by Chris Morey
They had decorated their Christmas tree the previous evening, and with its hundreds of colorful blinking lights, it looked just splendid in front of the large living room window. Though Christmas Day was still a week away, she had already hung the stockings from the mantel over the fireplace at the other end of the living room. Risking life and limb, Roger had strung lights over the eaves and gables, and now a colorful, complex galaxy of blinking stars encircled the entire house.
Dylan was sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the tree, mesmerized by the lights and ornaments. She felt a little rush of joy, for she believed it important that he understand how special Christmas was to their family, and not just for all the gifts. It was the time for them to gather, celebrate, and give thanks. In a couple of days, her folks would be arriving from Atlanta to stay through the holidays, and Roger’s parents had invited them to their house in Aiken Mill for dinner on Christmas Day. To be sure, it was a hectic season, but she did love it so.
“What’s so fascinating, Dylan?”
“An eye.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“There’s an eye in the tree, watching me. It’s kinda creepy.”
She huffed in mock exasperation. “Young man, there is no eye in that tree.”
“There is too. Look at it.”
Dylan loved to make up stories and conjure fantasies about everything—though sometimes he got a little more wrapped up in them than seemed healthy to her. Still, she couldn’t help but lean in to take a look. Hundreds of lights blinked in arrhythmic sequence, their numbers multiplied by the reflective balls, bells, and tinsel. This was, she thought, the most beautiful tree they had ever put up.
So absolutely fitting for their brand-new house.
With a little sigh, she stood upright and was just turning to face Dylan when something stopped her: a fiery red pinpoint of light, blazing at the corner of her eye. She turned back toward the tree and peered through the dense evergreen boughs.
“Good lord.”
There was an eye in the tree. A red, oblong gem, smoldering like an ember in the heart of a silvery crystal sphere with a long, tapering stem at the bottom. The thing was clearly old, the rings of glitter on its surface faded and uneven. She had never seen it before.
“Do you know where that came from?”
Dylan shook his head, his gaze never leaving the tree.
“Your dad must have put it on there.”
“It’s pretty,” Dylan said. “But I don’t think I like it.”
She offered him a reassuring smile, but, for some reason, she didn’t like it either. She couldn’t imagine that the ornament was electric or even battery-powered, but the glow of the glass gem appeared far brighter than mere reflection. It was brilliant. Blinding, almost, when she gazed into it.
“Time to get ready for bed.”
“Okay,” Dylan said, though he continued to stare into the burning eye.
She shook off her strange uneasiness and started for the kitchen. Maybe Roger had pulled the ornament out of some old box unearthed during their move. It wasn’t that important, she decided.
“Mom!” Dylan cried. “There’s black smoke!”
With a gasp, she turned and rushed back to the tree, beyond terrified by the idea of a fire starting in the house. Just for a second, she saw it—a tendril of thick black smoke dripping like liquid from the ornament’s glowing eye—but when she leaned in to examine it, no hint of smoke remained. After a moment’s hesitation, she reached in and touched the crystal.
Not hot. Quite cool, in fact.
There had been smoke. She had seen it herself.
“Tell you what,” she said, reaching in and gently unhooking the ornament from the bough. “I think I’m going to take this off the tree.”
Dylan’s big brown eyes remained fixed on the silvery, spear-tipped globe in her hand. His fascination with it sparked a resurgence of her strange apprehension. Unwilling to take any chances, she refocused her attention on the tree and scanned every branch, every wire, every bulb. No further sign of smoke. She did catch a whiff of some strange odor, but it wasn’t like smoke; more like something dead. Where on Earth could that be coming from?
Ick.
She hated to do it, but just to be on the safe side, she unplugged the lights. As the tree went dark, she felt her heart sink a little. The last thing she wanted was for their first Christmas in their new house to start on an ominous note.
THEN
Even after thirteen years of marriage, Hannah had kept herself looking great, though Landon Grigg knew it was never for him. This week, it was for her jazz dance instructor—Ricky Delgado was the name, if he remembered right. A few years younger than she, Delgado no doubt saw Hannah as a real conquest after a string of swooning little girls who got off on his godlike physique. Before the dance teacher, it was Robbin Metzger, her former hairdresser’s fiancé. She would probably still be all over him but for the fact he had relocated to Florida for whatever business he was in and taken his ditzy fiancée with him. At least Hannah’s new hairdresser was a hell of a lot better at her job.
Whatever his wife’s infidelities, he still took some pleasure in her elegant, youthful looks.
Months and months ago, he had sworn he would let her know that he was aware of what she was doing; that he wasn’t a spineless milksop afraid of confrontation; that she owed him at least a scrap of common courtesy, if not outright respect. As yet, he hadn’t worked up the nerve. He knew why she stayed with him: his late parents had left him money, lots of it, not to mention their charming, spacious country house. Still, he sometimes wondered why he couldn’t just let her go. He wasn’t ugly, he wasn’t mean, and he came with better-than-modest financial resources. Surely, he could find someone else if he set his heart and mind to it.
