The Christmas Table

by Donna VanLiere

  These are so good with roasted chicken! Her mother wrote beneath their name on the card. Remember how many you would eat? Always make extra! Joan looks at the ingredients:

  1 to 1½ pounds of new potatoes. Red potatoes work, too.

  3 tablespoons vegetable oil

  1 tablespoon fresh rosemary. Don’t use the dried stuff in a jar!

  2 to 3 tablespoons grated parmesan cheese. Yes, buy a wedge and grate it!

  Joan cuts the potatoes in half and mixes them with all the ingredients, sprinkling a little salt and pepper on top of them. “They look yummy,” she says, lecturing herself again for not learning how to cook before now.

  May 2012

  Lauren steps inside Glory’s Place and notices that Gloria, Miriam, Andrea, Heddy, Stacy, and Amy are looking at Gloria’s computer inside her office. She peeks her head into the room and Gloria looks over the top of the computer at her. “Come on in, babe. We’re looking at some of the pictures for the new website.”

  Without Lauren realizing it, the words tumble out of her mouth. “I’m pregnant.”

  As if on cue, the six women look up at her at the same time, letting her words register with them. “What?!” Gloria says, sliding her chair back and running with her arms open to the ceiling toward Lauren with the other women following behind. “Did you just find out? Does Travis know? You didn’t tell us before him, did you? That would never do. If you didn’t tell him, we’ll just pretend we don’t know.”

  “He knows!” Lauren says, laughing.

  “Oh, that’s good!” Miriam says. “The father can get awfully offended if someone knows he’s about to be a dad before he does.”

  “Well, I wasn’t offended, but you can imagine my surprise when someone else knew that I was pregnant before I even knew,” Lauren says, grinning.

  “The doctor?” Stacy says.

  Lauren shakes her head. “No. Andrea.” She points her finger at Andrea, laughing. “You knew!”

  Andrea smiles. “I suspected. That’s all.”

  “When are you due?” Gloria asks, both of her hands resting on the backs of Lauren’s shoulders.

  “Sometime in December, but I don’t know a date! I have to find an obstetrician!”

  “And we have to plan a baby shower,” Heddy says.

  “But before that we simply have to do something with Lauren’s home,” Miriam says. “A little color to make one realize they’re not part of a lab experiment when walking through the front door, and a kitchen table is definitely in order, and a crib inside a nursery. And we simply must hang some things on the wall so the baby doesn’t cry out in boredom from the plainness of it all.”

  Gloria shakes her head. “There are days when I think, ‘Today’s the day. Miriam won’t blurt out whatever is on the top of her head. Today Miriam’s brain will have a filter.’ But then you say things like that, proving me wrong … again.”

  Miriam opens her mouth to defend herself when Lauren lifts her hands, laughing. “It’s okay, Gloria. I agree with everything Miriam said.” Miriam gives Gloria a smug smile. “I’ve been wanting to do things with the house, but I just don’t know what. Now that we know a baby is coming, I definitely want to make it more homey.”

  “Then I’m on it!” Miriam says, thrusting her index finger into the air.

  Gloria sighs. “Those are the most chilling words that Miriam could say to anyone: ‘I’m on it!’ Oh the terror of it all!”

  SIX

  May 1972

  “Don’t let it get to soft ball,” Joan’s mother, Alice, says.

  Joan sighs on the other end of the phone. “What exactly does that mean? The recipe says to get it to softball, but you say don’t let it get to softball. Why do they call it softball anyway?”

  Her mom chuckles. “It’s not softball, like the sport. It’s soft ball. It starts at 234 degrees. But don’t let it get to 234. Take it off the burner when the thermometer gets to 233.”

  Joan stares at the thermometer in her hand with red liquid in the bottom that will climb up through the thermometer as the temperature rises. “My thermometer doesn’t say 233. It just says softball.” She catches herself. “Soft ball.”

  “Just take it off the burner before it reaches soft ball,” her mother says. “You can also test a little bit of it by pouring it into some cold water. If it forms a soft ball in your hand, you know that it’s ready.”

