Make Me Beg, Daddy

Chapter 12

She wades through an ocean of cheek kisses and fawning glances. Half a dozen cousins and creepy uncles immediately rush to help unload her car. They came in carrying towering boxes of my baked goods, and every one of them gushes to Vivian about how delicious they look.

Connor is a few minutes behind her. He finds me by the sideboard, where I’m moving a tray of stuffed mushrooms two inches to the left for reasons known only to my mother.

“Hiya.” He kisses the top of my head. “Merry Christmas, babe.”

“Merry Christmas,” I say back, brushing sweaty bangs out of my face.

His hand rests on my back for exactly as long as his dad is watching, then leaves.

“Look at that,” my father-in-law says. “Ten years and he still can’t keep his hands off you.”

“He’s a real romantic,” I agree.

“Gets it from his old man,” he says, and then brays laughter at his own joke.

Finally, by seven-thirty, I’ve gotten everything where it needs to go and found time to duck into a guest bedroom and slip into my attire for the evening.

It’s a riff on the Delilah Classic. Black dress with long sleeves and a hem below the knee. Black tights underneath, plus shapewear, obviously.

Over it all goes the cardigan. It’s black like the rest of it, but not clingy.

The overall effect, when I check my reflection in the mirror, is anonymity. I’m a shapeless black frame, vaguely woman-shaped, but not super particular about the fine details. This shape mostly exists—for now, at least—to refill drinks and pass out party favors.

It’s a stark contrast against Viv’s gold-sequined bodycon dress with a hem that falls just below her sculpted ass.

I pat down the wrinkles in the cardigan and think about the jeans that make me look massive, and Andre the Giant at the charity gala, and every joke they wrote about the body I’m currently zipping into a girdle in my dead father’s house.

Then I turn off the light and go back downstairs.

I’m handing a plate to my aunt Bab when my father-in-law taps a spoon on his glass and takes the floor. He does this every year. He thinks being the loudest guy in the room automatically makes him in charge of it.

“Here’s the plan,” he announces. “We eat. We do dessert. Then we get the little ones bedded down, so we can relax and watch the slideshow without them screaming and running around like chickens with their heads cut off.”

I put down the serving spoon. “Wait, what?”

“That’s a good idea,” somebody chimes in.

“They’re feral when they’re up too late and cracked out on sugar,” says somebody else. “I agree. Bed first.”

Four or five people nod along, and it’s clear that I’m losing the crowd.

But I’m worried. The longer the slideshow gets delayed, the more opportunities Connor and my sister have to sneak off.

I haven’t stopped thinking about Vivian’s text on the iPad.

what time can u slip away tonight?

I’m still mulling what to do when I feel an arm snake through my elbow.

I look up in alarm to see Connor’s aunt Sherry. She’s way too friendly when she’s drunk, which she clearly is, judging by the eggnog sloshing over the rim of her glass and the bright pink glow in her cheeks.

“Delilah, angel face, why don’t you let me run the slideshow for—hic!—for tonight. You look dead on your feet!”

“Oh, no, it’s totally⁠—”

“Really, peach. You look like you could use the rest. Sit! Have a drink! Eat something!”

I swallow and put on my brightest smile. “That’s so sweet of you to offer,” I tell her. “But it’s a fussy old thing. It’ll fight anybody who isn’t me.”

“Well, at least make yourself a plate.”

I look across the room to see Vivian holding court among a gaggle of the younger female cousins, all of whom are gazing adoringly at her spray-tanned legs crossed over each other.

“I will,” I promise Aunt Sherry.

“That’s a good girl.” She pats my arm and stumbles off in a drunken zig-zag.

My eyes are still on Vivian, though. As I watch, she pulls her phone out of her clutch, reads a text, types out a response, and fires it off.

A suspicious instinct perks up in my gut. I search the crowd until I find Connor…

… who is pulling out his phone at that exact moment.

He thumbs something out.

Back to Viv. Another text.

Back to him. Another text.

They’re messaging each other.

I drop the ice bucket I was holding. Because I’ll be damned if I let them squirm their way out of the public humiliation I have planned.

