"Which do you think we should use as a tree topper, Merri?"
"Beats me. And who cares anyway? What's this need for a tree? It's Christmas Eve already. You'll just want to take it down tomorrow anyway. And it's a lame tree; you sure you got all of the branches it's supposed to have out of that box?"
Paul had been buzzing around the silver aluminum artificial tree he'd taken out of the attic earlier in the day. He had propped it up as best he could in the corner of the living room. Then he had spent all of the time he had planned to have to take on the total job just getting the strings of lights untangled and had completely forgotten to make dinner in the process.
Merri was irritated, not so much because she had missed eating dinner—although it was his turn to fix it, there wasn't anything he knew how to fix in the kitchen anyway—but because he had forgotten to make it. He was getting forgetful about a lot of stuff of late. If she hadn't been so engrossed in the book she was reading, she could have made it herself. But it was the principle of the thing. It was his turn.
"There. I think leaning it into the corner will keep it from falling into the room."
Merri took a long look of mixed emotions at her father. Anyone could have pegged him as the retired professor that he was—complete with slightly bent back, leather-elbowed cardigan, and glasses on top of his head where he would have forgotten he'd perched them. He was still a fine-looking man, though. He hadn't gone to fat like most of his colleagues had done, and she was quite fond of the gray. But she didn't know how much longer they could go on like this. She couldn't even remember which side of sixty he was on.
But he took her breath away when he entered her deep.
"I think it would be nice for Stevie if we had a tree. Just like we used to."
Merri snapped back into the present. "What? You're going to send Stevie photos in Seattle?"
"Well, hardly. He can see it for himself. He said he'd be here before noon."
"Before noon? What noon?"
"Tomorrow. He's coming for Christmas."
"Steve here? With us for Christmas? What the? . . . and how long have we known this?"
"Oh, I don't know. You sure I didn't tell you?"
"No, you friggin well didn't tell me, Dad. Steve in this house . . . with us?"
She looked at her father. He had such an open, innocent look on his face that she couldn't go on. He didn't understand. He'd never been able to understand. It was like he had no idea what all of this had done to the family.
"You don't remember what happened two Christmases ago? It wasn't explosive enough that you didn't—?"
The telephone rang. The two of them remained there, looking at each other. Paul was holding an angel ornament in his hand and giving her a sloppy, lovable grin.
"You gonna answer that?" Merri asked.
"Answer what?"
"Oh, for the loving . . ." Merri slapped the copy of
Fifty Shades of Grey
down on top of the table next to the La-Z-Boy recliner, flipped back her straight, black bangs, and lurched off toward the telephone in the kitchen.
Paul turned back to the tree, humming an off-tone rendition of "I'll Be Home for Christmas" absentmindedly to himself as he walked around the tree looking for the best place to hang the angel. "Wahla!" he exclaimed when he'd hung it on the tree. "Perfect."
"Yes, just perfect. Just frigging perfect." Merri didn't sound even as happy as she was when she had left the room.
Paul turned toward the door into the kitchen, looking a little confused, but giving his daughter a tentative smile. This despite Merri looking like a Valkyrie rising up from the depths to tear someone limb to limb, which wasn't that easy to do in her twenty-four-year-old, slim, boyish five-foot-four frame. Tossing her straight, black tresses over her shoulder, placing her hands on her hips, and fixing Paul with her flashing, heavily black eye-shadowed eyes, she was almost hissing, with steam coming out of her ears.
"What is it, honey? Dinner not going the way you planned?"
"No, Dad, dinner is
not
going at all the way I planned. But that's not the problem at hand. Do you have any idea . . . any idea at all . . . who that was on the phone?"
"The Republican Party? Didn't know the elections were over? And that they lost?" Paul chortled softly and with satisfaction to himself on this brilliant joke.
Merri couldn't control herself enough to answer for a moment, which was long enough for Paul to forget where they were in the conversation. He leaned down, running his hands through the ornaments in the box next to the tree, trying to decide which one to hang next.
"That was Muriel, Dad. And do you know what she asked?"
