Pupcakes

by Annie England Noblin

  “Why don’t you all go on into the living room?” Brydie said, sensing that there were one too many cooks in the kitchen. “Let Rosa and I get everything out and onto the table.”

  Brydie took a deep breath once she was alone with Rosa and Lillian. It had been a long time since she’d cooked for so many people—since she’d hosted so many, and she was suddenly painfully aware of how little she’d missed it. There was something about the quiet of her life now that she’d not known she loved until this very second.

  “Relax,” Rosa said, resting her hand on Brydie’s shoulder. “It will be fine. Everything will be fine.”

  “I know,” Brydie replied, bending down to lift the massive turkey out of the oven. The smell filled her nose and lungs, and she began to feel herself relax. “Thanks, Rosa.”

  Rosa nodded and shooed Lillian out of the kitchen, following close behind her.

  Brydie scanned the room. Everything else had been put out onto the table except for the turkey, which she’d bring out once the guests had been seated. She walked out from the kitchen, almost tripping over Teddy and then Sasha, who wasn’t far behind him. “You two look guilty,” she said to them, bypassing them and making her way into the living room.

  She stood at the threshold for a few moments, taking in the sight in front of her. Brydie had a house full of people, and not just people—friends. She felt her heart swell, and she wished that Pauline could be there to see it. Something told her that she would enjoy this motley crew. Nathan and Joe were having a lively conversation about recipes for shepherd’s pie. Her mother and Roger were playing with Mia, and Elliott was submitting to Rosa rubbing her belly, and telling her, Brydie could only guess, the exact due date of the baby.

  “Is it time to eat?” Mia asked, looking up from the disappearing-quarter trick Roger was showing her.

  Brydie grinned. “It is, kiddo.”

  “Can I have pumpkin pie first?”

  “Absolutely not,” Elliott interjected before Brydie had a chance to respond. “You’ve got to eat a real dinner first.”

  Mia stuck out her lip in a pout, and Brydie held out her hand to the little girl. “Come on, Amelia Bedelia,” she said, winking at her.

  “No pie!” Elliott called after them. “I mean it!”

  Brydie and Mia rounded the corner and into the kitchen just in time to see what was left of the turkey sliding from the countertop to the floor. It was like slow motion—Sasha jumped up, her front paws on the counter, and sank her teeth into the side of the turkey, dragging it down with her. Together she and Teddy dug in, completely unaware that they’d been caught.

  Brydie watched in horror for a few seconds before she found her voice. “Teddy! Sasha! No!”

  Sasha completely ignored Brydie, but Teddy looked up at her for a brief second, a piece of turkey hanging out of his mouth, before plowing right back in. The temptation was just too great. Brydie let go of Mia’s hand and charged over to them, desperate to save what was left of the battered carcass. She realized too late that she’d stepped right into a puddle of turkey juices, and felt herself falling backward, unable to catch herself before she landed with a thud right in front of the dogs. She could feel the liquid seeping into her jeans.

  In a fit of giggles, Mia plopped down next to her. “Look, Brydie! It’s a mud puddle!”

  Brydie closed her eyes in a feeble attempt to collect herself, and when she opened them again, Nathan was there, pulling Sasha back by her collar and cursing at her under his breath. “I’m so sorry,” he said, pulling her out of the kitchen.

  “They ate the turkey,” was all Brydie could say.

  Nathan returned a few seconds later without Sasha and picked up the turkey, setting it out of Teddy’s reach and back onto the counter. “They sure did,” he replied. “I should have told you that you can’t leave anything within Sasha’s reach. Especially not something like an entire baked turkey. This is my fault.”

  Brydie reached out her hand to meet Nathan’s and allowed him to pull her up. She looked down at Mia, still playing in her mud puddle made of turkey guts. “It’s my fault,” she replied. “I should have known better, and now the whole dinner is ruined.”

  “No, it’s not,” Nathan replied. “We still have plenty of food.”

  “But the turkey is the most important!” Brydie wailed, on the verge of tears. She didn’t know why the turkey was so important. It just was. It was like the icing on top of a cake. You can’t have a cake without icing, and you can’t have Thanksgiving dinner without a turkey.

