Stuart MacLean (6:21)
Last year, when Carl Lobeer bought his wife Gerda Martha Stewart's Complete Christmas Planner, he did not understand what it was he was doing. On Christmas Eve, Carl found himself staring at a bag full of stuff that he couldn't remember buying. He wondered if he'd maybe picked up someone else's bag by mistake, and then he found a receipt with his signature on it. Why would he have paid $23 for a slab of metal to defrost meat when they already owned a microwave oven that would do it in the time? Who could he possibly have been thinking of when he bought the AB machine? Although he did remember buying Martha Stewart's Complete Christmas Planner. It was the picture of Martha Stewart on the COVID that had drawn him to the book, a picture of Martha striding across her front lawn with a wreath made of chili peppers tucked under her arm. Carl had never heard of Martha Stewart, but she looked like she was in a hurry, and that made him think of Gerda. So he bought the book, never imagining that it was something that his wife had been waiting for all her life. Carl was as surprised as anyone in the neighborhood last May when Gerda began the neighborhood Christmas group, although not perhaps as surprised as Dave was when his wife, Morley, joined it. It's not about Christmas, Dave, morley said. It's about getting together. The members of Goethe's group, all women, got together every second Tuesday night at a different house. Each time they drank tea or beer and the host baked something special. And they worked on stuff, usually until about 11. But that's not the point, said Morley. The point is getting together. It's about neighborhood, not about what we're actually doing. But there was no denying that they were doing stuff while they got together. It was May and they were doing Christmas stuff. It's wrapping paper, said Morley. You're making paper, said Dave. We're decorating paper, said Morley. This is hand painted paper. Do you know how much this would cost? That was July. In August they took oak leaves and dipped them into gold paint and hung them in bunches from the kitchen ceiling. And then there was the stenciling weekend. The weekend, Dave thought if he stood still too long, Morley would stencil him. In September, when no one could find an eraser anywhere in the house, Morley came home and she said, that's because I took them all with me. We're making rubber stamps. You're making rubber stamps? Said Dave. Out of erasers, Said Morley. People don't even buy rubber stamps anymore, said Dave. There were oranges drying on the clothes rack in the basement. There were blocks of wax for candles stacked on the ping pong table. And then one day Morley said, do you know there's only 67 shopping days until Christmas now? Dave did not know this, had not, in fact completely unpacked from last summer's vacation. And without thinking he said, what are you talking about? And Morley said, if we wanted to get all our shopping done by the week before Christmas, we only have. She shut her eyes. 62 days left. Now, Dave and Morley usually start their Christmas shopping the week before Christmas, and suddenly there they were, with only 67 shopping days left, standing in their bedroom, staring at each other, incomprehension hanging in the air between them. It hung there for a good 10 seconds, and then Dave said something he had been careful not to say for weeks. He said, I thought this thing wasn't about Christmas, which he immediately regretted saying because Morley said, don't make fun of me, Dave, and she left the room and then she came back like a locomotive. Uh oh, thought Dave. What? Said Morley. I didn't say that, said Dave. You said oh, said Morley. I thought oh, said Dave. I didn't say oh. Thinking oh isn't like saying uh oh. They don't send you to jail for thinking you want to strangle someone. What? Said Morley. She slept downstairs that night, and she didn't say a word when Dave came down and tried to turn talk her out of it. Didn't say a word the next morning until Sam and Stephanie had left for school. And then she said, do you know what my life is like, Dave? Dave suspected, correctly, that she wasn't looking for an answer. My life is a train, she said. I'm a train dragging everyone from one place to another to school and to dance class and to now it's time to get up, and now it's time to go to bed. I'm a train full of people who complain when they have to go to bed and fight you when they have to get out of one. That's my job. Because I'm not only the train, I'm the porter and the conductor and the cook and the engineer and the maintenance man, and I print the tickets and stack the luggage and clean the dishes. And if they still had cabooses, I'd be in the caboose so I could pick up everything after the train went by. Now, Dave. Dave didn't want to ask where the train was heading. He had the sinking feeling it was one of those Civil War trains. And then somewhere up ahead, someone had pulled up a section of the track. You know where the train is heading? Said Morley. Yep, thought Dave. We're going off the tracks any moment now. What? Said Morley. I said no, dave said. I said I don't know where the train's going. Morley leant forward over the table. It starts at a town called First Day at School, Dave, and it goes to a village called Halloween and then through the township of Class Project and down the spur line called. Your sister is visiting. And you know what's at the end of the track? You know where my train's heading? Dave looked at her kind of nervously. He didn't want to get the answer wrong. He would have been happy to say where the train was going if he knew he could get it right. Was his wife going to leave him? Maybe the train was going to divorce. Not at Christmas, he moaned. Exactly, said Morley to the last stop on the line. Christmas dinner. And this is supposed to be something I look forward to, Dave? This is supposed to be a vacation Christmas dinner, said Dave, kind of tentatively. It seemed a reasonably safe thing to say at the moment. Morley nodded, and feeling