Christmas Morning, by Antonia Bale

ReadingRoom

“I want to wake up on Christmas morning holding your hand…”

A bunch of us were ready for a good night.

We met at the Matterhorn beforehand. The party was a theme party but I can’t remember what the theme was now. Keegan didn’t dress in any discernible theme though. He dressed as he always dressed: tight black jeans, black leather jacket, black band T-shirt, black Vans, black fingerless leather gloves. He wore them summer or winter, no different. People gossiped. Said he had cuts, welts, burn marks, allergies, regretful tattoos. I imagined the nice things I’d whisper as he peeled the gloves off in the half light, revealing his secret to me.

I was wearing an eighties prom dress I’d got from an op shop: strapless, bright scarlet. Crisp starchy layers of synthetic taffeta bloomed out down the length of my body from boobs to thighs. It was a mullet of a dress that showed your legs but covered your bum. It was sexy despite all that extra material. I wore my favourite sneakers, white high-top Converse. Christmas Eve is a night for dancing.

Me and my taffeta dress and my high-top sneaks were out of place in the sleek bar with its shiny dark wood ceiling, leather- bound drinks’ list, metal stools welded to the ground so you couldn’t move them. Stools made for tall people in tailored suits and expensive leather pants. The taffeta made a brittle, crunchy sound as I stalked through the bar. I couldn’t be sure only I could hear it. The waiters, dressed alike in their counterfeit army uniforms, stared at me. I enjoyed being seen by them this way. Some kind of gypsy girl, not afraid to wear what she liked, threading bright colours through the throng of black leather. Keegan was over by the amp, big and jolly, light on his feet.

Me, him, the others, we drank Falling Waters, Campari Spritzers, wines we couldn’t afford. Then we sang ourselves down the long echoey corridor that pitched us up and served us out, another late-night offering to Cuba Street.

We barged our way into a BYO Malaysian with bad lighting and cheap food. We met more people, gathering them up along the street until there was a mob of us, cowboys and spaceships, penguins and lifeguards, naughty nurses, Supermen, Santa Claus. All of us shrieking and ricocheting across the cement car park into the abandoned building, down to the place where the cool kids were.

A musician I knew, Batman for the night, gave me a hug, taffeta crunching. Over my head he said to Keegan, “She’s so hot, you lucky devil.” It made me feel warm inside. Not the compliment; the implication—Keegan was with me, I was with Keegan, and other people knew it too.

All night we tracked each other’s movements through the crowded room. We always knew where the other was. Cliché, I know, but it was just like that. I’d feel something on me and I’d look up and it was his brown eyes fixing mine.

The party was overcrowded and I kept feeling bodies pressing against my flesh but when Keegan and me met out on the ledge, in the hallway outside the bathroom, there were ripples of fresh air between us. We made each other laugh, wedged in by the door in the kitchen that wasn’t a kitchen, its stove ripped out. The empty alcove where the fridge should be was filled with the writhing bodies of Batman and Robin. At a certain point Keegan put his arm around my bare shoulders and I buzzed with his touch.

I said no to the pills and the rest of it. Hadn’t drunk as much as the others; I had stopped after the Malaysian. That was hours ago. Maybe half a day ago. It was after three in the morning. No one had marked midnight, no carols sung, no cheer. Maybe you only do that at New Year’s Eve but I remember feeling that it mustn’t be Christmas yet because no one had said anything.

That it wouldn’t be until we did.

My flatmate had lent me her car for the evening. It was small and dark blue and it drove flat, close to the ground. Its doors were clangy when you shut them. He asked me if I could drop his sister home. His beautiful blond sister, dressed like a shimmering mermaid. In the car we laughed and turned the radio up loud and he was happy, it was easy to tell. His body was loose, his head moving in time with the music. We dropped the sister at a big house on the hill.

“It’s my dad’s,” he said. “Check out the view.”

We all tumbled out, my taffeta dress rustling with the wind. He gave me a quick tour. Big wooden entranceway, stained glass windows, winding staircase.

“Best view in Wellington,” he said, but the night was so dark I couldn’t really see anything. Just a big black gulf.

“There,” he said, pointing out towards some lights in the distance. “That’s the wharf, that’s the ocean.”

“The sea, you mean?” I said.

“The ocean,” he said.

