The Hundred Gifts

by Jennifer Scott

  “It’s okay,” he said. “Let’s just drop it.”

  Bren knew Gary, and she knew when drop it meant she could keep pushing and when drop it meant drop it. He meant drop it. But she was tired of dropping it.

  “No,” she said. “I’ve been begging you to talk to me for months, and now you’re going to do it.”

  He gazed at her with tired, hungover eyes. “What do you want me to say, Bren? You kissed another man.”

  She wagged her finger. “No, he kissed me.”

  “There’s a difference?”

  “Of course there is,” she cried.

  “He said you led him on. He said you’d been flirting with him. He talked about you being naked on the day you broke Gil’s drum, and that he was here. Funny how you never mentioned that little detail to me.” He took another swig of beer. “You gotta admit, Brenda, it sounds a little fishy.”

  Her face flamed. She wished the memory of that day could just be wiped away forever. “Sure it seems fishy when you put it that way. But you have to give me the benefit of the doubt, Gary. We’ve been married twenty-seven years, and I’ve never been devoted to anyone but you. You, on the other hand, have been solely devoted to your little projects.”

  He stood. “I’m sorry—I wasn’t aware that my full-grown wife needed a babysitter.” He walked toward the living room. Bren hated when he turned his back on her during an argument. He knew this. She took a deep breath to keep her calm.

  “I don’t need a babysitter, but a partner would be nice,” she said, following him.

  “So you went for my best friend? Classy, Bren. Real classy.” He flopped onto the couch and picked up the remote, but Bren positioned herself in front of the TV so he couldn’t use it.

  “I didn’t go for him! He went for me!” She was yelling now, her calm a thing of the past. “He thought we were having troubles, Gary. He thought I was available. Because of the way you were acting toward me. Think about that for a minute. He thought he could have me.”

  Gary’s jaw set, but he didn’t respond. She recognized that look on him—it was the look that he knew, on some level, she was right. She took advantage of the momentum.

  “I’ve been begging you for attention. I took you to Olive Garden, for Christ’s sake. But all you can give me is insults about my cooking and promises to talk later. I want a partner, not a fraternity roommate.” He set his beer on the table, but still didn’t speak. “I got naked on the drums for you, Gary. For you. It went horribly wrong, and I’m so embarrassed, and trust me, if I could take anything back, it would be that. But I swear I didn’t kiss John. I love you. And that may make me the world’s biggest idiot right now, but I can’t help but think there’s still hope for us. And maybe when you’re done being mad at me, you’ll have hope for us, too.”

  He took another drink. “I’m not mad at you,” he finally said. Surly, unconvincing.

  “You look mad. You sound mad.”

  “Can’t I even say what my own feelings are without you questioning them?” he snapped.

  She stood in awkward silence for a beat, waiting for him to say something more or for the right thing to pop into her mind or anything to break this weird bubble between them. He said he wasn’t angry, but he didn’t look like someone who wasn’t angry. It was a part of marriage Bren didn’t think she would ever get used to. The part where you were supposed to read each other’s minds and just know how to make things better. She really began to fear what this new development meant for them. Maybe they were done. She tried to imagine what that would mean for her. Would she get the house? Would she have to go back to work, learn how to do things like clean out gutters and wash the lawn mower blades?

  “Can I just . . . have a minute?” he finally said.

  Bren nodded, her heart falling even lower, if that was possible. Here she had just told him how much she needed him, how much she missed him. Had laid herself bare at his feet. And all he wanted was more of the same—for her to go away. She turned and headed back toward the kitchen. She had no more fight left in her.

  “Oh, I forgot. The good news,” she said when she got to the doorway.

  He looked confused for a moment, and then seemed to recollect what she was talking about. “Oh, yeah. What was it?”

  “The kids. They’re coming home.”

  “For Christmas?” He didn’t look excited. More wary, and perhaps a bit unnerved.

  “No, in a couple of weeks.”

  “I see,” he said.

