I'll Be Home For Christmas - II
He did not feel particularly merry, and, if the acrimony radiating off Pran was anything to go by, neither did she.
“So, are you coming home from Christmas?”
Slowly, Randy tilted the glass of red wine up and away from his mouth, slowly not to spill any on himself, his clothes, or the couch he was laying on. Drinking red wine laying down was, he knew, playing a dangerous game, but after the past two days, it was about all he wanted to drink. Aside from hard liquor, but, given that there was nothing to do but sit on the couch and drink, it seemed smarter to slowly sip away at the many bottles of wine he and Pran had collected over the course of the year rather than pound straight liquor. He set the glass on the table and settled back against the pillows he’d arranged to keep himself comfortable, eyes trained on the television screen where he was half-watching the Portland Trail Blazers get smacked by the Dallas Mavericks.
“I dunno,” he replied with a sigh. “Everything’s kinda up in the air right now. It’s a mess. Pran was gonna fly to Helsinki two days ago, but, I mean - you’ve seen the news.”
From the phone lying on his chest, he heard his mother give a wry laugh.
“She didn’t get out in time?”
Randy shook his head, even though he knew his mom couldn’t see it. He reached back towards the table, grabbing a cookie shaped like a star and biting off one of the arms.
“No,” he said through a mouthful of partially chewed sugar cookie. It had already gone stale, and it tasted more like cardboard than cookie, but he and Pran had made more than either of them could ever hope to eat and they had to go somewhere other than the trash. Or, most of them did, if only to assuage his guilt for wasting perfectly good food. “I mean, even if the planes were taking off… I wouldn’t be drivin’ her to SeaTac in this mess.” He bit off another arm of the yellow star cookie and added, “And I wouldn’t want her drivin’ herself there, either. Or even taking an Uber, or something. They said, like, twelve people or somethin’ died in traffic accidents already.”
He coughed as some of the desiccated cookie bits caught in his throat and promptly washed it down with another mouthful of wine, just as the Mavericks scored another three-pointer on the Trail Blazers. “Yeah. It’s wicked. So, I mean - I dunno if we’re gonna risk driving down to Hillsboro in this weather. It’s messed up all the way down to Longview. I don’t think it’s supposed to get any better before Christmas.”
Randy wasn’t making excuses to avoid his parents and find a reason not to make the drive from Northern King County to the suburbs of Portland. It had been his yearly ritual, even before he’d met Pran, and only broken one or two years when an ex-girlfriend who actually had family within driving distance had taken him to her parent’s house, instead. If he had wanted one, though, God had provided by smacking a once in a life time snowstorm over the entirety of Western Washington, which had rolled in from British Columbia and just kind of… stopped. And it’d been sitting there for two days straight, dumping snow on the Puget Sound in levels that hadn’t been seen in years. Worse, when it wasn’t snowing, it was raining, which was, in turn, freezing when the temperature dipped, creating a veritable deathtrap on the already hazardous roadways of King County, which were a headache in even the best of times. Seattle-Tacoma International had been effectively paralyzed, stranding thousands of travelers, cocking up flights from New York to Beijing, and ensuring that no locals were getting in or out of Western Washington. Including Pran.
It seemed, at first, like an answer to his prayers to finally have one holiday season spent with his girlfriend from beginning to end. But, Randy was not a particularly religious man, and he didn’t pray so much as casually toss out the occasional beleaguered request to a higher power that he wasn’t entirely sure was actually listening all the time. He had, however, always heard that God had a sense of humor - a truism that had proved itself correct, time and time again, and right up to this moment. This Christmas week was also serving as a testament to the other old saying, be careful what you wish for.
“So,” he mother said. “I guess that means you’re actually gonna spend Christmas with Pran this year.”
That got a single, hoarse laugh out of Randy, which sprayed cookie crumbs across his sweater - a particularly lurid piece of pop culture ephemera that his brother, Reilly, had purchased him one year as a joke, which bore the image of Darth Vader wearing a Santa hat, bordered with the words, I FIND YOUR LACK OF CHEER DISTURBING. It wasn’t something he would have been wearing if he’d intended to go outside.
