Just a bit of seasonal madness with the family of someone we know.
(A provisional "Sorry" to all my readers who may be disappointed to find this is not about everyone's favourite pearl diver for once.)
'Tis the season to go bonkers seemed to have been the motto of the day, the bookshop crowded to the very limit of its capacity, mostly with customers who obviously hadn't wasted one thought on literature since they left school and had no idea where to look for what someone in their family had been adventurous enough to put on their wish list, unless it was to be found on the best-seller display table by the entrance.
She had done her best to keep smiling as she assisted her customers with finding their way through the jungle of mysteries and thrillers, chick lit and romance, sci-fi and fantasy, but she been very hard pressed not to get very impolite with the arrogant banker type who'd complained loudly that he had spent half an hour of his valuable time with a futile search, all over the shop, for Thomas Hardy's Woodlanders.
For a moment, she had been wondering if they had sold all of the three copies she knew they had in store. To play for time, she'd asked him what she'd thought was a rhetorical question, namely "You're sure you've searched both shelves of classics? There are some more over there, you know."
"Classics?" the man had echoed, appearing puzzled. "Why, no! I've been all over the fantasy stuff, though. Isn't The Woodlanders something like The Hobbits or The Orcs or …"
His voice had trailed off when she'd shot him a poisonous look that told him clearly, The sharpest thing about you must be your suit.
That sort of people were the very reason why she detested the Christmas business with all her heart. Yes, it was the time of year that created the biggest slice of revenue and had more than once secured the little shop's survival for another year, but she hated the way the confused, cranky crowds destroyed all the magic the weeks before the holiday were supposed to hold.
Today, she had at least been lucky enough to get out in time to buy the last gifts at the department store around the corner from the bookshop.
Two days to go until Christmas Eve, counting today, and still so many things on her mental to-do list. Wrapping the presents, shopping for groceries, putting up the tree … oh, and they needed to remember to test the fairy lights beforehand, so they wouldn't have to dash into town at the last minute to buy a new set, like last year.
She rummaged in her large cluttered shoulder bag to find her house keys and cursed under her breath when one of the plastic shopping bags she was carrying split, its contents spilling out. When she bent to pick them up while trying not to drop the rest of her shopping onto the rain-wet ground, her heavy key ring came sliding from a side compartment of her bag and smacked into the small lantern on the doorstep, breaking one of the little glass panes.
"Great. Just great", she said aloud, pushing the shards aside with the tip of her boot as she put the key into the lock and pushed the door open with her hip.
The house was suspiciously quiet and the hallway and staircase unusually dark.
With two children aged nine and eleven, there should be some kind of noise going on, plus they always wanted as many lights on as possible because Grace was still afraid of the dark when her parents weren't home. Something wasn't right.
"Grace? Giles?"
No answer.
"Grace! Giles! I'm home!" she shouted up the stairs.
Nothing. Not even music or voices dampened by closed doors.
"Hello!? Where are you?"
She stormed upstairs, tore open doors to empty unlit rooms, stomped back down the stairs, yelling in anger and frustration, "Kids! This is NOT funny! Come out from wherever you're hiding!"
There was no trace of either of them in the living room or the den, but there was a strip of light showing underneath the kitchen door. Hopefully, she flung it open and froze. There was an utter chaos of pans and dishes, the worktop strewn with flour, something sticky had spilled on the table, and there was a yellow smear across one cupboard door. Egg yolk, presumably.
Looks like they have been trying to bake, she thought wryly, remembering guiltily she'd promised them a cookie-making session two weeks ago.
But where the hell were they?
Finally, she had the good sense to check the coat rack in the hallway. Giles's blue down jacket and Grace's purple duffle coat were missing.
I've told them a million times to call me before they go out, she thought angrily, then remembered with another pang of guilt that she had left her mobile in her locker while she worked and probably wouldn't have heard it ringing in the bustling department store afterwards either.
Without taking off her own coat, she checked her phone – noting that nobody had tried to reach her – and dialled her husband's number.
"Hey, darling. What's up?" his familiar warm voice sounded in her ear seconds later.
"Have you got any idea where the kids are?" she inquired without any introduction.
"The kids? At home?" he said, half questioningly.
"No, they're not!" she shouted. "I'm at home now, the kitchen looks a mess, and the kids have disappeared! Did they phone you to say where there were going?"
"Uh … no, I don't think so. But wait … oh, damn, looks like I had a missed call from home. Sorry, love. Kate and I were so busy that I didn't hear it ringing, obviously."
Kate and I. She felt another bubble of anger rise within her. Too busy to hear his own kids phoning.
