A Year on Ladybug Farm - Donna Ball [126]
They enjoyed the Christmas breakfast they had intended to share with their early-arriving guests: a festive breakfast casserole with sausage and cheese, sticky buns, even the grapefruit halves with coconut and maraschino cherry Santa faces that Bridget had prepared for the grandchildren. For while city dwellers in totally electric homes struggled to make coffee on barbecue grills that morning, the gas ovens of Ladybug Farm were working just fine.
They had small gifts for each other, although the biggest gifts had been given the night before. They opened them while watching Rebel the sheepdog through the window as he bounded and sank across the snowdrifts, stopping every other minute to scratch and shake his head, furiously trying to wriggle out of the new red leather collar Bridget had bought him for Christmas. “He really hates that thing,” Lindsay observed, to which Bridget replied complacently, “He’ll get used to it. After all, we got used to him.”
Lindsay’s gift to Bridget was, in fact, a hand-painted portrait of the border collie, which made her cry, not so much for the subject matter but for the signature at the bottom. For Cici, Bridget had a set of antique woodworking tools, which left her speechless, and for Bridget Cici had spent her spare hours of the autumn putting together a birdhouse from the twigs and bark of the beloved poplar tree. For Lindsay, a nineteeth-century edition of Audubon’s Sketches of America, which Cici had found at the bottom of a stack of old textbooks on a back shelf of Family Hardware. And, as Ida Mae came in to clear away the coffee cups and the wrapping paper, Bridget reached under the tree and brought out a bulky package.
“We didn’t quite know what to get you,” she explained, offering up the package. “I hope you like it.”
Ida Mae grunted, “What’s this?” and wiped her hands on her apron. She took the present hesitantly, and unwrapped it as though she suspected it of being booby-trapped.
“We know how much you enjoy the gramophone,” Lindsay explained as Ida Mae pulled out the stack of old records, some of them still in their yellowing jackets. “And Jonesie finally found these in the back of the store.”
“We thought you could have the gramophone in your room, if you like,” added Cici.
“Well, now, ain’t that nice?” None of them could be sure, but they thought, as the old woman thumbed through the records, they saw the hint of a smile.
But it was gone as she declared gruffly, “Didn’t have a bit of trouble figuring out what to get you bunch of lushes.” She made her way back to the big tree, bent rather stiffly, and pulled from behind it a clumsily wrapped bottle. They laughed in delight as they peeled back the paper.
“Blackwood Farms Shiraz, ’67!” exclaimed Lindsay.
While Cici said, “Ida Mae, how thoughtful! You didn’t have to do that.”
And Bridget added, “I thought this was for your fruitcakes!”
“It’s my last bottle,” she told them, and looked as though she already regretted the gift. “Don’t drink it all at once.”
“We’ll treasure it,” they assured her, and she shuffled back to the kitchen, muttering about all the work she had to do.
But perhaps the best gift of the morning was Bridget’s phone call from her daughter Kate, who was safe and sound in her apartment in Chicago, enjoying Christmas with her girls and, it turned out, their dad. “I was going to tell you when I saw you,” she said, sounding a little shy. “But, well . . . Dave and I are going to try to make the marriage work. No.” Her voice was firmer. “We are going to make it work. It’s best for the girls . . . and for me. For us.”
“Well.” Bridget hardly knew what to say. “That’s—why, that’s wonderful news, Katie.”
“I think I’m a little more grown-up, now,” she said. “I know what’s important.”
Bridget smiled. “I’m so glad, Katie.” But she couldn’t resist adding, “And wouldn’t we both have felt foolish now if I had moved in with you last year like you wanted me to?”
“Actually,” Kate admitted, and Bridget