A Catered Thanksgiving (3 page)

I
t had started snowing in earnest on Thursday by the time Bernie and Libby gathered up the supplies they'd need to cater the Fields' Thanksgiving dinner. They'd gone to bed as soon as they'd closed the shop at nine o'clock, and slept straight through until seven o'clock the next morning. They probably would have slept later if one of their customers hadn't pounded on the shop door and asked if they had any desserts they could sell her for tonight.

Fortunately, Bernie and Libby had an order that hadn't been picked up yesterday, so Libby had slipped on her robe and trundled downstairs to sell Mrs. Haldapur three pies—two pecan and one juiced apple. Then she'd made a big pot of coffee, toasted some cinnamon bread, added a tub of fresh butter from one of the local dairy farms to the tray, and brought everything upstairs. Bernie had already turned on the TV, and she and her sister sat there watching the Macy's Day Parade and sipping coffee and eating buttered cinnamon toast for a little while.

“It feels funny not having Dad here,” Libby noted as she ate her third piece of toast.

Bernie looked up from yesterday's edition of the local paper. “I hope things are going well.”

“Me too,” Libby said. “I mean, he sounded okay when he called. Unless he was putting on an act.”

Bernie closed the paper. “I guess he'll tell us when he gets home.”

“Even if the visit isn't going well, he won't tell us.”

Bernie checked the clock on the wall. It was time to get going. “This is true,” she said as she stood up.

Bernie showered, dried herself off, and slipped into a white long-sleeved T-shirt, followed by a black merino wool turtleneck sweater and her dark green cargo pants. Normally, she wouldn't wear something like that in the kitchen, as it would be too warm, but she figured, considering the temperature at which Monty Field kept his house, she'd be okay. Then, to be on the safe side, she put a cotton long-sleeved turtleneck in her tote in case she had to change. She finished her outfit with a pair of heavyish green and yellow striped socks under some ankle-length black Dr. Martens. Libby, in turn, put on a white cotton turtleneck shirt, a black cardigan sweater, a pair of black slacks, and a pair of sensible black shoes.

“We're not serving the food,” Bernie told Libby when she took a look at her outfit.

Libby looked puzzled. “I know that,” she said.

“I wasn't sure, because you look like a waiter in those clothes.”

Libby shrugged. At this point she was too tired to care. Her clothes were clean. They fit—kinda. And they were unobtrusive.

“You should get some new pants,” her sister added. “Those should be retired. The seat is bagging out.”

“I plan to on Friday,” Libby lied as she closed the door to the flat. She hated shopping.

“And not from a catalog, either. You have to try them on.”

Libby just grunted, annoyed that Bernie had called her out. But she didn't say anything, because there was no point. She'd tried, but she couldn't get Bernie to see her point of view. She didn't care about clothes. Not in the slightest. Unlike Bernie, who was a fashionista. On this issue they had to agree to disagree.

Libby was thinking about how one mother could have produced two daughters so opposite in their tastes as she and Bernie went downstairs and began gathering the supplies for the upcoming meal. The shop seemed especially quiet after yesterday's commotion, and as Libby passed the ovens on the way to the cooler, she could almost hear them sighing in relief. She ran her hand over the counters, then lightly touched the kitchen witch hanging over the window by the sink, something she did every day.

Libby remembered her mother buying the good luck charm at a craft fair two years after she'd opened A Little Taste of Heaven, and even though the witch was now more than a little worn, and she'd had to restitch the seams a couple of times, Libby wouldn't let Bernie take it down. Not that she was superstitious or anything, but why mess around with something when it was working, especially when the business you were working in was so precarious?

They'd had good luck so far, and Libby saw no reason to change things up now. Besides, the witch reminded her of her mom. She was thinking about her and how she'd always worn an apron in the shop kitchen—a different colored one for every day of the week—as she glanced out the window.

The weather reports had predicted light flurries, but this was more. This looked like a storm. Great. Just what they didn't need. Oh well, they'd better get a move on. The roads would be bad, and it would take them longer than usual to get to the Fields' house.

