A holiday memoir in which everyone
is reduced to initials, a pig threatens domestic order,
and hospitality reaches its natural limit.
We spent Christmas in San Luis Obispo with M. and J., who had just moved into a house that was not yet entirely their own. It still contained traces of its previous inhabitants, including a pig.
The pig was not supposed to be there. It belonged, in theory, to someone else, but like many things in life, theory and practice had parted ways. The animal had a way of asserting its presence—through smell, through noise, through a kind of animal cunning that suggested it understood more than it let on.
M. maintained that the situation was temporary. J. was less convinced. The pig, for its part, behaved as though it had signed a long-term lease.
There were also guests. Some of them were from the Middle East, or at least adjacent to it in the conversational sense, which meant that discussions at the table tended toward large topics—history, politics, the fate of civilizations—interrupted occasionally by the pig.
Meals were elaborate. M. cooked with a kind of determined generosity, as though feeding us might somehow restore order to the universe. J. opened bottles of wine at regular intervals, each one an argument for optimism.
The pig attended none of these meals, but its presence was always felt. At one point, it made a noise that caused everyone to stop speaking at once, as though we had collectively remembered something important and unpleasant.
By the third day, it became clear that the arrangement could not continue indefinitely. There was talk of solutions—phone calls, negotiations, vague plans involving other people’s property—but nothing immediate presented itself.
On the final morning, we woke to an unusual quiet. The pig was gone.
No one knew exactly how this had happened. There were theories, of course. Some involved neighbors. Others involved a level of initiative that no one present felt entirely responsible for.
We did not investigate too closely. There was a general sense that the situation had resolved itself in the best possible way, and that further inquiry might only complicate matters.
Later, as we were leaving, a helicopter passed low over the house. Someone suggested, half-seriously, that this was connected. No one disagreed.
We said our goodbyes in the driveway, each of us returning to lives that, we hoped, contained fewer surprises.
It was, all things considered, a successful holiday.
Initially yours,
J.