t-day, xmas, nye, and the end of 1919
Nov. 29th, 2011 09:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smackenzieA few weeks after James' birthday is Thanksgiving, for which all of the Godwin children, minus Gabriel, plus Alianor, descend on the house to eat and drink and attempt to be civil to each other and to their parents. Mrs Godwin invites Alianor's aunt, with whom Alianor is living until she and Matthew are married, as well as one of the junior associates in Mr Godwin's office who is new to Manhattan and has no family nearby, and she has also asked several of her and Mr Godwin's friends over for dessert and coffee after dinner. So there are slightly more people than James is used to for dinner, with the prospect of even more afterwards, and because of this they eat in the larger dining room. Which makes sense to James, as it is used for special occasions, and Thanksgiving is indeed very special. It is the only holiday that he knows of that revolves solely around food.
(And gratitude, Luisa says, do not forget the gratitude of your Pilgrim forefathers to the Indians for helping them survive in a new land. James does not think the Godwins have been in America since Pilgrim times, but he does not want to contradict Luisa, and besides, it is possible they have been here that long.)
Luisa and her cousin and even Mr Sewell help Mrs Malcolm serve, because there are so any people and so much food. There is cream of mushroom soup to start (the junior associate is allergic to mushrooms, for which he apologizes to Mrs Malcolm), and then sliced pears, a very large turkey, of course, chestnut dressing, olives, scalloped potatoes, candied yams, broccoli with a cream sauce, cranberry sauce (which both Alianor and Lucas spill on themselves), cold pickled beets (which James accidentally drops on his lap), a small ham because neither Nathaniel nor Alianor's aunt like turkey, roasted brussels sprouts, and three different kinds of rolls (which James is sorely tempted to throw at William after William makes a face at him).
They take a break after dinner and before dessert, during which time Luisa herds James and Aimee and William upstairs to take naps under protest. Aimee goes right to sleep, despite her complaining that she is not tired and wants to stay awake with the grown-ups, but William and James resist. Luisa keeps them occupied for a while, until everyone has digested a bit and Mrs Godwin's friends have come over and Mrs Malcolm and Luisa's cousin have cleared the table and set out the desserts.
They have several kinds of pie – raisin, pumpkin, apple, and something called a chess pie, which is terrifically sweet and which James loves – ice cream, petits fours, cheese, and chocolates. Everyone but James and Aimee and William and Nathaniel has an after-dinner drink, even Julia and Con, and they all take their glasses of port and cups of coffee into the parlor, although there are not quite enough places to sit. Some of James' brothers stand, or lean against the wall. Matthew perches on the arm of the sofa. James sits on Julia's lap. She lets him taste her port, which he does not love but does not hate either, and much to his embarrrassment he falls asleep while Lucas is in the middle of an interesting story about one of his colleagues and the colleague's horse.
Julia has to wake him up because, as she explains, he is too big to carry, and she takes him upstairs and watches him brush his teeth and wash his face and get ready for bed, although she at least leaves him some privacy so he can put on his pajamas in peace. He is eight now, he can undress himself.
Julia tucks him in and he tells her that it is very strange that she is doing it and not Luisa, but he does not mind.
"Luisa is no doubt convincing Aimee and William to join you in sleep," she says, "and then Mr Sewell will drive her and her cousin home, so she does not have to take the subway on Thanksgiving."
"Is it running?" James asks. "Do the subway drivers get the day off?"
"I would imagine that some of them do, but someone has to drive the trains so people can travel to their Thanksgiving dinners."
"That does not seem fair."
"There are taxicab drivers out as well – Lucas said that he and Nathaniel will take a taxi back to his house, rather than have Mr Sewell drive them. Momma's friends said the same. Oh, not the Blounts. They walked."
"Who were the Blounts?"
"Mr Blount is the one who looks a bit like Henry VIII. The large one." She grins. "A walk would be good for him. Mrs Blount is wearing the yellow dress and all those pearls."
James thinks. Mrs Blount has a high screechy voice, like Mrs Fokine's parrot, but she called him a little gentleman during dinner and complimented him on his manners. Mr Blount, he remembers, ate the last piece of pumpkin pie.
