Sisterhood Everlasting - Ann Brashares [51]
The phone rang and jolted her from her thoughts. She stared at it without even considering the idea of sticking out her hand and picking it up. After a few seconds, she poked the button and the message began playing. She hadn’t realized it was Christmas Eve until her robot-voiced message machine told her the date.
“Len, it’s me. I’m on the train right now, because you are not allowed to spend Christmas alone. I’m passing through … I don’t know, New Haven? I think that was the last stop. I said in the last message I’d be at your place by one, but it looks more like one thirty. Call me back and let me know you got this.”
Lena felt as if she were choking on her tongue. Effie was on her way. She was coming here to keep her company for Christmas, and that was about the last thing Lena wanted.
She should have known she couldn’t get away without acknowledging Christmas. Her parents had finally let the matter drop after badgering her endlessly about coming home to Bethesda, but she should have known she hadn’t heard the last of it.
Why hadn’t she listened to her messages? If she had she could have caught Effie while she was still safely in New York, not racing past New Haven. She could have somehow talked her into staying there or doing something else. Now Effie was coming here, and what was Lena supposed to do?
She knew Effie all too well. Effie was going to pester her with questions and confidences and take her out to dinner and make a big fuss about exchanging presents and sleep in her bed with her. Effie wouldn’t leave her alone. She would crawl into Lena’s precious quiet like a tapeworm.
Lena put her face in her hands. Should she call Effie right away? Before she entered the state of Rhode Island? Lena racked her brain for excuses to make Effie turn around and go back home. Leprosy? Bedbugs? No heat or hot water?
No, Effie was on the move. She couldn’t be turned away. Lena suspected that her parents were a big part of the impetus for this visit and probably the ones financing it. If Lena wasn’t careful, Effie would book them a hotel room with massages and manicures all around.
There was only one thing Lena could do. She could be so arduously, painfully boring that Effie would leave the next day. And that, at least, came naturally.
Jones decided, somewhat impulsively, that they should spend Christmas in Fresno, California. Christmas needed to be celebrated, and his parents needed to meet his fiancée before the wedding, so that was what they did.
Which was how Carmen found herself sitting at a dining room table in a modest ranch house in suburban Fresno on Christmas Eve, between the elderly Mr. and Mrs. Jones.
There was an artificial tree in the living room, a fruitcake on the kitchen counter, but as they sat down to dinner, Carmen was surprised by how little ceremony there was. There were no prayers or toasts, they just started eating. They didn’t even remember to turn the TV off.
“I can’t hear what he’s saying,” Mr. Jones said with some irritation after he’d eaten most of his ham.
Carmen wasn’t sure Jones was saying much of anything, but she jumped out of her chair to turn the volume down on the television so they could all hear it in case he did.
“No. The other way,” Mr. Jones directed her, and she realized the person Mr. Jones couldn’t hear was the man on the TV.
“Oh. Okay. Sorry.” Carmen remembered how, as a child, she’d longed to be able to watch TV during dinner and her mother had never let her do it one time, not even when she was sick.
“Delicious,” Carmen said to Mrs. Jones, pointing at the ham.
“Thank you. I use a maple glaze.”
“Right. It’s very good.”
“I can give you the recipe if you’d like.”
“Okay. Yes. I don’t cook much these days, but I’d like to learn.” She wondered if she should have said that. She glanced over at Jones, but he was staring at the TV.
“Do you enjoy cooking?” Carmen asked, and then she felt doubly stupid at the blank look Mrs. Jones gave her. She knew how alien and spoiled she probably sounded, as if cooking were a hobby you chose or