The Hundred Gifts

by Jennifer Scott

  “Oh, I don’t know if I’m the person for that one,” Bren said. “Maybe a Break Your Resolution in Record Time cooking class would be more my speed. Or How to Cheat on Your New Year’s Diet in the Privacy of Your Car. We’d be eating marshmallow Peeps before Valentine’s Day even rolled around.”

  Paula tapped her pen on her chin, her necklace bouncing softly against her turtleneck with the movement. “You know, you may be onto something there,” she said. “People are oppositional these days. I can see them getting excited over an anti-resolution movement. We’ll give it some more thought.”

  Bren wrinkled her nose. “Actually, I don’t know if that’s such a good idea. I’m not the best teacher.”

  Paula’s eyebrows creased and she shuffled back through her papers. “That’s not the feedback I’ve been getting. The students love you, across the board. I’ve even got a couple on a wait list. You think you could handle as many as ten next time?” Bren felt a wave of happiness wash over her heart. The students love you, across the board. Wasn’t that what her goal had been from the beginning? Just to have some friends? Someone to hang her holidays on?

  “I think I can’t handle the ones I’ve got,” Bren said, and then put her hand over her mouth, surprised that she had said this aloud. She lowered it and pulled the stool that Tammy Lynn normally sat on over to the station. “What about the woman upstairs? She’s not getting any easier to deal with.”

  A frown melted Paula’s gleeful look. “Don’t worry about her,” she said. “I’ve already talked with my lawyer. She can’t do anything to us. She’s the landlord’s problem. So we just keep doing what we’re doing.”

  “Yes, but she will just keep doing what she’s doing, too,” Bren said. “It’s very distracting.” She chewed her lip. “And humiliating.”

  Paula smiled. “We’ll figure something out. So I can count you in for a January class, then?”

  “Uh . . . ,” Bren hedged, but in the end, the conversation went right where she knew it would. She was locked into teaching another class when she couldn’t even finish the one she was working on now.

  But at least maybe her plan might resolve the other little problem—the one upstairs.

  • • •

  Since she wasn’t actually cooking tonight, Bren had a couple of hours to kill before she had to leave for class. Even her talk with Paula and thinking about Virginia Mash hadn’t killed her mood. She felt free and alive and eager to put her plan into motion.

  But first. Gary.

  He’d left her a message. The band couldn’t meet tonight—something about Rosa dragging Gil to see The Nutcracker—so he would be home all night. She took that as a sign. An opportunity. He would be home . . . all night. The old Gary would have been saying that with wiggling eyebrows and groping hands. Maybe new midlife Gary would take that as an opportunity to remember how fun it was to make love to something other than his cheese puffs and guitar strap.

  This could be their chance to rekindle things. To get back to each other. To work it out, just like the Beatles sang. Snow on the Roof had been trying to sing it themselves.

  Bren started by putting a roast in the oven, ignoring the years of grime that coated the oven window. Roasts could be sexy, right? After twenty-seven years of marriage, food was definitely sexy, along with conversation and the occasional actual eye contact. Roast, potatoes, carrots, all of it smelling perfect. Not like the perfect disasters she’d grown accustomed to in the classroom.

  She lit candles. Not so many that he would begin to complain about his sinuses getting overloaded by “all those conflicting smells, and why do we pay money for that, anyway, it’s not like we live in a hut filled with oxen” and start doing that thing where he squeezes one nostril shut and blows through the other to try to clear it. She’d seen it more than enough times to know it was decidedly unsexy. She blew out three of the candles she’d lit.

  She remembered a movie she and Gary had once seen a long time ago. One where the wife waited, all wrapped up in a Saran Wrap dress, for her husband to get home. The husband had practically blown a gasket when he’d arrived, afraid that someone might have seen her, completely missing the point of her seduction. I’d have had you unwrapped before I put my briefcase down, Gary had told her after watching that scene. I’d have had to rip into you like a birthday cake, he’d said.

