The Last Christmas


                     

For fifteen minutes, eighteen-year-old Jack Mahon was the ultimate party animal.  Then he collapsed in the middle of Sarah Smythe’s Christmas party.

Dead on arrival, the hospital said. 

Drug overdose, concluded the extensive tox screen.

But for a generous six figure donation from his parents, his obituary in the New York Times read, “Unexplained death of promising teenager.”  Even his death certificate went in on deception, claiming he had passed from natural causes.

Although Jack wasn’t religious himself, his family held the funeral in Hampton Bay United Methodist Church with a closed casket.  His father, James Mahon–millionaire and Ambassador for Frank, a drug information agency—gave the eulogy, speaking of his grief at the sudden and unexpected death of his son.

At the reception at the house, following the service, Jack’s friends offered tributes to “a tender and loving soul.”

With its spiral staircase, opulent rooms, and a garden that looked better than the park near her home, she knew she was out of place in this mansion.  Michelle, Jack’s girlfriend, sat curled up in the corner of the sitting room, trying to grieve in peace.  Her long hair, dark and unwashed since Jack’s death, hung limply over tired eyes made heavier by cheap mascara.  Her black, wrinkled cotton clothes gave her the look of a lost vampire come in from the solemn white winter afternoon.

She stared at the crowd that gathered to pay their respects to Jack, hoping to see a friendly face.

“You have no business here,” said a voice from behind her.  Michelle turned to see James Mahon.

His voice was quiet but commanding. “I suggest you leave.”

The smile on Mr. Mahon’s face couldn’t his hide his anger and disgust.

Michelle didn’t move.  She stared into the distance, past the elegant glass windows, to the statues in the garden.  The gray stone cherubs danced, frozen and naked, and shouted for her to join them.

Strong hands settled on her shoulders, dragged her back to reality.

Although his voice remained low, Mr. Mahon’s tone scared her as he said, “Leave.  Now.”

Michelle stood, shaky, spilling some of the contents of her oversized bag on the floor.   She hurried to pick everything up, but a small bottle of blue pills skated across the marble floor.

The bottle came to rest against Jack’s father, nudging one Italian loafer like a dog begging for attention.

“I’m sorry,” Michelle said, her voice trembling as she snatched the bottle and stuffed it into her pocket.

“You will be,” said Mr. Mahon.  He grabbed the girl by her elbow and marched her to the front door through the crowd of mourners.

Michelle paused for a moment to look at the large picture of Jack by the grand piano.  He looked so young and handsome, just like the first time they had met.

* * *

It was a late Saturday afternoon in July.  Michelle sat on the grass of the quad, inspecting her sketchbook.

She had spent the last hour creating an almost life-like picture of the untraditionally handsome young man napping on the grass a few feet away from her.  His cheeks were high and feminine, his nose large and hooked.  His mouth was too wide and his eyebrows too thick on his heavy brow.  Dark hair curled against his forehead, and his long fingers twined through the locks as he rested.

“You finish yet?” said a voice, startling her.

Oh god, she was so embarrassed!

She had tried to be discreet, afraid he might be freaked out by her attention.  In her enthusiasm for her work, she never realised that he had noticed her as well.

“Sorry, I’ll stop,” Michelle said.  She started to pack away her sketchbook and pencils.

The young man laughed.

“Don’t go,” he said.  He stood up, brushing the grass from his t-shirt and jeans.

Because he had been sleeping, Michelle had never seen his eyes.  Now, she almost lost hold of her art supplies as she started into the twin emerald stars that were the young man’s eyes.

“Let’s see the picture,” he said, smiling warmly.  “I posed for this long.  It’s only fair.”

Reluctantly, Michelle handed over her drawing.

“You’re good.  Very good.  I guess it helps having such a stunning model to work from.”

Michelle laughed.

“I’ve never seen you around campus before,” the young man said.

“Oh… I don’t go here,” Michelle said.  “It’s a long story.”

“I’ve got time,” said Jack as he helped her pack away her art materials.

Michelle hesitated.  The past year had been hard.  With her mother diagnosed with breast cancer, and her father and his new wife refusing to take her in, there had been a lot going on. She had stopped attending college to look after her mother and had used every penny they had to pay for medical bills.  She was working as a server in one of the local restaurants and she wasn’t sure that she wanted to let someone in to her life right now, even for a short while.

“I’m Jack, by the way.”

Jack was insistent and she found herself in a coffee shop with the handsome stranger.

