Holiday Cheer from Andrew Grey and Amy Lane

Chapter 7 Baking Cookies Solves Everything

Chapter 7: Baking Cookies Solves Everything

Earlier on the day the pipe broke…

“I CAN’T believe I’m doing this,” Andy grumbled, throwing flour into Porter’s mother’s giant mixer. That’s why they were making the cookies at Porter’s mother’s house—she used to run a bakery and had kept some of the industrial-sized appliances. And her kitchen was top notch.

“Baking cookies or making a mess?” Porter asked, grinning.

Andy gave him a remorseful look. “I’m sorry,” he said, taking a moment to wipe down the counter so he could continue to bake cookies. “I’m just distracted. I should be in Brooklyn right now, you know?”

“Yeah.” Porter blew out a breath. “Man, that sucks, what Eli’s going through. I wish I could be there. I’m getting damned good at fixing plumbing. You sure your dad’s got a guy?”

Andy nodded. “He does. And as worried as I am about that, it’s the presents that are killing me. You don’t understand. We’ve been budgeting since August to get those kids the stuff they need. There were laptops in that room for the kids graduating and going to college. There was high-end makeup for our trans girls—their identity is so tied up in their appearance at this age, and feeling pretty and made up is so important for their self-esteem. Binders for our enby or trans boys so they can feel like themselves. Or, hell! Just clothes that don’t have holes or haven’t been worn by anyone else, phones to help them get jobs—”

“Or surf porn,” Porter said with a wink.

“Well, yeah, teenagers.” Andy chuckled because he and Porter had been that age together. He sobered, grateful for the lighter moment. “But you know, important things for kids growing up without the support system they thought they’d have.”

“I get it,” Porter said. Then he paused and sort of shifted on his feet. “Uhm… so, how picky are these kids? I mean, does it have to be Aeropostale and Abercrombie they were young enough to remember when not getting a Christmas gift really would have been the end of the world—and then they both started talking at once.

“Wait, I’ve got an idea!”

“Oh my God, I know something that can help!”

He calmed them down and pointed to Charlene first. “The junior college got a huge donation of new prepaid smart phones for the students to buy at a discount. They’ve been sitting in the bookstore, drawing dust, because most of the kids have the newest iPhone and they’re not needed.” She grinned. “I knew that job would pay off!”

“Oh wow,” Andy said, taking a deep, delirious breath. “We don’t need too many of them, Charlie. They were meant for about twenty of the students, and I don’t know how many of them survived the flood.”

“Let me go call my boss,” Charlie said, looking excited. “I can go pick them up today if she can do it. She’s super generous. She always keeps a bowl of granola bars for kids she thinks haven’t eaten yet, mothers the bookworms, that sort of thing.” Charlie gasped. “Hey! Do you have any bookworms?”

Andy grinned. “We have a couple—and a lending library, why?”

“Same reason. We have to send the covers back of the books we decide not to restock. Let me see if she can donate some of those too!”

“Charlie, you’re a genius!” Andy gave her a big, floury hug. “Go do magic! You’re amazing!”

“But I haven’t even talked yet!” Mary Beth protested. “Let me talk!”

“Of course!” Andy said. “Apologies, Bimini Beth. Your turn!”

She grinned, all excitement. “My anime club was going to sell these book/collectible sets to raise money. One of the girls got them donated by the artist because she wrote fangirl letters and stuff. But it turns out the only people who wanted this set already had five of them from the series already. My friend Avery was really depressed because she was going to have to write the author and say we couldn’t sell any, but this would be so much cooler. The books are very sweet, YA level, with all sorts of queer representation in them. We’ve got twelve sets. Would that help?”

Andy’s eyes actually burned. “You, too, are a genius! Oh my God, you guys, go make your calls! I’m going to stay here in cookie hell, but if you can get some extra wrapping paper, go get the other stuff and come in and join the party, okay?”

It didn’t end there. Andy kept on with the baking, and Porter’s kitchen became a portal to Santa’s little sweatshop. Young men and women Mary Beth and Charlie’s age began to stream in, bearing mint in-the-box laptops that had been hanging around since a birthday or brand-new snow boots that hadn’t fit quite right and had never been returned. Mary Beth’s friends brought in stuffed animals, fresh in the wrappers, explaining that they’d gotten three of them for their birthday and they were very special anime animals and he wouldn’t understand, and the entire school football team came in with brand-new sports equipment—footballs, volleyballs, baseball mitts—all of them still with the tags on.

