by April Hill
“You don’t understand what it’s like to be a woman,” she said bitterly. “Do you have any idea how hard I’ve had to work to get where I am, now? How hard I had to compete with the men I’ve worked with?”
“I was there for a lot of it, Jess. But do I really understand it, on a gut level? No, I obviously can’t. I’ve felt your disappointment, and your pain, and your anger. What happens to women isn’t fair, and it never has been. And it’s not changing fast enough. It’s still not a level playing field for most of you. But if you keep letting your anger about it come home with you, we haven’t got a chance. Our marriage doesn’t have a chance. And I want that chance, Jess. I want it for both of us.”
“I don’t even like my job,” she said.
“I know that,” he said quietly. “So, quit.”
“Do you know what my parents always said about quitters?” she asked bitterly.
He nodded sadly. “I remember.”
“When I was in college,” she said, “I got this letter, telling me I was about to graduate magna cum laude—top 10% in my class. Dad looked at the letter, and asked me who’d placed in the top 5%. Who was graduating summa. Mom just shook her head and said I probably hadn’t been trying my best, because I was spending so much time with you.”
“That was me,” he chuckled. “The famous slippery slope.”
“It wasn’t even true,” she sniffled. “I was working my ass off.”
“You don’t have to convince me. I was there. That final semester, you lost twenty pounds.”
Jess sighed. “Well, that was good, at least.”
He grinned. “Not from my point of view. I liked your ass the way it was.”
She made a face. “Then you should be very happy. I’ve gained it all back, and then some. According to Ed, I need ‘to get some of the excess baggage off my caboose’ before we go to the conference in Denver.”
“Ed Jenkins is your boss,” Jim said firmly, “which makes that remark sexual harassment, and him an asshole—overlooking the fact that he couldn’t be your equal on his best, day, let alone your superior.”
“Ed says that looking attractive to clients is good public relations.”
“He’s an idiot. Tell him that, and then file a harassment suit against the son of a bitch. Then, again, I could just go up there and take the jerk apart. Bust his nose? Maybe an arm? The one he’s always using to pinch the file clerks? “
She shook her head. “I don’t know. Ed’s probably no more than five-ten, but I’ll bet he weighs more than three hundred pounds.”
“Then, it’ll be a fair fight—not that I care. Bullies like Jenkins never play by the rules, anyway.”
“My hero,” she laughed.
“I’d like to be,” he said softly.
She went to the window and looked out. “The snow’s getting worse,” she observed. “You’re going to have to stay here, tonight, even if you don’t want to. I’m sorry.”
“I’m not. Do you really think I’d want to spend Christmas in the apartment without you? We didn’t even get a tree.” He paused. “That spot by the window where we usually put it looks empty.”
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “Again.”
“Not your fault, Jess. Not really. I just wish you’d told me all this, earlier, before …”
For a while, neither of them said anything. Jess stood at the sink, pretending to rinse the few dishes she’d left there. Jim walked over to the back door, and watched the snow through the small, frosted windowpanes. A moment later, he turned around, and sniffed at the air.
“It’s getting kind of smoky, in here,” he said. “The fireplace must be burning low.”
Suddenly, Jess looked up from what she was doing, and he thought he heard her swear under her breath.
“We’re out of wood,” she suggested, a bit nervously. “I forgot to…”
“No problem,” Jim said. “When I came up the back steps, I noticed you’d covered the woodpile. I’ll just duck out and bring in a few logs.”
When he reached for the doorknob Jess stepped in front of him, and put one hand on his chest.
“Don’t bother,” she said. “I’ll do it.”
“You’re in your pajamas,” he said.
“So, is this the way it’s going to be, from now on?” she shouted. “I can’t even go outside to get some damned firewood without your lordship’s permission?”
Jim stared at her. “What?”
“Just wait, here, damn it!” When she shoved past him and flung open the door, the wind caught one corner, and slammed it against the wall, letting a freezing whirlwind of snow and ice sweep through the kitchen. Jess marched out onto the porch in her bare feet, and looked around for the woodpile.