encouraged, Dave added, with a turkey and everything. But Morley wasn't listening to him. She said, and when we finally get through that week between Christmas and New Year, you know what they do with the train? They back it up during the night when I'm asleep so they can run it through all the stations one more time. And you know who you are, Dave? You're the guy in the bar car pushing the button, asking for another drink. By the way, Morley said that Dave could tell that she still loved him. She didn't, for instance, say that he had to get off the train, or for that matter, even out of the bar car. But he did realize if he was going to stay aboard, he was going to have to join the crew. So the next weekend he said, why don't I do some of the Christmas shopping? Why don't you give me a list and I'll go and get some of the things for the Cape Breton cousins. Now Dave had never gone Christmas shopping in September before, but when he came back he said that was okay. And Morley said, I'm sorry. It's just that I like Christmas so much. I used to like Christmas so much, and I was thinking if I got everything done beforehand, maybe I could enjoy it again. I'm trying to make it fun again. I'm trying to get control of it. That's what all this is about. And Dave said, well, what else can I do? Morley looked at him and she said, on Christmas Day, Dave, after we've opened the presents, I want to take the kids to work at the food bank and I want you to look after the turkey. I can do that, said Dave. Dave didn't understand until Christmas Eve, when the presents were finally wrapped and under the tree and he and Morley were snuggled in bed and he was feeling warm and safe there beside his wife and he nudged her feet with his feet and she said did you take the turkey out of the freezer? And he went downstairs and couldn't find a turkey in the freezer, in either freezer and was about to call out where's the turkey anyway? But stopped abruptly when the truth landed on him like an anvil and he understood that looking after the turkey, something he had promised to do, meant buying it as well as putting it in the oh. He decided he'd wait downstairs for a while and when he went back up Morley was asleep and he thought I could wake her. Instead he lay in bed and imagined in perfect detail the chronology of the Christmas Day waiting for him, imagined everything from the first morning squeal to the moment his family left to work at the food bank and then that moment when they came home with his mother in law who they would have picked up, all of them expecting turkey. Saw the look on his wife's face as she sat at her table with the homemade crackers and the gilded oak leaves as he carried a bowl of spaghetti across the kitchen. At 2am he was still awake, but at least he had a plan. He would wait until they left for the food bank, then he'd take off and go to some deserted Newfoundland outport and live under an assumed name. And at Sam's graduation his friends would say, why isn't your father here? And Sam would say one Christmas he forgot to buy the turkey so he had to leave. Then at 3, after rolling around for an hour, Dave got out of bed, dressed and went looking for a 24 hour grocery store. It was either that or wait for the food bank to open. And though he couldn't think of anyone in the city more in need of a turkey than he was, the idea that his family might spot him in line made that unthinkable. At 4am in the morning on Christmas morning, Dave found an open store and bought the last turkey there. 12 pounds, frozen as tight as a cannonball Grade B, whatever that meant. He was home by 5am and by 6:30 had the turkey more or less thawed. He used an electric blanket and the hair dryer and the turkey and a bottle of scotch on himself. As the turkey defrosted it became clear that the grade B part was the cosmetic part. The skin on the right drumstick was ripped. To Dave it looked as if the turkey had made a break from the slaughterhouse and dragged itself a block or two before it was recaptured and beaten to death. This bird looked like it had died in a knife fight. Dave poured another scotch and began to refer to the turkey as Butch. If that had been the worst thing about the bird, that it was cosmetically challenged, Dave would have been happy, would have considered himself blessed, would have been able to look forward to this Christmas with equanimity, might eventually have been able to laugh it off. The worst thing came later, after lunch, after Morley and the kids left for the food bank. Before they left, Morley dropped pine oil on some of the living room lamps. When the lamps heat the oil up, she said, the house will smell like a forest. Then she said, mother is coming. I'm trusting you with this, Dave. You have to have the turkey in the oven. Dave finished her sentence for her. He said by 1:30, don't worry, I know what I'm doing. The worst thing began when Dave tried to turn on the oven. Morley had never had cause to explain to him about the automatic timer and Dave had never had cause to ask about it. The oven had been set the day before to go on at 5:30. Morley had been baking a squash casserole for Christmas dinner because she always does the vegetables the day before and now until the oven timer was unset, nothing, anybody, least of all Dave, did, was going to turn it on. At 3:30 in the afternoon, Dave retrieved the bottle of scotch from the basement and poured himself a drink. He knew he was in trouble. He had to find an oven that could cook the bird and cook it fast. But every oven he could think of had a turkey inside it already. Now, for 10 years, Dave was a technical director to some of the craziest acts on the rock and roll circuit. And he wasn't going to fall to pieces over a raw turkey. Inventors are often unable to explain where they get their best ideas from, and Dave is not too sure where he got his. Maybe he spent too many years in too many hotel rooms. At 4 o'clock in the afternoon he topped up the scotch and he phoned the Park Plaza Hotel and he was given the front desk. And he