Home for the Holidays

In the rear view mirror, a flashing blue light was approaching slowly. The security guard was giving them plenty time to get out of the way. He started up the engine, Sally rearranged her clothes, and they departed. They drove back to her house without another word. But when he walked her to the door, when he gave her a nice polite goodnight kiss for the benefit of her mother peering through the venetian blinds, she whispered "next week, let's go to the drive in."

. . . .

"You got a letter." His mother opened the bedroom door a crack, and stuck her hand through.

"It's okay, Mom. I'm decent."

"I always knock. Now." She had walked in on him a couple of times at an awkward moment, years ago, and she had never let him live it down. She opened the door, and wrinkled her nose. "You really need to keep a window open. It's stuffy."

"Yes, Mother."

"How did your date with Sally go?"

"It was okay. We might go out again next week."

"Really?" There was a glint of hope in his mother's eyes. "Sally is such a nice girl, from such a nice family. They go to our church. They have money, too. Her father has a very big job, he's a director or something. He's a trustee at the church." She made it sound like he was the Pope. "You know, it's important in a relationship, to find someone who shares your values."

"A nice Presbyterian girl?"

"Well, maybe a Methodist."

"Not some Jewish whore?"

"Thomas, I did not say that! I have nothing against Jewish people. It's just that, you have to think ahead. Where are you going to get married? How are you going to raise your children?"

"Married? Children?"

The look of horror in his eyes was too much for his mother. She handed him the letter and ran out into the hall. He could hear her out there trying to suppress her giggles. With a sigh, he took a look at the letter -- tissue paper thin stationary, the address inscribed in purple ink, in a delicate, spidery hand. Even after its journey through the mail, it still reeked of perfume.

"You got a letter from your girl friend?" His brother had walked into the room, unannounced. Well, technically it was his brother's bedroom now. He didn't even have a bed in it. Somehow, his brother had convinced his parents to replace the twin beds with one oversize water bed. What were they thinking? What was a fourteen year old going to do with a water bed? But his dresser was still in here. It was where he changed his clothes. "Nice," his brother snatched the letter, still unopened, from him. "Jean Nate?"

"Give that back."

Instead, his brother opened the letter and began to read it in a simpering falsetto.

"Dear, dearest Tom. I miss you. I want to kiss you, to touch you, to ... wait, I can't read that word, to something you. I want to ..." he unfolded the page, and let out a whistle. "Holy fucking shit." He held up the paper. There, in the middle of the page, in the same purple ink, was a sketch of a naked Lisa and a naked Tom, kissing.

"She's an artist," Tom said. "She draws nudes all the time."

"No shit. You're fucking really fucking her? No shit. Wait until I show this to Larry."

"You little shithead!" Tom was too late. By the time he could move, his brother was out the door. It wasn't for nothing, though, that he was running track. He caught the little twerp by the end of the driveway.

"What does this mean?" His brother was looking at the letter under the post light. "At the end. PS 3DL."

"Nothing," Tom said. He snatched the letter away, and looked at the post mark. Two days ago. That would make five days now. Well, Lisa's periods had been erratic all Fall. It wasn't anything worth worrying about. But he was worried.

. . . .

"Please deposit seventy five cents, for the first three minutes."

"Seventy five cents?" Tom gasped. "For three minutes? How much is two minutes?"

"Seventy five cents is the minimum." The operator sounded really pissed that she was working on Christmas Eve. Who could blame her? Down the hall, he could hear the laughter of the reception after the evening service. No one else was headed for the rest rooms yet. "Would you prefer to call collect?"

Oh yeah, he could imagine how well that would go over. Lisa's mother was okay, but her father thought that anyone with blonde hair was a concentration camp guard. Blonde hair, blue eyes, that made Tom a Nazi for sure.

"Please deposit seventy five cents. Now."

"Yes ma'am." He fumbled in his pocket for the coins. A quarter. That should mollify her. Appeasement. That hadn't worked with Hitler. It wasn't working with the operator either. "Sir, I have other customers waiting? Are you going to complete your call?"

Another quarter, almost there, a dime, a dime -- no that one was a penny, and the phone rejected it, sending it rolling down the tiled floor of the Sunday school wing.

"Sir!"

"Just a moment, just a moment." A nickel. Another nickel. Then a dime!

"Sir, you have deposited eighty cents. Would you like to start again?"

"No, no, that's fine."