“Maybe,” he said flatly. “Shit - she’s so stressed out right now, you could put rocket fuel in her ass and she’d probably fly over there herself. The way she’s been acting, you’d think she’s about to walk her happy ass all the way to Finland.”
He reached for another cookie, blindly fishing one off the plate. This one was, ironically, in the shape of Darth Vader’s helmet, too, because, for some reason, they had cookie cutters in the shape of Star Wars characters that Randy could not recall either he or Pran buying, which left him to assume they’d materialized in the cabinet of their own accord. Pran had done an admirable job at trying to depict the Sith lord in all his glory, but there was only so much she could do with a piping bag and a palette of frosting colors limited to Christmas colors. As he bit into Vader’s uncharacteristically green helmet, he heard his mother sigh.
“Well… hopefully this’ll get her over whatever her phobia of staying in America for Christmas is.” Sensing that she may be treading on a sensitive topic - as it had been in the past - he heard her sigh again, lighter this time, and add, “I don’t - you know, I’m not trying to say that it’s wrong she wants to see her family for Christmas, but - does she ever go back there any other time of year?”
“No,” Randy said, gesturing to no one in particular as he did, crumbs tumbling from his lips and catching in his dark facial hair. “That’s what I’ve been saying. Seriously, like - the thing is, she doesn’t even really wanna go. She bitches about it from the minute Thanksgiving’s over, she bitches about it when we’re hangin’ ornaments on the tree that she has to get and she isn’t even around to see, she gets back and bitches about how much she can’t stand her dad and how overbearing her mother is and how she doesn’t like her brothers and sisters, and it’s, like - why even go, y’know?”
His mother said nothing. Randy knew that didn’t bode well for the conversation of the already dour conversation, so he reached for the glass of wine and, as carefully as he’d sat it down, let the contents flow into his mouth while one of the Trail Blazers whiffed a free throw.
Miserable.
He didn’t even know why he watched the team, other than he’d grown up watching them and was too stuck in his ways to give up on them entirely. He grabbed another cookie - this one shaped like R2-D2, and caked in green and red frosting - and shoved it into his mouth in one go.
“Randall,” said his mother.
“Cheryl,” said Randy, as he always did when his mother used his full name.
“I know…” His mother took a deep breath. “I know you probably don’t want to hear this -”
“Then don’t say it,” said Randy plainly.
“I have it to.”
“You don’t, actually.”
“No, I do, because I’m your mother, so - let me speak my peace. Please?”
Unlike Pran, Randy had a positive relationship with his mother, and, even when she pushed boundaries, he felt bound by a sense of filial piety to allow it. She wasn’t perfect, but - you only got one mother, and without her, what would he have done for Christmas for the past few years? He knew the answer was do exactly what he was doing now, with the caveat of drinking himself into a coma, but, he also didn’t like to think about it.
“Randy,” his mother continued. “You know I like Pran. I always have. She’s a good woman. Hard worker. Responsible. I… I have never had a problem with her.” There was a pause. “But.”
“But…” said Randy - a habit he’d picked up from Pran.
His mother sighed, long and hard. “Randy, it’s been four years. And you’ve never met her family. Not once.”
Randy took another gulp of wine. “Hey. Not everyone is as lucky as me to have such a… such a robust and candid relationship with their mother.” And, just like that - he was playing defense for the girl he had just been complaining about. And about as well as the Trail Blazers were playing on television, at that. The word simp flashed in his mind’s eye in bright lights, like a show sign on Broadway… but was it really simping to defend your girlfriend?
“That’s not the problem,” said his mother. “I understand. Not everyone has parents as kind of patient and generous and understanding as your father and I… and, not every parent is as blessed as I am to have such a smart-ass for a son.”
Randy smirked. He got his sense of humor naturally.
“But - Randy. Listen. Pran… I don’t know if you heard, but she was throwing around the M word a lot this Thanksgiving.”
