Is this thing on? Not a lot of reviews yet but I do see hits and just hope you're interested enough to see where I'm going with this. Any who hope you enjoy...R/R pretty please?
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"You're here where you should be, Snow is falling as the carols sing, It just wasn't the same, Alone on Christmas day" ~Kelly Clarkson
3
Drew
Imogen was at least as mortified as I was that my aunt apparently had no idea who I was "Aunt Caitlin," she murmured, "it's Drew." "Drew?" Aunt Caitlin asked.
"Andrew?" Imogen tried again. "My, uh, brother?"
"Oh my gosh," Aunt Caitlin snatched back her hand like she might not even be sure whether I deserved a handshake. "Oh, Andrew, I'm so sorry." She put her hands on my cheeks and looked into my face. "I'm so embarrassed," she said. "Of course it's Andrew. And I saw you just last year. I just didn't realize how much you'd grown."
"I'm sorry I haven't come over more," I mumbled.
"Well, I certainly hope we see you more now," she said. "Now give me a big hug. I leaned down — Aunt Caitlin was only about five-foot-five — and got almost as enthusiastic a hug as my sister had. "Well, come on," she let go and turned around, linking one arm in mine and one in Imogen's. "Everyone's going to be so excited to see you both."
We stepped into a simple foyer, made fancy by the evergreen roping that hung on the staircase, decorated here and there with elegant red globes. There were voices coming from the right.
"Eeeehhhh," I recognized the voice of my Uncle Joey imitating a buzzer. "Next, please." "I thought it was perfect," Aunt Stephanie protested. "Perfectly flat," her husband, Uncle Derek, chimed in. "It's not too late to ruin the gravy," Aunt Stephanie warned him. "Perfectly wonderful," Uncle Derek corrected himself. "But now it's my turn. Maestro? Excuse me, maestress? Maestrix?"
The tinkle of Aunt Caitlin's piano drowned him out and filled the house, and Uncle Derek's baritone followed close behind. "O ni-ight dee-viiiiiine. O-o niiiiiight, when Christ was booooorn. O niiiiight, dee-VIIIIINE — " "No, it's hideous," another woman protested as the piano went silent. "Make it stop! Make it stop!"
"Philistines!" Uncle Derek roared through the laughter.
By that point, Aunt Caitlin had put our coats in the hall closet and escorted us into the living room, where a group of five adults was gathered around the piano, all five of them laughing helplessly. The living room was even more splendidly festive than the hallway. There were candles in all the windows, and a block-shaped pine-scented candle burning inside a wreath on the coffee table. The angel atop the Christmas tree was almost touching the nine-foot ceiling, while the tree itself held globes of silver, red, and gold; and ornaments of every shape and description, ranging from an elegant glass crèche to a homemade lime-colored clay wreath inscribed "Love, Imogen" that had been given a place of prominence right in the middle. And tinsel. This was my mother's family. Strands of tinsel were draped on all the branches, making the whole tree shimmer in the reflected light of hundreds of tiny white bulbs.
I looked over to see a tear running down Imogen's cheek, which she quickly brushed away before the singers realized we were among them.
"Uh-oh, cops," Uncle Derek grinned as he finally caught sight of us. "Cool it everyone." "Imogen!" Aunt Stephanie raised a glass of punch from the piano in a toast to my sister. "And Andrew," Aunt Caitlin added quickly, eager to save everyone else from making the faux pas of not recognizing their nephew.
"Andrew!" Aunt Stephanie's eyes twinkled. She pushed herself off the piano — she'd probably consumed a little more than a moderate amount of the punch, her own special Christmas recipe that I'd never been allowed to try — and walked over to me. "Give us a kiss."
She winked at Imogen and stuck her cheek out at me. Stephanie was Mom's younger sister, probably still a year or two shy of forty, and she'd always been the adventurous one. And the flirtatious one. It was usually Caitlin who got the cheek kisses; Stephanie always liked a nice firm smack on the lips, a source of unending embarrassment to the 15-year-old me who she'd fooled into giving her one that last time she visited us. Or the last time I remembered her visiting us, at least.
Like the others, she was dressed in what I thought of as church clothes — skirts and sweaters for the women; pressed slacks, button-down shirts for the men. I felt very out of place in my jeans and flannel shirt. Imogen, I was only noticing now, had changed out of her jeans into a pair of black slacks and a very pretty plum-colored blouse. I delivered the commanded kiss at the same instant that she turned her head. Our lips met briefly, and I hastily pulled back. "He's gotten taller, hasn't he?" Aunt Stephanie asked Imogen with a merry giggle.
