by Patrick
Cullie
We lived in Chicago but would drive
through the night in our Ford station wagon to my grandmother's house
in Youngstown, Ohio for the holidays. I was especially fond of my mother's
mother, my Gramma, a gentle, caring woman who was, by the late 1950s
when this story takes place, widowed from my rather unpleasant grandfather.
I loved these holidays. Together
with the other 22 grandchildren, uncles, aunts and hangers-on, we took
over my grandmother's rambling Monticello-style house. My mother's family
was once somewhat wealthy and the house was stately, yet comfortable
and homey. Trimmed in Philippine mahogany, with a large marble foyer,
the house was an amusement park for kids, rife with banisters, attics,
parlors, breakfast rooms and porches. Places to hide and places to slide.
And unlike my gruff, overbearing grandfather, my Gramma loved the clatter
of grandchildren. The television squawked. The record player played
Clancy Brothers albums. People played cards. People drank. The women
cooked. The smokers smoked. The readers sat in the library and read.
The arguers argued. It was lovely.
I was twelve years old this particular
holiday - the oldest of the grandchildren and the apple of my Gramma's
eye. My twelve years had earned me the right to sit at the big table.
The other grandchildren were relegated to card tables set up around
the room and into the adjacent living room. My disgruntled cousins eyed
me enviously. My grandfather had passed away some years earlier and
my father had taken on the turkey carving job and with it, the seat
at the head of the table. I was seated next to him to dish out potatoes,
or vegetables after he had ladled the plate with the turkey of the assigned
eater's choice. "White or dark, Helen? I don't remember,"
he would say. Or,"ìEileen, I know you like the wing,"
he'd say holding up an elbowed wing. "Howís this then?"
There must have nearly thirty of
us. Outside it was a cold and gray, industrial Ohio late-winter afternoon.
The windows were steamed from our body heat and the cooked food. The
talk was loud and, although I was too young to be sure, I sensed it
was also a bit boozy. We weren't big drinkers. Well, a few were. We
were Irish after all. I was just old enough to tell by the high-pitched
laughter and the red faces that maybe a few too many pre-dinner cocktails
had been poured. That and the way my Aunt Betty wobbled as she went
in and out of my Gramma's grand kitchen through the swinging door. But
all was merry and gay and I was loving my preeminent position near the
head of the table. That and my precious turkey leg.
Now, there was a tradition on my
mother's side of the family - Christmas plum pudding. I wasn't a huge
fan of the stuff. There was always a pie or two for dessert besides,
so I was happy to let the Christmas pudding go to those that waited
364 days for it. When my aunts were younger, the making of the pudding
was a three-month long affair. The fruit was brandied and mixed with
various ingredients over a week's time. Then it was molded into shape
and aged for three months. And over those three months, every week it
was uncovered and re-soaked with brandy. As my aunts grew older and
the job became too much, the pudding was purchased at great expense,
and far in advance, from England. It came in large 28 ounce cans that
sat on the kitchen counter throughout the day, looking very exotic and
very English.
For dessert, the pudding was heated
while still in the can, in saucepans of water. A poor man's double boiler,
so to speak. When it was heated sufficiently, the cans were opened gingerly
and the pudding scooped out and served with whipped cream or crème
fraiche. It seems that for the duration of this particular loud, tipsy,
familial dinner, two cans of English plum pudding sat in boiling water
in two sauce pans on the stove. One of my aunts had gotten the process
going and had, in the rush of the meal or the glow of the wine, completely
forgot about them. The water boiled merrily away as the dinner continued
and we made short work of a very large turkey with all the trimmings.
Then suddenly, the first can exploded.
It sounded like a canon had gone off in the kitchen. The clatter of
thirty-some laughing, yammering people came to an abrupt stop. No one
moved. Then the second can blew up. I think it was my Aunt Helen, a
large woman with a hook nose and one of the greatest laughs I've ever
heard, who said,"ìOh Jesus. The pudding." Someone laughed
nervously. Still no one moved. I was puzzled, but I think the adults
saw in their mind's eye the nightmarish vision that lay on other side
of the swinging kitchen door. And they were right.
Think of plum pudding. Almonds,
raisins, currants, plums, candied cherries, sugar and brandy. Three
months of brandy. Imagine the consistency. The color. The stickiness.
Now imagine that someone had filled an industrial blender with the aforementioned
mess and, without placing the lid on said blender, turned it on full
force while whirling round and round to make sure no crack nor cranny
in the room escaped the thick, purple, gooey effluvia. That was my grandmother's
kitchen on Christmas Day
They tried to clean it up, but it
was impossible. It was everywhere - on the floor, the walls, the ceiling.
It lodged in every crack and crevice in the room. By the next morning
it was even worse. The pudding had solidified overnight and had chemically
transformed into the world's strongest bonding agent. Doors stuck shut.
Canisters were glued to counters. They eventually decided to give up
and just remodel the damn kitchen. And that's what they did. They tore
out the cabinets. Got rid of the refrigerator. Built an island in the
middle. Stripped the wallpaper. And re-laid the linoleum floor. By next
Christmas there was a brand new pink kitchen. And we had Christmas dinner
in the large formal dining room like we always did.
My extended family, this large,
happy aggregation of aunts, uncles and cousins came to ruin. My father
went into business with my uncle and it went sour. My mother never spoke
to her brother again. The rift tore the family in two. There were not
many more Christmas dinners. My grandmother died ten years later, sick
and broke. Youngstown, Ohio, once a booming steel town, went bust. My
Gramma's grand house, on the nicest street in town across from the golf
course, sold at auction for $39,000. I've lost track of my cousins.
I've never seen any of them since my grandmother's funeral and the awkward
afternoon we spent together, the very last time we were all in her once-grand
house. My family, like an untended can of plum pudding that came all
the way from England, ended up in a mess.
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