  That was a long time ago, but maybe he still felt that way.

  She knew exactly where to wait for him. The one place he would be most geared up to go. Her competition: that damned basement band set. At first, she thought she’d skip all pretense and go completely naked—after this many years of marriage, time and frugality worked against cute ideas like Saran Wrap—but the drum seat was way too cold against her bare butt.

  She tried lingerie, going for the frothy red getup she’d bought for their twentieth wedding anniversary (and then had hidden and promptly forgotten that she had it at all until the night was over). But she was a good thirty pounds lighter back then. And lingerie showed way too many bad doughnut decisions, especially once she sat down.

  She finally settled on one of Gary’s old tried-but-true favorites. She got one of his dress shirts out of the closet and put it on. It was tighter than she’d have liked it to be, but once she unbuttoned it to the navel it didn’t matter anymore. She let one of his ties hang loose between her bare breasts, and finished the look with a pair of black heels—the ones she’d gotten for her brother’s wedding many moons, and years of younger feet, ago. She limped/walked down to the basement and waited.

  It was only about twenty minutes before she heard his car pull up outside, and moments later a car door slamming. She rearranged herself, draped sexily across the snare drum, a little bit of nipple showing, the heel of her left shoe hooked sexily around the chair leg. She held two drumsticks loosely in one hand, hoping that she looked suggestive.

  “Down here!” she called as soon as she heard the front door shut. “Come on down; I’ve got something to show you!”

  She pressed her palm into her mouth to stave off giggles as she followed the sound of his footsteps through the entryway, the kitchen, and slowly down the basement steps.

  “Feel like banging something?” she purred, giving her chest an extra little pop forward.

  Only it wasn’t Gary standing in the doorway—a fact that took Bren, and her exposed nipple, far too long to register.

  “John!” she screeched, lurching backward.

  “Oh!” he yelled, turning and covering his eyes with one hand.

  The backward motion tipped the stool she was sitting on, and next thing Bren knew, she was crashing to the hard basement floor, flashing God knew what to Gary’s best friend, who was not supposed to be there, by the way—the goddamned practice was canceled; hadn’t he gotten the memo? Her foot kicked out, her heel slicing a hole clean through the bass drum, and her flailing arm knocked over a cymbal with an earsplitting crash.

  “Get out, get out, get out!” she yelled, rolling around on the floor, trying to get herself righted and save as much of the drum set as she could from getting ruined. Gil was going to kill her. And would probably want a new seat when he found out what had been on it.

  It took her a long moment to get herself sorted, and by the time she did, yanking the lapels of Gary’s shirt together as she struggled to sit upright, John was gone, the sound of hurried footsteps and the front door slamming the only thing left in his wake.

  If she hadn’t been so mortified, and if her butt hadn’t hurt so much from hitting the floor, she might have laughed.

  As it stood, she could only sit on the floor miserably, taking in the damage she’d just caused, knowing that Gary was going to be livid to see the broken drum and bent cymbal, and at best what she could look forward to when he got home was fighting rather than lovemaking. Yet she couldn’t help but wonder, above all else . . . What in the world had John been doing there in
the first place?

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Gary hadn’t been quite as outright furious as she’d been afraid he’d be. What on earth were you thinking? had come out of his mouth a record seventeen times, and twice he’d accused her of beating up Gil’s drum set in a fit of jealous rage, but after that he’d seemed to mostly let it go.

  He’d also turned right around and gotten into his car, mumbling something about owing Gilbert a new bass drum as he backed out of the driveway.

  Not exactly the homecoming she’d been planning. Stupid John. Stupid John, who’d now seen her lady bits. Oh God, how would she ever face him again?

  But all the fuss and mayhem had indeed killed those two extra hours she’d had, and soon Bren found herself standing in the Kitchen Classroom, giddily waiting for her students to arrive with their contributions to tonight’s special class.

