Works and Days

Christmas

1

“Hold still, Thom!” Frank McLarchlahn said, taking a swig from his coffee. “Stick out your chin a little more. The boy’s a Michelangelo, isn’t he, Patricia?”

“That’s why I married him, Dad,” Patti sat down at the kitchen table, pulling her housecoat closer.

“Thomas, stop smirking,” Frank chided.

“Oh, leave the boy alone,” Sara said as she entered the kitchen.

“When are we going to open presents?” Russell demanded coming down the back stairs. Behind him Uncle John’s boys chanted, “Presents! Presents!”

“Restraint in everything, Russell!” Thom said.

“Thom!” Frank reprimanded his son-in-law for talking.

“Good morning and Merry Christmas to you too, son,” Patti said, reaching up to swat the back of Russell’s head.

“I think Russell’s got a point,” Sara decided. “When I was a little girl we’d open presents right after Midnight Mass. The suspense is killing me. Let’s open now.”

`    At this, John’s three sons began to cheer before Patti said, “But everyone’s not up yet.”

“Well, let’s wake ‘em.”

Frank’s brush halted above the easel.

“You care if we stop for a while?”

“Ah?”  Thom looked as if he were hesitating in his answer. He smiled brightly.

“Not at all. Well, Russ, go up and wake John. I’m surprised you didn’t wake him up when you were getting out of bed.”

“John didn’t stay in my room,” Russell said.

Thom and Patti both eyed him, and then turned their gazes on each other.

“He... ah...” Patti stumbled over her words. “He and Jackie... stopped...left after coffee... went to play...”

“In the snow,” Thom finished her sentence.

“Yes,” said Patti. “The snow.”

“Where’s Daddy!” Tommy asked Russell, tugging at the older boy’s housecoat.

“Probably just talking with Jackie,” Sara said. “They probably talked all night long.”

Thom raised an eyebrow at his mother in law.

“Dawlings!” They heard Kathleen before she arrived at the base of the stairs, followed by the vacant eyed Chase, a new and, in Tom’s estimate, entirely too young companion.

“We were about to open presents,” Sara started, “but we can’t find John.”

“He and Jackie slipped off last night,” Frank elaborated, putting up the paints and moving the easel from the center of the kitchen. “and neither of them has come back since.”

“Oh, marvelous,” Kathleen cried, clasping her hands together, “That means they finally had sex!”

“What’s that?” Tommy and Russ both demanded, screwing up their little faces and looking at their namesakes in confusion.

Thom and Russell looked to each other, Russell made a conciliatory gesture to his father who said, “Something that there’s been a whole lot too much of in this house for the last few holidays.”

“If you ask me there hasn’t been enough,” Kathleen differed, making her way to the coffee pot.

Thom, Frank, Patti, Russell, Sara and Kathleen and the boys went into the living room.

Russell said, “I have to sing at ten o’clock Mass,” and Thom said they’d better start opening presents immediately then, while Patti said, “Make it quick ‘cause we need to put dinner in the oven.”

“Chase, dear, would you go upstairs with Russell to wake up the others,” Kathleen asked, and Russell felt strange walking up the stairs beside someone whom, when he snuck side glances at him, looked to be about twenty.

“I work at Pizza Hut,” Chase said by way of introduction as they came upstairs. “What do you do?”

“I work for the CIA. I’m actually forty-five years old.”

Russell stopped to knock on his Aunt Kristin’s door while Chase stood and looked at him in amazement.

“Really?” Chase marveled.

Russell looked at him, dumbfounded.

“No.” he said.

 

The tree was high and green, touching the ceiling and clothed in silver tinsel and red bows, its green smelling branches hanging dark over the mass of presents, so many, so well wrapped in red and gold, in green, in stripes, in ribbons. With such a large group there were many presents. Then, as made sense with there only being four children in the family, and only one of them being over five years old, the bulk of them fell to Russell. For some reason this always put a strange stress on him when, after holding back for so long, suddenly the tree was his. He was the only person in the house that everyone gave a presents to. One mother, one father, three uncles, three aunts, three grandparents, none giving gifts as couples, some giving more than one.

Thom and Patti, even at their worst and most depressed never spared expense on their only child.

This year three huge journals like ledgers with hard covers that would take months to fill, felt pens to go with them—this from Patti. Those were not the only present, but the one he liked best, that and a hardbound set of The Lord of the Rings.