Randy pensively chewed on the head of a reindeer cookie. “Mash potatoes?”
“No,” his mother sighed. “No. You know what I’m talking about. Have you two been… y’know?”
Randy swallowed the cookie. It went down his throat like rubber cement.
“It’s come up,” he stated.
“How often?”
He took another sip of wine. He sat up just long enough to pour more. “Once or twice. I mean… look. We don’t talk about it much. I mean, the only reason Pran was probably dropping it was because Mackenzie’s always talking about weddings.” He threw another cookie in his mouth and, through the crunching, continued, “Like, seriously. You need to, like, talk to Mack about that, or something, because she’s, like - she’s got a problem.”
Randy’s little sister had been dropping the dreaded M-word since he and Pran had started going out. Weddings were something of an obsession of hers, and he was never able to tell if it was some sort of desire to get married herself that she projected onto everyone else, or if it was some weird inferiority complex that she didn’t go to as many weddings as her friends, which she often complained that she didn’t.
“Son, I don’t think it’s Mack who has the problem,” said his mother. “Four years and it’s onyl coming up once or twice? Son, after four years, you shouldn’t be talking about it once or twice - honestly, it should be done.”
“Aren’t you the one that told me to, like - make sure I knew who I was marrying?” Randy asked.
“I was,” his mother replied. “And, after four years, I’d hope you’d know if she was the right girl or not.”
“Well, you and dad… you dated for, what? Three? And you guys…” He drew a deep breath. If his mother was walking on thin ice, he knew he might be about to step on a landmine.
“What was that?”
“Nothing,” Randy said. “Nothing.”
“Randy. Honestly, I just - think about it like this. If you two do - y’know…” She didn’t actually say the word, almost like saying it may somehow will it into existence. “If you went through with it, would her family even come? Would your children ever meet her family? I understand that living on the other side of the Atlantic complicates things, but, at this point… are you sure she even has a family?”
It was a valid question. Randy had never even seen a picture of Pran’s family.
“It just… it bothers me that’s she won’t even let you meet them. Not once over four years. You have to wonder… is she hiding something?”
“Look,” Randy sighed. “Mom. I get it. It bothers me, too. A lot, actually. It bothers me more than it bothers you, I’d assume. Like, it’s keeps me awake at night levels of bothers me. This is not something that I have not dedicated many… many hours of thinking and - and pondering and…” Drinking was the correct word, as he usually thought about these things when he was drunk and upset, but, he opted to say something nicer for his mother’s sake, and simply settled on, “Contemplating. I’ve contemplated it, yes. Okay?”
“And I know you have, but -”
The sound of a door opening came over the phone’s speaker, along with the sound of heavy, fuzz-distorted footsteps.
“Oh. Your father just came in.”
“Who’s that?” Randy heard his father say, his voice coming from a distance.
“Just Randy,” his mother replied. “We were talking about… you know.”
“Pran?”
His mother was silent, but Randy figured she was nodding. He heard his father make a noise of affirmation and the sound of vague movements on the line.
“Randy?”
“Hey, dad.”
“How you doin’?”
Randy shrugged as he watched one of the Mavericks literally dunk on one of the Trail Blazers. The ball bounced off the poor guy’s head. “I’m doin’,” was all he could say.
“Right,” his father said. “Right. Well. Your mother and I were talking about this earlier -”
Randy rolled his eyes. Of course they were.
“And… y’know, I only have one piece of advice for you. I should’ve given it to you a long time ago, but - you can take it or leave it.”
“And what is it?” Randy drank more wine. He had a feeling he’d need it.
He heard his father come closer to the phone.
“Shit or get off the pot.”
If nothing else, he had to appreciate how brutally honest his father was always willing to be. He heard his father groan, no doubt stretching after doing some winter yard maintenance, as he was usually doing during these months.
“Well,” he said. “That’s all I had. Hopefully we see ya at Christmas. Stay warm, bud.”
“Yep,” Randy said. “Thanks, dad.”
