The Stocking Was Hung

The Stocking Was Hung by Tara Sivec




Chapter 1




Noel


“Put him on the phone, Noel. I just want to say hello to my future son-in-law.”

Rolling my eyes, I signal to the bartender, then point to my empty pilsner glass while my mother adds a little guilt to her demand.

“My baby is stuck in an airport in a strange, dangerous city. Is it too much to ask that I speak to the man accompanying her to make sure he’s keeping her safe?” she questions.

“Mom, I’m in Chicago, not Afghanistan,” I remind her with a sigh as the waitress rushes over to me and quickly refills my glass with another draft beer. She can obviously see the distress on my face and knows I’m two seconds away from losing my shit all over the bar if I don’t get more booze in my system. I should’ve ignored my mother’s call and continued drinking away my problems, but after ten missed calls, six voicemails and four text messages, if I continued to ignore her she would’ve probably called the police.

“Whatever,” she huffs. “Put him on the phone.”

I cringe, lifting the delicious frosty beverage to my lips and downing half of it. I should’ve told her the truth two days ago when everything went to shit, instead of lying about it every time she called. I should just tell her the truth now and get it over with, instead of having to do it in person when I finally make it home and see the disappointment on her face.

“And don’t even try to tell me he’s in the bathroom again. He’s been in the bathroom every time I call,” she complains.

Her words bring the guilt, fear, and sadness rushing back and the beer goes down the wrong pipe when I gasp, causing my eyes to fill with tears as I choke and cough and try to breathe.

“Wait, does he have an incontinence problem? Is that why he’s in the bathroom so much?” Mom questions worriedly while I hold the mouthpiece away from my hacking coughs so she doesn’t think I’m dying and call 911. “You should call a doctor about that. It could be serious.”

After I get my coughing under control, I stare around the small airport bar at all the other sad, lonely travelers stuck at O’Hare due to the snow. The multicolored twinkling lights hanging from the ceiling and the soft sounds of Christmas carols piped through the speakers should make me happy, but it just makes me feel even more emo and depressed. It’s Christmas and I’m unemployed, homeless, and too much of a chicken-shit to tell my mother that my boyfriend of twelve months got down on one knee to propose and I freaked the f*ck out, running away screaming because…commitment. How much worse could things possibly get?

“I’ll give you the number to your father’s urologist. His name is Doctor Urinstein, and he’s amazing,” my mother tells me, pulling me out of my self-pity party.

“Dad’s urologist is seriously named Doctor Urinstein? Tell me that’s a joke,” I implore in an attempting to divert her attention away from speaking to my boyfriend traveling with me who is no longer my boyfriend nor is he traveling with me. Why didn’t I just tell her the truth yesterday when she called and asked if Logan preferred corn or green beans?

Probably because she didn’t let me get a word in and talked for five minutes non-stop about how I’d broken her heart by not being able to come home last Christmas, and that the only thing that has kept her from crying herself to sleep every night is the knowledge that I’m finally able to make the trip and bringing a man with me.

Welcome to Guilt Town, population: my mother.

Don’t judge me. You try explaining to your mother that when your boyfriend got down on one knee with a velvet box in his hand, all you could about was being barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, catering to his every need instead of being a strong, independent woman. I know it’s not the 1950’s anymore, and I’m pretty sure Logan wouldn’t have expected me to put on a dress and pearls to serve him a martini every night in an apron when he got home from work, but still. It’s not an easy thing to do, let me tell you.

“I once had a gynecologist named Dr. *foot,” my mother muses. “Lovely woman, very gentle hands.”

Throwing my arm out in disgust, I forget all about the glass of beer in my hand and all of the amber liquid sloshes out behind me.

“SON OF A BITCH!” an angry, deep voice shouts.

I wince, realizing I just spilled beer all over someone and quickly cut my mother off before she can give me intimate details about her last pap test.

“Mom, I’ve gotta go. I’ll call you when I know the flight status,” I explain hurriedly, smacking my now-empty glass on top of the bar in front of me.

“Great. Just great. Now it looks like I pissed myself,” the man behind me complains loudly.

“Oh, dear,” my mother frets. “I’m hanging up and calling Doctor Urinstein right now. You can thank me later.”

She disconnects the call before I can say anything else. With a sigh, I shove my phone into the purse resting on top of my lap and start rummaging around for the napkins I’d kept after my earlier lunch.

“Hold on, I have some napkins in here somewhere,” I mutter, digging to the bottom of the cluttered bag, too frazzled to realize there’s a stack of bar napkins right in front of me.

“Don’t bother. I think you’ve done enough,” the deep, raspy voice mutters.