Matt Cowper - The Clerk

Everyone sat motionless, as if a wrathful goddess had just sentenced them to torment and death.

“Oh dear,” Jean said sadly. “Something’s offended her.”

They all looked at Thomas, since his last statements had, it seemed, driven her away from the table. Thomas frowned, miffed at being made a scapegoat, but feeling powerless to counter so many denouncing stares.

Dan knew that, as a supportive husband, he would have to go up and check on his wife eventually. He might as well do it now, before Emily, alone in their bedroom, whipped her anger up to holiday-ruining levels. With a genial “Excuse me,” he left the table and headed upstairs.

“Maybe I should go up there, too,” Jean wondered aloud.

“What for?” Frank demanded. “Let Dan handle it. He’s her husband. And if he can’t handle it, I’ll get involved.”

“Well, I’m her mother. Mothers understand things husbands and fathers don’t.”

“Like what?”

“Well — things , Frank. Women things.”

“I’m sure Emily feels comfortable talking about ‘women things’ with her husband, who is, like her, a mature adult — as am I.”

“I don’t know about that. Not all husbands can talk about that stuff easily. Why, remember when I went through menopause. You were absolutely helpless. Couldn’t even talk about it without your face getting all scrunched up like it does sometimes.”

“Well, uh, that’s different…” Frank sputtered, his face scrunching up in exactly the manner his wife had just described.

Dennis sensed his freedom. His mother would be poring over her grievances for a while, and his father would be trying to comfort her in his meek way. Dennis didn’t understand either of them. His mother acted more childish than he did, and his father was “whipped,” as they said at school when a guy let his girlfriend wrap him around her finger. Still, he wasn’t really complaining. Moments like these allowed him to sneak back to his room, where Call of Duty was waiting.

He announced he was already full, and was going to “clean up,” which meant taking his dirty dishes and cutlery and putting them in the dishwasher. After he’d done this, he slipped out of the kitchen and returned to his room. He assumed, correctly, that his grandparents and uncle wouldn’t stop him. They probably thought he was actually cleaning something up, somewhere, and not blasting noobs with a shotgun.

Well, his grandparents probably thought this, but they’d always been gullible, and they seemed to get more gullible each year. His uncle, though — he probably wasn’t fooled. His mom had occasionally commented on her brother’s “laziness” and “lack of drive,” but Thomas seemed the most “self-actualized” among them. (Dennis had just been introduced to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, which, in his opinion, was fairly obvious, and not worth studying.) Uncle Thomas didn’t seem to worry about much, while everyone else around him worried about everything.

Then again, this family was pretty fucked up (every teenager in history has thought this at some point) so maybe Uncle Thomas was fucked up in some way too. But then Dennis zoned into Call of Duty, and everything else fell away.

Thomas snuggled down into bed, sighing happily. It was an almost lasciviously comfortable bed; his body sank into the cloud-soft mattress, and the satin sheets were as smooth and cool as a woman’s fingertips. He yawned and smacked his lips. He would not be long for this world.

After Emily’s tantrum, the family had slowly dispersed from the table. Dennis was the first to leave, and then Thomas had escaped, borrowing his nephew’s “cleaning up” excuse. In his case, however, he had actually cleaned up a little in the kitchen. Emily’s cooking had left a slew of dirty platters, cutting boards, knives, whisks, and mixing bowls scattered about. Thomas washed and dried a few larger items, and put the smaller things into the already-stuffed dishwasher. He looked around as he wiped his hands on a towel, but he’d only cleaned up about a third of the mess. Shrugging, he went looking for the liquor. There were five other people in the house, and they were more than capable of handling the rest.

The liquor was in the same place it had been for years: in an overhead cabinet by the refrigerator, on the tallest shelf. It was located there to keep it out of a young Dennis’s hands, but Dennis was not so young anymore, and could reach the bottles without much difficulty. (When he did pilfer his parents’ liquor, he only took two or three sips from each bottle at a time, correctly guessing that his parents monitored the levels closely.) Thomas stretched to grab a bottle of whiskey, and poured himself a glass on the rocks. He then tiptoed upstairs and shut himself into his assigned guest room.

Luckily, his room, like nearly every room in the house, including the kitchen, had a television. Thomas propped himself up with the half-dozen fluffy pillows that were splayed out on the bed like women in a harem and flicked on the TV. He was soon channel surfing adroitly. Reggie, that fucker, would have been proud.

After an undetermined length of time, Dan entered the room — without knocking, which the quarter-drunk Thomas pointed out sharply. Dan apologized through clenched teeth, then told his brother-in-law that Emily had decided to “retire for the evening.” Thomas asked what the hell was wrong with her, and then asked why he was being told she’d retired when everyone else had already retired themselves. Dan said she was “dealing with issues,” and he was telling everyone Emily had retired just so everyone knew what was going on. Thomas nodded and turned back to Top Gun. After standing there awkwardly for a few seconds, Dan left, grumbling about the disrespectful attitudes of some members of the Copeland family.

Two whiskeys-on-the-rocks later, Thomas was certain this would be the best Christmas ever. (He thought this every year after guzzling a few drinks.) No one else had bothered him. Whenever he needed to replenish his glass, he’d been able to slip down to the kitchen and then back up to his room without being detained by familial chit-chat. Dennis was likely in his room remorselessly slaughtering people, though it seemed he’d turned down the volume out of consideration for the laughably early bedtimes of the guests. His parents had cleaned up the kitchen, and now they were somewhere on the premises, probably in their room asleep. Dan was probably still trying to decode his wife, while Emily was probably still acting indecipherable.

After his fourth drink, Thomas had decided to call it quits. No point in pushing himself and ending up with a nasty hangover tomorrow. He brushed his teeth, slipped into the nylon shorts and ratty “BIG ROCK BLUE MARLIN TOURNAMENT” t-shirt he used for pajamas, and waited for sleep to take him. He couldn’t wait for the alcohol-fueled dreams. Those were the best: so vivid they felt completely real, yet so wild that the most plot-scorning director in Hollywood would’ve called them far-fetched.

The house was quiet. He was sure everyone else was asleep, or trying to fall asleep, like he was. A light wind stirred the pine trees outside. An owl hooted. Thomas’s eyelids slowly closed…

There was a commotion outside. Two people were yelling. A car door slammed shut and an engine started. Thomas pulled himself from the depths of the mattress and walked to the window, which looked out onto the front lawn. A pajama-clad Dan (and those pajamas looked ridiculously boyish; what were those designs? Sailboats? Dinosaurs?) was standing out on the grass, waving his arms in what looked like an overacted portrayal of hysteria. The sun-like glare of the garage’s security light made him look even more like an actor under the spotlight.