  “We’ve got so much food that it won’t even matter,” Nathan said. “Nobody is going to be mad.”

  She knew he was probably right. Save for her mother, everyone would be kind about the destroyed turkey. But it galled her. Couldn’t anything just go right for once? She wanted to stamp her foot and throw a fit as if she were Mia’s age instead of a grown woman in her thirties. Instead Brydie reached down and picked up a couple of stray pieces of turkey, tossing them dejectedly at the sink. But they bounced off Nathan’s arm and back onto the floor.

  “Oh, so you’re hitting me with food now?” Nathan asked, arching an eyebrow.

  “No!” Brydie exclaimed. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to . . .” She stopped abruptly when she felt a piece of turkey slap her cheek, and then her forehead.

  Nathan was grinning over at her, fingers wrapped around the disconnected leg of the turkey.

  “Don’t you dare!” Brydie said, lunging toward him.

  Nathan caught her by the wrist with his free hand and pulled her closer to him until there was no space between their bodies. Despite her despair over the ruined turkey, Brydie could feel her heart pounding in her chest as he drew her gaze up to his, refusing to release her with his eyes. “Not so bad, is it?” he said cozily, a smirk appearing on his lips—lips that Brydie had to fight furiously not to press against her own.

  “I need to get this mess cleaned up,” she said instead, but she made no effort to pull away from him.

  “What on earth happened in here?” Ruth Benson demanded, suddenly there in the kitchen as if she were an apparition. She eyed the kitchen scene first—the discombobulated turkey and Mia playing on the floor. Then her eyes snapped up to Brydie and Nathan, who by now had moved away from each other and were staring guiltily down at their feet. “What are you two doing?”

  “Nothing,” Brydie muttered, bending down to pick up Mia. “Come on,” she said to the little girl. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

  “I’ll take the dogs and get them hosed off,” Nathan said. “You’ve got a hose out back, right?”

  Brydie nodded. She walked into the living room. When Elliott saw them, she made an effort to stand up. “It’s fine,” she said to her friend. “We just had a little mishap in the kitchen. Is there an extra set of clothes in your bag?”

  Elliott nodded. “Did Mia . . .”

  “No,” Brydie replied, choking back a laugh. “No, Mia didn’t do anything. But it’s going to be a few minutes before dinner is ready,” she said. “The turkey . . . well, it looks worse than we do.”

  “Good thing we got more food than we can probably eat,” Joe said, giving her a good-natured grin. “Nobody here is in a hurry.”

  Brydie mouthed a thank-you to him before saying to Elliott, “Just stay where you are. I’ll get the both of us changed.”

  Ruth followed Brydie back to the bedroom. “What happened?” her mother asked.

  “Sasha and Teddy happened,” Brydie replied grimly.

  “The dogs?”

  “Yes, the dogs.” Brydie hunched over the bag Elliott had discarded on her bed earlier that day. “Go on back into the living room with Roger.”

  “It looks like she went swimming in turkey gravy!” her mother said, ignoring Brydie’s request. “Weren’t you paying attention to anything at all except that doctor’s hands on your rear end?”

  Brydie felt herself flush hot with anger. “It was an accident,” she hissed.

  “His
hands on your rear end were an accident?”

  Brydie rolled her eyes and pulled Mia into the bathroom, where she discarded the little girl’s stained clothes. Wetting a washcloth, she began to rub at the blotches of brown all over Mia’s skin. “Is that too hot?” she asked her.

  “No, it feels good,” Mia replied, closing her eyes.

  “Maybe after dinner,” Brydie offered. She wiped at Mia’s face. “This gunk is stuck on here good.”

  “Let me see that.” Ruth snatched the washcloth out of Brydie’s hands and began to rub Mia’s forehead.

  “Ow!” Mia screeched.

  “Mom, that’s too rough,” Brydie replied, making an attempt to reclaim the washcloth. “Stop!”

  “You have an entire room full of people waiting to eat,” her mother said, continuing to scrub. “At the pace you were going, it would have taken all night long to get this child’s face clean.”