  Shaking her head, Joan says, “There’s no way I’m trying that. I don’t even know what that really means. Well, if anything, we can pour this over ice cream and eat it.”

  “You can do it!” Alice says. “I bet you’ll all love it so much that you’ll end up making another batch in a few weeks.”

  “We love Aunt DeeDee’s fudge, Mom,” Joan says, reaching for a pot. “It could be an entirely different story when I make Aunt DeeDee’s fudge.”

  “Call me later and tell me how it turned out.”

  Joan hangs up the phone and puts the sugar into the pot with the milk. She then measures out a cup of Marshmallow Fluff and puts that into a separate small bowl, along with a cup of peanut butter. After she stirs the milk and sugar together, she turns on the burner and places the thermometer on the side of the pot so the bottom of it is immersed into the mixture. She is paranoid as she watches the temperature, stirring consistently as the red moves upward through the slender thermometer.

  “Is it done yet?” Gigi asks, playing with Christopher on the kitchen floor. Joan has learned the best spot for the children to play while she is cooking is right in the heart of the kitchen with her.

  “Not yet,” Joan says, stooping over to make sure she is seeing the correct temperature. The temperature rises quickly during the first several minutes of cooking but seems to crawl for the last several, making Joan wonder if something is wrong with the thermometer. She stays stooped over, watching the red dye as it creeps toward 234 degrees. Before it reaches soft ball, she turns off the burner and removes the pan from the stove. Taking the thermometer out of the pot, she uses a spatula and adds the Marshmallow Fluff and peanut butter to the mixture, along with a teaspoon of vanilla. She stirs everything together and then pours the mixture into a buttered pan. “Who wants to lick the pan and the spoon?”

  Gigi and Christopher are in front of her before she finishes the question, raising their little hands for the goodies. Joan leaves enough in the bowl for all three of them, and as the warm peanut butter fudge hits her tongue, she smiles in satisfaction. “Wow! So good.”

  “Yummy!” Gigi says, running her spoon around the bottom of the pan.

  When the kids aren’t looking, Joan uses her spoon and scoops some fudge from the pan. She remembers loving it this way as a child when her mom made it, warm and gooey right out of the pan. She looks at the soft brown fudge and hopes it will “set up,” as her mom always said.

  * * *

  John lifts a long, thick slab of black walnut inside his workshop and sets it on the wood plane to begin the process of planing each side. He’ll rotate the wood until it’s approximately a one-and-a-quarter-inch square piece of lumber and thirty-one inches long and will repeat this for each leg before working on tapering them. He stops his work when Joan opens the door, letting the children run in ahead of her. She’s holding a small plate in her hand. “Is that lunch?” he says, shutting off the planer.

  “It’s peanut butter fudge!” Gigi squeals. “It’s yummy!” The little girl jumps up and down, waving her arms as if she’s about to take flight.

  “Is this Aunt DeeDee’s peanut butter fudge?” John asks, taking the plate and lifting a piece. Joan nods. “There’s nothing like it.” He watches Gigi move busily around the workshop and smiles. “It looks like Mommy filled your tank with fudge because you have lots of energy!”

  “Just eat some and you can do this, too,” Gigi says, jumping.

  He bites into a piece, closing his eyes. “Mmm. The best.” He opens his eyes, looking at her as he pops the rest of the piece in his mouth. “Please tell me this me
ans you’ll be making it every year from now on.”

  “Yes, we will!” Gigi says, jumping higher yet into the air.

  “I can’t afford to make it every year,” Joan says. “I think I’ve eaten half the pan by myself. I’ll be enormous tomorrow.”

  John puts another piece of the fudge into his mouth. “It’s worth being enormous one time a year for this.” He hands the plate back to her. “What else are you making in there today?”

  Joan bends down and picks up Christopher. “We like to surprise you when you come in for dinner. Don’t we?” she says, looking at Gigi.

  The little girl nods. “Yes! We like to surprise you with meat loaf!”

  “That’s not surprising Daddy,” Joan says, laughing.

  “It is surprising!” John says. “Mommy has never made meat loaf and I love it. Especially a meat loaf sandwich.”

  “What are you working on today?” Joan says, looking at the various pieces of wood in front of her.

