Burnt Ham: A Christmas Tale of Domestic Revenge

When the ham burns, something else is cooking.

Marion stood at her kitchen island arranging cheese cubes while her twenty-pound honey-glazed ham turned to carbon at 425F degrees. She'd been standing there for eighteen minutes now, watching it through the oven door like television. Like meditation. Like prayer.

"Mare?" Richard called from his recliner. "Mare, something burning?"

"Just the ham, sweetheart." She placed a cube of pepper jack at a perfect right angle. Muscle memory. Her hands knew this dance while her mind was elsewhere. "Don't worry about it."

Two hours ago, she'd made his special eggnog. Extra bourbon, extra cream, extra nutmeg. Extra everything, really. Three weeks' worth of his digoxin crushed finer than Florida sand. The pills he refused to take because they made him tired, made him weak, made him less of a man. Well. He was about to get very tired indeed.

Brad shuffled in, phone in one hand, vape in the other. "Mom, the kitchen's like, full of smoke."

"I know, baby."

She didn't move. Couldn't move. Not yet. Everyone had to see her here, frozen at her post, watching her perfect reputation burn.

"Mom? You okay?"

"I've been making hams for twenty-seven years," she said, voice dreamy as smoke. "Never burned a single one. Did you know that? Twenty-seven years of perfect hams."

"Okay, that's... weird. Dad, something's wrong with Mom!"

Good. Come look. Come see Marion having her breakdown. Come witness her standing here, paralyzed, while that ham turns into evidence of a woman overwhelmed.

Dennis arrived next, Jessica trailing behind with her hand on his back instead of Richard's shoulder for once. "Jesus Christ, Marion! You trying to burn down the house?"

"No, honey. Just the ham."

She'd stood in line for this ham for two hours last Tuesday. Behind women just like her. Women with lists and schedules and husbands who wouldn't notice if you served them roadkill as long as it came with gravy. She'd promised herself then—this would be her last ham for the Richardsons.

"Turn off the oven!" Dolores appeared, fanning smoke with her church program.

"I can't."

"What do you mean you can't?"

Marion finally turned, and whatever Dolores saw in her face made the older woman step back. "I mean I can't. I've been standing here watching it burn and I can't seem to stop. Isn't that something? Twenty-seven years of perfect hams and today I just... can't."

From the living room: "I don't... I don't feel..."

That would be Richard. Right on schedule.

"Too much nog, honey?" Marion called, still not moving. Let them all see her here. Let them remember her standing exactly here.

"My chest... Dennis..."

The sound of a big body hitting carpet. Jessica's scream. Brad actually putting his phone down. Dolores rushing toward her son, then stopping, torn between the crisis in the living room and Marion's strange vigil in the kitchen.

"Call 911!" Dennis's voice, sharp with panic.

Marion counted to ten, then slowly, like a woman waking from a nightmare, walked to the oven. Turned it off. Opened the door. The ham sat there like a burnt offering, black as her heart, hard as her resolve.

"Marion! Get in here! It's Richard!"

She walked into the living room, saw her husband on the carpet, gray-faced and gasping. His special glass knocked over on the side table, leaving a sticky stain on her grandmother's doily. She'd have to bleach that later. Bleach fixed everything.

"Richard?" She knelt beside him, the devoted wife. "Oh my God, what's happening?"

"Heart..." he gasped. "My heart..."

"His pills!" she cried. "Where are his pills? He hasn't been taking them. I've been begging him... Oh God, I even started crushing them into his food sometimes. The doctor said it was okay, said it might help, but he found out and got so angry..."

Dennis was doing chest compressions. Jessica was crying those big tears that somehow didn't smudge her makeup. Brad was on the phone with 911, finally useful. And Marion held Richard's hand, feeling his pulse flutter and fade like a bird against glass.

"I'm sorry about the ham," she whispered, loud enough for everyone to hear. "I don't know what came over me. I just stood there watching it burn. I should've been watching you instead."

The paramedics arrived in eight minutes. Worked on him for twenty. Called it at 3:47 PM, December 25th.

"Ma'am, we're very sorry for your loss."

Marion nodded, tears coming easily now. "He wouldn't take his medication. I tried everything. I even... this morning I put some in his coffee, just trying to help. Then with all the drinking and the stress and I burned dinner... I should've been paying attention to him instead of that stupid ham."

The younger paramedic looked at the burned smell still heavy in the air, at Marion's shocked face, at the overweight man who'd clearly been drinking all day. "These things happen, ma'am. Especially at the holidays. You can't blame yourself."

The police asked their questions. The family confirmed Marion had been in the kitchen, frozen, watching the ham burn. They'd all seen her. Standing right there like she'd lost her mind while the smoke detector screamed. Clearly in shock. Clearly overwhelmed. Clearly nowhere near Richard when he collapsed.

"She didn't even turn off the oven," Brad told the officer. "Just stood there staring at it. It was weird."

"Shock does strange things," the officer said, making notes. "The holidays can be overwhelming."

They took Richard away in a bag. The family dispersed in whispers. Marion was left with a destroyed ham, a stained doily, and a house that smelled like smoke and freedom.

She threw the ham in the garbage, piece by piece. Like disposing of evidence, except the evidence was exactly what everyone had seen—a woman so overwhelmed she'd let her perfect ham burn. A woman too distracted to notice her husband dying. A woman whose breakdown had been witnessed by everyone.

Later, after the autopsy found massive levels of digoxin in Richard's system, the investigators would ask more questions. Marion would sob through every answer.

"I tried so many ways to get him to take those pills. Sometimes I'd crush them in his food, his drinks. The doctor said whatever worked. But today... I don't know how much I gave him. I was distracted, the ham was burning, I must have... Oh God, I killed him, didn't I? I was trying to save him and I killed him!"

The investigator, a woman named Detective Hollis who'd been married three times herself, looked at Marion's red eyes, at the kitchen still bearing smoke stains, at the trash receipt showing one expensive ham purchased and destroyed.

"It was an accident, Mrs. Richardson. A tragic accident."

Marion nodded, clutching the handkerchief Dolores had given her. The one with the embroidered R she'd never have to wear again.

A year later, she sent the family a Christmas card from Miami. Just a photo of herself on a beach, raising a glass of something fruity. No ham in sight.

Inside, she'd written: "Found a wonderful restaurant down here that does the cooking for me. No more burnt offerings. Love, Marion."

Jessica would read it and shiver, remembering that strange day, that strange scene of Marion standing at the oven like a woman possessed.

But she'd never quite put together why Marion had stood there so long. Never quite realized that sometimes a woman needs an alibi more than she needs a ham. That sometimes the best witness to your innocence is twenty pounds of meat, burnt beyond recognition, drawing every eye in the house while your husband dies in the other room from the help you gave him hours before.

The ham, it turned out, had played its part perfectly.

Right down to the bitter end.