The true scope of what his sisters had done didn’t start to dawn on him until Porter and Pastor Dan started trooping presents outside to Dan’s SUV.

“Where are all of these going?” he asked, a little dazed—and a little sugar crazed too. He’d been eating nothing but cookies since breakfast.

“Dan’s got a cargo plane,” Porter said, like didn’t everybody? “It’s out at the hangar by Mr. Portenby’s airstrip, so the presents should be safe. I talked to a buddy of mine—”

“Ex-boyfriend,” Dan said, giving a sly little glance.

“Ex-hookup,” Porter corrected, looking very embarrassed. “Not boyfriend. There’s a difference.” He gave his own sideways glance. “As you very well know.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, his cousin always goes back to New York with an empty truck. He leaves tomorrow night, and we figured that if he hauled some of the presents down, and Dan flew down at about the same time, they could deliver all the presents, and then Dan could fly him back to Foxglove, because his wife was afraid she wouldn’t get to see him Christmas Eve.”

Andy paused for a moment, putting all this together to see what it really meant. “You offered him a flight home,” he said softly. “So he’d get to see his wife, and the presents would get to Brooklyn.”

Dan shrugged. “Porter likes to fly,” he mumbled, his face bright red.

Andy tried to wipe his face with his palms and realized he couldn’t without leaving flour paste all over. “You guys. I’m a mess. All I’m doing is making a diabetic nightmare, and you—”

“And your sisters!” Porter laughed.

“You’ve literally become the elves who saved Christmas.”

Pastor Dan shrugged. “We were going to leave tomorrow night after the pageant.” He and Porter looked at each other, and Porter nodded. “I, uh, know you really want to be back there with him. Do you want a ride?”

Andy thought about it, the memory of Eli, chin propped on his fists, crying alone in his office, still fresh and raw in his heart.

“Yeah,” he said. “I don’t know what I’ll do with my luggage….” He shook his head. “Don’t care. I’ll have a go bag ready for after the family choral presentation. How’s that?”

“Perfect,” Porter said, grinning. “Your guy’s gonna be super happy to see you.”

“He’s going to be super happy to see all of this ,” Andy said excitedly. “Wait until Margie sends me the list and we can compare what we’ve lost to what we’ve got—I think this is going to be his best Christmas surprise ever !”

“OH MY word, Andy. You’re late! We need to practice for the choral presentation tomorrow. Please tell me you got all the cookies done?”

Andy looked at his mother dully, his eyes gritty with fatigue. He’d finished the cookies by four o’clock, but they’d needed to work for another three hours to get the rest of the presents wrapped. On the one hand, he’d gotten to talk to Porter’s mom, which had been nice. She had a tart tongue, it was true, but she was often very funny.

“Did you see our chicken jumpers?” she’d asked, cackling.

“Yes. They’re terrifying.” He remembered Eli’s horror at the idea of wee chicken sweaters and smiled.

“Right? I mean, chickens aren’t smarter than people, but the people don’t know that!”

He’d laughed and grabbed some wrapping paper and a package, and she knitted while he started to help. When she asked where Dan and Porter had gone, he’d told her they were taking presents out to the airstrip, and she’d snorted.

“I think that’s code for getting busy, what about you?”

He’d snickered but then shushed her. “If they wanted the world to know, they’d tell the world,” he whispered, looking around at the animated teenagers all having their own discussions.

“Well, if they didn’t want me to know, they need to keep it quiet! It may look like I fall asleep in my chair at seven, but it’s a nap, I tell you. By the time I wake up from my nap….” She shook her head and tsk ed. “Not pretty. I’m saying.”

He’d snorted another laugh, and the scissors slipped in his hand, making a hash out of the wrapping paper.

“Are you seeing what you’re making me do?” he told her, part in outrage but mostly in affection. Porter’s mother was what his grandparents might have called “a pistol”—not all butterflies and candy corn, but not boring either.

“That stuff’s terrible for the environment anyway,” she sniffed. “Recycle some brown paper with some pretty ribbon.”

Charlie heard her and said back, “Yeah, but this was going to get thrown out by the book store anyway as surplus after a fundraiser. So, you know, we’re just letting it be used before the landfill.”

Porter’s mother looked at Charlie in admiration. “You kids are gonna save the world, you mark my words.”

Charlie came by and kissed her on the cheek. “Maybe, Mrs. Burrell, but you’re going to save all the chickens. Andy, let me have that piece you just cut off. I’ve got something smaller I can use it on.”