"Okay, then. If you don't know where they are I'll start phoning their friends. See you." She rang off before he had a chance to answer, feeling like smashing the phone against the wall. Instead, she took a few deep breaths while she slowly counted to ten and fished the old address book she was still using from a drawer of the hallway cupboard.
While she was still debating where they would be most likely found, at the home of Grace's best friend Leslie or with the Johnstons, whose two kids were the same age as Grace and Giles, the doorbell rang.
She shoved the address book into the pocket of her coat and opened, surprised to find herself face to face with Mrs. Chater, the sweet Miss Marple doppelgänger who lived next door with her couple of portly Maine Coon cats.
"Oh, good evening, Mrs. Chater!"
"Good evening, dear. I saw you returning, so I thought I'd bring your little runaways back home straight away."
Now she realized that the old lady was indeed not alone. Giles and Grace were sheepishly grinning up at her, sure that their mother wasn't going to chew them out in front of their neighbour.
"Thanks, Mrs. Chater. Would you like to come in for a cup of tea?" Belatedly, she remembered what the kitchen looked like and hoped Mrs. C was going to decline. Which she thankfully did.
"Good night, everybody. Have fun baking. And don't forget the sample cookies you promised me, you two." With a cheeky wink and a little wave of her hand, Mrs. Chater scampered off, and Giles and Grace set about unwrapping themselves from their coats and hats and scarves and boots. Grace was careful to put a box of eggs safely down on the hall table beforehand.
"What's all this with Mrs. Chater and those eggs?"
Grace was unfazed by her mother's severe tone and explained casually, "Me and Giles, we finally wanted to do that baking you promised us. It's Christmas Eve the day after tomorrow, and we can't wait forever. So we decided to make them on our own, we're not babies after all, but there weren't enough eggs …"
"… because you broke two!" Giles chimed in cheerfully.
"Oh, shut up, weirdo!" Grace hissed and continued in a more dignified, matter-of-fact voice, "Well, there weren't enough eggs, so we went to ask Mrs. Chater. I guess you'll have to buy her some eggs in return."
That snippy, precocious tone!
Where had her cuddly little girl gone, the sweet-natured child who had used to curl up in her father's lap in the evenings around this time of year to listen attentively to a song her dad was singing, or to a story her mum was reading aloud, while her brother was snuggling up to his mother's side?
That God-awful puberty. She had hoped it wouldn't set in quite as early, but at eleven, Grace was all tangled up in the throes of adolescence.
Trying to stay calm, she took off her own coat and went into the kitchen with the kids to assist with the baking and prevent greater damage to the furniture (and to her own reputation with her daughter), even if what she really craved was half an hour on her own in a hot bathtub with only a book for company.
Suppressing a sigh, she looked at the wall clock. Half past six. She hoped Ross wouldn't be home too late tonight. It would be nice to have an unhurried family supper for once, followed by a glass of red after the kids had gone to bed. They hadn't found the time to just sit down and talk all through Advent with its frenzied activity everywhere.
"Listen, what's that?" Kate raised her head that had been bowed over the staff paper alongside his. "Isn't that your ringtone?"
Of course it was the unmistakable whimsical intro of the Gopher Mambo. He sighed and picked up the phone that had remained, forgotten, in the pocket of his coat all day long.
Laurie, the caller ID said. "Hey, darling. What's up?"
"Have you got any idea where the kids are?" She sounded frantic.
"The kids?" he repeated, nonplussed, running a hand through his hair, adding stupidly, "At home?"
"No, they're not!" she replied crossly. "I'm at home now, the kitchen looks a mess, and the kids have disappeared! Did they phone you to say where there were going?"
"Uh … no, I don't think so." Having said this, he began to wonder – he and Kate had tried out some of the passages they'd written and it was well possible that their music had drowned out any other sound. "But wait … oh, damn, looks like I had a missed call from home. Sorry, love. Kate and I were so busy that I didn't hear it ringing, obviously."
His wife's worried tone changed to cold anger as she told him curtly, "Okay, then. If you don't know where they are, I'll start phoning their friends." Before he could react, she had hung up with a clipped "See you" and he was left with a buzzing line.
Boy, she's really pissed off, he thought. All that Christmas stress must be eating her big time. Laurie never hung up on anyone. Normally.
Pursing his lips, eyebrows raised, he stared at his phone for a disbelieving moment and pressed the disconnect button, proceeding to check his text messages. "Off to Mrs C's. Need eggs", Grace had written.
Eggs?
"Trouble at home?" Kate asked before he could pursue the egg riddle any further.
