"Oh, but I'm going on and on about myself. Come in, right this instant! You'll have to forgive the paltry decorations around the house. We had to cut back on some of the frivolities this year. Everything is just so expensive now! Did you know that we couldn't even afford poinsettias for the entryway? Oh I fought Grayham on it, I promise you. I told him, "Darling, what's Christmas without poinsettias?" But he held firm."
"Charlotte still has plans to get her masters in social work, he reminded me, and grad school tuition isn't cheap. What good a degree like that could possibly do her, I have no idea. There's no money in helping a bunch of druggies. But the girl is as stubborn as her father is, so here we are, scrimping and saving as best we can. No poinsettias. You can tell Piper is sad about it."
"But, as Grayham always reminds me (eyes rolling), Christmas is about being close to the ones you love anyway. So I suppose that we can live without a few of my favorite things this year. And you know what? Don't tell Grayham this, but I might have used my own credit card to purchase a few extra goodies. That's right. It's the Williams-Sonoma catalog!"
A hostess greets arriving guests with exaggerated warmth while noting travel chaos and a daughter's eight-hour tarmac delay. The daughter returned from college seated beside a passenger eating Taco Bell, prompting the hostess's disdain. Household finances are tight because of possible graduate school costs and a husband who opposes extra spending, leading to cuts in holiday decorations like poinsettias. The hostess oscillates between concern for family and snobbish judgments about others, consoles a toy corgi named Piper, and admits to secretly charging small Williams-Sonoma purchases despite the budget constraints.
Read at Defector
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]