A Christmas Family Stankpool
Marla
Stankpool had made the dinner, as usual, assisted only by the young child Pig,
who had meekly peeled all the little pearl onions for creaming. She had cooked
a fourteen pound turkey, which formed the centerpiece of the meal, and in addition
had prepared instant mashed potatoes, stuffing from a box, and a hearty helping
of frozen peas and carrots. The creamed onions had been made from scratch. The
ice cold Pabst Blue Ribbon had been Ed's contribution, and he already consumed
much of it, as his other contribution. Presents, such as they were, had been
distributed under an oppressive veil of obligation first thing in the morning,
and the family had lapsed into the usual testy silence for the remainder of
the day.
It was now three o'clock: dinnertime. The family was gathered at the table, as for battle. Marla sat with her hands neatly folded in her lap. Pig sat expressionless and erect with his fork in his left hand and his knife in his right, both implements held handle down and pointy side to the sky. Ed had ambled in last, tossing an empty can of Pabst into the bin, and had scarcely laid his pillowy buttocks upon his seat before reaching for the great turkey fork to dig in, when Marla made a noise out of propriety.
"Ahem," she said, and looked away innocently.
Ed ignored her and began to search among the turkey slices for the largest, thickest piece.
"Ahem," said Marla once again, articulating both syllables as a word rather than trying to make them sound like some sort of cough, as is generally done.
"What is it Marla?" said Ed with obvious irritation.
"Ah don't spose you'd lahk ta say grace at th'dinner table on Christmas Day before stuffing your face full of turkey Ed? You're sposed to be setting an example for our Pig."
"Fat ass bitch," mumbled Ed, just barely audibly.
"What was that Ed? What was that on Christmas Day at the dinner table?"
Pig tightened his grip on his utensils.
"All right, all right Marla," grumbled Ed, without relinquishing his grip on the turkey fork or removing it from its position, hovering over the serving plate. "May the Lord bless blah blah blah" he mumbled, piercing a fine tender slice of white meat and bringing it over to his plate.
"Ed Stankpool I will not have the name of the Low-erd God taken in vain at the dinner table on Christmas Day here in this household! We are here to thank the Low-erd for this food on the table this Christmas and we will thank Him properly! Praise the Low-erd! Praise Him!"
Marla had successfully induced shame within Ed's breast and he dropped his turkey obediently, lowered his head, clasped his hands, and repeated "Praise the Lord" in quite a humble manner, only resenting it after he had finished. Pig mumbled "peas and corn" at the same time and stared straight down at his plate, eyes wide open.
"Honestly," said an exasperated Marla, warming up to her role as the long-suffering martyr, "Ah have been up since fahv ay em working and slaving away so this family can enjoy a nahce Christmas holiday and have a decent Christmas dinner on the dinner table. Ah do not ask for any thanks but ah am tahrd, sick and tahrd of the attitude ah am getting from y'all on Christmas Day."
Fah hasbihhh, fah hasbiiihhh, Ed half mumbled and half sang, deliberately making it unintelligible but thinking the intended words to himself in his head, "fat ass bitch, fat ass bitch" to a childish repetitive tune. Marla looked at him suspiciously and frowned as she waited for Pig to take his helping of instant mashed potatoes before taking her own.
"Don't you start in with me with your humming now Ed, I know you have something nasty to say in that dense head of yours. Honestly, ah am so tahrd. Ah've been up since fahv ay em and ah have had it up to here."
"Are these mistletoe berries?"
"What?"
"Are these mistletoe berries mixed in here with the stuffing?"
"No."
"Are too. Look at that. Hundreds of mistletoe berries right in with the stuffing. Don't eat that stuffing Pig it's completely poisoned. I can't believe you'd try to poison your own family on Christmas Day. Marla Stankpool, you ought to be ashamed of yourself."
Marla blushed, as indeed she did feel slightly ashamed of herself. So she went right back on the offensive.
"Well it's more than you've given me for Christmas this year Ed. Even Pig gave me a nahce bottle of that washing-up liquid for the dishes. Now ah don't ask for a thing around here but you might have gotten me one Christmas present to give to your wahf on Christmas morning."
"That twelve pack was for you Marla and you know it."
"Ah do not know it, and ah do not want it, and you already drank eight of them before noon tahm. But ah don't care about mah own self. What ah do not lahk is the kind of nonsense you are giving our son, and on Christmas Day in the Low-erd's ahh."
Pig lowered his already lowered face closer to his plate and concentrated all his energy on eating, as the blood rushed to his head.
"What are you talking about Marla, ah gave the boy one of mah own favorite personal movies in that fancy DVD format with all kinds of fancy extras!"
"You gave our eight year old son a piece of cheap trash called Attack of the Boob Girls, and you've already taken it upstairs to your own room and watched it twahce while I was down here in the kitchen slaving away trying to put food on our table on Christmas Day!"
Ed gave his wife a dirty look as he pushed a heaping forkful of stove-top stuffing, complete with mistletoe berries, into his already over-packed jowls. Ed didn't really care about the mistletoe berries. They were only fatal in extremely large quantities and Ed had built up a good resistance to them by now. Besides, he kind of liked them.
"Honestly!" Marla continued. "Ah spare no effort and no time in going out to do my Christmas shopping for weeks on end, fahting the crowds in the department stores, stuck for hours on end in traffic, just to trah to find some small thing that maaht make mah family happy, and I don't spose it's too much to ask for…"
"That's horse shit Marla and you know it."
"Ah beg yore pardon?"
"Come off it Marla, you ain't left the apartment in a month and a half, and you ordered all that crap in about a half hour from that Internet so you could get right back to watching the Tee vee." Ed always emphasized the "tee" in "tee vee."
"Well isn't that nahce at the dinner table on Christmas Day, isn't that just very nahce indeed." Marla rose dramatically from the table and placed her hands on her hips before continuing. "Ah have had it with you Ed, ah'm sorry but ah've been up since fahv ay em and ah am tahrd and ah just cannot stand this kind of abuse on Christmas Day at the dinner table. Ah'm going upstairs!"
As she always did when resorting to this last-word-and-exit strategy, Marla worked herself up to plausible tearfulness and pointed her noise indignantly skywards before setting off majestically for her bedroom.
"Aaaaaiiiiiiieeeeeeeee!" screamed Pig at last, unable to restrain himself any more, knocking over his chair and running for his own bedroom, where he slammed the door and barricaded himself inside. Ed rolled his eyes.
"Fine," he muttered. "More for me. I honestly don't know what everybody's problem is around here. I honestly don't." Still, he frowned and was not content.
Later that night, a trio of ghosts came to visit Ed, planning to fill him with a sense of the love he had once had for his wife and son, to cajole and frighten and warn him into rekindling his dormant feelings of spiritual generosity and kindness for all of humanity, and into embracing once again his family and the world with the whole-hearted joy and profound gratitude that reside as possibilities within the hearts of all men. But they found him passed out on his bed in his boxer shorts amid a pile of Pabst Blue Ribbon empties, the full-motion menu of the Attack of the Boob Girls DVD playing an infinite loop on his television, and they couldn't rouse him.
"Same as last year," said the Ghost of Christmas Past to the others.
"What did I tell you?" said the Ghost of Christmas Future.
The End
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