"Nothing grave. The kids haven't gone AWOL after all." He grinned wryly and dialled his wife's mobile again, but she didn't answer. He left a message on her voicemail, adding he wouldn't be home before seven, more like half past, and sat down with Kate again, picking up where they had left off when he'd taken the call.
"As I said, this is wonderful, absolutely wonderful. It's got this lovely wistful mood and a haunting chorus. Really superb, Katie. We'll take it just the way it is, there's nothing to improve about it."
She beamed. "I've been brooding about that one for a long time. It gave me a serious case of writer's block, or should I say composer's block, a while ago and I just let it lie for some weeks, and then in all came gushing out of me in one session. We just need to find a title. I can't seem to think of anything but clichés when it comes to titles. I wonder how many Lonesome Sailors have been composed so far."
"We can do the title later. The music and the lyrics are enough for the moment. This will be the perfect opener."
They had been working on an album of maritime-themed songs for a while. Kate had come up with the idea of doing this as a kind of homage to the grandfather she had never met but heard so much about from those in her family who had known him. He had been a sailor in his youth, a free spirit travelling all over the globe, experiencing romance and heartbreak and all the ups and downs of a seafarer's life along the way, and Kate was utterly fascinated with his story.
After his last solo project, a rather purist recording of traditional Irish ballads, just his voice and his guitar, he thoroughly enjoyed working with the band again, especially with Kate. She wasn't only a gifted flutist and good vocalist, but a very creative and imaginative songwriter. Who'd have thought that the little girl who'd used to attach herself firmly to his heels whenever their parents, good friends for decades, had met, would prove such a valuable addition to the band.
Kate brought out another sheaf of paper and said, "I've also given Coastlines a makeover. I think the bridge works much better this way." She sang the line, and he nodded, reaching for his guitar. "Let's give the whole thing a go, shall we? You can do Kevin's violin intro on the flute for now, solo, and I come in here, right?" he said, pointing at the fifth bar.
"Right." Smiling, she took up her flute, and the crystal notes of a deceptively simple tune filled the studio. He joined in at the required moment with some gentle chords, perfectly in time, underlining the touching melody of the introduction with a subtle rhythm, then began to sing the first verse, and a warm happiness glowed inside him when their voices united in the chorus, her clear alto contrasting beautifully with his gravelly tenor.
He still thanked his lucky stars for sending Laurie and Mr. Tang his way all these years ago. If it hadn't been for them, he'd still be plucking his guitar secretly in the basement, if anything, wasting most of his life with a job he didn't believe in, caught up in a neverending rat race.
This was so much better. He never would have dreamed he'd actually be able to live off his music, but there he was, working on yet another new project after winning quite a lot of critical acclaim for his Irish album, which had also sold reasonably well so far.
They had now arrived at the project phase he loved the most – they had accumulated almost two dozen of new pieces and all that was left to do was record them all and select which ones to put on the album. This meant a lot of trying out different arrangements, honing tunes and lyrics to perfection, discussing which songs would go into the final project and in which order.
He and Kate were barely finished with the new version of Coastlines when Steve and Kevin arrived, laughing loudly, no doubt about some bawdy joke, closely followed by a rather harassed-looking Dermot who wasn't only lugging his double bass along but also a huge carrier bag. "Had to pitch in to do the rest of the gift shopping because the kids started to throw up last night and Maggie couldn't leave the house", he said as he dropped the bag in a corner. "I'm glad she let me come here. I really hate that pre-Christmas frenzy."
"Don't we all", Ross sighed, ruefully remembering Laurie's anger on the phone. He was feeling a trifle selfish about having insisted on this last session with the band before the holiday break, but if the album was to be released in summer, they needed to get ahead as quickly as they could.
And if he was honest, he didn't mind that little timeout from the holiday madness.
It was a fruitful evening that he thoroughly enjoyed, but it came at the price of a rather frosty welcome at his own home.
"Half past seven, huh?" Laurie hardly looked up from the gift tags she was busy writing on the coffee table when he popped his head round door of the den, but her voice was icy enough.
"Ye-e-es, I know I'm abominably late, and I'm really sorry. I know I promised I'd be home earlier. But we were …"
"… so busy we forgot the time, yeah sure. Kate and I."
"It wasn't just Kate and me, it was the entire band. Please, Laurie, don't …"
"When you were too engrossed to even notice your kids phoning, you said Kate and I."
There was something in her pointedly miffed tone that blew his fuse.
"So what if I did? I don't know what it is you've got against Kate or what kind of weird fantasies you're entertaining in your head. She's no competition for you or anything. We're just working on the album together. Sorry I haven't got a nice predictable nine-to-five job. You know pretty well that the album ..."
