A Christmas Arrangement by Annie Adams

than excited.”
    “You’ll be fantastic, don’t worry.  This is so great.  You’ll be great.”
    “Aw thanks.  Love you.”
    So, a bottle of my Grandma’s perfume.  I contemplated what that meant while I tried to unstick my teeth from a mouthful of homemade caramels.

CHAPTER FIVE
     
    I stared down at a grocery bag full of chestnuts that stared back like a sack of brown eyeballs.  “You’ve got to help me, Danny.”  I felt a cramp in my wrist and loosened my grip on the phone.  “Now that I risked my life getting these chestnuts, I don’t know what to do with them.”
    “Well what does the recipe say, Julia Child?”  I couldn’t fault him for being snippy with me.  I’d called my best friend and competitor at six-thirty in the morning asking for help.  But the Christmas dinner party was later that night and I needed serious help STAT.  
    “He just wrote chestnuts.  He probably told me when we went over it, but I was too nervous to pay attention, I guess.”
    “Why don’t you call him and ask?” he said gently.
    “Because his parents are there.  And she doesn’t want me to have this stupid recipe in the first place.  I’m only making it because Alex loves it.”
    “Aww.  That’s so sweet.  You’re trying to impress your fella.  Who am I to get in the way of true love?  You’re like a female version of Greg Focker.”
    I think he was being complimentary.  He explained how to roast the chestnuts in the oven and I apologized for calling so early.
    “I’m sure you’ll make something delicious and there’s something wrong with his parents if they don’t demand that you become their daughter-in-law on the spot.”
    “Whoa, slow down there.  I don’t know if I would go that far.  But, thank you.”
    “Now what did you say about risking your life?”
    “I couldn’t find chestnuts in our local little store, and I didn’t have time to go to a bigger one.  And then I got distracted at work and I kind of…forgot about the chestnuts.  Until last night, around midnight, when I remembered that my parents’ neighbors had a tree.  We used to stomp on them on the way to school.  So I drove over there last night and saw that they’d actually put them in baskets along their park strip for people to take away.  It was like a miracle from heaven.  Until their attack dog jumped the fence and took after me.  I made it into the van just in time.”
    “You know, Eliza…” Eliza was one of his favorite pet-names for me.  I was a work in progress, just like Miss Doolittle.  “Sometimes I wonder if your life isn’t like a carnival ride.”
    “You know me so well,” I told him. 
    “Good luck, dear.  With everything.”
    “Thanks, I’ll need it.” 
    We would have to compare notes about our open house plans and their progress later on.  This roasting thing was going to take up time I hadn’t anticipated.  I pre-heated the oven then started chopping.  I put the chestnuts in the oven, started the egg-timer and re-read the instructions.  I’d missed the part about pureeing the vegetables with a food processor.  What was a food processor?  The word pulp had also been written so I assumed a food processor was used to make pulp.  We would just have to have pulp-free stuffing, which if anything like the orange juice, would be much tastier anyway. 
    The vegetables were chopped, which didn’t take much time at all.  The timer said I still had twenty-five minutes, so I pulled the sausage from the fridge, sliced the casings open and gagged my way through removing the meat and crumbling it into the pan.  The cooking went fine but I smelled like sausage grease.  My hair smelled like sausage grease, my clothes smelled like sausage grease, everything in my home smelled like sausage grease.  I washed my hands and ran into the bedroom, hoping my closet door had been shut.  No such luck.  I pulled some potential outfits from the closet, and set them out on the bed.  I