Although Jack and Michelle came from two very different worlds–he from the Hamptons, she from the Bronx–there was a definite spark between them.  Over coffee and scones, they realised that they both had a love for English Literature, especially Shakespeare.

Romeo and Juliet is my favorite,” said Michelle.  “A lot of people think it’s silly, a sixteen-year-old and a thirteen-year-old having such a brief affair and killing themselves because their families won’t let them be together.  But I find it fascinating that two people could be so swept up in their emotions, whether it was love or lust or something else entirely.”

“That’s an interesting way of looking at it,” Jack said.  He smirked as he said, “Personally, I love The Taming of the Shrew.”

That evening, as they stood under a sky full of stars on the edge of Central Park, they kissed for the first time and held each other with a passion that neither had felt before.

Maybe it was the heat of the evening, or the feeling of finding a soul mate, or the craving that they both felt in their bodies, but Michelle’s heart filled with a new hope.

Though it was only in one small way, her life was looking up.

A month later, Jack invited Michelle to his family’s estate.

“I want you to meet my Mum and Dad,” he said.  “I know they’ll love you.  And, well, I was hoping I might convince them to help get you back to school in September.  Your talents are wasted on all these portraits you keep making of me.”

Either Jack was naive or he didn’t know his parents.

As Michelle walked in the front door of what felt like a palace, Mr. and Mrs. Mahon’s smiles walked out.

The evening was full of pretence and general indifference to the girl the Mahons wouldn’t have hired as a house cleaner let alone deemed worthy of their only son and heir.

At the end of the evening, as they walked to Jack’s car, parked near his favourite willow tree, Jack kissed Michelle passionately.  He said, “Aren’t my parents great?  And I really think they loved you!”

He squeezed an arm around her waist.

Michelle stiffened and tears welled up in her eyes.  She didn’t have the courage to break Jack’s heart and tell him what she knew: like Romeo and Juliet, their loved had been doomed from the start.

* * *

The second time Michelle met Jack’s parents was at the end of Sarah Smythe’s party.

The night that Jack took sick.

The night that Jack died.

As he laid there in her arms–foaming at the mouth, vomit and spit on his crisp white shirt—she’d known he was going to die.  Michelle held onto him as tightly as she could, as though her own life was the one on the line.

She hadn’t let go until Mr. James Mahon ripped her off his dying son.  She remembered how he stooped to cradle his boy, spitting vitriol at Michelle, telling her she had done this to Jack.

She had argued, saying she hadn’t done anything.  That she had found him that way.  But it didn’t matter.  Nothing mattered.  Little more than five months after it had started, her love and her hope were over.

Michelle walked through the wake, still being led by Mr. Mahon.

In the crowd of onlookers, her eyes caught on Sarah Smythe.

Blonde Sarah.  Pretty Sarah.  The Sarah that had thrown herself at Jack the night he died.  The Sarah that Jack had turned down, because he was there with Michelle.

Sarah… the designer drug addict posing as a Hampton socialite. With the number of times she had been featured, partying hard and wild in the celebrity magazines, Ms. Smythe was almost a B-list celebrity.

Michelle knew her kind.  A lady in public but, behind closed doors, a junkie and a destroyer of lives.

Michelle felt her heart ice over as she remembered hearing that, when Sarah got high, she would play tricks on other people.  She would fling herself at the first person who came her way–guy or girl, it didn’t matter, it was all a big joke to her.  If they accepted her, she’d take them partying.  But if they rejected her, she’d spike their drinks with what Michelle had heard called fairydust.

While she didn’t have proof, Michelle knew the truth about that spoiled rich brat.

Mr. Mahon tossed Michelle towards the front door, where a servant stood ready to open it and send her on her not-so-merry way.

Michelle looked around a final time.  Everyone was rich enough to buy power, respect and secrecy… except her.  She was the outsider.  She knew that the way they looked away from her, she was who they blamed.  Whether anyone else suspected Sarah Smythe of not, it didn’t matter.  They needed to believe it was someone outside their social stratosphere who took away James Mahon’s precious son.

Michelle’s beloved.

She knew the truth about Sarah would never come out.

Fine, she thought.  Let them believe what they want.  They didn’t know him anyway.  Not like I did.

As Michelle trudged away from the mansion, the first snow fell gently at her feet. She was cold but didn’t shiver.

She sighed.

Tomorrow was Christmas Eve.  She and Jack had been planning to spend the day together before he had to join his family.

She stopped at Jack’s favorite weeping willow near the edge of the driveway and took a seat on a stone bench tucked away there.  She reached into her pocket and closed aching fingers around the little container of blue pills.

They would be together tomorrow after all.