Longely was a great town and Libby was happy to be living here, but the town wasn't very good at snow removal and the shop's van didn't have its snow tires on yet. Libby made a clucking noise with her tongue as she pondered the possibilities for disaster. After she'd come up with several scenarios, she decided it was better to try to think positively—an ability that had unfortunately eluded her since childhood.

And on that note Libby continued on to the cooler, opened the door, and slid the box containing the turkey out. It was an eighteen-pounder, which was rather large for the number of guests coming, but Perceval Field had said that they wanted enough for leftovers, which this would surely do. In fact, both she and Bernie had tried to convince him that a twelve-pound bird would do the trick, but he'd remained adamant on the subject, and so they'd bowed to his wishes under the rubric of the customer is always right—something that was so not true. In fact, he'd even specified the brand of turkey he'd wanted them to buy.

That had irritated Bernie no end, although it really shouldn't have. In Libby's humble opinion one brand of frozen turkey was as good as the next. No. Her fear was that since they hadn't gone to the Fields' house and seen the oven in the kitchen, the turkey might be too big for it plus the other dishes they had to fit in.

Perceval had assured them that that wasn't the case, and Libby figured they'd have to go with that. It was not as if they had a choice. And if that were the case, they would figure something out. They'd have to. Lately, Libby had come to realize that in a funny way cooking and baking were all about problem solving. You had the ideal, which was the recipe, and then you had reality. Reality was when you had the oven that wasn't calibrated correctly, you had the wrong-sized pans, you had ten eggs when you needed a dozen. The trick was to bring about some sort of amalgamation between the two and get a good result.

“I hope that oven is big enough,” Bernie said, echoing Libby's thoughts as she watched her sister take the turkey out of the cooler, where it had been defrosting. It wasn't even fresh-killed, for heaven's sake, but this was what Perceval and Ralph Field had wanted and this was what they'd gotten. Both of them had claimed that this kind of turkey was what their brother wanted, and who was she to dispute that?

“I hope the oven is big enough, too,” Libby said as she carried the box to the van.

It was snowing harder now, the snow coming down in thick, fat flakes. Bernie turned and studied the window of A Taste of Heaven. The window had come out well, if she had to say so herself. Mrs. Fowler's fifth-grade class had made a diorama of the first Thanksgiving meal between the Indians, or the first Americans, as they were now being called, and the Pilgrims. This formed the main element of the window design.

Bernie had had something else in mind, but her dad had told Mrs. Fowler that his daughters would love to display the classroom work in the store window, so what could she do? Bernie hadn't had the heart to contradict him. And, anyway, it was good community relations. But once they'd gotten the diorama in the window, it had become obvious that it was too small, so Bernie had surrounded it with old-fashioned paper turkeys with scarves wrapped around their necks, ears of corn with faces painted on them, and gourds wearing hats.

What she had was your standard kitschy Thanksgiving holiday window, but then she'd taken some pies, both big and small, lacquered them, and hung them from the ceiling. Somehow the whole thing worked. Maybe, Bernie mused, that was why they'd sold so many pies this year. It wasn't the one-liner in the
Times
at all; it was the window sending out subliminal messages. She was deciding that next year she'd decorate in cheesecakes when Libby came up behind her.

“Thinking about what you're going to do for Christmas?” she asked.

Bernie laughed and brushed the snowflakes out of her hair. “Well, I'll tell you one thing it's not going to be. Pies.” She turned back to the van. “I can't believe it's snowing like this in November. What ever happened to global warming?” she asked.

“Well, wherever it is, it's not here,” Libby replied as she tromped back into the kitchen to get more supplies.

Bernie joined her. They loaded up the boxes with sweet potatoes, onions, celery, peppers, garlic, pearl onions, string beans, two types of mushrooms, butter, heavy cream, freshly baked corn bread, Parker House rolls, a bag of marshmallows, two pies and one cheesecake, and whipped cream, along with five different types of cheese, a variety of crackers, olives, spiced pecans, and walnuts, as well as dried dates, figs, and apricots. And that wasn't even counting all the other stuff they were bringing.