said, do you cook special menus for people with special dietary needs? We're a first class hotel in a world class city, sir. We can look after any dietary needs. And Dave said, if somebody brings their own food because it's on a special diet, would you cook it for them? Of course, sir. Dave looked at the turkey lying on the counter like a naked baby. Come on, Butch, he said. We're going out. Morley had the car Dave called a taxi. He stuffed the bottle of scotch in his pocket on the way out the door. The Park Plaza, he said. It's an emergency. He took a slug from the bottle in the back of the cab. The man at the front desk of the hotel asked if Dave needed help with his suitcases. No suitcases, said Dave, then turned breezily to the man behind him in line and patted the turkey, which he had dropped on the counter and was spilling out of its plastic bag, and said, only slightly slurred, just checking in for the afternoon with my check. The clerk winced, and Dave turned, wobbled, and peered at the man in line behind him. He was looking for approval. Instead of approval. He found his neighbor, Jim Schofield, standing beside an elderly woman who Dave assumed must be Jim's visiting mother. And Jim didn't say anything, tried, in fact, to look away, but he was too late, and their eyes met, and Dave straightened himself out and said, turkey and the kids are at the food bank. I just brought Morley here so they could cook her up for me. Oh, said Jim. That explains everything. I mean the turkey, said Dave. I bring it here every year. I'm alone. Dave held his arms out as if he wanted Jim to frisk him, and the man at the desk said, excuse me, sir, and handed Dave his key. And Dave. Dave smiled at the man behind the counter, at Jim, at Jim's mother, and walked toward the elevator, one careful foot in front of the other, and when he got there, he heard Jim calling him, and Dave turned, and Jim said, you forgot your chick, pointing to the turkey on the counter. The man on the phone from room service said, but we have turkey on the menu, sir, and Dave said, this is a. A special turkey. I was hoping you could cook my turkey. The man from room service told Dave the manager would call. Dave looked at his watch, and when the manager called, Dave knew this was his last and only chance. This man was going to either agree to cook his turkey, or he might just as well book the ticket to Newfoundland. Excuse me, sir, said the manager. I said I need to eat this particular turkey, said Dave. That particular turkey, sir, said the manager. Do you know, said Dave, what they put in birds today? No, sir, said the manager. He said it like it was a question. They feed them now. Dave had no idea what they fed them. He wasn't sure what he was going to go with this, just that he had to keep talking. They feed them chemicals, he said, and antibiotics and steroids and lard to make them juicier. I'm allergic to that. Stuff. If I eat any of that stuff, I'll have a heart attack or at least a seizure. In the lobby of your hotel. Do you want that to happen? The man on the phone didn't say anything, so Dave kept going. I have my own turkey here. I raised this turkey myself. I butchered it myself. I butchered it this morning. The only thing this thing has eaten. Dave looked frantically around the room. What did he feed the turkey? Tofu, he said triumphantly. Tofu, sir, said the manager. And yogurt, said Dave. It was all or nothing. The bellboy took the turkey and Dave gave him $20 and said, you have those big convection ovens. He said, I gotta have it back before 5:30. All he said was, you must be very hungry, sir. Dave collapsed onto the bed. Didn't move for an hour and a half, which was when the phone rang. It was the manager. He said the turkey was in the oven. Then he said, you raised that bird yourself? It was a question. Dave said, yes. There was a pause. The manager said, the chef says the turkey looks like it was abused. Dave said, ask the chef if he's ever killed a turkey. Tell him it was a fighter. Tell him to stand. Stitch it up. The bellboy wheeled the turkey into Dave's room. A quarter to six. They had it on a dolly covered with a silver dome. Dave removed the dome and gasped. It didn't look like any bird he could have cooked. There were white paper armbands on both drumsticks and a glazed partridge made of red peppers on the breast. He looked at his watch and ripped the paper armbands off and he scooped the red pepper partridge into his mouth. And then he realized the bellboy was watching him and saw the security guard standing on the corridor. The security guard was holding a carving knife. They obviously weren't about to trust Dave with a weapon. Would you like us to carve it, sir? Just get me a taxi, said Dave. What? Said the guard. I can't eat this here, said Dave. I have to eat it. Dave couldn't imagine where he had to eat it. Outside, he said. I have to eat it outside. He took out another $20 bill and he gave it to the bellboy. And he said, I'm going downstairs to check out. You bring the bird and get the taxi. And he walked by the security guard without looking at him and said, careful with that knife. And he got home at 6 o'clock and he put Butch on the table. The family was due back any minute. And he poured himself a drink and he sat down in the living room and the house looked beautiful and smelled beautiful. It's like a pine forest, my forest, said Dave. And then he said, oh, and jumped up and got a ladle of turkey gravy and ran around the house smearing it on the light bulbs. You do what you've got to do there, he thought. And he went outside and he stood on the stoop and he counted to 50 and he went back in and breathed in. And the house smelled just like Christmas. And he poured himself another scotch and he looked out the window and he saw Morley coming up the walk with Jim Schofield and his mother. We met them outside and invited them in for a drink. I hope that's okay. Of course, said Dave. I'll go get the drinks, he said. Morley, could you come here a moment, please? There's something I have to tell you.