"Very well, I am connecting you now."

The phone began to ring. Damn it, Lisa, be home. Of course she'd be home. This night was nothing special for her. Answer the phone, damn it. It stopped ringing, and a gruff male voice answered.

"Is Lisa there?" he stammered.

"Who's calling." It wasn't a question, so much as a challenge.

"Tom."

"Tom." There was a pause, as one of those precious minutes started to slip away. "Hey Lisa, baby, it's your goyish Romeo."

Another agonizing pause, another precious minute slipping away. "Tom!" The sound of her voice, the joy in her voice, was a revelation. This was the woman he loved. What was he doing, messing around with all those other ... breasts, pussies ...

"Lisa. Merry Christmas. I mean, Happy Hanukah. I mean, I got your letter. Seven days now?"

"Oh," she laughed. "It came. It saw. It conquered."

"Oh. Thank goodness."

"Please deposit an additional fifty cents." The operator's voice cut in. His pocket was empty, and a little kid was coming down the hall.

"Got to go. Love you."

"Love you too. See you soon."

He wandered back into the reception. Sally wasn't there. Her family hadn't shown up for the Christmas Eve services. He felt a pang of guilt as he realized that he'd been looking forward to seeing her. Well, mostly he had come to get a chance to sneak in that call to Lisa. And of course there were all the Christmas cookies, brownies, chunks of fudge, eggnog and coffee. But the thought that Sally might be there, radiant in some really tiny little Christmas dress, had been in the back of his mind. There had been no sign of her. Too bad.

He started to descend into deep existential angst. The service had been as beautiful as ever, the wreaths, the hymns, the choir, the great organ ringing out a Bach chorale. Then the candles, everyone holding a candle in the darkened church, singing Silent Night, and all he could think of was virgins waiting to be liberated from their virginity. It all meant nothing to him now. Everyone knew there was no God, no baby Jesus, well maybe there had been a baby Jesus once, but never any angels, no heavenly choir. It was all just a pious sham. He'd made his phone call. It was time to go home, as soon as he could get his parents to leave.

Then he spotted Sally, over in a corner talking to Mike and Tracy. That in itself was strange. Sally liked jocks. If you didn't have a letter sweater, there was no sense even asking her out. And Mike and Tracy were the braniac twins, the hyper intellectuals. Tom knew, of course, that he was smarter than either of them, even though they were at Harvard and Radcliffe and he was only at Columbia. They were his friends, his intellectual friends, and Sally was his friend, but what the hell was Sally doing sucking up to Mike? She was standing there, just as he had imagined her, except that the dress was blue satin instead of red, hanging on every word from his one time best friend.

"Tom! We were looking all over for you!" Sally greeted him with too much of a show of concern, and even gave him a little kiss. The pangs of jealousy he'd been feeling were replaced by a sudden terror. You are not my girlfriend, not my girlfriend, he was muttering to himself. The stupid bitch had gone and fallen in love with him. What the fuck was he going to do now? "Where's your eggnog?" She slipped that little silver flask out of her purse and added some clear fluid. "There, isn't that better?"

Tom nearly choked as he tried to down it. "What the hell is that?"

"Aquavit. One hundred fifty proof."

"Sally is a life saver," Mike said, and he gave her a little hug.

"She's a darling," Tracy added, "an angel of mercy. A St. Bernard with cleavage." She held out her cup and Sally refilled it. There was not a hint of eggnog in it. "You should be carrying your flask around your neck," she ran a finger down Sally's chest, "instead of ... wow, are those real?"

What a question for one girl to ask another, Tom thought, and he expected Sally to deck Tracy on the spot. But instead, she pulled out a pendant that had been nestled between those magnificent breasts. It glittered with red and green stones.

"Yep. My Christmas cross. My parents gave it to me early. I mean, if I'm not going to wear it tonight, when?"

Real. Those were real rubies, real emeralds, real diamonds. Tom had known vaguely that Sally's parents had some money, but it had never really hit him. "Wow."

"You are really beautiful." Tracy said it with such frank admiration, such utter lack of jealousy.

"So are you," Sally answered. And it was true. Tracy had been a skinny, mousey little girl who hid herself in thick sweaters and long wool skirts. She didn't look so mousey tonight. Her hair, which had been a dirty brown in high school, was a beautiful dark red now, and Tom was wondering if it came out of a bottle. Her dress was shorter than Sally's, as if that were possible, and it had almost no back to it. He had never realized what beautiful skin Tracy had, white and creamy, not a sign of a pimple or even the possibility of one. There was no way she could be wearing a bra under that dress. She bent down to retrieve a fallen brownie crumb, and his suspicions were confirmed. "Have you been working out?"

