As a child, Alexis had loved holidays and the family traditions surrounding them. Every year, she was in the Nativity pageant, and later she participated in the church’s musical presentations with the youth group. Frank put up the lights on the house and Liz baked cookies and made decorations out of papier-mâché. On Christmas Eve, instead of watching TV, the family played cards or board games together while listening to carols on the hi-fi. On Christmas morning, Frank presided over the opening the presents, one by one. Later, Grandma and Grandpa arrived and the wonderful smells of turkey and pumpkin pies filled the air.Of course, in her rebellious teenage years, Alexis had gone through a stage when the family environment had become too square; she wanted to spend Christmas or Easter with her friends. But her father had insisted that those holidays were reserved for family. He had said that, in the future, the friends would be all but forgotten, while family would remain.
"Family is the only thing that counts; the only thing that lasts," Frank had said. "Only your family really loves you." How wise Dad had been on that count, she thought.
In those days of young innocence, when Alexis had dreamed of the future, she had imagined herself to be the kind of wife and mother Liz had been, and her husband would be like her father, funny and caring, kind and giving. Max was none of these things. Instead, he had become the enemy, the opponent. Anti-love, anti-trust, anti-laughter. Now she dreaded the holidays. There was no tradition, no cohesion in the family, and the contrast to her childhood made the pain greater.
Compounding the problem was the radically different climate in Belize; it was virtually impossible to create a typical holiday ambiance. There were none of the usual props. No grandparents were due to arrive from over-the-river-and-through-the-woods. There was no church pageant, and no snow. During the previous Christmas, Alexis had made a trip to the Pine Ridge and cut a scraggly long-needled pine, but then she had fretted that there were no decorations. So she'd strung some popcorn and hung it on the tree, only to find that, by morning, ants had invaded the house and eaten it. Chicken was abundant in Belize, but turkey was scarce. Orange pumpkins were unknown, and even if Alexis had been able to obtain such delicacies, she had no oven in which to cook them.
Now it was Easter, and Alexis wanted to show Jordan some of the traditions she had enjoyed as a child. She searched the shops in Cayo to find an Easter basket, jelly beans, and a chocolate rabbit, but found nothing. Colored dye for Easter eggs was unheard of; no one even knew what she was talking about. Disheartened, she went home and put some eggs on the stove to hard-boil. Then, while Jordan was napping, she looked through his toy box for some crayons. The art work would be crude, but she would do her best. But, of course, Max took issue with her."What the hell are you doing?" he said, as he saw the tray of eggs with Crayola faces.
"I just wanted to do something for Jordan for Easter. I thought it would be fun to have an egg hunt."
"That's stupid,” Max said, unequivocally. “All that holiday stuff you're so attached to is pointless."
It seemed that everything had become either pointless or stupid to Max, unless it revolved around him, or directly related to making money. Alexis felt utterly invalidated by his contempt, and it extended to anything she held sacred or meaningful. But it wasn't just the holidays. It was more far-reaching than that.
Gradually, Alexis' image of what family life should be was fading into a charade. Except for her son, and the beauty of the verdant jungle around her, life had become colorless. The dream of a utopian farm had degenerated into a jaded monotony of daily chores. Alexis felt her horizons shrinking. She was lonesome for human companionship. Fear and boredom directed her wooden movements as her verbal creativity became first stifled, then crushed. She no longer wrote poetry. She hadn't kept a journal for years. Life was no longer an open book, full of promise. Max was unbearable and hounded her like a drill sergeant. He cross-examined her every word, thought, and deed, then nit-picked her answers. When she spoke, he wanted to know what she was insinuating, instead of taking her word at face value.
Sadly, Alexis learned one very valuable lesson: that a plausible falsehood was often more useful than an unworkable truth. She wasn't a dishonest person, but it simply became more practical to tell the man whatever he wanted to hear. If openness and honesty were the trademarks of a healthy marriage, then Max had effectively educated her on the value of deception. He’d taught her to become a liar by making the truth a punishable offense.