So catching up with Porter’s mother had been fun, but between the cookies and the wrapping, he’d needed to send Charlie out for pizza because after cleaning up after the cookies, he couldn’t even look at the kitchen again, and his blood sugar was on such a roller coaster he’d contemplated getting sick.

He was in no mood for his mother’s demands at the moment.

“Yeah, Mom. They’re in the boxes in the mud room, on top of the washer.” The mud room wasn’t heated, so it was the next best thing to keeping them in a refrigerator.

“Well, Andy, don’t just sit there. Charlie told me you ate pizza for dinner. Come get ready to go use the piano at church!”

Andy took a breath and stood, every bone in his body cracking. “Did Charlie tell you what else I was doing all day?”

“Something about getting last-minute gifts for the kids at the shelter. Honestly, if your boyfriend’s going to wait this long, he’s going to have to take what he gets—”

“He didn’t wait this long!” Andy interrupted, needing her to understand this point at least. “The basement sprang a leak, and they were destroyed. He’s been planning Christmas since August! He almost couldn’t find someone to help with the plumbing. Dad had to call in a favor.”

His mother’s expression softened. “Well, that’s too bad, honey. I’m glad you could help him a little with that. But you promised you’d be here for the holidays, and it would be really nice if you were, you know, here . So I need you to come practice with us. Please, don’t fight me on this.”

He stared at her. “You’re not hearing me,” he stated flatly. “This was huge. A huge undertaking. The entire town donated stuff to help him out. Pastor Dan and Porter are transporting everything out tomorrow night so it can get there in time for Christmas Eve. This was enormous. Mary Beth and Charlie and Porter and Dan and Porter’s mom—they all pulled off a miracle here―”

“While Andy worked three jobs at once,” Charlie chimed in, standing up to their mother for the first time in Andy’s memory. “Mom, he’s exhausted. He was baking cookies, making calls, wrapping presents—he was killing himself to help out his boyfriend and his boyfriend’s kids. Do you think you could give him a break tonight? There’s nothing in the child handbook that says you have to kill yourself to come home, okay?”

“Don’t be melodramatic,” Cindy snapped. “He baked some cookies. I do it every year. It’s not going to kill him to come sing with us.”

Andy’s temple gave a throb. He reminded himself that he was leaving immediately after the presentation the next night, and he hadn’t told his mom.

Charlie opened her mouth to protest, but Andy shook his head. “No, no,” he said. “Don’t worry about it, Charlie. The pageant is the last thing I’m doing here anyway, so let’s go practice and make it super-duper great.” His voice cracked with sarcasm, and Charlie’s eyes got really big, as did Mary Beth’s. Both of them gave him wary looks but said nothing as he stomped to the mudroom to grab his coat, hat, and boots.

Their mother glared at them as they got ready, but Andy’s father actually came to talk.

“Son?” he said, looking worried. “What did you mean by that?”

“I’m going with Porter and Dan to take the presents down to Brooklyn, Dad,” he said softly. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell Mom about it. I’ll just go, and she can fuss all she wants, but I’m tired of it. Eli is literally the most important thing in my life. He is my family, and I wanted him to have you guys too, but she won’t even acknowledge he’s alive.” His voice broke bitterly as he remembered those piles of sweaters, some of which had his mother’s unmistakable color choices or needlework. “She won’t even knit him a sweater. Dad, I can’t be here with you guys if you’re not going to be part of his family. I just….” His voice fractured again—and this time not with sarcasm. “I’m exhausted,” he confessed. “Let’s just go. I’ll learn the choir part, and we can practice. I’m actually looking forward to it. But if she wants to see me ever again after tomorrow night, she’s going to have to get off her high horse and get her ass to Brooklyn.”

His father nodded. “How are you getting down there?” he asked.

“Porter’s driving with the trucker, who’s taking the bulk of the presents, but I’m going in the cargo plane with Pastor Dan.”

“Ask Dan if he’s got room for one more,” his dad said. “You’re right, son. I’d like to meet Eli. I realized this morning that I was talking to him for the first time in two and a half years, and he sounded like a really great ki—erm, young man. And I really liked the sound of the two of you together. You guys have a guest room, right?”

Andy nodded, his eyes burning. “Yeah.”

“Well, if you’re taking Christmas down to Brooklyn, I can join you if you can put me up.”

Andy found himself engulfed in his father’s best hug, and then the girls whispered, “Guys, Mom’s coming. Get a move on. Let’s go practice so we can come home and sleep!”

As his father guided him, once again, with a hand in his back so he might not fall apart in exhaustion, Andy thought that finally, finally , he could bring the family to Eli that Eli so desperately deserved.