Christmas In The Country

by Muriel Jensen

  “My…God!” Liza breathed, stunned by the mag nificence of it.

  “Liza.” A hand fell gently on her shoulder and she turned to see Bill McBride standing behind her. He was a tall, thickly built man in his early forties with thick dark hair graying at the temples, expressive brown eyes and a ready smile. He wore casual gray slacks and a blue, gray and white plaid shirt. “Some tree, huh?”

  Liza still couldn’t quite believe it. “It’s magnificent. The whole room is.”

  “Wait till you see the rest of the house,” Bill said, his gaze focused on the tree. “I like to think that this reflects some deep personal need of her own. That she would do it just this way if she lived here.”

  Liza wanted to think so, too, but she liked Bill. She hated the thought of her sister hurting him.

  “I admit that when I came up with this idea,” she said as he helped her off with her coat, “I thought about what this could do for the two of you. Proximity is always a catalyst for resolution—one way or the other. But…”

  She waited while he took her coat to the guest closet and hung it up.

  “But she’s adamant about staying single,” Liza continued as he led her toward the kitchen. “Tom put her through hell at the end and she’s determined to enjoy her freedom.”

  He stopped at the doorway, nodding. “She’s told me that over and over. But when the two of you came over that night to propose your plan to me, I thought she looked a little upset when you asked me to play the role of your husband.”

  She smiled over that forgotten detail. “She did, didn’t she?”

  “She did. I take that as a good sign.”

  “But she could be jealous of you and still refuse to marry you.”

  He sighed with forbearance. “True. But I’m using reverse psychology on her now.” He grinned. “I’ve had the courses. Pediatrics—dealing with the parents, anyway—is a step above practicing psychiatry without a license. After a year of pleading with her to marry me and being rejected, I’ve spent the past two months ignoring her.”

  “She told me. Only she made it sound like she was ignoring you.”

  “I guess that’s true, too, only she did have Travis call me and ask me if I was spending Thanksgiving alone.”

  “Were you?”

  He winced, as though from a painful memory. “I was. But I was determined to keep my distance until she closes the gap and comes to me. So I told her I was going to my sister’s in Vermont. Then I had to leave town so she wouldn’t know I’d lied.”

  Liza put a sympathetic hand to his arm. “Where did you go?”

  “Mystic. All by myself.”

  Liza nodded. The historic old seaport town was a wonderful place. “At least it’s beautiful there.”

  “Yeah,” he said grimly. “But beauty seems to hurt when you see it alone. Come on. You won’t believe this kitchen.”

  They passed through the dining room, which was also painted a creamy white, but here the woodwork had been painted a deep rose and the stenciling had been done in spruce green and a lighter rose.

  The long, narrow sawbuck table bore a strip of pine boughs down the middle. Tall candlesticks were interspersed.

  Above the table a rough, ironwork chandelier with crenellated cups holding a dozen candles was also hung with boughs.

  “Silk, flame-retardant boughs,” Bill explained.

  A rough corner cupboard in its original milk-paint had a basil-and-strawflower wreath on its door.

  Liza could just imagine Ben Whittier’s delight when he arrived the following day with Jeffrey James.

  Bill’s kitchen had a five-foot brick fireplace that took up an entire wall. Liza often used descriptions of it in her columns. She told her readers she rocked her baby by it when she awoke during the night, and that her boys played near it on cold winter afternoons.

  Sherrie had made a garland of pine, apples, oranges and gourds and attached it to the old wooden plank that marked the top of the bricks. Under the garland she’d hung long, knit stockings and she’d stenciled names on each. Betsy, Davey, Travis, Liza and Bill.

  “I’m fantasizing,” Bill said as Liza put a hand to her heart at the realistic touch Whittier would certainly notice, “that she made one with her name on it and has stashed it in the bottom of a drawer someplace.”

  Liza drew a steadying breath. “I hope so.”

  In a little alcove in the kitchen Sherrie had placed all the old toys she’d collected for her children, and strewn them around a table on which she’d placed a small Christmas tree decorated with gingerbread cookies.

