Grave Apparel (5 page)

“Everyone
expects
it,
Lacey.
Christmas at
The
Eye
won’t
be the same without
it.”

“Don’t
whine,
Tony.”
She
was
thinking.

“The
cookies,”
he moaned, “think about the
cookies.”
“Now
you’re
whimpering.”

Felicity’s
many
trays of artistically arranged treats
would
in
clude
cookies
in
the
shapes
of
poinsettias,
wreaths,
Santa
Claus,
reindeer,
and angels. There were
Moravian
spice cook

ies
and
there
were
brown
sugar
drops
and
coffee
and
spice
drops, applesauce cookies, butterscotch cookies with burned
butter
icing, oatmeal cookies, ginger creams, coconut jumbles,
and
macaroons.
The
food
editor
piled
on
the
date
bars
and
lemon bars. There were cookies with raspberry and cherry
fill
ings.
Cookies
iced
and
sprinkled
with
colored
sugars
and
dot
ted with red and green gumdrops. Cookies with
exotic
names and
familiar
names and cookies with no names at all. Felicity demanded nothing in
exchange
for her
efforts—except
lavish
thanks and eternal
love.

“Don’t
forget
about the gingerbread
cookies,”
Tony
said.
“How
could I
forget?”
Lacey
snapped. “I could
never
forget
the gingerbread cookies.
Why,
they
practically do the tango,
Tony.
They could stage a newsroom
revolt
and publish
their
own
paper.”

Felicity made gingerbread
boys
and girls for
every
reporter and
editor,
personalized with their names in red or green icing. Her yearly cookie ritual was a nottobemissed
event.
Even publisher Claudia Darnell made an appearance for her
own
gin gerbread girl.
Lacey
had a problem with the cookie feast be cause she had a problem with
Felicity.
And the
fact
that the entire
newsroom
had been seduced into
loving
Felicity by her
compulsive
feeding of them.
Lacey
considered the whole thing
naked
emotional blackmail, and it
was
just another
excuse
to pack on
five
pounds during the holidays.

Lacey
turned her back on
Tony
and stared into her computer screen, the silent code in the
newsroom
for
This
conversation
is
over.

“All
I ask is for you to
try,
Lacey.”

“Go
away,
Tony.
I
am
not
responsible
for
Sweatergate,
and
I’m not responsible for
Felicity’s
baking or not baking. I’m not ruining
Christmas.”
Everyone
else
is
ruining
my
Christmas,
she added
silently.

“You
are, you
know!”
Tony
left with a dark look.
“You’re
ru ining Christmas!”

Cassandra’s
editorial brought more nasty repercussions for
Lacey.
She opened her email: Another reader
convinced
that
fashion
reporter
Lacey
Smithsonian had written the snotty edi torial cursing Christmas clothing:
“You’re
not a crime of
fash
ion, Smithsonian.
You’re
a crime of nature. Do you think
you’re
witty?
You’re
not!”

Lacey
was
one
of
the
better
known
names
at
the
paper,
thanks to some sensational stories she had
broken
in the past
few
weeks. She
allowed
herself one sigh of
selfpity.
She had just come
off
the scoop of her
career,
finding
a
legendary
corset full of
Romanov
jewels.
It
was
good while it lasted. At
work,
the heady
glow
continued for about a week. A couple of weeks and it
was
old
news.
And in the
newsroom,
old
news
is no
news
at all.

Obviously,
Lacey
thought, her less stable readers
believed
Sweatergate
was
some
psychotic
personal
vendetta,
and
Smithsonian must simply be too
craven
to put her name on it.
Unhappy
emails
followed,
along with
several
personally de
livered
letters from the more seriously outraged members of the reading public.

“My grandmother wears Christmas
sweaters,”
one of them said.
“And
she has more taste in one little
finger
than you
have
in your whole body! I’m through reading you!”
If
only
that
were
true,
Lacey
thought. People who
swore
they
were through
with
her
column
inevitably
read
it
again
and
were
outraged
again.
And
wrote
a
letter
again.
Another
wrote,
“What
kind
of
twisted, hateful
worm would
attack something as innocent as a harmless Christmas tie that lights up and plays ‘God Rest
Ye
Merry,
Gentlemen’?
I’ll
have
you
know
my
granddaughter
gave
me that tie!” Still another member of the reading public said,
“Watch
your back, Miss HighandMighty Smithsonian,
you
might
find
yourself bloody in the
snow
with no one to rescue
you.”

Lacey
was
willing to
take
her lumps for the columns that she actually wrote. She
was
not willing to
take
the heat,
however,
for Cassandra
Wentworth’s
incendiary opinions. Mac said
it
was
no big deal. Mac said it
would
blow
over.
But
every
time she
checked
her email there
was
another vile message or three. She
forwarded
them to Cassandra,
but
that
didn’t
help.

Lacey’s
reputation
was
at
stake.
She had no choice
but
to
fight
for her
honor,
such as it
was.

She decided to set the record straight and pen a small
fash
ion
apology,
not on behalf of Felicity or Cassandra,
but
for the common
woman,
the
average
Jill, the
woman
who gets no re spect, the
woman
who
loves
the flashier aspects of the holidays.
Christmas
is
a
holiday
that
seeks
to
embrace
all
mankind,

Lacey
reasoned, including those with taste and those who
can’t
resist the
tacky.

In light of the threats, she needed to
cover
her back,
her
front, and
everything
in between.
Lacey
was
reduced to defend ing Christmas sweaters in order to defend herself. She hoped she
wouldn’t regret
it.

The truth, when she dared to
acknowledge
it,
was
that
Lacey
didn’t
hate Christmas sweaters at all.
They
amused
her,
they
comforted
her,
they
lifted her spirits, and most of the time
they
made her smile. She applauded those
brave
few
who dared to wear one to the
office.
At least
they
broke
up the dreary sarto rial color palette of
Washington,
D.C., which in winter tended to turn as drab and depressing as the Potomac
River
mud. The city took itself
far
too seriously all year long. If a Christmas sweater
was
a cheap laugh, at least it
was
a laugh.

Lacey
remembered fondly all the outlandish and
joyous
and
just
plain
preposterous
Christmas
sweaters
she
had
known,
scrupulously
avoiding
using
any
of
Felicity’s
as
examples.
At a department store cosmetics
counter,
Lacey
had recently seen a cotton candy blonde of a certain age, looking like a
bonbon
plucked
from a platter of pretty pastel petit fours. The blonde
was
wearing a
powder
blue skirt and a
powder
blue Christmas
sweater.
Or perhaps the sweater
was
wearing
her.
The sweater
was
framed with white ostrich feathers and featured a white Christmas tree decorated with
silver
rhinestones. On her wrist she
wore
a charm bracelet from which dangled a
silver
jingle bell. In her heart,
Lacey
imagined,
giving
the blonde the bene
fit
of the doubt,
was
the
joy
of Christmas.
Lacey
recalled this image and took a deep breath.

But
how
to
begin?
She concentrated. At the
beginning,
of course.

Lacey
Smithsonian’s
F
A
S
H
I
O
N
B
I
T
E
S

It’s
Not
a
Matter
of
National
Security,
It’s
Just
a
Christmas
Sweater.

That’s
right,
it’s
just a
sweater
.
Go ahead and wear it.
Wearing
that uniquely resplendent garment of seasonal delight, replete with Rudolph and Santa and their friends, the Little
T
oy
Soldier,
the
Nutcracker,
or the Snow Queen, will not cause the terrorists to win or the polar ice cap to melt. It will not cause wars, except possibly at this
ver
y
newspaper,
nor will it cause (or cure)
cancer.
It’s
just a
sweater
.