In My Brother's House

The tree was huge for the small room and decorated to the hilt. We sat drinking eggnog laced with brandy as my sister in law put the finishing touches on Christmas dinner. Her small son played among the toys and discarded wrapping paper, trying unsuccessfully to tie a ribbon on the cat. I wondered when my brother had begun to lose his hair and become pudgy, a family man if ever there was one. My other brother sat in another room, close by but not part of the grouping, a perpetual smirk on his face and a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. He looked like 90 miles of bad road. My daddy was in the rocking chair, head back and eyes closed, the Sunday paper spread across his lap. His face was wearied and worn out, deeply lined with exhaustion and the effort of breathing. My husband, secured by his second six pack of beer, retreated to the kitchen, some alcoholic's instinct alerted to the tension even through the haze. And my mother, wasted and ill, her entire body a relic of the cancer she didn't even know about then, sat across from me, eyes sunken and hands shaking. There was no trace of the evil I knew to be in her, she had become a sad, repulsive, old woman who nobody really loved. When she reached out her hand to me, I instinctively flinched and drew back. There was still venom in her, sleeping perhaps, but easily awakened. I sensed it, smelled it, wanted no part of it. The cancer that was posioning her would not bring forgiveness or even charity. She looked bewildered, a little lost, like someone waking up in a strange room and just for a second not knowing where they were. That look was quickly replaced by one of low heat hostility, a look I recognized and knew well and had had enough of. I looked away.

On the surface, I suppose it was like any other Christmas with any other ordinary family. Dinner was served with all the trimmings and we ate with little conversation but much complimenting. My sister in law and I cleared the table and washed dishes in not an uncomfortable silence while the others regrouped in the living room. My husband and brothers smoking on the tiny front porch, my daddy half asleep in the rocker and my mother in the new reclining chair, hands folded in her lap, an utterly blank look on her face.

I didn't know it then, but that Christmas in my brother's house was the last time I would see any of them. The cancer was diagnosed a week or so later and with the diagnosis came the final family split. I chose to be outside the circle.
We left late in the afternoon, making the drive home in darkness and silence. The man I had married was numbed by alcohol, I had only my demons for company and even they were fading and unnaturally quiet. Perhaps they knew what I didn't even dare hope - that the wind was about to change at last.