Home for the Holidays

"Stay in here and don't come out." 

My brother-in-law herded his wife, my son and I into the used-to-be garage. 

The door clicked shut and we locked the door behind him. My sister-in-law's light blue eyes met mine in wide awareness and disbelief. 

"What do we do now?" she whispered. 

I shrugged as best I could with my wiggly toddler on my hip. 

"Down," he said. 

"Not right now, Monkey. Stay with Mama." I nuzzled his soft shaggy blond hair with my cheek. What do we do now? I wondered. 

Face to face and the kid between us, my sister-in-law pressed her right ear against the crack in the door. 

"Can you hear anything?" I asked. 

On the other side of the door were three men and a woman: our respective husbands and our in-laws. The three grown men, her husband, my husband, and their father, had eerily similar voices, so much so that I struggled to tell them apart on the phone. My father-in-law's new wife had a raspy, deepened voice from too much smoking.

"I can hear them, but I can't tell who is saying what. They all sound the same." 

It was a subtle burn. We snickered. Our new "mother-in-law" was the fourth wife on the roster, each wife getting progressively crazier. The Original Crazy, twenty years prior, was my husband's mother who caught my husband's father cheating on her with this current wife, but all of that ended in slashed tires and curse words, and eventually the adulterers married other people. Wife Two, my sister-in-law's husband's mother, turned out to be an alcoholic with either bi-polar disorder or schizophrenia, but I forget which; The Gambler was wife number three; The Good One was too smart to stay; eventually, Facebook rekindled the love of these two, and here we are. 

To be fair, they are kind of perfect for each other. They're both stuck in the late 80s, which I assume was the prime of their lives, but their pants didn't transition with the times. Once a handsome man, my father-in-law now looked like a chubby Roadhouse extra, moose knuckle and all. She still flaunts high-waisted painted-on jeans. Now, I wonder if the tightness of their pants cuts off circulation from their brains. 

Our momentary giggle was interrupted by three gunshots: pop, pop, pop! 

"Holy shit!" We listened harder. Finally, I couldn't resist unlocking the door. After all, what if someone was dead? 

I stepped around the corner and into the dining room with morbid curiosity. The long wooden rectangular antique table was still cleared off for Thanksgiving dinner. Just beyond the table, the kitchen was empty except for the five bags of groceries I brought in when all of this started. 

 The three of them were in the hallway, but it took a full second to take in what I was seeing: My father-in-law was facing my direction, holding his wife in a half nelson pose, her back pressed against his chest, her arms above her head, entwined with his. She was kicking wildly with her long legs, tight pants, and pointed boots. She was a black belt in karate, so she's not exactly harmless. My short, square brother-in-law has more muscle than brains and was in front of her, just out of reach of her boots, and reared so far back with his fist that he could've and should've been able to grab earth. My eyes darted back and forth. Questions reeled. Is he really going to let his son knock her out? What the actual fuck is happening? 

Just before the swing that would've certainly knocked Crazy Pants all the way out, my husband grabbed his brother's arm, saving his stepmom's face. 

"Let me go!" she yelled at her husband. And he did. She stomped out, boots thumping purposefully on the tile floor, straight through the house and out the front door. 

My brother in law laughed a hearty laugh. 

"Well, shit....welcome home, guys!" 

We left Texas three years prior and just received orders home. This was our first holiday back at home with his family, but unfortunately not the first time his family tempted me to look into the fine print on the marriage license and see if there was a way to get out. 

"So....quick question, what the hell happened?" I asked my father-in-law, who was watching his wife back her white SUV to the front door so she could load up and go. 

Several days prior, I asked my in-laws what their plans were for the holiday. My father-in-law and his wife had plans with her family; my brother-in-law and his wife had plans with her family. I should have known that there's something off about a family who doesn't even try to spend time together on what's supposed to be a family holiday. However, we'd been stationed on the east coast for long enough to realize that we weren't really even upset that we'd be alone on another holiday, because we weren't really alone; there were three of us - my husband, our son and I. 

