The Eggnog Chronicles Read online

  “It’s clear that you’re talented,” Emma said earnestly. “I really admire that.”

  “You don’t have to shovel it, Emma. I was writing without an outline. Pretty stupid of me.”

  “But I can tell you worked hard on it. And you know what? We all work too hard. I think that’s a problem for New Yorkers. You know, when I call the bank offices in Chicago, everyone lams out of there at five. People might be on the phone with you at four forty-five, but within minutes they wrap things up and head home. Meanwhile, we’re an hour ahead, so already it’s pushing six and I’m entrenched in work. What’s wrong with us?”

  “We’re workaholics,” I said, wishing I could apply the same diligence to my novel.

  Emma rubbed the porcelain-white skin on the back of her hand. “Leave at five in Chicago and the boss calls it effective time management. Leave at five in New York and you’re off the fast track. What’s that about?”

  As we griped about work Duke came over and took our orders—two salads, which he promised to get out quickly so Emma could get back to work. “Jane, you are the last person I’d ever expect to have a dry lunch,” Duke said wryly.

  “Antibiotics,” Emma explained, nodding at me.

  “That explains it,” Duke said as he went off for our diet Cokes.

  “I’ll drink to that,” I called after him, raising my water glass. First, let me say that I have never slept with Duke, mostly because he never made those moves and subsequently he has become something like a brother to me. There was some speculation a while back that he might be gay, since he was still single and had never dated anyone I knew, but Emma talked me out of that one . . . or at least, she talked me into respecting Duke’s privacy and forgetting about the question altogether.

  He brought our drinks, gracefully balanced on a round tray. “Lemon on the side, ladies. Let me know if you want a whiskey chaser for that.” Duke has an innate sense of cool, which is probably why he can get away with hair down over his shoulders at his age—early thirties, I think—though he’s never told me.

  “Thanks, Duke,” I said as he disappeared into the back room.

  Emma pushed the bread basket away. “God, I have to stop eating compulsively, but I’m so stressed. I hate my job now. Really, really hate it. I hate telemarketing.” Part of Emma’s executive training program at the bank was a rotation into nearly every department and property owned by the corporation. Telemarketing was just one of the many adventures in banking Emma would suffer to earn an executive title and an office with a window.

  “Don’t we all? I think most of the nation would join you there, the president included.”

  “But I don’t hate the people who do it,” Emma said. “I mean, to them it’s a job, and for some of them it provides food and shelter and medical coverage for their kids.”

  I slugged back some ice water. “Your point being?”

  Emma lifted her auburn red hair—hair Clairol would kill for—from her collar, then dropped it onto the back of her navy suit jacket. “I don’t wish these people ill. I just don’t want to go back to that damned office after lunch. The sleaze factor is so high.”

  “Poor Emma Dee.” Emma’s girlfriends had started calling her that in middle school, when we decided that her last name, “Dombrowski,” needed fixing. These days, it was one of the first things Emma checked out when she met a guy—his last name. For Emma, a new last name would be one of the bonuses of marriage. “So I guess telemarketing is not the place to find that Christmas lover?”

  Emma shuddered. “Not unless you want him to call you out of the shower to sell you credit card protection you already have.” She shook her head. “I wish this rotation would end.”

  “When do you finish with the telemackerels?” I asked.

  “Not soon enough. I’m there until March first.”

  “Oh, poor Emma. It’s going to be a blue Christmas for you.”

  “It won’t!” Her eyes flashed with defiance. “This is going to be a wonderful Christmas—the Christmas of my liberation. Jonathan managed to ruin the last few holidays for me and I’m determined to make this the best Christmas ever.”

  “Jonathan? Brrr.” I shuddered. “Did someone open a window, or did his ghost just pass through me?”

  “You know, I thought I’d miss him, but I don’t. Not at all. It’s kind of scary.”

  “He was more work than he was worth, and you should be glad he’s gone.”

  “I am.” Emma fingered the fake garland lit with tiny lights that was draped along the room divider beside our table. “But it’s hard at Christmas, you know? Hard not to have someone.”

