December: The Tree

Sweat trickled down his brow. Kitchen saws are made for tackling squash, not Christmas tree stumps. Unfortunately, Tony owned nothing more suitable but he couldn't wait until the following day to buy a proper saw. Well, to be accurate, he was actually afraid to wait. Brittany might get angry.

*

Brittany had always been a bit of a blister. Loud and unabashed about her needs and opinions. These complimented her size which at age twelve, was eponymous: twelve. Admittedly she was tall for her age, but no prepubescent height justifies that size trouser. Once she  had espied her mother sewing a pair of shorts for her sister, two years her senior.

Brittany picked them up and stretched them to extreme, “Wow!” she exclaimed, “these look like they could fit an elephant!” She gave a throaty laugh at her own wit. The irony was that they were smaller than those lying on the table, waiting for assemblage. Those were for Brittany.

Brittany was not part of the in-crowd. she was that combination of intelligence, obesity and superciliousness that endeared her to few friends. But this did not particularly trouble Brittany since she maintained several imaginary ones, the most popular being Elvis. When Brittany felt lonely for solace of the male persuasion, she would invoke an Elvisian spirit and belt out an enthusiastic, if somewhat tuneless version of “Blue Suede Shoes,” accompanied by an appropriate jiggle of her hips. In fact, during junior high, this fact became generally known and many of the popular set would periodically request a performance. They would then totter off, snickering and, later that day, would mimic Brittany’s Elvis impersonation.

Brittany’s mother shared her trait of overbearing tactlessness. Myra often demonstrated it during lengthy disquisitions for the benefit of Brittany’s friends. Her favorite was to proclaim that Brittany was of pure “Nebraska mutt stock.” It appeared that being a product of innumerable “mixed” marriages was eminently better than hailing from a single ethnicity, for this was inevitably too foreign, not American enough. This theme was elaborated upon frequently to edify Brittany’s American-Chinese friends:

“Did I ever tell you that Brittany here is a pure American?”

Brittany would nod in proud agreement.

“Yes, you did…”

“…And that she has roots from over seven different European countries, including Sweden, Ireland, Italy…” Brittany’s mother would drone on. “In fact, we’ve been here for three generations! Although one of Brittany’s grandmothers did immigrate from Poland,” she admitted.

Brittany’s friends nodded politely. One of her few friends, an equally smart Chinese girl, ventured to insert, “You know, my family’s been over here for four generations…”

Which sentence was never finished because this launched Brittany’s mother into another lecture of cultural superiority: “The Chinese culture is so interesting,” she boomed. “We know a thumbnail,” here she ticked off her nail demonstratively, “only a thumbnail of that culture.” She would then elucidate on the general ignorance of Americans regarding the “China-man.”

Brittany often tired of these conversations once they veered from her own ethnic heritage. She would resort to daydreaming about the time she would finally lose a little weight and the popular set would drop spontaneously at her feet like slaves. When she was able to pry her friends away from her mother, she would drag them into the back guestroom where her boyfriend was residing, since Brittany, at age fourteen, was still firmly entrenched in the world of make-believe. Thus it was that “Clark Gable” reclined on a dilapidated couch, which served as a bed, whom she gave an airy kiss. The couch stood next to a sewing table/kitchen, where Brittany prepared a sumptuous repast for herself, Clark Gable, and her two spinster sisters played spinster sisters basking in Brittany’s reflected brilliance.

 Wine was essential to these scenarios. Brittany knew that every special dinner (and what dinner is mundane with Clark Gable as one’s boyfriend?) needed wine. Brittany had learned this two years earlier during Thanksgiving festivities. To celebrate the occasion, her mother had splurged in the wine and spirits section of the supermarket with two bottles of Cold Duck, a bargain at three-ninety-nine a bottle.

“So what’s that?” Brittany eyed the bottle innocently.

Her mother looked at Brittany with pride and laughed. “That, Brittany, is Cold Duck. It’s for our Thanksgiving dinner.”

Brittany sensed the importance of the moment, if she played it right: “So why is Cold Duck so special?”

Brittany’s mother gazed fondly at her daughter, “Would you like to find out? I think you’re old enough to try some.” She reached into the cupboard and extracted a modest wineglass to demonstrate her open-mindedness. This she filled a third full and then handed it to Brittany. Myra had begun embracing increased alcohol consumption five years previous, when her husband had left her for another woman he met at his job working for the county recorder. Prior to this, Myra had scorned weak-minded women who required the aid of self-medication to endure both their days and their relationships. But now because Myra technically no longer had such a relationship, she felt that her newfound acceptance of alcoholic solace was neither problematic nor hypocritical.

Brittany was thrilled at this initiative gesture, her first rite of passage into (drunken) adulthood at the ripe age of 10. It hearkened Brittany’s favorite scenes from Gone With the Wind when Scarlet O’Hara vanquished a lusty Rhett Butler or a restrained Ashley Wilkes with a restorative swig. Brittany took the glass, gave what she imagined was a coy, yet triumphant smile, and gulped it down like a shot of whiskey. She then emitted a faint burp to cement her sophistication. Her mother laughed aloud and glanced at her other children as if to say, “Isn’t she so clever?” Then, to ensure that the rest of her children could enjoy the Cold Duck equally Myra poured half a bottle into the gravy.