  She sighed. “Aren’t you happy they’re coming home at least? We’re going to have a proper Christmas celebration in January. And we can get to the bottom of this whole Kevin marriage issue while they’re here. Oh, Gary, be happy! Our kids are coming home.”

  “I’m happy,” he said. “I’d like to see them. But they aren’t staying long, are they?”

  She slumped against the doorframe. “I don’t know; we didn’t talk about it. But I’m guessing if they’re coming all the way from Thailand it’s not going to be a weekend trip. I’ll do their old rooms up for them. It’ll be like old times.”

  “Yeah,” he said, a downturn to his mouth.

  “What is it?” Bren asked, cross again. She hadn’t been expecting him to jump up and down for joy—that just wasn’t Gary’s style, especially after a big argument like they’d just had—but a little excitement might be nice. A smile, at the very least.

  He took a breath, like he might say something, but let it out, and took another. Seemed to hesitate. Finally, he set his beer on the table. “It’s just . . . I’ve waited a long time for this.”

  “For what?” But she had a sinking feeling she knew for what. For his dune buggies and his golf game and his band. For his freedom. As she’d feared and been unable to articulate until just this moment, Gary was in love with not having to have a family around to drag him down. Gary was in love with being untethered again for the first time in his adult life. The kids were just a reminder that he had things to do, and while he could blow off Bren, he couldn’t blow them off.

  “For this,” he said, gesturing around the room.

  Bren glanced confusedly at the curtains, the end tables. “What do you mean? You’ve had this for almost thirty years.”

  His forehead creased with irritation. “No, not the house. Us. Alone. Here. Our lives.”

  “But we’ve been . . . unhappy,” she said. “We’ve been fighting.”

  “Well, okay, I don’t mean that. I mean having the house and our lives to ourselves. I’ve screwed it up lately, I get that. And I’m selfish. I get that, too. But I still want it. I want to have our dinner at Lucky’s on Christmas Eve and I want to be able to eat popcorn and drink beer whenever I feel like it and I want to build models of ships inside bottles.”

  “Models of ships?” Bren repeated, thoroughly confused now.

  “Or make sausage or have sex with my wife on the living room floor, or . . . whatever.” He sagged back into his chair and picked up his beer again. “I got excited. I had so many things I’d been waiting to try until they moved out. And you seemed occupied with your shows and your magazines and your cooking class. I didn’t think it was a big deal. I didn’t realize you were taking it personally.”

  “Of course I was taking it personally. I was lonely as hell. I told you as much.”

  “I know,” he said. “I just never thought it could drive you to another man’s arms.” Finally, when he looked at her, she could see the old Gary inside. The tender Gary. The one who’d said I do all those years ago. He’d been buried for so long, she wasn’t sure she’d recognize him if he ever came back. But there he was.

  She knelt in front of him. “It couldn’t. It didn’t. John was wrong. I never wanted him.”

  He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, they looked watery. “For a minute there, I thought I might lose you.”

  The sk
y was turning hazy gray outside, nightfall pressing in on them already, bathing the kitchen in grainy twilight. The countertop looked dark and unused in this light. The house seemed heavy and closed in.

  But on the inside Bren felt like she could fly to touch the sun. She’d only been waiting for this. This. She reached out and put her hand on his. He flipped his over, and they held hands like that for the longest time.

  “Are you thinking about making dinner tonight, or should we go get something? I can pick up some burgers,” he said.

  Bren blinked. “It’s the twenty-third. You have a gig.”

  He shook his head, drained the last of his beer. “Not anymore. That got canceled. The guys will come by after Christmas to get their stuff.”

  “But you worked so hard for that gig.”

  “Sure did. It was fun, too.”

  “Sorry they canceled on you, Gare.”

  “I canceled on them.” He shrugged. “Things are different now. Easy come, easy go.”

  She walked over to him, put her hand on his shoulder and rubbed in circles, the way he always liked it. “How about I make something?”