  Against another wall an old iron woodstove held a huge, brightly polished copper kettle, and canned fruits stood on the top shelf looking like jars of jewels, along with a kerosene lamp and a wire basket filled with eggs.

  A dry sink cupboard on another wall had an open door that revealed more preserves, tin plates, a coffee mill and old pottery jugs, one of which held a sprig of. glossy holly. Sherrie had hung a holly wreath on the inside of the open door.

  On the long kitchen table a collection of containers was grouped in the middle. A tray held shiny red apples with a flickering candle in a votive cup. A clay pot held sand that supported a tall candle; a glass vase held three white roses, and visible in the water that held them was the unexpected touch of gleaming red radishes. There were cranberries in a glass bowl with another votive light in the middle of them.

  “She must have worked twenty-four hours a day for the last four days,” Liza said, thinking very seriously that she should simply hand the column over to her sister. She was obviously 126 pounds of untapped genius.

  “Almost.” Bill looked around, shaking his head. “And she had Dora and the boys and me working, too. By the second night I was praying for a 2:00 a.m. call from an anxious parent that would turn out to be nothing but would allow me to find a tavern that was open all night.”

  Liza laughed. “You know, if she does end up accepting your many proposals, you’ll be subjected to this kind of thing all the time.”

  He smiled wistfully. “But then, I’d have her in my arms when it was all over, wouldn’t I?”

  “Hold that thought, Bill.” Liza could think of nothing she’d like better than having Bill McBride as a brother-in-law. And permanent access to this house. “Where is she, anyway?”

  Bill glanced at his watch. “She took the boys to caroling practice, and she was going to stop by the inn to make sure they took her off the schedule through Christmas. Apparently they have a lot of bookings for the holiday.” The big brass kettle spouted steam, and he went to the stove to turn it off. He opened a cupboard door. “Earl Grey tea still your favorite?”

  “Yes,” she replied, pulling a chair out at the long table. “Me and Captain Picard. But you don’t have to wait on me. I’ll be disturbing your life sufficiently over the next few days.”

  He brought her a mug of tea and a saucer for the bag, then sat at the head of the table with a cup of coffee.

  “Happy to oblige. It’s my last chance with Sherrie.”

  Liza drew the tea bag back and forth across the cup. “Why your last chance?”

  “She intends to buy the inn with what she makes on the show. She’s already spoken to Denio about it.” He stared into his cup with a fatalistic expression. “She won’t need me to provide security for her and the kids. She’ll be able to do it herself.”

  Liza straightened in surprise. “Bill,” she said, “that was never what attracted her to you.”

  “I know, but it was what forced her to communicate with me. She had to call me to ask me to be patient about her bill. I’d have torn it up in a minute, but it kept her in contact with me. Then when she saw this article about stenciling in a magazine in my waiting room and asked me if she could make a copy of it, I saw another opportunity and hired her to stencil the living room and dining room.” He smiled in memory. “That was great. I had her for a couple of hours every evening. She was on a ladder and I was pretending to ignore her, but she was
in my house. Then I had her cater a few parties for me. I hate parties, but again, it brought her into the house because she needed the money. God. That woman in a white shirt and bow tie makes me wild.”

  “Well, she needs more than money from you. I think that’s why she’s so adamant about not getting involved. She knows you’re what she needs, but she doesn’t want to give up her freedom.”

  The doorbell rang melodically through the house.

  Liza frowned when Bill didn’t get up to answer it.

  “It’s Sherrie,” he said with a rueful smile. “I’ve given her a key, and she and the kids have been living here for the past few days, but she doesn’t want me to think she’s settled in or anything, so she rings the bell before she comes in, no matter how many times a day she comes and goes.”

  Liza smiled. “Did I mention that she’s the stubborn one?”

  “No kidding.”

  Liza’s nephews exploded into the kitchen, both blond and blue-eyed in heavy green-and-gray stadium-style jackets.

  “Aunt Liza!” Davey, eight, launched himself around the table and into her arms. “Hi! Mom says we’re all gonna be on television!”

