Peck let go of his shot glass. His elbow slipped off the table and his face dropped into his mashed potatoes. Elsie got up. Gripping his mop, she jerked his plastered mug up for air. His eyes popped
open - tiny red peppers. "What the hell?" he said, swatting at her hand.
"Is staying awake for supper, on Christmas Eve, too much to ask, Peck?"
"I am awake," he said, sporting a goofy grin.
Peck sat there unconcerned with, or maybe he was just too drunk to notice, his stuccoed complexion. Elsie went to the sink and wet a dishtowel. She looked out the window. The neighborhood glittered with the falling snow and animated lights. For Elsie, though, the holiday magic lay out of reach.
She wiped the food off Peck's face wishing she could erase it, along with the rest of his bloated body. The Peck she married was all gone. His sensitivity, his conviction, his
humor - dissolved like the worm in a tequila bottle.
He pulled Elsie onto his lap. "How about my Christmas present?" he said, pressing his tobacco-stained teeth against her clamped mouth.
His body odor and sour breath churned her stomach. Squirming out of his hold, she ran for the sink. Retching over the drain, she threw up her last ounce of compassion, or pity, or whatever it was that yoked her to such a rotten excuse for a human being. She ran the cold water and rinsed it into the sewer.
"You're a sick man!"
"Looks like you're the one that's sick," he said, choking, spitting and laughing.
Elsie splashed the running water onto her face, icing her conscience. "I am
sick - sick of you!" She dried her face with her apron, untied it and tossed it onto the table. "I'm leaving you, Peck."
He grabbed her arm. "Whatcha gonna do for money? I'll kill ya before I let some snot-nosed judge give ya half my pension."
Elsie shook her head and grinned, thinking about what a predictable jackass he was. "Your life insurance will leave me quite
comfortable, thank you."
"Whatcha do - poison this slop?" He swiped his plate off the table and stood up.
"Poison it? I could've let you suffocate in it. I'm always saving your sorry butt," she said.
He staggered to the pantry, peeled the seal off a tequila cap with his teeth and cracked it open. Sucking on it like a baby bottle, he lumbered into the living room; excess booze ran off his chin and down his shirt. Elsie followed him and watched him perform his settling-into-his-recliner routine. Nestling the booze beside a remote on the end table, he grabbed his cigarettes. He spanked the bottom of the pack. Half a dozen slid out. He lit up one.
Elsie picked the evening newspaper off the floor and handed it to him. He clutched her hand, slobbering a kiss onto it. "Don't go, Els. You're
right, I'm sick," he said as his eyelids drooped and his head nodded. "I got that narcolepsy."
"I'd say it's more like tequila-lepsy." She pulled away from his lethargic hold and went to the coat closet for her purse and jacket.
Peck's chin sagged to his chest. Intoxicated grunts puffed out of his mouth. His cigarette slipped from his fingers onto the newspaper in his
lap - its smoldering tip resting on the Y of the HAVE A MERRY CHRISTMAS headline.
Elsie snapped her jacket closed. She didn't know why, but something within made her laugh--like she'd never laughed before--as she twisted their only smoke alarm off the wall. Dropping it into her purse, she walked out the door and embraced the numbing cold.
Copyright ©2005, Diane Dahlstrom All Rights Reserved