After this, they ate lunch. Turkey, ham, stuffing, collards, chicken salad, rolls drenched in butter, mashed potatoes. For dessert, Thomas’s mother’s famous coconut balls, pumpkin pie, key lime pie, chocolate chess pie, with organic yogurt as a Healthy Option, which everyone ignored. Lunch, with its mouthfulled conversations, passing of dishes, bathroom breaks, and reheating of food that had fallen below optimum temperature, took over two hours to eat. After the dining table was cleared and the dishes clean (Emily loudly insisted on doing both, but became agitated when everyone didn’t bully their way into helping), it was midafternoon, and most of the family agreed that it was time for a snack. They’d nibble on this and that and meander through the house, chatting or trying to avoid chatting, depending on their mood. In a short while, it would be dinner time, and the whole buffet would be brought out again. This meal, like lunch, would take roughly two hours to finish. Therefore, in Thomas’s mind, Christmas day consisted of approximately eight hours of continuous eating. At the end of it, his belly bulged and he felt as nimble as a beached whale. Soon, all that food dragged him down into sleep, where he dreamt of enormous gardens filled with god-blessed victuals and decanters filled with magical draughts. Then he woke up and had to shit out logs the size of power-poles.
On the 26th, everyone went home, after much arguing over who would take which portions of the leftovers.
For the past few days, Thomas had come home to find his Gmail account cluttered with e-conversations. His mother informed everyone they’d be leaving St. Augustine at 6:00 AM on the 24th, maybe 6:15, “depending on bodily functions,” because “you never know when you’ll have to take that last-minute trip to the bathroom.” Emily responded that they needed to be careful on Interstate 95, because it was “the worst highway in the country.” (Thomas had, over the years, heard her claim five different highways were the worst in the country, though he had to admit I-95 drew most of her ire.) Thomas’s mother had asked if Dennis needed a new Xbox controller, “because i saw one at wal-mart that was see thru and had bunches of buttons. i believe it was called the xx raptorslayer or something like that. we already have gifts for him, don’t you worry. you know we’re not last minute shoppers. but it might be a nice little extra something.” Emily had replied that “Dennis already controllers. Doesn’t need another one.” Emily then told Thomas to “text me when you leave home on the 24th.” Thomas replied that he’d do no such thing, that he’d show up between the hours of 1:00 and 4:00 PM, as he did every year. Emily: “Settle on a specific time. And text me.” Their mother: “yes thomas, it would be nice if you settled on a specific time and it wouldn’t hurt to send a courtesy text message to your waiting sister.” And so it went.
Thankfully, Thomas’s Christmas shopping was out of the way. He went to Wal-Mart the second week of December and spent a fast-paced hour loading up a cart with goods. If he shopped for less than an hour, he felt guilty for having rushed through this supposedly sacred experience. More than an hour, and he felt suffocated by the endless shelves of low-price items, and the pop music playing overhead had turned his mind to mush. It wasn’t like this at Oxendine’s; there, he was a worker and had clear tasks that needed to be accomplished. Here, he was a consumer trying to fight the impulse to buy, buy, buy.
He’d wrapped the presents in his ham-fisted way (His mother, every year: “Oh, Thomas, didn’t I teach you how to wrap better than that? Don’t you remember helping your mother when you were a wee little fellow? Oh, you used to love sticking on the bows!”) and stacked them in his closet.
At work, the yearly Christmas decorating had been completed. Yolanda had ostensibly been in charge, but Vernon hovered close by, controlling his wife’s excesses. If she had her way, she’d wrap the entire store in blinking lights, wreathes, garland, smiling elves, and red-cheeked Santas, and put a 36-foot-tall Christmas tree on the roof. It was her not-so-secret dream to win the annual Carteret County Chamber of Commerce’s Best Decorated Business (Christmas Season) Award, but her husband lovingly squashed her dream every year. She would sigh and say that “a few more lights and maybe an animatronic snowman and this lil ol’ store would look right peachy,” and her husband would respond that “the store looks fine. My workers have spent enough time on all this glowy-glowy stuff. You know this is a business, right?”
So Thomas had bought presents, helped decorate Oxendine’s, and dealt with the most nettlesome and frenzied family e-mails. He anticipated a lull until the Oxendine’s Grocery Christmas Party, which this year took place on the 22nd. In addition to the food and drink that would be consumed, there was the Secret Santa event. Each employee drew a name from a hat, and had to get a gift for that person. No one was supposed to know who was getting a gift for whom, but of course there were loose-lipped people who couldn’t resist tantalizing their giftee, and there were others who lied about who they’d drawn to confuse and frustrate others. It was an elaborate game, with a little bit of malice, depending on who had grudges with whom. To his dismay, Thomas had drawn Eddie. He had no clue what the scatter-brained deli man wanted or needed, so at Wal-Mart he’d grabbed a package of plain white Fruit of the Loom socks, figuring everyone could use more socks.
But a lull was not to be had. When Thomas was stocking up the pickle section one afternoon, he noticed someone approaching out of the corner of his eye. He turned, meaning to greet the customer with a simple nod, or, if it was someone he knew well, to greet them in the ironic fashion most of the locals liked. He did know this person, but there would be no ironic greetings. It was Kara.
He stared, befuddled. Kara had never visited him at work, because he’d told her not to visit him at work. What did she want now, especially since they hadn’t seen each other in weeks? Hadn’t their non-relationship fizzled out?
“Hey,” Kara said. Already a dull word, Kara made it even duller.
“Hey,” Thomas echoed, with equal dullness.
He looked her over. It looked like she’d put on twenty-five pounds since he’d last seen her. Or had she always been this big? Thomas scanned through mental images, trying to compare past to present, but it was pointless. After all, most girls look at least a little desirable when you’re on top of them and ramming them with your penis. When naked, Kara’s hips were sensually wide, and any fat she had was fun to play with. Now, fully clothed, and with their last sexual encounter an age ago, she looked slatternly. Her face in particular struck him: it had been her best feature, but now it was as round as a frisbee, and her lips looked like they’d been injected with far too much collagen.
“What’s up?” Thomas ventured, when Kara just stood there staring at him.
“I need some help.”
“OK — what kind of help?”
“Well — I’ve got this itch, and I was hoping you’d scratch it for me.” She put on what she evidently thought was a sexy smile, but to Thomas it looked like half her face was paralyzed.
“Was that, uh, meant to arouse me, or what?” he asked, genuinely curious.
She sighed and shook her head.
“I try to be sexy for you, and you make fun of me.”
“No, no, I meant that seriously. Your delivery isn’t — well, it’s different, let’s just put it that way.”
“You’re making fun of me.”