The Thousand Pound Christmas

by Victoria Burgess

“The point isn’t that it’s African dance. The point is that it’s dance. I don’t care if it’s Russian ballet, Cuban salsa, or Texas two-step. It gets your body moving. You sweat and you sway and you have a great time.”

  She was right, too. It was a blast. We’ve got two more classes scheduled between now and Christmas Day.

  “How’s the campaign going?” Mike asks.

  “Lyndon Johnson has a quote about politics that I love. ‘Being president is a lot like being a jackass in a hail storm. You just stand there and take it.’”

  He smiles and gives my shoulders a soft squeeze.

  “Gotcha.”

  “Gotcha? What does that mean?”

  “You’re forgetting who you’re talking to. I spent over a decade engaged in political warfare in Washington. I was in the trenches. What you just pulled—answering a question that hasn’t been asked—is an old standby. Maybe you could slip that by someone else, but not me.”

  I glance up at him. “You’re feeling pretty good about yourself right now, aren’t you?”

  “Actually, I am.” A beat. “But I’m sensing you’re not. So spill it. What’s happening with the campaign?”

  What’s happening? Alper is framing himself as the numbers guy. Smart, sensible, experienced. Anti-tax, pro-growth. He’s coming at this thing hard. He’s got actual minions. Minions. People running around door-to-door, passing out campaign flyers for him. People wearing ‘The numbers add up! Vote Alper!’ Buttons on their lapels. (The woman who rang up my groceries was wearing one. ‘Sorry, Mayor,’ she said as she gave me my change.)

  Me? I don’t have a campaign slogan. Not yet. Everything I’ve come up with sounds hackneyed and trite. Mayor Rachel Presley—For a Better Eaton. The Best That Eaton Can Be. Vote Hometown Goodness. Sounds like I’m selling corn, not the town’s future. Even I wouldn’t vote for me.

  “Tell you what,” I say, “when I need a campaign manager, I will bank on your considerable expertise. Until then—”

  “Butt out.”

  “Pretty much, yeah.”

  “Got it.”

  We finish the neighborhood and loop back to his car. He offers to stop somewhere for coffee or a drink, but I decline. The kiss we share in front of my house, when we’re parked at the curb, weakens my resolve a bit, but in the end, as much as I like Mike, I’m ready to call it a night.

  I find Matthew inside, stretched out on the sofa, woodenly flipping through channels.

  “Hey,” I say. “I thought you were hanging out at Owen’s tonight.”

  “Yeah, I was, but I bailed. He’s all into Doom Wars right now. It’s a stupid game.”

  I scooch his legs aside so I can sit down. Then I kick off my shoes and prop up my feet. A grateful sigh slips from my lips. I close my eyes for a minute, drinking in the rare sensation of having absolutely nothing to do. When I open them again, my gaze falls on our Christmas tree. Matthew and I decorated it before dinner. It’s lit up and sparkling.

  “Tree looks beautiful,” I say. “Probably the prettiest we’ve ever had.”

  “You say that every year.”

  “That’s because it’s true every year.”

  He scrolls through a few more channels. “How was your date?” he asks, his eyes fixed on the TV.

  “Fine,” I say, then, “That’s a weird thing to ask your Mom, isn't it? How was your date?”

  He gives me a sideways smirk. “It is weird.”

  “Well, I appreciate you asking. You should get some friends together tomorrow night and go check out the lights. It’s fun.”

  He releases a noncommittal grunt.

  “Speaking of dating, is this an absolutely horrible time to ask how things are going with Hannah?”

  Matthew stiffens slightly. “It’s fine. Whatever. Nothing’s happening.”

  “You guys aren’t a thing?”

  “No. Definitely not.”

  “So—”

  “Look. I’m sorry I ever mentioned her. Can we just drop it, all right?”

  “Is that why you asked your Aunt Therese for dieting tips? You want to impress Hannah?”

  I might as well have tossed a match in an empty gasoline can for the explosion that follows.

  “Oh, my god. I can’t believe you’re bringing that up. I can’t believe she told you. Can I just have a little space around here? A little personal privacy? Is that really too much to ask?”