  “Legs!” John says, holding up a piece of the thick lumber. “If these can be half as good-looking as yours, I’ll be happy.”

  Joan rolls her eyes. “Just what every woman wants … to have her legs compared to wood!”

  “Wooden legs are beautiful!” John says. “They are stunning.”

  Joan reaches for Gigi’s hand and walks to the door. “You’re obsessed, John Creighton,” she says, closing the door behind them.

  “I’m not obsessed! I just know beauty when I see it, that’s all.” John looks at the piece of lumber in his hands. “Gorgeous!”

  * * *

  Miriam drives up to the door of Larry Maccabee’s workshop and turns off the engine. “Andrea said that Larry had a couple of tables that might work for your house,” she says, looking at Lauren.

  “But what about the price? Larry’s things are so expensive,” Lauren says, getting out of the car and closing the door.

  “The furniture he makes is expensive,” Miriam says, opening the shop door. “If he refinishes something, it’s usually less expensive. That’s what we need to find!” She glances throughout the shop for Larry. “Larry! You’ve got customers!” Larry pops his head around the corner, wiping his hands on a rag. “You need a bell on your door.”

  “Who needs a bell when I’ve got a foghorn like you?” Lauren laughs out loud and Larry winks at her. “What can I help you ladies with?”

  “When Andrea was here a couple of weeks ago,” Miriam says, walking through the furniture pieces in the shop, “she said that you had some kitchen tables that look nice. Lauren is trying to find one for that dismal kitchen of hers.”

  Larry walks them toward a light-colored table with sleek, tapered legs. “I made this one out of tiger maple and finished it just a few—”

  “Larry, you know as well as I do that Lauren and Travis cannot afford any tiger maple table that you made,” Miriam says, cutting him off. “Show us the affordable ones.”

  “This really is beautiful, Larry,” Lauren says, running her hand over the tabletop. “How long did—”

  “He knows his work is beautiful,” Miriam says. “He talks more about it than anybody else.”

  Larry shakes his head, laughing as he leads them toward another table. This one is round in a darker wood with simple legs. “This one is three hundred.”

  Miriam snarls her lip. “Three hundred for that? It’s so small and plain.”

  “We don’t have a big space,” Lauren says. “And I think it’s beautiful. I love how simple it is.”

  “I had to refinish it,” Larry says. “At some point in time, someone went crazy with nail polish on the top of it. It was covered in dings as if somebody had taken a hammer or something to it. I think it was probably set up in a space for kids somewhere and got abused. I can’t tell you how much I hate to see wood get abused.”

  “It looks brand-new,” Lauren says.

  Miriam sounds as if she is clearing rocks out of her throat. Lauren looks at her and Miriam bugs out her eyes. “It doesn’t look new at all. This is clearly a used table that has almost been destroyed by wild children run amok with nail polish and hammers and whatnot.”

  “But the polish is all gone,” Lauren says. “And it—”

  “It has been used and abused,” Miriam says, raising her voice over Lauren’s. “Larry said so himself.”

  Larry laughs, shaking his head. “How about two seventy-five, Miriam?”

  Lauren smiles. “That sounds won—”

  “Two hundred,” Miriam says, looking like she’s chewing on lemons.

  “Two seventy-five,” Larry says.

  “Two hundred,” Miriam counters.

  Larry looks at Lauren and she smiles, shrugging. “I think two seventy-five is fair,” she says.

  “Two hundred,” Larry says, sticking his hand out in front of her.

  “Really?!” Lauren says, laughing. “What just happened?”

  “Skilled negotiations just happened,” Miriam says, rapping her knuckles on the table.

  SEVEN

  May 2012

  Travis is home from work when Lauren and Miriam arrive with the table in the back of Dalton’s pickup truck. Travis refuses Miriam’s or his pregnant wife’s help in unloading the table. Setting the table down onto the driveway, he says, “This is awesome!”

  “Do you really like it?” Lauren asks, rubbing her hand over the top of the table.

  “I love it! It’s the perfect size. Did Larry make it?”

  Miriam scoffs. “If he had, no one in Grandon could have paid for it. Do you need help getting it inside?”