And because I'm rarely punctual with these types of things, I went to the grocery store the day of Thanksgiving. When I pulled up to the front of the white stone house,my father-in-law and his wife were outside also. I popped the trunk, got out, and grabbed a couple of the bags. 

"See!" the wife yelled at my father-in-law. "You lied to me! She IS making Thanksgiving dinner!"

I wanted no part of that discussion, so I walked inside with the groceries. They walked in behind me and her scoldings followed him through the house. I became a wallflower alone with my questions. Somehow I had offended her by making Thanksgiving dinner for my husband and my son. Didn't they have plans anyway? Was I not supposed to make dinner for my own family? 

Their fighting ensued into their master bedroom; I fetched my husband out of our room and told him what was happening. He had no further information than I did, so we went to his brother's room at the far end of the hallway. It was in his brother's room when they heard the scuffle for themselves. 

"Help!" 

"Did Dad just call for help?" 

"Help!" 

My husband went to help his father and his brother ushered us down the hallway and into our large converted garage/bedroom. 

When my husband opened the door to the master bedroom, his stepmom was on the ground, but screamed "fuck you" at the same time that she kicked the bedroom door hard enough to cause him to reflexively reach for a pistol that wasn't on his hip today. His brother, however, after shooing us into our room, armed himself with a revolver and went to help. The new stepmom was biting, kicking, swinging and scrambling for a gun of her own, but frustrated that she didn't know the code to the gun safe and her own guns were "magically" unloaded. 

She made it to the bathroom where she let out another disgruntled snort after discovering that the shotgun in her closet had also been unloaded. 

"How come every fucking gun in this house is loaded except mine?!" 

Gee, I wonder...

She must've then made a comment about wanting to kill herself because the story goes that after she made the comment about the unloaded gun and the empty threat to hurt herself, my brother-in-law, making a point, scooped a handful of shells out of the safe (that he had the combination to), opened the door, and tossed them in before closing the door again. 

She didn't take kindly to that, if you can imagine, and she came out swinging again. When she attacked her husband again and would no longer listen to reason, they decided she was better out of the house than in the house, so they started to forcefully escort her out. This wasn't going well and she wouldn't stop yelling, so my brother-in-law took his revolver, walked to the front door, opened it, aimed at the sky and fired off three rounds: pop, pop, pop! 

To make matters worse, at some point one of the boys called the cops and reported the incident as domestic violence. 

My father-in-law a (crooked) sheriff's deputy knew what was about to happen. 

"Call it off," he told his sons. 

"What?" 

"Call it off. She's a teacher; if she gets domestic violence charges against her, she'll get fired." 

"We can't call it off; they're on their way." 

"I'll handle it," he said. "Just let me do the talking." 

"Call me crazy here, but perhaps she shouldn't be a teacher. You did see what just happened here, right?" 

We walked out in the cool November air and waited for the police to arrive. Whichever of the boys called in the incident gave the police her car's description, so we looked out over the open pastureland and the grid of caliche road that squared off the acreage. Red and blue lights slowed down at the end of the pavement and made the 90-degree turn. Up the hill to the east, we spotted another set of headlights. 

"That's not her, is it?" I asked. The lights drew near enough to determine that it was, in fact, an SUV or small pickup instead of a car, but it was dark outside and hard to see much else. The car paused at the intersection. I turned my head. At the direct opposite corner of the farm to market road was the officer. He turned toward the house, and the other car turned. 

"Surely not..." I said. "Is that her?" 

We deduced that if it were her, she wouldn't get back on the main road and she wouldn't let the cop catch up to her, but on a gravel road, there's not much safety in going fast and it also looks mighty conspicuous. At the next corners, the cars did the exact same thing. They were circling each other. 

Standing under the oak tree in the front yard, we could watch the world's most unexciting slow speed police chase. My father-in-law took this opportunity to find out who was on duty, call him directly, and get him to stop chasing his wife. 

I looked at my husband and leaned into his arm. "Can we go back to the coast now? I've had as much family time as I'd like."`