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"You’re not really going to sit at home on Christmas day?" Kathy said, her glass of mineral water rocking agitatedly.
"Yes, I am," Emma said. "I’m going to curl up with a dozen bottles of cold white wine, an ocean of prawns and a fingerbowl, and a nine thousand page epic encompassing seven generations of lust, infidelity and miscegenation in the Deep South of Silesia, and enjoy myself."
"But you’ll be so lonely, with everybody else out there having such a good time. What about your family?"
"Both my brothers are blessed with wives and children, and will be quite far enough up the wall, thank you, without me descending on them."
"Doesn’t sound much of a family," Kathy said. "Why don’t you come to our place? We always get together at Christmas, all of us. It’s so nice. Never a cross word."
"That’s not what Gordon tells me," Sue said, her chamagne glass poised between two talons like the claw of a crab.
"My brother wouldn’t know a cross word from a jigsaw puzzle."
"The way he tells it, it’s a remake of Pol Pot meets Vlad the Impaler, only with a referee present."
"That’s mean."
"Not at all. He says your uncle Godfrey’s got a set of yellow and red cards. If you make a snaky remark, like say your last one, that’s a yellow card.
"Remarks like ‘But after all the trouble I’ve gone to ...’, ‘Why was that long-haired lout with the holes in his jeans pawning your engagement ring?’ and ‘I fail to understand why you have to go down to the pub at seven thirty in the morning?’ get two hours in the sin bin.
"’When you were three, you had this lovely doll’s house, with trees all round it, and you used to pretend you were a dog, ...’ gets a red card — off to your room for the rest of the day."
"At least we don’t fight," Kathy said. She turned back to Emma. "It’s really nice. Do come. Mum and dad are dying to meet you."
Petra listed her eyes momentarily distracted from the column of bubbles in her glass and held up a yellow coaster. "Is this how it works?" she asked.
Kathy ignored her.
"Why don’t you have dinner with me and Des?" Sue asked.
"What about his wife and kids?" Emma asked.
"They’ve got him at lunchtime."
Petra lifted her eyes from the glass and twisted her shoulders into position, the movement flowing into her breasts, as if to say Look at Me. "I did that once," she said. "It doesn’t work. The guy turned up at ten o’clock, stuffed to the gills with turkey, drunk as a skunk and with this story about having to wait till his wife flaked before he could get away. I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t you both come to my place."
"After last year!" Emma said.
"Last year was good. Everybody was there."
"Two ex-husbands, four ex-boyfriends, five new girlfriends, eleven children, parentage various ..." Sue interpreted, using a fingernail as a tally stick. "Plus a murder. It sounds like your book on Southern Silesia, Emma."
"My sociology textbooks describe it as typical blended family Christmas," Emma said. "Sort of like a fruitcake, only heavier, and it can’t hold its grog as well." She nibbled at a hunk of cheese.
"It won’t happen again," Petra said. "Robbie thought Roland was my new boyfriend ..."
"Couldn’t you explain that he was an ex-husband’s ex-wife’s new boyfriend," Sue asked, "or would that have been too hard for him to follow?"
"What’s going to happen to him?" Kathy asked.
"His trial’s in March. I’m hoping he doesn’t get off, but there’s a risk."
"How come?" Emma asked. "Didn’t he shoot him point blank with a sawn-off shotgun?"
"The Australian Shooters’ League is paying for his defence," Petra said. "They say it was a hunting accident." She paused. "You see, Roland had buck teeth and sticky up ears. They say Robbie mistook him for a rabbit. And rabbits are vermin. So Robbie is a public benefactor."
"It’s Robbie that’s the vermin," Kathy said.
"Unfortunately, troglodites and dinosaurs are protected," Sue said.
"Do come," said Petra. "There’ll be lots of nice men there."
"Such as?" Sue asked.
"Andrew, Joseph, Karl, Wayne, Bruce, ..."
"What about their wives?"
"I’m not sure. Does it matter? But hands off Andrew. I saw him first."
"What happened to Alexander?" Emma asked.
"His wife called in the loan. He’s got to babysit now while she has her affair."
"Why don’t you and Emma get together?" Kathy asked me.
I shook my head. "There’s this mob," I said. "We get together, get so much grog into us that the food floats, and pretend we’re having a great time. I wouldn’t miss it for worlds." I looked at Emma. "You’re welcome to come," I said. "The only qualification for admission is that you’re not related to anybody else there."
Kathy looked imploringly at Emma. "You must do something. You can’t have Christmas on your own. We won’t let you."
Emma smiled a thin smile. "Then perhaps you should all come here. I will supply scrawny chicken, deep fried with greasy parsnip, macadamia nuts still in their shells, hundreds of gift-wrapped socks, handkerchiefs and aprons, and a most gorgeous fruit punch that will bore you out of your skulls in half an hour flat."
"That would be nice," Kathy said, "but ..."
The party moved for the door.
Copyright © D.W. Walker, 1990