But he had never dumped anyone before. He didn’t know how. Women had always dumped him.
That was before he was rich.
Still, his frustration with Hannah was nearing the breaking point. She barely bothered to conceal her extramarital activities anymore. Always going to see an endless number of sick friends, putting in extra time at the gym, visiting her aging parents in Roanoke but never inviting him to accompany her. This morning, she had told him that, after dance practice, she and the girls from class were going to lunch in Aiken Mill, which sounded reasonable enough. But she had been “at lunch” for over five hours now. After the third hour, he had gone stomping through the house, broken the living room pole lamp, and screamed at the mirror until his voice became a hoarse croak. Energy drained, he had staggered out to the front porch and collapsed in his dad’s old wooden rocking chair, where he sat for a solid hour, despite it being 25 degrees and windy.
When the nearest neighbors’ little marmalade cat wandered up to the porch, probably looking for a something to eat and a place to warm up—they virtually never let it indoors—he felt an inexplicable, urge to kick the thing. More than that, to kill it. It took all his willpower not to boot the little thing, to grab it and smash its head against the wall, to hurl its body into the woods.
The cat was peering at him, at first merely curious. Then, as if sensing danger, its eyes went wide and the hair on its back rose. A second later, it turned and bolted for the shelter of the trees.
“Thank God,” he whispered, overcome with relief. “Thank God.”
He had always been kind to animals, especially that little cat when it came around. But now it was afraid of him.
Had it come to this? A rage so potent it threatened to overcome his restraint? To damn near kill an innocent animal?
He could not let anger take hold of him this way.
Still, when he stood up, his blood felt like liquid fire. Deep breath after deep breath; long, joint-limbering stretches; turning on a mellow, pleasant tune in his head. Nothing cooled the burn, the pain spreading through his body and mind.
Before he realized what he was doing, he was pounding the brick wall with his fists.
Take
that, Hannah. Take that. Take that. TAKE THAT.
From a distance, he heard a voice that sounded like his, wailing in pure misery. Then agony ripped through his right hand, and he saw a dark smear of blood on the pale brick.
From pinky to wrist, most of the skin was gone from the side of his hand.
With what little remained of his voice, he cried into the woods, “Look what you made me do!”
§
By the time Hannah’s car came down the long driveway, he had cleaned up the broken lamp, the blood, and bandaged his abraded hand. Other than the bandage—and his voice sounding like sandpaper on rusted metal—he showed no sign of his rage attack. When she walked through the door, looking way too done-up for someone who had spent the morning exercising and socializing with the girls, she gave him the usual smile and quick hug, barely noticing his ragged voice when he said, “You were gone a long time.”
“Well, you know how it is when we get going. Especially that Ginny Asberry, bless her heart. She’ll carry on till there’s no breath left in her.”
She stood there, tall, blonde, beautiful, looking better than she had a decade before. His heart ached for that long-gone time when he thought, just maybe, she did love him.
“I knocked over the pole lamp and broke it,” he said, knowing it had been a favorite of hers and she would notice its absence right away. “Sorry. I wasn’t used to it being there.” That much was true. They had moved it from its usual place by the front window to beside the couch when they put up the Christmas tree the day before. He held up his bandaged hand. “Cut myself, too.”
“Oh, no,” she said with a pained expression, finally giving him a long, quizzical look. “What’s the matter with your voice?”
He shook his head in mock distress. “Damned sinuses. Woke up feeling all scratchy this morning.”
“You should take some Benadryl.”
“Done.”
She walked into the living room and frowned at the vacant space beside the couch. “Damn. Oh, well, I guess we can always get a new lamp.”
“Sorry. It was clumsy of me.”
“We’re going to trim the tree this afternoon, right?”
“Sure.”
“Did you bring down the decorations?”
“Last night.”
“Oh, that’s right,” she said with a half-hearted laugh. “I forgot.”
Like she had forgotten what it meant to show genuine affection to her husband.
“Well, let me go to the bathroom, and then we can start decorating—if you want to.”
“Yes, let’s.”
“Tell you what. We’ll open a bottle of wine. It’ll put us in the proper spirit, and probably help that poor throat of yours.”
He smiled, almost believing she was sincere. “We have that new bottle of Aglianico from Villa Appalaccia. Sound good?”
“Sure,” she said. “I remember we liked it a lot.”
He went to the dining room that adjoined the kitchen, to the wooden rack on the wall that held twenty bottles, and found the Aglianico, which they had picked up on a recent visit to the nearby winery. He grabbed a couple of glasses, took the bottle to the kitchen, and opened it, realizing he suddenly felt melancholy, as if some part of himself that he valued had withered and died.
All the wine in the world could never fix what was broken between them.