"Oh, yes, sure, the album. The album that's obviously more important to you than your own family. You should have seen the kids' faces when they had to go to bed without seeing you. Because you were with Kate. Composing."
"Jesus, Laurie, I said I'm sorry! And please stop that nonsense about Kate. I've known her since she was a baby, for heaven's sake!"
"I'd really appreciate if you didn't shout at me", was all she said, pointing the remote at the screen and clicking the TV off. "And now that I know you're still alive after all, I'm going to bed. I'm tired."
He watched, helpless and stunned, as she walked out, very erect and stiff-backed. It was no use trying to calm her down now. That was one thing he knew from experience.
He plonked himself down on the old green sofa and turned the TV back on. Of all the actors in the world, Laurie's favourite fantasy boyfriend appeared on the screen - a dirty and bloodied Rufus Sewell in a suit and tie, trying to squeeze through some hole in a rocky cave.
Ross rolled his eyes. He'd never got what exactly she saw in the man.
With a grunt, he switched to another channel. A reedy teenage tenor was belting out Silent Night. He pressed the button again.
Idly surfing through the bad mix of seasonal reruns and Christmas music shows and old action movies that made up the pre-holiday late-night programme, he realized how hungry he was. He hadn't eaten since lunch and helped himself to the meagre rest of chips left in the bowl on the table.
He shook his head in frustration. Damn that holiday season, he thought moodily. All those people working themselves into a state of frenzy to fulfil the exaggerated expectations everyone seemed to have about the occasion. All those family visits and fancy meals and gifts and decoration. All the shopping and preparing and all that unnecessary stress for a few hours of pretend harmony.
He remembered that his parents had clashed badly in the run-up to virtually every Christmas of his childhood, sometimes not even managing to make up by Christmas Day. He recalled how often he and Paul had wished they could simply have a burger and fries and watch a movie instead of being paraded around in front of the whole big family, dolled up in their best clothes, forced to spend hours on end seated at the lunch or dinner table, with hardly any time to play with their new toys and games or read their new books.
He had always sworn he'd do things differently when he had a family of his own, but somehow they had slipped into the same old routine to make grandparents and aunts and just about everyone except himself happy.
How lovely the first Christmases with Laurie had been. Just the two of them, in that little cabin they'd used to rent in the mountains. No tree, no family dinners, no guests. Nothing but midnight Mass and small thoughtful gifts and curling up with a hot drink and a nice sentimental movie.
It had all changed when the kids came along. Suddenly Laurie's parents and her sisters wanted to play happy family, which usually meant spending Christmas Day at home, with the in-laws and Carrie and her respective current boyfriend visiting, and driving almost a hundred miles to see Michelle and her family of five on the twenty-sixth.
Laurie wouldn't hear of changing anything about this. Not because she had grown so fond of the tradition but because she shied away from the confrontation with her parents. No wonder she was in such a foul mood.
That was the kind of thing that made him regret their decision not to stay in California, about as far away from the rest of her family as was possible without moving overseas.
Grumbling indistinctly to himself, he fiercely scrunched up one of the throw pillows until one of the seams split. Frustrated that even the decoration seemed to be against him tonight, he stuffed the pillow behind another, careful to hide the damage, and went to bed, quietly slipping in beside his wife who had his back turned on him. He wondered if she was really asleep and refrained from giving her a kiss lest she'd complain he'd woken her up, which was not unlikely to happen when she was so peeved at him.
The next morning, he tried to atone for the night before by offering to do all the hated grocery shopping while she got the last workday over with.
The day had begun grey and drizzly. Meanwhile, it was pouring, and his coat and trouser legs were unpleasantly clammy by the time he came home after several hours spent mostly in incredible checkout lines. He shivered as he dropped his bags and boxes in the hallway and went to change into dry clothes first of all, some faded old jeans and a soft grey crew-neck sweater.
There were no clean socks to be found in the chest of drawers in the bedroom, so he padded down the cold wooden stairs on bare feet to search the laundry baskets in the basement. All he found among the clean stuff was children's socks.
Remembering something, he went into the attic and dug through the box of old clothes that nobody had ever managed to drop off at the charity shop, coming up with a collection of woollen socks in horrible colours hand-made by his mother-in law. The least awful ones were still a jarring shade of pea green, but he hoped they'd at least be as warm as they were ugly.
Rubbing his frozen hands together, he set about putting away the mountains of food he had been told to buy. One could have thought they were in for a siege of several weeks instead of two days of family feasts. Did they really need all that stuff?
He guessed they did, otherwise Laurie wouldn't have put it on the list, and, judging from other people's shopping carts at the supermarket, it was apparently quite normal to buy such mind-blowing quantities of food before the holidays.