On the other end of the line, Randy listened to his father lumber away from the phone. He meant well - Randy knew that he did - but tact had always been a concept he’d had a tenuous grasp on, and that grip had only loosened with age.
“Listen,” his mother sound, almost apologetic in her tone. “Randy. We’re not trying to beat up on you, or anything, really, we aren’t, but… well, you really need to think about this.”
“I am, mom,” Randy protested. “Trust me, I am.”
“Maybe… maybe you need to think a-”
His mother started to say something else, but the words were lost on Randy, sliding through one ear and out the other as the sound of jingling keys leaked through the thin and flimsy front door to the apartment.
“Shit,” Randy said under his breath.
“What?” his mother asked. “What is it?”
“The beast is home.”
“The - the what?”
“Hey,” said Randy. He sat up and put his glass of wine down with one hand while he brushed the crumbs off his sweater with the other. “Look. I’ll, uh - I’ll call you later, okay? I’ll let you know if we’re gonna come down or not, ‘kay?”
“O-okay?” his mother sputtered. “Well, that’s… that’s fine, b-”
The deadbolt.
“Okayloveyoumombye.”
Randy stabbed at the red disconnect call button on his phone screen and promptly threw himself back on the couch, just as the front door opened and a deluge of frigid air swept into the room. For a brief moment, his phone hung weightlessly in the air before striking him in the sternum and falling down into the crevice between his chest and the sofa. By the time what appeared to be an ambulant, shuffling collection of coats, jackets, and scarves ambled into the apartment, Randy was already sprawled back out on the couch and looking as if he’d actually been invested in watching the Trail Blazers getting spanked by the Mavericks.
“Oh,” he said. “Hey, Pran.”
Pran turned to look at him the same way a tank turret moved to take aim at a target. Between the knit cap pulled low over head and the scarf pulled up over her nose, all that could be seen was a thin sliver through which a pair of critical eyes was all that could be seen. The rest was swathed in coats and jackets, dusted with snow like powdered sugar on a funnel cake, plastic bags from the Fred Meyer down the street clenched in hands covered in more than two layers of gloves. Randy thought that she looked fit to embark on an Arctic expedition. For someone who routinely ventured out into thirty-degree weather with only the protection of a sweater and a pair of blue jeans, this seemed out of character; strange, given that the blizzard pummeling the Seattle area was not particularly cold or brutal so much as persistent.
“You, uh - you warm enough?”
Wordlessly, Pran shook her head. The crust of snow accrued on her flaked off in sheets that tumbled down her carapace and burst into pieces on the welcome mat, which she had replaced at the beginning of the month with a gaudy, green piece that read, Here, We Are Merry. That was a lie if Randy had ever seen one. He did not feel particularly merry, and, if the acrimony radiating off Pran was anything to go by, neither did she.
“So… what’d you get?” Randy asked.
“Stuff,” Pran replied. At least, that’s what he thought she said - it was a bit difficult to discern, what with the layers of scarves wrapped around her mouth.
“What kind of stuff?” Randy asked. She’d told him when she left, I need some things, and, after several years of going out, he’d learned that some things were often goods of a nature that men did not need to buy. But the plastic bags in her hand currently were too heavy, too full to be only items of that sort.
Pran made an inscrutable sound and shuffled further into the apartment. Normally, she’d have shed whatever outer coatings she wore right there on the welcome mat and come back for them shortly after, but, this time, she kept them on as she ventured into the kitchen. Every step she took, a flurry of snow followed her, trickling on the faux-hardwood laminate.
“O-o-okay,” Randy muttered. “You wanna, uh - you wanna shed the layers, abominable snowman?” If he’d been the one tracking in snow, she’d be having a fit.
Pran let one bag fall on the kitchen island. She pointed at it.
“Food.”
“Cool,” said Randy. “So, you, uh - you wanna take all that off? Or -”
“Don't feel good.”
And that was all he got before Pran trudged off into the bedroom, and Randy knew that was all he was going to get by the time the door shut.
“Good lord,” he muttered to himself. He let himself ease back into the comforting embrace of the sofa. There was a niggling suspicion that, if worst came to worst, it would be where he was going to sleep that night.
