UpHill

Chapter 4

CHAPTER 4

“Bar bells?” Lary stares at the eight-pound weights, one in each hand.

“Yes, dear. For that flap of skin under your upper arms you’re always complaining about,” Brit says, smiling.

How many Botox injections did it take you to get ready for today, parsnip?

Brit, the forty-two-year-old second wife of Lary’s brother Roger, smiles brightly across the century-old living room, larger than twice the size of Lary’s apartment. A fire crackles in the massive stone fireplace. The oak mantel sparkles with two dozen silver candlesticks stuck with red tapers, guarding an original Emily Carr.

Brit’s cherry cashmere skirt and sweater set enhances her wrinkle-free complexion, set off with a single string of pearls, and framed by a black wave of pageboy. The Brit Nitwit. Or the Trophy Wife, as Pumpkin likes to say.

In reflex, Lary’s eyes fly to her own pudgy arms, encased in a thrift store peach sweater two sizes two small she has matched up with gray slacks two sizes too big. She fingers the weights, smiling back across the expanse of oak and Persian. “How incredibly thoughtless of you.”

“You’re welcome, dear.” Brit jumps up to the far-off kitchen to smell her soybeans or whatever she is brewing in there.

How had this British twit managed to land her lovely brother for a husband, anyway? Oh, yes, his cultural tour of Great Britain when he had come home with a souvenir. One that weighed about 120 pounds and talked like the Duchess of Kent. It wasn’t fair.

Only Pumpkin looks over at Lary with a twinkle in her eyes. “Good one, Lawrence, dear.” She alone seems to know her aunt’s pet peeve – younger women calling her ‘dear’. “And thanks again for the necklace.” She touches the intricate green and amber beads that set off her spiked-out, pumpkin-hued hair.

“Ditto for my finger blankets.” Lary wiggles her hands in the air in her new sage angora mittens.

“You’re welcome. More champagne, dear?” Pumpkin stretches out a willowy arm to reach for the bottle on the door-sized coffee table in front of her, pouring for her aunt slouching beside her on the sofa.

“Don’t mind if I do, dear.” Lary snickers.

“Papa Bear, a top up?” Pumpkin crosses the room to the baby grand to tap the shoulder of a forest green cardigan. As usual her economics professor father escapes anything terribly interesting in life by engrossing himself in tinkling a classic. Today it is Brahms Fourth Lullaby.

“Hmm? Oh, no thanks, Pen,” Roger mumbles without looking up. “Saving myself for turkey.”

“News flash, dad, not turkey. Soykey. Your Trophy Wife is cooking us a soykey.”

His bespectacled, watery blue eyes in a pudding plump face, snap up at his daughter. “Be nice. It’s Christmas.”

His daughter smiles back serenely. “I’m always nice.” Over his head she mouths to Lary, “to her face.”

The doorbell chimes. Lary glances over at her niece. Pumpkin shrugs her shoulders in a “I don’t have the faintest idea” gesture while Brit scampers from the kitchen, disappearing towards the second ring.

“I’ll get it!” she squeaks, flinging the door open like Scarlett O’Hara.

A tall and plump gentleman, a hard combination to find, stands awkwardly in the snow in a lime green, full-length down coat. He carries a bottle of wine and a pitiful pink poinsettia.

“Dudley!” Brit shouts his name like she’s reading it off a nametag at a convention. Heavy footsteps creak down the oak hall before she and her prey emerge into the living room.

“I’d like you to meet my stepdaughter, Penelope, and my sister-in-law, Hillary. She’s single. This is Roger’s dear friend from the University. Mathematics.”

The man named Dudley stares into the room in horror, obviously mislead. “Linguistics, actually, ah … Brit.” His accent is mellow Scot.

“Exactly.” Brit is never one to waste time listening to what anyone actually says. She practically tears the coat from his huge body, racing with it back into the hall.

Roger finally gets up from his piano, padding over to pump Dudley’s hand. “Season’s greetings. Make yourself comfortable.”

Dudley collapses into an empty blue and white chintz armchair, an unfortunate choice, as it turns out. It’s at least thirty percent too small for his frame. He’s wearing puce corduroys teamed with a wrinkled tangerine sweater over a striped shirt sticking out at the neck. Long gray hair strays in many directions. A large gold earring pierces his right earlobe. He places a hand on each arm of the chair to await his execution.

“Excuse me, friend. I’ll be back in a moment.” Roger ambles in the direction of the washroom.

Pumpkin, Lary, and Dudley remain flash-frozen in their respective positions. Suddenly Lary snickers, joined by her niece, and mercifully by the newcomer.

“Drink?” Pumpkin jumps up.

“Lord, yes. Double scotch, no ice, please.” He looks at Lary. “I had no idea this was a set-up. I’m still drunk from last night.”

“Me, too.” Lary laughs. “You’re a mess.”

He grins. “Why, thank you.” After Pumpkin hands him his drink, he toasts, “Cheers, girls.”

After a cocktail hour that lasts two, they finally sit down at the dinner table to officially celebrate the joyous occasion.

“Gee, I’ve never seen so many vegetables at once,” Pumpkin says sweetly to her stepmother. “What’s that one?”

“Baked turnips with soy cheddar,” Brit replies proudly. She picks up the casserole dish. “Want some?”