"Fencing," Tracy said. "Mike and I are both doing fencing."

"Fencing?"

"Yep. We learned how to fence when we were kids. But we've had to practice with each other until now."

"Like a lot of other things," Mike added. Tracy gave him a really dirty look, and he added, "our German. We've had to keep our German up."

"How about you Tom. Still running?"

"Running now. I did soccer in the Fall."

"Soccer? Really?"

"Freshman team. But they want me back next year."

"Congratulations. How about you Sally?"

"Oh, the usual. Field hockey. See that?" She pointed to a little lump just below her right knee.

"Basketball?"

"Too wimpy. I'm doing indoor tennis this year. I'm second singles."

"Good for you."

There was a pause while they all admired themselves and drank more eggnog. Sally's flask was empty.

"Mike was just starting to explain how Christmas is really a collection of pagan traditions. It's really very fascinating." Sally finally broke the silence.

"December twenty-fifth was the birth date of a lot of gods," Mike said. "Mithras in particular. In the old Roman calendar, it used to be the date of the winter solstice."

"Really?" Tom had never heard that.

"Really. The sun is gone for three days and then it comes back. Does that sound familiar?"

"And the three stars in the belt of Orion point to where the sun is going to rise," Tracy added. "The three wise men."

"Aren't we really celebrating the Saturnalia?" Tom objected. "That's what I thought."

"What was that?" Sally asked.

"It was a big Roman fuckfest," Tracy said, too loudly.

"I thought they just exchanged gifts," Tom objected.

"They exchanged a lot of body fluids," Tracy snorted, "and shared some body parts, if you know what I mean. Christmas is just the same thing, dressed up. The Pilgrims wouldn't even celebrate Christmas. This is all just a pious fraud."

"So why are you here then?" Sally seemed really upset.

"I'm here for the fuckfest," Tracy whispered. She put a hand on each bare shoulder and kissed Sally on the forehead. "How about you?"

"I'm only here for the brownies," Mike announced. "And the beautiful women." He leered at Sally, and she blushed and giggled a little. "It does get old though. Tell you what." He gave them a little wink. "How 'bout the four of us go back to our house, and we'll celebrate Christmas Eve the old fashioned way."

"Saturnalia?" Tom stammered it out. He couldn't believe what he was hearing, and he couldn't believe that Sally was standing there, wide eyed, chest heaving and mottled with a light red rash. She wasn't paying attention to either of the boys. She was staring at Tracy with a fascination that was unsettling.

"Saturnalia," Tracy whispered. "We'll all give each other a little Christmas present. Some little part of ourselves."

"I can't. I came with my parents," Sally stammered.

"So did I," Tom echoed. It was starting to get very warm in Fellowship Hall. He was wearing his good wool suit, and it was way too heavy.

"Well, tell them you're going home with us. No problem." Mike broke the tension with a laugh.

"You'll get us back home?"

"Eventually." The way Tracy drawled that was enough to make Sally shiver. But it was with anticipation, not fear.

They made their arrangements, retrieved their coats, in Sally's case, just that little fur wrap, and went out to find Mike's car. It was a VW Beetle, with almost no back seat. "Put your coats in the trunk," he said, and laughed as Sally headed for the rear of the car.

"Ladies in the back," he announced, in a tone that did not allow for argument. Well, Mike was driving, and there was no way Tom was going to fit back there. Even Sally had her knees pulled up trying to wedge herself in behind the front seat. Her skirt was bunched up around her waist, and it was pretty obvious her period was over. She was wearing tiny lace panties that didn't cover much of anything.

She saw Tom's stare, and giggled a little. "Mommy always told me to wear nice underwear."

Tracy crawled in next to her. "Comfy?" She wiggled around a bit and hiked up her own skirt, as if that were necessary. "Damn, I've got no where to put this arm. Do you mind?" And with that she put her hand on Sally's leg.

"Same here," Sally said, and she moved her arm up around Tracy's shoulder.

"That's better." Tracy gave her a little kiss on the cheek. "I'm sure we're going to be really good friends by the time we get home. How about you two up there? Are you doing any male bonding?"

