Russ was large. Not overweight, necessarily, but he was tall, towering over six feet. His shoe size had to have been at least a fourteen. He looked completely skinny from the back and even straight on from the front, but his side profile showed a decent-sized pot belly. And he had a voice that boomed.
I stared at his hand and waited a beat too long to react. It was petty and made our greeting feel awkward. I tried out a new pep talk in my head. I am a grown woman, not a bratty teenager. Summoning up a smile, I managed to reach out and shake his hand.
“Hi, Russ.”
A loud piercing through the room had everybody ducking and covering their ears. The microphone was a perfect excuse to pull my hand from Russ’s and focus my attention elsewhere.
Jack Taylor stood on the stage and tapped the microphone three times. A large smile captured his face as all the eyes in the room turned toward him.
“That’s our welcome-to-the-lodge noise.” A murmur of laughter filled the room. “Welcome, welcome, everyone. If you could all find a seat, we’ll get going on dinner, and we’ll start breaking down the calendar for this week.”
I sat down at the end of our table, next to Ivy, across from Ben, and three seats down from Russ, which meant I wouldn’t have to make polite conversation.
“Man, this is a good group here tonight,” Jack Taylor was saying. “It’s been a great day meeting all of you. We’ve got three different family reunions going on. We got the ice cream machine working again, thank goodness. And our cow, Snowflake, only kicked me twice while I was milking her tonight.” He paused while a low murmur of laughter broke through the crowd.
I looked around, counting roughly sixty people taking up space throughout the large room. Even though it was huge, the rustic wood and brown tones gave the whole lodge a cozy feel.
Jack dismissed the group to get dinner, and the entire crowd began to stand and wander over to the buffet tables along the back wall. Chloe and Ben went before me, each expertly balancing their own plates of barbecued ribs, roasted vegetables, and salad as well as a plate with a dollop of mashed potatoes and a roll for each of the girls. Once we were all back at our tables with heaping plates of food and cups of hot wassail, Jack took the stage once more.
“Alright, keep eating. I hope you’re enjoying the ribs from Old Snowflake’s mom, Bessie. She was a great cow, but she could have been a lot nicer. I’ll bet she regrets that now.”
He grinned at the alarm on all our faces. Jack’s laughter filled the silence. “I’m just kidding. We’d never feed you a cow we named. The ribs were courtesy of an unmarked cow from the back pasture. She was ready to go. It was her time.”
A few bouts of ruckus laughter filled the room, interspersed with soft, undecided chuckling. I decided to eat my mashed potatoes first.
“I’m kidding. Alright, we’ve got something special to tell you about. When my wife, Sandy, and I started taking over this week of Christmas, we began to notice a theme. It became all about the kids. Which is wonderful. But we didn’t want parents to just be here, watching their kids experience the magic of Christmas. We wanted this place to bring back a little magic for them, as well. So, a few years ago, we came up with an idea. This will be the third year we’ve done our Christmas bingo, and it’s been a hit every time.”
He held up a card. “Here’s how it works. Everybody will get a bingo card. In fact…” He looked around the room until he spotted his wife. “Sandy! Would you come grab this stack of cards and start passing them out? You all probably met my better half, Sandy, when you checked in, but just in case, she’s the woman who knows all the things, if you ever have any questions.” Sandy bowed theatrically before she reached the stage and took the stack of cards he handed her. “Thank you, my dear. Alright, on the cards are twenty-four things—plus a free space—for you to do during your week's stay. The cards are all the same. It’s more like a choose-your-own-adventure bingo. There is an adult version and a child version. Most overlap, so you can do things together as a family, but the adult version has a handful of extra events, for reasons I’ll tell you about in a second.”
“We are so doing that.” Chloe’s eyes sparkled with excitement.
“Have fun,” I retorted.
Her face scrunched, and she looked like she was about to say something but was interrupted by Jack.
“Alright, for the adults, there’s a small prize for anybody who gets a bingo. That means five squares in a row in any direction. As soon as you get a bingo, bring your card to the lodge for your prize. Same with the kids. But if you get a blackout–that’s every square crossed off and completed–before the Christmas dinner on December 25th, your card will be entered to win an all-expense-paid trip for two on a cruise to Mexico this winter. For a whole week.”
A small gasp overtook the crowd. That even had my ears perking up. New England winters were long and dark…a winter trip to somewhere sunny with a beach had all of us interested. When a bingo card made it down to our table, I took one, though only out of curiosity. Most of the card was full of simple Christmas activities, things that were easy to do with kids, like sledding, building a snowman, or decorating a gingerbread house. But my eye caught on the more problematic squares: polar plunge, mistletoe kiss, milk a cow by hand, barn dance, etc. I leaned back in my seat, having seen enough. I’d just save for ten years and pay for my own vacation like a respectable adult.
“Now,” Jack was saying, “I’m going to ask my lovely wife to send around our calendar of events. Most of the activities on this list are available through the lodge. For example, we always host a barn dance at some point during the week. We’ll have several gingerbread house and Christmas cookie competitions. We can show you how to roast a chestnut by the fire. And we’ll have sleigh rides to the big hill for sledding. Keep your calendar handy, and getting a bingo will be pretty easy. Blackout…now…that’s another story. There are a few things you have to do on your own. And some things–looking at you, polar bear plunge–sound pretty terrible.” He did an exaggerated full-body shiver that made the crowd laugh.
Jack leaned down toward the audience, cupping his ear toward somebody who had yelled a question. He repeated it into the microphone. “Polar bear plunge is where you go from the hot tub to a full jump into the pond behind the lodge, and then back to the hot tub. There’s a hot tub located just behind the lodge with a convenient pathway straight to the pond.”
If it was the pond I noticed on my drive in, it was completely frozen over. I shivered just thinking about it. Jack went on, explaining a few more of the rules while I stirred the mashed potatoes on my plate. I had no desire to make this week any more of a “thing” than it already was. My body had to be here, but that didn’t mean I had to engage more than necessary. Now, thankfully, with the whole boyfriend bit, I wouldn’t have to do any of it. I patted my lying little self on the back for that one.
“Hey, hot guy, 5:00,” Chloe whispered across the table. She was seated facing the buffet table behind me while I was facing the stage.