  • • •

  Thirty minutes later Bren floated into Savings Shopper, nothing on her mind but carrots and potatoes and those little pearl onions—ingredients for Gary’s favorite chicken potpie.

  For so long now it had seemed like he didn’t care. Like she had nothing to hang on to with him anymore. Like he just wanted his own life and his own things and his own activities and none of those involved Bren. But maybe, she now realized, he was just comfortable knowing that she would still be there when the other stuff ran out.

  And now she was making a potpie for him. Maybe they’d watch a movie. Maybe they’d make love. She didn’t know, and didn’t care, as long as she was with him.

  She turned down the soup aisle, searching for cream of chicken—her potpie cheat—when her thoughts abruptly turned to the old woman who lived above the Kitchen Classroom. Would she feel this way when she found more gifts on her stair this evening? They had been retrieved from under the tree and stacked roof-high in the back of Bren’s minivan. All of them. Some wrapped, some in bags, some in homemade cheesecloth pouches, some just wrapped in cellophane and tucked into a big basket Bren had unearthed from her craft experiment days. Bren had stopped by the apartment on her way to the grocery store and hefted them up the stairs, stacking them neatly off to one side of the doorway. It had taken three trips, and the whole time Bren’s heart had pounded with nerves that the old woman would open the door and catch her there. How silly to be nervous that someone might catch you leaving them gifts.

  But from the looks of things, the old woman wasn’t home. The lights were off and there was no sound coming from the other side of the door. Bren drove around the square a couple of times looking for her to be out there loyally following her dog on his leash. She’d even taken a little side trip past the cancer center. But no Virginia Mash.

  So wherever she was, she would come home to the gift of giving. Whether the old snot wanted it or not.

  And maybe, just maybe, when she saw the gifts, and experienced the fact that the ladies still wanted to treat her with kindness even after what she’d done to them, she would feel the way Bren was feeling now. Hopeful, happy, too cheerful to even bother to stop at the Hole Shebang for a pastrami–glazed chocolate cake doughnut.

  She checked her cart—all that was left to get was the chicken. She turned toward the meat department and almost slammed into the cart of a man standing behind her.

  “Oh!” she cried. She did a double take, her lips tingling of their own accord. She touched them. “John?”

  “Hey, Bren,” he said. He ducked his head, doing his level best to really let her see only the crown of his stocking cap, but she bent her knees to look up in his face. His lip was split and he had a hell of a bruise sprouting on his left eye.

  “Oh my gosh, what happened to you?” She reached out as if to touch his face, but thought better of touching him in any way and pulled her hand back.

  “I should think you would already know,” he said, offering a small, painful-looking smile. He leaned toward her and whispered, “Why did you tell him?”

  It took her a minute to catch on. “Tell who what? Oh no.”

  He was nodding, looking thoroughly unimpressed. “Oh yes.”

  “Gary did this?”

  “I figured he would have told you. Stormed into my house, pulled me out of my recliner—spilling my beer, by the way—and punched me twice. He defended your honor. What a guy.” All of this came out very deadpan.

  “No, I’m so sorry, I had no idea.”

  “So why did you tell him, then? You’d already shut me down. That wasn’t enough?” He tossed a can of soup into his cart, so hard it rattled the beer bottles together. Of which he had many, Bren couldn’t help noticing. “If I’d known that kissing you was going to get my ass kicked, I would’ve stayed away. I would’ve kissed Rosa instead.” This, he said loudly. A woman by the canned ravioli looked up.

  Bren burned with embarrassment. Although she was maybe the teeniest bit proud that she had been John’s first choice over adorable Rosa. She looked around, trying to appear as if this were just a hilarious joke between her and a good friend, but the ravioli woman didn’t look like she was buying it. “I did not tell him so he would come after you. I felt guilty about what happened between us, if you must know.”

  John grinned again, wincing as his lip split anew. “Which means you wanted it. I knew it. And I told Gary as much.” His voice went falsetto. “Oh, please, bone my bird!” He went back to his normal voice. “Come on, what did you expect me to think? You got naked in front of me.”