  Matthew leaps off the sofa and heads for the stairway. I stop him before he can get there.

  “Hey! You are not walking away from this conversation! Get back in here.”

  He stops, gathers himself, slowly turns back around. “Fine. Whatever. What?”

  I could easily jump all over him for his attitude. But I won’t. Not now. Because what we’re discussing matters more.

  “You want to go on a diet?”

  “Why not? Everyone else in this stupid town is on a diet.”

  “We’re not talking about Jym’s challenge. We’re talking about you.”

  Matthew releases a beleaguered sigh. Drags his fingers through his hair. “You don’t get it, Mom. You know what girls like Hannah like? Athletes. Jocks. X-men. They don’t want to go out with guys like me.”

  “That is absolutely not true!”

  Matthew’s expression tightens. Not what he wants to hear, even if I’m totally, absolutely, completely right. Yes, I’m his mother. Yes, I know I’m biased. But I see a good-looking sixteen-year-old-kid with dark hair and his father’s amazing cornflower blue eyes. A kid who’s going to be tall and broad-shouldered when he finishes growing up. A kid with a great sense of humor, a decent work ethic, and grades that aren’t too shabby, either. Maybe he’s not an X-man, but there’s plenty there to attract nearly any girl he wants.

  But none of that matters, because this isn’t about me being right and him being wrong. It’s about something else entirely.

  I take a breath and start over again. “Matthew,” I say. “You know what Therese said, when I asked her why you talked to her about dieting, rather than me?”

  He eyes me warily, as though sensing a trap. “What?”

  “She said that I roll people over. Tell them how they should feel. That I think I have all the answers.”

  “Sometimes, yeah, you do that.”

  “Wow. That must suck.”

  He considers that. Gives a small shrug. “You don’t always, though.” He comes back into the room and flops down on the sofa. Picks up the remote and fiddles with it.

  “Did you talk to Mike about this, too?”

  “No. I’m talking to you.”

  Matthew does that dramatic sigh thing that teenage boys do. Where he stretches and squirms at grimaces all at once, like he’s trying to escape his own skin.

  “Look, it’s no big deal, all right? I just want to be the kind of guy a girl like Hannah Goebley would go for.”

  Shades of my conversation with my sister flash through my mind.

  “What if you can’t be? What if you’re perfect the way you are, but she’s just not feeling it?”

  “Then I’ll change.”

  “Matthew, c’mon. You’re a smart kid. Have you ever considered it’s not your weight? That maybe that doesn’t have anything to do with it? That maybe it’s just you?”

  He releases a shocked laugh. “Oh, my god. Harsh.”

  “Remember Clara Lierman? She had a crush on you?”

  He rolls his eyes. “Eighth grade, Mom.”

  “You didn’t like her.”

  “Yeah? So?”

  “If she had gone on a diet, or changed her hair, or worn different clothes, or hung out with different friends, would you have felt any differently?”

  A pause. He’s thinking. “I guess not.”

  “There was nothing wrong with Clara. Nothing she needed to fix, I mean. You just weren’t feeling it.”

  A longer pause. Finally he says, “Huh.”

  Just huh. An ‘I’ll think about it’ sound. Good enough. We’ll both think about
it. Because damned if there isn’t a lesson in there for me, too.

  Next door, our neighbors pull in. We listen to the sound of car doors opening, the trunk popping, the rustle of them retrieving packages and heading inside. They’ve got bells on their front door. They jingle merrily as they pull it shut and go inside.

  Matthew glances across the room. I follow his gaze to the tree we trimmed earlier. We don’t do pretty trees—all the decorations brand new and color-coordinated. I love them, but that’s not what sits in my living room. Ours is what I call a sentimental mess. Ornaments Therese and I made when we were growing up, chains of dyed macaroni, family photos pasted on cardboard hearts, letters to Santa, vacation mementos, a snowflake Matthew made out of glitter and Q-tips when he was four, chew toys scrawled with the names of beloved dogs who’ve been dead for decades. That sort of thing. Nothing glamorous, but it’s ours.

  Matthew says, “You know, maybe that is one of our best.” I feel some of the earlier tension slip out of the room. He props up his feet, presses a button and opens Netflix. “The Office or Parks and Rec?”