Downtown had been a veritable madhouse, an experience he had definitely not enjoyed. He didn't even want to imagine the mood his wife would have been in if she'd had to endure the crazy masses after she finished work, and he hoped to God she'd have calmed down a little by the time she came home.
Still feeling pretty cold, he made himself a large mug of tea and munched a few of the cookies the kids had made last night. About one hour to go until the two of them would be home from school, just enough time to write his traditional Christmas cards for Laurie and the kids and wrap Laurie's gift.
Upon leaving the kitchen, he walked straight into the corner of the table, spilling half of his tea on the floor. With a rude oath, he went to get a rag.
As he was cleaning up the mess, one of these moments of brilliant inspiration hit him with several fully formed bars of a guitar solo that would be the perfect intro for Shipwrecked On Your Shore.
He had to get a pen and paper, fast, before it was all gone; so he eagerly hurried into the tiny chamber that was his study and practice room, whipped out a sheaf of staff paper and quickly jotted a string of neat little notes down, got his guitar and tested what he'd written, found fault with one bar in the middle, erased, re-wrote, tried again.
Until the door of the room opened and jerked him back from that other world he'd been absorbed in.
"Hi, Dad!" Grace stood in the door in her tight grey jeans and loose white fitted shirt, a purple-patterned scarf draped artfully around her neck, her hair tied up in a slightly tousled topknot.
When exactly had his daughter become so scarily grown-up, he wondered. She easily looked two or three years older than eleven in that getup, and she certainly had the attitude, and the airs and graces, of thirteen going on twenty-five, plunging from exuberance into bad temper and back again within seconds.
Thus he was quite surprised when she gave him a genuine enchanted smile and said, "That sounds soooo cool. Is that a new one?"
"Yup. Just popped into my mind."
"Can we do the tree now?" Giles asked somewhat inarticulately. He had squeezed past his sister with a chocolate chip cookie in his hand and another in his mouth, which accounted for his mumbling.
"No, we can't, stupid." Grace glared at him. "We always do that in the morning of Christmas Eve, remember? And what's that you're eating again? Aren't you fat enough anyway?"
"I'm not fat", Giles, who was rather sensitive about being slightly on the chubby side, protested, visibly stung. He paused for a moment to regain his composure and retorted, "But you know what, Grace? Your ass is fat, and it gets fatter every day!"
"Oh, up yours, weirdo." Grace narrowed her eyes with all the contemptuous composure she could muster. "Go and …"
"STOP IT!" Ross heard himself yell at the top of his voice. "Cut it out this moment! And will you watch your mouths please! How many times have I told you I don't want you to use this kind of language?"
"But he always …", Grace began.
"She said …", Giles began.
"I said stop it and I meant it!" their father shouted. "Go into your rooms, both of you. I don't want to hear any bickering again, or else you can forget about your Playstation games and your iTunes gift cards and whatever other junk was on your wish lists."
Both kids stood dumbstruck. Giles's hand was slowly crunching the cookie to bits, his green eyes large and quite shocked in his flushed face. Grace's lower lip was trembling, a strange contrast to her earlier behaviour that almost moved him to hug her.
Instead, he snapped at them, "Now move! Go on, get out!"
They scurried off, leaving him feeling like the biggest jerk on earth.
Rather exhausted, he dropped back on his chair. Pushing his black-rimmed glasses up on his head, he rubbed his eyes and groaned, wishing this God-awful holiday was over.
A headache was beginning to hammer in his temples, in time with the sudden eruption of music in Grace's bedroom. He considered walking out into the hall to shout up the staircase for her to turn it down, but it didn't seem worth the while. She'd either not hear him over the din or pretend she didn't. He simply closed the door to shut out the racket and allowed himself the luxury of zoning out for a bit.
Laurie's voice woke him up about an hour later. "Ross? Ross! What's the matter with you? Have you been sleeping? Here? And what's that racket?"
He blinked at her slowly and tried to make sense of what she was saying. It took a moment until he realized in his woozy mind that the music upstairs was still on full blast and that he must have fallen asleep at his desk, with his head in his hands.
He wanted to explain what had happened, but all he managed was, "I guess I'm getting a cold. I feel like shit."
"You look the way, too", Laurie said mercilessly. "Have you done all the shopping? Did you get the sage for the turkey stuffing? And did you remember the lactose-free ice cream for Parker, and the …"
He threw up his hands in defeat. "You bet I got everything you had on that mile-long list and then some, except for the turkey. I'll go and pick that up at the butcher's tomorrow morning. And if you'll excuse me now, I think I'll lie down for a while. My head is about to explode."
