Page 73 of Just Say Christmas
NYREE
It was a good thing Marko’s parents had a big kitchen, because at nine A.M. on Nyree’s wedding day, there were eight women working in it. Nine, counting his grandmother, though she was lying down. Also one man, the photographer, who kept popping back and forth between the kitchen and the garden, where the boys were doing the setup, and whom they were all doing their best to ignore.
Yes,Woman’s Worldhad still wanted the photos, because theywouldbe better, and so much more fun. Or, as Nyree had told Marko on Friday afternoon, when she’d taken the call, “because I’ve got a twenty-thousand-dollar tongue.”
He’d looked at her, raised his brows, and said, “True, but I didn’t expect to make money off it.”
She hit him, and he laughed. “Because I talked them into it,” she said. “You knew what I meant.”
“I’m going to enjoy thinking about your twenty-thousand-dollar tongue, though,” he said, getting his hand at the back of her neck in the way that made her forget her modern-woman principles, then brushing his lips over her cheek in the completely sneaky way that made her shiver. “Save some of it for me on Sunday night,” he whispered in her ear. He also slapped her bum.
Oh, yeh. She was marrying the right guy.
She was sleeping with Ella and Caro until the wedding, which Marko wasn’t one bit happy about. She wasn’t all that happy about it, either, truth be told, but it worked for one thing. She was nearly desperate to have Marko’s hands and mouth all over her, and if he felt the same way . . .
Stop. Hormones.She kept on with cutting stem ends out of the pile of strawberries for the pavlova and asked, “Why didn’t I always plan to do it this way? So much better to be busy, however mad it all gets. Yes, we had to change the ceremony time to four to fit it all in, but see? It doesn’t even matter. Otherwise, I’d have been jumping out of my skin, having my makeup done in some flash lodge room and then having to hide in there for about three hours without even having Marko around to calm me down.”
“True,” Olivia said, “but then, I got married in this house, so I’m probably prejudiced. My wedding weekend was a lot like this one, but with Mary doing the cooking and me doing my clumsy best to help. I was also pregnant, just like you. That was Marko, so you see? It was meant to be. It’s a lucky house. A house built on love, and a house addedonto with love. It’s a rabbit warren now, but such a friendly one. I can’t even remember what it originally looked like, though Mary could tell us, since Ander’s dad built it for her with his two hands.” Her own hands, decorated only by her simple silver wedding band with its inlay of paua shell, stirred an enormous pan of sliced onions and whole garlic cloves, after which she’d add them to the slow-cooking lamb that had already started perfuming the room. Pulled lamb with aromatics, and Nyree wanted itnow.
The lamb was the one thing they hadn’t had to shop for yesterday, after Olivia, Marko’s aunt Jakinda, Nyree’s mum Miriama, and Nyree’s Nan had worked out the menu amongst them.
“Coals to Newcastle, bringing lamb into this house,” Olivia had said cheerfully, when they’d been sitting at the big round kitchen table the day before with a pot of tea and a notepad. “That’s one of the mains sorted, anyway, because I pulled three shoulders out of the freezer on Friday as soon as I heard. Wedding dinner for thirty or thereabouts. This is going to befun.Fish, don’t you think, Miriama? So we represent both Northlandandthe South Island? Now, how to do it, I wonder?”
Nyree’s mum said, “Barbecued snapper with lemon. Easy, and the boys can do that at the last minute.”
“Tom,” Nyree said instantly. “He’s not coming until Sunday. He can bring snapper in a chilly bin, and maybe a few crayfish as well. If I know Tom, he’ll get them in the morning before he flies down, hey, Ella?”
“Yes,” Ella said. She and Caro were sitting at the counter making dried lavender sachets to put on pillows in the tents, with Nyree’s sister Kiri’s help. The older girls had finished their secondary schooling the day before, but seemed willing to have their parade rained on a bit, fortunately. Or maybe Ella just looked happy to be seeing Tom. “He’ll catch them,” she said, “and he’ll bring them, and he’ll barbecue them, too. He’s brilliant.”
Olivia smiled and said, “You know? I think he is.”
