12 Deaths of Christmas

by Paul Sating

  “I’m fine,” Adam started to say, but was cut off—ignored—by Ted.

  “He’s got the money for that fancy car he’s posting all over Facebook. So he can fly up here more often so you’re happy about something.”

  Jesus Fucking Christ, here we go again.

  “I don’t come up here that often because of my job, not because of money,” Adam intervened before this turned even more awkward and regrettable. It was already hard enough dealing with the death of his adored Aunt Celia, the reason for the visit. He didn’t need or want family drama piled on to make matters worse. This trip wasn’t about Christmas. It wasn't about seeing the family he enjoyed rarely visiting. It was about a beautiful woman who left life too soon.

  Fucking death. Aunt Celia was the sweet woman they were putting in the ground and he was here to honor her memory, silly as it was. Dead people were dead; they had no idea whether three people or three thousand attended their funeral.

  For Aunt Celia.

  The next three days couldn’t pass quickly enough. Florida already beckoned.

  “Forgot,” Ted snarled under his breath with vinegar tone, “you’re a big man at your company, aren’t you?”

  Adam shook his head. Round and round they went. “It’s not my company, I don’t own it,” he reminded his father for the one-millionth time. “And I worked my ass off to get where I am.”

  “And we’re proud of you,” Jennie called from the kitchen. Adam had the sneaking suspicion she wasn’t actually doing anything in there. More likely that she was using her ‘work’ in the kitchen as justification to avoid Ted and Jon while trying to enjoy as much of Adam’s visit as she could. It was a healthy decision.

  “You don’t need to be using words like that either,” Ted admonished him, returning the feel in the room to the appropriate level of distress. “We’re a Christian family. That language isn’t allowed. See? This is what I’m talking about. Can’t wait until the Father gets his hands on you.”

  Adam hid the laugh begging to be released by bringing the beer can to his lips, taking a small sip. Numb from years of mental abuse, he wasn’t bothered by this latest threat. When they were kids, Ted was driven to make them ‘good’ by scaring them into submission, sometimes even going as far as to tell them fantastic stories about the power of Satan being so strong that he could send demons into the real world. Messages that were reinforced at the church, as crazy as it was. In his teens, Adam simply rejected the nonsense out of pure rebellion. As an adult, he’d gotten angry over the twisted manipulation he and his brother had been subjected to. Though, only hours into this current visit, it didn’t look like Jon wasn’t anything but fully bought-into the family dynamic. Adam wondered how much of what he saw in his brother now was a result of decades of unfair manipulation by a father and a priest.

  Demons. How had he ever fallen for that?

  “Ted,” came the cautious word from the kitchen. How many previous arguments had his mother stopped? Not even a full day into this return home and her tally began again. Like it always did when he came home.

  Adam sighed. Three more days. Just three more days. I’m here for Aunt Celia.

  He should have followed his gut and got a hotel room. He tried. But being the armpit of the world that Hannibal was, the closest hotel was a dump in Oswego, twenty minutes away. A straight shot past small farms and homes devoid of hope, the half hour it added each way wasn’t a problem for him. But it was for his mother. Jennie asked—begged—him to stay with them. Adam didn’t have a wife or kids to bed down, he didn’t even have time for a girlfriend, so it wasn’t like it would have required a lot of room, his mother argued. She’d even made up his old room. So he did.

  And regretted every minute of it even before dinner.

  “Yeah, I know,” he responded, not remotely interested in having this conversation again.

  “And I don’t need any lip about it either,” Ted set the cheap beer down on the end table with a dramatic thunk. “You can do all that devilin’ stuff in your Sinland, but don’t you bring it home with you. We don’t want any business with that stuff you all do down there.”

  Adam laughed. He couldn’t help it. Ted was counseling him while downing what was at least his fourth beer of the afternoon. Tonight they were all going to a dinner. Nothing formal but, under the circumstances, not something to attend drunk. Yet to Ted, drinking like this was only a problem when others did it. It was always about what other people were doing. He was a good Catholic in that way.