"Look, honey, it's that felt Nutcracker soldier you made in fifth grade. I'm not sure whether the missing arm is here someplace, though. No, what did your mother ask?"
"She asked if she should bring white or red wine. She said it would be a waste to bring both. And she said to make sure we had plenty of beer. Although, I don't know why. She never drank beer that I know of."
"Tell her rosé would be a good compromise." Paul looked up, beaming at Merri. He was quite proud of himself for having found the perfect solution to the problem at hand. He wished all of their problems were this simple to work out.
"She's not still there. I hung up on her, of course. The issue is why she's asking about bringing wine at all—why she would
bring
anything here?"
"Well, I thought she really should bring something. It would be a vast improvement over the twenty-four years we spent together. I don't remember her bringing anything to the marriage in that time—except a lot of demands and fistful of bills."
"Focus, Dad. You didn't invite mother for Christmas too, did you?"
"But, of course. They'll be here sometime after noon."
"Mother in the house? And Steve too? Don't you . . . wait, they? Who they? Oh, my god, you didn't invite Clifford too, did you? Not Clifford!"
Paul just stood there, giving her a slight smile. "That's probably why we need beer. Clifford drinks beer. Lots and lots of beer. It will be nice to have the whole family home for Christmas. Don't you think so? And Clifford
was
married to you before he was married to Muriel."
"Oh, Mary, Joseph, and the Angel Gabriel," Merri cried out. "I don't know what I'm going to . . . well, shit." She collapsed into the La-Z-Boy, pursed her lips tight, tossed her head to get the bangs out of her face again, and picked up her book.
Paul started humming again and turned to the tree, taking an ornament out of the box, examining it, sometimes starting to say something to his daughter about the shared experience of its provenance but, seeing that she was lost in her book, placing it carefully on the tree in just the perfect spot, and then dipping his hand into the box again.
This went on for several moments, and he could have been lost in this activity for much longer, but he heard the low moan from across the room. He looked over at Merri. She was licking her lips, and the hand that wasn't holding the book close to her face was roaming down her body, from the small mounds of her breasts to her lap.
Paul stood there and watched her a little more attentively. It was good to see her happy. That's what Christmases were for—to bring the whole family back together. He leaned down and scrounged around in the box of ornaments until he found what he was looking for.
"Look, honey, mistletoe," he called out to her in a low, hoarse voice.
Merri looked up. It indeed was that silly felt clump of fake mistletoe he had hung in the archway between the living room and dining room for years, causing everyone to avoid that route through the downstairs rooms.
How disgusting, she thought. But what she had been reading had her all hot and bothered.
"It's late, sweetheart. It's time for bed, I think," Paul murmured. The tone of his voice told Merri precisely what he had in mind.
She snapped her book closed and rose from the chair.
The master bedroom was dark. Merri was spooned into her father's torso on the queen-sized bed. His hands were covering her breasts and he was nuzzling the hollow of her throat with his lips. She could feel the need of him running up the small of her back. That was the one part of him that would never seem old to her—not thick, but so, so long. When it was inside her, she felt connected with life and her history as at almost no other time. It didn't fill her as Clifford did, but it fulfilled her. She felt like she'd won the lottery.
And she had actually won a lottery recently. Not a big payoff one, of course, but big enough to know how good and at peace with the world one feels when they have won the lottery—big enough for a cruise somewhere certainly.
It was all fire and explosion with Clifford. It was peace and fulfillment with her father.
Her mind was racing over the pages she'd just been reading in her book. With a sigh, she took one of his hands and moved it down her naked body, pressing his fingers between her folds, helping him to find her clit. Although he didn't really need help. He may be getting forgetful, but he'd always been able to find himself home there.
Merri arched her back into his body and moaned as he started a circular motion with two fingers. A third was moving deeper inside her. What was on that page she'd just read. Could they? Would he?
His other hand was off her breast now, moving between their spooned bodies along her back and down along the inner lines of her cheeks. She could feel him finding his cock and moving it down, between her legs. The fingers of the hand she had holding his fingers to her clit felt the spongy smoothness of his cock bulb, now also pressing at the pearl.
