The Hundred Gifts

by Jennifer Scott

  “Don’t be embarrassed. I liked it.” More of that disturbing smiling. Bren’s stomach twisted as she realized what she supposed she’d already known for a while now—that this was no ordinary visit, no ordinary smile, and that John was not here to see Gary or to play in the band.

  “Gary’s downstairs,” she said nervously. “You can go on down.”

  Instead, he pushed away from the doorframe and sauntered toward her, his head ducked so that he was looking out at her from under hooded eyes. “It looks great in here,” he said.

  “Oh, that.” She glanced toward the decorations and then waved them away breezily. “It’s not what I’d usually do, but it’s kind of nice.”

  “I think you’re kind of nice,” John said, and took another step toward her.

  Bren backed up a step. Her throat was suddenly very dry. “Wh-what?” She tried to smile.

  “Come on, Bren, we’ve been doing this for weeks. Maybe longer. You know Cindy and I are split up.”

  “You are?” she barked. She’d at one time been good friends with Cindy, but they’d fallen out of touch. Cindy was a gigglier, tinier version of Bren herself. “I had no idea. Does Gary know?”

  He squinted. “For months now. Of course he knows.”

  “He didn’t say a word.” About anything, she thought bitterly. Of course he wouldn’t think it relevant information to tell her that two of their oldest pals had split. Why would she care? “I’m so sorry,” she practically whispered. “I hope it was amicable.”

  He rubbed her arm with an index finger. She felt it like an electric jolt to her skin, but she was too shocked; this was all happening way too fast for her to move. “And I know you and Gary are having a hard time.”

  She swallowed. “We’re . . . Has Gary said something?”

  But John seemed to ignore her question. “I’ve felt it, and so have you. All that stuff about the nuts?”

  “Nuts?” Bren was really lost in this conversation. Nothing he was saying was making sense. Did he really say he and Cindy were no more? “I’m sure you and Cindy will work this out.”

  “And then the boning,” he continued. He ran a finger up her other arm. She finally found the power to move both arms behind her back.

  “Boning?”

  “The birds,” he said. “And that day with the drums. Tell me that was an accident.”

  “It was. I mean, what do you mean an accident? That was for Gary. And I had to make a turducken. You came in and boned . . . them. Oh God.”

  John had wrapped himself around her so swiftly, she didn’t even have time to move her arms back. She was trapped under the most uncomfortable hug she’d ever felt.

  “I’ve wanted you for so long, Bren Epperson,” he breathed into her neck. “I know you want me, too.”

  “No, I . . . John, I think you’re misinterpreting. . . . Gary is right downstairs.”

  He continued to hold her for a moment, and Bren would be lying to herself if she didn’t admit that it was at least kind of nice to feel a man’s arms wrapped around her once again. It had been so long, and he smelled so good—like spices and soap. And he was warm.

  But this was wrong.

  Unexpected and nice.

  But wrong.

  She wriggled under his grasp until she was able to put her hands on his chest. She pushed him away. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I need to do something upstairs.”

  And without looking back, she raced up to her bedroom and locked the door behind her, feeling flushed and excited and mortified and confused all at once.

  Downstairs, very faintly, “Mele Kalikimaka” started up on the stereo.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Chuy had improved just the tiniest bit. She could at least get him to eat now, little bits at a time, and she’d finally taken him for a short walk around half the square. Even though it was bitterly cold, he’d started panting before they’d even reached the flower shop, and she’d picked him up and wrapped him in her flannel, carrying him back, clucking at him while she stroked his face. She’d walked slowly, so he could see the lights on the buildings. He’d never said so—well, of course not; he was a dog—but she always suspected he enjoyed Christmas lights. Especially the yellow ones, because they lit up the night with a goldish glow that just felt peaceful. Old Chu liked peaceful.

