The Christmas Pearl Read Online Free PDF

She waved, blew me a kiss, and said, “Oh my! Ms. Theodora! You’re right! Merry Christmas to you, too! Thank you!”
    When I returned to the living room, I was to receive the next surprise of Christmas. Barbara was delivering a stammering lecture, and for once, Cleland was almost supporting her.
    “We are not used to—or I mean, we are not completely unfamiliar with the insides of a kitchen,” she said. “I think, if we all pitch in and do a little, everybody doing something, we can certainly get Christmas Eve and Christmas-day dinner on the table. Right? I mean, why can’t we?”
    Faces were frozen in trepidation. Paranoid fantasies of food poisoning even crossed my mind. What about burns and mad dashes to the emergency room? Did we even have an aloe plant? Did we know a plastic surgeon? A good gastroenterologist? There was a weightysilence as everyone considered Barbara’s lack of expertise with anything beyond the microwave she engaged for heating leftovers.
    “Let’s try to be optimistic. Perhaps this Jewel, if she shows up, will know how to cook. Perhaps she will be useful,” Cleland said, shrugging his shoulders toward my Barbara. “If not, your mother can make her specialty—peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.” He chuckled at his ridiculous joke. No one else joined in.
    Not nice, I thought. I have already confessed that Barbara is not the next incarnation of Julia Child. So what? I decided she could absolutely produce a turkey dinner with all the trimmings if I supervised her and the others kept the floor dry. We could certainly make a simple pasta dish for Christmas Eve, couldn’t we? Was it necessary for Cleland to be so sarcastic?
    “Well, I can’t do dishes,” Lynette said. “I just spent forty-something dollars to get these here nails put on.”
    She held out for inspection her long barber-pole French-manicured fingernails, which, through the wonders of airbrushing or stencils, resembled candy canes. It was a bold remark for Lynette and a vulgar one.
    “Lynette? You know what I think about fake nails,” George said.
    Lynette blushed. Fake anything never sat well with George, even though I was certain his hair was tinted. To say nothing of her, ahem, red hair. Try as he might,he would never transform her into a socialite. Here’s something else. Usually Lynette was the nicest one of the bunch, which should tell you something.
    “Hon? You’ll wear gloves like those housewives on television and you’ll manage,” Camille said, as though she had never washed a dish in her life and had no intention of washing one during this holiday, either.
    “Excuse me,” I said. They all froze and looked at me as though I had stopped by from another planet. “It is almost Christmas Eve. It may well be my last. If anyone cares to know what I’d like for Christmas, I wish for once, just for the next two days, that you all would be nice to each other. That’s all I wish.”
    There was not one peep from any of them.
    “It’s not too much to ask, is it?”
    Silence begat silence.
    “Well then, it’s almost nine. I’m going to bed,” I said. “If Eliza calls, please wake me. Good night.”
    I went to each one of them and gave them a little air kiss on the cheek and hugged my great-grandchildren.
    I leaned down to the little impertinent Teddie, and with the most serious face I could muster, I said, “If you don’t believe in Santa, he doesn’t come. So if I were you, I’d reconsider my position.”
    Teddie turned red as a beet and spun on her heel toward George, burying herself in his side. George did not utter a syllable in rebuttal. I looked to Camille, Barbara, and Cleland. They appeared slightly chastened. Good!
    Not my pudgy little Andrew. He was guilty of nothing! His beautiful chocolate eyes grew wide and he smiled at me.
    “Do you believe in Santa?” he said.
    “I surely do,” I said, squeezing both of his shoulders.
    “I love you, Gigi.”
    Andrew called me Gigi, which stood for