Christmas Dinner

My fork comes up to my mouth placing a piece of Christmas ham on my tongue. I chew and swallow before bringing my fork down to take another piece of ham from my plate. The process repeats, chew, swallow, chew. The ham isn't particularly juicy, or salty, or sweet. It doesn't taste like anything. 

The monotony of the taste bores me and I reach for some mashed potatoes. Chew, swallow, chew, swallow. It tastes like the ham.

Christmas Eve wasn’t always this dull. I remember embracing my children with love and affection. Now they're too busy chasing their offspring around the dinner table, telling them to behave. 

I look at my wife. Her soft gray hair is cropped short, her beautiful blue eyes are clouded. I can’t seem to remember a time when her face wasn’t cut with wrinkles or she looked at me fondly. It seems with each new wrinkle the more she narrows her eyes at me.

“Thank you for the ham, Cassandra,” I tell her. She gives me a half-hearted little smile.

“I know you don’t like it, Eugene,” she replies, “but you’re welcome anyway.”

She’s known me for fifty years. Of course she can tell I don’t particularly care for it, or any of her cooking.

I look down at my plate. Half-finished pink ham, a small mound of lumpy mashed potatoes, and what appears to be green bean casserole adorn it. Feeling the food come up again in my throat, I can no longer take the suffocating din of scraping forks and polite chatter.

Cassandra looks at me in alarm, as well as our two children and their children. It takes me a moment to realize my fist is bleeding. Broken crystal is digging into my palm where I’ve squeezed the glass so hard it’s shattered. Red wine mixed with red blood is staining the white tablecloth.

“Eugene have you lost your mind?” Cassandra admonishes me.

“I’m sorry, excuse me,” is the only thing I can say before getting up from the dinner table.

In the bathroom, I try and remove as many shards of glass as I can before washing my hands. A small stream of red is being washed away down the drain. I open the medicine cabinet and try and wrap my hand up as best as I can. There’s a knock on the doorframe.

“Dad you should really go to the hospital,” my daughter Claire says. “There could still be glass in there and you’re doing a bad job of bandaging up your cuts.”

“I don’t need you to tell me how to wrap up my wound,” I bite at her. “And I don’t need to pay for the trip to the emergency room. I’m fine.”

“Whatever you say, Dad,” Claire says, holding up her palms in a defensive gesture. As she leaves I hear her mumble stubborn old man.

I put away the remaining bandages in the medicine cabinet. I look down at the white bandages that are now slowly being stained red. I figure nothing bad can happen and I look up to stare at my reflection.

The man in front of me wears spectacles and has thin tufts of white hair. Deep wrinkles line his face around his mouth from scowling. The lines deepen even more as I feel my mouth turn downwards.

My meticulous inspection leads to nothing, so I return to the dining room, where my family has continued as if nothing happened. Their forks scrape against their plates and Cassandra still has a little smile on her face. I take my seat at the head of the table, and slice another piece of ham.

I bring it up to my mouth, chew, and swallow.