"A little," Imogen smiled back at her. "More support for my swelled head."
Everybody had a good laugh at my expense, and Imogen collected a hug and a kiss from her other aunt as well. Uncles Derek and Joey came over with handshakes for me and kisses for Imogen, and then Aunt Caitlin turned to her other guests, a handsome couple in their late twenties or early thirties.
"Rick and Heather Poulette," she said, "I'd like you to meet my niece and nephew, Imogen and Andrew Torres." Jeff rose to offer my hand, while Heather stayed seated at the piano bench, from which she offered us a half-hearted wave. She looked a little nauseous, to tell the truth, Caitlin, and Uncle Derek hustled back to her side to ask if she was all right.
"A little too much punch, maybe," she said weakly. "Could I just have a glass of water?"
My aunts raced toward the kitchen for some water as the men gathered solicitously around the stricken woman. She was incredibly attractive; her church clothes included a sweater that seemed to have expelled all of the air that might have fit between it and her skin. "I thought you said she moved," Imogen stepped toward me and whispered into my ear.
I suddenly wasn't feeling that good myself, and the next glass of water was for me. After a time, though, both Heather and I recovered. She seemed intent on ignoring me for the rest of the afternoon, or at least ignoring whatever relationship we had had. For my part, I was as blissfully ignorant as everyone else in the room of the details of that relationship. Only Imogen apparently knew that there had been one, and she treated Shelia with an initial coolness that I'd never seen in her before.
After a while, even that thawed. Imogen could no more ignore the spirit of Christmas than she could stop breathing, and soon she was standing behind Heather, her hand on Heather's shoulder, taking her own turn at the show-stopping chorus of "O Holy Night." After I had a turn, standing well in back of Heather, Imogen was awarded first prize, and allowed to select any ornament she wanted from the tree. "How 'bout that wreath?" Uncle Joey joked, pointing at Imogen's youthful gift.
"You touch that wreath, Joey Hatzilakos," Aunt Caitlin's eyes flashed, "and you'll lose something very dear to you." "Very dear to you," he suggested with a flick of his eyebrows. "I can get another one," Aunt Caitlin quickly retorted.
"I could make a better one," Imogen offered.
The room exploded into laughter. "A better wreath, I meant," Imogen turned a brilliant crimson. "It's a little, uh, lumpy." "You touch that wreath, Imogen Torres," Aunt Caitlin turned on her, "and you'll get no pie for dessert." "She gets no pie and I get disfigured?" Joey asked. "I know which punishments work on which offenders," Aunt Caitlin smirked. "Now which one would you like, dear?"
Imogen had to examine each and every ornament on the tree, and finally plucked a hand-painted wooden Santa Claus off a branch in the back. She held it out to Aunt Caitlin with great delight, and Aunt Caitlin, with equal delight, pulled open a drawer in one of her tables and extracted a box in which the ornament fit perfectly. "You knew!" Imogen seemed awed. "I bought it for you," Aunt Caitlin smiled at her. "Still, I'm surprised you won it this early. I was figuring you'd win charades once everybody else got a little tipsy."
As it turned out, I won the charades, even though I had earlier been pronounced old enough to finally sample the punch and was probably a little tipsy myself. In a similar vein, both Imogen and I were pronounced old enough to be able to dispense with "Aunt" and "Uncle," which Stephanie argued made her feel old.
Dinner was served just after three, a turkey that had been butchered at a local farm only two days earlier, and that Joey butchered again with his electric carving knife. It was still wonderful, though, just like stuffing, the mashed potatoes, and Caitlin's exquisite gravy. Later, when Imogen was busy washing dishes in the kitchen and Joey had dragged Derek and Rick out to the garage to see my new toy, I found myself sitting at the table with Heather.
"So how have you been?" she asked quietly. "A little sick," I admitted. "Not quite myself lately."
"I've been thinking of you," she said. While she was thinking, she'd apparently kicked off one of her heels. I could feel a stockinged foot begin to trace a course up my leg. "My husband never found out who it was, you know. Only that I was cheating on him." "Uh-huh," I agreed. Her foot had reached my crotch, and I couldn't believe that I wasn't exploding into my pants.
"Therapy was so boring," she said, taking another sip of the wine we'd shared during dinner as she began rubbing the ball of her foot up and down the ridge in my jeans created by my swollen dick. "And I guess I sort of promised not to do it again. But still..." She gave me a look that could almost be described as predatory.
Just then, Stephanie popped back in from the kitchen, gaily humming "Deck the Halls."
