FRIDAY: Every Year It Was the Same

This is the last post of 2023. Our next post will be Monday, Jan. 8, 2024. Have a wonderful Holiday season!

BY KATRINA JOHNSTON

Copyright is held by the author.

AFTER NINE years of marriage, Mary knew that the holidays were not a good time to ask her husband for a favour.He hated the planning and the decorating that began with American Thanksgiving and stretched through late December. He didn’t enjoy the food; despised the visiting and spurned the social obligations. “Holy horrendous botheration,” he told Mary.

She decided Malcolm was the Grinch, Scrooge and a Piece of Coal. He wasn’t enthused about New Year’s either.

Prior to Christmas, a multitude of volunteer requests landed solely on Mary. She squared her shoulders and became a busy elf, earning the nickname “Christmas Mary”. She had to get away from Malcolm. He was quite depressing. She volunteered throughout the Lakeside district. She car-pooled, organized and cooked. She decorated halls, created festive dioramas, gift wrapped donations, designed and addressed greetings. She even orchestrated a seasonal fashion show.

Mary tried to understand why Malcolm detested Christmas. “I’d prefer to hide away until it’s over,” he told her. And then he repeated a similar litany every year. He said: “Christmas is just an overblown, materialistic excuse to spend a lot of money.”

Malcolm had endured an alcoholic father who had verbally and physically abused his family when Malcolm was a teen. When he was in middle school, Malcolm had never selected nor decorated a Christmas tree. Gifts were almost nonexistent. Joy was drained away into pools of tension and angry words thanks to his father’s bouts of nasty temper.

Today, Malcolm presses his weary palms against his forehead. He sighs repeatedly: “I remember. Yes. I did get a pair of socks.” His father often came home in a drunken state. He declared that the children (Malcolm and his older sister) didn’t require gifts. “That’s a lot of plastic junk,” Malcolm’s father shouted. “No need for crapola.” He shoved Malcolm roughly to one side. “Ya don’t deserve it.” After that, Malcolm rarely left the refuge of his upstairs room.

Shortly after one of the rants, Malcolm’s father walked out on the family and away from Malcolm’s world forever. Today, no matter how many carols chime on the radio, no matter how many festive lights glitter, and no matter how Mary tries to elevate her husband’s mood, Malcolm reverts to Humbug.

When December slides past the middle weekend times, Malcolm holes up for the duration. He sleeps. He eats and complains. “It’s nothing but a huge commercial rip-off,” he says.

Mary drives to Sidney to help out at the seniors homes. She preps meals at the homeless shelter. She decorates the halls and foyers inside care facilities. She crafts ornaments from scraps and ribbons. She wraps gifts for the disadvantaged at the Outreach.

Normally, Malcolm paints. An accomplished artist, he seemed content through the fall – or – at least occupied. He is obligated, by contract, to contribute several finished pieces to a local gallery in early February. By mid November, Malcolm stows away his brushes, his palette and his acrylics. And now he shoves blank canvas deep inside the closet. Maybe he will resume the paintings in January? He confesses to Mary that he always suffers a profound seasonal funk. Mary knows this well. She has her own concerns. She needs to get out of town.

Mary’s Aunt Lizzie has taken a terrible tumble and injured her right hip. She needs nursing care and she lives in Lockton by the Pier, a full-day’s journey east. Mary knows she must leap into action. She will probably have to stay for at least two weeks, spending her Christmas and New Year’s Day in Lockton.

“You’ll have to chip in,” she tells Malcolm.” I’ve got way too much on my holiday agenda.”

“What do you mean, chip in?” Malcolm asks.

“One teeny, tiny contribution.”

“Don’t tell me. Don’t make me. I will not volunteer to wrap, to buy, to sing, to waste money. I will not write out insincere season’s greetings. I will not celebrate.”

“You don’t have to,” Mary tells him.

“So . . . we’re golden then?”

“The gingerbread cookies for the Cornet Childcare Centre.”

“What?”

“I promised four dozen this year. Now . . . See . . . I’ve made the dough; divided into batches. It’s in the freezer. You’ll simply have to thaw it, roll it out and use the cookie cutters. 375F degrees for 25 minutes — I’ve written down extremely specific instructions. Decorate the finished gingerbread men and women. Deliver them to the Cornet Centre by the 22rd. I’ve got jelly bits and sprinkles, several tubes of icing, chocolate chips, black currants and candy crystals. You should enjoy the project. You’re the artist.”

“Cookie dough is not my medium.”

“It is now. I’m not relinquishing my promise or my reputation. I won’t disappoint those Cornet kids. C’mon old man — it might be tons of fun.”