"Yes, sure", she said, adding, with the tiniest bit of reproach, "I'd thought you could help me with the gift wrapping tonight, but I guess that's not a good idea now."
After he'd gone upstairs, uncharacteristically quiet, Laurie wondered why she'd felt the need to complain about the gift wrapping. It was something she actually liked doing and nothing she couldn't do without his aid.
Maybe she had just been disappointed about another missed chance of spending a bit of time with Ross, and knackered from another killer day at the shop. She so wanted all that Christmas crap over and done with.
The horrible music blaring from Grace's room – what on earth had she and Ross done wrong in their education that her daughter loved screaming females in silly outfits and the bland elevator pop of various boy bands? – had finally ceased, and the girl came shuffling downstairs with her boots still on. From the look on her face, she was about to whinge about some terrible injustice that had been done to her, presumably by her brother.
Before she could open her mouth, Laurie scolded her for not taking off her boots and for turning up the volume so loudly - before she spotted something else.
"Come here, Grace", she said sternly.
"Why?"
"I said come here."
"First tell me why."
"I want to get a close look at you."
"Why?" Grace stubbornly remained where she was.
Laurie lost patience and stormed up the stairs, facing her daughter from close up, firmly rubbing a fingertip over Grace's cheek. "Because you're wearing make-up again. I thought we had agreed you'd not do that until you're older."
"But Leslie and …"
"I don't care what Leslie and Leanne are allowed to do. These are our rules and I …"
There was a suppressed giggle behind the upstairs banister. Laurie glimpsed a bit of dark curly hair above the edge and rolled her eyes.
"Shove off, dunderhead!" Grace had detected her brother, too, who blew his thin cover completely by countering his sister's rudeness with a gush of his own favourite, non-quotable expletives.
"Hey! Watch your language, will you?" Laurie called out, totally unnerved. "Do me a favour and go back into your rooms, both of you. I don't want to see or hear anything of you until dinnertime."
She watched them disappear into their respective rooms. Grace slammed the door shut behind her but thankfully kept the volume down when she flicked her music back on.
Laurie sat down on the stairs and stared blankly ahead for a few minutes. She couldn't remember ever having looked less forward to the festive season. This year's run-up to the holiday had been the worst and the most stressful ever, and the thought of a ton of gifts to wrap and all the decorating to finish made her want to scream, to say nothing of all the preparations required for the traditional family feast, the mountains of dirty dishes piling up afterwards, or the long drive to Michelle's early on the twenty-sixth.
She fantasized about a nice little tropical island for a moment, just herself and the waves. And Ross, maybe. But definitely no kids, no holiday guests, no bad weather and certainly no stress and no quarrels.
Maybe in another life, she thought and went upstairs to have a shower, hoping it would refresh her spirit along with her body.
Christmas Eve began with a bang.
Ross had got up around half past eight, glad that yesterday's headache was gone and he was feeling much better, intending to make breakfast for the rest of his family. After he'd set the table, he sneaked outside to get the paper because he knew Laurie loved reading it at breakfast, and promptly landed spread-eagled on his back when he'd barely left the doorstep. The ground was covered with the thinnest layer of ice, as good as invisible but slippery as hell.
Cursing wildly, he picked himself up and made his way to the mailbox, gingerly holding on to shrubs and bushes. ´
He definitely deplored not being in California now.
Safely back in the house, he massaged his aching backside and vowed not to tell anyone while he walked upstairs to wake Laurie and the kids.
There was no need to rouse the latter, though, or to try and keep the incident to himself. Both of them were doubled over with laughter by the window on the upstairs landing.
"What's so funny?" he asked, although he knew what they found so exhilarating.
"You!" Giles snorted.
Grace was actually kind enough to ask if he'd hurt himself, the sweet little girl peeking through the prickly adolescent surface for a thoughtful moment.
"Not too much", he said and went on into the bedroom. He had intended to wake Laurie with a kiss, but she was already up and brushing her teeth in the adjoining bathroom.
So much for romantic plans, he thought with some resignation, kissing the nape of her neck above the collar of her pajama jacket. She smiled at the pair of them in the mirror, rinsed out her mouth and said, "Sorry for bitching around so badly these last few days, but was pure horror at the shop. I just couldn't stand it any more, all that lunacy. You feeling better?" She gave his mirrored face a critical scrutiny.
He nodded. "Much better. Guess I'm fit for the big day." He bared his teeth ironically and went downstairs to toast some bread and make the kids some hot chocolate.
At breakfast, the mood was surprisingly relaxed. Everyone seemed to have forgotten about the strife of the previous day, even Grace refrained from sneering and whining and nettling her brother.