  “Either one.”

  He navigates to The Office and picks an episode at random. Within thirty seconds, Steve Carell deadpans a line with such beautiful idiocy it has us both cracking up. I lean back, spread a throw over my lap, and settle in.

  TWENTY-TWO

  December twenty-first. Winter equinox, the shortest day of the year as far as daylight is concerned. A turning point in the seasonal calendar. This year the equinox falls on a Friday. Which means I’ve made it through another work week. A week that felt as though it stretched straight uphill. Five days—Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday—of office, dieting, and working out. And more than anything, talking to reporters.

  “How are the numbers looking, Mayor? Has the town lost enough weight?”

  “Does Jym have any last minute advice for anyone?”

  “Do you think you’ll win the challenge, Mayor?”

  The same questions, over and over again. Morning, noon, and night. I’m convinced no one would recognize my face anymore without a microphone stuck in front of it.

  The official weigh-in is Tuesday morning. Christmas Day. In a last minute scramble, Jym and I have done everything we can think of to shore up enthusiasm among the participants. We’ve sent out encouraging email blasts, doubled the number of work-out classes offered, assembled low-cost, low-calorie, pre-packaged meal kits.

  Jym’s traveling door-to-door this weekend, ‘chatting it up with folks and putting a little fire in their bellies,’ as he puts it. Not me. At this point, I’m ready to wash my hands of all of it. There’s only so much I can do. What will be will be.

  I’ve devoted my free time (not that there’s much of it) toward helping the committee that’s in charge of dressing up Eaton’s downtown corridor. That’s where the media will congregate this weekend, so we want to look our best. While the committee’s budget is miniscule, their enthusiasm is vast.

  After two weeks of work, Church Street is dazzling. Bright, multi-colored lights everywhere. Tons of festive greenery. Street lamps wrapped to resemble candy canes. Inflatable snowmen. Enormous ornaments, dancing penguins, and red-nosed reindeer. Everything big and bold. We’ve also wrapped empty feed barrels in bright Christmas paper and positioned them along the street to accept donations of gifts and food for needy families. The barrels are brimming over. We’ve received so much, we’ve started sharing our largess with neighboring towns.

  All of which should put me in a fairly decent mood as I return to my office. It’s time for the annual holiday party for town staff, their families and friends. Normally a fun event—we all get decked out in our ugliest Christmas sweaters, sing carols and play silly games—but this year I’m feeling ho-ho-humbug about it. I can’t seem to summon up any Christmas cheer.

  Maybe my blood sugar’s low. I paste a smile on my face, say hello to a few friends and staff members, then grab a plate and head to the buffet in search of something that’ll tide me over until dinner. What greets me are an array of scrumptious looking hor d’oeuvres… all of which are labeled either Naughty or Nice.

  How clever. Exactly the kind of holiday fun I’m in the mood for. Cutesy little reminders of what I can and cannot eat.

  The tempting stuff—the mini quiches and crab puffs and glazed meatballs and deviled eggs and gooey cheese dips—are Naughty. So are the pies and cakes and breads and cookies. Off-limits. I glance at the Nice stuff. Celery sticks. Carrot sticks. Cubed bell pepper. Dry pretzels. Pita chips with a tiny scoop of hummus.

  Esme appears beside me, holding an empty plate. She takes in the buffet and sighs.

  “Isn’t this depressing.”

  “No kidding,” I say. “I’m so sick of this. Sick of good food and bad food. I want to go back to the days when there was plain ol’ food and you shut up and ate it.”

  “Ha. Well, that’s rich, coming from you.”

  Wait a minute. Wait just one teensy little minute there. I stop. Swivel to look at her. I know I’m tired. I’m hungry. I’ve had a long, difficult week and my nerves are rubbed raw. I also know that Esme and I have been friends for years and that ours is a friendship I treasure. So I deliberately instill a note of forced neutrality into my tone as I say, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Exactly what it sounds like, Mayor. You concocted this whole scheme and pushed all of us to join in. Well I hope you’re happy. You got what you wanted, didn’t you?”

  “I got what I wanted?”

  “You heard me.”