  “Ow!”

  “Mom!” Brydie said, her voice raising an octave. “You’re hurting her!”

  “She’s fine!”

  Brydie reached down and grabbed the washcloth out of her mother’s hand, tossing it into the bathtub. “Mom, this isn’t your house. Mia isn’t your child. You aren’t in charge here.” She felt the words slide out of her mouth before she had the time to take them back. She bit her lip instead, turning back to Mia, who was now crying softly in the corner. “Shhhh,” she said. “It’s okay.”

  “This,” her mother said acidly, expanding her arms and waving them about the room, “isn’t your house. She isn’t your child, either.”

  Brydie kept her back turned to her mother. “It’s my house for now,” she said. “And while you’re in it, you’d do well to remember that you’re a guest.”

  Her mother let out a noise that sounded like a cross between a snort and a sneeze. “I don’t know why I thought coming here today was a good idea. It’s obvious you don’t want me here.”

  “That’s not true,” Brydie replied, feeling a slight pang of guilt knowing that she wasn’t, in fact, telling the truth. She picked up Mia and carried her past her mother and to the bed. “But this is at least for now the place where I’m living. The people out there are my friends. You can’t just come in and take over.”

  “That’s not what I’m doing.”

  “That’s what you always do.”

  Brydie’s mother followed her out of the bathroom. “I don’t understand why you’re acting like this. I was just trying to help.”

  “I know,” Brydie replied. She felt tired. She really didn’t want to argue with her mother, but the woman just wouldn’t listen.

  “I really thought coming here today would be a nice reunion,” her mother continued. “I thought you’d like Roger.”

  “I don’t know Roger.”

  “He’s a nice man,” her mother said. “He’s so much like your father.”

  “But he’s not my father,” Brydie said, cutting her off.

  “If you’d just get to know him,” her mother replied.

  “He still won’t be my father.”

  Brydie’s mother sighed. It was a sigh she reserved for the times when her daughter was being her most insolent. “Your father would want me to be happy,” she said.

  Brydie closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I want you to be happy, too, Mom,” she said. “Does Roger make you happy?”

  Her mother paused. “Yes,” she said. “He does.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “Are you?”

  “I said I was.”

  Her mother sat down on the bed, kneading her hands into her navy dress slacks. “Brydie, I want to apologize to you.”

  “It’s okay, Mom,” Brydie said. “Mia will be fine.”

  “Not about that,” her mother replied. “Come here. Sit down.”

  “What is it?” Brydie asked, doing as she was told. “Mom, are you okay?”

  Her mother nodded. “It’s just that I feel terrible for the way we left things, you know, when you were staying with me. Before you left for this place.”

  “I know you were just trying to help,” Brydie said. “I just wasn’t ready to date anyone.”

  “No, I don’t feel bad about that,” her mother said, giving her daughter a sideways smile.

  “Then what do you feel bad about?”

  Her mother stopped kneading her pants. “I feel bad about what I said about your father. About his drinking. About him being a bad husband.”

  “Mom . . .”

  “Let me finish,” her mother said. “I shouldn’t have said those things. Your father wasn’t a bad husband any more than I was a good wife. We just . . .” She trailed off. “We just weren’t good together.”

  “You were good together,” Brydie protested. “Not always, but most of the time.”

  “We were good together at first,” her mother continued. “We loved each other. But we got lost somewhere in the middle. I took it out on you that night, and I shouldn’t have.”

  Brydie reached out to take her mother’s shaking hand. “It’s okay.”

  “It’s not,” her mother said, her voice cracking. “I’m sorry. Those things I said about Allan, those were the things I felt about your father. The things I never said.”

  “You weren’t wrong.”

  “Maybe not,” Ruth Benson replied. “Maybe not, but it wasn’t my job to tell you. It was my job to be there for you and let you figure it out for yourself.”

  Brydie wasn’t sure what to say. She’d never heard her mother apologize for anything—at work or at home. The concept was so foreign that the only thing she could think of to say was “I love you, Mom.”

