Hot Flash Holidays: A Novel - Hardcover

Thayer, Nancy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0345485513 ISBN 13: 9780345485519

Publisher: Ballantine Books, 2005

Synopsis

The intrepid women of The Hot Flash Club are back for the holidays, soothing jingled nerves and stressed shoppers in their exclusive spa and celebrating the joys of the season. In her witty and delightfully wisecracking prose, Nancy Thayer tells a heartwarming tale packed with fun, secrets, romance–and an ample dose of good cheer.

When the Hot Flash friends gather at the spa to trim the Christmas tree, they share steaming mugs of hot chocolate, a few laughs, and a vow to make this holiday one to remember. And it is–but not in the cheerful, ho-ho-ho way they expected. Instead, Christmas brings family conflicts, household accidents, plane delays–and that’s just the beginning.

After a hazardous holiday season, the women make resolutions that they intend to keep . . . in a perfect world. But life–and their friends and relatives–cause complications. Shirley lends financial support to her boyfriend’s schemes, which infuriates Alice, whose own son commits an act she’s not sure she can accept. Marilyn travels to Scotland and falls in love, but her octogenarian mother needs her at home. And when Polly and Faye find themselves pitted against each other by a younger woman, an they overcome this clash to make a new, entrepreneurial dream come true? Then real disaster strikes, bringing new challenges and surprising revelations.

Just as every month of the year throws new problems at us all, so too does the end of the year give us the chance to reunite and put these problems
into their proper perspective. And when the Hot Flash Five get together for the holidays, we should expect nothing less than the unexpected.

About this title

About the Author

Nancy Thayer is the nationally bestselling author of The Hot Flash Club, The Hot Flash Club Strikes Again, and Between Husbands and Friends. She lives in Nantucket, Massachusetts.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

On this early December day, snowflakes sparkled down to earth like granted wishes from a magic wand.

Inside the handsome lounge of The Haven, Yule logs blazed cheerfully in the fireplace, while Presley, Sinatra, and Springsteen sang Christmas carols. Near the long casement windows, five women were looping lights around a Norway spruce so tall they had to use a ladder to reach the highest branches.

“Okay, that’s the end of the last string,” Marilyn called from behind the fat tree.

“Plug them in,” Shirley told her.

Marilyn knelt to fit the plug into the socket.

“Oooooooh!” Shirley, Faye, Alice, Marilyn, and Polly sighed with delight as dozens and dozens of multicolored miniature lights twinkled to life.

“Now,” Shirley announced, “for the fun part. How shall we do this?” Shirley was the director of The Haven, but the four other women were her best friends, practically her family, and she wanted to please everyone.

“I think we should all hang the ornaments we brought where we want,” Polly suggested.

“But keep in mind,” Faye added, “it will look better if the heaviest, biggest ornaments go on the bottom boughs, with the smaller ones on the higher branches.” She was an artist, with an artist’s eye.

“Yes, but we don’t want it to look too perfect,” Alice insisted. “We want it to look real.”

“Good point, Alice,” Shirley agreed. “Perfection, as we all know, isn’t real.”

“Sometimes it is,” Marilyn disagreed, in her thoughtful, vague way. “The horseshoe crab, genus Limulus, for example, is perfect. Its design hasn’t changed since the Triassic period, that’s two hundred forty-five million years.”

“Lovely,” Faye said gently, amused. “Still, we really don’t want to hang a horseshoe crab on the Christmas tree.”

“I suppose not. Although one year we did.” Marilyn smiled at the memory. She was a paleobiologist—the others teasingly called her a pale old biologist—and her grown son and her ex-husband were molecular geneticists. “Teddy was nine, and fascinated with crustaceans and fossils, so we bored holes in lots of shells, slipped colored cords through, and hung the tree with crabs, mollusks, and gastropods.”

Alice snorted with laughter. “You are so weird!”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Polly chimed in. “David told me that he and Amy are hanging only homemade decorations on their tree. And my daughter-in-law is such a purist, she’ll use only vegetable dyes, natural wood, straw, and such. Afterwards, they’ll probably carry the tree outside and feed the entire thing to the goat.”

The others laughed. As they talked, they moved back and forth from the tables and couches where the boxes of decorations were set out. Occasionally Shirley dropped another log on the fire.

The spacious room, with its casement windows, high ceilings, and mahogany paneling, seemed to glow with contentment. Once built to house a private boarding school, this old stone lodge had been abandoned for a few years. Then Shirley, with the help of her friends and a few investors, had bought it and opened The Haven, a premier spa and wellness resort with a burgeoning membership and second-floor condos for staff or friends.

She had staff (she had staff! Shirley, who had struggled financially most of her life, got a thrill every time she remembered that). But she hadn’t wanted her staff to decorate the Christmas tree, and neither had her friends. They’d wanted to do this together. They’d agreed to bring three boxes of decorations each, and they’d agreed to do it without advance discussion or collaboration, so their choices would be a surprise.

