. What was bothering me? I closed my eyes and tried to shut out everything that was causing sensory overload. And I remembered.

That night revealed and told

“TORI, ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?”

I opened my eyes and saw Ginnie staring at me with a concerned frown on her face.

“You looked so odd,” she said. “I thought you might be feeling sick-from all that pie.”

I hadn't eaten that much. “I don't know, Ginnie… something just came to me… let's go somewhere quiet… where I can think.”

We went into the small parlor that served Greta as a TV room. Hundreds of Santa Clauses-plastic, ceramic, papier-mache, and even celluloid-dominated the room, occupying every flat surface. There they would stay, I knew, until spring when they'd be replaced by Greta's collection of Easter bunnies.

“Can I get you a glass of water?” Ginnie asked, still concerned that I might be getting ready to throw up.

“No, thanks. I'm not sick. Really.” I sat on the plaid sofa and patted the cushion beside me. “Sit down. Maybe if I can talk this out, it'll make some sense to me.”

Ginnie moved aside a needlepointed Santa Claus pillow and joined me on the couch. “What is it? You look terribly serious.”