  “You mean a man to validate you?” I made a mock gasp. “Emma Dee, I gasp on your behalf.”

  “Don’t go all Femi-Nazi on me. I’m talking about a man to exchange gifts with. Someone to share the brandy and snuggle beside the Christmas tree.” Her fingers framed the tiny white bulbs so delicately, I had to stop in my tracks and really listen to what she was saying. It was the ultimate American dream, really—spending a happy holiday with someone you love. It was fodder for Christmas carols and cards, coffee commercials in which Johnny makes it home from war in time for Christmas morning or the man gives his mate a diamond necklace under the Christmas tree, print ads with his-and-hers cell phones spilling out of Santa’s voluminous bag.

  “Oh, what am I saying? You’ve got Carter.”

  I nearly choked on a lettuce leaf. “Carter is not a boyfriend.”

  “Then what would you call him?”

  “A boy, but not a friend. Carter is a way to relieve stress. You have a high math aptitude, right? Here are the equations: Great sex = great time. Commitment = annoyance overload.”

  “And you don’t love him,” Emma said thoughtfully. “I had that with Jonathan, and I’m so glad he’s out of my mainframe. But we deserve more, Jane. That’s my Christmas wish for us. Someone to love. A man for all time.”

  “Humbug. We may want a man like that, but December twenty-sixth always rolls around with a few extra pounds, a handful of department store returns, and a truckload of regrets. For me, those regrets usually involve some loser who thinks I understand him because I’m the first girl who’s dropped her bloomers since his wife divorced him.”

  “Aha! So you have been disappointed,” Emma said.

  “Not anymore,” I said with a coolness I didn’t feel. “That’s my new policy. Keep your expectations low and you’ll never be disappointed.”

  “Ah, but low expectations breed lackluster results.”

  I tilted my head. “Where the hell did you learn that?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, her eyes filling with panic. “Maybe telemarketing school! Oh, God, I have to get out of that place. The sales patter is seeping into my brain.”

  “But you love your job—at least most of it—and you’re so well suited for banking.” Unlike me, Emma has always enjoyed working with numbers. She clings to the solid sense in calculations; the surety and reliability that one plus one will always equal two (unless you are me, balancing my checkbook, and then everything seems to equal a zero balance). “Stick it out until the next rotation, kiddo. They wouldn’t have put you in the training program if they didn’t realize how smart you are.”

  “Do you think?” Emma asked as Duke delivered our salads smoothly and disappeared again. “I’m such a wreck. Sorry! It’s still killing me, Jonathan and the weather girl. Talk about public humiliation. I became the ditched one—the dumpee—and all you have to do is tune into Weather Watcher on channel six to see why.”

  “Oh, Emma, don’t go there. It’s not about him.” We’d been over her ex’s exploits way too many times. “It’s seasonal blues.” I stabbed a grape tomato. “What’s that line? I think it’s Shakespeare. ‘Now is the winter of our discontent.’”

  Emma turned away, her bottom lip quivering in an unexpected show of emotion. “Yeah, but I usually don’t feel that way until after Christmas.”

  “You know, I’ve read that th
e post-Christmas blues are really a product of lack of sunshine. Our spirits are up for the holiday, and then suddenly it’s over and we’re cornered in darkness, stuck in the darkest phase of the year. In Australia, people don’t suffer post-Christmas depressions. Instead, they’re bummed out in July. Weird, huh?”

  Emma swallowed and wiped one tear away with a pinky finger. “Let’s move to Australia. I hear they have like, eight men for every woman in the outback.”

  “Oh, Emma,” I sighed, batting at fake berries on the garland with one hand. I was torn between trying to make my friend feel better and defending the right of my feminist sisters to find happiness without a man as arm candy—even if that candy was just a Christmas accessory. “You’ll find someone. Maybe not for this Christmas or the next, but if you’re setting your sights on companionship, I’m sure you’ll accomplish your goal. You’re a wicked taskmaster when you focus on something.”

  That tweaked a smile from her. “I am relentless when I establish a goal. It’s one area of my job review where I always excel.”

  “I, however, waiver and wobble. I’m dying for a smoke.”

