NOT EXACTLY A CHRISTMAS STORY

Stranger



It was the morning of the Christmas Eve. It was cold outside and the trees and the house’s roof tops were carrying the ice-cold burden of the previous night’s snowfall. Apart from those, pretty much everything else was covered too and the spotless white scenery was only ruined throughout the main road, which was leading the locals to the big highway, where two brown unremitting lines had shaped from the vehicles that were crossing it with their dingy tires.
After shoveling the snow from the front door’s steps “so that Santa knows we’re expecting him”, George sat at the kitchen’s round table, watching his wife, Mary, cooking eggs and sausages for breakfast and listening to his two daughters’ voices coming from the living room, fighting over who’s star should be placed on the top of the Christmas tree. George’s wife, Mary, was really absorbed by the preparations for the holidays, as every year was and missed to discern her husband being more thoughtful than what he pretended he was that morning. Mary, a twenty seven year old woman, ten years younger than George, was really overcoming herself every time around Christmas, cleaning out the house, cooking traditional pies and sweets and in general creating a fitting atmosphere. During the whole year, every year, she was the “typical housewife” with all that means but around Christmas she was really doing nothing else but cleaning and cooking and decorating the house properly for the instance. On return, she never really enjoyed the holidays due to her angst to get everything as they should be, for her husband’s and her daughters’ delight.
The phone rang twice before Mary picked it up with her left hand, while blending the sausages and the eggs with the other. George felt relieved when he heard his wife greeting back her grandmother who was on the other side of the line. At first he was afraid that the one who had called him last evening was the one who had called again that morning. But fortunately, it was Mary’s grandmother who was very old but still in good condition considering her age and never missed to call on Christmas Eves that it was Mary’s birthday, as well.
Last afternoon’s phone call was the George’s anxiety feeder. Ever since, he was thinking about what he should do. Should he meet that woman who told him to go and find her at the only motel of the region alongside the highway, the motel without a name, just with the blue sign beyond the front entrance, in which M and T where lighting up and then was fading away slowly again, or he should just stay with his family which seemed the right thing to do, anywise…?
Vivienne, or Vinnie, as George used to call her a long time ago, was someone from the past until that phone call. A memory that took voice, flesh and bones just in a second. Vinnie and George used to be engaged when they were both twenty two but Vinnie left one day and let him live until that current day in that small town. She said she had to find her mom and dad who had abandoned her in the orphan when she just a new born, before she was ready to make her own family. And even though she used to love George and he loved her too, she left.
After almost fifteen years she called at his house and without a hello or a pause to hear his voice and let him answer back to her invitation, she hanged up the phone. With the same familiar warm voice, but way more hoarse, she told him that she was back for a while and she would wait him at No.23 room the next day; just the day before the Christmas day.
George was so confused. He didn’t know if he would go or not but he was avoiding to look his wife Mary in the eye, feeling that he had already betrayed her, just by taking that phone call.
At noon he was in front of the mirror observing for the first time how much his belly had pumped now that he wasn’t still that twenty two year old fit boy and felt bothered for the first time. Fortunately, he hadn’t lost neither one hair from his head so far, while many of the men in his age he was associating with, could already be characterized, well… as bald or semi- bald. Apart from the two long lines which had circled his mouth and the three more on his brow, appearing every time he was laughing or lifting his eye- brows higher in surprise, he still could be deemed more alluring (French prefer this word) than most of his friends.
George got out decisively and somehow mechanically from the bath and kissed his wife on the cheek. He told her he would be back in an hour, as soon as the dinner is served I’ll be back again, he said and closed the door beside him, letting his wife believe that the drive with his car that he just launched would end outside his parents’ house.
Vinnie was still looking gorgeous. A little older and not that fresh but gorgeous. Maybe if she wasn’t smoking that much she would look even better, George thought sitting next to her, while making the ice cubes swimming in his scotch change places as he waved his glass. He drank a sip and tried to imagine what would be the sense of touching her long silk robe she was wearing. “Sorry but my wife and my kids are waiting for me. Mary must probably have served the dinner and wonders where am I…” George said looking to Vivienne and trying to resemble her with that twenty two year old girl some fifteen years ago. “I’m glad and surprised that I met you… But really why you called me?” he added, surprised by his own self for his straightforwardness. “I just wanted to see you, didn’t you? Vivienne said, pushing her cigarette against the ashtray. “I just wanted to feel you” she said and George realized what she meant as she moved closed to kiss him. He resisted, but he wanted to feel her too. He thought of Mary and his kids. He even thought of his work and his bedroom while kissing Vivienne, who was Vinnie again but he didn’t stop kissing her. In addition, he grabbed her tight with his hands and placed her to the undone from hers last night sleep bed. He came in a minute or two but they didn’t stop. They did it again; more slowly now but with same passion. They became one body. They became the twenty two year old kids again.
Vivienne got up from the bed naked and went back again with a cigarette lighten up between her fingers. She lied beside him, naked bodies touching, and passed him her cigare after a long whiff. “I don’t know if you heard… but my foster dad just passed away…” Vivienne said and George thought that he hadn’t heard but didn’t say anything as she went on. “They called me just for my signature and to accept everything he left me. I’m rich now you know…: Vivienne said, using the same tone for every word she was saying. “But I don’t mind because I became rich ten years ago when I married Bob.” Vivienne was looking at the wall on the other side of the room while talking and someone could think that she was talking to no one in particular if George wasn’t laying down beside her, smoking her cigare. But then she turned to his side and gave him a gentle look and a gentle kiss “He must be here any time now… so I guess…. I don’t think we will meet again” Vivienne said and started to get dressed.





End of story