"Is there pie left over?"
"Yes, there is. Half the chess pie, a piece of apple pie, and some of the raisin pie. And there is leftover ice cream. I wonder if we will be able to have pie for breakfast."
James hopes so. He yawns.
"Everyone was so well-behaved," Julia comments. "I am very impressed with my brothers."
"They are my brothers too."
"So they are. Your manners were quite good, too. I know you wanted to throw a roll at William at dinner." She grins. James thinks he should be embarrassed, but he is not. If no one had been looking, and if he knew he would not have gotten into trouble, he would have thrown the roll and William would have thrown it back, and it might have turned into a food battle.
Perhaps it is a good thing that people were watching him, then.
"I am glad you restrained yourself," Julia continues. "I shall let you go to sleep. Sweet dreams." She kisses his forehead and turns off the light and shuts the bedroom door on her way out.
On Saturday, James and Sean and Liam compare notes about their Thanksgiving feasts. Sean and Liam's was smaller, with fewer people and not as much food – and only two pies, one of them a mince pie bought at a bakery – but James can understand that, as there are far fewer O'Donnells than there are Godwins.
"Ma wanted to go to a restaurant," Sean says, "so she would not have to cook everything herself. Da was home for Thanksgiving last year and he cooked some things. But he's still on his ship."
"Mrs Meara put up a fight," Liam continues. "She said Thanksgiving was for eating at home with your family, not going out to eat with strangers." He shrugs. "I think she just wanted to be invited to dinner. She does not have Pilgrim forebears, anyway."
"Did you have leftovers?" James asks.
"A whole turkey carcass. Mary Margaret made it into soup and took it down to Jamie's station house for all the policemen. Stop making that face," he tells Liam, who looks disgusted about something, perhaps the idea of turkey soup. "Jamie says the station house is really cold. They could use some soup."
"We still have some raisin pie," James says, lowering his voice so no one else will hear him and eat the last piece of pie before he can share it. "And pickled beets. And ham. There are cold brussels sprouts, too, if you want them, but I do not think they taste good cold."
"Ma puts Thousand Island salad dressing on them," Liam says, scrunching up his face to indicate how he feels about either brussels sprouts or Thousand Island dressing, or both. James likes brussels sprouts when they are hot, but they do not taste right cold.
"We finished all the pie," Sean says. "We got to have it for breakfast." He sounds triumphant, and James can just imagine that the morning discussion in the O'Donnell household sounded very similar to the morning discussion in his own household – children insisting that they should be able to eat pie for breakfast before it spoils, and adults (Mrs O'Donnell in Sean and Liam's case, Luisa and Mrs Malcolm in James') being just as insistent that pie is not an appropiate breakfast food.
It seems as if Sean and Liam won that battle, though, as did James and Julia and Con, and that is why there is only one piece of raisin pie and a bit less than a quarter of the chess pie left over. Come to think of it, James should share the chess pie as well. Mrs Malcolm has told him that she will not keep it or the raisin pie any longer, if they are not finished today.
Mrs Malcolm serves them the rest of the ham, the brussels sprouts, and the beets for lunch, and Sean discovers that if you eat it slowly enough, or if you eat enough of them, a slice of pickled beet will turn your tongue and teeth dark pink. He spends half of lunch baring his newly-pink teeth at everyone, to Liam and James' delight, William's annoyance, and Julia and Luisa's amusement.
Aimee's opinion is that he is a very silly boy, which pronouncement she makes in lofty, superior tones before daintily finishing her ham sandwich.
They demolish the leftover pie, as well as a few petits fours that Mrs Malcolm put aside for Sean and Liam, having guessed that they would be over on Saturday as usual, and that they would not have had the tiny iced cakes at their Thanksgiving dinner.
It is a sunny day, but cold, but Luisa somehow manages to convince her little charges (including Sean and Liam, who are technically her charges for the day) to take a walk to Central Park. Some of the trees are still orange and yellow and red, but most have dropped their leaves, and the boys scuff through drifts of them on the way to the park and back. Even Sean and Liam mind their manners, and as tempting as it is, no one grabs a handful of leaves and throws them.