He filled both glasses, took them into the living room, and set them on the small table next to the front window. Three large boxes sat on the floor at the base of the freshly cut, perfectly conical Leyland Cypress, which he had brought home the day before. He opened the first two boxes, which were filled almost to bursting with ornaments of all shapes and sizes, most wrapped in tissue paper. The majority of them had been passed down from Hannah’s parents and grandparents, and she insisted on hanging every one of them on the tree. The third, smaller box contained several strings of lights, at least one of which had belonged to his grandparents. He was particularly fond of those old ones that were filled with liquid that bubbled when they lit up.
As a kid, Christmas had been his favorite holiday, and he always sought to recapture some of that joy. In recent years, however, awareness of his wife’s indiscretions increasingly eclipsed any happiness the season might otherwise bring.
Hannah soon joined him, and she began to unwrap ornaments while he strung the lights around the thick green branches. Now and again he took a sip of wine, and by the time most of his glass was gone, he had begun to feel mellow, and a little less inhibited.
“Where did you go for lunch?” he asked, keeping his tone neutral.
“Robey’s, in Aiken Mill. You knew that, didn’t you?”
“I’d forgotten. What did you have?”
“Grilled chicken salad with papaya dressing. I figured we’d want wine while we putting up the tree, so I didn’t have any at the restaurant. Wasn’t I good?”
“Incredibly.”
“How many at dance practice today?”
“Small crowd. Most people are out of town for the holidays, I guess.”
“I guess your buddy Ricky Delgado was teaching, as usual?”
She nodded, putting on an affected, disinterested expression. “Mmm-hmm.”
“Is he staying in town for the holidays?”
She shrugged. “I’ve no idea. Why? You’re not interested in coming to class, are you?”
“Oh, lord no,” he said with a little chuckle. “I couldn’t do two steps without falling over. Just wondered. You seem so fond of his technique.”
“He is very good. Much better than Christy ever was,” she said, referring to the class’s former instructor. She gave him a deep, searching look and, for a moment, appeared on the verge of saying something more. But she did not.
He opened one of the ornaments: an antique from Hannah’s grandparents’ day, a large crystal sphere with a long, lance-like stem at one end and a ruby-red glass gem embedded in a deep socket in its center. For a second, the ruby eye appeared to glare at him, with an almost disturbing semblance of cognizance.
He poured a second glass of wine and refilled Hannah’s, even though she was only halfway through the first. “This is quite good, isn’t it?”
“Very.” She took a long swallow, drew a deep breath, and said, “Is something bothering you? You’re more than customarily curious about my day.”
He detected a strange buzzing deep inside his skull—his blood heating up and rushing through his body. Did he really have the nerve to confront his wife about her infidelity?
That red eye. It was still staring at him.
Taking a deep, steadying breath, he said, “Well, it’s been brought to my attention that you and Mr. Delgado…”
She raised an eyebrow, as if genuinely surprised by his remark. “What?”
“Well, that you’re very fond of each other.”
“Brought to your attention? So, there’s some kind of gossip getting back to you?”
“Gossip?”
Her bright green eyes turned cold. “Landon, you know damn well the instructor gets very close to us on certain moves. All of us. Not just me. And yes, I’ve said out loud that I find Ricky pretty hot. There’s not a female in the class who hasn’t said the same thing. But you can’t take that seriously. I gather one of our friends’ wives must have said something to her husband, blew it all out of proportion, and then repeated it to you?”
He shook his head. “Not exactly. Now, why not tell me a little about Robbin Metzger?”
Her eyes turned incredulous. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“It’s not gossip,” he said. “I paid someone to verify my suspicions. And he did.”
“Are you saying you had me followed?”
Swallowing hard, he nodded. “I didn’t have any choice.”
His voice was almost gone again.
“How dare you.”
“How dare me? I’ve been loyal to you every minute of every day since we met. I’m not the one who’s been cheating
. You are.”
She took a step toward him, fists clenched at her side. “I don’t know who you had after me, but they’re either inept or lying. What kind of proof do you have?”
“Cell phone video. You meeting Robbin Metzger. Having dinner with Ricky Delgado. At least one of them was when you were supposed to be at your parents’ in Richmond.”
“And you were able to tell from these videos that it was actually me?”
“It was you.”
It had to have been her.
“I’m telling you, it wasn’t. I want to see these videos for myself.”
“I don’t have the copies. Not yet.”
She put on her most disgusted expression. “There’s no way you can prove I’ve been unfaithful to you, Landon. I defy you to produce any conclusive proof.” Finally, her gaze softened. “It hurts me that this is what you believe. That you feel you had to do this.”
She was lying to him now. She had to be. “Why were you gone so long today? Nobody’s lunch takes five hours.”
She hesitated a second before replying. “There was a bunch of us, Landon. It turned out to be more a Christmas party than a plain lunch. And that’s all there was to it.”
“So if I call up at Robey’s, they’ll confirm you were there with a party?”
“Give them a ring. Go ahead. But if this is what you want to do, then it’s you who’s destroying our marriage. It’s you, Landon.”
One of her hands was trembling.
There was faint sheen of sweat on her neck.