  “Good. That means you must be feeling better.”

  I tried to inhale through my nose and shrugged. “Not just yet. But it’s good to know those antibiotics are doing their little sock ’em, rock ’em thing.” I knew that antibiotics take a good twenty-four hours to take effect, but having launched my campaign to cheer Emma up, I was on a roll. “Oh, I forgot to tell you, Ricki called. She’s booking her flights.”

  Swallowing, Emma nodded. “Excellent. It’s so nice of you guys to let me in on your dinner.”

  “Don’t thank me. You’re doing most of the cooking.”

  “I make a mean crown roast.”

  “I am impressed. I’ll supply the wine.”

  “And eggnog. Don’t forget the eggnog with a touch of brandy.”

  Honestly, I have never understood how that oddball drink became lumped in with Christmas foods, but then, there’s also bread pudding and fruit cake. Sometimes, I just go with the flow and add nutmeg. You can’t let Christmas traditions overrun your life—especially when those traditions include hooking a man on your candy cane.

  4

  That afternoon, as I sat across the table from yet another shiny-faced prodigy, I longed for a pretzel stick or a lollipop or a flaming sword to take away the yearning for a cigarette, the yearning for a reason to escape this meeting and hang outside the door of Oscar’s while collecting my thoughts.

  Instead, I sat in a booth facing my lovely Japanese subject, Yoshiko Abe, and her mother, both of whom had bowed when I introduced myself. Sitting across from them might have been a mistake, as it was the position of confrontation. In deference, Yoshiko and Mrs. Abe kept their eyes averted from mine. I’d done interviews like this countless times, and I wasn’t looking forward to an hour of trying to extract personal information from a woman and child who for cultural reasons could not allow me to make a connection.

  “Would you like to order?” I offered.

  Yoshiko lifted the menu politely, her long fingers elegant against the laminated card. “Oh, I don’t know.” She turned to her mother and said something in Japanese. The mom answered back in Japanese, pointing to various items on the menu.

  Trying to appear attentive, I waited for the answer.

  Most foreign musicians pose a challenge, especially the young ones. There is the language barrier, of course, though most of my musicians speak English and I am fluent in French. These brilliant children also tend to focus exclusively on their craft with a level of discipline unmatched in the United States. Consequently, prodigies like Yoshiko often have no lives beyond their musical aspirations.

  “My mother,” Yoshiko said, “she would like to try the prime rib very much, but she worries that she had a very large lunch.”

  Was that a yes or a no? I wiggled my toes in my boots, wishing her mother would make up her mind. “The prime rib is delicious,” I said. “And how about you? Something to eat?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Shyly, Yoshiko lowered her head to the menu once again.

  I felt annoyed by their passive aggression and in no mood for a dance of semantics. Then I recalled that the Japanese language does not include a polite word for “no.”

  “How about if I order some appetizers that we can share?” I suggested. “The sampler platter?”

  Yoshiko translated and Mom nodded. “Yes,” the girl said, “that would be very nice.”

  With that taken care of, I told Yoshiko that I had been researching her accomplishments. I knew that she had begun studying violin at the age of two, had performed her first concerto when she was just five, and had been touring since she’d turned eight. Last year, at the age of fifteen, she was the youngest violinist to win the Irving M. Klein String Competition. I asked how that accomplishment had changed her life, and Yoshiko shrugged.

  “Not much different,” she said. “Same old, same old.”

  “What do you do when you’re not playing the violin?” I asked. “Do you have any hobbies? Ways to relieve stress?”

  “I travel on tour,” she said, skittering over my question. “From the concert to the hotel. I plug in my laptop, then must do homework and e-mail it to my teachers.”

  Nose to the grindstone, I thought with a smile. “And how about fun? What do you do for fun?”

  “I have my violin,” she said, her eyes bright. “A del Gesus. It’s fantastic.”

  If I was going to dig through to her favorite TV show or a secret passion for pistachios, I was going to need a new angle. “What’s your favorite snack?”

  She squinted. “Potato chips?

  “Your favorite outfit?”

