Page 69 of War on Christmas

“Congrats, man.” I forced myself to sit up, consciously ordered the corners of my lips to lift, even though it felt like a mortician trying to get a corpse to smile. “And I get it. You didn’t want Freya and me to see each other for the first time at the wedding and have your big day turn into World War III. It makes sense. You didn’t know it would turn into…well, whatever this is.”

“Well, I kind of suspected,” he mumbled, tugging at his hair again. “But I honestly thought you two would work things out. Istillthink—”

“No.” I cut him off as I flopped back onto the bed, my stomach roiling at the hope he was trying to give me. “I just—I just can’t let myself go there right now.”

He left shortly after with a quiet, “Let me know if I can do anything,” and a few hours later, I found my way to the couch with a box of Lucky Charms, fully prepared to carbo-load my way through this stupid broken heart.

No, not broken.Pulverized.

My heart feels fucking pulverized.

“Jem?” my mom asks again, and when I ignore her—again—she doesn’t walk away this time. This time she shuffles into the living room and slumps onto the couch next to me, her shoulder sliding against my arm.

She’s still in her long-sleeved nightgown, slender legs propped against the coffee table next to mine, and she’s here. With me. I clear my throat as I set my empty cereal bowl on the coffee table. I should feel grateful she’s finally here, trying to be the mom she should have been all along, but I can’t see beyond my own pain. My own bitterness. I can’t trust myself right now. I can’t trust myself to be polite, smooth, kind. To put her at ease. But I also have to saysomething, so…

“Sorry,” I whisper. “I’m just…”

I’m just what? What, Jeremy?I’m just sick of biting back my thoughts around her? I’m just at my limit with stifling the questions that have been burning a hole through me for seventeen years? I’m just tired of pretending that she hadn’t hurt me? Really, truly, profoundly hurt me?

The silence between us stretches as she waits for me to collect my thoughts, and suddenly, I don’twantto protect her anymore. I don’t want to hurt her—not on purpose—but dammit, what aboutmyfeelings? Don’t those count? Yes, she’s my mom, but I’m her son. Shouldn’t she care howIfeel?

But…I look down next to me, and my mom looks back, blinking expectantly. Shedoescare. She’s asking me, straight up, to share my real feelings with her. Right now.

And isn’t that what Freya would do? Chase down the truth and let the pieces fall where they may?

Dammit, I’m not going back to the way things were. Freya may be gone, and I’ll have to learn to accept that. But this time with her? It’s not going to waste. I looked her in the eye and told her we were the same, and I meant it. Deep down, under the hurt and the trauma and the lessons we never should have learned, we’re made of the same stuff. It’s messy and complicated, and it doesn’t always look pretty, but it seeks the truth. It craves honesty.

I straighten my back and take a deep breath.

“Christmases,” I blurt out to my mom. “In college. I never had anywhere to go.” The words tumble out, one after the other, stilted but true. “The first couple years, I had to couch surf. Had to beg to stay at people’s houses for the month-long break. I hated every second.”

Her eyes go round with shock. This isn’t what she was expecting. She was expecting something about Freya. About my broken heart.

I guess she hadn’t realized that Freya wasn’t the first one to break it.

“I wasn’t sure how to explain to people that I had nowhere to go for the holidays.” True. I hated the look on people’s faces. Not just pity. Although that was bad enough. But suspicions. What waswrongwith me? What terrible thing must I have done to be disowned by my own mother? “By my junior year, I started telling people that you’d—” I choke on the words but force them out “—that you’d died.”

I must be the only person on Earth who felt relieved when family estrangements became more common. By my thirties, a quick, almost painless “I don’t have a relationship with my parents” usually sufficed, and people were happy to fill in the gaps with expressions like “toxic relationships” and “generational differences.”

“You told them I was dead?” She sucks in a breath, her hand fluttering to her throat. She’s clearly distressed, but I forge on.

“For a few years, yeah. It was…” I shrug. “It was easier.” The words roll easier now. “I’ve spent holidays with more families than I can count. Thanksgivings. Easters. Hanukkahs. New Years. But once I was out of the dorms and had my own place, I never celebrated Christmas with other people. Not even girlfriends. This”—I jerk my head toward the screen, where Alan Rickman leers villainously—“this was my Christmas. Every year.Die Hardand takeout.”

Christmas was different than the other holidays. Everyone’s Thanksgiving looked pretty much the same. Turkey, football, awkward relatives. Easter was egg hunts and ham. But with Christmas, each family’s traditions were unique. Special. The treats baked. The presents given. The decorations displayed. Every moment was bursting with meaning and nostalgia. With the obscure details and shared history that make…well, that make a family.

And every Christmas was a stark, kick-in-the-ass reminder that I didn’t have one.

She listens, head hanging forward, her body still as she takes in my rambling. And I talk, then I talk some more. Not just about Christmas, but about all of it. The anxiety I had in college, always feeling one bad semester—one badtest—away from disaster. The desperation I started to feel for acceptance and security. The way I lost parts of myself. My art, my love of fantasy, my drive to push the limits, be at the fringes.

I talk until my disjointed stream of consciousness peters out. Until the credits are rolling on the movie, and there’s only one thing left to say. To ask.

“How, Mom?” My throat works up and down. I’m not a crier. The last time I cried, I was fourteen years old, and I’d just been ditched by the best friend I was head-over-heels crazy about. Now, in the past twenty-four hours, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve felt that telltale prickle behind my eyes. My stomach jerks as I realize that I’m not going to be able to hold it in this time. I swipe at my face with the back of my hand, embarrassed but determined. “How could you pick him over me like that? How could you ditch me when I was still just a kid?”

The next thing I know, her arms, wiry but strong, are around me, and she’s pulling me down, so my head rests on the soft cotton of her nightgown-clad shoulder. She smells like coffee and faint traces of yesterday’s perfume, citrus and vanilla. She smells like childhood. Like home.

“Jem…” she murmurs, her hand running up and down my back like when I was little. It’s the first time we’ve touched since I put my arm around her at the funeral, when she shrugged me off, and I soak up her touch. For a long time, that’s all she says, just my name, until my tears have run out and I lean back on the couch to drag my sweater over my eyes and nose. Even then, her hand stays on my arm as she watches me, her eyes pained.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I thought”—she swallows hard—“well, I thought you’d be better off without me. On your own.”

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