Thom gave him three things, none of them in boxes. The first was two hundred dollars out of his wallet so that Russell could get himself what he really wanted to wear. The next was—strange coming from Thom—a large cedar chest to go at the foot of his bed. The last was in the hall closet and Thom maneuvered Russell toward it, pretending his son’s shoulders were a steering wheel and crying, cheerfully, “This way, to the right, vroom vroom. Screech,” as they approached the closet.

Russell opened it.

“Dad!”

“If you don’t like it, I’ll—well, I can’t very well take it back can I?”

“No, Dad,” Russell’s voice was smaller as he marveled over it, lifting it up. “No, I love it. But I can’t play it.”

“Jackie can teach you,” Thom told him. “Half the family can teach you.”

“You can teach me!”

“Aw Russ, I don’t—what?”

Thom caught an almost horrified look in his son’s eyes as Russell murmured, “Thomas Lewis ’75.”

“If you wanted your own instead I—” Thom started, but Russell threw his arms around his father, burying his red head in the older man’s shoulder.

“Russell... Russell,” Thom said. He was about to say, “Enough,” when he realized that this was a small miracle and let his son embrace him, even if the boy was almost bigger than him and the embrace was going to knock him to the ground.

Suddenly the front door opened on this scene of filial bliss, and Jackie came into the foyer, looking red and petrified.

Thom and Russell separated.

“Welcome,” started Thom, “Jaclyn.”

“Where’s John?” Sara demanded.

“Patti,” Jackie said, ignoring John’s mother, “I need to talk to you. Now.”

“Should we wait until—?” Patti began.

“Now.”

“Okay...”

Patti stood up and announced, “Part two of the opening of presents will take place… later on. Right now, Jaclyn Dara Lewis and I are going to begin the Christmas Dinner and my son, Russell Fenian Lewis is going to get dressed for ten a.m. Mass.”

“Alright,” Russell said. “Thanks Mom. Thanks Dad.”

He ran halfway up the stairs before remembering the guitar, running back down, throwing his arms around short Thom again, then running back up with his instrument.

 

“Do you need us to help?” Kristin and Kathleen entered the kitchen.

“Not... right now,” Jackie said.

“Well if you ever need to talk...” Kristin left the rest off, putting her hand to the swinging door and preparing to return to the living room.

“Or if you need any tips about sex—”

“:Mother!” Kristin reprimanded, grabbing Kathleen’s arm.

“She’s such a prude—” started Kathleen as her daughter guided her out of the kitchen.

Patti, going into the refrigerator, began to pull out all of the unfinished dishes.

“Your mother thinks you and John had sex last night,” Patti said shaking her head.

“Well, that’s because we did.”

“What?”      

“Patricia,” Denise began, entering the kitchen,  “do you need any help in here?”          

“Ah...” Patti looked to Jackie, whose mouth was openi in the beginnings of speech.

“No, Denise. Thanks, Denise.”

“Well, really! I come all this way to be a little helpful, and there’s nothing to do.”

“If it helps, I heard Father Geoff saying he needed help now that Ann doesn’t live with him,” Jackie said.

“Well, that’s where I’m going, then,” Denise said before Patti could tell her Jackie wasn’t serious, and smiling, Patti’s sister left the kitchen.

Patti sat at the kitchen table, her fingers linked in the handle of the coffee mug, staring at nothing.

“Patti? Patricia?”

“Yes,” said Patti. “I’m here. I just don’t know what to say. Do you want me to say anything? Where... where’s my brother?”

“I left him asleep in my bed,” Jackie said, the phrase strange in her own ears.

They heard the front door slam, and voices talking. Jackie grew rigid. Both women were quiet. Jackie heard someone say, “John!”

“I need to go,” Jackie said, rising and heading for the back door.

“Jackie—”

“Later, Patricia,” Jackie said, and was gone.

She was just barely out when John stormed in red faced disheveled, followed by a dazed Thom.

“Where is she?” John hissed at Patti.

Patti, fingers still linked in the handle of the cup, gestured toward the back door.

The boys tried to follow their father, but Patti, with a gentle hand, kept them back as John ran into the driveway after the retreating station wagon.

“Come back here!” he shouted. “You....”

Thom, coming out into the driveway to catch his brother-in-law’s shoulder heard the younger man murmur, “Bitch.” as the car screeched down Breckinridge Avenue.