Page 11 of A Stag Family Christmas

11

TIM

“You could at least help me with the ladder,” I yell at Thatcher, who seems content enough to sit on the porch and watch me wrestling with the icicle lights Alice and Petey insisted we get. He laughs at me and tugs at his wool coat, blowing into his hand and walking over to steady the ladder. “I saw you and Emma spying on us,” I tell him. They pulled up all smug in his new SUV to watch us tussle with the Christmas tree. Alice vetoed Nicole’s idea of just ordering one for delivery. She wanted to go out there and chop one down like country tourists or something.

“You looked so manly with that saw, big bro,” Thatcher says, laughing again. He’s not wrong, though. It did feel good to whack through that tree, knock it over, and drag it up to the checkout area. I grunt in response as Thatcher helps unwind the strings of lights. “What’s up with your Juniper situation?” he asks.

She hasn’t really been working to her potential since Election Day, when she blurted out she was pregnant in front of the news cameras. It’s all everyone talks about—how she will be Pittsburgh’s first elected judge to take maternity leave this next spring, and would she still take the post.

“It’s a circus,” I tell him. “She’s going to be fine. Stag Law, on the other hand…” I drift off. Juniper is not only a fine lawyer, but had been helping me shape the direction of the company. I’ve let myself become someone totally new in the past few years. I never used to give a fuck what other people thought or take a minute to assess their opinions. I never had the luxury of time to ponder. I was always too busy raising my brothers, making sure they made good grades and stayed out of trouble. When it came time to open my law business, I handled it the same way. Do. Achieve. I never bothered to rely on anyone else, and so I never felt fucked when someone left Stag Law to work elsewhere.

Meeting Alice…she took my breath away and taught me how to rely on other people. Share in the hard stuffandthe good stuff. So what does it get me? I bring Juniper into the fold, grow a damn fine business at her side…and she leaves me.Well. I pause and tack some lights up on the eaves. She’s notleavingme. She just reached the top of her potential with Stag Law. “Fuck it.”

I climb down the ladder and toss the rope of lights to Thatcher. “Your turn, dickwad,” I tell him. And before he can protest, I say, “this is for spying on me at the tree farm. Thatcher snorts and climbs up the ladder. Fuck him for hanging the lights faster than me. He works with his hands all day long. He’s used to this shit.

“Hey,” he calls down, talking around the nails in his teeth. “Is our father coming for Thanksgiving?”

“I guess so. I haven’t talked to him in awhile.” Things have been precarious with our father the past year or so. After he walked out on us and hid inside a bourbon bottle for 13 years, his body basically shut down. Thatcher found him in the hospital the last time Emma was in there with a seizure. “Gram talks him sort of regularly, I think. So I’m assuming he will be here.” Ted Stag had finally gotten sober and has slowly been more involved in our lives. “What makes you ask about that?” My brother climbs down the ladder and we move it over a few feet to finish up the last of the lights.

“I want to ask him about when Mom was pregnant,” Thatcher says with a shrug.

I don’t ask him to elaborate or whether Emma has talked more about her pregnancy. “Sounds like a great topic for a big holiday gathering,” I snort. If I’m honest, I’m the one who has warmed up to Ted the least since we reunited. Seems fair to me, since I’m the one who picked up all his work when he couldn’t handle his grief at losing our mother. He’s apologized and made amends, but it’s a slow process. I’m working on it. I want him to know Alice and Petey. I just don’t think to ask him for insight when I’m having a hard time in life.

I need to think about something else. Ted Stag reminds me how hard it is to rely on someone else and how big the disappointment feels when they inevitably let you down. I try to think about Alice. “Oh, hey. Alice was asking if Emma is having any aversions.”

“What the fuck does that mean? Like how she doesn’t drink alcohol?”

“Aversions. Like…things pregnant ladies can’t handle. Alice couldn’t walk past fast food places when she was pregnant with Petey. The smell of the fried oil made her sick to her stomach.”

