CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Despite my best efforts at exemplifying the qualities of a taciturn grouch, the forced vacation proved restorative to body and soul. I’d missed my little family while lumbering around Horseheads.

Christmas Eve dinner was me and Lionel, and Meg and Devlin. After dinner, I watched an animated superhero movie with the kiddo. Devlin leaned into my side and fell asleep while his cartoon played on. It dawned on me that I felt very protective. I carried him to bed, reflecting, as Meg took over to tuck him in, that he’d gotten heavier. Somewhere along the way, I’d segued from “cool uncle” to a father figure. This scared me for reasons I chose not to interrogate.

Because sensitivity isn’t one of my finest qualities, I asked Lionel why Delia hadn’t accompanied him for dinner. Was our spread too humble for Her Majesty? Was it his face? He said she’d fucked off to Italy on vacation with a guitar player who fronted a famous band none of us listened to. His disinterested tone wasn’t convincing anyone. I felt a twinge of guilt for interrupting his time with the Black Powder ladies.

Lionel sat on the floor, sorting packages of toys, and scowling. His left arm was in a sling painted with snowflakes and candy canes. Devlin had insisted he wear a red and green elf cap while attending the festivities.

“Most aggravating part of Christmas is how much of it boils down to some assembly required! Batteries not included!” He’d graduated from rum and Coke to plain rum with corresponding surliness.

“Let us not forget the five A.M. wake-up call.” Meg glanced at the clock. “Popcorn and a movie, boys?” Bag popcorn and more rum and Cokes incoming.

Counterintuitively, Christmas is the perfect occasion to revel in the horror genre and forget the horrors of the real world. She put on John Carpenter’s seminal 1978 slasher flick, Halloween. Having seen the film umpteen times, we drank and kibitzed. Michael Myers terrorized the original final girl, Laurie Strode, while Donald Pleasence, in the role of aged Dr. Loomis, plodded the streets of Haddonfield in pursuit of what he termed “pure evil.” I don’t laugh off such melodramatic pronouncements here in the shadow of middle age. The moral core of Halloween resonates, stronger and truer, as decades slide by and the world chases its own tail like Sean Pruitt’s ouroboros tattoo, or the strikingly similar (if one squinted) Mares of Thrace horse skull symbol.

Meg, who loved critical dissection, had afforded the film’s premise some thought since our last Christmas screening.

“When Michael Myers, aka the Shape, kills the German shepherd, you realize he’s overqualified for the babysitter massacre. He’s hell on wheels and slaughters everyone who crosses his path, yet a young girl and an old man ultimately defeat him. Why is that? To understand, we must examine the two most important members of the dramatis personae. Old man Loomis is a stand-in for Van Helsing of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. He uses his .38 snub as a crucifix against the ultimate plodding unkillable monster, which is Count Dracula minus the gothic style and barely repressed sexuality. Michael Myers’s sexuality manifests as hatred for those he catches coupling, and an inchoate desire for Laurie Strode that he can only act upon through violence. Slasher logic: If you use that pussy outside of marriage, or if you use that pussy for your own pleasure, I will stab you with my steely, metaphorical cock.” Note that she repeatedly jabbed my tender biceps to emphasize this last point.