  “That’s right.” She hugged him to her. His jacket was cold and he smelled of the fragrant winter. His cheeks were apple red, his eyes bright with excitement. “You think you’ll like that?”

  He nodded, then frowned. “If I don’t forget. I have to call you ‘Mom,’ Bill ‘Dad’ and Mom ‘Aunt Sherrie.’ That’s gonna be weird.”

  “But it’s going to get us new bikes, right? Hi, Aunt Liza.” Travis, ten, leaned around his brother to hug her.

  “Right,” Liza replied, thinking that he must have grown three or four inches since she saw him for his birthday in August. “That’s the bribe. The bike of your choice for a good performance.”

  “Cool. Would that include a motorcycle?”

  “No way.”

  “Just asking.”

  Sherrie shouldered her way into the room, a bag of groceries in one arm, a plump, blond baby in a pink snowsuit in the other. Liza stood to take the baby. Betsy shrank from her and screamed.

  “What is it with this child?” Liza demanded as she sat down again, totally rebuffed. “She’s hated me from the moment you brought her home from the hospital.”

  Bill rose instantly to take the baby from her.

  “Thank you,” Sherrie said with a quick, smiling glance at Bill. “You were my Lamaze coach, Liza. She probably doesn’t trust you after you cajoled her down that path.”

  “Well, this is going to look great to my viewing audience.”

  Bill laughed. “Don’t worry. I’ll hold her when I’m around. She likes me.”

  The baby kicked and gave Bill a broad smile displaying two bottom teeth, obviously comfortable with him. That should be no surprise, Liza thought, since he was her pediatrician. And he handled her with the ease of long experience, sitting down again and placing her on his knee while he held her with one hand and expertly extricated her from the snowsuit with the other.

  The boys went to Bill, Travis resting an elbow on his shoulder, Davey leaning against his other side.

  “So, Pop,” Travis said. “Can we have a raise in our allowances?” He had his father’s good looks, and had also inherited his perpetual exploitation of the proverbial angle. He was always after something. Fortunately, he’d also been born with his mother’s inherent goodness and sense of responsibility.

  Bill handed him the baby’s snowsuit. “You can’t even expect your usual allowance if you call me ‘Pop.’”

  “But Dad’s ‘Dad,’” Travis said without any evidence of emotional trauma, but with an unexpectedness that brought up every adult head. “I’m not going to call you ‘Father,’ and we can’t call you ‘Bill.’”

  Liza saw Bill’s eyes meet Sherrie’s over the baby’s head and wondered why it had never occurred to her that the boys might find some difficulty in pretending that another man was their father, even for a brief few days. Some mother material she was.

  “You’re right,” Bill said easily. “Pop it is. But no raise in allowance until I see what a good actor you are.”

  “I’ll be great,” Travis promised. “Don’t worry. It’s Davey you have to worry about.”

  “I can be great, too,” Davey said with quiet lack of conviction. “If I don’t forget.”

  Liza felt a little constriction of guilt in her chest and went to wrap her arms around her youngest nephew. He was sweet and sensitive and worried about everything. “If you do forget, nothing terrible will happen, so don’t worry.”

  “We won’t be on television if I forget”

  “Sure we will.” We’ll just be humiliated and then fired. “All we have to do is look like one big happy family. If it’s easier for you, just don’t use names. Then you won’t say the wrong one. But even if you do, it’ll be okay.”

  He looked relieved.

  Sherrie glanced at the clock as she put away groceries. “You guys go take your showers,” she instructed. “It’s getting late. Call me when you’re ready to be tucked in.”

  “Already?” Davey whined.

  Travis waved him to follow. “Come on. We’ll look through the Sears catalog and pick out bikes.”

  “Yeah!” Galvanized into action, Davey followed Travis. Their thundering footsteps could be heard on the stairs.

  “I’m sorry,” Liza said to Sherrie, getting up to make her a cup of tea. “I never gave a thought to the dad thing. They’ve seemed so unaffected by the fact that Tom’s gone.”

