A Big Storm Knocked It Over by Laurie Colwin Page A

pine branches in enormous glass jars, and there were wreaths on every door. In the late afternoon the smell of mulled cider wafted up the stairs.
    Jane Louise realized that she was exhausted. They were all exhausted. The idea of lying around napping took them by surprise, like a fall on the ice, and they surrendered to it. When they came down for dinner—Edie and Jane Louise in long skirts and long underwear—they were surprised to find a cheerful group of people they had never seen before. Mrs. Schuldes explained that these were friends and relatives who always came for Christmas supper and evening skating. Guests of the inn traditionally were included.
    They stood in the living room, drinking hot cider, until the doors to the dining room were pulled back to reveal the kind of table Edie said Mrs. Teagarden would have paid several hundred thousand dollars to have someone fix up for her. On the large sideboard were three roast ducks, a glazed ham, an enormous glass dish containing a mountain of beet and herring salad, greens, roast potatoes, and a gigantic Christmas cake.
    â€œThis is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” Edie said.
    Jane Louise looked around her. It made her feel almost panicky to be sitting at a Christmas table surrounded by people she had never seen before.
    As they began their dinner the front door crashed open, and in walked the three big Schuldes boys and their dogs. They had just come from cleaning off the pond and setting out the flambeaux: huge torches on poles. They sat down and began eating quantities of food Jane Louise found mind-boggling. “Did you and Mokie eat that way when you were teenagers?” she asked Teddy.
    â€œHoney, I still eat that way,” said Mokie. “This is heaven.”
    He looked around the table, used to being the only person of color. This group was polite and not very talkative, so Mokie started in.
    â€œMy wife and I are caterers,” he said. “Actually, Edie is a cake decorator and pastry chef. She has raised cake decoration to a fine art. And I am a caterer, but I have never seen such beautiful food.” He lifted his glass toward Mrs. Schuldes.
    â€œMy husband does all the cooking,” she said. “It must be very interesting to cook professionally.”
    â€œYou do,” Mokie pointed out.
    â€œWe only do breakfasts, except for Christmas Eve,” Mrs. Schuldes said. “Do you have many interesting clients?”
    Mokie, Edie, and Jane Louise sighed audibly.
    â€œTell them about the fairy cake,” Teddy said.
    â€œThe sugarplum fairy,” Mokie began. “We have a client who is what you might call extremely demanding. Every little thing, every big thing, every middle-sized thing. She likes to get it all right. This year our client had a winter party, and she had a vision of something called a Sugarplum Fairy Cake.”
    â€œIs that one of those hollow cakes with a lady popping out of it?” Mrs. Schuldes said. “You hear of these things at stag parties.”
    â€œShe was unclear what it was,” Mokie said. “But my genius wife decoded this to mean a cake with a doll ornament. We made her prototypes in cardboard, we found Victorian Christmas cards, we found little dolls of the fifties. Finally Jane Louise found an old bisque doll and dressed it up, but by that time our client had forgotten all about it and was onto something else.”
    â€œ Forgotten! ” Mrs. Schuldes said. “After all that work?”
    Mokie smiled a beautiful smile. “These people aren’t afraid of hard work, ma’am,” he said.
    Jane Louise looked over at him. The name of this smile was “the Nigger Funereal Smile.” She and Mokie had in common thatthey never felt they were where they ought to be, and when they were where they thought they ought to be, they longed to be somewhere else. Mokie’s manners were flawless, a kind of self-parody. He had the very best kind