‘I can’t believe you’d be so damn selfish, you little bastard!’ Aunty Justine sobbed. I looked on, shocked. So did everyone.
‘OK’, Uncle Peter whispered, ‘I think you’d better go, mate.’ I was still looking ahead, feeling the collective eyes sitting on my ashen face and feeling their sting.
I wanted to protest, but something intuitive clamped my jaws shut and guided me out of my chair and out towards the kitchen. I managed to miraculously leave the table without a fuss, shifting sideways past the chairs weighed down by heavy people with heavy stares.
‘I don’t know what I did!’ I whispered as loudly as I could to Peter when I finally reached the kitchen, gesticulating with my right arm to emphasise how deeply I meant it.
Uncle Peter was nodding and had raised his hands in a way to try to get me to just shut my mouth and leave. He had taken off his red paper crown on the countertop and the joyousness he had been exhibiting just 10 minutes before, laid on there with it.
‘I know, I know,’ he whispered back, thrusting his hands down with each syllable, pleading with me not to interrupt. ‘She always cooks it that way. She’s scared of salmonella.’
‘It was just a little joke!’ I replied, ‘I didn’t think she’d respond like that! Christ, I’m sorry for ruining everything, man.’
‘It’s fine. But, you might need to go, mate. She’s going to be like that for a little while. She takes great pride in it, you know, and we don’t call it out. It’s kind of, you know, part of the tradition at this point.’
‘OK, but I don’t know where to go? I mean, haha, this is 200-miles away from home. I thought we were going to be in your spare room tonight?’ I felt the tears welling up in my eyes, more out of embarrassment than anything. Peter clearly felt sympathy, but as he reached out to put a fatherly hand on my shoulder, a horrendous round of shrieking burst through the archway which separated the two rooms in something of an L-shape.
It pierced. Nothing pierces like that. The atmosphere hit a noise level akin to absolute zero, as the festive joy in the room was well and truly extinguished. For a moment, I even felt like it brushed around the corner, through the doorway and left a deep, cold cut right through to my bones. The atmosphere had shifted from awkward to straight iciness. It was probably best I wasn’t in that room, and I was fortunate for it, even if I was the cosmic vacuum cleaner or air conditioning unit that had drawn out all of the hallmark merriment and filtered in all of the chilly night air of eternity.
Uncle Peter withdrew his hand, or rather, merely shifted it over my left shoulder and out into the hallway.
‘Thanks, mate.’ he said flippantly, looking flustered and annoyed. Tossing my coat and scarf onto my shoulder in one motion with his right hand, he then walked briskly to the door and with his left hand directed me out of it and down the step. I was wrong, the winter air was much colder than any metaphorical comparison could do justice.
‘Sorry,’ I said, rather sincerely. ‘Merry Christma-.’ On that final syllable, the door slammed shut inches from my anguished face.
The Disinterested Philosopher Gets By 