Page 6 of Wassailing We Will Go
But this morning, I wish Deborah would try to get to Foodland just a little bit faster.
By the time I get to the cidery, it’s 10:25 a.m., and both my car and I are covered in flaky croissant crumbs. I walk by Barb, who is in the midst of stringing lights onto the trees that line the way into the tasting room.
Morning, Barb, I say as I rush past her. Barb is a retired firefighter, a tall, strong woman who is the sort of person who can figure out any problem and solve any situation. She and her husband, Hank, have been friends with my aunts for decades, and when she needed a job to keep her busy after retiring, my aunts brought her into the fold. She’s been working around the cidery for over a decade, doing just about every job that exists at some point or another. On Thursdays, she and her husband play the tasting bar open mic night, her on guitar and Hank on the fiddle. The only one who has been more of a mainstay around here over the years is Charlie…and me.
Morning, Kate, she calls from the top of the ladder. How’re things?
Good! I’m super late to a meeting, though, I call over my shoulder. Nice work, though!
I rush into the cidery office, one of the newer additions to the property that was built at the same time as the restaurant space. When my aunts first opened the cidery, they worked out of a slapped-together office at the back of the restored red barn that was barely bigger than a broom closet. After over a decade of working under those conditions, when it came time to improve their office space, they put a lot of thought into it: the windows face the road, so you can always see what’s coming up the long driveway, and it lets in the perfect amount of light. The space kept a few rustic touches, like a wooden beam reclaimed from an older part of the barn and a horseshoe above the door.
As I walk in, Daniel looks up from his laptop and sighs with relief. Even on a day that’s not even open to the public, he looks nice. He wears a black button-down shirt and black slacks year-round, even in the summer. The restaurant is air-conditioned, but still—it’s a commitment. His dark hair always has a trendy cut, and his thickly framed glasses age him up slightly from his early twenties. I have often suspected that he doesn’t actually need them but wears them as an entirely aesthetic choice.
Oh, thank God, I was afraid you weren’t coming in. I was about to text you, he says.
Why are you even here today? I say as I plunk my oversized purse down onto my desk.
Well, originally, I came in because Chef wanted me to taste some things for the Wassail menu. But now, I’m staying because apparently you decided to hire an Abercrombie & Fitch salesperson to work with Charlie? Can we talk about that? He crosses his legs and leans back expectantly. Ah. So, Harrison is here, then.
Right…so, I met him yesterday and found out that he worked for a cidery in BC. He’s just here visiting friends for a few weeks, and I thought maybe he could at least meet Charlie and see if maybe he could help him out. Where is he now?
Charlie got to him first, says Daniel. They’re out back. Out back nearly always refers to the fermentation room around here. But before you go, where did you find this guy, and can I keep him?
I met him at the spa last night, I confess, and Daniel can barely hold back a grin. And I don’t know. Maybe? It didn’t come up in conversation. Despite the dinner invitation that was extended to me, I cannot presume to know whether Harrison would also be potentially interested in taking Daniel out for a barbecued meal.
Hm. Guess we’ll see. Oh, and I need to talk to you about Linda. She made a noise complaint about us again.
I groan. What now? Are our tractors too noisy? Did a guest play their car radio too loudly as they drove by? Did a single napkin blow over our fence and onto her property?
Daniel shakes his head. Apparently, all the sirens shook up her goats. They were up all night. The goats are exhausted, Kate.
If my rage could transform me into the Hulk, this would be my breaking point. I would go on an unstoppable rampage and never come back from it. She complained about the sirens? The sirens from the ambulance that came because we had a medical emergency? I seethe. Daniel winces.
She said that if we knew how to run a cidery, there wouldn’t be people going to the hospital in the first place, he says through a grimace, very quietly and with a slightly higher pitch than usual.
I take a deep breath. Did the police take it seriously?
Daniel laughs, and seeing his reaction lets me relax ever so slightly.
No, thankfully, it was Janie that took the call, he says, and I raise an eyebrow with confusion. The one in my pickleball league? She’s thirty years older than me and kicks my ass every Tuesday night. Anyway, she said not to worry about it. Everyone knows what Linda is like. We might be her main nemesis, but she has plenty of enemies. I heard she called the cops on Norm’s lavender farm down the road because she was downwind, and apparently, ‘the smell of lavender makes the goats sick.’ So we’re not special—she pulls this nonsense with everyone. But I think we’re her favourites.
So blessed, I say with a sigh. I know a little more about the story, but Daniel doesn’t need to hear it. Back in the late nineties, Linda and her husband, Dennis, protested my aunts’ purchase of the apple farm, not because she had any objections to the business itself but because she had objections to their way of life. Gay marriage wasn’t legal in Canada yet, and folks like Linda were a lot bolder. They shut up on that front after they realized that no one else in the neighbourhood was really on their side—most folks around here just mind their own business either way, even back then—and for a while, there was a one-sided truce, given that my aunts had always just ignored them. But two years ago, Dennis suddenly passed away, and Linda has been filling her days by harassing everyone else who dares to live along County Road 2 ever since. We all desperately wish she’d find a different hobby, like knitting, or pickleball, or literally anything else that isn’t calling the cops on her neighbours.
Well, I look forward to her angry phone call later today when she realizes that, once again, the police force will not be storming in here to arrest us all for existing, I say and turn back to my laptop.
And that is why I’m glad you’re here, he says. You can deal with that, and I’ll be with Chef in the kitchen, eating fancy appetizers at— He checks his expensive-looking watch. —10:51 in the morning. Please do send Harrison over if he would like to join us, he adds.
After he leaves, the office is eerily quiet. During the normal workweek, I share the space with Daniel, Wendy, and our restaurant’s chef, Melanie. And occasionally, Denise, our accountant-slash-HR person. Because we’re all in and out of the office throughout the day, it’s never quiet for too long, and when all four of us are in there, it’s frantic. Wendy and Daniel alternate between hilarious, friendly banter and vicious arguments. The two could not be more different on a personal level: Daniel Manalo is a single, gay, Asian man in his early twenties, and Wendy Neepin is a married Mohawk mom of two absolutely giant teenage boys. Even their music taste is wildly different, with Daniel lobbying for eclectic pop music and Wendy allowing for only classic and, occasionally, alternative rock. This has led to a wholesale ban on playing music out loud in the office space—that, and I like country music, and they both threatened to quit on the spot if I ever turned it on. Despite all of this, they have formed a strong friendship over the past few years that borders on one between siblings. They may argue nearly constantly, but it’s always with a healthy amount of respect for the other, beyond a couple of cheap shots at the other’s music choices.
Just as I’m about to leave to go track down my wayward potential cider maker, the office phone rings and gives me a minor heart attack. The office phone is from the eighties and has the most jarring ring you’ve ever heard, like someone put a bell and fork in a garbage disposal and turned it on. It doesn’t go off often, since the public line for the cidery is in the retail area, so you get just enough time to forget it exists before it goes off again. I answer it promptly to kill the ring as soon as possible before my ears bleed. Hello, Sparks Cidery office.
Is this Laura or the other one or that—that young one, the niece? The voice on the other end is absolutely screaming into the microphone, and I hold the old-fashioned phone further away from my face.
May I ask who is calling?
This is Linda, your neighbour, she yells. She doesn’t sound like she’s yelling on purpose, more like she just doesn’t understand how cell phones work. She sounds both very loud and very far away.
Linda, you don’t need to yell, and how did you get this number? I say and collapse into my office chair. I lean back and stare at the ceiling, regretting every life choice that has led to this phone call.
