True story: more people die over Christmas than at any other time.
The cold weather gets them. Hospital resources fail them. Loneliness sends them reaching for the pills, a knife, a rope.
Or they fall into a fist.
I threw my first punch on 25 December 1996.
Merry Christmas.
Anna was five. Sitting by the tree in a sea of wrapping paper, clutching a Buzz Lightyear with undisguised delight.
“They’ve sold out everywhere, you know,” Bill said, with more than a touch of smugness. “You wouldn’t believe what I had to do to get hold of that one.”
Next to Anna, discarded on the floor, was a Barbie. It had hair that grew, eye shadow that changed color. Articulated bloody ankles. A Barbie I’d worked for, chosen, paid for. She’d looked at it once—seen how the hair could grow longer with the little wheel at the back—then she’d dropped it on the floor. I don’t think she picked it up again all Christmas.
I poured my first drink then. Felt judgmental eyes on me as I knocked it back, so I poured another, just because. I sat. And I seethed.
You messed up Christmas lunch. Overcooked the turkey, undercooked the sprouts. You’d had a drink yourself. You thought it was funny. I didn’t.
You tried to make Bill stay. Didn’t want to be on your own with me. When he insisted, you walked him to the door and pulled him into the sort of embrace you never gave me anymore. I drank more. Seethed more.
“Shall we ask Alicia to join us next Christmas?” you said. “Awful to think of her and Laura in that horrible flat.”
I said yes, but I wasn’t so sure. If I was honest I couldn’t imagine Alicia here, in our house. She was different from us. She spoke differently; dressed differently. She belonged in her world, not in ours.
We’d kept our own presents till last. Anna was in bed, and the turkey wrapped in foil (although it couldn’t have gotten any drier), and you made us sit on the floor like we were five ourselves.
“You first.” I handed you a present. I’d paid for it to be wrapped, but you pulled off the ribbon without looking at it and I thought next time I wouldn’t bother.
“I love it.”
I knew you would. The camera had caught Anna just as the swing hit its highest point. She was laughing, her legs swinging and her hair flying. The frame was silver. Expensive. It was a good present.
“Now you.” You put it in my hands. You were nervous. “You’re so hard to buy for!”
Carefully, I peeled back the sticky tape, slid the package out of the red and white paper. Jewelry? Gloves?
It was a CD.
Easy Listening: A compilation of the world’s greatest hits. Just relaaaaaax . . .
In the corner of the case was a sticky patch where you’d scraped off the label.
It was as though someone had stolen two decades from me. Marched me into JCPenney and dressed me in beige trousers with an elastic waistband. I thought of my life before you; before Anna. Of the parties, the coke, the lays, the fun.
And now, what was my life?
An easy-listening CD.
You’d think it would have happened quickly, but for me it was the reverse. Time slowed down. I felt my fingers curl into a fist; felt my nails in the soft flesh of my palm. I felt the shiver of tension run from wrist to shoulder, pause at the top, and then run back again. Building, building, building, building.
The bruise ran from your temple to your throat.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I was. I was ashamed. A little frightened—although I’d never have admitted it—of what I was capable of.
“Forget it.”
I didn’t, of course, and neither did you. But we pretended we had.
Until the next time.
It scared me enough to make me stop drinking for a while. But I wasn’t an alcoholic, remember? That’s what I told myself. So there was no need to go cold turkey. A cool beer here, a glass of wine there . . . It wasn’t long before I needed the sun over the yardarm long before six o’clock.
You never know what goes on behind closed doors. Out of every ten of your friends, two of them are in violent relationships. Two. How many friends did we have? We can’t have been the only ones.
I found it reassuring, in a way. We weren’t unusual.
We kept it a secret, of course. If we hadn’t, it might not have gone on for so long. But no one’s proud of a failed marriage. No one’s proud of being a victim.
You didn’t say anything, and neither did I.
I’d like to say I was out of control. After all, I only ever hit you when I was drunk; surely that absolved me of some responsibility?
You never called me out on it, but you knew—and I knew—that I must have had at least a modicum of control. I never lashed out when Anna was in the room, or even—once she was old enough to understand the nuances of an adult relationship—when she was at home. It was as though her presence was a calming influence; a reminder of how a rational person behaves.
That, and I was too ashamed to let her see me that way.
Each time it happened I told you I was sorry. Each time I said it had “just happened,” that I hadn’t planned it, hadn’t been able to stop myself. I hate myself now, for the lies I told then. I knew exactly what I was doing. And after that first time, however drunk I was—however angry I was—I never again hit you where the bruise would show.