Home for the Holidays

by Hill, April

  "Could you just tell me why …" he inquires a bit plaintively, "why nobody in this house will just get in the damned car, go to Mom’s, and try to have a pleasant dinner?"

  I give the matter a few moments’ careful thought.

  "Because your mother is a flaming bitch?" I suggest. "And a lush who swears she doesn’t drink, but keeps a pint of Jack Daniels in her girdle drawer so she can get hammered every holiday and bemoan to everyone who shows that you married ‘beneath your station’? Because your sister Myra reminds me without fail every fucking holiday that I look like I’ve put on ‘a few extra pounds’? Because Myra’s bigot of a husband and snotty children have the personalities and the combined IQ of a bag of avocados and treat our kids like lepers? Or maybe it’s because your saintly Aunt Janet will be there, handing out leaflets and nailing herself to the cross because no one in the family will agree to get born again? And because your Cousin Francine, of the Never-Ending-Hysterectomy Saga, will be there, along with Uncle Bert, of course, who can’t pass the mashed potatoes without putting his hands all over my ass."

  David grins. "Okay, but aside from that?"

  I sank down on a kitchen chair, defeated. David believes in family. Even his. "All right," I groaned." Round up the cattle and hog-tie them before they make for the hills. I’ll shower and change into my body armor."

  And so began one of the longest nights of my life.

  The twins sulked all the way there, and took turns whopping their younger siblings on the heads when the wee ones started belting out "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" for the forty-second time. We can always time how far it is to anywhere by how many stanzas of some obnoxious children’s ditty it takes to arrive. I made a firm rule about "Raffie" when the twins insisted on playing "Baby Beluga" nonstop from Sacramento all the way to Yakima, Washington—at which point the tape mysteriously disappeared and was never seen again. Yes, I know. I’m a rotten mother.

  * * * *

  A DESCRIPTION, IN REAL TIME, OF WHAT ENSUED UPON OUR ARRIVAL AT THE ANTICHRIST’S

  We are at Grandma’s house for exactly twenty-four minutes before I get spanked. Don’t believe me? Think I’m making it up? Guess again.

  Listen, I went in there with the best of intentions; I swear it. I had even taken a pie of my own manufacture and had the purple fingers to prove it. A blueberry pie—the antichrist’s favorite.

  Do you remember the story of Red Riding Hood and the wolf? How Red arrives at Grandma’s, only to find a vicious wolf in Grandma’s bed, disguised in the old lady’s nightgown and mobcap? Well, here’s the thing—David’s mother looks very much like a real Grandma. She’s round and fat, has crinkly gray hair, and wears little granny glasses perched on the end of her nose, but that’s where the resemblance ends. Everything else about her is 100 percent ravening, snarling wolf.

  Have I forgotten to mention that I am wearing a red, hooded sweatshirt on this particular afternoon, with HO-HO-HO emblazoned on the front? A Christmas gift from Amanda and Michael, who are still too young to see a possible dirty joke in the present they bought for Mommy all by themselves, after saving all year? Myra’s rotten children, however, see the joke immediately. And why not, I ask? At fourteen, David’s niece, Brittany is a simpering bimbo-bitch in training, and her twelve year-old brother, Jared, is a hulking, foul-mouthed bully who could use six months on the South Beach Diet, along a few thousand bucks of orthodonture. Myra’s kids read my chest aloud several times and laugh like the hyenas they are, falling all over themselves with delight.

  Finally, Michael begins to cry, convinced by their comments that his Christmas gift to Mommy is a flop. David picks Michael up and takes him in the next room to reassure him, whereupon Jared starts to snicker, and calls my baby a sissy. Jemma redeems herself in my eyes for all time by punching her cousin in his flabby gut and calling him something that evidently only poorly bought-up teenagers like mine know the meaning of. When Cousin Brittany gasps in feigned shock at the forbidden obscenity, Emily throws in a few more.

  As much as I would like to haul off and smack the little asshole, Jared, into the middle of next week, I don’t. He is, after all, only a child. A loud-mouthed, cowardly little creep who probably outweighs me by twenty pounds, but a child, nonetheless.

