running from his bellybutton into the ever-so-small bottoms below.
He’s too white for the Mexican sun. When Vero first said she
wanted to name their second son Jamal, he’d balked, “Look at me:
I’m practically an albino. And we’re going to have a kid called Jamal?”
But she waited until the birth, knowing that after Shane watched her
push out a baby, she could call him whatever she wanted.
“A skirt,” Vero mumbles, pointing at Shane’s towel, not letting her-
self pity him and his sun-beaten sensitive skin. “How civilized of you
to dress for Christmas dinner.”
Heather smiles at this, though her eyes water. She has dressed for
dinner, pure silver teardrops hanging from her ears and a silk scarf
the colour of merlot pinned at her neck. She sure thinks she’s something,
Vero’s own mother would say. In Vero’s family, there’s no worse insult.
“I’m fine. I’m fine,” Vince insists, as Heather holds his elbow to
steer him into his chair for the extravagant feast of cold Mexican
goop.
“Shis dins shanks its,” says Shane, looking down to his plate. He
closes his eyes. Vero wonders if he might fall face-first into his five-
star food. She craves the drama of that splat. But then he opens his
eyes. “Ish versh pand Imssh.” He closes his mouth, holds two fingers
to his lips and looks at Vero, so lost that she nearly pities him.
Lecker like a crecker. That’s what Gregory usually says, rubbing his
hands over his full plate, just before they start a feast. Lecker like a
crecker. It’s something people said back in South Africa. Another
family joke that Vero is not in on. But now? Vero craves that joke. She
almost says it herself, rubbing her own hands above her plate.
“This dinner is very good, Mr and Mrs Schoeman. Thank you.”
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Vero hasn’t called them Mr and Mrs since Shane first took her out of
his bed, down from his sweet suite, through the garage, and into their
house nearly two decades ago, but the extent to which they’ve become
a satire of family Christmas dinner calls for such formality. Vero nods
her head at them and raises her purified water in a toast. She tries to
enjoy the dinner Gregory has paid for, but lumps of melted cheese
and mashed avocado stick in her throat.
“You’re welcome, Vero.” Gregory holds his glass of Argentinian
Malbec up to her. “Merry Christmas.” He takes a polite sip.
Heather reaches for her glass. “Yes, Merry Christmas, everyone.”
Her sip shows equal restraint. She wipes her lips on a linen napkin.
“Delishish,” Vince says. But he hasn’t taken a bite. Even sitting
across from his bare chest now, so close she could touch him, Vero
can’t work up any of the rage she had on the beach. He’s nothing but a
puddle of booze. Who could rage at that? Vince has recently declared
himself a stand-up comic, performing at nightclubs to create a muted
sort of post-football limelight for himself. His routine relies on push-
ing that boundary between offensive and funny. Vero keeps her own
checklist; if Vince hasn’t said all four of these words within the first
seven minutes of his show, she knows he’s off his game: rape, faggot,
child-fucker, cunt. She’s waiting for him to use all four in the same
sentence. He gets away with it because he’s big enough to discourage
anyone from marching out of the audience and punching him smack
in the face.
Looking at him now, a drunken middle-aged man at the dinner
table in Lycra bikini bottoms, Vero wonders how long it will be before
he performs his alchemist’s sleight of hand and transforms this day of
dross into on-stage gold.
Shane dips his fork into a sticky pile of refried beans and lifts it, with
effort, to his mouth, hand shaking. He takes two bites before clanking
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his fork across his plate. “Ifsh you exchushe…I’m…Goonight.” He
stands up and falls through the door into their bedroom.
Vero sets her fork down and stares at her plate, not knowing where
else to look. The next morning she will open the balcony curtains to
discover that he’s barfed off the edge and into the blooming bougain-
villea, bright purple below. The efficient Mexican gardeners will have
it cleaned up before lunch.
“Maybe you should call it a night too, son.” Vero has never heard
Gregory call Vince “son.” The forced formality is catching.
Heather pushes Vince’s plate away from him. “Be careful. You’re
going to get sick.” The silver teardrops dangling from her ears swing
hard, once, with the force of her movement.
“I’m fine.” Vince pulls the plate back and shovels some squished
avocados into his mouth. “The thing about Bikini Chrishmash iz,
you never say die. Ish not over til therz a winner.” He swallows one
forkful of sour-cream coated mush, then another, then another, com-
petitively. “A winner finishizz the day. The whole day.” He takes five
more quick bites until the plate’s nearly empty and then rips a piece
of tortilla, sloshes it around his plate to slop up the remnants of his
meal, and tears it with his teeth. “I’m a finisher,” he says with his
mouth so wide that everyone can see his tortilla and refried dinner.