Now they worked quickly, climbing the ladder to adorn the top, stretching left and right, standing back to appraise, kneeling to the lowest branches, murmuring to themselves, exclaiming at what the others had chosen.

Shirley was a sucker for whimsical creatures with smiling faces: elves, snowmen, Santa Clauses, cherubs, fat angels with crooked smiles and tilted halos, fairies with freckles and yarn hair.

Faye had selected expensive glass ornaments: gorgeous faceted stars, elongated teardrops and iridescent icicles, extravagantly striped or translucent balls in gleaming gemstone colors.

Polly loved to cook. She’d baked dozens of gingerbread men and women, sugar-cookie stars, leaping reindeer, trumpets and drummer boys and crescent moons, the absorbing, familiar activity bringing back memories of Christmases when her son was little. She’d decorated them with colored icing, silver balls, and sprinkles of colored sugar, and glued ribbons firmly on the back, for hanging. She’d also strung cranberries and popcorn on fishing wire and bought boxes of candy canes.

Alice, less sentimental and more practical, had chosen thirty of the skin care, cosmetic, and aromatherapy products on sale at The Haven, and tied their lavender boxes with glittering gold and silver bows.

Marilyn’s contribution was a boxed set of antique ornaments from the Museum of Fine Arts, and a handmade collection of brass and enamel stars, sun, moon, and planets purchased from an Asian gentleman selling them from a rug on a sidewalk in Harvard Square.

When every ornament was hung, the five women stepped back to admire their handiwork. The mixture was eccentric, aesthetically enchanting, and wildly cheerful.

“It’s fabulous,” Shirley said. “Let me get my camera.”

Alice said, “I’ll pour the hot chocolate.” She twisted the cap off a large Thermos and poured the fragrant liquid into Christmas mugs—little gifts from her to the others. Then, without the slightest twinge of guilt, she took out a can of Reddi-whip, shook it, and topped the drinks with snowy swirls of the white concoction. After that, she opened a little plastic bag, dipped her hand in, and sprinkled dark chocolate shavings on the creamy peaks.

“I brought some Christmas cookies—without the glue.” Polly opened a red and green tin, and the sweet, warm aroma of butter and sugar rose into the air.

Marilyn and Faye pushed two of the more comfortable wing chairs close to the sofa so they could all sit in a half-circle, facing the tree. Shirley returned from her office with the camera and began snapping shots of the tree and its trimmers.

Shirley wore purple Tencel pants with an emerald top that flattered her auburn hair. Her earrings and necklace were miniature battery-operated Christmas lights that blinked on and off.

Faye wore scarlet trousers in a silk-and-wool weave with a matching jacket over a sleeveless white shell. A chunky choker of garnet and jade circled her neck. Her white hair was held back with a matching barrette.

Plump, auburn-haired Polly wore jeans and a bright green sweater with white snowmen she’d designed and knit herself.

Alice looked majestic in a velvet tunic and pants of swirling crimson and indigo, embellished with lavish gold embroidery. Earrings, necklace, and bracelets of heavy, scrolled gold gleamed against her dark skin.

Marilyn wore brown wool trousers and a shapeless gray sweater. She wasn’t color-blind; she just kept forgetting to think about her clothing.

The five curled up on the sofa and settled into the chairs.

Shirley raised her mug. “To the holidays!”

“To the holidays!” the others toasted.

They all sipped the rich hot chocolate, and sighed in unison.

Faye focused dreamily on the twinkling tree. “This is going to be the best Christmas ever!”

Alice chuckled. “Yes, and I’m Glinda, the Good Witch of the North.”

“Did you know,” Shirley informed them, “in the movie The Wizard of Oz, Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, was played by an actress named Billie Burke when she was fifty-three years old?”

“You’re kidding!” Polly nearly spilled her cocoa. “She looked so young! All that blond hair. The sparkling pink dress. The tiara.”

“I wish I had that dress,” Faye mused.

“I wish I had her magic wand,” Marilyn murmured.

Alice lazily turned her head toward Marilyn. “Really. What would you do with it?”

Marilyn didn’t hesitate. “I’d turn my mother back into her normal, independent self. Oh, yes, and renovate Faraday’s sexual abilities.”

“He’s still impotent?” A former hotshot executive, Alice didn’t mince words. Besides, they’d helped solve one another’s problems before, and were ready to do it again, if they could.

“Always.” Marilyn’s tone was rich with regret. She’d only discovered the joys of sex in her fifties, and she wanted to make up for lost time.

“You need a magic wand to make his wand magic,” Polly joked.

“What’s going on with your mother, Marilyn?” Shirley asked.

Marilyn sighed. “My sister says she’s going downhill fast. Not physically, mentally. Sharon wants me to have Mother come here for Christmas and stay indefinitely, so I can watch for signs of senility and help her decide whether or not Mother should be ‘persuaded’ to go into an assisted care facility.”

“Hard decision,” Faye sympathized.

“I know.” Mari...

Edition details

• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0345485513
• ISBN 13: 9780345485519
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 304