  “Well,” her mother replied, “I love you, too.” She stood up and smoothed out the nonexistent wrinkles in her silk blouse. “I’d better go and find Roger.”

  Brydie watched her mother leave and heard her beckon to Roger, calling out to him about not letting his green bean casserole burn. She looked down at Mia, slightly red-faced and sniffling, and she was reminded of all the times she’d overheard her parents arguing. At least this time, there’d been a happy ending.

  “Hey,” Brydie said to her, touching her gently on the cheek. “How about we get you dressed and we’ll go out there and have a piece of pumpkin pie right this very second?”

  “Really?” Mia asked, hopeful.

  “Really.”

  “Okay.” Mia held out her arms to Brydie, and Brydie picked her up, carrying her as gently as she could into the living room full of waiting people.

  CHAPTER 29

  DESPITE THE TURKEY FIASCO, THANKSGIVING DINNER went off without another hitch. Nobody seemed to mind not having the main course, and Brydie’s anxiety over having ruined everything diminished completely when Leo appeared nearly half an hour after they’d all sat down to eat and claimed quite gallantly that he, for one, abhorred turkey. Not a single person mentioned anything other than the amazing pumpkin pie, shepherd’s pie, and hallacas.

  Even Joe loosened up and talked with everyone, and Brydie could have sworn that she saw more than one smile out of him, although she would never mention it. For Joe, that would have been akin to an insult. As the evening wore down and she’d said goodbye to everyone but Nathan and Myriah, she began to clear the plates and pack a dinner for Pauline. She’d have just enough time to get it there before eight o’clock—the close of visiting hours at the nursing home.

  “What are you doing?” Nathan asked, carrying in a stack full of plates from the table. “Are you still planning to go over to the nursing home tonight? It’s getting late.”

  “I know,” Brydie replied. “But I promised her I’d be there. I don’t want her to wait up for me only to have me be a no-show.”

  “You could just call and tell her you’ll bring it by tomorrow.”

  Brydie shook her head. “I want to take it to her tonight.”

  “Okay,” Nathan said. He sat the dishes down with a plunk into the soapy water in the sink. “Do you think maybe afterwards you’
d want to stop by?” He was looking at her like he’d looked at her earlier. They’d been standing in almost exactly the same spot.

  “What about Myriah?” Brydie asked. She didn’t know why she asked it, but she couldn’t stop herself. That seemed to be a theme in her life at the moment. “Won’t she be there?”

  “No.” Nathan looked at her, cocking his head to the side. “She drove herself here.”

  “Oh.” Brydie peered around him and into the living room. “Where is she, anyway?”

  “Outside with the dogs,” he said. “So? How about it?”

  “I probably shouldn’t.”

  “Why not?” Nathan asked.

  “I guess I don’t have a very good reason.”

  “Good,” Nathan said, brushing his lips up against hers. “You go and see Mrs. Neumann, and I’ll see you in a couple of hours.”

  BRYDIE ARRIVED at the nursing home with twenty minutes left to spare. She’d called just to let them know she was coming, afraid that holiday traffic might cause a delay. Teddy snored in the backseat. He’d been decidedly grumpy about being pulled out of the bed at so late an hour and had whined and snorted his displeasure until falling asleep.

  She pulled on the dog’s leash. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  Teddy blinked up at her in the darkness, and smelling the food she carried, jumped down out of the car, happy to follow her. Once inside, the night receptionist smiled up at her, a hint of panic in her eyes at seeing a visitor so late.

  “Hi,” Brydie said. “I’m Brydie Benson. I called earlier.”

  “Oh, yes,” the woman said. “I just about forgot you were coming.”

  “Is Mrs. Neumann already asleep?”

  The woman, whose name tag read Rita, shook her head. “She was awake just a few minutes ago when the orderlies made their rounds. You can go on back.”

  “Thanks.”

  “That’s a cute dog you’ve got there,” Rita said. She bent over the desk and grinned down at Teddy. “He’s a pug, right?”

  “He is,” Brydie replied.

  “My aunt and uncle have two,” she said. “I just love their little bug eyes. Can I pet him?”