(prelude here, I’ma start this one off with…)
Gordon’s last gift to his older brother was a pamphlet listing a variety of hand and wrist exercises, in an effort to help stave off the carpal tunnel syndrome that’s probably just about inevitable, considering all the typing his brother does. Of the five of them, John and Alan are the only ones who spend any time at desks any longer, and though it doesn’t happen often, occasionally John ends up with idle time on his hands, nothing to do while he sits at his desk. Come Christmastime, it becomes apparent that he’s been putting this time to productive use. It’s not clear if he’s used any of this idle time for the provided wrist exercises.
Apparently one of the other dispatchers had taught him the basics over the course of a couple lunch breaks. Apparently she’d gotten him started with a spare pair of needles, and an old skein of yarn that she’d meant for him just to practice with—by her standards, the colour of it was too bright and gaudy for anyone to reasonably want to wear, bright, chunky, golden rod yellow—but John’s a fast learner and a perfectionist, and by the end of a few particularly slow weeks, he’d had a respectable four feet worth of scarf, garter stitched the whole way through.
John says it’s nothing much, and that he won’t mind in the least if Gordon doesn’t wear it. He doesn’t even know if it’ll be particularly warm, being made of cheap acrylic yarn, nothing like high quality wool. He’d made it just to make it, after all, it was only supposed to be for practice. And anyway it’s out of regs, as far as the uniform goes.
Gordon doesn’t care. Gordon loves it. And he wears it from the depths of December, right up until the city starts to thaw out again.
Grandma used to do this when she was a girl, and the Depression made everything scare and then scarcer still.
Alan’s not sure what Scott was trying to prove, giving him something of Mom’s. Especially her wedding ring.
Penny wasn’t brought up to be the kind of girl to do her own baking.
She was brought up to be genteel and ornamental and functionally useless. She was brought up to be pretty and charming and obedient, to go where she was told and to do as she was bid.
The diner doesn’t care about pretty, or charming, or even obedient as long as the eggs made it to the table still hot from the kitchen. The diner cares about girls that can carry eight plates at once and keep the coffee topped up.
It’s exhausting and leaves her coated in grease, and it doesn’t pay enough, even with tips that are delivered as often as not with a slap on her ass, but a part of her is so, so proud of herself for making it this far.
The library cookbook has a thumbprint marked in grease on the corner of the page. Penny’s got her tongue permanently parked in the corner of her mouth as she studies the instructions and guesses weights and measures with a chipped coffee mug and a bowl that she’d been using to hold her fruit.
The result is lopsided, the icing slowly oozing downhill to spill over one side. But the candles encountered nothing but fluffy sweetness as she jammed them in, setting them aflame with Virgil’s borrowed lighter.
Gordon’s eyes are golden in the firelight as he leans in to blow out the candles. “Happy birthday, darling,” Penny said as she kissed his cheek, mindful of his brothers and Grandmother ringed around the table. “What did you wish for?”
Gordon wasn’t brought up to be genteel or charming. He catches her jaw in a gentle hand, pulls her in for a kiss that still makes her toes curl. “Nothing. I’ve already got everything I could want.”
Rent Day Blues 