Bone Magic

Aperitif

“If the cat shins up that tree one more time, I swear to God, I won’t be responsible for my actions.”  My mum’s face has gone the scarlet of her M and S, lurex thread jumper while the cat just sits there, biding its time.  Cats are good at that.

We’re sitting in the living room, me and my family – mum, dad, gran, granddad and the cat.  Mum has put not only a collar on it for Christmas, but a tinsel bow too.  The cat’s eyes shine hungry for revenge at this sartorial indignity.

We’ve necked the Cava and we’re exchanging presents.  “I wouldn’t bother getting anything for your nan this year”, mum had said in November.  “I don’t think she’ll make it to Christmas.”  As she energetically rips open the box with her massaging foot spa in it (a glance of triumphant Fuck You thrown at mum), Nan begs to differ.

I’m pleased with what I’ve been given.  Finally, finally at the age of forty three, my family have got me presents that I actually like.  A book on Russian prison tattoos, the last few Hellboys (in Spanish, granted, and I don’t speak Spanish) and some animal bones.  The skull of a muntjac, a crow and a Scottish black ram.  They even tried for an amusing present – a book with the immortal title, Creatures with Cocks.

I’ve gone for the generic and the thoughtless and my family are as happy as Larry – or as happy as Larry would be if he’d received the same generic, thoughtless gifts they have.

Underneath the strung-up cards (antlers and deers in snow scenes are de rigeur this year, I notice), mum looks a little teary.  I know she’s thinking about her dad who died on Christmas day twenty odd years ago now. How about that?  Dying on Christmas day.  I always remember him as an awkward bastard. 

The cat is tapping its toes and its collar is jingling.  It’s eyeing the tree again, looking particularly at the squirrel decoration about two thirds of the way up.  It can take it, you can see it in its eyes.  Kind of a practice for the real deal it’s seen in the big tree at the bottom of the garden.  To the cat, the Christmas tree is a kind of training situation and the cat is H.E.N.C.H.

Starter

Mum calls dinner and I rush to the table, so I don’t have to sit next to granddad and his trick of gargling the gravy.  It’s impressive and hideous at the same time, and I don’t want to hear it. 

Dad is already in situ and is adding to our classy setup by kneading the stuffing with his hands.  He’s brought the packet to the table along with the kettle and once he’s made the stuffing mixture, he creates stuffing turd-balls that he puts straight on to our plates.  None of us can ever say he doesn’t give mum a helping hand.

For a minute or so, we sit there until the silence is broken by the snap of the crackers.  Oh how I love the golf tees and nail clippers inside them.  But nothing tops the hats.  I will not wear them – not now, not ever.  2016 may have been shit, with Trump as president and barely a celeb left alive, but I will not wear a hat from a cracker.  The donning of said hat would be as symptomatic of failure as rocking up at my parents’ house to spend Christmas with them when I’d told them for most of the year that I had other plans.  I can ride the bed my mum had made up for me and even the waiting Santa sack by the fireplace – but not the hat.

Main

I get the wishbone from the turkey and I make a wish.  In an odd twist, I make a wish not to choke on a wishbone the next time I eat turkey.  What I don’t wish for is a better year next year – 2016 was terrible, blah blah blah.  Who could have imagined?  Yada yada yada.  Yes, it was shit.  Yes, people die (it’s the nature of people) and do stupid things and make stupid decisions.  But we need to get over ourselves.  We need to look outwards, not inwards and do a little better next time because that’s all we can do.

The cheese sauce made to pour over the cauliflower congeals in the gravy and I shudder.  “God, you’re so bloody precious about food”, my dad says to me.

On my knee, the cat sits with its claws out, waiting for its chance to strike.  It’s not worried, it’s got all the time in the world.

Pudding

When the door knocks, mum sighs and says she wishes we hadn’t got rid of the bell.  “How terribly middle class we are to go vintage”, she says.  Out of the blue, Nan shouts, “Well, I’ve got knockers and they’re big ones.”  Granddad responds, “You’re not the only one - I’ve got a big one too.”

I’m sorry, I think, but age and sherry are not valid excuses.  I’m thinking about a spot of reading and a cat and a quilt, but even the cat’s skidaddled. I’m thinking about quiet, possibly a tomb.  But hey ho, let’s go, as the Ramones say.  I’m thinking about the story, the Monkey’s Paw and three wishes and knocks on the door.  Dah, dah, dah!  Who can it be?  A big pause and a bigger reveal.

Dad goes – he’s nearest the door and he comes back with a big woman, blonde and shiny. She’s taut like a turkey in Bacofoil, wrapped up like a pig in a blanket.  She has a feather boa round her neck.  “I’d like to jump her bones” says granddad uncharacteristically (and in fact not at all, but I need to keep the bone motif running).    The woman sits down on the piano stool, dragged out of the garage and it creaks under her derriere.  After a deep ahem, in a Star Wars, portentous way, she bellows, “he’s my faather!”

Stuffed

Granddad looks puzzled and quite pleased.  He puffs out his ancient bird chest with a pride that his low sperm count can’t possibly justify, when dad shifts on his chair and for an horrifically, long second, his jumper rides up and I see Calvin Klein pants circling his ample waistline.  “No.  No. he was talking to me”, he says.

There’s almost too much here to begin to unpick.  Talking to him? He not she?  Dad in Calvin Kleins?  The wo/man shrugs off her coat and her décolletage reveals the strident hairs on her chest.  Her pecs.  The truth, whatever it is, is out.

Mum sits there, eyes rectal examination wide, but she’s mercifully silent.  Gran and granddad have finished the pudding and clearly forgetting that they’re in any polite company are licking the last of the cream off the plates with their tongues.  They’re making googly eyes at each other too.  I’m not sure which of these two actions make me feel the most sick. 

I raise my eyebrows at the wo/man, s/he raises them back.  I do the same. As does s/he.  As do I - you get the picture.  We’re locked in the futile battle without end that is suggestive eyebrows.  A long battle.  A bitter battle. 

I reckon we’d still be there now if it wasn’t for the cat.  You know you’re lost when you put a catflap in a house; when you give what is essentially a wild animal egress and ingress.  When the cat is making the decisions about what it’ll do and you’re not.  In any case, the decision the cat makes is to bring in a decapitated squirrel and lay it at the wo/mans’ feet.  S/he screams and bellows at the same time – a rather beautiful, yet mournful sound. Then s/he stands up and knocks the table.  It judders and the plates gran and granddad are licking ricochet against their teeth.

The cat sits there – it’s done its thing.  Reaction is nothing to it.  I feel I ought to busy myself with something and pick up the squirrel, whose body promptly falls away from its tail.  I’m left holding the tail and it reminds of nothing so much as the skanky boa round the wo/man’s neck.  The wo/man walks out of the room, followed by dad, followed by mum.  I sit on the chair by the Christmas tree and the cat comes and sits on the floor next to me.  It’s eyeing the tree again – an optimist to the last (as all cats are despite their rep. for sinister gloom) and it’s sure it can get up and down it another couple of times before mum ineffectually shouts “Bad Cat” at it again.  I’m stroking the squirrel tail, thinking it could look really good on display next to my bones.

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