household staff usually takes care of that part.”
“Me, too,” Maggie giggled. “My butler does it all.”
We wound the strings around the tree and plugged them in. After a few bulb replacements, the tree sparkled with hundreds of tiny white lights.
Ginnie ladled eggnog into four crystal mugs, then settled down on a sofa with a bag of popcorn, a needle, and a spool of plastic thread, while Maggie gravitated toward the construction paper. “Just like the children's room at the library,” she said.
Praxythea handed me a bowl of cranberries. “Why don't you string these?” she suggested before leaving the room.
It was an impossible task. The little red balls were as hard as rocks. I stabbed myself with the needle half a dozen times and only succeeded in staining my fingertips red.
“I give up,” I announced. “Hand me a bag of popcorn, please.”
It was much easier to poke a needle through the soft popcorn, and an added benefit was I could nibble on it as I worked. While my popcorn garland lengthened, I couldn't help thinking this was a sad little gathering, despite all of Praxythea's attempts at gaiety. I was feeling lonelier by the minute and missed my cat, Garnet, my mother, and my few good friends in New York. For the first time in many years, I thought about Nobuko, the Okinawan woman who lived with us from the time I was born and was practically my second mother, and wondered how she was.
Praxythea, despite her fame, also claimed to have no one in her life. Ginnie was a widow, who'd moved to a town where outsiders were rarely accepted. And Maggie? I wondered why she wasn't with her fiance this evening.
“When are we going to have the snacks?” Maggie asked after we'd worked for twenty minutes or so. “I'm getting hungry.”
“I thought we'd wait for Primrose,” Praxythea said. “Have some more eggnog.” She had returned, with Icky draped over her left shoulder. “He was lonely.” She stroked the beast's head.
“Yuck!” Ginnie squealed. “It looks like a dragon. Keep it away from me-far away.”
Maggie didn't say anything, but she quietly placed her scissors and paste on the couch cushion next to her so Praxythea couldn't sit there.
“I don't understand you three,” Praxythea said. “He's a sweetheart. Iguanas may look frightening, but they are really very gentle. Why, just last night, he-” The ringing of chimes interrupted her. “What's that?”
“It's the front doorbell.” I took off for the front hall at a run, praying that the person on the porch wouldn't be crushed to death by the roof before I got there.
I jerked open the door, dragged Primrose in by one arm, then closed the door gently so as not to disturb anything.
“Well!” Primrose said, shaking off my hand. “That was some greeting.”
“I'm sorry. It's just that the porch roof is about to collapse. I guess you didn't see my sign.”
“It would help if you turned on the porch light. A person could break her neck out there in the dark.”
She placed the small paper bag she was holding on the silver calling-card tray next to the door. I assumed she'd brought something to eat, or maybe even an ornament for the tree. “Why, thank you, Primrose-” I began.
“Don't thank me. I found it next to your front door. It has your name on it.”
As she shrugged off her coat, a burst of laughter came from the front room. I had the feeling the “girls” had dipped into the eggnog again.
“You've got to see what Maggie's made for us,” Praxythea called.
“Come on in and have some of Praxythea's crescent cookies,” I told Primrose. “They look wonderful.” I led her into the parlor, where she was greeted with warm cries of welcome from the three women wearing red and green crowns decorated with popcorn “jewels.”
Praxythea poured eggnog for Primrose and refilled Ginnie's and Maggie's cups. I declined, since I really don't care for sweet drinks.
“I found a tape player and some Christmas tapes in the dining room breakfront while I was looking for the punch bowl,” Praxythea announced. She fiddled for a moment or two with the little black box until Andy Wil-liams's smooth baritone voice filled the room with “O Come All Ye Faithful.”
After several more cups of eggnog, our homemade decorations were complete-and only a little peculiar-looking. We danced around the tree, entwining the popcorn strings and paper garlands, while Bobby Vinton sang “Christmas Eve in My Home Town.”
“It is beautiful. Really beautiful,” Praxythea announced. “It looks as I imagined it would. So country. So homey. So old-fashioned. So-”
“So tacky,” Maggie interrupted. “Let's put the store-bought decorations on. It might look better.”
We unloaded Praxythea's ornament boxes. Everything was very lovely and very expensive-looking, although I thought she'd gone rather heavy on stars and moons. We loaded the branches and stepped back to admire our work.
“
While she grasped for another adjective, Praxythea interrupted. “Let's toast the tree.”
We switched off the lamps, so the only light in the room came from the tree. With arms entwined, we sang “Silent Night” with Perry Como.
I heard several sniffles. “‘Silent Night’ always makes me cry,” Ginnie said.
Maggie handed her a Kleenex, then blew her own nose. “Me, too.”
Even Praxythea's eyes were moist, and Primrose kept her face turned away from us.
“What makes me cry is seeing a group of women who have had too much to drink acting maudlin,” I said. “I do believe the party's over.”
I wasn't about to let any of them drive home in that condition. Maggie accepted my invitation to sleep over.
“I'll walk home and pick up my car in the morning,” Ginnie said.
“And I'll call my husband,” Primrose announced.
It was about another half hour before Reverend Flack arrived and the party officially ended. At first, I interpreted Reverend Flack's frowning countenance as disapproval, but then I realized it was really concern. He helped his wife into her coat, propped her up against the wall in the kitchen, and went back to the living room with me to find her bag.
“You're a very understanding husband,” I remarked as we hunted for her purse among the empty ornament boxes.
“I'm not one to throw stones,” he said. “Christmas is a rough time of year for my wife. It brings back memories of her birth parents. They died in a car accident on Christmas Eve when Primrose was seven.”
“I'm sorry. I didn't know that.”
“It's not the kind of thing that would come up in casual conversation. Ah! Here it is.” He held up Primrose's missing purse.
“Thank you for having her over tonight, Tori. Mostly, local people wouldn't think of inviting her to something like this. I believe they think a minister's wife has to be serious all the time.”
We rejoined the ladies and the lizard in the kitchen.
“I'll drop Ginnie off at her house,” Reverend Flack said.
“What a nice man,” I said, after they'd left. “I wonder if I'll ever have someone like that in my life.”
“You already do,” Praxythea said, placing Icky back in his glass home.
“I wonder… Let's put the cookies and chips away and get to bed.”
We went back to the parlor and gathered up the debris from our party.
“What about the paper and empty ornament boxes?” Praxythea asked.
“We can get all that in the morning. I'll just out the lights in the foyer.”
“‘Out the lights'?”
“I'm speaking Lickin Creekese,” I said as I went into the front hall. There I saw the paper bag with my name on it.
“What's that?” Praxythea said behind me.
“I don't know. Primrose said she found it on the porch.” I opened the bag and peeked in.