  Speaking of peaceful. It was not lost on her that the Kitchen Classroom was empty, lights out, sign on the door flipped to CLOSED when she walked by. Not even that obnoxious redhead inside to yell at. She and Chuy had stood outside that window, too, and gazed at the shadowy reflections of themselves on the glass, framed by the dormant equipment inside. It was so dead in there. So . . . boring.

  But the wind had driven them home, and Chuy hadn’t once done any business while they’d been outside. Instead, he was going on the newspaper in the guest bedroom, or sometimes just wherever he sat. Which was messy and unpleasant but, given that he wasn’t feeling well, temporarily forgivable.

  She probably should have taken him to the vet long before now. She knew that. She felt a little guilty for not having done so. But he wasn’t suffering—or at least he didn’t appear to be. He seemed happy, but tired, so tired. If she’d had any hint that he was in pain she would have had him put down. Or at least she’d liked to have thought she would. She’d like to have that strength for Jamie.

  For Jamie.

  Everything she ever did with Chuy was for Jamie, and that included squeezing out every last minute that she could with him. If there was even a chance that he’d have another good day, another half trip around the square with her, then by God she would give that to him.

  Probably people would think she was cruel for it. People had found her cruel for many, many things in her lifetime. And maybe for good reason.

  She understood that she wasn’t the easiest person to like. She knew that she was persnickety. Outspoken. Demanding. Opinionated. She hadn’t always been like that, of course. Life made her that way. If people wanted to blame something for the way she made them feel, they would just have to turn their little faces upward, clasp their little hands together, and thank God. Or the universe. Or whatever it was that drove her life down this path.

  She was once just as pie-eyed and hopeful as the rest of them. It was a disgusting way of living. Unrealistic. She never thought she’d have reason to be any other way, but she’d been wrong. It was a terrible lesson to learn in this life. An unforgettable one, too.

  Those women downstairs probably thought she was cruel. And over the past two days she had been wondering if maybe she’d been a bit too harsh with them. She’d talked to Chuy about it at great length, stroking his back as he lay next to her limply on the couch.

  “You think I should have let them be, don’t you, Chu?” she’d asked. He’d rolled his eyes at her and then gone back to sleep. This was on one of his better days—a day when he could limp to the food bowl mostly on his own. “Well, I know what you’re thinking—that I was jealous of their fun. But it wasn’t about that. It was that they were so loud with their fun. All that talking and yelling and clanging pots and pans and giggling like teenagers. Really, they needed a wake-up call, someone to tell them to act their age. Now, don’t you sigh at me, Chuy. You’re a soft heart, but you can’t be softhearted with people like that. They don’t know when to stop. They push and push and will just keep pushing until you push back. Leaving all those things on my doorstep. What do you suppose that was about, anyway?” She leaned over to check Chuy’s reaction, but he was snoring again. His ear twitched. “I’ll tell you what it was about. It was about making me feel guilty. And it didn’t work.”

  But the truth was it did kind of work. She couldn’t quite figure out their game—that much was true—but the gifts were nice. And it had felt really good to pass the first ones on to those kids at the cancer center. She’d only wished Chuy hadn’t gotten sick so she could take
more down there. Brighten more bleak days. If that was possible. There wasn’t much of anything bright about having cancer.

  But there was also something too personal about the gifts. She didn’t have friends because she didn’t want any. She didn’t have family—well, of course she had family, those dimwit nieces and nephews of hers, who served only to remind her of what she didn’t have and never would—because she didn’t want any. She had no one but Chuy, and that was on purpose. She didn’t need a bevy of moronic housewives trying to wend their way into her life. She didn’t need people to care about. She had enough cares with Chuy.

  Which was why she couldn’t explain what it was that made her repeatedly open her front door, looking to see if the idiotic cooks had left more gifts there. Of course they hadn’t—she’d made sure they couldn’t—but still she looked just the same. Opening her door, even stepping out to peer down the stairs to make sure they hadn’t just decided to leave the things on the sidewalk, and then closing the door slowly with a soft, defeated click. She’d expected more fight out of those women. They’d let her down by giving up so easily.

  She hated it when people gave up.