James gets out of school for winter break a week before Christmas, and spends the final two weeks of 1919 first waiting impatiently for Christmas, and then wallowing in the joy and commerce of the season. The Godwins buy and set up an immense tree in the ballroom, because the windows that face the street are the widest and tallest in the house, and because Mr and Mrs Godwin throw a Christmas Eve party for their friends, with food and drinks and dancing in the ballroom. James is not allowed to stay up for it, but neither is Julia, but they creep down the stairs with Aimee and waltz around the landing for a while.
(Con has not been invited to the party either, but he is not interested in waltzing outside the door. He is interested in sneaking into the ballroom and partaking of the food and drinks.)
There is another, grander party for New Year's Eve, and while the younger Godwins are not invited to this one either, they are allowed into the ballroom just before midnight to count down the minutes as ticked off by the tall grandfather clock that Mr Godwin inherited from his great-aunt, and which Mrs Godwin had moved into the ballroom from the larger dining room for just this occasion,
Both James and William fall asleep somewhere around eleven o'clock, despite their best efforts, but Julia wakes them both up and they follow her down the stairs, where Con and Aimee have already been ushered into the ballroom. Con even has a glass of champagne. Aimee has a glass of milk, because she informs Julia and James and William that she tried the champagne and did not like it.
Julia finds a glass as well, and at midnight, when everyone cries "Happy New Year!" with much embracing and kissing of each other, she picks James up – briefly, because he is getting too big for her to do that – kisses him soundly on the cheek, and wishes him a good 1920.
Mrs Godwin finds them shortly thereafter, to give them all kisses as well, and James thinks 1920 really will be a good year, because both Con and William consent to being smooched by their mother, and Con does not even say anything sarcastic afterwards.
James is wide awake fifteen minutes later, having been shooed back upstairs so the adults can continue their party, and he has brushed his teeth again and been tucked back into bed, but he cannot stop thinking about all the good things the next year holds – Matthew and Alianor will get married, and James will go back to Coney Island, and there will be more movies with serials, and pirate stories and pretend adventures with cowboys and Indians and bandits and fair damsels in distress, and perhaps they will all take the train to Chicago to see Gabriel, and he will move up a grade in school and turn another year older – he will be nine, so much closer to ten – a whole year of games and adventures stretches out before him, with his sister and his friends and the rest of his big family. He cannot wait.
words: 2251
total words: 49,406
quickie research: thanksgiving restaurant menus, produce in season
(And gratitude, Luisa says, do not forget the gratitude of your Pilgrim forefathers to the Indians for helping them survive in a new land. James does not think the Godwins have been in America since Pilgrim times, but he does not want to contradict Luisa, and besides, it is possible they have been here that long.)
Luisa and her cousin and even Mr Sewell help Mrs Malcolm serve, because there are so any people and so much food. There is cream of mushroom soup to start (the junior associate is allergic to mushrooms, for which he apologizes to Mrs Malcolm), and then sliced pears, a very large turkey, of course, chestnut dressing, olives, scalloped potatoes, candied yams, broccoli with a cream sauce, cranberry sauce (which both Alianor and Lucas spill on themselves), cold pickled beets (which James accidentally drops on his lap), a small ham because neither Nathaniel nor Alianor's aunt like turkey, roasted brussels sprouts, and three different kinds of rolls (which James is sorely tempted to throw at William after William makes a face at him).
They take a break after dinner and before dessert, during which time Luisa herds James and Aimee and William upstairs to take naps under protest. Aimee goes right to sleep, despite her complaining that she is not tired and wants to stay awake with the grown-ups, but William and James resist. Luisa keeps them occupied for a while, until everyone has digested a bit and Mrs Godwin's friends have come over and Mrs Malcolm and Luisa's cousin have cleared the table and set out the desserts.
