Trini Trims the Tree

In the silence while everyone awaited Jerry's response, I heard the cook stirring or scraping something on the other side of the kitchen door. He's really stirring up a storm in there. Is our storm winding down in here?

"We'll talk about this later," Jerry mumbled at last, looking down at his plate in a very subdued, non-gazillionaire manner.

Hah! I thought, doing a victory lap in my head.

"I ... guess so," Wyn said. He glanced curiously at me, then back to his father. "Not that it's going to change anything for us to wait --"

With a pained expression, Mrs. Tate cleared her throat. "He said we would talk about it later. Now can we please move on to a less contentious subject."

Thank you, Merry! I knew there had to be an upside to your persnickety Miss Manners-ism.

Jerry picked up his knife and power-sawed his steak. Wyn held his fork like it might help him think of something to say. Liz decided to come to the table's salvation.

"So," she asked me brightly, "I haven't heard yet -- what is it that you do, Trini?"

In the last ten yards of my victory lap, I tripped and fell flat on my face.

Oh, for God's sake. Now? It couldn't be, I don't know, any other question???

Wyn held his fork even tighter. His parents both stared at their food like they were trying to move it with their minds.

"Well, truth be told, I'm ..."

An event coordinator.

Event coordinator.

Event coordinator. Come on, Trini, say it with me, 'An event coordinator.'

But looking Liz in the face, with her expression saying she actually, genuinely wanted to know, I just couldn't fake it.

"I'm a professional escort."

She blinked for a second or two after I got the words out.

"Escort." Her eyes kept shuttering and unshuttering, moving between me and Wyn. "You mean you ..."

"I have sex with people for money."

She snort-laughed and then laugh-laughed. "Ha! That's either the balls-iest dinnertable joke I've ever heard, or ..."

I didn't have to look at Jerry and Merry to know from the silence they'd gone dead-dinosaur petrified. And after a second of that silence, Liz's eyes went as big around as the china.

"Oh my God." Back-and-forth almost faster than she had blinked, her gaze flipped from one of her parents to another. "It's true. And the two of you have both slept with her!"

"What?" The way the word burst out, Wyn must've had his breath held, waiting to see what would happen. "Liz, don't be --"

Clearly expecting a denial, he turned to me. All I could do was bite my lip. I saw his jaw drop. His eyes moved on to Jerry, but only for a second. Yeah, he can kind of buy that news. On the other hand ...

"Mom?"

That word, aimed right at her, de-fossilized Mrs. Tate. With a squawk, she popped up from her chair and started shouting.

To the room: "This is outrageous!" To Liz: "How could you say such a thing?" To Wyn, with her voice cracking: "How could you think such a thing?"

Then she disappeared upstairs in a whirlwind of tears and sobs.

Jerry stood up, folded his napkin, and left the house.

Wyn stared after him for a minute. "What the fuck?"

"I'm sorry, Wyn, I didn't know until I got here and --"

"No, no, no," he said, instantly covering my hand with one of his. "Not you." His face turned to his sister and turned livid at the same moment. "Liz. What -- the -- FUCK."

She leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs, wineglass swirling in one hand. "I'd like to say I just blurted it out without thinking," she said, pausing afterward to take a sip. "But to be honest, it was a total executive decision."

I felt the anger in Wyn's grip where it squeezed my hand. "An execu-fucking what?"

"Come on, Wyn," she said. "Let's add the facts up. Your girlfriend announces she's an escort. Then, instead of yelling at you for bringing a whore to Christmas, they both just completely freeze? Pardon me, Trini, I'm not calling you a whore, I'm just saying that's what the Mom and Dad we grew up with would call you. Only they didn't. They sat there like statues -- only not quite like statues, because if you were paying close attention, Mom just looked mortified, and Dad looked mortified and startled. Which means Mom already knew about Dad and Trini, but Dad had no idea about Mom."

"Damn, Wyn," I said. "You told me Liz was smart, but I didn't know you meant she was Sherlock-Holmes kind of smart."

"Yeah, she's a fucking genius." He had cooled down as she talked, now just holding my hand instead of locking it in a vice. "I still haven't heard why you'd call them on it at the dinner table, Liz."

"It was then or never. As soon as they realized Trini wasn't going to tell on them, we were all done for. You know that, don't you? They couldn't stay the people we grew up with and also allow a sex-worker in their house. There's no universe in which the people who raised us would allow Trini to stay. If I'd let them leave the room with their secret safe, Mom would have gone up and Xanaxed herself comatose for the rest of the trip, and Dad would have told the two of you to get off the island tomorrow morning. You gave him the perfect excuse -- leaving the company and bringing home a prostitute. So first thing in the morning, the two of you are gone. Mom's in Xanax la-la land. When she comes to, she doesn't just think she's a failure as a wife -- she thinks she's a failure as a mother too, because now there's a major split between you and Dad, and a big icebox between me and Dad because I'm pissed at him kicking you out. Plus, she knows he kicked you out for having sex with the very same prostitute he had sex with. What a fucking hypocrite. After something like that, there's no repairing their relationship, but she's still going to stay with him, because we've left her the illusion of propriety, and getting divorced would break that illusion. Total shitsville. Have I missed anything? Any holes in that scenario?"