  Jamie had given up. She had. She didn’t fight near as hard as Virginia wanted her to. She’d said she was fighting, but it didn’t seem like enough of a fight from Virginia’s perspective. She remembered standing by Jamie’s bed on that last day, looking down at her veiny eyelids, her sharp cheekbones, a younger, oblivious Chuy tucked under her arm, and thinking, Dammit, why didn’t you fight harder? You had some still left in you; I could feel it. A mother can feel it.

  And then when Ernie went with no fight whatsoever, Virginia had only looked on with bitter jealousy.

  “Maybe that’s my problem, Chuy,” she said, trying to interest him in a spoonful of peanut butter. He shifted, lifted his head, and gave the spoon a few tentative licks. “That’s a good boy.” She ran her fingers over the top of his bony head. “Maybe I should give up a little easier, you know?”

  Indeed, her life would be easier. Or at least filled with less fighting. Imagine if she didn’t have to continually set people straight on what they were doing and how it was affecting her. Imagine if she could just toddle through life with a dippy grin like most of the general population did. Her IQ would suffer, certainly, but at least she wouldn’t have to worry so much about so many things. She would just sit in her stuffy little apartment. Leaky faucet drip, drip, dripping all night long? No problem. Stench of burned flour poofing up through her floorboards on clouds of smoke? No big deal. Loud, rumbling car engines waking her up in the morning, keeping her up at night? She was getting too much sleep anyway! No worries, friend as her catchphrase? Of course!

  Bah. She could never be that person. She hated to even be in the same room with that person.

  “But can you believe it, Chuy? I used to be that person.” She turned the spoon so the lump of peanut butter he’d pushed to the edge wouldn’t fall off. “I used to tell Jamie all the time to suck it up, live and let live, turn the other cheek. And look where that got her. Look where it got both of us. No, wait, sorry, Chuy, all three of us, you’re right.”

  No, Virginia was not at a loss every day to notice exactly where all those morals, all that nobility, all that living and letting live got her. She was surrounded by it, literally, every day of her life. Shabby walls, wood floors with the varnish worn off, peeling paint everywhere except around the windows, where it was thicker than cinder blocks. Appliances that worked only when they wanted to, noise, noise, noise—always the noise of people having happy days, people spending their money, spending their time, as if they had unlimited quantities of both. Did those people not know that there was suffering around them all day every day? Did they not understand what their laughter did to the lonely?

  Chuy understood. She could see it in his eyes, which had become so red around the rims they looked almost bloody. He understood what it was to be left behind. And he also understood what it meant to do the leaving.

  “It’s okay, old man,” she said. “I’m used to it.”

  But as she turned on the TV to take her thoughts away, and wiped the insides of her glasses, which seemed to have gotten smoggy all of a sudden, and thought about getting up to check on the doorstep one last time before bed, she couldn’t help wondering if she was, in fact, used to it.

  She began to wonder if she ever would be.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Bren couldn’t blame the ladies for not wanting to finish the gift project. They were angry. So was she. Who wanted to deal with such unpleasantness just three days before Christmas? It was supposed to be a time of joy!

  She’d never gotten to share her figgy pudding recipe. That was the thing that kept going through her mind as she sat in her kitchen, ignoring the gurgle of the dishwasher. It was probably the sound of the old thing getting ready to go out, and when she was trying to watch TV, the noise annoyed her, but at the moment if she let herself hear it, the noise would serve only to upset her more. She never got to bring them some damn figgy pudding.

  Who in the world still ate figgy pudding, anyway? As far as she knew, nobody. But it was the tradition of it, the undeniable Christmas-ness of it. It was in songs, for goodness’ sake. Bring us some figgy pudding. She’d found a figgy pudding recipe; she’d bought the dates and figs and had even picked out which ramekins she would use. They were supposed to eat them warm right there in the classroom on the twenty-third—what was scheduled to be their last class before the holiday. Their farewell until January.