They have several kinds of pie – raisin, pumpkin, apple, and something called a chess pie, which is terrifically sweet and which James loves – ice cream, petits fours, cheese, and chocolates. Everyone but James and Aimee and William and Nathaniel has an after-dinner drink, even Julia and Con, and they all take their glasses of port and cups of coffee into the parlor, although there are not quite enough places to sit. Some of James' brothers stand, or lean against the wall. Matthew perches on the arm of the sofa. James sits on Julia's lap. She lets him taste her port, which he does not love but does not hate either, and much to his embarrrassment he falls asleep while Lucas is in the middle of an interesting story about one of his colleagues and the colleague's horse.
Julia has to wake him up because, as she explains, he is too big to carry, and she takes him upstairs and watches him brush his teeth and wash his face and get ready for bed, although she at least leaves him some privacy so he can put on his pajamas in peace. He is eight now, he can undress himself.
Julia tucks him in and he tells her that it is very strange that she is doing it and not Luisa, but he does not mind.
"Luisa is no doubt convincing Aimee and William to join you in sleep," she says, "and then Mr Sewell will drive her and her cousin home, so she does not have to take the subway on Thanksgiving."
"Is it running?" James asks. "Do the subway drivers get the day off?"
"I would imagine that some of them do, but someone has to drive the trains so people can travel to their Thanksgiving dinners."
"That does not seem fair."
"There are taxicab drivers out as well – Lucas said that he and Nathaniel will take a taxi back to his house, rather than have Mr Sewell drive them. Momma's friends said the same. Oh, not the Blounts. They walked."
"Who were the Blounts?"
"Mr Blount is the one who looks a bit like Henry VIII. The large one." She grins. "A walk would be good for him. Mrs Blount is wearing the yellow dress and all those pearls."
James thinks. Mrs Blount has a high screechy voice, like Mrs Fokine's parrot, but she called him a little gentleman during dinner and complimented him on his manners. Mr Blount, he remembers, ate the last piece of pumpkin pie.
"Is there pie left over?"
"Yes, there is. Half the chess pie, a piece of apple pie, and some of the raisin pie. And there is leftover ice cream. I wonder if we will be able to have pie for breakfast."
James hopes so. He yawns.
"Everyone was so well-behaved," Julia comments. "I am very impressed with my brothers."
"They are my brothers too."
"So they are. Your manners were quite good, too. I know you wanted to throw a roll at William at dinner." She grins. James thinks he should be embarrassed, but he is not. If no one had been looking, and if he knew he would not have gotten into trouble, he would have thrown the roll and William would have thrown it back, and it might have turned into a food battle.
Perhaps it is a good thing that people were watching him, then.
"I am glad you restrained yourself," Julia continues. "I shall let you go to sleep. Sweet dreams." She kisses his forehead and turns off the light and shuts the bedroom door on her way out.
On Saturday, James and Sean and Liam compare notes about their Thanksgiving feasts. Sean and Liam's was smaller, with fewer people and not as much food – and only two pies, one of them a mince pie bought at a bakery – but James can understand that, as there are far fewer O'Donnells than there are Godwins.
"Ma wanted to go to a restaurant," Sean says, "so she would not have to cook everything herself. Da was home for Thanksgiving last year and he cooked some things. But he's still on his ship."
"Mrs Meara put up a fight," Liam continues. "She said Thanksgiving was for eating at home with your family, not going out to eat with strangers." He shrugs. "I think she just wanted to be invited to dinner. She does not have Pilgrim forebears, anyway."
"Did you have leftovers?" James asks.
"A whole turkey carcass. Mary Margaret made it into soup and took it down to Jamie's station house for all the policemen. Stop making that face," he tells Liam, who looks disgusted about something, perhaps the idea of turkey soup. "Jamie says the station house is really cold. They could use some soup."
"We still have some raisin pie," James says, lowering his voice so no one else will hear him and eat the last piece of pie before he can share it. "And pickled beets. And ham. There are cold brussels sprouts, too, if you want them, but I do not think they taste good cold."
"Ma puts Thousand Island salad dressing on them," Liam says, scrunching up his face to indicate how he feels about either brussels sprouts or Thousand Island dressing, or both. James likes brussels sprouts when they are hot, but they do not taste right cold.