“Maybe later.” Pumpkin smirks as she greases a roll with some I-Can-So-Believe-It’s-Not-Butter.

The dining room looks as if it had been put together out of a British Upper Middle Class Decorating for Dummies handbook. Silver plates and Royal Doulton stalk the powder blue walls on an endless dark oak plate rail.

Lary’s thoughts drift back to long ago Christmas dinners at the Wilkes. Patricia, why did you leave us with this nitwit? Patricia was Roger’s late wife, class oozing from her fingertips. Her dinner parties were tossed together with an innate casual elegance.

Now Lary glances down at the twenty-foot Victorian table where a poinsettia and white rose arrangement, guarded by red tapers, sits in the exact middle of an Irish linen tablecloth. Two sets of silver salt and peppers stand six inches away from the candles. Matching silver serving dishes march like turtles away from those. Wine glasses are set exactly four inches from blue and white dinner plates over under-plates.

Did the Nitwit measure everything with a ruler? Lord help one if one should lay a soup spoon too closely to one’s teaspoon. The world as we know it would collapse.

“Hillary used to be a big wig in the television business, a producer of a cooking show,” Brit addresses Dudley. She lifts up one of the fifty-pound serving dishes. “Until she got the boot four years ago. More Brussels sprouts?”

Dudley furtively pushes his squishy peas under a slice of bread, and a mound of meatless meat. “You, ah, miss it then, I take it, Hillary – the big wig thing?”

“Golly gosh no, not at all. I much prefer working for minimum wage for an Under Forty realtor with a five-carat diamond glued in her pudgy belly button and a nasal blockage. Far more interesting. Any more plonk in that bottle? And please, do call me Lary.”

“Sounds fascinating.” Dudley grins while his hand slyly drops a Brussels sprout on the carpet.

Pumpkin, seated to his left takes notice, and drops two more on his plate. Dudley looks down in dismay, locking eyes with her while another pale green ball springs from her evil fingertips. Lary reaches into the serving dish to toss a sprout at Pumpkin.

Brit stares around the table, wondering how she has lost control of it. Apparently, this isn’t supposed to happen when you follow the manual. “More soykey, anyone?”

Later, in the driveway, as Lary and Dudley are leaving in separate taxis, he shouts out the window, “I’d give my left testicle right now for a decent burger. Pardon my French.”

Lary grins and calls over, “I have a lovely idea. Follow me.”

Twenty minutes later they are the only customers at the Mayfa— Hotel bar. (The last two letters of the neon sign had disappeared in the sixties.) They’re alone except for the bald, beer-bellied bartender who is reading an old People magazine.

A plastic wreath leans against a bottle of Chivas Regal against the back mirror. A chipped, plastic Santa and his reindeer sit at one end of the bar near a small white Christmas tree dressed in beer bottle caps and painted corks. Duct tape holds up a string of lights along the windows.

“Don’t be kind, I look like a giant potato.” Dudley squirts mustard on his double bacon cheeseburger.

“All I said was you look quite dapper in an unmade bed sort of way.” Lary groans and leans back on her stool, her mouth stuffed with greasy burger. “Ah, meat.”

“Stuck with a moniker like Dudley, I haven’t got a chance. Dudley. Dud. Dud the Giant Spud.”

“Or Dud the Stud. Or Dude. I’ll call you Dude, how’s that, Dude?”

“I’m flattered beyond speech.”

“So, Dude, how did you end up in our neck of the woods, anyway?” Lary runs her finger around the ketchup on her plate and licks it.

“I’m just here for a year from Glasgow for a change of pace, filling in for a pal from Harvard, who was supposed to fill in for a prof from Toronto. Who went on vacation to Amsterdam and got into a m*******a-fuelled traffic accident. Something like that.”

“Is he okay? The prof?”

“She. Jacinta Smythe-Yardsmith, how’s that for a handle? Broke both legs falling off her bicycle, but yes, she’ll be all right. Saints in heaven but it’s butt-freezing cold here in Toronto. How do you manage it?”

“Trana. You say, Trana, not Tor-on-to.”

“Torana, Torana. Refill?”

“Sure. That’s what I figure should be on my epitaph. Here lies Hillary, a.k.a. Lawrence, a.k.a. Lary Wilkes whose motto was ‘Sure’.”

“I like it. To the point. One syllable. Positive. What’s with Brit’s accent by the way?” Dudley stuffs more burger into his mouth.

“She’s from Chelsea, apparently. Born and high bred.”

“Chelsea, my fat arse. Princess Anne, my dear Lary, she is not.”

“My, my, my. Give me the dirt, linguistics professor.”

“She’s Irish from Liverpool with Belfast overtones. In fact, Liverpool is a Belfast overtone. Makes Brit much more interesting, actually.”

Lary holds her burger in mid-air. “Oh no! She’s not a Brit? I can’t call her the Brit Nitwit, anymore?”

“’Fraid not. Not officially, anyway.”

They watch the snow falling outside the sleet-streaked window, sipping their drinks. Lary glances at her companion, not looking nearly so potato.

He returns her gaze, his eyes twinkling. “Next time Brit tries to set me up,” he declares before taking a giant slug of his scotch, and giving her a wink, “I’m going to tell her I’m gay.”