  Tammy Lynn walked in first. “Gloves!” she sang, waving a pair of bright pink and green striped gloves over her head. They matched her outfit, which was far more spring in a color palette than winter. “And cookies on the way.” She gestured outside, where Elwood was wrestling with a Tupperware container and the car door.

  She dropped the gloves on Bren’s station. “Oh, Bren, I think this is the best idea. To think, reaching out to combat ugliness with kindness. We should be on a viral video on the Internet, don’t you think? How do you go viral? We should try it.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Bren said. “I’m not much of an Internet video type of person.” Though she would be, if it meant she got to actually see her kids instead of just talk to them over the phone. But Kelsey was always claiming that Dean hadn’t yet set up whatever something or other was necessary to make that happen, and old wild-night Kevin didn’t even own a computer. Even though, in Bren’s estimation, a computer could really make him feel at one and connected to the entire universe, without his having to make love on some strange beach she couldn’t pronounce.

  “Well, I think it’s just fabulous. Maybe she’ll have a change of heart and feel differently about us after she gets all warm and cozy,” Tammy Lynn said.

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” Aunt Cathy said, coming through the door with a cake pan and a plastic bag. She tossed the bag at Bren, missing her station by miles. It skidded across the floor and came to rest at the wall. “There’s your scarf. Stayed up all night knitting it, and now my arthritis is acting up.”

  “You don’t have arthritis, Catherine,” Joan said, toddling behind her sister. “And you bought that scarf at the Walmart.”

  “How would you know?”

  “I was with you, Miss Cranky.” Joan bent to pick up the bag Cathy had dropped—which took a great deal of effort and grunting—and handed it, and another one, to Bren. “We got two, just in case she’s the kind who likes to double up. And boots, just like you asked. And never mind your aunt there. She’s just crabby because she missed Wheel of Fortune while we were at the store. You know how she is about Pat Sajak.”

  “I try not to think about it,” Bren said.

  “And all for that ungrateful cow, too,” Aunt Cathy added. “Bet she won’t even appreciate it. Ten bucks says we don’t even get a thank-you card.”

  “Well, now, that’s not why we’re doing this, Aunt Cathy,” Bren said, pulling the scarves out of their bags and setting them on her station.

  Lulu and Teresa came in, bringing with them what seemed like an entire kitchen, and a blanket.

  “I could have gotten the ingredients for you,” Bren said, rushing to hold the door.

  “No, you wouldn’t have gotten the right ones,” Teresa said.

  “How would you know what are the right ingredients to anything, Teresa?” Lulu scolded. “Two trays of taco meat in the trash in one day. What am I going to do? You’re going to put the truck out of business.” She shook her head. “What Teresa means is that we were already out buying el edredón for our friend upstairs.” She pulled out a beautiful quilt.

  Teresa ran her hand over the blanket, ignoring Lulu’s complaints. “I have one just like it. It will keep her very warm.” She shot a look at Lulu. “And you can’t just guess at tamale ingredients. You might accidentally put too much cayenne into the meat.”

  Bren took the blanket to the front of the room with the other things. Rebecca had slipped in, unnoticed, while her back was turned, and had deposited a clutch of stocking caps on her station as well. They were all varying shades of brown.

  “So how are we going to do this?” Tammy Lynn asked. She winked and nudged toward Bren’s side with her elbow. “You know, make the drop?”

  Aunt Cathy pumped one fist in the air. “We’ll just go up there, knock on the door, and say, ‘Here, maybe this will calm your crabby butt down.’”

  Joan gasped. “Catherine! We will do no such thing.”

  “We can’t very well just hand it to her and say nothing,” Tammy Lynn said.

  “That would seem very weird,” Lulu agreed.

  Bren carefully placed each new item in the giant gift bag she’d bought. At the bottom was the new coat she’d picked up earlier that day—fluffy, turquoise, knee-length, warm. Expensive.

