The closer they are to Christmas, the longer it takes her each evening to put to bed their infant son, as frustrated by the slow crawl of advent as he is excited by the morning’s prospect of opening each little calendar window, both routines from which her husband has absented himself.
She lullabies the little Brother Skunk with memories of distant Christmases, her voice become a sedative to decelerate his agitation and bring him to sleep.
Back downstairs, and entering again into their ongoing and unresolved back and forth
Mother (choosing her moment): What should we get for him?
knowing from the child himself over and again the idea of whatever presents brought and left so much less thrilling than his anticipation of a visit from Santa Claus.
Father: I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t think it matters. You choose.
and then the silence, through which, fearful to interrupt that reading to which he has returned, she must wait until he again momentarily sets aside the latest of his library-borrowed western novels,
Mother: What about you?
Father: What about me?
Mother: For Christmas, what can I get you?
His answer is so long in coming she has already given up on its ever arriving, her assumption he has opted to ignore the question not unusual.
Father (finally): Cowboy gloves, pale leather, so they will wear their ageing.
pause
Mother: Cow-
Father: Nothing else.
and still to be thinking on this exchange as she passes another night lying full awake and willing the onset of her menses, now that many more days late than she will dare admit.
She lullabies the little Brother Skunk with memories of distant Christmases, her voice become a sedative to decelerate his agitation and bring him to sleep.
Back downstairs, and entering again into their ongoing and unresolved back and forth
Mother (choosing her moment): What should we get for him?
knowing from the child himself over and again the idea of whatever presents brought and left so much less thrilling than his anticipation of a visit from Santa Claus.
Father: I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t think it matters. You choose.
and then the silence, through which, fearful to interrupt that reading to which he has returned, she must wait until he again momentarily sets aside the latest of his library-borrowed western novels,
Mother: What about you?
Father: What about me?
Mother: For Christmas, what can I get you?
His answer is so long in coming she has already given up on its ever arriving, her assumption he has opted to ignore the question not unusual.
Father (finally): Cowboy gloves, pale leather, so they will wear their ageing.
pause
Mother: Cow-
Father: Nothing else.
and still to be thinking on this exchange as she passes another night lying full awake and willing the onset of her menses, now that many more days late than she will dare admit.