He was drunker than I’d thought. He slipped down the stairs, landed in a heap and rubbed his head. The sister made shushing noises and hopped from foot to foot. The dad was asleep somewhere in the house. I asked her if Keegan was going to be all right.

“I’ll just leave him here then, shall I?” I said.

“Oh, no, no!” he said from the floor.

“Oh no! Shit no,” the sister said, slipping into the bathroom, shutting the door on us.

“I’m going home,” he said. “I don’t wanna wake up here on Christmas Day.”

“Why? It’s your dad’s house,” I said.

“Yeah, I’ve gotta go to Mum’s first. If I woke up here she’d kill me.”

“What about your sister?”

“Different mum,” he said, “different rules.”

“Oh,” I said.

We got back in the car and I leaned over his body and opened a window so he’d feel better. He smiled at me. We careened off, me pushing my foot down too far because the accelerator was looser than I was used to. I eased it off until it felt like the belly of the car was scraping along the road, and we slunk down the hill.

“It’s my flatmate’s car, so don’t be sick, okay?” I said.

“I’m too happy to be sick,” he said, out the window to the city. “I’m so happy,” he said, turning to me and smiling again. I caught it like a snapshot in the streetlights. He took a big swig from a square glass bottle.

“Me too,” I said.

He shouted, “I’M HAPPY!”

“HAPPY!” he yelled at the traffic lights that obligingly turned green.

“I’m happy too,” I said and then yelled it out through the windscreen to the flags of green and red whipping in the wind. “HAPPY TOO!”

He laughed and closed his hand over mine on the gear stick. I was happy.

When we got to his place, I parked in the spot outside the dairy. I’d dropped him off twice before but I wasn’t too sure where he actually lived. He flung open the door and the corner edge of it caught on the pavement and got stuck there.

“You need to lift it up a little. Be careful, be careful,” I said, “it’s my flatmate’s car.”

He came round the front of the car to my side, pulled a Santa hat out from his jacket with a flourish and put it on the wing mirror. It perched there for a second and then fell off. He was not very steady on his feet, I could see that. He knocked on my window, holding the glass bottle up, waving it at me. The passenger door was still wide open, stuck there by a small triangle of dark blue metal. I rolled down my window.

“Hi,” he said, leaning in.

“Hi,” I said.

“Merry Christmas,” he said. “The hat’s all yours.”

“Thanks,” I said out the window and he stood there mugging at me, his eyes droopy.

“I want to hold your hand,” I said, quietly into the night. “I want to wake up on Christmas morning holding your hand.”

It was already Christmas morning. His hand was clinging onto the edge of the window. I could’ve leaned over and kissed it.

“Okay,” he said gravely.

He almost sconed himself getting back onto the pavement. I rolled up the window, got out and then went round to the other side of the car and lifted the door up gently, easing the snagging metal until it gave way. My taffeta layers bounced. I slammed the door shut with a clang. Keegan stood watching me with a funny look on his face. I followed him up the back steps. They were slippery; it must’ve rained at some point in the night.

“This is the kitchen,” he said. “This is the bathroom,” he said.

“This is the vinyl but it’s bedtime now. So we won’t play them.”

“No,” I said.

He didn’t turn the lights on in the bedroom. Didn’t even get under the covers. Just heaved himself down on the bed, a huge lump in the dark.

I stood there for a moment, not sure what to do. He didn’t move, didn’t say anything. It appeared that he was asleep already.

I took my sneakers off and carefully sat down on the side of the bed. I wasn’t sure if I should really stay. As slowly as I could, I lowered myself inch by inch until my eyes were staring up at the ceiling, my back feeling the doughiness of the duvet underneath. I lay there next to him, my pink dress puffing out around me. I could smell the sweat on my body, the alcohol on his, the eucalyptus laundry powder he must’ve used in the wash.

At some point I became aware of something. A sound, a movement. I was still asleep but there flashing through my brain like a fire alarm was a message. Did you lock the car? I had a sudden sure feeling that someone must’ve stolen it, driven it away for Christmas. I’ve got to get up and check, I thought. I’ve got to get up right now. But I was still asleep and my body was sinking down deeper underneath me. When I woke up he was already on top of me, already inside me.