  "This is what happens when women have more children than they can take care of properly," David’s mother observes, shaking her head. She means me, of course. "For heaven’s sake, Margaret, (that’s me, again) I can’t for the life of me understand why you permit your children to use such filthy language!" (No mention of David, naturally.) At this point, Amanda starts to cry, as well, because Brittany—thoughtful girl that she is—has just leaned down and explained in some detail the current, popular double-meaning of the word, "Ho." Amanda doesn’t get it, but she knows from the smirk on Brittany’s face that whatever a "Ho" is, it’s not someone you want to come to your birthday party.

  I am dangerously close to losing it, but until David’s mother puts in her next two cents worth, I nobly hold my fire. And then, Grannie Dearest reaches over and slaps Amanda on the arm. "Stop blubbering, Amanda! There’s no need to act like a whining little crybaby!"

  I hit my mother-in-law with a pie.

  Yep, one moment, my slightly lopsided homemade blueberry pie was in my hands, and the next moment, it’s slipping in great, sticky purple globs down my mother-in-law’s chest—and onto the living room carpet. (Beige, of course, and brand-new for Christmas. I have all the luck.) And what isn’t on Grannie or her new carpet is oozing slowly down, into her massive cleavage.

  Enter David, in response to the hue and cry, with Michael tagging along behind him. Michael stares at David’s oozing mother for a long moment and announces to everyone in the room that Grandma looks like she’s melting—like the bad witch in "The Wizard of Oz." When I break down laughing, David misunderstands the situation, drags me from the room by one arm, through the kitchen and out to the garage, slamming the door behind us—to talk, he says. I try to explain, but I’m still laughing too hard.

  I finally stop laughing when he pulls me across his thigh, yanks my pants down and begins whacking the living you-know-what-out of me with a dried-out paintbrush. Maybe it’s the accumulation of holiday stress, but my beloved is enjoying himself immensely and seems prepared to continue spanking me until the proverbial cows come home. Finally, though, the ongoing racket from inside the house begins to distract him, and for that, at least, I am grateful. David stands six foot four in his socks, weighs in at maybe fifty pounds more than "moi," and stays in shape—maybe for exactly these moments. This is the fastest spanking I can remember, but while his weapon of choice may have been comical, the discomfort in my behind is very, very genuine. I grit my teeth and try not to howl out loud, because on the extremely long list of things I would prefer to keep from David’s family, the fact that their golden-haired boy spanks his wife is right at the top of the list.

  David has used the paintbrush with such vigor that I’m sure I’m sporting a series of livid welts up and down my tender, chilled rump. My damned welts will probably have welts. But I’m not intimidated. The moment he lets me go, I whack him on the arm." That wasn’t fair!" I hiss." You didn’t see what happened!"

  "I don’t care what happened!" David yells. At this juncture, though, he glances down at a my ass and shakes his head with what I take to be remorse." Damn! I’m sorry! (So, I did have welts—a few, at least.) "I didn’t mean to do that, but Jesus, Meg you threw a goddamned pie at my mother, and she’s an old woman!"

  "Old woman, my ass!" I shout back, carefully dusting the dried paint chips from my throbbing butt as I try to pull up my pants. "She’s still two years from Medicare, and she’s a damned mean-spirited witch! You weren’t there when she slapped Amanda!"

  David stops yelling. "What do you mean, ‘slapped’?"

  I explained. The slap to Amanda wasn’t all that bad, of course, but David isn’t happy about it, either. None of our kids has ever been slapped, or spanked. (I suppose th
is might have had something to do with the way the twins behave. I prefer to blame that on hormones, and aliens …)

  By the time I get my clothing straightened and we get back in the living room, open war has broken out. Jemma and Emily, who spend much of their time at home tormenting their younger siblings in every bizarre and sadistic way they can devise, have now come to the little ones’ defense like avenging angels. Twelve-year old Jared the Bully has a bloody nose and the beginnings of a pretty good shiner. His sister Brittany has blueberry pie and another substance of unknown origin in her long blonde hair, and all over her ivory silk blouse. (I’ve always told my kids they could do great things if they’d just put their minds to it.)

