Fifty Six: 24% Cashmere
Chapter Fifty Six: 24% Cashmere
Christmas came quicker than I thought it would and it was the first time Natalie was back in Tulsa with the kids. The kids had been back twice since they left and although I struggled, with the help of my family I managed to make sure I didn’t accidentally (or purposefully) starve them while they were staying with me. My sisters helped me get them ready in the morning and get them into bed at night, and my mother made sure they ate during the day. My jobs included demonstrating how to load a Nerf pocket blaster, tracing Ezra in sidewalk chalk on the driveway, and my personal favorite, hitting play on Monsters Inc. We made s’mores on the grill out back in November and in December we went to the Tulsa Aquarium when the News Channel 8 announced that a new penguin named Victor was born… or hatched. I have no idea if penguins are fucking mammals or not.
It was surreal seeing Natalie show up at the house on December 24rd, Penny on her hip, Ezra carrying gifts in his arms. It looked like a Halmark card but the sentiment didn’t exactly fit. It was awkward, standing there in the kitchen, peering towards the foyer as my mother opened the door for her. I felt like I shouldn’t stare at her but I couldn’t ignore her and so I scanned the kitchen, trying to find a place to land my eyes.
“I got all the presents for the tree,” Ezra said as he wandered into the kitchen carrying a stack of presents that looked pretty abused from the flight over. Through a rip in blue snowman paper I could see an Old Spice shaving kit and prayed it was not for me.
I walked over towards him and took them out of his arms, setting them on the counter and then lifting him up so I was holding him against my chest. “You brought presents…? Uh oh… we forgot to get you any…” I told him
He smiled and kicked at me. “Nu uh, I did get some.”
“I don’t think you did… I heard all you’re getting this year is coal and fruit cake,” I informed him.
He squinted at me, confused probably about what fruit cake was, or why it belonged in the sentence, and I realized my joke was far too sophisticated for him. Fruit cake jokes… sophistication defined.
I set him down and watched him run towards the living room. At that moment, it finally felt like Christmas. Even if you partly resent your children, and never really got good at being a father, you still get used to Christmas’s with kids. Christmas becomes about your kids. Christmas isn’t Christmas without helping them set out the cup of milk for Santa or forcing them to make dorky faces while they hold up their opened gifts and smile for the camera. In the past I’d always found stress in my children and family, but never at Christmas. Christmas made things okay for just a few days out of the year.
Ezra stopped for on his way to the living room to hug my mother and yank on her stunning jingle bell earrings before running towards the Christmas Tree to yell off the number of gifts he saw for himself and point out how there were more for him than for Penny.
The walk towards Natalie felt surprisingly comfortable. I swooped in first and kissed Penny on the lips. “Ho, ho, ho,” I said dryly, because honestly, I really couldn’t figure out a better way to greet my 18 month old.
“Well if it isn’t Santa,” Natalie said, handing Penny over to me.
I glanced at Natalie and smiled faintly, leaning in and kissing her lips too, and then suddenly freaking out and wondering if that was inappropriate. It was right? We were adults. Adults did that.
She held a plastic bag out to me. “Give these to your mother. It’s some trinkets that I picked up at the Dollar General for stockings.” That’s something I’ll always love about Natalie- her ridiculously dorky Georgia lingo. Trinkets. I’m pretty sure that word was left in Mayberry.
“I’ll gladly make sure she gets these here trinkets,” I muttered, walking towards the kitchen with the bag and beginning to look inside of it, rummaging through it. Pez dispensers, Snickers Nutcrackers, butterfly hair clips… god, I hoped those were for me. I pulled out a milk chocolate snowman lollypop and set the bag down on the kitchen counter, pulling the tinfoil wrapper off of it and popping it into my mouth.
I stood back watching most of the night- I tended to be like that. For awhile, the years before, I used to stand back on holidays and watch my family members, silently attaching little bulls eyes to their foreheads and imaging myself holding an automatic revolver blowing their heads off. I had always been a slightly morbid person and it passed time.
Now I just watched with slight amusement, enjoying the way that Ezra read off the names on each stocking and amused by my younger sisters painting their finger nails alternating colors of red and green… fucking sick.
I felt like myself again. I felt like that good old family boy Taylor Hanson who appreciated his family and was a classic Mama’s boy. I felt like the Taylor Hanson who felt blessed to have the family he had and enjoyed holidays. It was unreal standing there and feeling my own skin again, but everyone seemed to notice. I was pretty sure they were all whispering about me when I couldn’t hear- saying that I looked good, seemed happy- but I didn’t even care. As long as they were whispering good things for once, I didn’t mind.
Gabrielle showed up right before dinner the next night- Christmas Eve. She showed up with a plate of granola cream cheese bars or something like that and I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised. It’s really sad that I was excited about that, but when you’re used to expecting a tofu casserole or soy turnovers, granola cream cheese bars sound pretty normal.
It was hard not to show her off. We were 5 weeks into our relationship, spent time together everyday, and had a thriving sex life might I add. I wanted to tell everyone in the world how good things were, but I knew I had to be sensitive. It was hard finding a balance.