I could let it go and run the show at the end of the night to whoever’s left, and the two of them could come back in with their hair fixed and watch the last four pictures of a family Christmas and never know what they missed.

Or, on the other hand…

Absolutely f*****g not.

I find my father-in-law by the drinks table, refilling.

“Can I ask you something?”

He looks down at me. I don’t think he’s ever had me make a case for anything. But he says, “Ask away, kid.”

“The slideshow. I was thinking we could do it right after dinner instead? Before dessert?”

He makes a face. “But the kids⁠—”

“My dad ran it before dessert,” I interrupt hastily. “He always said sweet treats put people to sleep. And the caterers leave at nine, so if we go late, they’ll be stacking chairs behind us the whole time.”

He hesitates, tugging at his bristly mustache. “Eh… I guess you’re right, huh? He did always insist on that. Well, alright then. S’pose it makes sense. Although…”

“Great!” I blurt. “Glad you agree. I’ll go tell everyone.”

I walk to the sideboard, which is where the drinks are and where Connor is, four feet from my sister monologuing about how fab Tokyo is during cherry blossom season, and I call out, loud enough for everyone in the house to hear me:

“Heads up, everyone! Quick change of plans. We’re doing the slideshow right after dinner instead of after dessert. Connor’s dad’s call. So don’t go anywhere.”

Vivian’s head whips around. “After dinner?”

“Yep. Soon as the plates are cleared.”

“Dee-Dee, some of us are still eating.”

“Then bring your plate,” I say as pleasantly as I can.

Connor is squinting at me with his glass halfway up to his lips. “Dee, you okay?”

“Who, me? I’m great.”

“You’re very…” He does a thing with his hand. “A lot. Tonight.”

“It’s Christmas,” I say. “I’m festive.”

Vivian is not done, though. She’s standing and brushing through the crowd of teens gathered at her feet. “Since when do you decide the schedule?”

I shrug. “Ed asked me to. It’s no big deal.”

It’s obvious that she wants to argue, but with so many eyes and ears on all sides, she doesn’t want to make a scene.

Instead, she takes her phone out of her clutch again. This time, she doesn’t bother hiding it.

Which confirms my suspicions. Whatever the two of them had planned has just gotten complicated.

Brace yourself, sister of mine.

It’s about to get a whole lot worse.

But first, it gets worse for me.

Because I now have less time than I anticipated to prepare, and the nerves are starting to come alive in my stomach.

Am I doing the right thing? Have I gone too far?

All I have to do is close my eyes and picture those text messages.

Then I decide, nope, not too far at all.

In fact, I might not be going far enough.

Dinner is wrapping up. Little clusters of Dorseys and Boyds and whoever-the-hell-else-is-here are sitting on couches and chairs, chatting happily.

Buffet trays sit mostly empty, scraped clean of the good stuff.

As per usual, nobody has touched Auntie Rosa’s lasagna. She put grapes in it one year and no one ever forgave her.

What all that means, though, is that it’s almost time for my performance.

I need to rehearse. All the big pieces are in place—the projector, my laptop, the slideshow—but I have to emcee this whole affair and I only get one shot at it.

The upstairs bathroom has a line. The downstairs one has Aunt Sherry in it, singing sea shanties at the top of her lungs while her husband tries to shush her.

Welp, those won’t work.

So I take the pantry.

There’s nothing in there but my mother’s dry goods and the vacuum. It’ll have to do.

I check that nobody’s watching me. Then I open the door, slip in, and pull it shut behind me.

Dark. Warm. Quiet. Safe.

I don’t turn on the light since I don’t want to draw attention. If I do, I’ll inevitably get pressed into service once again, carrying a folding table somewhere all by myself.

Haul-It-All Delilah is closed for business.

I put my back against the shelves and breathe in through my nose.

“Okay,” I whisper. “From the top. It starts like this: ‘I’m sure you all came expecting a very merry Dorsey family Christmas… I’ve got some bad news for you in that regard.’“

Then we get into the fun stuff. The receipts in order, with tidy little explanations that will paint a nice picture for the slow-to-understand or the hard of hearing.

I remember a rule from a creative writing class I took in high school.