Matt Cowper - The Clerk

The opposing team had pulled ahead while Dennis was answering the door, but being the warrior he was, he grimly continued, perforating players with names like YOLO720NOSCOPE_XD and ISnipedJFK and slowly whittling away at the other team’s lead.

Thomas, in his meanderings through the internet, had seen the occasional YouTube video showing Call of Duty gameplay, and he’d thought it looked fine, but to actually see the Xbox One churning out powerful graphics on a large High Definition television was stunning. He stared as Dennis ran, jumped, and strafed through a gloriously-detailed cityscape. He thought back to Mario on his cherished Nintendo; the little plumber was downright sluggish compared to Dennis’s frenetic soldier. To think he’d once felt so powerful when he grabbed that brown leaf and turned into a raccoon!

“Things sure have changed since the old days,” Thomas said wistfully.

“What? Oh, yeah. It gets better with each console.”

“How do you react so quickly? There’s so much stuff going on, but you’re still blowing those guys away.”

“I play a lot. You get used to it.”

Thomas’s words had broken his focus, and an opponent named Tr1ggerHappy had gunned him down. Suppressing a curse, he respawned with a cold fury.

Emily suddenly appeared in the doorway. Thomas turned towards her, but Dennis’s eyes remained on the screen. Her hands were on her hips, and Thomas knew sharp commands were imminent.

“Dennis, get off that thing and come visit,” she ordered. “And what are you doing, Thomas?”

“I’m watching him play.”

“Yeah,” Dennis agreed, “he wanted to see how the graphics look nowadays. On the Xbox, I mean.”

“Well, that’s nice,” Emily said, “but gunslinging time is over. Both of you, out here.”

“Five more minutes, mom. Need to finish this match.”

“It’s one match out of the millions you play per day. Get off.”

“Five minutes.” He’d been speaking softly but sternly, as if his mother were a supplicant who needed to be gently rebuffed. It was clear he would not move from his beanbag again until he’d finished his match. Thomas marked the change: last year, Dennis had been too awkward to oppose his mother, but now he managed her with astounding ease. With an overabundance of glee, Thomas imagined the remaining years of teenagehood his sister would have to deal with. Dennis would not be so easily controlled as Dan, if he could be controlled at all.

“Fine,” Emily said lackadaisically, as if she really hadn’t cared about the matter at all. “But Thomas, I don’t see the need for you to stay…”

“I do,” Thomas replied. “I want to see the end of the match. Dennis has had a hell of a game — or so it seems to me, and I admit I only understand about one percent of what’s going on — and I want to see if he can pull off a victory. It’s like watching a close basketball game that’s down to the final two minutes.”

Emily chewed her lip. She looked at her son, at her brother, at the wall, at the overflowing trashcan by the nightstand. She looked back to Thomas, who gave her his most winning smile.

“Fine,” she said again, this time not so lackadaisically. “But after this match, that’s it. You hear me, Dennis? Don’t try to sneak in another one.”

“OK, mom,” Dennis said.

She disappeared from the doorway, and Thomas chuckled in triumph. Dennis, however, remained zoned in on the game. Apparently he’d had many such victories over his mother, and they’d lost their novelty.

Thomas sat down in the thoroughly uncomfortable wooden dining chair at his customary place between his mother and father. Emily, Dennis, and Dan sat on the other side of the table. Emily had planned it this way years ago, telling her husband that “it separates the families.” Dan didn’t understand why this was important, and he really didn’t care to learn, so he’d simply nodded in assent.

There was a seat at the head of the table for Dan’s aristocratic mother, but everyone knew she wasn’t coming. She hadn’t set foot in this house in five years, not since she said that “most women don’t deserve the vote, because all they do is elect empty-headed liberals” to Emily’s face.

This being the Christmas Eve “light meal,” there was only twenty pounds of food on the table. None of the Christmas Day heavy hitters — the turkey, the ham, the coconut balls — were present, but there was still enough hearty variety for any stomach. Thomas eyed the meatballs, green bean casserole, and pumpkin pie with particular interest.

For this meal, Emily had used her Roxy Wesley dish set. Roxy Wesley was a feminist chef with a half-hour cooking show on the Food Network (her catchphrase, which she said without irony: “I’m not a piece of meat, but I know how to cook one”), and the dishes in her set were designed with delightful garden scenes in soft colors. In other words, they looked like dishes from any other set.

Before the families could begin eating, they had to have a Prayer. Emily had rejected her parents’ stuffy Presbyterianism way back in college, but her agnosticism was suspended during Christmas. She looked as pious as a nun as everyone locked hands and she chanted:

“Thank You for this food, and for bringing the family together. We don’t see each other often, so each moment we have together is a blessing. May this Christmas be joyful and fun, and may everyone get what they wanted — but maybe not what they deserved.”

Everyone chuckled at the light ending note — though, judging from Emily’s expression, it hadn’t been said lightly — then attacked the food.

“This casserole is great,” Thomas said in between mouthfuls, “but it tastes a little different than I remember.”

“Yeah, it’s a new recipe. I’ve been trying new things lately,” Emily said, looking at her husband pointedly.

Dan sat there, pretending to be oblivious. Just two more days, and he could get back to the firm…

“So Dennis,” Frank said, “haven’t seen you much since we arrived. What are you doing with yourself?”

“Nothing special,” the teenager replied, his cheeks bulging with mashed potatoes. “Just school and other stuff.”

“Tell your grandpa about basketball,” Emily insisted, then immediately began telling about it herself. “He’s playing on the JV team. Power forward — right?”

“More of a small forward,” Dennis replied.

“How do you like it? Score any points?” Frank Copeland wanted his grandson’s basketball experience quantified, preferably with detailed game-by-game averages — unless the numbers were poor, in which case he didn’t really want to know about it.

“Not really,” Dennis said. “I mainly just grab rebounds and play defense.”

“Well, last game you had ten points and ten rebounds,” Emily said, aware of her father’s searching gaze. “That’s a double-double.”

“Yeah, it is,” Dennis said after washing down a buttered roll with a gulp of sweet tea, “but it’s not really that impressive. It’s all kind of boring, actually. You run up and down the court, and everyone’s yelling at you, and the coaches don’t really tell you anything, they just say stuff like ‘Hard work beats talent that don’t work hard.’ Anyway, I probably won’t play next year.”

“That’s the first I’ve heard about it…” Emily complained.

“I’d think long and hard about that, Dennis,” Frank lectured. “Athletics builds character. It’s a good way to test oneself, and in a pretty safe environment. Because trust me, once you get out in the Real World, people will eat you alive if you let them.”

“Nah, I’m not worried about that,” Dennis said nonchalantly. “I don’t plan on letting people eat me alive.”