  “That was for Gary! I did not want it. I never did anything to get it.” She realized too late that her voice had also escalated, and now not only was the ravioli woman watching them, but so was an old man who had just turned his electric scooter down their aisle.

  There was a frozen turkey in the old man’s basket. If you’re planning on having that Christmas Day, dude, she thought, you are going to be out of luck. Or licking turkey Popsicles. She giggled, despite herself. Turkeysicles. Tammy Lynn would have appreciated that one, for sure. She could only imagine the jokes they would all riff off of that one. She giggled some more.

  John cocked his head to one side. “I’m glad you find it all so hilarious. I could file charges against him, you know.”

  She shook her head, held up one hand, tried to tell him that no, it wasn’t about his beat-up face, but she couldn’t catch her breath. And, besides, it kind of was about his beat-up face, maybe just a little bit. It all seemed so absurd now—the band, the kiss, the wild night in Rome.

  “I guess I never realized how much like Cindy you are. You two were a great pair,” John said.

  Bren, still laughing, nodded. “Yes . . . we were.” She straightened up, gulped in a few breaths, stilled herself as best she could. “Excuse me. My husband deserves a chicken potpie. Looks like he worked hard today.”

  She turned and sauntered down the aisle, hesitating at the ravioli display only long enough to pull a can of Beefaroni off the shelf. She handed it to the lady standing there.

  “Here, I’ve found this pairs well with eavesdropping.”

  She went straight to the meat counter, where she bought the expensive fresh chicken. Gary cared. In his own selfish, weird little way, he cared.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  There were twelve gifts left to make. But it was also Christmas Eve, and Bren knew she couldn’t ask the ladies to come over for more crafting. They had their own families, their own traditions to attend to.

  Gary had agreed to upgrading their dinner plans to Christie’s Steakhouse, where at least their Christmas Eve dinner would be served on china plates with cloth napkins. Bren still missed cooking, but she understood what he was trying to do
. He was trying to create a new tradition for the two of them.

  “They could only get us in at four thirty,” he announced, coming into the living room, holding his suit on a hanger. “We were lucky to get reservations at all, this late.”

  “We can do four thirty,” Bren said, snapping off the TV and checking the clock. “I love four thirty. Lots of time for digesting before bed. Four thirty is our new tradition.”

  She raced upstairs and poured herself into an old dress that she hadn’t worn since her cousin Maxie’s third wedding. She’d been an easy sixty pounds lighter back then—and Maxie had been one husband shy of landing on the current husband number—and she couldn’t lift her arms above her head without the sleeves pinching her armpit fat into oblivion. But it wasn’t like she and Gary were going to be doing any dancing, and it was an A-line, which meant she had plenty of stomach room to fill with steak and potatoes and buttery, buttery cauliflower. As long as her boobs didn’t split the side seams and turn her into the dinner show.

  • • •

  Christie’s Steakhouse was a bustle of energy and ambience. The lighting was low, but the mood was high. Bren could literally feel a melted butter mist in the air. Decadence and revelry and smart-looking couples in shimmery clothes, families in their church best, little boys squeezed into plaid vests and little girls itchy in white tights and patent leather shoes. Wine at every table. Dessert at every table. Smiles at every table, and people leaned back against their chair backs and clutching their bellies in regretful satisfaction.

  It felt like being part of a special club. Maybe it was. A club of people who didn’t do things exactly traditionally. Maybe it was a club of people who didn’t slave over a stove and dredge out recipes handed down from their grannies and didn’t have legions of children racing around, feverish with excitement for Santa’s arrival.

  But it was a club of people who were together. Merry Christmas, Bren wanted to tell all of them as she passed their tables. Happy New Year. God bless us, everyone! Enjoy! Enjoy!

  “This was such a great idea,” she said, sipping the most velvety wine she’d ever tasted. Like ribbons slipping into her mouth. Bright red holiday ribbons. She sipped again, feeling her limbs go warm and relaxed. “A great idea.”