Home for the Holidays

by Heather Vogel Frederick

  “Sounds like fun,” says Mrs. Delaney.

  “Especially if you made the ornaments,” adds Mrs. Wong.

  Megan’s eyes slide over to mine. Her mother can be like a dog with a bone when she gets going on something.

  “We could have them be the final Secret Santa gift, and you girls could give them to each other at our next meeting when we do the Big Reveal,” says Mrs. Sloane-Kinkaid.

  Mrs. Hawthorne nods. “Good thinking, Clementine.” She peers over her glasses at me and my friends. “Girls? Are you in?”

  “Wait a minute,” says Gigi. “How come they get to have all the fun? I think we grown-ups should give each other ornaments too.”

  After a quick vote, Megan’s mother passes out three-by-five cards to all of them, too.

  Megan and I exchange a surreptitious glance as we write down our names on our cards. We made a pact as soon as we heard about the whole Secret Santa idea, mostly because we know each other so well, and this way we’ll be able to pick out great presents. The plan is to turn down one of the corners on our card, so that when we reach into the hat we can feel around for it.

  But something goes wrong.

  Megan picks first, and when she pulls out the card and looks at the name on it, she flicks me a sharp glance and shakes her head, one really quick, almost invisible shake.

  Uh-oh, I think. That can’t be good. Who did she pick, if she didn’t pick me? And even more importantly, who am I going to get stuck with?

  Not Cassidy, I plead silently as the Santa hat makes its way slowly around our circle. Please, please, please, don’t let me pick Cassidy.

  Besides the fact that I have no idea how to shop for someone who never uses makeup or wears jewelry, and who forgets to use deodorant half the time, and thinks about nothing but hockey, I really, really don’t want to be forced to buy presents for my crush’s crush. I’ve liked Zach Norton since kindergarten, and if it weren’t for Cassidy, I know he’d like me, too.

  I reach into the hat and grope around for a card with one of its corners turned down. But since I’m the last one to pick, there’s only one card left.

  I pull it out.

  I turn it over.

  My heart sinks.

  CASSIDY.

  Megan

  “Betsy and Tacy went downtown on their Christmas shopping expedition. This was a tradition with them. They went every year, visiting every store in town, and buying, at the end, one Christmas tree ornament.”

  —Heaven to Betsy

  My eyes flutter open, and I stare groggily at my bedroom ceiling. Something is clanking noisily outside.

  Oh, no! Throwing back the covers, I stumble across the room to the window. My sigh of disappointment fogs up the glass pane as I stare glumly at the snowplow scraping along Strawberry Hill Road. The storm must have started last night after we finally went to sleep.

  “Becca!” I whisper. “Becca, wake up!”

  She makes a noise somewhere between a snort and a groan and flops the pillow over her head. I cross the room and snatch it away. “Becca! It’s snowing!”

  That gets through. She sits up, rubbing her eyes. “What about our shopping trip?”

  This is why I love Becca. We totally think alike.

  The two of us stayed up late last night talking. About our shopping strategy for today, of course, but mostly about boys—Zach Norton, who she’s still stuck on, and Simon Berkeley, my long-distance boyfriend.

  Really long distance.

  Simon lives in England. He and his brother Tristan and their parents swapped houses with the Hawthornes last year, and that’s how I got to know him. I glance at the framed photograph of the two of us that’s on my bedside table. Cassidy took it one day last spring when the three of us were at the Old North Bridge, and she really caught Simon’s spirit. I smile every time I look at it. He’s so cute, with his curly blond hair and brown eyes. If I close my eyes I can practically hear him laughing. Simon has a great laugh.

  The last time I saw him in person was in July, when our book club went to England on a Jane Austen research trip. We’ve been IMing and e-mailing and video-chatting since then. I really miss him. We were supposed to talk yesterday morning before the football game, but he didn’t call, and when I tried him there was no answer, which is weird. He’s always super punctual.

  “Megan?” Becca repeats groggily, snapping me out of my daydream. “Do you think we’ll have to cancel our trip?”

  It’s going to be a complete tragedy if we don’t get to go shopping because of the stupid weather. “Let’s go talk to my parents and find out.”