"You drove out the men?" she asked us. Heather had yanked her foot out of my lap as if it were on fire, and she lifted her glass for another drink. "They went to check out Joey's car," I answered Stephanie, happy for a change of subject. "His car," Stephanie nodded knowingly. "So that's where he keeps the annual Playboy magazine that Caitlin gives him each Christmas."
Stephanie sat back down at the table and picked up her own half-full wine glass. "So," she looked at me after a sip, "tell us what's new?" "New?" I asked. As far as I was concerned, everything was new. "New girlfriend?" Stephanie teased me with a guileless wink at Heather. "Any new scholarship offers?" "No," I shook my head. "Not that I know of."
"I'd still like to go to NYU," I added. I wondered if I'd even submitted an application? Or whether, as an in-demand jock, I simply considered myself above applications. Now it was Stephanie shaking her head. "Well, you can ask Derek," she said, "but apparently they've decided to toughen up academic standards for athletic scholarships, and I think they're starting with the baseball recruits. Here he is. Honey, what was it you told me about baseball scholarships?"
"Pretty ruthless," Derek said. "A two point seven five average and somewhere around a 1400 on the SAT combination."
I nodded to myself. That didn't sound that hard. The last report card I remembered, after the first semester of ninth grade, had straight A-pluses, which was like, what, a four-five? I had no idea what my average was at this point, of course, and no idea whether I'd even taken the SAT. By now, though, everyone else had gathered around the table again, and judging by the look on Imogen's face, I wasn't going to be attending NYU any time soon. I felt tears coming to my eyes, and I tried to cover them up by knocking over my water glass.
"I'm sorry," Imogen said gently as we got settled into the car for the ride home. "You never mentioned NYU anymore, so I thought you'd given up on it. "It doesn't matter," I said. "That was fun, huh?" "That was Christmas," Imogen sighed, nestling herself into the passenger seat like she was ready for a nap.
Oh shit. She was in the passenger seat. I was in the driver's seat.
"So you wanna drive back?" I asked her as casually as I could. "No," she said sleepily. "I just wanna sit here and remember that feeling." She stretched like a cat, and I returned my attention to the car.
All right, I thought to myself, trying to replay the instructions Imogen had recited, I put in the clutch, I start the car. I let the parking brake off, I put it in reverse. Now I slowly let my foot off the clutch, and when I feel it reach the stall point, I put on the gas, and - YESSS! I pumped my hand as the car began backing down the driveway. Thank God for muscle memory; apparently I'd done this enough that my feet and hands could feel when it was time to shift and when it was time to let the clutch out. I'd done a good job memorizing the directions, too, and had no trouble navigating my way home.
Driving? That was another story altogether. Thank God for tryptophan, or whatever it is in turkey that puts you to sleep, because Imogen would have been terrified of ever getting in any car again, let alone mine, if she had seen the two dogs we almost hit, the stop sign we ran through, the cute little family that had to jump back to the curb with expressions of horror on their cute little faces — yeah, like I'd really been that close to the stroller — and the general disregard I showed for the dotted and solid lines that had been painted down the middle of the road. Muscle memory is apparently of absolutely no use outside of that shifting thing. Once you've got the car going, that whole driving business apparently requires input from the brain. Mine was still 15 years old, the same age it had been yesterday when I went to sleep.
Finally, thank God for Christmas; on any other day of the year, the roads between our house and Aunt Caitlin's would have been filled with traffic, and even more pedestrians than the ones whose lives I'd nearly ended. With sweat dripping from my chin, I pulled into our driveway and jerked the car to a halt.
"Are we here already?" Imogen asked, once again doing the cat stretch. "Thanks, Drew. Thanks for bringing me. You did have fun, didn't you?" "I did," I nodded, a little taken aback at the surprise with which she'd laced that question. "After a while, I even forgot what a schlub I looked like." "Nobody noticed," she smiled, still lost in nostalgic reverie. "Nobody ever notices anything like that over there. Speaking of which, that was Heather, wasn't it?"
Reverie over.
"Um," I said, "I really thought she'd moved. I haven't seen her in, like, forever. She seems to be happy with her husband, though." "Bullshit," Imogen said. "I saw the way she looked at you when she thought nobody else was looking. You be careful, Drew. The last thing you need is another paternity test." She looked at our house, the lights of the tree in the living room the only visible sign that we celebrated Christmas.
"Whaddya bet they're in there having meatloaf for Christmas dinner?" she sighed. She slammed the door and left me in the car to ponder my life. Another paternity test? I hoped to God I'd at least passed that one.