Hot Flash Holidays by Nancy Thayer Read Free Book Online Page B

on Christmas Eve, Amy had agreed to come to Polly’s house! This was a magnificent milestone. Jehoshaphat was fifteen months old, and he’d never visited his grandmother before.
    Polly began arranging her evening’s culinary offerings as artistically as possible on plain white ironstone platters.
    “Let’s see, I’ve got cheese made from the milk of goats fed by the Dalai Lama and crackers made from flour ground by French nuns during a full moon,” she joked to Roy Orbison, who waddled hopefully at her feet, waiting for something to drop. “I have several kinds of fruit. I have plain nuts and salted nuts. Carrots and celery. Everything from the health food store.” Because it was, after all, Christmas, she’d also used her grandmother’s recipes to make the gingerbread cookies and sugar cookies David had always loved.
    She carried the platters into the living room, setting them on tables out of the dog’s reach.
    Back in the kitchen, she surveyed the drink possibilities. From a health food store: mango juice, carrot juice, papaya juice, apple juice. Also beer, which David used to drink, and Champagne, just in case. And eggnog, whole and skim milk, sparkling and plain spring water, and a staggering assortment of herbal teas.
    She glanced at her watch: five thirty. They would be here in an hour. She rushed to the living room to double-check everything. The tree’s lights—the only non-organic decoration—were glowing. Gingerbread characters grinned from the boughs, among angels, elves, and animals that Polly, who was a talented seamstress, had made from scraps of fabric. Presents for everyone lay under the tree, wrapped in paper Polly had recycled from brown paper grocery bags and tied with yarn. She was especially proud of this touch of environmental support; Amy
had
to approve of that! From the mantel hung stockings Polly had made herself for Amy, Jehoshaphat, and Polly’s boyfriend, Hugh. David’s stocking she’d made years ago, when he was a toddler. She’d considered giving it to Amy when they married, but quickly realized Amy would want to hang stockings of her own choosing.
    She nodded admiringly at her mantel, decorated with laurel and candles. “I bought the greens myself, at Odell’s farm, which is totally organic,” she told her hound. “The candles are beeswax, also organic. I bought the wooden candleholders at a farm fair this fall. Can’t wait for Amy to notice
them
!”
    Roy snorted.
    “I know, you think I’m going overboard, trying to please Amy, but come on, Roy, David’s my only child. And Amy’s the mother of my only grandchild!”
    Her grandfather clock chimed. “Eeek!” she cried. It was time to shower and dress.
    She’d laid a fire of natural woods—was there any other kind? Now she knelt to light it, so it would be blazing heartily when David and his family arrived. She clicked on the CD player, and Christmas carols rolled their golden notes out into the room. Everything was clean, dusted, polished, shining. She lit the candles on the mantelpiece. Their little flames danced, giving a lively, festive touch to the room.
    “I don’t think Amy can complain about a single thing,” Polly assured herself.
    She hurried up to her bedroom, stripped off her clothes, and turned on the bath water. As the tub filled, she stared in the mirror at her naked, sexagenarian body. She looked grandmotherly. That was appropriate. After all, she
was
a grandmother.
    But she was also, to her surprise, at her advanced age, newly in love, or at least in serious like.
    After Polly’s mother-in-law died last year, her physician, Hugh Monroe, had asked Polly out on a date, at which point Polly, who liked to consider the glass half-full, decided Fate was getting around to balancing things out. Polly had taken good care of Claudia in her final months. She considered Hugh a kind of karmic reward. In her most sentimental moments, she even imagined that Claudia had engineered this somehow.
    Hugh was so