  We throw on our robes and slippers and head down the hall to the kitchen, where my parents and Gigi are having their morning coffee. Well, my dad and grandmother are having coffee. My mother’s holding a steaming mug of one of her green tea concoctions.

  “Is the shopping trip still on?” I demand.

  “Good morning to you, too,” replies my mother mildly. “Did you sleep well?”

  Becca nods. “Really well, thank you, Mrs. Wong. Can we still go shopping?”

  My mother laughs. “Not to be deterred, are you, girls?” She turns to my dad. “Jerry? What’s the verdict?”

  “No to Boston—the highways are too icy.” He holds up a hand as we start to protest. “But yes to downtown Concord, and maybe—just maybe, depending on whether the snow lets up and whether road conditions improve—to the mall.”

  “I vote you stay in Concord,” says my mother, taking a sip of tea. “It’s better to shop local anyway.”

  She’s actually happy that this freaky weather sabotaged our plans! Outraged, I open my mouth to retort. Before I can, though, Gigi swoops in.

  “Cheer up, girls. No snowstorm is going to spoil our fun.” She steers us toward the table, which is decorated with an orange tablecloth, a scattering of gourds, tiny pilgrim salt-and-pepper shakers, and a paper Thanksgiving turkey. My grandmother’s doing, of course. Gigi loves holidays, and celebrates all of them with abandon. “I’ve got hot chocolate and croissants all ready for you. I think real whipped cream is in order on a morning like this.”

  “Mother!” my mom protests, as Gigi heads for the refrigerator. “We’re going to be having breakfast at the shop in a little while!”

  My grandmother flaps a hand dismissively. “The girls need energy if they’re going to be walking all over Concord today.”

  Becca and I slump in our seats. Shopping in Concord is hardly the same as shopping in downtown Boston.

  “Eat up girls. I can’t wait to get going!” Gigi says brightly, setting a plate of croissants on the table in front of us. “We’re going to explore every single store in town. We won’t leave a stone unturned. I want to check out Arrivederci, that new shoe shop that just opened, and I saw some fabric at the Whole Nine Yards the other day that I know you’ll love, Megan. We’ll even hit the five-and-ten! Plus, Josephine’s is carrying a new line of bath salts and soaps from France—and who knows, with all the extra time we’ll have without the long drive into the city, we might be able to squeeze in some of their special pampering. And if my wonderful son-in-law”—she pinches my dad’s cheek, like he’s little Chloe or something—“can get us as far as the mall, so much the better. Who needs the hassle of city traffic?”

  “Us?” Becca whispers. But she’s smiling, and so am I. Suddenly the day doesn’t seem like a complete loss.

  My grandmother is amazing that way. Somehow she always manages to turn lemons into lemonade. Even I’m starting to think that this will be much more fun than going to Boston.

  At least we don’t have to spend Black Friday stuck at home.

  For the longest time I had no idea why the day after Thanksgiving was called “Black Friday.” When I was little, I thought it had something to do with the color of the clothes the pilgrims wore. Later my mother told me it was because it’s a dark day for mankind and a blot on our national psyche. My mother can get like that sometimes, especially when it comes to shopping. She is totally
anticonsumerism. If she had her way, we’d all make our own clothes out of old flour sacks, like the pioneers did. Her motto? Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Mine, on the other hand? Shop, Shop, Shop! I can’t help it. I love shopping. I’m not just talking about buying, either. I have just as much fun looking—well, almost as much fun. I love checking out clothes, and shoes, and jewelry and other accessories, and thinking about how things go together, and getting ideas for my own designs. Fashion is my art form, and going shopping gives me inspiration.

  Anyway, a couple of years ago my dad finally explained to me that Black Friday is the day most stores in the United States finally start to turn a profit for the year and see their numbers go from debt-red to profitable black. So now, when I come home with too many shopping bags, I just tell my mom I’m doing my part to help the economy.

