Page 72 of War on Christmas

Ten minutes later, we’re sitting around my coffee table like a goddamn therapy circle, me scrunched in the middle of my green velvet couch, bookended by Bethany and Sam, Mom perched on the edge of the secondhand leather chair. Peppermint steam scents the air, herbal and sharp, and I have the unshakeable—and disconcerting—feeling of a teenager about to be called out for missing curfew. It’s doing nothing to settle my nausea.

Mom, unlike her usual, chatty self, stares me down, her blue eyes unblinking.

“What?” I finally ask, bristling. I was already tense, but with every second that passes, my spine fills with steel, cold and hard. “Was Iwrong? What did I say that wasn’t—”

“You, young lady…” Mom pauses, then swallows. “Were absolutely correct.”

I’ve lost it.I shake my head, waiting for this entire crazy scene to evaporate into a merlot-induced hallucination. Any second now I’m going to wake up on the bathroom floor, face dried to the cold tiles with vomit.

But Mom’s still here, hands folded neatly in her lap.

I clear my throat. Sip my tea. “Pardon me?”

“I said you wereright, Freya. I haven’t been there for you the way I should have been.” She takes a deep breath. “And I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” I parrot. My head feels thick and slow. Like it can’t keep up.

Mom nods, and next to me, Bethany rests a hand on my knee. I look down, and for the first time, I notice that her hands look like mine, fine bones and tapered fingers.

“I’m sorry, too,” she says, so earnest her brow creases. “We’ve never had the relationship I would like as”—she shrugs—“well, as sisters. And I want to do better going forward.”

“I’m not sorry about anything,” Sam pipes up. “I’ve been anawesometwin brother’s girlfriend.”

Bethany reaches across me to lightly smack Sam on the leg, but my eyes are on my mom. I was already raw when they arrived. My defenses down. Confronting our dysfunctional family dynamics on top of leaving Jeremy feels like too much. This can’t be an easy conversation for Mom—she’s really putting herself out there—but for crying out loud. I’mthirty-five. It’s too little, too late.

I open my mouth to ask them to leave, but what comes out is, “What—exactly—do you mean about not being there for me?”

Mom’s mouth quirks into a sad smile. “I didn’t know how to be the mother you needed. Bethany was easy. She was enough like me that I could put myself in her shoes. Anticipate what she needed. You…” She sighs. “You were harder. So prickly and independent. And so,sobrave.”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t Bethany,” I snap. “I couldn’thelp—”

“Of course you couldn’t,” she interrupts, her voice soft. Soothing. “It was on me, Freya.Me.We’re very different people. Obviously.” I wait for her to sneer. To curl a lip at the black crystal chandelier hanging over the coffee table or the collage wall featuring a cow skull bedecked with red and black dried roses. But she doesn’t. She just continues calmly. “I’mthe mom. It was my responsibility to work through our differences. To find ways to connect. I just didn’t know what to do, so I…I let you drift. I let you find your way with Thad and”—she hesitates, and I brace myself—“and Jeremy. By the time you were in high school, you didn’twantme around anymore, and I told myself I was respecting your boundaries. Giving you space.”

Ididwant space as a teenager. Or—I frown—IthoughtI did. However, those are two different things.

I chew my lip as I remember my first theater production:Bye Bye Birdie, freshman year. Between Jeremy and Tiffany dating and the Freaky Freya thing, life had gone to shit. I was convinced that it was never going to feel ok again. Ever. But working on stage crew for a few hours every afternoon, everything else turned off. Missing my best friend. The shame I carried for deserting him. The stupid nicknames.Poof!Gone.

I attacked theater with the passion of a Scorpio discovering her life’s work. I started to eat, sleep, and dream that musical until—in my mind—our 2003 high school production ofBye Bye Birdietook on the weight and scope of a major, life-changing world event.

It was the big bang of theater events.

The lights, the sound, the sets…they were going to be perfection. They were going to play their own role, however invisible, in giving the audience an escape from the weight of everyday life. By opening night, I’d worked myself into such a frenzy, I was sick with anxiety. Would Bobby Kimble remember to switch the mics between scenes six and seven? What if our spotlight got glitchy again? Wouldeveryoneon crew remember to wear black?

When Mom told me over breakfast that she and dad would be attending the play, I’d lashed out. Wasn’t the pressure bad enough without having to impress my parents, too? And what if they did something embarrassing? I was already sinking myself socially without their help.

“Um, could you justnot?” I’d asked around a mouthful of Lucky Charms.

Mom’s eyes had gone round, and without a word, she’d carried her plate and coffee cup to the sink and left for work. She never mentioned attending one of my theater events again, and I told myself that’s what I wanted. Space to do my thing. I didn’t do theater to gain my parents’ approval. I did it because I loved it.

But in hindsight…it created a rift. At the very least, it exacerbated the rift that was already there. I pushed my mom away in a moment of stress, but as I grew more comfortable in my new role, I felt her absence. I loved the theater so much. How could anyone really understand me, reallyloveme, if they didn’t understand my passion for it?

“I pushed you away,” I admit, worrying at my lip.

Talk about a goddamn pattern.

“Yeah, you did,” she agrees. “But you were a teenager, sweetie.Iwas the grown-up. I should have kept trying. And honestly?” Her nose wrinkles. “You intimidated me. You were so smart. So sure of yourself. I didn’t know how to push back, and we ended up with this—well, thisdistancebetween us. And now…” For the first time, her bottom lip trembles, a crack in her armor. “I’ve missed you, Freya.We’vemissed you. All of us. These past four years since you’ve been home?” Her mouth twists. “I get that you feel like the black sheep, but you’reourblack sheep. We’re not the same without you.”

I think back to the new moon and the tarot card I pulled for her: Justice. Karmic balance. Reaping the fruits of past actions. The skittish way she avoided my gaze when I told her the meaning of her card.

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