  Sinland? Father McElroy’s influence. Ted wasn’t clever enough to come up with that term on his own.

  “What’s so funny?” Jon leaned toward him. It was a gesture Adam remembered quite easily and not-so-fondly. Jon’s aggression was well-documented through bruises on Adam’s body during their younger years.

  “Nothing.”

  “Then why’d you laugh?”

  “No reason.”

  Jon sat back, his can of beer bouncing on his own leg. “Yeah, well, it’s not a laughing matter, Adam. Because you turned your back on Christ doesn’t mean you don’t have to show respect in Dad and Mom’s house.”

  “Damn right,” Ted echoed.

  Adam held up his hands, a gesture that would feed their egos without costing him anything. His pride was too healthy for these little men to damage. “Sorry. I didn’t realize you were all suddenly religious.” He wanted to say convenient, but why fan the flames? Maybe they had changed over the years? People did. The family had been the typical run-of-the-mill Catholics, attending Mass on Christmas Eve and Easter and virtually forgetting where the church was the rest of the year. But those two times a year when they did go? They knew how to put on a good show, taking Communion and talking up the virtues of Confession like they were stalwarts of the faith.

  It was all so Catholic.

  Somewhere in Florida, there was a man walking a white sand beach, enjoying the breeze coming off the Gulf of Mexico. Sand between his toes. Lapping waves of an afternoon tide. Adam envied that faceless stranger.

  The pair across from him cast dark glances, holding back words entangled in jumbled brains. This could take a while.

  But he didn’t need them to because, at that moment, his mother walked into the room, drying her hands in a dishtowel. His smile, already depressed, slipped. “Is everything okay, Mom?”

  Jennie looked at her husband and eldest son before coming and sitting on the arm of the chair. “Honey,” she said, pulling a stray hair away from Adam’s face, “we need to talk.”

  “Okay,” he offered with a nervous laugh. This was beyond typical family strangeness now.

  Maybe they had fallen into the religion well, head first, drowning in the empty promise of salvation without evidence? At least then they committed to something besides the retelling of local triumphs that didn’t register anywhere outside of Hannibal.

  “Things,” she paused, looking over at Ted, who shrugged and tapped his beer can, “things have been different here since you left. We’ve changed. Everyone has. It’s been glorious.”

  “Okay,” he drew the word out, hoping for understanding.

  Jennie drew a deep breath, her gaze moving from his to where she played with that loose strand of his hair. She didn’t say a word. No one did. Adam squirmed.

  “It’s probably best if Father McElroy talks to him,” Ted said.

  Adam tried to ignore his mother’s lingering fingers in his hair. He looked up at her. She blinked, trance-like. “Yes. Yes, I guess we should,” she answered.

  Adam had no interest in talking to Father McElroy. As an awkward high school senior, Adam was forced into compliance with the ridiculous Catholic faith. That was the last time he saw the man. A laugh boiled in his chest at the memory. And he’d fucked with the priest, giving his confession that he masturbated no less than ten times a day. Every day. Adam smirked as he recalled McElroy’s expression. All these years later, understanding the crimes of the church, Adam wondered what perverse thoughts that old b
astard had rolling around in his lustful mind as he imagined that teenager pulling on his hard flesh-tube so often.

  Their church was a fundamental Roman Catholic congregation. They didn’t believe in using Confessional booths, that was how cowards and cheats confessed their sins to God. Hannibal’s sons and daughters were proper Catholics, the type who confessed their sins face-to-face with their priest. The way God intended.

  All pain, no actual gain.

  He wasn’t in a hurry to see the priest. But he’d have to at some point; McElroy was conducting Aunt Celia’s ceremonies this weekend.

  “What’s going on?” Adam broke their silent strategy session.

  No one answered. Even Jon looked morose.

  “Come on,” Adam urged, his heart thumped a little harder.

  Ted examined him from across the room, his gaze unwavering. When he spoke the discussion ended. “We wait.”

  ***

  And wait they did.

