Merry Christmas

The old screen door creaked as Claire pushed it open, its rusty hinges unlubricated for the last seven years. The thin icy crust on the paved slabs cracked under her boots as she stepped onto the porch.

Claire hated the cold, yet not as much as the stuffy air she’d left behind in the living room, mouldy with unbidden memories.

As snowflakes replaced the mist on her glasses, she swept the snow from the balustrade and perched her elbows on it. It used to be her forearms resting here as she spent hours on the porch on snowy days like this one, but she had grown taller since, and the once-smooth wood had grown rough — her elbows soon grew stiff, so she leaned on the pillar instead.

Her movements were clumsy in the thick woollen gloves, and the cold, wintry wind put out the flame of her lighter twice before she managed to sustain it long enough to light a cigarette. As she waited for a welcome surge of nicotine, she stared blankly at the fake mistletoe dangling from the eaves.

She flinched at the sudden pop. She turned toward it as a bright flash pierced the snowy curtain, followed by another, even louder, explosion; some kids were setting off firecrackers down the road. They had built a Snowman in the middle of the road and were now destroying it by lighting the firecrackers sticking from its body.

Claire didn’t know them, yet instantly felt strong contempt for them; she had seen too many good souls wither away in this street to feel anything else toward someone carrying out any form of meticulous violence, even if it was just a bunch of toddlers molesting a lifeless heap of snow.

They were about to light the fuses protruding from the Snowman’s eyes when a car appeared on the corner of the street. They quickly plucked the unlit firecrackers and scattered away before the vehicle struck the Snowman, mowing off its lower part with its bumper and finishing off its head with the windshield wipers. The carrot was catapulted into the air and landed in someone’s yard out of sight.

Some of us fade slowly away, and some go out with a bang.

The car was so thoroughly coated in snow that she recognized the Jones’ Toyota only when it parked across the street. When he climbed out of the car, Mr Jones checked the front of the vehicle for potential damage, grumbling something about the nowadays kids. Once satisfied with the inspection, he grabbed the groceries from his trunk and climbed into his house. Claire, hidden from his gaze by the thick sleet curtain, didn’t bother revealing her presence, which would have risked more than a curt ‘Merry Christmas’. The neighbors’ bonds on this street were nearly as bad as familial — both brimming with the warm, facile amiability that threatened to drain the little warmth her heart still possessed.

The screen door behind her creaked, and her Baby brother’s head poked from the hall.

“Hey, Mum asks if you’re ready for the Mass?”

The beanie, awkwardly perched over his combed hair, starkly mismatched the flip-flops on his feet.

Claire took a long drag of smoke before answering.

“Tell her I’m ready.”

“Great,” he gave her a thumbs-up.

But instead of retreating to the house, he walked onto the porch and leaned his back against the railing she’d purged of snow.

“Cold out here, isn’t it?” he asked casually, snowflakes sticking to his bare feet.

In a different universe — or at least a different street — Claire would have laughed at the absurdity of his statement. However, in this house, you had to be cold when it snowed, hungry at lunchtime, tired in the evening, and all your needs were met with care, as long as they were normal enough — everyone was attentive to everyone’s sensitivities.

The flip side of this coin was their not-so-fine treatment of the vulnerabilities they didn’t share or understand.

She had always thought she’d pulled the shorter straw, but now, looking at him — his cheeks not even flushed by the sleet bombarding them — she felt pity instead of the usual jealousy. Perhaps his callousness wasn’t so much better than her vulnerability. Had he ever learned that this game was confined to a single pitch — its boundary the very porch they stood upon — or was his entire life still dominated by its laws, just like hers had once been?

She didn't know, and didn't care; her Baby brother was now 33 years old, and it wasn’t her job to raise him. Not anymore. What’s done is done.

And yet, here she was too, eating the baked potato soaked with turkey fat she’d never have eaten outside of this playground, where she made sure all her food was animal-free; getting ready for the evening mass, celebrating the birth of a man she no longer believed had had more divine powers than herself, preached in an institution she had severed all bonds with seven years previously, falsely swearing that the sermon on the funeral was the last one she would ever attend.

She was still in the game as well.

“Cold,” she replied. She turned her back on him and crossed to the other side of the porch.

The firecracker bunch was now constructing a new Snowman from the remains of the old one. Claire felt the overwhelming impulse to hurt them. She could beat the shit out of them so easily if she only wanted to — she could do it right now — stuff them full of snow until they choked, or stick their lovely sticks of gunpowder into their orifices for a change — their mouths, nostrils, eyes, ears, and genitals — and light the fuses to enjoy watching their faces convulse in horror at the expectation of unavoidable, unimaginable pain, until the whole street was filled with bloody cadavers of children who’d never go to school, or collage, get a job, or have kids; and never get a chance to treat those kids like this Snowman, to bring them into this world only to watch them suffer, until their kids couldn’t take it anymore, and they would either grow numb to the pain, like her Baby brother, move away to avoid it, like she did, or…

…move far away, where no pain of any kind can ever reach them again.

Like he did.

Her tears were unwelcome in this icy wind — unwelcome in this house — and she quickly swept them away, exhaling the cigarette smoke upward to dry up her frozen cheeks.