Wyn frowned, shaking his head slowly. "No, that's pretty much how it would go. Only ... what exactly is better this way?"

Liz drained her wineglass. "Damn, are you going to make me do all the hard work in this conversation? I'm parched already. Hey! On the other side of the door! Can I get some more of the Chardonnay in here? Okay, while I'm waiting on the eavesdroppers to bring me my wine, does someone else want to take a turn at bat?"

"Uh ... my brain is boggled," said Wyn, picking up his own glass for a slug.

"Eat some more of your steak, then," his sister told him. "It's a crime to let this shit go to waste. How about you, Trini? Anything you want to throw out there that wouldn't violate professional confidentiality?"

I thought about it, then looked at Wyn. "Well ... it should be pretty obvious at this point that both of your parents are waayyy repressed, right? I'm not giving up any secrets with that. I bet you understood it back in high school, if not earlier. Only you didn't know they're both major pervs, and they sure didn't think you'd ever find out. They've been hiding this big chunk of who they are all your life, and now they can't hide it anymore. Kind of wipes the slate clean on your whole family dynamic, right?"

"Score one for Trini!" Liz said as the server came in with a newly filled wineglass and the bottle on a tray. Liz snagged them both. "Thank you." The server gave a little curtsey, picked up the empty glass, and left again. "You picked a smart one here, Wyn. Later in the week, you've got to tell me the story of how you found her."

I grinned. "It's a good story."

"Yeah," Wyn agreed. "It's a pretty damn good story."

"Well shit, then," she said, taking another drink. "Maybe you should just tell me now and we can all get drunk and leave our plotting against Mom and Dad till tomorrow."

At the same time, Wyn and I both said,

"I'll drink to that."

* * *

We didn't end up all that drunk, and we did end up doing some plotting, though not enough to settle anything. But lying in bed that night, after some quiet, reassuring sex with the most beautiful man I think I ever met, I had an idea. A couple of ideas, in fact.

The next morning, we got the lay of the land. Merry was still shut up in her room. Tompkins said that Mister Tate had taken one of the boats right after dinner and headed to an island across the way -- the one where Liz and Merry had been shopping the day before. Presumably, he'd gotten plastered and stayed the night there.

So we split up: Liz to talk their mother out of her room, Wyn to try to find his dad and wrangle him home, and me to the airstrip where I had the pilot fly me back to Nassau for something I didn't expect they'd have on the smaller island. I got back early afternoon to find that everyone had done their jobs, and ten minutes later we all gathered in the big room where that towering, naked Christmas tree stood waiting in its corner.

Woosh. I have never had to dog-paddle my way through a shame-swamp of loathing and resentment like the one stinking up that room. Luckily, it almost all came off the Tate parents -- if I'd been hit with it from all four sides, I think I'd have run.

"Okay," I said, walking over in front of the tree and putting both hands on my hips. Liz and Wyn watched me attentively from the couch. Meanwhile, Jerry and Merry -- seated in the most widely spaced chairs in the room -- couldn't let their eyes settle in any one place, jabbing a variety of glares and sneers around the room at each other and at their children, then wimping out and looking away after a second or two. "So here's the deal. All eyes on me."

Surprisingly, Mister and Mrs. Tate obeyed. Or maybe not so surprisingly -- under Jerry's hung-over stare of hatred I could see that forbidden, repressed lust clawing to get to the surface. And under Merry's please-let-me-die embarrassment, her puffy red eyes had just a tiny hint of wistful longing.

I got going.

"The first thing to do is admit the biggest fact. Nobody here gets to blame this cockup on anybody but themselves."

With his fiercest scowl, Jerry said, "Why exactly are you the one lecturing us, then?"

Oh, Jerry. Do you think I'd be standing up here if I wasn't ready for that one?

"Easy," I said, smiling just as fiercely as he'd scowled. "One way or the other, we've all fucked each other getting to this point. But I'm the only one in the room who's a professional in fucking, and that makes me the expert."

Merry blushed. Wyn treated me to one of his sweet, worshipful looks. Liz gave me a thumbs-up. And Jerry let the point drop.

"Now," I went on, pacing with my hands clasped behind me (and don't think it escaped me that this pushed my tits up and out against the front of my tube-top), "two of you called me for sex. Wyn called me for a date. Liz let all of our cats out of the bag. And I --" Here, I gave a glance down my front, holding out a long, bare leg to take it all in. "-- I took a bunch of hormones, had plastic surgery, set up an illegal sex business, and then blabbed my job to Liz instead of lying when she asked."

I took my hands from behind my back and shrugged.

"Some of those things turned out better than others."

That got a laugh from Wyn and his sister.

"I know, right?" I grinned at the Tate siblings, but I was more interested in making their parents react. "Now, you two --" I pointed my eyes and a finger at Jerry, then Merry, shifting back and forth until they both looked ready to squirm. "-- maybe you both regret making those calls now. But there was a time when you didn't. When you really, really didn't."

Mrs. Tate looked away, even redder. Jerry swallowed, but set his jaw to try to hide it.