Jakinda said, “That’s a bit iffy, surely, counting on catching snapper, not to mention finding crayfish. We should have a backup plan.”
Ella said, “Mum. We don’t need a backup plan. Tomisthe backup plan.” She shut her mouth as if she were thinking,Don’t ruin Nyree’s wedding.Ella was so clearly aching to be gone to University, it was like she was already there, and Nyree’s sister Kiri, who was thirteen, leggy as a newborn foal, and clearly thought Ella was the Woman She Wanted to Be, had a near-visible thought-bubble over her head that said,Rugby players. And me. If it’s happening for Nyree and Ella, and even Victoria, why not me?Nyree was going to have to have a talk with her about that. Maybe not today, though.
“Well, let’s plan on another main, just to be sure,” Jakinda said. “Or—I have a good recipe for baked gnocchi. Potato dumplings, light as anything. If we triple that, with lamb? That’ll be good. Filling.”
“Mm,” Nyree said. “Can I have some now, please?” She’d eaten about an hour before. She was hungry again anyway.
Olivia got up, pulled crackers from the pantry and an avocado from the fruit bowl, and said, “One grandchild-growing snack, coming up.”
“Careful,” Nyree said. “I could move in.” And Olivia laughed.
“Veggies,” her Nan said. “We’ll do a tagine. Moroccan. Vegan, in case that matters to anybody. You never know, Miriama,” she said, forestalling Nyree’s mum, who had her mouth open to say something about the silliness of veganism. “Things change. That’s how I plan to stay young forever, hey, Livvie? Change right along with them, that’s the idea. Anyway, that’s a main, if we do it with chickpeas. We can do as much as we like, and cook it along with the lamb. Lucky you’ve got two ovens, as this’ll be four racks of food, and we’ll be doing the potato thing as well.”
“A couple extra fridges also,” Olivia said, mashing avocado onto crackers and putting them onto a plate. “Benefits of running a B&B. And that you don’t tend to get too fussed. Now. A couple of salads. This makes me think—chicken, avocado, and mango salad in lettuce cups. Lovely, and we can cook the chicken today. Beetroot salad with pomegranate and rocket. And feta on the side, for the vegan idea. Write that down, will you, Nyree?”
Nyree didn’t move fast enough. She was thinking about avocado, mango, and chicken salad. Her mother said, “I’ll do it. Grilled asparagus along with the snapper? Easy to do at the last minute, with some squeezes of lemon and shaved Parmesan. And what for a sweet, as we don’t have wedding cake?”
“Pavlova,” Nyree said, just before she sank her teeth into a cracker piled high with avocado and followed it with a nibble of cheese. “Absolutely. It’s Christmas. We do a pavlova. Or a few pavlovas.”
Now, women filled just about every nook and cranny of the enormous B&B-sized kitchen with its massive center bench. It was bigger than Nyree’s entire apartment had been, and a lucky thing, too. The tagine was happening, and so were the potato gnocchi, which did look delicious. Jakinda knew what she was doing there. Kiri was removing seeds from three pomegranates, a fanatically fiddly and messy occupation, while at the kitchen table, Marko’s sisters Sabine and Therese were doing the salads, though Sabine kept stopping and reading the recipe details aloud. Loudly, and her older sister was rolling her eyes. Finally, she said, “Sabine. It’s salad. It’s not a chemistry experiment.”
Sabine, who’d just finished medical school and had a thin, serious face, like she’d got all her father’s intensity genes and none of her mum’s relaxed ones, said, “They test the recipes before they put them out. They’ve listed the optimal ingredients and preparation. Why not follow them?”
Therese was holding a sharp knife. She looked a little stabby for a mum of two, also. That may have been why Olivia said, “Oh, wait. Wait a minute. How did I not realize this?” Everybody looked at her, as intended, and Olivia said, “The pavlova. Mary . . . how are we going to cook the meringues with so much moisture in the kitchen? It’ll be a soggy mess, and also end up tasting like lamb. And we need three. We’re going to have to do it at the last minute, or . . .”
Mary—Marko’s Amona—opened her eyes from her spot on a lounge chair in the corner and said, “Ask Sabine.”