Gabrielle and Natalie greeted each other pleasantly as they always did- neither looking for confrontation. Both ignored the elephant in the room as Natalie complicated Gabrielle’s shirt and Gabrielle mentioned how big Penny looked.
Christmas Eve at our house is a series of madness that doesn’t stop until at least midnight. The evening starts with food- at least 15 different kinds of food from lasagna to wings. Next comes sitting with Ezra and helping him write a note to Santa. Now that he can write himself, this has become a 45 minute activity in which you sit there ready to gauge your eyes out as he asks you to spell each word and then writes each letter down backwards on the paper. When he asked me how to spell “FROM” for the “FROM EZRA” part of the letter, I spelled out “PEACE OUT” just to make the experience slightly more interesting for myself. Throughout the rest of the night the rest of the family asked him why he signed it with “peace out” and he informed each of them that it said “from”, to which they responded with confused expressions and reluctant nods. This was one of the pathetic highlights of my night.
We all loaded into the car at 8:30 and headed to the 9:00 church service. Even though church is only half an hour away from home, we arrived 15 minutes late due to my father driving like a 90 year old blind man. It was awkward figuring out who would drive with who. I ended up taking Ezra, and Penny in my car with Natalie in the passenger seat. I asked Gabrielle to at least get in the back row and drive with me but she claimed that was far too far too awkward and polygamy-esque for her taste. I don’t know why she has a problem with polygamy. I personally see it as the perfect solution. Anyway, she rode with my parents and everyone else who were leading the way in my father’s suburban. I laughed every time we got to a stoplight and I could see Isaac squeezed in the back between Mackenzie and Jessica. 25 years old and stuck in the back of the family car… oh it brought back good memories.
After Christmas Eve church we went home and did the everyone gets to open one gift tradition. What family doesn’t have that tradition? I love that Americans are so impatient we can’t wait until Christmas morning. There are some families out there that open all of their gifts on Christmas Eve. What’s the point of Christmas morning then?
There aren’t really many downsides to having a lot of money. One of the fews is that no one knows what the hell to get you for Christmas so you end up with gifts you can tell they grabbed the day before at Sears because they realized they didn’t have enough for you under the tree. Even if you rarely splurge and probably only enter a mall once of a year to buy something for yourself, everyone assumes you have everything you need.
So while Mackenzie opened a Playstation 3 game, I opened a 25% cashmere gray sweater vest. Fortunately for me, and my mother who was expectantly awaiting my reaction, I happen to be in the .2% of the male population who actually like sweater vests, even from JCPenny. I did the obligatory trying on of the sweater vest and even went as far as to cat walk through the kitchen just so I could pull up the bottom a little and reveal to Gabrielle my rock hard abs.
That’s something I generally like about my family- we don’t go crazy on Christmases like so many people do these days. I spent a Christmas morning with Natalie’s family one year and I was shocked to see each person had 15+ gifts. I’ve always gotten just a few items on Christmas and I think it makes you appreciate each gift more. Not everyone can feel grateful for $24.00 sweater vests- and I appreciate that about myself. In case you were wondering, she accidentally left the price tag on. It was on sale.
Once the milk and cookies were set out and the bottles of wine were finished, I ended up outside with Gabrielle, back by the pool.
“I dare you to eat this,” I smirked, picking up a handful of birdseed and oatmeal. Ezra had made reindeer food in preschool back in Georgia and I had been nominated to be the sucker that had to go out and pick it up to ensure that it looked like the reindeer came and ate it.
Gabrielle was drinking a coffee with baileys and smiled, holding her mouth open. I went to drop some into her mouth but she laughed and moved away.
I held my tongue out and dropped a piece of birdseed onto my tongue and then began to attempt to chew it with my back molars. “This thing is fucking hard,” I muttered.
She laughed. “Oh that would be wonderful… you breaking a filling on Christmas Eve.”
“I’ve never had a cavity thank you,” I said, raising my eyebrow at her and spitting the hard corn kernel out onto the snow. We had snow that year, for the first time in awhile.
I gathered up another handful of reindeer food and walked towards the woods. “Do you think the birds will still find this in the woods?” I called back. That was one of the benefits of reindeer food, Ezra had explained. If the reindeer don’t eat it all, the birds can have a little too for a Christmas treat.
“Probably,” Gabrielle called back.
I chucked a handful of the birdseed into the woods on the edge of the snow-covered lawn.
“Because god forbid the birds miss out on the holiday celebrations,” I muttered, walking over and taking the mug from her. I held both my hands around it, trying to warm them up, and then took a small sip before handing it back.
I picked up one of the baby carrots Ezra had added to the mix and took a bite of it, smirking at myself.
Gabrielle smiled, “You’re such a show off.”
I gave her an innocent look and swung my arm back, launching the other half of the carrot into the woods. “How am I a show off?” I asked as I chewed. “This thing is all dried out and sick…”
“It’s not a bad thing,” she said. “It’s cute actually. Eating the birdseed, eating the carrot… trying to be all funny for me.”
