For Every Thing, A Season - Dan Brotzel
I got up early and raced down to peek at my presents, even though in our house you had to wait till after lunch to open them, and I was 80, and I was just a twinkle in my mum’s eye. Christmas meant something again now that I had children of my own, and it was true what they said about the little ones preferring the wrapping to the toys. When they were teenagers they were grabby and sullen, same as I was. And when I was an old man they fought bitter little furtive wars about whose turn it was to put up with me drooling in front of the telly.
Nan and Grandad arrived early. Nan came alone, newly widowed. Neither made it, though Nan got to be older than I ever did. Dad went next and then my brother. Mum was at once domestic drudge, materfamilias, hostess, lonely spinster, frail housebound invitee. I looked at my gloves and my alarm clock and my sensible stationery, and I wondered why my parents couldn’t buy any decent stuff. I always wanted something else, and I wanted for nothing, and I couldn’t bear the thought of one more thing.
The dog sat staring at the corner, giving off a funny smell. The cat got hit by a car in the night and we had to bury him in the semi-frozen ground before the kids saw. The turkey got stuck in the oven. My little cousin said he was so cross he could have killed it, and everyone laughed, and the joke instantly entered family folklore. And Dad’s Ayatollah Must-have-a-pee gag got yet another outing, even though he was dead, even though Rodney at work hadn’t told it him yet, even though no one ever laughed. Someone said: ‘Undo me belt – you’re nearer’. In the crackers there were plastic whistles and plastic combs and a thin fortune-telling fish whose ends curled up in your palm, and Auntie Gertie – who wasn’t anyone’s auntie – sat dripping tears into her Christmas pudding, because her Bert was dead and what was the point of anything. And it was the first year without Dad, and the first year with a baby, and the first year we were married, and the year I was born. And it was the last time with both cats, and the last year in the old house, and the last year before Mum lost her mind. And Bert had been dead for years, and Bert had died yesterday. But Gertie was never anyone’s auntie really.
At church I wore my new Harrington jacket, and I knew it didn’t really fit me because the sleeves all bulged, and then Wendy Pander looked at me and my jacket across the pews, and she sniggered and said something to Karen Greally, and she laughed too, and I knew it was all over for me at school. And I was on the altar and I was in the choir and I wasn’t there at all. And I came straight to Midnight Mass from the pub, where the right girl had pointedly snogged the wrong boy, to stand swaying and reeking at the back of the church, putting my parents to shame with a big picture of Karl Marx pinned to my denim jacket. And we stayed up all night waiting for my daughter to get back from a party. And her makeup was all messed up, and she wouldn’t speak about it, so we stayed up worrying some more. And in the night I went to the loo three times and I lost my footing without my walker, and I lay until dawn with my neck wedged against the burning radiator. I said my first words, and I said my last ones.
Outside it was so cold that my sister’s new Levi’s froze to a solid plank on the line, and it was so mild that everyone came out and had a drink on the little terrace, even the non-smokers. And there were fireworks, and tantrums, and bad films and good ones, and always the central heating was too high. And the Queen made a speech, and the King did, and the other King, and no one listened to any of them, except Mum, who always said they looked tired. And I ended the night unpleasantly full, except when I went right off my food, which was how people first guessed I was really sick.
And the neighbours came in to us, and we went in to them, and we had some sherry, and they had some awful mulled wine, and we were home, and we were away. I called you from Patagonia, and our son phoned from Boston. We never did get out to see him, though we found out he’d been back to see his girlfriend instead.
And through it all the little plastic camel and the little bald donkey sat on the mantelpiece, breathing on an empty crib, looking like all their Christmases had come at once.
Originally published by Tiny Molecules 2020
Dan Brotzel is the author of a collection of short stories, Hotel du Jack, and a novel, The Wolf in the Woods (both from Sandstone Press). He is also co-author of a comic novel, Work in Progress (Unbound). His new book, Awareness Daze (Sandstone Press) is out November 2023. More at www.danbrotzel.com
