Standing in the Rainbow - Fannie Flagg [75]
Ida weighed her words carefully. “That’s very sweet of you, dear, but I don’t think you have thought this through.”
“Yes, I have.”
“Norma, how are you going to serve dinner for that many people? You don’t have a buffet table.”
“Easy, it doesn’t have to be all that formal. I’ll just put everything out on the counter in the kitchen and everybody can get their plates and come in and serve themselves sort of casual like. Macky said he could set up card tables in the living room and we can throw sheets over them.”
There were not enough words in the English language to describe just how much Ida Jenkins did not want to eat a meal off a card table covered with a sheet but she sensed how much it meant to Norma. She held on to the telephone table for support and said, “Fine dear, if that’s what you want to do, I’m sure it will be lovely.”
After everybody Norma had invited to Christmas dinner said they would come, it suddenly occurred to her that she had never cooked for more than two people. Cooking for ten might not be as easy as it sounded and she wanted it to be perfect. She called Neighbor Dorothy, who then helped her plan her menu, right down to the last morsel. To make sure there would be no mistakes, she wrote out a list of exactly what time she was to put things in the oven, exactly what time they were to come out, when to start the potatoes, how long to cook the roast beef, how many minutes to cook the gravy, and when to heat up the four cans of English peas and when to warm the rolls.
Norma spent almost the entire next week in the kitchen, rehearsing everything she was to do. One day she spent making sure all her timers worked, with everything in the right place, ready to go. She had decided to empty the peas into a covered dish on Christmas Eve and throw the cans away. It was cheating, she knew, but she also knew what her mother would say if she by any chance saw the cans. She had heard it a hundred times. “Norma, only hoboes and derelicts eat out of a can.” Macky came in and watched her setting timers, walking back and forth from the oven to the counter to the refrigerator with her list, pretending to carry things and talking to herself. She looked so intense he felt sorry for her and asked, “Can I do anything to help?”
She looked at him. “Yes—keep everybody out of the kitchen, especially Mother. I’m going to be nervous enough as it is without having her in here staring at me and getting in my way. Just keep them entertained until I come out and say, ‘Dinner’s ready, come and get it.’ ”
“Dinner’s ready, come and get it?”
“I might not say those exact words, I may say ‘Time to eat’ or something like that but when I do, have everybody get up, get their plate off the table, and come on in—but not before that.”
“O.K.”
“Just pray I don’t burn anything or drop something.”
“What if you do? It’s not the end of the world, it’s just a dinner.”
“Just a dinner?” She looked at him in utter disbelief. “Just a dinner? Is that what you think after I have gone to all this trouble so we can have our first Christmas in our own home?”
“No, that’s not what I mean. I mean, so what if you do mess it up, nobody cares.”
“Nobody cares?”
Macky realized he was digging a hole for himself and tried to get out. “But you won’t mess it up. Everything will turn out just great.”
“Well, that’s easy for you to say. You try cooking for ten people.”
Saturday, a full week before the dinner was to take place, Norma cleaned the house from top to bottom. When Macky came home that afternoon she met him at the door with a scrub brush. “Macky, do not sit on the sofa or the chairs, or walk on the rug, and try not to use the bathroom.”
Still a newlywed, Macky was learning the hard way that when Norma was nervous about something, it was best not to try and reason with her.
Christmas Window
DECEMBER TWENTY-FIRST was an especially busy day. Dorothy baked fifteen dozen gingerbread men to have at the house for the holidays, Bobby was pulling down all the Christmas decorations from the closets, and Betty Raye and Mother Smith were making