"Bucket seats," Mike said. "Stick shift in the middle."

"Oh well. We'll just have to wait until we get there, right?"

"So how do you like college?" Sally asked. She was uncomfortably aware of Tracy's hand on her thigh. Her cheek was burning from that little kiss.

"Oh, it is such a relief to be out of high school. You know, we didn't move here until tenth grade."

"Your father was in the army?"

"Over in West Germany. You know, it's different there. Kids have sex, and no one thinks anything of it. When I came over here, I was used to having sex. But you can't do that in high school here. If you have sex, you're a slut. So I had to keep a very low profile."

A low profile. All those bulky sweaters. No makeup. The mousey little girl had just been a front.

"Anyway," she giggled, "this semester I've been making up for lost time. Of course, I've discovered that I like girls, too." That last was whispered in Sally's ear, and followed by a tongue pressed into the same place. No one had ever done that to her before. She felt as if a shock was going straight from her ear down to her groin. She realized that the hand that had been on her thigh was up above her stockings now, fingers brushing against the hem of the lace panties.

"What about you Mike?" Sally gathered herself up enough to taunt him. "Do you like guys?"

There was only sullen silence from the front seat.

"We'll train them," Tracy whispered. "We'll get them whipped into shape, won't we, Sally dear? They're going to be our little sex slaves."

"Aren't your parents home?" Tom asked with a note of hope or desperation in his voice.

"They are away for the evening," Mike said, as if it was no big deal.

"They went to a party right after church," Tracy added.

"What time are they coming back?"

"Who knows. Late. Very late."

"Sometime tomorrow, even," Tracy added.

"Sounds like some party," Sally drawled. She had moved her arm so that it was just draped over Tracy's shoulder, so that her hand was just brushing a breast, or a least where a breast should have been. She reached down a bit further, and realized that she had encountered a nipple. "Sorry," she muttered, and started to move her hand away, but Tracy held it there, and shrugged a shoulder to make it less awkward.

"I guess. We wanted to go this year but they said everyone was too old for us." They had arrived. Mike and Tracy lived in one of the little split levels down on the main road. Their father was a cop, their mother was a nurse, blue collar, really, but somehow they had wound up going to college in Cambridge. Co-valedictorians, they had nudged Tom out. They were on full scholarship. Everyone had made a big deal about it, full scholarship to Harvard, and why didn't Tom get a scholarship to Columbia? Of course, Tom's father hadn't even bothered to fill out the financial disclosure form. That was why. Tom lived up on the hill, where the big houses were. So did Sally.

Tom got out, and Sally and Tracy started to untangle themselves. "I mean," Tracy added, "I guess they are all my parents' age. They've been having this party for a long time."

"They went to an orgy?" Sally asked it with such innocence that both Tracy and Mike sputtered with laughter.

"No, no," Tracy said. "They have some Polish friends. They all get really loaded and then they go to midnight mass. At least," she added, "that's what they've always told us."

"We'll just have to have a little party of our own," Mike added. He'd been very subdued since that remark about liking guys.

"Oh yeah," Tracy said. "We have the place to ourselves. We've got plenty of toys ..."

"Toys?" Sally seemed confused. "Aren't we a little old for toys?"

"You'll see."

They retrieved their coats from the trunk. Mike unlocked the front door and they went up a few steps into the living room. Split entrance, Sally thought to herself. That is so tacky. Plaid upholstery, shaggy wall to wall carpet, a little aluminum foil Christmas tree with packages in red and gold and green boxes underneath. Some of the trophies Mike and Tracy had accumulated during their high school years were displayed on the mantle over the fireplace. It looked as ordinary, as boring, as any other living room in the neighbourhood. Tom had been there many times.

Sally looked around with a little sniff of contempt. Overstuffed chairs, a little pile of copies of Reader's Digest in a basket by the recliner. Her living room featured Persian carpets, Mies van der Rohe leather couches and copies of the Saturday Review. Not that she ever read it, but her parents had taste. These people didn't even know what taste was. "Where are all the books?" she had to ask. "I thought you two were such eggheads."

"Down in the den." Mike seemed to be impervious to her sarcasm. "Want some more eggnog?"

"I think I've had enough eggnog," Sally giggled. "Maybe more than enough."

"Apple cider?"

"Sounds good."

Mike went into the kitchen and came back with a gallon jug of cider, four plastic glasses stacked together, and a box of donuts.