He started hoping this Christmas would turn out well after all.
His hope was dashed quickly.
Temperatures remained too low for the ice to melt and Laurie realized in terror that it was impossible to get down the hill into town, which meant no turkey.
Ross tried to calm her down by pointing out her family wouldn't be able to come anyway if the condition of the roads didn't improve, but she wouldn't hear of it and got into the rage of her lifetime because he hadn't taken the time to get the bird yesterday.
Giles and Grace's happy anticipation quickly changed into a different kind of excitement as their mother's dour mood rubbed off on them, and they were at each other's throats within seconds of having started to decorate the tree.
Ross had to separate them when they started whacking each other with cardboard boxes, one of which still contained glass ornaments, and ended up getting hit in the face himself.
Laurie meanwhile threw smoldering looks at the window, as if red-hot anger would do anything to melt the ice, and she grew continually more fretful as the mercury remained firmly stuck below thirty degrees and snowflakes began to tumble out of the greying skies in the late morning.
By noon, the drive and the garden - and the road - were covered with a thick blanket of pristine snow.
Grace let go of all her grown-up attitude and plunged right into the splendid white with her brother to make snow angels before they began to pelt each other with snowballs.
They started a fistfight when Giles landed a snowball smack on his sister's ear, but as both of them toppled over in their brawl, rolling about in the snow, they couldn't help laughing at themselves.
Ross had been watching them from the kitchen window and smiled to himself. Just like him and Paul. Fighting like cat and dog one minute and bosom buddies the next.
Laurie was frantically searching fridge and pantry, trying to think up an alternative menu for tomorrow's traditional family feast.
When she heard the radio weatherman forecasting even more snow, she began wondering vaguely if there was a chance her parents and her sister wouldn't come at all and debated with herself what she actually would want to happen, given the choice.
The phone rang around half past three.
Ross picked it up and was strangely relieved to hear Ellen's voice tell him what a dreadful, dreadful weather it was and that they could hardly get out of the house, to say nothing of driving anywhere, and how awfully sorry she was that they wouldn't be able to spend Christmas together for the first time in over ten years. And by the way, Carrie wouldn't be able to make it either, she and Parker were stranded at his grandma's with three feet of snow.
Ross assured his mother-in-law that he was also awfully sorry and hung up.
He knew he sounded way too gleeful when he informed Laurie about the call who was so close to a nervous breakdown already that she dissolved into tears.
The kids came in, their cheeks and noses red with cold and delight, ravenous and tired.
When he told them the news over tea and cookies, their faces fell.
"When will we get our gifts from Grandma and Grandpa, then?" Giles asked with disappointed puppy-dog eyes. "I can't wait to see if they've got me the Star Wars Lego spaceship I asked for."
"Is that all you can think of, your gifts?" Grace snorted, putting on a very grown-up face. "I've been sooo looking forward to see Carrie. She said she'd bring her laptop to share some music files. She's even got the Lady Gaga Christmas album!"
Ross was unable suppress a groan. "If it means we'll be spared listening to that full blast, then there may be some good in this chaos."
"Dad! Don't be so mean!" Grace squealed. "She's such a great artist!"
Giles pretended to stick his finger down his throat and made a gagging noise. Ross, secretly agreeing with his son, tried to hide a grin behind his fingers as not to spark another clash between his children.
"Well, speaking of upsides, I guess it's just as well they won't be coming, considering we've got no turkey", Laurie said wearily.
"Can we have pizza, then?" Giles, who wasn't too fond of fancy food, asked hopefully
"No, stupid! Pizza's not festive enough", Grace told her brother. "I think it's a pity there is no turkey."
"Feel free to make your way into town and get it", Laurie snapped.
Ross cut in, "With all that food in the house, I'm certain we're not going to starve, and I'm sure we'll survive not having a turkey for Christmas this once. So let's not quarrel now, please."
Contrary to the rest of his family, he was actually beginning to like the idea of this different kind of Christmas.
After he'd sent the kids off to have a bath to kill a bit of time, he and Laurie exchanged a wry look. He was pretty sure she was glad her family had cancelled their visit, but she'd certainly get him wrong if he said anything along these lines.
They spent a wordless while on the sofa, sipping their tea, looking out the window where thick flakes were still sinking earthward in majestic silence.
Eventually, Ross dared put a tentative arm around Laurie's back, and she didn't shake it off as he'd half expected her to but leaned her head on his shoulder, smiling, and gave a half exhausted, half happy little sigh.
He kissed her tenderly on the top of her head and smiled, too.
"Listen, what's that?" Laurie perked up suddenly as she heard the reedy notes of a descant recorder, followed by two clear young voices singing Winter Wonderland.