  Forty-five minutes later my mom and dad and Gigi and Becca and I are creeping down Strawberry Hill in my dad’s SUV. He was right about the roads, because even with chains on our tires the streets are still really slick and icy. We skid a few times, and almost slide into a snowbank once, and I’m relieved when we finally pull up in front of Pies & Prejudice, my grandmother’s tea shop.

  Last spring, Eva Bergson, the skating teacher here in town who was part of our Mother-Daughter Book Club, passed away. She was Gigi’s best friend, and she left my grandmother some money for her to start a tea shop. It’s been in the works for months and just opened a few weeks ago. It’s already really popular. Of course, it didn’t hurt that the Boston Post did a big write-up on it, thanks to Mr. Hawthorne, who knows the book review editor, who’s good friends with the restaurant critic. So far it’s only open for lunch and afternoon tea, but Gigi is thinking about expanding to serve breakfast, too.

  “You get to be my guinea pigs this morning,” she tells us, her dark eyes shining with excitement as she climbs out of the car. My father opens the trunk, and Gigi loads us up with containers full of delicious-smelling things, then herds us inside.

  As usual, my grandmother is dressed to the nines. This morning she’s decked out in a black wool coat with black boots and red accessories—red cashmere scarf, red purse, and red leather gloves. She looks like she’s heading off for a shopping spree in Paris or Manhattan instead of tiny Concord, Massachusetts. But then, that’s how Gigi always looks.

  I glance over at my mother, who threw on an old down jacket of my dad’s and one of those hats—I think they’re called balaclavas—that cover everything but your face. Not a good look, especially since it’s olive green, which is a terrible color on her. She’s smiling, though—I think she’s excited that she gets to run the shop today. She and Mrs. Chadwick volunteered to take the reins while we go shopping.

  I helped Gigi with the color scheme for Pies & Prejudice, and it still makes me smile every time I walk in the front door. Stepping into the tea shop is like stepping into summer.

  There are lace curtains at the windows, and the walls are painted in wide stripes of cream and yellow. Gigi hired an artist to paint quotes from famous authors along the tops of them: “You must drink tea with us,” from Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, and “You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me,” by C. S. Lewis, the guy who wrote the Narnia books. Mrs. Hawthorne picked that one out, and it totally sounds like her and Emma.

  There’s another quote from some guy I’ve never heard of named Henry James: “There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.” That one reminds me of last summer when we were in England and had tea at the Pump Room in Bath. The last quote is my favorite, though: “Come, let us have some tea and continue to talk about happy things.” That’s by Chaim Potok, another writer I’d never heard of, and it makes me think about sitting at the kitchen table with my grandmother every time I read it.

  Everything about Pies & Prejudice is sunny and fresh. The white wooden tables, the white wicker chairs with their plump yellow-and-white-striped cushions, the white linen tablecloths and yellow-and-white-striped napkins, and most of all the white vases filled with cheerful yellow roses that are on the center of each table and elsewhere around the room.

  From the black-and-white tiles on the floor to the big white wooden hutch along the wall next to the cash register, the shop is crisp and clean and spotless. Gigi found yellow-and-white polka-dotted shelf paper for the hutch’s shelves, which are loaded with all sorts of tea-related merchandise: teapots and teacups and tea towels, tea accessories and books about tea, and of course, boxes and tins filled with different kinds of tea. There are gleaming jars of jam from Half Moon Farm, too, and other little goodies as well.

  On the other side of the cash register is a glass case filled with yummy things—pies, of course, since the tea shop grew out of the pie business my friends and I ran last year, but also cookies and brownies and muffins and tarts and cakes and scones and stuff. A blackboard behind it lists all the soups and sandwiches and salads that Gigi offers, along with daily specials and tea options. Adults can order a full English cream tea, with sandwiches and sweets served on tiered plates just like they do at the Pump Room, or they can order “Just a Cuppa,” as the menu calls it, along with a single scone or other treat. For little kids, there’s the Peter Rabbit tea, which includes “Mr. McGregor’s Watering Can” (a small teapot filled with hot chocolate or cambric tea, which is mostly warm milk), tiny peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, ants on a log (celery sticks spread with peanut butter and sprinkled with raisins), and a mini cupcake. That’s Chloe’s favorite.