  All right. So far, all of this was between me and good old Mom, and the battling cousins. right? But at this point, late arrivals Myra and husband Paul join the fray. Paul solemnly explains their tardiness on the fact that he was called away on a bunion consultation. (Paul is a podiatrist.) He surveys the scene, immediately blames the twins, and tells everyone that he’s going to call the juvenile authorities to report my children for assault and battery.

  "They both belong in reform school," he says coldly. "We all know that this isn’t the first time, do we not?" This is a reference to an incident when he twins were ten and cousin Brittany was eight. Brittany had kicked Murphy down a flight of stairs and broken his leg. The twins—who can work very well as a team when given good cause, tied their older cousin to a radiator and chopped all her hair off with a pair of dog shears. The little brat looked like a Nazi collaborator for weeks. It was one of the few times David actually considered spanking the twins, but I told him that if he tried it, I’d divorce him.

  And now, with the mayhem reaching a fever pitch, Aunt Janet and Uncle Bert show up, bearing a plate of cookies shaped like crucifixes. Aunt Janet is hauling her usual stack of Baptist hymnals, with all her favorites marked with Post-It notes." After dinner," she announces, beaming, "we’ll all gather around the piano and share the good word in song."

  Uncle Bert, a notoriously unredeemed sinner specializing in lechery, immediately comes over to greet me with a sloppy kiss and a clandestine caress of my sore butt. When I jump at his touch, he gives me a sly, lascivious wink, apparently mistaking my yelp of pain for an invitation. I politely refrain from kneeing him in the groin, the way I might with a "free-feeler" to whom I’m not related. Family is family, after all.

  We don’t stay for dinner.

  While David takes his mother upstairs and tries to smooth things over, the kids and I wait in the car. The atmosphere inside Grandma’s house was getting a bit tense, and I dislike family gatherings that end up on the nightly news. As we walk out, Aunt Janet is on her knees in the hallway, speaking in tongues as she prays for our immortal souls. When David finally comes out to join us, he looks like he he’s ready to spit nails.

  Jemma unplugs herself from her IPod just long enough to rub salt into the wound. "Is Grandma still acting like an old fart?" Emily giggles and makes a rude noise with her cheeks, in case her little brother and sister don’t get the joke. David turns around and gives the twins the sort of look that says they might be about to get the first spankings of their lives. Both of the girls are smart enough to shut up and say nothing the rest of the way home, but Amanda and Michael trade punches and spit at one another for several minutes. Finally, Daddy stops the car on the side of the road and flashes the adorable little munchkins the same menacing look he gave their older sisters. A good mother, of course, would intervene, and try to spread love and peace amongst her little family, but I don’t give a rat’s ass about love and peace at the moment, because I have problems of my own. I have welts on my butt, I’m depressed as hell, I’m sitting on an empty pie-plate—and I’m starving.

  I close my eyes and try to imagine what life might be like without children or in-laws—or husbands.

  * * * *

  CHAPTER FOUR

  It would be lovely, at this point in my story, to say that the following week was quiet and tranquil— but that would be a lie, and I abhor lying. It was as if God had decided to make His point all in one hellish ten-day period—His point being that I was a mess, my entire life was a mess, and something had to change.

  Two days after the Post-Holiday Horror at David’s mother’s house, we were slated to attend an evening fund-raiser and bake sale at school. Bad enough, since these things always remind me what a dismal failure I am as a mother. (I’m the kind of mother who has to run out to the store and buy cupcakes because I burned the ones I tried to bake myself.) Actually, I burn almost everything I bake because I get distracted with a book, or on the phone, or the computer, and only remember when the whole house begins to get smoky and reek of burning sugar cookies. The twins used to refer to my cookies as "hockey pucks," and once broke a lamp throwing cookies at one another.

  That morning, I awoke knowing that I had to come up with cookies or cupcakes for the bake sale, so I crawled out of bed and stumbled down to the kitchen feeling as bad as I probably looked. The kids were beginning to stir, and David had already made coffee and toast and was now reading the paper. I stole a piece of his toast, and plopped onto the chair opposite him.