“We gotta show Shpeedo Navidad who’z boss.” He grabs the edge of
the table with both hands, bracing himself in his chair. His muscles
flex as if he’s doing push-ups. “Ishn’t that right, baby?” He wobbles
as he wipes his greasy hands on his bare chest, seeming to direct the
“baby” at Vero. “Now. Who iz ready to go dancing?” He answers his
own question with a burp so loud and wet that Heather winces, and
her chin wobbles twice. She will cry. But then burp number two turns
into a hiccough, a gag, and then a full-body spasm. The rest of them
watch, immobilized, as Vince’s convulsing, sweaty body races for the
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bathroom. He leans spread-eagled over the bathroom sink for one
violent heave before he falls to his knees, bent over the toilet where
they can all see his Speedo-clad ass. Vero tries not to look at the line
where his careful shave ends. Her body softens with gratitude when
he finally kicks the door shut.
Nobody leaves the dining room table until Vince finishes his gag-
ging and retching and belching and horking in the bathroom and
then staggers, a slouched and deflated beast, into his bedroom. They
sit and stare at their plates. Not looking at the bathroom. Not looking
at each other. Afterward, Heather spends a good hour at the bath-
room sink fishing chunks of Vince’s five-star vomit out of the five-
star drain with a five-star butter knife, apologizing so repeatedly to
Vero and Gregory that anyone new to the scene would think she
made the mess herself.
Vero can’t go into the bedroom where Shane snores obliviously. She
sits out on the patio, a tow
el wrapped around her shoulders against
the chill of the night, and watches brightly lit cruise ships haul their
drunken passengers out of the harbour for the night journey.
She thinks of her mother, living so far across the continent from
Sprucedale that they see her only once a year. Cheryl Nanton isn’t big
on giving advice. She isn’t big on a lot of things associated with moth-
erhood. Vero can’t remember the last time she called Cheryl “Mom.”
Cheryl goes by Cheryl. “Don’t saddle all that ‘mom’ shit on me,” she
says. “You’re a big girl now, honey. Consider me retired.”
When Vero first told Cheryl about her engagement to Shane,
Cheryl held Vero’s face hard between her hands and stared straight
in Vero’s eyes as they sat in her beaten-up, economy-sized Ford. She
tugged at Vero’s chin until their eyes met over the worn gearshift.
“Listen carefully, and don’t for a second think I’m exaggerating about
this. Ask yourself— Am I ready to say, ‘until death do us part’ to that
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mother? How about to that father? The brother? They are all part of the package.” Cheryl gave Vero’s cheeks one firm squeeze, then dropped
her hands, looking away as if she knew her words were futile even as
she spoke them. “And let me tell you one more thing: when things
go bad, and they will, you don’t talk shit about your spouse’s family.
Ever. A husband knows his mom’s a glutton or his dad’s a big loud
or if his sister’s a slut or a bigot. He can see it without his wife telling
him. Blood defends blood. Always. You talk shit about someone’s family,
and things are gonna turn nasty. Fast.” She put both her hands on the
steering wheel, at ten and two (some things Cheryl insisted on doing
right). “And now, you do what you want, but never claim that I didn’t
warn you. Nobody ever warned me. I warned you.” Just when Vero
expected Cheryl to squeal out of the driveway in her usual rally-racer
style, she turned the engine off and fumbled in her purse. She quickly
lit a cigarette, but then held it away from lips. Cheryl didn’t smoke
anymore.
◊◊◊
Vero crawls into bed around midnight after watching a couple of
impotent firecrackers fizzle up from the beach and the last of the
holiday-in-a-can vessels push into the open sea. She lies awake in the
bedroom all night, a palm spread flat on Eliot’s warm back. As her
hand moves with the rhythmic rise and fall of Eliot’s breath, she lis-
tens to Jamal’s soft snore and watches Shane drool on his pillow. She
feels their weight on her, as if she’s at the bottom of a pig-pile, their
presence squeezing the air right out of her. She struggles for just one
complete and satisfying breath, and thinks a single, lonely thought
over and over again: I could not be more stuck with this guy.
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That single sentence—as much as the rush of breast milk, as much
as the screams of labour, as much as the omnipresent fear for a child’s
well-being—unites Vero with mothers across the generations and
world over.
I could not be more stuck with this guy.
She will tell Shane, “I stayed up all night just waiting for you to wake
up so I could divorce you.” But that’s a lie. If she had decided upon such
a clear course of action, she might have slept.
Shane hasn’t even opened his eyes in the morning when Vero attacks
him. As soon as he stirs, she lunges to his side of the bed, puts her face
inches from his, and hisses, “You go out there right now. You apologize
to your mother. And then you apologize to your father. You tell them
you’re sorry for acting like a delinquent teenager. You tell them you’re
sorry for ruining their holiday. You tell them you’re sorry for wrecking
everybody’s Christmas.” Even as she issues this demand she wonders
why she should worry about them. They made Shane what he is. But
nobody will ever accuse Vero Nanton of thinking she’s something: she
will not make it all about her. At least not at first. “And then you come
right back in here and you give me one reason I should stay married
to you.”