He was holding my arms above my head, pinning my wrists with his fingerless gloves. I was still wearing my puffy pink dress. It was crunching and rustling underneath him. He was wearing a T-shirt. Our skin didn’t touch. Except for there. I could taste blood in my mouth. I must’ve bit my tongue.

No, a voice said, a soupy muggy voice in my head. No, it said again, clearer, louder. But my real voice was lodged inside my throat, pegged in place. His eyes weren’t looking at me, they were flicking along the ceiling. It was light now. A quiet time.

Inside my mind, my body was propelling him up and out to the other side of the room like a superhero would, like Batman or Superman. His back was slamming into the opposite wall, his legs were swinging up and then crumpling beneath him. I wanted to be able to do that to him, to get him out like that, but instead I lay very still. My toes, my armpits, my whole body could hear things. A creak in the roof, the rain on the windowpane, the grunting sounds he was making as he rummaged around inside, ransacking my body.

Slowly, like something thawing, my wrists began to strain against the pressure; to resist. My nails snatched wildly against the gloves, scratching now soft leather, now the pink flesh of the tips of his fingers. His eyes slid down from the ceiling then and fixed on mine. He didn’t say a word. Jabbed inside me maybe three more times, one last stab deeper than the rest. And then he rolled off.

I stayed there, still like that, with my arms reached out above my head, my body icebound.

The light crept in the room and stretched out along my pale thighs.

We lay in the silence.

After a time I shoved my dress down, pulling at the hem hard.

The sound filled the room.

Sssh, I wanted to say.

Marooned on my back, I could still feel the feelings from inside me. A rawness. I pressed the fleshy heel of my hand down onto my pelvis and pushed hard so that this pain could cover that pain. He made a sound then, a sudden sob. His big paw reached out and roughly brushed down the side of my body, catching in the taffeta folds, searching for something. Fierce and tender, he held my hand on Christmas morning like I’d wanted, like I’d asked him to.

I tried not to breathe.

After a while the pressure of his grip eased off and it felt like he had gone back to sleep.

Or maybe he was pretending. I extracted my hand in one firm slide.

Did I lock the car? I thought.

I left the house quietly, like a thief.

In the car, I wound down the window again. Sipped in the air through my nose. The roads were slick with rain. The shop windows were green and red and closed. The light was thin and raw in the grey sky. My bare feet pushed too hard against the pedals and the car jolted. I wasn’t wearing any underwear.

I don’t remember parking or getting into my bed, but I do remember going round to Mum and Dad’s in the mid-afternoon and Mum saying, “Oh what’s the matter with you, Anna? You’re always such a sad sack on Christmas. You ruin it every year.”

I was supposed to go camping on the East Coast for New Year’s but I didn’t. I spent the holiday in bed. On the fifth of January I took a shower and got dressed for work. I almost tripped getting out the front door. There, sitting in a neat little pair on the step, were my Converse high-top sneakers.

*

Years later I told a boyfriend about it. It was lodged in his head, he said. He couldn’t stop thinking about it.

“Could we do that?” he said. “Could that be our thing?”

“What?”

“That,” he said.

“Our thing? Non-consensual sex?”

“No, like you’re asleep and I wake you up like that. I think it could be hot.”

I grimaced.

“Like you won’t know when until I do it. You won’t know when it’s coming.”

“You know what you’re asking, right?” I said.

“I think it could be hot,” he said.

“I won’t be able to sleep.”

“Sure you will, that’s the point.”

“You want to take something without my permission? That’s what you want to do?”

“No. We’re two consenting adults. It’s not like that. It’d be an arrangement.”

I started putting my coat on, moving towards the door.

“Don’t get huffy,” he said. “It was just an idea. I thought it could be hot.”

*

The other day, I saw Keegan. Fingerless leather gloves feeding coins into the meter. We never even kissed, I thought. He saw me, standing on the street outside the library, staring at him. I didn’t mean to but my hand raised, quick, like a wave. His eyes flicked away and I kept on walking.

Taken from the superb anthology A Game of Two Halves edited by Fergus Barrowman (Victoria University Press, $35), featuring the work of Eleanor Catton, Damien Wilkins, Tayi Tibble, Elizabeth Knox and others, available in bookstores nationwide.

We conclude our series of stories set at Xmas next with “Xmas and the Small Dog Park” by Vincent O’Sullivan.