  "So," he said. "Your Mom will be here day after tomorrow. You must be growing up. You’re usually hysterical by this time."

  "No, honey," I replied, rolling my eyes. "She’s coming on the fifteenth, not the fifth. Let’s not make this any worse than it already is, okay?"

  David looked puzzled for a minute, then got up and picked up the phone. He punched in several numbers—our pin number presumably—and listened for a few moments before coming back to the table to sit down. "Well, she left a message sometime yesterday that says her plane’s landing at 3:38, day after tomorrow, as planned. Don’t you ever check the messages?"

  I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. I was gagging on a piece of toast.

  "WHAT?" I think this was a question, but it came out as a scream. I snatched the calendar from the kitchen bulletin board (installed by David, right there by the phone in the obviously futile hope that it would help me to get organized.) The board was covered top to bottom in faded and unreadable little scraps of paper, old business cards from long-defunct companies, assorted artwork by the younger kids when they were even younger and expired calendars from the last two years. The most current calendar was still showing the month to be November, and as I thumbed frantically through to December, I noticed that I’d missed a dentist appointment, right after Thanksgiving of—I looked again—of the year 2012.

  "For God’s sake!" I shrieked." Don’t we have a new calendar anywhere in this house?"

  David shook his head and raised his eyes skyward." There’s one on my desk, another on the wall in the den, and …" he paused to shuffle through the mess of papers on the bulletin board," and there’s always this one, of course." He removed the tack from a brand new calendar with a very pretty picture of an idyllic snow scene—representing the month of January, 2013. There was a big red circle around January fifth, under which I had written." MOM arrives. God help us, one and all!" David shook his head again but didn’t utter a single word about my discombobulated record keeping, which was nice of him, under the circumstances.

  "I can’t do this," I groaned." I can’t! Not in only two days. I thought I had another few … oh, shit! Is it too late to move and change our names?"

  For those few of you out there who may actually anticipate a visit from Mom with pleasure, allow me to explain about my mother. My mother won’t let anyone wear shoes inside the house. Not so bad, you say, and a good sanitary practice actually? Okay, what about this? My mother cuts the buds off her patent roses before they bloom—so the white gravel in her flowerbed won’t get littered with all those nasty old rose petals. My mother crawls over her neighbors’ fences at night and trims their shrubbery. While it is widely accepted within the extended family (on both sides) that my husband’s mother is the true, anointed antichrist, my own mother is usually referred to as
The Terminator.

  I had two days to clean a house that looked like a herd of rampaging wildebeest had thundered through on their yearly migration. My mother is not only the Terminator, she’s the queen of the white glove inspection, and when it comes to housekeeping, she hasn’t got a forgiving bone in her immaculately groomed, pitiless body.

  David took Amanda and Michael with him to drive the twins to the mall, and while they were gone, I walked around the house in a daze with a can of Pledge in the pocket of my robe, trailing a dust mop and wondering where to begin. I briefly considered hanging myself in the hall closet, but there was way too much crap in it. When David got back, he sent Amanda and Mike upstairs to at least shove their toys under the beds and get themselves dressed, and then he began making a list—to be helpful. He tried to calm me down and began his usual ritual of intelligent, useful suggestions. A couple of shots of Tequila would probably have been a better choice, but David always approaches any crisis with logic and reason, for all the good it does.

  "Take it easy, honey," he said gently." We’ve got time. I’m free both days, and when the kids get home tomorrow, we’ll hobble them and put them to work. In two days, working as a team, we’ll have everything shipshape. Okay?"

  I threw a dozen eggs at him—still in the paper carton.

  Okay, it wasn’t nice. In case you haven’t gotten the picture, I’m not always the nicest person. And when I know that my mother is winging her way toward me, I get worse.

  David was apparently more in the mood to undertake a plan of action than to deal with my deep, psychological reasons for throwing eggs at him, and before I could say the words, "I swear didn’t mean it, honey!" I was facedown over the kitchen table with my robe and nightgown over my head, and David had the big rubber spatula in hand.