  Bren had thought about the delivery many times, actually. And she’d considered so many possibilities for how it could go. They could drop it and doorbell ditch, just like kids, although the thought of her mother and Aunt Cathy racing down a flight of stairs seemed laughable, if not altogether terrifying. They could wait for her to come in to complain and present it to her then. Bren had even considered burning some popcorn real quick to get her downstairs. But she wasn’t sure if that was the best time to give someone a gift—right in the middle of their yelling at you. She’d even imagined them knocking on her door and singing a sweet Christmas carol—probably “The Little Drummer Boy,” because, well, obviously—before presenting her with the gift. But there was nothing about that old woman that suggested she would appreciate such a gesture on any level.

  “Anonymous,” Rebecca said, and everyone turned to stare at her.

  “Did she just say something, or is my hearing aid on the blink again?” Aunt Cathy stage-whispered to Joan. Joan shushed her.

  Rebecca gave her only the slightest glance and then continued. “It needs to be anonymous. She’s a proud person—we can tell that much already. If we try to just give it to her, she’ll refuse it. Leave it as an anonymous gift. Bren, you should take it.”

  There were murmurs affirming what Rebecca had just said, and Bren nodded. This also had been a scenario she had toyed with. Leaving the bag after they were done for the night, and just letting it sit there until the woman found it the next day.

  “Okay, done,” she said. “Now. Who’s hungry for tamales, cookies, and cake?”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Those dumb cooking bimbos had been in high spirits last night, that was for sure. They’d kept her up until nine o’clock with their giggling and their thumping around and their car engines. Even Chuy had rested only half as well as usual. He’d gotten up and shifted positions at least three times.

  It didn’t help that she had this damn cold. She hated colds. The fact that she was still getting them made no sense whatsoever. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had personal contact with anyone. She never even let anyone touch her cane.

  She’d probably picked it up just by stepping inside that godforsaken class. There were what, six of them in there? All with their germs flying right out of their flapping gums and hanging in the air, just waiting for an unsuspecting victim. The very idea of eating anything cooked in that petri dish made her want to puke.

  She would be fine. She knew that much. The world was too cruel for this cough to be anything more serious than a cold, what with how long she’d been waiting to meet her Maker, and whomever else happened to be hanging out with Him. She had some guesses who. It was a real party up there. A corker. Something these
cooking bimbos knew nothing about. So she would be fine, but in the meantime, she felt certain she was going to cough up her toenails, and standing outside in the slush the wet snow had left behind seemed like courting disaster. She’d taken Chuy out only once, in the morning, and after coughing for a solid twenty minutes after, had given in to letting him go on paper inside the apartment. Made for a stinky day, but she was so congested she didn’t care anyway.

  And because she wasn’t leaving the apartment, she’d had to just let those cooking bimbos party away. She’d watched them as they trickled out, each of them carrying pans and yelling at one another to have a good weekend. One—the really loud one with the really loud husband—had a strand of red garland wrapped around her head like a sorority girl. She’d overheard that one getting yelled at once by someone who seemed to be her very fit daughter. Virginia had pretended she hadn’t heard a thing, but she’d been witness to all of it. It was embarrassing, and she thought she could even see the glimmer of a tear in the woman’s eye. She felt sorry for her in that moment. Wanted to shake the daughter, tell her to appreciate her mother while she was still around. Life is too short to fight, she wanted to say, but then she remembered that she didn’t really believe that fully. Life was about fighting, and she intended to be the winner. If you didn’t fight, you ended up alone.

  Worse. If you didn’t fight, you left other people alone.

  She never did see the head bimbo—the fat cook—leave. She must have snuck out when Virginia wasn’t looking.

  Despite having been kept up until all hours of the night from that fuss (she made a mental note to include that phrase—that fuss—in her next letter to Buckley Finster, attorney-at-law), somehow she’d managed to get enough rest to feel better this morning.

  Which was good, because Chuy was a sophisticated man who didn’t appreciate having to do his business on the sports section any more than he absolutely had to. He was practically jumping in circles at the front door.