  Sherrie folded the paper bag, her expression philosophical. “He was never that great with them, but I know they kept hoping he would suddenly turn around and notice them, see how wonderful they are. But he was always too important to himself to notice us.”

  “They’re probably just not comfortable with the idea of elbowing him aside altogether by making someone else ‘Dad.’” Bill stood, Elizabeth riding his hip, went to the cupboard and took down a box of animal crackers. “This way they can compartmentalize us. Tom’s ‘Dad,’ and I’m ‘Pop.’ Kids can be very clever at solving their problems. Adults should be as good.”

  Liza thought the remark was innocently made, but Sherrie’s head turned in his direction, her eyes suspicious. He went through the swinging door without a backward look, saying something about checking with his answering service.

  Sherrie tossed her hair and put the bag away in a rack in the utility closet. “I hope we know what we’re doing,” she said, accepting the cup of tea Liza handed her. “This is starting to feel just a little scary to me.”

  “Nonsense,” Liza said bracingly, sweeping a hand around the beautifully decorated kitchen. “You’ve done such an amazing job I’m seriously thinking I should just turn the column over to you.”

  Sherrie rolled her eyes and sipped at her tea, leaning back against the counter. “That’s why we agreed to do this in the first place. I have the homemaking know-how, but you’re the one with the communication skills. Even your grocery lists are exciting. You’re the one who makes life in the Connecticut countryside seem so real to those big-city people who read you. I don’t understand things, I just…try to beautify them. Only, some redecorating tricks just don’t stick, no matter how hard you try.”

  Liza leaned against the counter beside her. “Like life with Tom?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sometimes you can’t redecorate, you have to renovate. Knock down and start over.”

  “Maybe sometimes you should just leave well enough alone.”

  “But life keeps moving. We have to, too.”

  Sherrie turned to her, her blue eyes reproachful. “You know, for someone who leaves herself little time to do anything else but work, you certainly have a lot of advice for me. Have you noticed that you’re not moving anywhere? Oh, sure, your career is, but your life isn’t. How long has it been since your last date?”

  Liza went to the kettle to pour more hot water over the tea bag in her cup. “T
oo long. In fact, that’s…sort of why we’re here.”

  Sherrie looked confused. “I’ve missed some- ■ thing.”

  Liza went to her purse, removed the videotape of Jeffrey James and handed it to Sherrie. She put it in the TV-VCR mounted on the wall and watched silently as the man talked about Liza and how thoughts of her had gotten him through his difficult escape.

  Liza had watched the tape over and over and now knew the words by heart.

  “Lucky guy,” James said in response to the reporter’s revelation that she was married.

  The interview over, Sherrie reached up to turn off and eject the tape. She handed it to Liza, her eyes wide with astonishment.

  “But…sis. There’s a major flaw here,” she said. “You are going to get to meet him, but he’s going to think you have a husband and three children!”

  This was true. The situation was complicated, to say the least But she wasn’t going to miss meeting him and spending time with him.

  She put the tape back in her purse and sank into a chair. “This is one of those adventures Mom warned us about, where we should have looked both ways.”

  Sherrie sat beside her, grinning. “We? As I remember it, I was cooking at the inn, minding my own business, and you invited me into the dining room to share a bottle of wine and dragged me into this.”

  Liza challenged her with a look. “And you didn’t want to spend three days here with Bill.”

  Sherrie looked away. “No, I didn’t.” She looked back again. “But I would like to own the inn. So there. I admit I’m not blameless. But how does that help you?”

  Liza smiled grimly. “It means we’ll get mowed down by our adventure together.”

  “Oh, good.”

  Chapter Three

  “Here we are!” Ben Whittier pointed through the window of the limo as it turned off the road and through an entrance in a low stone wall onto an oak-lined drive. The trees were bare limbed and ancient against a stormy sky.

  At the head of the drive Jeffrey James could see a slate blue Federal-style house with gray shutters and two dormer windows on a third level. There was a fanlight window above a wide oak door on which hung a fat green wreath with a red bow. White lights trimmed the door and the window.