“I wasn’t trying to be funny! I was genuinely hungry!”
She laughed and sipped her coffee. “You were too trying to be funny… aww…”
I smiled and shook my head. “Fuck off. I was not.”
I finished getting rid of the birdseed, leaving just a few specks so he could see where it had been. I walked over to a patch of mud and stuck the heels of my hands against it and then walked back over to the bird seed, creating a little trail of what I considered to slightly resemble hoof prints. “There,” I said, when I was finished. “Reindeer hoof prints.”
“Very inventive,” she smiled.
“See, you spent years chasing creative artist types and here you had your very own artist right under your nose,” I said.
“What do you know,” she said, walking towards the concrete pool deck, sitting down on one of the lounge chairs we hadn’t taken in for the dinner.
I wiped my hands off on the back of my jacket and walked over to her, sitting down next to her on the chair and leaning my arm around her and sliding my hand into the pocket of jacket.
“Are you trying to be sweet or are you mooching off of my pockets?” she laughed.
I smiled and rested my head against hers, looking over the icy trees. “Mooching,” I said. “My pockets are too small for my hands.”
“Well you know what they say about big hands…” she said quietly.
“Oh yeah? What do that say?” I faked innocence.
She smiled and rolled her eyes.
“No, really. They say something…? What do they say?” I asked.
She set her coffee down on the ground by her feet and smiled. “They’re big somewhere else too…”
I squinted my eyes and then pulled my arm back, reaching down and beginning to undo my pants. “Oh really… let me check…”
She smiled and began repositioning herself on the lounge chair so she was laying back and her legs were pushing me out of the way. “Oh that’s great… public nudity… not to mention your dick falling off from frost bite.”
“Public nudity?” I said, redoing my pants because the frost bite comment actually did scare me. My life would be difficult without a dick, and considerably less enjoyable. “Hardly… we’re in my backyard.”
“Yeah well in this family… it might as well be public… you never know who is watching,” she said, gesturing towards the windows of the house.
I smirked and began crawling over her. “Maybe I like knowing people are watching.”
“You would,” she laughed.
I leaned down and pressed my lips to hers, smiling against them. “There’s nothing like your baby sister watching you get off,” I muttered.
She laughed and shoved at my chest. “Alright… we’re going to keep the pedophile jokes to a minimum tonight.”
“How many do I have remaining?” I smirked.
She smiled and rolled her eyes, reaching up and pushing my hair away from my face. “I’m pretty sure that one maxed you out.”
I sighed and slid myself between her body and the edge of the chair, laying on my side and making room for myself next to her, resting my hand against my stomach. “Our first real Christmas together…” I mumbled, closing my eyes. It was 12:30 in the morning and I was exhausted.
She smiled. “I knew you’d get all sentimental on me…”
“How can I not… all I’ve wanted for Christmas for 4 years is you,” I said.
She laughed. “Don’t… be cliché.”
“Why not!” I couldn’t help it if I was cliché. I really did feel that way. “It’s true, who cares if it’s cliché? It’s cliché for a reason- because sometimes that really is the thing people want most. That’s all I wanted… and now I finally got it.” I waited for her to respond until I continued rambling. “Every year I kept hoping that I’d come downstairs and find you in a box wearing nothing but a red ribbon…”
She laughed. “Oh because that is so like me…”
“And finally it’s going to happen.”
“How did you know!” She gasped sarcastically.
I smiled and sighed heavily. “Can’t you ever just be sappy… just once in awhile for me,” I mumbled.
She was silent for awhile. A moment later I felt her hand fall down so it was resting on top of mine. “It’s probably my favorite Christmas ever,” she said a moment later.
I smiled and opened my eyes, looking at her. I leaned in and pressed my lips to her neck, sighing against it and resting my face there against her. “See… it’s not so hard to be sentimental… and not nearly as painful as you might think…”
She smiled and laughed a moment later. “Oh it was painful.”
Painful or not for her, I knew couldn’t ask for more. I had Gabrielle for Christmas- for the first year since I met her. She was mine, laying with me, and even if we were outside in the freezing cold, and I was shivering and could see my breath, and even if I still had the faint after taste of dried up carrot still on my breath, I had all I needed.
It’s funny how things work out. I always thought that line was bullshit. You know- that line that goes thing like- you don’t know why certain things happen to you at the time, but it all makes sense later. I never understood it how someone close to you could die and someone would hug you and say, “There’s a reason for it.” It seemed idiotic.
But laying there with Gabrielle, it all really did make sense. It made sense that I knocked Natalie up and had my beautiful children with her. It made sense that I had to go 4 years without Gabrielle. Now that I finally had her, I wasn’t letting her go. I would never take her for granted, I would never betray her, and I would always remember how it felt to live without her. And somehow, even though she thought sentiment and sappiness were trite and awkward, I knew that despite her best attempts to hide it, I could tell she felt that way too.