  “I think I got it,” Travis says, stretching his arms over the top and lifting it.

  “Would you like me to take the card table that you’ve been using to the dump?” Miriam asks, following them into the house.

  Lauren and Travis chuckle. “No, thanks!” Lauren says. “We will hold on to it and use it somewhere else.”

  “Where would you possibly use that thing? At an interrogation? All it needs is some torture tools lying on top of it and you’re all set.” Lauren giggles as Travis angles the table to get it through the kitchen doorway. Miriam watches as he maneuvers it and says, “We will tackle other parts of the house on another day.”

  Lauren hugs her good-bye. “I don’t know what I would do without you and Gloria, Heddy, Stacy, Amy, Dalton, and…”

  “Oh my! This is beginning to sound like all the ‘begats’ in the Bible,” Miriam says, cutting her off. “Good-bye, my love!”

  Lauren closes the front door and notices Travis bent over, looking beneath the table inside the kitchen. “It’s cute, isn’t it?”

  He stands up straight, looking at her. “Yeah. You didn’t tell me about this. That’s a cool feature.”

  “What’s a cool feature?” she says, walking into the kitchen.

  “This little drawer underneath the table.”

  Lauren bends over to take a closer look. “I didn’t even look underneath it at Larry’s, and he loaded it for us so I never noticed. Does it open?”

  Travis pulls open the drawer and they both look inside. To their surprise, they see something at the back of the drawer and pull it out farther to see what it is. Lauren reaches for several small stacks of what look to be index cards held tight with rubber bands. She removes a rubber band from one stack of cards and flips through them. “They’re recipes.” Travis looks over her shoulder. “Whoever sold the table to Larry must have forgotten that they were in there.” She pulls her phone from her purse and dials Larry’s number.

  “Maybe someone wanted the recipes to go with the table,” Travis says.

  Lauren shakes her head. “I think someone forgot all about them. Look at these. They are all handwritten.” She puts her hand in the air to indicate that Larry has picked up his phone. “Hi, Larry! It’s Lauren. We just found a stack of recipes in the drawer of the table I bought. Do you remember who you bought it from? I’m sure they’ll want them back.”

  “I don’t remember. It’s been
too many years. I found the recipes when I started refinishing the table two weeks ago. I just kept them in there. I didn’t feel right separating them from the table. Felt like they went together. They’re yours now. Do you know how to cook?”

  Lauren laughs. “Not exactly.”

  “Well, maybe these will get you on your way. You can do it,” Larry says, sounding more like a father than just some guy who builds furniture in a too-dusty workshop on the other side of town.

  “Thanks, Larry,” Lauren says, hanging up. “He bought the table a few years ago and doesn’t remember.”

  Travis looks at the recipes. “Here’s one for meat loaf. I love meat loaf! Have you ever had a meat loaf sandwich?”

  “No! Gross!”

  Travis looks aghast. “You do not know what you’re talking about! A meat loaf sandwich with mustard on it is transcendent.”

  Lauren grins, looking at him. “Do you even know what ‘transcendent’ means?”

  “Yeah. It means meat loaf sandwich with mustard on it. Look it up.” Lauren smiles as Travis flips through the recipes. “Here’s one for peanut butter fudge. Peanut butter fudge! We could make meat loaf and peanut butter fudge tonight for dinner.”

  “Meat loaf and peanut butter fudge? For dinner?”

  “There are worse things we could eat,” Travis says, his face straight and serious.

  She kisses his cheek. “I think tonight we will stick with hamburgers and try some of these other recipes later. Chicken enchiladas,” she says, reading through some cards. “Strawberry cake. Red velvet cake. Homemade caramels. Muffins. Chicken casserole. Poppy seed dressing. Mmm.” She lifts one of the cards, reading it: “Val Clemente gave me this recipe for shortbread cookies ages ago. She said she thinks it came over on the Mayflower with her ancestors (not sure if that’s true, but what a story!) and got passed down through the years. I always quadrupled the recipe because we ate these cookies like pigs! Enjoy!” Lauren skims each one and looks down at the table, dreaming of mealtimes around it with her growing family.