As Bernie moved the box that contained the turkey to the side to make room for the other boxes, she said, “Why these people insisted on having a battery-raised turkey, I don't know,” she groused. “They're tasteless.”

“You tried to suggest alternatives and they didn't listen,” Libby said.

Bernie sighed. “It's just that, popular opinion to the contrary, this kind of turkey is difficult to cook well. They tend to get mushy or extremely dry, and they're flavorless. Except for the skin, of course.”

Libby put the box with the pies in the van and wedged it between the other two boxes so it wouldn't slide before replying. “
Chacun à su goût,
as they like to say in French.”

Then she and Bernie went back inside for another load. What with attending to a few last-minute details, it took them another fifteen minutes to load up the van. Then Libby took out her list of ingredients and read them off while Bernie looked to see that they had packed everything. This, they had painfully learned, was the best way to ensure that they didn't forget anything. “No ingredient left behind,” was Libby's motto.

That accomplished, they both got in the van and fastened their seat belts. Bernie put the key in the ignition and turned it. The van made an odd clunking sound as it started up.

“This van is like an old lady,” Bernie observed as she pulled out into the street. “It's always got something new wrong with it.”

“I hope that something isn't anything serious,” Libby said.

Bernie crossed her fingers. “Me too.” Bernie knew they needed to get a new vehicle and soon, but whenever they'd saved up enough money, another emergency came along and they were back where they started again.

Libby stared out the window as the van puttered along at thirty miles an hour. For the moment, the town looked deserted. All the shops on the main drag were closed, and there were just two or three other cars on the street besides theirs. It seemed as if everyone was either traveling to their destination or had already arrived. And, of course, the storm didn't help things.

“This is what it would feel like to be the last person on earth,” Libby opined right before she spotted a figure in a parka and snow pants being pulled along the sidewalk by his or her golden retriever.

Bernie didn't respond. She was too busy concentrating on driving. The van was a little wobbly at the best of times, but when it was fully loaded, it got more so. Especially since the van's all-weathers were almost bald. She slowed down to twenty-five miles an hour, and the van stopped sliding. The snow was coming straight at them now, and in addition to everything else, Bernie found it difficult to discern where the road ended and the sidewalk began. She hadn't seen this kind of snow since she'd been caught in a blizzard in Buffalo ten years ago.

“This is bad,” Libby said as they turned right on Ash Street.

Bernie just nodded. Then she reached over and turned on Pat Benatar. She needed the music to distract her. The driving got worse as they left Longely, the snow sweeping off the fields and across the roads, creating whiteouts.

“Why don't you see what the weather channel says?” Libby suggested after fifteen minutes had gone by.

“What's the point?” Bernie snapped, squinting to better see the road. “I know what it's going to say. That we're in the middle of a friggin' blizzard.”

“How long do you think it's going to take us to get to Field's house?”

“At the rate we're traveling? Another ten or fifteen minutes.” Bernie patted the van's dashboard. “I promise I'll feed you premium gas if you get us there,” she cooed.

Libby laughed. “It's the getting back that's worrying me.”

“Hopefully, the storm will have blown itself out by then,” Bernie responded as she turned onto Beechcroft Road. “I mean, this has to stop sometime, right?”

“Right,” Libby said as she looked at the veil of white enshrouding the car.

Bernie took one of her hands off the wheel to rub the back of her neck, which had grown stiff with tension. By her calculations, they had five more miles to go until they got to their destination, and it was definitely going to be a white-knuckle ride. The road went up and down a series of hills. In the spring Bernie was sure it would be a beautiful drive, with green fields on either side and a vista of the valley down below. Unfortunately, that was not the case now. The wind had piled the snow up across the road, making it hard to negotiate.

Every time the van had to go up a hill, it spluttered and coughed, and every time it went down the hill, it slid from side to side, forcing Bernie to ride the brakes all the way. By the time they arrived, Bernie was exhausted from the effort of keeping the van on the road, and although she didn't say it, she was beginning to wonder how they were going to get out of there and back to Longely by the time they were supposed to leave.