  Gigi is having a blast with all this. She’s met half of Concord already, since everybody from the mayor to the postmistress has stopped in, and it didn’t take the girls at Colonial Academy long to discover it either. My dad says it’s already giving the local coffee shop a run for its money.

  One of the best things about Pies & Prejudice is that it’s keeping Gigi out of my mother’s hair. She and my mother don’t always see eye to eye on everything, and having a project to keep my grandmother occupied has helped make things a lot more peaceful at home. Gigi is here by seven, when my dad drops her off before work (and has his second breakfast, one that doesn’t include tofu or spelt), and she doesn’t get home most days until nearly dinnertime. I’ve been helping her out on Saturdays when I can, and my mom drops by to lend a hand, too, when she’s not too busy with her boards and charities and fund-raisers. Mom’s kind of a wet blanket, though, because she gripes about sugar all the time and keeps wanting to add whole wheat flour and flax-seed to everything.

  We carry our boxes and trays and containers into the shop’s tiny kitchen, then take our seats at the table Gigi’s set for us.

  “Jerry, didn’t you already eat at home?” says my mother sternly, as my father spreads his napkin in his lap.

  His eyes go all wide and innocent. “That tiny little whole wheat bagel? That’s not a real breakfast.”

  My mother looks pointedly at his belt. My dad is sporting a muffin top these days. He’s been in hog heaven ever since Gigi came to live with us a couple of years ago and took over most of the cooking, but his waistline has suffered in the process.

  The bell above the door jingles, and Mrs. Chadwick and Becca’s grandmother breeze in, along with a gust of cold, snowy air. My father springs back up to help them with their coats.

  “Your shop is darling!” says Becca’s grandmother, looking around in delight.

  “Thank you, Grace,” says Gigi. “Come and have a seat. I hope you’re hungry.”

  “You wouldn’t think so after everything I ate yesterday, but I’m starving!”

  She and Mrs. Chadwick join us at the table, and Gigi beckons to me to join her back in the kitchen. She hands me a white ruffled apron and white ruffled cap.

  “Let’s give them the whole Pies & Prejudice experience, shall we?” she asks. I nod, even though I’m a little embarrassed for Becca to see me dressed in this getup.

  Sure enough, as we head toward the table w
ith our trays of food, Becca starts to laugh. I stick out my tongue at her.

  “Breakfast is served, ladies and gentleman,” Gigi announces.

  “Mmm-mmm,” says my dad. “What have we here?”

  “The Rise and Shine Special—a casserole with eggs, chicken apple sausage, and Half Moon Farm’s herbed goat cheese,” Gigi replies. “Plus, there’s fresh fruit salad and cranberry-oat-almond scones, hot out of the oven. Well, hot out of the oven half an hour ago back home. Usually I bake them here.”

  After everyone is served, Gigi and I sit down too, and for a few minutes it’s quiet as we all dig in.

  It’s not completely silent, though. My dad is a noisy eater, and Mrs. Chadwick keeps making these happy little grunting noises. Becca kicks me under the table every time she does, and it’s all I can do not to crack up.

  “You should offer cooking classes,” says Becca’s grandmother, licking scone crumbs off her fingertips. “People would pay good money to learn to make these scones. I’d pay good money to learn to make these scones!”

  Gigi’s eyes light up. “Grace, you’re a genius! That’s a wonderful idea! I could offer them one evening a week, maybe.” Her face clouds slightly. “Although I’m not sure how I’d fit in one more thing at the moment.”

  “Perhaps it’s time to hire some part-time help,” my father suggests.

  Gigi nods. “Perhaps.” She pours him some more coffee, then turns to my mother. “I don’t know whether the storm will keep people away, Lily, but I figure they’ll want something hot if they do come in, so I made a double batch of that Thai Butternut Squash soup that’s been so popular. There are three quiches in the refrigerator, too, so all you and Calliope need to do is make the sandwiches, okay?”

  Becca glances surreptitiously down at her cell phone, which she’s holding on her lap. Becca and her cell phone are inseparable. “Ashley says hi,” she whispers to me.