  Dinner was awkward, the conversation empty and forced. They talked about the same things they always talked about. Local news and happenings. Stories of old, when they were kids and the town was relevant.

  And throughout it, Ted and Jon continued to drink. Adam didn’t bother trying to count how many beers the pair shared. Their new drinking habits didn’t interest him. Plus, it would have been nearly impossible to keep count. The more they drank, the faster they consumed. Newfound drinking buddies. Adam couldn’t help but feel for his mother, cooking and cleaning up after the pair; who ate, drank and laughed like a knight and his squire. She was never independent. Her generation grew up on the tail end of gender and role conformity, the last of a people who refused to entertain ideas of fluidity. But now she seemed even more docile than Adam remembered. More subservient.

  “We need to get ready to get down to the church,” Jennie said softly when she finished.

  Ted and Jon’s laughing stopped abruptly. “Already?” his father asked, flicking his wrist in an attempt to get the watch to spin so he could read it. Ted squinted, struggling. “Damn watch,” he grumbled, finally giving up.

  “What are we going to the church for?”

  “We have some things to take care of,” Ted said, his statement followed by a harsh hiccup. It was harder than ever to take him seriously.

  “What things? Isn’t Aunt Celia’s family handling everything?”

  Jennie patted his hand. “Now, now, Adam,” there was a charmed lightness to her tone, “they can’t do everything. Celia’s death … it was hard on them.”

  Death was like that. Hard. Adam believed in appreciating every day while he was alive to enjoy them. He doubted Celia’s family appreciated her until it was too late, but he wasn’t about to bring that up. Aunt Celia was sweet, but her husband and kids could be downright assholes. To her and everyone they knew. The first time Adam took a punch it wasn’t from his own older brother, but from Celia’s kid, Tosha. In Celia’s family, the kids were all equal bullies. That might have been a major reason why she was so good to him and all the other neighborhood kids; she was making up for the twats she brought into the world. They all took her for granted, a lot of people did, Adam’s parents included. Later in his teenage years, when he understood the world a little better, Adam empathized with Celia. Her eyes were perpetually cast downward, her shoulders slumped. She walked with the confidence of someone who’d lose out on the lottery if someone told her the winning numbers beforehand. Her family had done that to her.

  It was hard to feel for them.

  Celia was the first one to congratulate him when he was accepted into Central Florida University. Ted was too drunk to care, Jon too jealous, and his own mother too mournful to celebrate. But Aunt Celia did.

  So he would do this for her, even if it meant going to the church with this merry band of losers. “Okay,” he nodded, “what do you need me to do?”

  “Just be there,” his mother answered in a dreamy voice.

  Ted and Jon tapped their beers together and took long, silent swigs.

  ***

  “Adam! It’s so good to see you,” Father McElroy’s voice boomed across the empty church foyer. The man hadn’t lost much vibrancy over the years. It was still the smooth voice of ages past, the same voice that told him demons were real and masturbation was bad.

  The same gold font Adam told the priest he’d pissed in half a lifetime ago stood between them, a quirky reminder of a past when this place severed his sense of normalcy and taught him to hate himself. He hated this place, hated the fabrication, and great expense of creating an image to sustain a lie.

  Adam played the part, wearing his best smile. For Aunt Celia, he reminded himself. “Good to see you too,” Adam replied, intentionally leaving his greeting free of titles of reverence. The silence behind him and the slight quiver in the priest’s face were all he needed to know that he’d struck first.

  They weren’t going to pull him into their little game this time. He was a grown man, someone who didn’t owe any of them deference. The games of doctrinal hierarchy were of no interest. McElroy was a man, just like any other. There was nothing special about him and, in fact, Adam had a hard time understanding and trusting any man who chose the lifelong prison of celibacy. That shit wasn’t normal.

  To his credit, the priest’s practiced smile returned quickly. “I hope your flight was a good one. It can always be tricky landing in Syracuse in the winter. It’s just wonderful you were able to make it.”

  Adam grunted and Father McElroy moved on quickly.

