Stories: All-New Tales

For a while, Yvonne kept herself away from our door, and she and Stephen seemed a bit awkward whenever they were near each other, but I made it clear that I wouldn’t have the two of them tiptoeing around over some little doomed infatuation, and they got the picture pretty quick.

Stephen and I had a good marriage. At first, he wasn’t the kind of husband I’d hoped he would be, but with my guidance, he began to take shape. I got him to give up his poetry and his reading, and all the other silly things he liked to fill his time with, and to concentrate on his career instead. Within a few years, he’d risen through the ranks of his firm, and we had enough money to make a nice life for ourselves. Stephen lost the boyishness and softness he’d had when I married him, and it pleased me to see the hard edges he developed in their place. We tried for a while to have children, but we never could—some problem with my uterus that I’m sure you don’t want to hear about—and if I’m being honest with myself, I think it’s probably just as well. I’m not really the maternal type.

It was a few years after we got married that Mother gave me the Christmas ornaments. Mother had quite an artistic eye, and her Christmas tree was always breathtaking. Over the years, she’d amassed a beautiful collection of ornaments, some of them quite valuable, and I know Yvonne had always hoped they’d pass to her someday. I think she was quite hurt that Mother chose to give them to me, but it was fast becoming clear that her role was going to be that of maiden aunt, hovering at the edges of our family Christmases, and it just wouldn’t have made any sense for her to have them. Mother was a practical woman, and she saw this as well as I did. She knew it was the way of the world, and there was nothing you or I could do about it. But Yvonne never could see things that were plain to everybody else, and I know she took it as a slight. Honestly, it’s forty-five years later, and I don’t think she’s gotten over it yet.

That first Christmas we had the ornaments, I had a big party for the whole family. I made a beautiful ham dinner, and we all sat beneath my perfect Christmas tree and opened gifts. Stephen played the piano—now there was one hobby I approved of—and we sang carols late into the night. After everyone left, Yvonne offered to stay late and clean up a little, since I’d done all the work of the party, and I agreed to her kind offer. I went up to bed, leaving Yvonne in the kitchen and Stephen still sitting at the piano, picking out tunes.

It must have been two hours later when I woke up and discovered that Stephen wasn’t in bed with me. The lights were still on downstairs, and I crept down to the living room. Stephen and Yvonne were sitting on the couch together. They had their arms around each other, and they were looking deep into each other’s eyes, their foreheads touching. She was stroking the back of his neck and speaking to him in a low voice. In the instant before the floorboards creaked and they looked up and saw me, I heard her say two words to him. I heard her say, “Leave her.”

Then, like I said, there was the business of the floorboards, and the two of them snapped their heads around like they’d been caught stealing, which, in a way, they had.

“Get out of my house,” I roared, and for a minute I wasn’t sure which of them I was talking to. They just sat there, frozen. I plucked one of the ornaments from the tree, a little white porcelain angel, and threw it at them with the newfound strength of a woman betrayed. It hit the wall over their heads and landed on the floor, chipping one of its wings, but it didn’t break. It was made of harder stuff than I’d thought.

Stephen didn’t leave me, of course. What a thought. Say what you will about him, he took his responsibilities seriously. I think he knew he had it pretty good with me. Really, not so much changed after that; I got a new fur coat out of it, and a trump card to play in every argument we ever had. And when Yvonne came around, sniffling and saying her sorries, I welcomed her back with open arms. Friends close, enemies closer. But I made sure that she and Stephen never had a single minute alone together, not a single moment in thirty years. When Stephen was lying in his hospital bed, two hours away from dying, he asked me if he could have a few minutes to say good-bye to her alone, and you know what I said? No. I said no. Simple as that.