  She’d been such a flop as a cooking instructor, it seemed like a figgy pudding was the least she could do for them. They’d done so much for her.

  And now that was a flop, too.

  And she had all these godforsaken dates and figs in her kitchen.

  “You’re home early,” Gary had said two evenings before, standing at the counter, dumping half the spice cabinet into an overflowing bowl of popcorn.

  “Oh, don’t get me started about that,” she’d said, unwrapping her scarf and draping it over a kitchen chair. “You know that old woman who lives above the kitchen?”

  He was actually clueless enough about her life to look upward and appear confused, as if she literally meant a woman living above the kitchen in their home.

  “At the Kitchen Classroom, Gary. Where I’m home early from?”

  “Oh,” he said. “Old woman, huh. Friend of yours, I guess.”

  She rolled her eyes. “No. Come on, I’ve told you about her a hundred times. She’s a nasty old thing who lives upstairs. And she’s always complaining. Everything we do is wrong and disturbing her and, well, I’ve just never met anyone so miserable in all my life.”

  He’d picked up the bowl and was cradling it to his chest, looking impatient. This was a look she’d gotten to know quite intimately—his get on with it, because I’m not listening anyway look. “Yeah,” he said.

  “Well, she’s been threatening to shut us down since day one. Threatening to put Paula out of business, and—”

  “Uh-huh.” Eyes roving toward the basement door.

  Bren pulled off her coat and draped it over the chair with the scarf. “Well, I never thought she’d come through on any of her claims, but today I go into the kitchen and—”

  There was a clang of cymbals downstairs and a “Check, check” into a microphone. Her head jerked toward the door.

  “Practice again tonight?”

  Finally, he looked interested. Invested. His eyes lit up. “We’ve got a lot to do. Gil thinks he might have gotten us a gig in the Holiday Inn lobby on the twenty-third. If the rest of your story can wait . . .”

  “Not really.”

  “We won’t be too late tonight, I promise. We can talk then.” Already, he was halfway to the door.

  “No. Gary, I’m really upset. I need to talk now.”

  He sighed, edged toward th
e door but inclined his head toward her. “Okay. What?”

  Bren hesitated—he just looked so put off by having to pay attention to her—but decided she would take what she could get. She walked over to the table and sat down. “Well, it’s just that this woman . . . She’s made us so miserable this whole time, so we decided to leave her gifts. Blankets and gloves and homemade things. Little from-the-heart things, you know? It takes work and money, but we were willing to do it, because, you see . . . well, I thought I saw her give some of them away to kids with cancer, and . . . well, that part’s a long story.” She rested her head in her hands. The class really was more than willing. They were excited about it. Excited about sharing with her, making a difference. “But then today when we got there and Paula had been shut down, I just . . .” She looked over her shoulder to where Gary had been, but he’d moved.

  He now stood at the basement door, turned completely away from Bren as he leaned to look down the stairs.

  “What the hell?” Bren demanded, and he jerked toward her, his face a guilty oval.

  “What? I was listening.”

  “No, you weren’t.” She pounded the flat of her hand on the table. “Jesus, Gary, is it so hard to pay attention to me for even a few minutes?

  “No,” he said, having the gall to look angered by the accusation. “But if we can just talk about this later . . .” He gestured downstairs with the popcorn bowl. “This is really important to me, Bren.”

  She let out a gust of air, suddenly so tired it just didn’t matter anymore. She brushed him away with a backward sweep of her hand. He turned and bounded down the stairs like a teenager. It wasn’t fair—his empty-nest-crisis hobby was working out just fine for him. She slid forward and folded her arms, laying her head down on them for rest. “But what about what’s really important to me?” she asked the table.

  And now, today, Sunday, Gary was gone. Out with the guys, buying sheet music or a microphone stand or a buffalo in a tutu—Bren hadn’t really been paying attention. Not only had they not finished their talk later; Gary hadn’t even come upstairs until well after midnight, and Bren had been sound asleep, earplugs firmly in place, for hours.