As he laid back down, the basketball game - which was hardly a game, so much as a slaughter- simply reflected against his eyes as his mind wandered back to his conversation with parents. His innards squirmed and an awful pressure descended on him.
Four years. He’d been together with Pran for four years, and this was the first time the words break up were coming to mind with any real weight to them. He wasn’t seriously considering it - no more than he ever did when the words bubbled up in a fetid pool of despair at the back of his mind when they bickered or argued or she did something stupid. They’d had their moments before. All couples did. But, he was unable to stop himself from thinking about just how strange and uncomfortable and generally unnecessary the drama surrounding the holidays and Pran’s family were. He was possibly going to spend Christmas with her, and, two days out from the big event, she had been nothing but anxious, miserable, and bitchy. He’d could sympathize with the fact that her holiday plans had been ruined and her big trip home scrapped and all the stress and headaches that brought about, but… shouldn’t she be happy? Shouldn’t she be glad that she didn’t have to go?
Was going home and working with a family she obviously had issues with preferable to staying here with him for Christmas?
It didn’t make sense. Especially for someone like Pran. To say she was acting out of character was an understatement; she was acting like someone he’d never met before. One of the reasons he liked Pran so much was that she was just… simple. That wasn’t to say she was simple-minded - Randy always got the sense that, when it came to raw intellect, she was smarter than he was - or someone who had simple tastes… but she just wasn’t complicated. She woke up. She did her morning routine. She went to work. She came home. She did her evening routine. She slept. She was easy-going. Mild-mannered. Straight-laced, responsible, and almost comically easy to please. Not in a bad way, either. Even when she was angry or upset, she didn’t raise or voice or work herself into hysterics, and, at this point in his life, Randy enjoyed having someone who was reliably even-keeled to come home to and relax with rather than someone who was stand-offish or temperamental or liable to explode at the slightest provocation.
Ever since her flight had been canceled, she’d been nothing but all those things. He’d barely exchanged more than a handful of words with her all day and they’d all been terse and angry. Like, somehow, he had some part to play in all this, as if he were some sorcerer that had conjured up the snowstorm specifically to sleight her.
Behind him, further in the apartment, he heard the bedroom door open. For a moment, he thought that Pran might actually leave the hermitage she’d established for herself in there for the past two days, but those hopes were extinguished when he heard the soft patter of socked feet on the laminate floor tip-toe hurriedly from the room to the bathroom, followed by the closing of that door and the small click of the lock on the handle being put into place.
Randy sighed and went for another cookie.
Oh, don’t worry about it that much, said a little voice in the back of his head. That’s just Pran. She’s always weird around this time of year.
He nodded in agreement as he gracelessly inserted an entire christmas tree shaped cookie into his mouth. He made a good point; Pran was weird around this time of year. For someone who’s wardrobe consisted strictly of the colors white, black, beige, and maybe dark blue, if she was feeling particularly exciting, she became exceedingly… colorful this time of year. When they returned from his parent’s place in Hillsboro, she brought out an entire plastic tub full of nothing but Christmas clothes that were all red, green, white, and yellow, and wore them all month. She didn’t always act very colorfully. Usually, she just sat there, sedate and inexpressive as ever, but with a small, content smile of satisfaction on her lips. She never let the holiday cheer manifest in her actions.
Usually.
What made her dour mood all the more out of the ordinary was the fact that, every other year, the closer Christmas crept, the more animated she became. She smiled broader. She stepped a bit lighter. She swayed and tapped her time in foot with Christmas music, hummed to herself as she savored food, she even gesticulated more, like the approaching proximity of Christmas Day was radiating some sort of energy that she fed on. Her light, sensible chuckles grew louder and stronger and a lot less dignified; she always said she had an embarrassing laugh, but Randy thought it was as cute as it was infectious. He even remembered the first holiday season they’d spent together - their very first red wine and cookie making night.