It wasn't she nor her Baby brother who had drawn the shortest straw; It wasn't them that feared the sound of a firecracker — a fear planted into all humans by birth, but dulled naturally by most — nor the equally congenital lure to the wrong gender — granted only to some, and then violently suppressed by others.

The explosion rattled the street, just like her grandfather's gun would have done, had she had the guts to take his way out, so many years ago. He had done it silently, just as you’d expect from him. He was always around without producing a sound, his presence more prominent by the things he’d fixed around the house than his tiny person.

Her Big Brother was a born repairman; from boilers and laundry machines to bicycles and cars, since she could remember, there hadn’t been a single broken thing he wouldn’t try to fix, too proud to ask Dad for help until he’d covered all bases, but mostly making it on his own. When the student had finally surpassed the master, he became the go-to repairman for the local community, fixing things throughout the neighborhood.

He was proud, but not stubborn. He would meticulously work on solving every problem, but once he ran out of ideas, he wouldn’t hesitate to ask for help from anyone who could offer it, even when his old master was no longer around.

He was smart, yet so naive. He thought that asking for help with understanding himself would be met with the same warmth as asking a plumber enthusiast to explain the mechanism inside a toilet tank, so he went to the institution that reigned supreme in matters of the mystic in their village, like in any other.

Claire was jerked from her thoughts by the chime of the church bells. The sound scattered the kids once more, sending them home to prepare for the evening ceremony.

Lest the tradition go unfulfilled, she thought bitterly: first violence, then piety.

The screen door creaked once again.

“Surely you weren’t thinking of entering God’s House in these, Brandon. Put on some proper shoes.”

As her brother went inside to search for the “proper shoes”, Claire felt her mother's presence glide beside her. She saw her clearly in her mind’s eye without turning around: freshly washed hair, tied into a bun, its actual age hidden beneath the red dye, just as her wrinkles were concealed by over-the-top makeup; an old wool coat crowned by a furry scarf, highlighting the shine of her pearl earrings; bare legs protruding beneath the skirt of her finest evening dress, swollen feet squeezed into the high-heeled crimson shoes.

“God, what would the neighbours say if he came there in his flip-flops?” she said, half reproachful, half bemused.

Claire felt a mix of hatred and pity for this old woman — a widowed wife and bereaved mother — standing beside her in the snow, as insensitive to the cold as her son was. As much as she knew that her mother was merely a product of her surroundings, she couldn't help thinking of her as evil — an evil Crone.

Claire was spared from answering her mother’s question by a jubilant voice.

“Hey there, how do you do, Miss Browning?”

Both women turned to see Mr and Mrs Jones climb from the street onto their porch.

“Oh, how do you do?”

“God, is that you, Claire?” Mr Jones said, offering her a hand. “I wouldn't have recognized you if you passed me in the street.”

Claire’s lips spread into a faux smile.

“Yes, it's really a wonder how the time flies by,” the Crone declared wisely.

“Isn't it just so?” agreed Mrs Jones. “Our girls are in college already, and it seems to me it was only yesterday that we were changing their diapers.”

The mothers exchanged a shrill giggle.

“They're both still in the house,” Mr Jones said, “been putting their makeup ever since lunch.”

He pronounced the word as though disclosing a maliicious conspiracy.

“Well, every age has its perks,” said the Crone, her fake eyelashes glaring evidence that she was well beyond the age of overdressing.

“Oh, hi, Brandon,” Mr Jones said as Brandon returned to the porch in his father’s leather shoes. “Have you made any progress with the kettle, perhaps?”

“No, Mr Jones, I'm still working on it. I think it must have been a short circuit—”

“No problem, boy, no problem,” Mr Jones interrupted him, waving his hand casually. Glancing at his watch, he said, “God, where are those two? I told them if they weren't in the car by eight, they would have to walk to the church. Three adult women, two bathrooms—living like this is one hell of a nightmare, m’boy.”

Everyone in the crowd erupted in laughter; everyone except for Claire, who furtively took a final drag of smoke, before throwing the butt into the snow.

As if vanquished by their laughter, the bells stopped ringing.

“Well, we had better get going,” said Mr Jones.

“Yes, we'd better go,” agreed Mrs Jones.

“Yes, we too,” repeated the Crone to her children.

They descended the icy stairs.

“See you there!”

“See you!”

“Merry Christmas!”

“Merry Christmas!”

Mr and Mrs Jones crossed the road to their Toyota, while the other three continued down the street, treading through the pristine snow. The Crone croaked the praises of their lovely neighbors as they walked past a half-demolished Snowman in the middle of the road.

Unnoticed, Claire separated from her family and approached it. Half of its middle ball had been blown away, the rest smeared with traces of gunpowder, and its torso was barely standing on the base. It only had one arm left — a twig sticking out of its side.

Claire lightly tugged at it, but the twig didn't move. When she jerked it more forcefully, the twig gave way, and the whole Snowman collapsed, its head smashing completely against the base, covering her pants in snow. What seemed like a small twig turned out to be a thick branch, buried deep in the snow, a skeleton holding the construction upright.

She hadn't planned on destroying it like this, but now that it had happened, she was glad that the Snowman got a quick and dignified death, instead of the painful torture those kids had planned for it the following morning.

Sometimes the shortest straw is the longest one, Claire mused as she threw the branch away and rejoined the remains of her family for yet another merry, merry Christmas.