I assess my fingers—red and throbbing, damn it—and then the cookies. Five of the dozen confections have fractured into jagged, unrecognizable bits. Clenching my teeth against pain and exasperation, I turn on the faucet and run cold water over my tender skin, cursing Meredith and her stupid Holly Hobbie pot holder.
She wobbles into the kitchen, probably drawn by my silent snark. Her volleyball belly has thrown her petite frame into a constant state of unbalance since it popped (her word, not mine) just after Halloween. She’s dressed in coordinating sweats, and when I say “sweats,” I mean expensive leisurewear from Nordstrom in a soft shade of pink, the only color she wears lately, because when you’re expecting a baby girl, you must constantly dress like a puff of cotton candy. She asks, “Everything okay?”
I turn off the water and hold up her pot holder. “Did you know this is ineffective?”
She blinks. “It’s pretty.”
My pulse throbs in my fingertips. I hold them up to show her. “Pretty doesn’t equal practical. What’s the point of a nonfunctioning pot holder?”
She holds a hand to her heart. “Jill, a burn? Let me get some aloe.”
The last thing I need is her coddling. Having spent much of my childhood with my walk-it-off dad, not to mention rough-and-tumble Max, I’ve developed a higher-than-average tolerance for pain. Besides, the cold water helped, and upon second inspection, the burn doesn’t seem so bad after all. “I’m fine,” I say. “Besides, I’ve got dozens of sugar cookies to finish before tonight, and then there are the peanut butter bars and pecan sandies, plus the pumpkin spice snickerdoodles I want to make for fun.”
She gives me an awed smile. Meredith doesn’t cook anything for fun. She’s the prepackaged angel food cake of housewives: light and airy, easily influenced by bolder flavors.
“Will you still be able to make the brownies?”
There’s a sigh building in my chest, but I swallow it. Sliding one of the salvageable cookies from the baking sheet with a spatula, I deposit it on a wire cooling rack. “As long as I start melting the chocolate soon.”
She attempts to straighten a cluster of glass magnets on the fridge. Her hands flutter and flit, shuffling them into a jumble as she says, “You saw the list your father left before he went into work, right? He put it on the dining room table this morning so you wouldn’t miss it.”
Because I spend loads of time in the formal dining room.Good thinking, Dad.
Meredith bustles out of the room, presumably to recover the list that’s so important my dad left it in a room nobody sets foot in. I sneak a nibble of the crumbled cookie rejects, then dump them into a Tupperware container in case I need a snack later—they look awful, but taste amazing. Then I retrieve another mound of cookie dough from the fridge. I’m rolling it across a dusting of flour when Meredith returns, waving a sheet of yellow legal paper.
“Okay, here it is,” she says, skimming the list. She hesitates. “I can help.”
I fight an eye roll. “You shouldn’t even be off the couch. Just read it.”
“So… the tree needs to be decorated, the winter village needs to be set up, the mistletoe needs to be hung, coolers need to be moved down to the basement, and when you get done with all that…” She pauses until I look up from my dough, then smiles in the way that’s sometimes helpful in exploiting my dad, but has little impact on me. “Maybe you can take care of the hors d’oeuvres?”
I set my rolling pin on the counter—gently. “Meredith!”
She’s already got a hand in the air. “I know it’s a lot. But the tree’s up and the hors d’oeuvres just need to be heated and set out—I can definitely help with that.”
Sheshouldbe helping—this is her party. She talks my dad into it year after year.We should know our community, Jake. It’s good for networking, Jake. People expect it, Jake.And this year:Who cares if I’m pregnant, Jake? Jillian can help!
I pick up my rolling pin and resume my work with an urgency I lacked before, because I can do this—I can help my parents maintain tradition, a night of normalcy in a year that’s been anything but. Besides, this party’s as important to Dad as it is to Meredith. He never misses out on a chance to make business connections, hobnob with the neighbors, and put his party basement to use. I’m more than willing to surrender an afternoon to helping out if the result is his satisfaction.
“I’ll ask Kyle to come over,” I tell Meredith. Football season’s over (the boys lost their third-round play-off game—a heartbreaker) and I’m sure he’ll be willing to help out.
She grins. “I knew I could count on you.”
***
Kyle breezes in shortly after I call, a cloud of cologne and lively chatter. He leaps into the role of sous-chef, and when the peanut butter bars are cooling, the last batch of cookies is iced, and the brownies are baking at three hundred twenty-five degrees, we tackle decorating.
He’s putting the finishing touches on the winter village—miniature people, smiles frozen and ceramic—and I’m teetering on a chair, trying to fasten a sprig of mistletoe to the archway between the living room and the front hall, when Meredith appears, belly first, flushed and breathless. “Jillian, I’m in crisis mode!”
My thoughts soar to the baby and I nearly fall off my chair. “What’s wrong?!”
“I need you to play Bunco tonight.”
I prop a hand on my hip. “Jeez, Meredith! I thought you were in labor!”
She touches her stomach, confused. “Of course not—the baby’s months from ready. The Robertsons just canceled because Jackie has the flu. I’ve got to have you to fill the table.”
Only in Meredith’s world would uneven Bunco tables equate crisis. “Uh, no thanks.”