“Shit! Where the hell is it?”
Still perplexed by her behavior, Jim joined her on the porch, took her by the shoulders to turn her around, and pushed her back inside. He had reached the bottom step when he heard the dead bolt on the kitchen door being thrown.
“What the blazes?”
He took the steps two at a time, and pounded on the door. No answer. Through the little windowpanes, he could see Jess dashing back and forth in the living room, doing something, but when he knocked the second time, she still didn’t respond.
“Okay, babe,” he muttered. “If that’s the way you want to play it! You’ll be lucky if you can sit down, again, by New Year’s!” Still muttering, he stormed back down the steps, kicked a pathway to the front of the house, and stumbled up onto the porch. When he tried the front door, it was unlocked. Jim swore to himself. How many times had he told her to lock the damned doors? The cabin was at the end of a long, hidden driveway, and there was never a lot of traffic on the road. To Jess, being isolated had always meant safety, but Jim knew it could also make the place vulnerable.
When he opened the door, Jess stopped what she was doing, and froze, right in the middle of the living room. She moved quickly sideways, in a clumsy attempt to hide something in the corner. Her arms were full of colored glass balls, and she had several garlands of tinsel draped over both shoulders. The living room floor was strewn with an assortment of Christmas ornaments, apparently dropped in her rush to get them out of sight. Several of the glass items had broken, and her right foot was bleeding.
When he’d opened the door, Jim had been furious. Now, he was simply confused.
And then, Jess started to cry. To bawl, actually.
“You weren’t supposed to be here,” she sobbed. “You could have called, first, you know!”
“I did,” he said, still bewildered. “Six times. You didn’t pick up.”
“Why should I? I didn’t want to talk to you. I was mad at you,” she wailed. “You should have kept trying, damn it!”
Wisely, Jim decided not to try to make sense out of that. He’d been married long enough to know that women don’t always think the same way men do. Instead, he pointed to the corner—and to what she’d been trying to hide from him.
“You found the little tree,” he said quietly.
On their first Christmas together, they’d been married less than two weeks. Jim was working at a department store while he finished his dissertation, and Jess didn’t have a job, at all. They were living in a motel, since they hadn’t been able to scrape together enough for a deposit on an apartment, and dining most nights at Taco Bell. Broke as a stone was too cheerful a phrase to describe their financial situation, that year.
But they had bought a tree. The kind of tree that made Charlie Brown’s tree look good, by comparison. At least Charlie’s tree was real. The one they bought from a little second-hand shop was two feet tall, and fashioned from twisted wire covered with feathers that had been dyed green. The little tree was obviously old—made in pre-war Germany, the elderly shop owner proprietor explained. It was bent in the middle from being packed away for more than sixty years, and stood on a little red wooden base that was badly chipped. They paid two dollars for the tree, another dollar for the box of fad
ed ornaments and tinsel that came with it, and told one another that it was the most beautiful tree they’d ever seen. And when they added a ninety-nine cent set of colored lights and set it up in their shabby motel room, they sat in the dark and looked at the shining little tree, and believed it.
The next year, Jess had begun working as an account executive at Sewell-Jenkins, and Jim had landed his first teaching job. They’d packed the little tree away, and pretty much forgotten about it. Jim had always assumed it had been thrown away in one of their moves.
Tonight, with most of its feathers gone or faded, and its ornaments in disarray, it was still beautiful to Jim and Jess. For real beauty, as everyone knows, is always in the eye of the beholder.
* * * *
Jess sat quietly while Jim bandaged her foot and arranged her on the couch, with the red tartan blanket covering her legs. While he was making sandwiches and hot chocolate, she watched the fire, which had burned down to glowing embers. She was remembering their first year together, and the way the little tree had looked. By the time Jim sat down next to her, Jess made a couple of decisions.
“I want to quit my job,” she said.
Jim nodded.
“And I don’t want a divorce.”
Jim nodded again, and breathed deeply.
“And I need to discuss—not argue, but discuss—this … this spanking business,” she added.