Fa la la la — No, it won’t.”

“Good. I’m counting on you.”

“I’ll miss you Mary, he says. “This will be a strange circumstance if we’re not together.” She picks up her fake suede suitcase, gives Malcolm a hug, and then Mary is outside the door. A local taxi picks her up and speeds her away beyond the ice encrusted driveway.

“I’ll miss you a lot my honey bunch,” Malcolm says into the empty hall, for he loves his wife and sometimes he cannot tell her clearly how much he does. His “Christmas Mary” is gone. She is not his possession nor his “Christmas Present”.

He mopes around for the first two and a half days until he has to face it. Malcolm extricates the batches of dough from the freezer early in the morning of December 20th. He despises what lies before him. It looks brown and repulsive. Malcolm wanders around the kitchen, glares at the firmly rolled-up dough. And then he walks around again. He is a man who keeps a promise. But, has he promised? Really?

“I do not have to do whatever I don’t want,” he says out loud. “Why bother with anything?” He could just let the dough go to waste. He could let it mould. He could toss it in the compost. Malcolm rubs his fist against his unshaven beard. Then he discovers the stock-pile of icing supplies. He notes the chocolate sprinkles, some red-orange crystals. Tiny neon gumdrops. Green jellies. Well, he thinks . . . she has gone to a lot of expense.

He flattens the first batch of dough with the rolling pin, employing quantities of flour as per Mary’s written notes. He sets the oven to preheat and he begins to experiment with the cookie cutters, of which there are but two; one shaped like a gingerbread man, and one a woman. Malcolm is unsatisfied with the results. Soon, tremendously annoyed, he begins to cut his own designs and then he pastes his free-style shapes together. He carves out gingerbread dinosaurs and trucks, robots and an alligator. Creative energy takes him forward. Malcolm finds that he can use the task as a distraction. He watches his own deftly moving hands.

In the zone; he keeps working. He creates silhouettes of bears and pigs, beavers and lions, an elephant, and an eagle. Then, a spouting whale, two dogs in reclining poses; a perfect cat.

Into the oven for 25 minutes as instructed. A few decorations go on before the baking and some are applied when the cookies finally cool. The afternoon morphs into darkness at 4:15. He’s uses up all the dough and most of the trim. He stands back to admire his handiwork. Hallelujah! Oh Holy Night.

***

The day after the night before of little sleep, he delivers his creations to the director at the Cornet Centre for Children, a Ms. Emily Nickerson. She smiles and takes the package from him. “Thanks,” she says and her dentures click together.

***

When Mary arrives home during the murky dark of a late afternoon on January 7th she finds her husband hard at work on his paintings. He is filling in the horizon lines on multiple scenes of the Logan Mountains.

“So how’d the cookies go for the Cornet Child Care centre?” she asks. “Did you deliver them for me?”

“Delicious.” Malcolm says.

“I mean, were you successful in giving them a few gingerbread men and women? You decorated them, uh . . . like I said?”

“I baked. I decorated. I delivered. My cookies were magnificent. They were different.”

“What to do you mean . . . different?”

“I made – you know. I made a gingerbread zoo.”

“What?”

“Check it out. See, I got a thank-you on the mantle.”

It was the sparkliest thank-you card among many others. The director of the Cornet Childcare Centre, had written a note on behalf of all the children who attend. “We loved your unique and wonderful creations,” Ms. Nickerson wrote. “The kids really liked the animal shapes and the unusual ones that looked like transformers.”

It was a new beginning.

Malcolm, aka the Grinch, was becoming Malcolm the cookie architect. He was feeling proud — a new emotion. That’s what Mary understood it to be.

In the subsequent years, Malcolm becomes the cookie guru. Once in a while, during the decorating, he sings Christmas carols, but only very quietly and secretly under his breath. Mary keeps busy with numerous volunteer positions so she is usually not at home when Malcolm does his thing. He sings: Fa La La La and Jingly Jangly Bells. But she hears him attempting to improvise: “Oh Happy Christmas For One Day. Oh! Happy Daze!”

Mary’s Aunt Lizzy recovered from her hip fracture in the early spring. An independent sort, Lizzy moved to California and took-up water skiing.

***

Image of Katrina Johnston

Katrina Johnston is the winner of the CBC Canada Writes — True Winter Tale, and a recent Pushcart nominee. Works of short fiction and other bits of writing appear at several online sites. She views her writing as akin to offering a lighted candle in a dark or hidden place. Katrina lives in beautiful Victoria, B.C., Canada, where she continues writing because she cannot do much else. She cherishes a variety of themes.