Two reasons—the only two—still sleep soundly, but Vero, like the
mother fox, ignores them. She also ignores the voice of Cheryl who
insists, Leave him. Cheryl never needed anyone. As soon as a man
thought it time to move his socks from his suitcase into her chest of
drawers, he was on his way out. Vero grew up a spectator to a parade
of leaving men.
“You didn’t even follow me. You didn’t come to find me. You didn’t
care to make sure I was okay,” Vero hisses. “You left me. You let your
brother yell at me and then you left me. On Christmas.”
“I had to talk Vince down, Vero. You know him. I needed to explain
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you to him, let him see where you were coming from. I smoothed
things over for you.” Shane’s voice rasps through phlegm in the back
of his throat. He scrunches his face like he can’t stand the taste of his
own mouth.
“You do not need to explain me to him. You do not need to go after
him. You need to come to me. Your wife.” She bites off the words because
it’s Christmas. She doesn’t want to use that, again. “I am your family. I
am.” She shushes Cheryl, who has appeared again. Blood defends blood.
“Of course you are.” Shane holds his hand out toward her arm. He
“We’re a family. And you didn’t even come back to me. For dinner.
On—” She pounds her fist twice, hard, on the mattress next to his
head. “CHRIST-MAS.”
He rubs his head, licks his lips. “C’mon, baby. Nobody even told me
we were having dinner. How was I supposed to know?”
How was he supposed to know?
Vero holds him coldly in her gaze, willing him to say more.
Eventually, he breaks. “It’s my family vacation. Just one week a year,”
he says so softly she barely hears him. “It’s Vince. My brother.” Shane
sits on the edge of the bed now, and his head hangs so low that his chin
nearly touches his chest. The head looks heavy—whether weighted
from fatigue or shame, Vero cannot tell. When she still says nothing,
Shane adds, “I’m sorry.” He holds his forehead in both hands and does
not look at her. She can think of nothing to say, not even when he
brushes by her, careful not to let his skin touch hers, and mumbles, “I
was drunk, Vero. Very, very drunk.”
Vero stands in the doorway to their bedroom while Shane mumbles
a sheepish apology to his mother. Heather doesn’t even look up from
the game of solitaire she plays on her laptop. Without a word, she nods
her acceptance of his apology.
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Or maybe her no
d simply means, Go away—I don’t want to think
about you right now. Leave me alone to spend my winters somewhere
warm and peaceful while I wait to die.
Shane’s apology to his dad goes more smoothly. Gregory takes a
deep breath and smiles, “Ah, that’s okay, son.” He clasps a heavy hand
on Shane’s shoulder. “Been there, done that. Believe me. Back in my
day. Who hasn’t? It won’t be the last time. Save your apologies for
the wife.” Vero tries to reconcile this been-there-done-that version of
Gregory with the grey curly hairs on the spine, the sweaty rolls at the
waist, the charges of hereditary alcoholism, the slammed glass, and
the blame hurled at Heather.
She can’t.
Vero knows they won’t see Vince until noon, and then they will all
act like nothing’s happened. “Morning, buddy. How goes it?” Vince is
Vince, that’s what they all say.
Vero would like to think that, in the wake of Speedo Navidad,
Shane might realize that “Vince is Vince” doesn’t have a particularly
satisfactory heft to it. Those three words are cotton candy next to the
emotional T-bone of this family Christmas gone wrong. But Shane
grew up with those three words, a family truth as real as “Brothers
Look Out for Brothers” or “Second Place is the First Loser” or “Sunday
Afternoon is for Football.”
Vince is Vince.
Vero knows all the stories. When Vince was thirteen, even before
he had a learner’s license, he smashed Heather’s car into a telephone
pole; Gregory responded with, Vince is Vince. When Vince got sus-
pended for pissing on the gymnasium floor at a high-school dance,
Heather said, Vince is Vince. When Vince played college football for
four years but failed to get a degree, Heather and Gregory shook their
heads, but still insisted, Vince is Vince.
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Shane tries, again and again, to explain Vince is Vince to Vero, but
he fails. Regular codes of conduct and standards of behaviour don’t
apply to Vince because…well, fuck, he’s Vince.
Vero watches Gregory Schoeman slap a meaty palm to Shane’s
shoulder, “Boys will be boys,” he says to his forty-two-year old son,
and points at the line-up of bottles on the side table, “Hair of the
dog?”
Vero leans against the doorframe, holding her breath against the