“It’s pretty simple, Jess,” he said. “I know it won’t be much fun for you, but,” he looked over at her, and smiled, “I caught that little giggle, earlier. I decided to let it go, hoping that by the time I finished, I’d have made my point clear.”
“You made your point every clearly, darling, believe me,” Jess assured him. “So, this arrangement you’ve got in mind isn’t for… I mean it’s just going to be….”
“Just you, over my knee, getting your butt blistered,” he explained. “Long, hard, and pants down. No exceptions, no excuses, no passes. Definitely not what you were hoping for.”
“And, will this…spanking thing be, like, forever?”
“That’s pretty much up to you,” he said. “I’m guessing maybe six months?”
“Six months!”
“You’ve always been a fast learner, Jess. I’m betting you can unlearn just as fast.”
“What are we going to do without all that money I’ve been making?” she asked plaintively.
He shrugged. “Do without.” He leaned over and kissed her. “Cheer up, and look at the bright side. We’ve already saved money, this year. We didn’t have to buy a tree.”
“Or exchange presents,” she sighed.
Jim hesitated for a moment, then reached into his pocket and handed her the small, green velvet box he’d brought with him to the cabin.
Jess closed her eyes, and began to cry. “I’m so sorry, Jim. I didn’t bring your present up! I’ve been too angry to even think about…”
“I ordered this a long time ago, actually,” he said. “Before everything got…the way it got.”
“Can you return it?
Jim shook his head. “Nope. It’s custom made. And funny-looking, according to the store where I had it made. They made it pretty clear it wouldn’t be returnable. Said they’d never be able to unload it on anybody else.”
“You got me something funny-looking?”
He grinned. “Taste in jewelry was never my strong point. Open the box. If you don’t like it, feel free to lie to me— keeping in mind it cost me two month’s salary.”
Jess opened the box very slowly, and sat for a full minute, looking at the gold locket. Three small jewels—an emerald, a ruby, and a sapphire—caught the firelight, and cast tiny beams of color onto her hand.
“It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” she breathed, pulling the tiny golden replica of their first Christmas tree from its bed of white satin.
“Not funny looking?”
She smiled. “Well, that, too.” When he took her in his arms and kissed her, Jess abandoned herself for a few moments to the wonder of it all, then sighed, and sat up.
“I wish we could stay here, forever,” she sighed. “A real Christmas holiday.”
“Christmas break,” Jim said cheerfully. “One of the best perks of teaching.”
“I, on the other hand, have a proposal due on the twenty-sixth,” she said. “The day after tomorrow. A proposal that absolutely, positively has to be in the client’s hands at nine a.m., lest the world as we know it comes to an end.”
“So, you can work on it tomorrow,” he suggested, bending down to kiss the back of her neck. “Not the best way to spend Christmas day, maybe, but Christmas Eve is sure turning out a lot better than I expected.” He slipped one hand inside the top of the baby-blue pajamas, and cupped her breast.
Abruptly, Jess stood up and walked into the kitchen, leaving Jim alone on the couch, and confused. When she returned, she was holding the big wooden spoon, and smiling.
“The unfinished proposal in question is outside,” she said sweetly. “In the trunk of my car.”
Jim groaned. “Shit!”
She leaned down to kiss him, and dropped the spoon in his lap. “My thought, exactly. If you go out there and start digging right now, before the snow gets any deeper, you might find the keys to the BMW in a couple of hours, who knows?” She yawned. “I’m going on to bed. As soon as you find my keys, you can exchange them for your Christmas present.”
“Christmas present?”
“Something you’ve been waiting for for quite a while. You’ll find it all wrapped up in baby blue flannel—with snowflakes, and penguins. Merry Christmas, Ralphie.”
THE END
“The Sculpture Garden”
As usual, I blew it. Sam asked me, straight out, in words of one syllable, if I had “done it,” and I lied to him. Of course, I did. (Lie, that is.) It’s sort of a characteristic, a character flaw that I’ve noticed in myself. When cornered, I lie. It’s like some kind of perverse reflex, really, because I don’t even lie that well. I almost always get caught “red-handed” or “with my pants down”. (Well, in my case, the latter term is probably more accurate.)
