The judges chose "Christmas Goes Up in Smoke" as first-place winner in our short-shorts contest. Congratulations, Margaret.

After today, Short-Shorts will be taking a break -- but we'll be back!

"Christmas Goes Up in Smoke" by Margaret Vaillancourt

I am smoking a cigarette in the living room of my father's house on Christmas Eve. It's 1966 and everyone smokes. There are no warning signs on our packs to make us think maybe we should not smoke. We smoke at our desks at work. We smoke in our cars. We smoke in restaurants, theaters, doctors' offices. There is no place we don't smoke. Smoking is pure bliss.

My brother, Topper, is watching me smoke. He is only fifteen and he's not supposed to smoke. I'm eighteen so I can smoke. When he asks me for a cigarette, I look at him like he's lost his mind. "No way am I going to give you a cigarette, Topper. Dad will kill you and then he'll kill me." 

Our father is in his office in the basement getting tight. He drinks everywhere. He even drinks while driving. He drinks as he drives to the country club, the golf course, the country to hunt for pheasants, and out to our turkey farm to bother our farm manager. Once he gets to where he is going, he continues to drink. By the time he drives home, weaving and racing down country roads he is soused. I don't think he ever killed anyone with his car. Who knows? Maybe he did.

"Come on, he'll never know." My brother grabs my recessed filter Parliaments off the coffee table and lights one up using the sterling silver cigarette lighter, one of the few relics left from my parents' life of luxury, the life they drank away.

My little sister, Jolley, who is eleven, comes into the living room, sits down on the davenport, and stares at Topper. "Oh, boy, are you going to get in serious trouble." Topper blows a perfect smoke ring into her face. "Keep it up, Mr. Potato Head, you're going to be blowing smoke out your ass when Dad is through with you."  

Right on cue our father appears in the doorway. Without saying a word, he turns with a jerk and starts taking all the presents out from under the Christmas tree. We know better than to say anything. What we need is a mother to run into the room, to implore him, to beg him, to threaten him to stop but there isn't one. She is dead. 

Our father, who is now completely soused, walks in and out of the living room, hauling presents into his room. We wait for him to blow up. It's not until he passes my brother and shakes a large oblong package wrapped in Christmas paper with hunting dogs all over it that he screams. "You can kiss this god damn shot gun goodbye." 

After every present is gone from under the tree and my father is in his bedroom, my little sister blows a shriek into my face. "It's all your fault, Vicki! You shouldn't have given him a cigarette." She runs to her room and slams the door.

Topper and I can hear our father rustling about in his room. I wonder if he is loading the gun and whisper to my brother, "He's going to shoot us." Topper is more confident. "Watch, he'll be out in a minute, dragging the presents back."

The two of us sit there by the lonely Christmas tree. I'm waiting to get shot. Topper's waiting for the return of his shot gun. Finally our father's bedroom door opens and out he comes. To my relief he is empty handed. Topper and I look at each other. My father is whistling. Topper whispers to me, "What does he think he is? A whistling teapot?" I stop breathing and wait for him to boil over, scream his usual obscenities at us but instead he walks towards the tree, picks it up by the stand, and drags it, with all its bulbs, lights, tinsel, and cranberry strings, out the front door.

In the morning, all the neighbors will see it on the curb, waiting for garbage pickup, and then they will call each other trying to find out who knows just what the hell happened this time at the Noonan's.

Margaret Vaillancourt is the co-editor of Kiss Me Goodnight: Stories and Poems Written by Women Who Were Girls When Their Mothers Died, a 2007 Minnesota Book Award finalist. She is currently writing, "No Dots to Connect," vignettes on her life as, but not limited to, an illegal pig farmer, horse trader, newspaper editor, jailed youth worker, community garden activist, writer, health care advocate, car hop, and a freelance proofreader of Harvard University Press books.