  “Sweats?” Again, a question, as if she were unsure of her answer.

  “You like comfortable clothes?” I asked. “Sweat pants and loose jackets?”

  She frowned. “Oh, those are fine, but I like the big woolens. You know? Sweats, with reindeer knitted in?” Her fingers flew through the air like prancing reindeer.

  “Sweaters.” I tried to smile encouragingly, but my face was still stiff with sinus pain. “Do you have a favorite movie or TV show?”

  She frowned, touching her little pin. “I like TV but I don’t have time to watch. But I do love Brad Pitt. Do you know him?”

  “I know who he is,” I said. Our appetizers arrived. As Yoshiko and her mother sampled the spicy wings and fried mozzarella sticks, I decided to stop the interview for now. It was tepid at best, which, considering my physical health and Yoshiko’s lack of life experience, was not a surprise. Oh, I could write up some history, throw in some facts, even describe the way she had brought tears to my eyes in her performance of a Stravinsky concerto. But there was more to life than single achievements, and it was the Herald’s mandate to provide a thorough picture of the celebrities we profiled; to cover the subject’s grand achievement, and yet to paint a fuller portrait with his or her passions and fears, idiosyncracies, and personal sense of style.

  A crush on Brad Pitt was just not a lasting facet of Yoshiko’s personality, but when I thought of her world, I realized how much of it was spent in concert halls and hotel rooms and airports. In a way, it was not a life at all, but a relentless stream of rehearsals and performances.

  As Yoshiko and her mother nibbled on appetizers, I chomped on celery sticks and tried to gather a clue from her clothes. Yoshiko wore a snappy little black blazer—looked like a Liz Claiborne to me—over a chiffon-print shirt with velvet trim at the waist. Her jeans looked well worn, as did her chunky Steve Madden boots. Nothing remarkable about this teenager, though I did admire the little pin on the lapel of her jacket. It reminded me of a model of an atom.

  “That’s a very nice pin,” I said.

  Yoshiko smiled, touching the pin. “Thank you very much. I made it.”

  “You did?” It wasn’t a real hook, but it was a nice detail that might prove to be an inroad to her personality. “You make your own jewelr
y?” I leaned forward to admire the pin, a spiral of silver wires looping around three polished stones, two green and one purple. “How interesting. Do you use wire cutters?”

  Her eyes lit up, and she put a hand over her mouth in a coy gesture that was almost comical. “I use blow torch,” she admitted.

  Beside her, mother rolled her eyes and shot a disapproving comment in Japanese.

  I shot Yoshiko a smile. “Do you have any other jewelry creations?”

  She nodded. “I have many now. It started when my uncle brought in the torch to work on a pipe, and I played with bending a piece of metal. After that, it sort of happened. I keep the torch in my room at home. My mother is worried that I will harm my fingers, but I am careful.”

  Mother shook her head, but I enjoyed the light of defiance in Yoshiko’s eyes.

  At last, I had the beginning of a story.

  After the interview I strolled up Lexington amid the blur of rushed commuters and shoppers and Christmas lights, trying to weave in my mind a fine mesh of Yoshiko’s distinctive qualities. The strong tendrils of her mother’s hold were a consideration. Was her mother the force behind Yoshiko’s disciplined genius, or the tyrant who held the girl captive in hotel rooms around the world?

  That was the thing about mother-daughter relationships—too difficult to read in one sitting, too complex to summarize in a tidy three-hundred word bio. The very woman we relied upon for our survival could also reach into our souls and squeeze so hard that we spent the rest of our lives reeling in pain. Not that my mother had consciously tried to wrap herself around me. On the contrary, she’d backed away, claiming to be lacking in the maternal gene, and though my father enjoyed nurturing his job as an archaeologist kept him away from New York for extended periods of times. Hence, I’d experienced a different kind of pain, the sort of the swollen soul, a conscience throbbing with neglect and lack of use, the eight-year-old who brought Oreos in for the class party because my mother didn’t bake, the ten-year-old who lied about her birthday to get a free sundae from Applebees, the teenaged girl who slept around because she was the only girl in the class whose parents thought sex was no biggie.