"So our job at this point," I said, pacing again and looking from one of them to the next to the next, "is to look around this room and remember that everybody here either loves each other, or has worked their butts off trying to live up to the other people's expectations. And our job is also to remember how good it felt when that work paid off. How proud you were when your kids both graduated with honors, high school and college. How it felt getting patted on the back for terrific grades or for pulling the company's stock price up. And yeah, not to dodge a really important one, but how fantastic the sex was. Especially the two of you."

Jerry and Merry both bristled when I pointed, but I kept going before they could open their mouths. "I don't mean with me. Or, I do, just a little -- but I'm mostly talking about way back, probably before the kids, when you had the time of your lives boning each other."

"That is so uncalled-for!"

"Oh, shut up, Mom," said Liz. "It's way too late for you to go back to pretending you don't like boffing with the best of them."

Merry's mouth hung open, but either she couldn't say anything or she held herself back from it.

Liz turned back to me. "Trini?"

"Thanks. Sorry you've been getting left out of this sex part of the speech."

"Haha. Trust me, I've had more than my share."

I went back to working the room. "So the point is, there's not one of us who's incapable of having an awesome time with the others if we just put our minds to it. And for the next three days, we're going to put our minds to it. Who plays tennis?"

Merry and Jerry both furrowed their brows, but I saw their eyes flick toward one another.

"Not in a long time, right? But you used to. And I was pretty good in college."

"Me too," said Liz.

"I hate tennis," Wyn said. "I completely suck at it."

"You can be the line judge. Next -- who plays poker?"

"Ugh," said Merry, maybe with more disgust than when the subject had been sex.

"Everybody else though, right? And there are enough jet-skis down at the cove for us to take turns, and I saw last night that we all drink. So the deal is, Merry's going to make us up a schedule of activities. That's your skill set, right, Merry?"

She nodded, grudgingly.

"A tennis tournament, poker, jet-skis, maybe some swimming, more of those gourmet meals, drinks in the hot tub, some doubles tennis matches --"

"Bridge," Jerry growled.

With my hands up, I said, "I've never gotten bridge, but I'll watch. We're going to fill up the rest of our stay here with things we enjoy, and we're going to do our damnedest to enjoy them and enjoy each other."

I looked around. Nobody tried to fight me.

"And tonight," I said, "we're going to pull out the box of ornaments for the Tate family Christmas tradition Wyn told me about, and we're going to dress this tree up like a motherfucker. Now, Merry, go get your day-planner."

* * *

The rest of the day went pretty well.

Liz and I let her parents win most of the doubles sets. (I'm saying we let them win, anyway. To be honest, they were pretty damn good, and the more matches we went through, the better they fell into a team groove and the harder they made it on us two younger girls.) Wyn didn't play, but he joined me in the shower afterwards, which, honestly, I appreciated way more.

Dinner rocked my world. Crazy good shrimp scampi appetizers, clam chowder, unbelievable swordfish, and a hurt-yourself-getting-the-last-of-it-down chocolate/espresso cake. Conversation hovered on the low end of the boredom/excitement scale -- which of course means it went much better than the evening before.

And then came Christmas-tree time.

The Tates went someplace new every Christmas, and wherever they went, each person picked out an ornament or a knick-knack that could be made into an ornament. Then, at the end of the trip, they packed it all in a box and mailed it home to bring with them the next holiday season. So the tree didn't get any lights or garlands, but filling the branches up with ornaments took everyone back to different years and different places, dozens of funny incidents or noteworthy disasters that had piled up over the course of a couple decades jaunting around the world each December.

By the end of it, that does something to you, I think, if you let it into your heart even a little. The vibe between Wyn and his family hadn't turned all sugarplums and gingerbread cookies, but it was better. Maybe better than it had been in a long time, I guessed -- or at least, I hoped.

When the last ornament went up and the last of those stories had been told, Merry fished a big star from the bottom of the box. But I stopped her before she could get far with it.

"Nope," I said, bringing out the bag from my Nassau shopping trip earlier in the day. I climbed up the stepladder with it, fished out the contents, and crowned the plastic evergreen in true Trini fashion.

"What ... in God's name ... is that?" Jerry asked.

I hopped down from the stepladder and raised one hand toward the strap-on I'd arranged atop the tree.

"It's a new angel for the Christmas tree," I said. "And at 12:01 tomorrow night, it's going to be Christmas, and the angel turns into somebody's Christmas present. I don't want to see it up there Christmas morning."

Merry stared up at the skyward-pointing dong and its leather straps. One hand rose up to cover her mouth. Jerry, after a moment of compressing his face ambiguously, went to the bar to get himself a drink.

Liz shook her head and gave me an admiring smile. "I like you, Trini. I'm not a hundred percent sure how well you're going to fit in with this family, but I like the hell out of you."

"I'm not a hundred percent sure either," I told her. "If I stick around, though, I bet you dollars to dildos this family will end up fitting in with me."

That said, I stepped over to Wyn and took him by the arm. "Think we could go find some mistletoe now?"

"Oh, yeah," he said, squeezing me to him. "Definitely."

And we walked out under tropical Christmas stars to do some celebrating.