"We finished all the pie," Sean says. "We got to have it for breakfast." He sounds triumphant, and James can just imagine that the morning discussion in the O'Donnell household sounded very similar to the morning discussion in his own household – children insisting that they should be able to eat pie for breakfast before it spoils, and adults (Mrs O'Donnell in Sean and Liam's case, Luisa and Mrs Malcolm in James') being just as insistent that pie is not an appropiate breakfast food.
It seems as if Sean and Liam won that battle, though, as did James and Julia and Con, and that is why there is only one piece of raisin pie and a bit less than a quarter of the chess pie left over. Come to think of it, James should share the chess pie as well. Mrs Malcolm has told him that she will not keep it or the raisin pie any longer, if they are not finished today.
Mrs Malcolm serves them the rest of the ham, the brussels sprouts, and the beets for lunch, and Sean discovers that if you eat it slowly enough, or if you eat enough of them, a slice of pickled beet will turn your tongue and teeth dark pink. He spends half of lunch baring his newly-pink teeth at everyone, to Liam and James' delight, William's annoyance, and Julia and Luisa's amusement.
Aimee's opinion is that he is a very silly boy, which pronouncement she makes in lofty, superior tones before daintily finishing her ham sandwich.
They demolish the leftover pie, as well as a few petits fours that Mrs Malcolm put aside for Sean and Liam, having guessed that they would be over on Saturday as usual, and that they would not have had the tiny iced cakes at their Thanksgiving dinner.
It is a sunny day, but cold, but Luisa somehow manages to convince her little charges (including Sean and Liam, who are technically her charges for the day) to take a walk to Central Park. Some of the trees are still orange and yellow and red, but most have dropped their leaves, and the boys scuff through drifts of them on the way to the park and back. Even Sean and Liam mind their manners, and as tempting as it is, no one grabs a handful of leaves and throws them.
James gets out of school for winter break a week before Christmas, and spends the final two weeks of 1919 first waiting impatiently for Christmas, and then wallowing in the joy and commerce of the season. The Godwins buy and set up an immense tree in the ballroom, because the windows that face the street are the widest and tallest in the house, and because Mr and Mrs Godwin throw a Christmas Eve party for their friends, with food and drinks and dancing in the ballroom. James is not allowed to stay up for it, but neither is Julia, but they creep down the stairs with Aimee and waltz around the landing for a while.
(Con has not been invited to the party either, but he is not interested in waltzing outside the door. He is interested in sneaking into the ballroom and partaking of the food and drinks.)
There is another, grander party for New Year's Eve, and while the younger Godwins are not invited to this one either, they are allowed into the ballroom just before midnight to count down the minutes as ticked off by the tall grandfather clock that Mr Godwin inherited from his great-aunt, and which Mrs Godwin had moved into the ballroom from the larger dining room for just this occasion,
Both James and William fall asleep somewhere around eleven o'clock, despite their best efforts, but Julia wakes them both up and they follow her down the stairs, where Con and Aimee have already been ushered into the ballroom. Con even has a glass of champagne. Aimee has a glass of milk, because she informs Julia and James and William that she tried the champagne and did not like it.
Julia finds a glass as well, and at midnight, when everyone cries "Happy New Year!" with much embracing and kissing of each other, she picks James up – briefly, because he is getting too big for her to do that – kisses him soundly on the cheek, and wishes him a good 1920.
Mrs Godwin finds them shortly thereafter, to give them all kisses as well, and James thinks 1920 really will be a good year, because both Con and William consent to being smooched by their mother, and Con does not even say anything sarcastic afterwards.
James is wide awake fifteen minutes later, having been shooed back upstairs so the adults can continue their party, and he has brushed his teeth again and been tucked back into bed, but he cannot stop thinking about all the good things the next year holds – Matthew and Alianor will get married, and James will go back to Coney Island, and there will be more movies with serials, and pirate stories and pretend adventures with cowboys and Indians and bandits and fair damsels in distress, and perhaps they will all take the train to Chicago to see Gabriel, and he will move up a grade in school and turn another year older – he will be nine, so much closer to ten – a whole year of games and adventures stretches out before him, with his sister and his friends and the rest of his big family. He cannot wait.
words: 2251
total words: 49,406
quickie research: thanksgiving restaurant menus, produce in season