  “I concocted this whole scheme? I pushed you to join in? Are you out of your mind? You think I wanted this mess? You think I went to Jym and begged him to pick this town for his challenge? You know that’s not true!”

  “All I know is that he sure didn’t come to me. If he had, I would have kicked his skinny ass straight out of this town.”

  “Is that right? Well, you know why Jym didn’t come to you?”

  We’re both raising our voices now. Attracting attention. There’s a sudden silence in the room as heads swivel our way, but I’m too mad to care.

  “I’ll tell you why, Esme. ‘Cause he couldn’t have found you. Not with you hidden away in that little bakery of yours yelling, ‘Help! Help! There’s no business on Church Street! You’ve got to fix it, Mayor! You’ve got to do something!”

  “Excuse me? What did you just say?”

  “Not only did I completely turn around Church Street, filling every vacant space and making it shine, I got this town national attention. I bet you’re doing ten times your normal business. And what do I get from you? Do I get a ‘Thanks, Rachel,’ or a ‘Good Job, Mayor,’? Noooo. All I get from you is whining because you don’t like the buffet!”

  Esme’s eyes flash fire. “Do you know what my girls want for Christmas this year?”

  “Let me guess. A doll that looks like me that they can stick pins into.”

  “A scale. My girls are twelve years old and that’s what they want for Christmas. Not razor scooters, or soccer gear, or new pajamas to wear to slumber parties. They each want their very own scale so they can weigh themselves before they go to school every day.”

  Oh, shit.

  Awful. Truly awful. I get it. But it’s not my fault. When I accepted Jym’s challenge, how was I supposed to foresee that kind of collateral damage? Is that really a fair expectation? Esme’s their mother. She’s the one raising the girls. All I know is that when Nelson brought home a meat-lover’s special, the women in his life yelled the roof off. Maybe if she’d taken a less hysterical approach to food none of that would have happened.

  It’s into this simmering stew of blame and resentment that Susan and Therese blunder headlong.

  “Hey,” says Susan. “What’s going on?”

  Therese adds, “Whatever it is, you guys might want to lower your voices. You’re attracting an audience.”

  I don’t really care about our audience right now. I need help. I need suppo
rt. I need Susan and Therese to take a reasonable and unbiased look at this situation and see it for what it is. Then I need them to take my side.

  “Esme blames me because her girls have become fixated on their weight. Like that’s my fault.”

  I lean back slightly and wait for them to rush to my defense.

  Susan winces. So does Therese. They both cluck and murmur sympathetically at Esme.

  Susan says, “I did worry how this challenge would impact the young women in our community. What it would say to them about acceptable standards of beauty.”

  Oh, my god. That is too much. That is just too much.

  “Oh, really? Well I’m sorry, Susan, but hypocrites don’t get a say in this discussion.”

  Her eyebrows rocket skyward. She pivots around to stare at me. “What? Hypocrite?”

  “Yes, you. Hypocrite.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about. All right, maybe you’re not a hypocrite. Maybe you’re just a coward.”

  “What could you possibly—”

  “Oh, give it up, Susan. Beyond Beauty. It’s so chic, so expensive, look how gorgeous we all are in our size four skirts and blouses. That’s what I’m talking about. Beauty for every woman, all right, as long as long as that beauty doesn’t go beyond size twelve.”

  “I don’t make the clothes. That’s not my fault.”

  “You’re right. It’s not your fault. It’s worse than that! You take their money, design their catalogues, wear their stuff. You are a walking endorsement of everything they stand for.”

  “I needed a job! What was I supposed to do, start dictating terms?”

  I think about the huge renovation to her home. The new minivan parked in her driveway. “You don’t need a job. You and Drew are doing fine.”

  “It’s not about the money, Rachel. Look, I love my children. I love my husband. I know how lucky I am. But I’m good at what I do. I want to be more than just a mother and a wife. Is that so wrong?”

  “Of course not. So go work somewhere else.”

  “Great advice. I don’t want to work for a clothing company that falsely idealizes and distorts a woman’s body. Let me put that on my resume, stand back, and wait for the calls to pour in.” She pauses, shakes her head. “Do you have any idea how competitive it is out there?”