Anyway, when Sam, my husband, soul mate, and all-round nice guy, asked me, on that freezing early February afternoon, if I’d been in any way responsible for the garbage “incident” at Mrs. Smedley’s house, I immediately said “no.” I suppose I said it too quickly, though, because Sam got that look on his face he always gets when he suspects me of being less than truthful.
I should probably explain that Sam, in addition to being an all-round nice guy, is also the most honest, forthright, and straight arrow person I’ve ever known. He is an infinitely patient guy, as well, but if there’s one thing that gets him steamed, it’s someone lying to him… specifically, me lying to him. So, you ask, how does someone with “zero lie tolerance” live with an unrepentant liar, like yours truly? Well, the truth is, that whenever I’m caught in a lie, Sam strongly encourages me to repent. And as part of that repentance, he provides what he refers to as an “incentive”. (My own definition of “incentive”—a spanking, often of historic proportions, delivered by an irate husband, to his dainty wife’s unprotected buttocks.)
In the past, Sam has provided me with a lot of incentives, and on this lovely snowy morning, it appeared that I was about to get another one, all because of a few little bags of “re-allocated” trash. So, what else could I do, but deny any knowledge of how the garbage got all over the Smedley yard?
“Are you sure you want to make that your final answer?” asks Sam, again. Sam always asks me to repeat my lies at least twice, like a prosecutor does, so that I get that last ditch chance tell the whole truth and avoid the even more severe penalty, for perjury.
“Of course, I’m sure, damn it!” I raise my voice, to demonstrate my outrage at having being been so unjustly accused. You never know, it might work. It’s never worked before, but they say there’s a first time for everything.
“Why don’t you ever
take my word?” I plead with him. This last part is a ploy to make Sam feel guilty, but it probably won’t work, either. For all I know, he’s got fingerprints and a videotape of the crime going down. I wouldn’t put it past that bitch, Smedley, may she roast in everlasting hell!
Marigold Smedley (Yes, that is the old cow’s real name) and her unmarried daughters, whom I like to refer to as “The Troll Twins,” have lived next door to us for six years, during which time they have wrought devastation and blight upon my life, and created this black cloud of suspicion between Sam and me. Every single time something of an unusual nature happens at the Smedley residence, I am the primary suspect.
The fact is, the Smedleys don’t like children—our children, in particular. It’s widely accepted as fact that the Smedleys themselves were never children. Each grotesque Smedley simply bubbled up, fully-grown and dripping slime, from some maggot-infested, radioactive swamp. I can’t take credit for this image, by the way. It came from my adorable eight-year-old son. (Sam says the kid watches way too much TV.)
For the record, the Smedleys have:
1) Called the police because our three-year old “urinated in public”… (in a flower pot on our front porch, actually.) A childish experiment, combined with a lack of vigilance by his distracted father, who was busy mowing the lawn at the time. When Marigold’s tires got flattened that night, by person or persons unknown, I got the blame, and spent a few very unpleasant minutes with a large wooden spoon, upended over my husband’s manly knee. After I confessed, he did it again, harder, longer, and in a few painfully different places. Confession may be good for the soul, but it’s murder on the rear end.
2) Called the police because our then six-year-old daughter and her little friends planted an adorable little grove of what they called “lollipop trees” in the Smedley prize rose bed, uprooting one or two patent rosebushes in the process. Sam paid for and replaced both rosebushes, and promised the vengeful Smedleys that he would spank the small culprit “until she couldn’t sit down” when he got her home. He didn’t do anything of the kind, of course. (Sam only spanks his wife, never his children.) The following day, when Helen the Hun (the elder, uglier Smedley) claimed she’d seen me pouring weed killer on her precious tomato plants, I got my bare ass blistered with a couple of switches from my own lilac bush. When he was finished, my rear end had a pattern on it that looked very much like basket-weave. (Artistic, but uncomfortable.)