"The kids", Ross said with a proud glow in his eyes. "Aren't they sweet?"
"Sometimes", Laurie replied dryly, and both of them laughed.
There was one last tearful episode on that day when it became obvious that almost two feet of snow made it quite impossible to go to Midnight Mass. No way to make it to St. Martin's, not even on foot.
Giles, overwrought and overtired and disappointed, was inconsolable. It would have been the first time he was allowed to come along. He cried and raged for the best part of an hour until he let his dad wrap him up in a comforting hug and finally fell asleep on the sofa with his head in his father's lap.
Ross carried the sleeping boy upstairs and laid him gently down on the bed, removing only his shoes and socks before he tucked him in.
"… 'sit already morning?" he mumbled in his half-sleep, turning over on his side, when Ross was about to leave the room.
"Not yet, buddy. Sleep tight."
"Mmmm." Giles burrowed his dark curly head into his pillow, and it wasn't a minute until his deep, regular breathing showed that he'd been quick to slip into the realm of dreams.
Ross smiled at the sight of his sleeping son. Both his children had always slept like this, on their side, tightly hugging one corner of the quilt, the way he'd used to hold on to his own duvet when he was their age.
He closed the door softly, trying not to make any sound, and went downstairs to help Laurie play Santa before they went to bed themselves. It had been a long day, and the kids would probably be up frightfully early in the morning.
They were, of course, at least one of them.
It was not yet seven when a little hand touched Ross's shoulder. He was confused for a moment, then squinted up at the small figure outlined darkly against the dim light seeping in from the corridor.
"Daddy? I can't sleep any more!" Giles declared in an excited stage whisper.
Ross suppressed a moan. That amazing ability to be so fearsomely awake so early in the morning was one of the greatest downsides of having children, but he remembered his own excited anticipation on Christmas mornings and decided to go for a compromise. He couldn't bring himself to wake Laurie just yet, but he knew there was no way of getting the boy back to bed.
He rose quietly, feeling for his glasses on the nightstand, and signalled Giles to come along downstairs. He made a mug of hot chocolate for the boy and a cup of coffee for himself and arranged a few cookies on a plate so the child wasn't going to starve until the ladies were ready, took everything into the den and told Giles to make himself comfortable with a quilt. "I'll be with you in a minute."
He came back with a book, bound in dark red linen with somewhat faded golden lettering on the cover. His grandmother had often read to him from this collection of Dickens's Christmas stories, and he had usually done the same on Advent Sunday afternoons, but not this year. To Giles's great disappointment, he had simply never got around to it with the kids' school plays and carol concerts and his working on the album and whatever else had eaten up all the precious time.
The boy's vivid eyes lit up brightly when he spied the treasured volume in his father's hand, and a delighted "Ohhh!" escaped him.
Ross settled beside him on the green sofa and ceremoniously opened the venerable old book. When the familiar, slightly musty smell hit his nostrils, it almost felt like he was a child again himself. Giles tucked up his knees, wrapped the quilt firmly around his legs and looked up at Ross expectantly.
With a little smile, he began to read the introduction he'd heard so often that he wouldn't have needed the printed words.
"Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that."
He had hardly gone past the first paragraph when a voice chimed in, "'… what there is particularly dead about a door-nail.' You're reading it after all!"
Grace took the seat on the other side of her father, pushing her cold feet under his thighs to warm up while she pulled her terrycloth bathrobe closer around herself.
This was how Laurie found her family when she came downstairs twenty minutes later, wondering why it was so eerily quiet around the house on a Christmas morning.
She smiled about the three of them in their nightwear, one child to each side of Ross. His hair was still mussed from the night, which, along with his old plaid pajamas, gave him an adorable little-boy air despite the dark shadow around his chin and cheeks and the stern black-framed glasses and a few sprinkles of silver in his thick dark curls.
Both children were listening raptly to his dark velvet voice, Grace leaning her head on her father's shoulder dreamy-eyed while Giles chewed on a cookie thoughtfully.
After what had easily been the most horrible December of her memory, the peaceful quiet scene filled her heart with a glowing warmth that was more of a gift than anything money could buy.
No bickering, no whining, no stress.
And no guests on the horizon for once.
Just a long day to spend by the tree and the fireside with the three people she loved more than anything, doing whatever they felt like doing. What a blissful prospect.
Ross and the children were so engrossed in Dickens's immortal classic that they hadn't yet noticed her. She simply stood and watched them with an overflowing heart through the half-open door.
That old Calvin and Hobbes Christmas cartoon was so right, she thought.
The best presents don't come in boxes.