He’d been playing Christmas music from a speaker while they worked, and, in a fit of Christmas passion, she’d attempted to mimic Franki Valli’s dog-whistle falsetto during the Four Season’s rendition of Santa Claus is Coming To Town. A wistful smile played on Randy’s lips as he remembered her twisting in time with the music, shrieking that Santa was checking his list twi-yay-yice in lunatic fashion. He’d laughed. She’d laughed. They’d nearly burned the cookies that were in the oven because they’d been too busy swapping spit on the couch. It was out-of-character for someone as reserved as her, but… in a good way. He’d thought that, maybe, the two bottles of wine they’d killed before, but, in the years since, he’d seen her drink more and never act that… enthused, which left two possibilities; either she got high on Christmas spirit, or Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, because the first night they’d met was one where they were both drunk, out with co-workers they didn’t want to be with, and ended up dancing to December, 19631 at a local watering hole’s 70’s Night.
They’d never danced before or after, and, given the way that Pran was currently acting, he was beginning to suspect that it really was Frankie Valli that had such an effect on her. Maybe his voice was, like, a dog-whistle, and resonated at just the right frequency to make her act weird.
Maybe you should put on some Four Seasons, the little voice in the back of his whispered. Just to test that hypothesis.
Randy was giving the thought some serious consideration when -
“Shi-!”
Pran didn’t even finish the word before a heavy thud and a wail of pain put a sudden stop to any and all higher functions in Randy’s head. Like a spring-loaded toy, he bounced bolt upright, twisting his head around hard enough to make an odious cracking sound that he knew would ache later, but didn’t really care.
“Pran?”
His reply was a long and drawn-out sound that he figured was a Finnish obscenity. Randy pushed himself off the couch.
“Pran?” He called again. “You alright?”
Between his own footsteps rumbling against the subfloor, his pounding heart, the rush of blood in his ears, and plain adrenaline, he was only vaguely aware of the cries of, No, no, no and Don’t come in! He put his hand on the door handle. The lock was engaged. It didn’t turn when he tried it.
“Jezis, Pran,” he said. “You okay?”
“I’m fine!” Pran snapped. The clear and unmistakable anger in her tone triggered a twinge of irritation - was she upset that he was concerned for her well-being after he’d heard what sounded like her falling and breaking her ass? “I’m - I’m fine,” Pran repeated, sounding very not fine. “I’m - I’m just - I-”
Something cracked. Something snapped. Pran groaned.
“Pran! What th-”
“Just…” Pran’s coarse, rasping voice gave way to an awful sound of pain. “Go away!”
“No!”
“S-seriously,” he heard Pran sputter. “I’m - just leave me al-”
More snapping. More cracking. More pain.
Leave me alone is what she wanted to say, but Randall wasn’t sure how he could in good conscious when it sounded like her leg was in pieces and cracking as she tried to set it back into place. He figured that if she had broken a leg - especially a femur - she’d be making a whole lot more noise and probably wouldn’t be able to articulate a coherent sentence, but something was wrong, she was hurt, and he wasn’t about to let her… her pride or her resentment at being stuck in America for Christmas keep him from helping.
Randy tried the handle again. It didn’t move much, but it did move. It wasn’t very reliable. A firm push, and it opened right up, lock or no lock. Even Pran had managed to pushed right through the lock before - when he was in the shower, at that.
“Randy,” he heard Pran gasp. “Randy - I swear to God, I-”
The sound that came out of her mouth next was the last straw. He wasn’t sure what kind of sound it was, but it wasn’t good, and it reminded him of the time his childhood dog had swallowed a toy and was trying to regurgitate it back up. Randy put his shoulder against the door and pushed. It opened without much resistance.
“Randy!”
“Pran! Jesus Christ!”
That’s what Randy was going to say before he realized what he was looking at.
Fun fact: the lead vocals on December, 1963 were actually provided by Gerry Polci and not Frankie Valli. But it’s still Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, not Gerry Polci and the Four Seasons.
Hey now, i think you accidentally a few paragraphs at the end. I kinda need to know WTF 😳
Typo: “I have it to.” > "I have to."