“Hm.” Thatcher nails in the final end of the lights and reaches out for the extension cord. I pass it up to him as he says, “She won’t talk about it yet. I don’t want to push her.”

I plug in the cord and step back. In the late afternoon, we can just see the glow of the lights around the overhang from the front porch. Alice has stuck bunches of greens out the windows on the second and third floor, putting candles in the windows. The house looks like a fairytale house. “Mom used to do that,” I say. “Put greens in the windows.”

Thatcher nods. “I remember. She’d like these icicle things.” He throws an arm around my shoulder, and I let him. The scent of pine drifts down in the crisp air. It’s nice. It feels right. We stand there admiring the scene until I hear the door fling open. Petey and my nephews spill out of the house, running and screaming, while Alice and Amy climb down the porch steps to admire our work.

“It looks magical, babe,” Alice says, kissing my cheek. I hadn’t realized how cold I’ve gotten until her warm lips press against my skin. Something about the mood makes me pull her in close, longing to cocoon into the couch and just hold her while I figure out the answer to everything. I need her to remind me, again, that it’s ok to trust other people. That the risk can be worthwhile.

The boys start throwing sticks at each other and Thatcher gets down low, playing with them, pretending he’s an abominable snowman. I look up and see my grandmother smiling down from her room on the third floor. For now, everything here is as it should be. All of us together. Happy. Loud. Then I remember Thatcher’s question about our father and head inside to check with Gram.

She pats my hand and tells me Ted will indeed be joining us. So we will have two Stag women with unplanned pregnancies, me trying to figure out the future of my business, Alice running around like mad cooking insane foods…this will be a Stag family Thanksgiving to remember.

12

THATCHER

Emma bursts into my studio, startling me so that I almost drop the rod with molten glass on the end. “Chezz,” I scold her, clucking my tongue. “That was almost a very painful greeting.” I roll the rod back and forth with one hand, shaping the glass a bit and trying to urge it into the look I’d imagined. “What’s up, babe?”

She bites her lip and sits on a stool, but she’s fidgeting so badly I can tell she’s going to explode if I don’t talk to her soon. “Come over here,” I say, holding out an arm. She stands in front of me and I hand her the rod, propped up on one end of my work bench. “Hold this.” She smiles at me and rolls the blob of glass back and forth as I squat on the ground next to her. I keep her eye while I blow gently into the hollow tube, creating just enough space in the glass to achieve a teardrop shape. She makes a lewd face at me and I laugh. Glass blowing has no shortage of innuendo. I love having Emma in my studio with me when I’m thinking about hot rods and blowing tubes. Then I remember that there isn’t much blowing or bumping between us lately.Damn.

I put my hand over hers and tap the drop off the end and, settling one hand on her back, grab the glass with metal tongs. I carry it into the kiln to cool down, close the door, and pull her against me. She lets me, and I feel relieved. Like maybe we are chipping away a few inches of whatever wall got built up near the tattoo shop that day. “Tell me what’s got you so excited,” I whisper into the shell of her ear, planting a kiss on her neck, just below her lobe. She shivers slightly and leans back to look at me.

“I won a Press Award,” she breathes. Then she can’t contain herself anymore and starts jumping and clapping her hands. “I just met with Phil and he told me.”

She doesn’t need to explain to me that this is a big fucking deal writing award. Those honors come with thousands of dollars in prize money and a trip to a swanky ceremony in New York City. I try to imagine Emma’s gruff editor telling her the biggest news that might ever come to thePittsburgh Post.

“For your prison story?” I ask, remembering all the nights I drove her to and from the county jail to meet with guards and inmates and talk about pregnancy behind bars. Emma nods, twirling around, still jumping. She’s about to publish the last installment of her series and has basically been working around the clock for months. Until recently, of course.

“Thatcher.” She stops. “Phil wants me to expand it into a book.”

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