Flash! Fiction 3 by Peter McMillan - HTML preview

28

A Christmas Dinner Tableau

The dining room was unevenly lighted. The two candelabra couldn't replace the immense chandelier that hung dark and silent overhead, and the wall sconces created more shadow than backlighting. The serving dishes were stationed on the sideboard.

there were four empty chairs, but the settings were left in place ...

just in case.

Henry sat at the head of the table as he had for 27 years. He couldn't feed himself since the stroke. His role was strictly formal.

Only his wife, Eloise, knew about his hallucinated cuckoldry, though the accusations had nearly driven her to file for divorce. But Henry didn't let on about his other fantasy.

From the other end, Eloise presided over the table as she did with everything. She was not inclined towards business, preferring the gardens, the church and the children, in that order. However, she had proved exceedingly competent in handling Henry's business affairs, including the partnership that managed the family's land.

Henry's younger brother, Cecil, was a life-long bachelor and the dashing black sheep of the family, so it was with no little irony that he attended the Christmas dinner faithfully every year. Not having any legitimate heirs, his interests in the partnership were more immediate than his siblings.' However, without the support of one of them, he knew he'd never cash in fully from the land. Two nights a year he harbored at the family house and then was gone again.

Diagonally, across the table was Catherine, the eldest of the three, and her companion, this year a middle-aged but gorgeous Italian actress. Catherine's two children, both unmarried and in their late thirties, rarely came, neither expecting anything financial to materi-alize from yet another long, drawn out Christmas ceremony with the 29

ancient relatives. Catherine came, not for tradition, but to check up on the family and the land.

Henry and Eloise had two sons. Reginald was a local real estate broker, and Archie was a medical missionary in the Congo or thereabouts. Reginald actively followed and studied the goings on of the partnership as he happened to be professionally associated with its legal and financial advisors. Archie wrote once a year — his annual Christmas letter — but otherwise he wasn't heard from.

Harold and Elizabeth, Reginald's children, represented the third generation. Harold was studying law, in keeping with his father's long-range plans. Elizabeth, the apple of her grandfather's wayward eye, was a graduate student specializing in tropical diseases, who had more in common with her Uncle Archie than her father. Neither child took after or took to their alcoholic mother, who stumbled in at last and was escorted to her chair by Great Uncle Cecil.

With everyone seated and the servants standing at attention, Henry slurred through the Christmas benediction once again.

First published in The Story Shack, December 25, 2013.