  “Come, let’s start. I want to show you some of the changes we’ve made,” Father McElroy slid his hand into Adam’s before Adam could protest, pulling him into the chapel. McElroy pointed out an impressive number of improvements they’d made over the past decade. Adam swallowed the bitter taste as the priest gave thanks to God instead of all the actual people who made the improvements. Adam faked his enthusiasm all the way through.

  They reached a door in the far corner of the chapel. Father McElroy stopped and finally let go of Adam’s hand, pressing his own to his chest. A sign above the door read: Rebirth Baptismal.

  “What’s this?” Adam asked, pointing out the sign.

  “Our pride and joy,” the priest beamed like a new father, opening the door with a sweeping gesture, encouraging Adam to step inside. “We’re in the hand of God in here. Come, let me show you.”

  Sure you are. When Adam paused, Ted whispered caustically, “Don’t be a pussy. Go in.”

  Father McElroy didn’t appear to hear the inappropriate comment.

  Adam held his sigh and stepped into the room. The quicker he entertained their pietistic masturbation session, the quicker they could get to the reason they were here. Aunt Celia.

  “Come,” Father McElroy tugged his hand, “let me show you.”

  A black cloak of darkness hung over the room, making it feel larger than the entire church. Massive candles, as broad as an adult, lined a walled rectangle in the middle of the room. The candlelight didn’t reach the edge of the room. A short wall, no more than three feet high and twenty feet wide, cut the space in half. They stepped toward it. A strong scent of iron made Adam pull back, pinching his nose. Behind him, in the descending shroud of darkness, the door banged closed. The stiffness in the room was palpable as if the rest of the world had detached itself, wanting no association with these proceedings.

  “This cost us over one hundred thousand dollars, the entire project did,” Father McElroy was saying when Adam could focus again. It was hard to do. “It took years of fundraising but, with the graces of God smiling down on us, we were finally able to start construction. Then it was a matter of the congregation jumping in and providing some sweat equity. And let me tell you, did they ever. God has been good to us.”

  They approached the structure. It looked like a long, rectangular wading pool. It stretched out beyond the candlelight and into the darkness beyond. A low and constant rumble came from the far end. Adam imagined the pool was being fed b
y an underground spring. But it was a weird sound, not rhythmic, like a pump or a spring. Erratic. Like the water was moving on its own, without mechanical assistance. Adam peered into the darkness, but the priest pulled his attention away.

  “This is the baptismal,” Father McElroy said, with an air of awe that Adam didn’t feel. “It’s our proudest accomplishment.”

  “Amen,” Ted said behind them. The reverence in his voice was thick.

  “Hallelujah,” Jon echoed.

  Adam swallowed a scoffing laugh forcing its way out at his family’s newfound devotion. So much had changed in the past decade.

  Father McElroy looked beyond Adam, to his family members, and nodded. “Your family is good people,” he said. “Some of the best in our congregation. We’re very lucky to have them.”

  Adam nodded, it was a slight gesture that wouldn’t betray his disagreement.

  Father McElroy smiled with eyes that devoured the humor. “And they’re worried about you, Adam.”

  “I guess,” he said. “It’s tough for them with me living so far away.”

  Father McElroy shook his head. “It’s not that at all. They’re worried about your soul and, from what I hear, rightfully so.”

  “How so?” Instant bitterness. Adam hoped it cut the priest.

  Father McElroy’s eyes narrowed, taking a stony appearance. He spread his hands wide. “You have fallen away, Adam. The church … she misses you. But you miss her more, whether or not you know it.”

  Adam couldn’t help himself. He laughed, even though he knew it would piss off his father and hurt his mother. But this was garbage and he didn’t have to tolerate it. “I promise, I’m fine.”

  But Father McElroy wasn’t listening. The priest’s eyes were taking in the baptismal as if it held the response he sought. “The wayward,” Father McElroy started, “they don’t realize that they’re wayward. That’s why it’s so important to have a life centered on the church and its teachings. You have a family who cares, and a church community who wants you to come home.”