Page 9 of War on Christmas

After all, I know better than anyone what she put up with. For years, it was her and me, together, tiptoeing around Gary’s moods like they were shards of glass. When she and Gary first got married, she tried to shield me, throwing herself on his sharpest barbs to protect me, but it didn’t take long to figure out that interference only escalated his temper. So, we both learned how to make ourselves quiet. How to anticipate Gary’s triggers and avoid activating them as much as possible.

There’s an intimacy in that. In haunting the shadows together. Maybe that’s why I felt compelled to come back. To see if there’s enough of our relationship left to stitch back together.

I’m starting to shiver, still unsure what to do, when the front door swings open. My mom, wearing jeans, a plain pink T-shirt, and a matching cardigan, offers me a hesitant smile.

“It’s freezing out there,” she says quietly. “Come on in.”

Was she always this small?I wonder as I step into the living room. Clearly, I got my height from my father. She’s so tiny, her shoulders so narrow and boney under her thin sweater, that I suddenly feel giant and awkward. Like my freshman year of high school, when I grew so quickly my shins throbbed like a toothache. We stand a few feet apart, and she looks skittish, her eyes never meeting mine. I try not to stare, but it’s impossible not to.

Somehow, in my mind, she’s been ageless, immortalized as that sad, soft-spoken woman who waved goodbye to me from the curb. That day, she was only a few years older than I am now, thirty-seven to my thirty-four. Now, she’s fifty-four. In our time apart, she slid firmly into middle age. Her hair, once the same dirty blond as mine, is mostly silver now. And her face is wrinkled—narrow lines crisscross her forehead and deep grooves run from nose to mouth—but it’s more than that. There’s a softness to her features. The slow, gentle toll of gravity tugging at her eyelids and chin and mouth.

I open my mouth to say something, but nothing comes out. I clear my throat.

I’m usuallygoodat defusing awkward situations. Really good. Without a family system to fall back on if I get ditched by my friends or fired by an irritable boss, I’ve learned to be adaptable and agreeable. I know how to celebrate Thanksgiving with families I’ve never met and get invited back the next year. (“Do you remember how he insisted on doing the dishes?”) I know how to treat my friends’ grandparents like my own, kissing old ladies’ dry, powdery cheeks and calling them things like “Meemaw.” I know how to break up with a woman so gently that I’m guaranteed an invitation to her wedding a couple years later. (“Congrats! The better man won.”) I’m a fish, slipping and sliding through every sticky situation until I find a win-win solution, and I do it with a smile. It’s my specialty.

I can do this.

“Um. Hi,” I choke out, fighting the urge to hunch over so I don’t feel so huge.

“Hi.” She talks to my feet, which also feel too big. “Thank you. For coming up. Taking off work, too. I—I know you didn’t have to do that. Thank you.”

I stare at her.Thank you?Thank you?! I ruined your life.If you hadn’t been struggling to take care of me, you never would have married him. And, speaking of him, how could you choose him? How could you choose him over me?

“Sure. No problem,” I mumble. “I mean, you’re welcome.”

She nods, her eyes still lowered. “You can take your things to your room. If you want. All your old stuff is still in there.”

“Really?” A surprised flutter of excitement ignites my belly, easing the knots.

There was no way I could take everything with me to my dorm. I’d hitched a ride to Milwaukee with an acquaintance from school, and his parents’ minivan was already full of all the things I couldn’t afford. A futon, a microwave, his own desktop computer. I’d feverishly stuffed as much as I could into a few duffle bags and resigned myself to Gary trashing everything I’d left behind.

“Uh-huh,” she says, and for the first time, she smiles. The barest quirk at the corner of her mouth. “I told him I’d put rat poison in his dinner if he set so much as a finger on it.”

“Um, thanks,” I say, grabbing at the back of my neck. Suddenly, I notice my leather boots melting snow onto the old tan carpet and step aside to toe them off on the doormat. “Sorry about that.”

My mom shakes her head—No problem.

It wasGarywho’d been waiting to criticize every mistake I made. Ready to fly off the handle at every inconvenience.

I swallow. “I—I guess I’ll go get settled then.”

***

FREYA

“Give your auntie a hug,” Bethany instructs Andy. She grabs him by the shoulders and steers him toward the couch, where I’m clutching a Tom & Jerry like my life depends on it. Because it does. Alcohol is all that’s sustaining my will to live right now.

After greeting me with shrieks and hugs, Mom had informed me that Bethany, Drew, and their four kids were coming over for a family dinner. “To welcome you home,” she’d said, running her hands over my hair like I was her personal sensory toy.

I’d say Mom is an older version of Bethany, but that isn’t exactly true. Shelookslike an older version of Bethany. Blonde, slender, way too smiley. But whereas Bethany is all type A, Mom is less controlling. She’s also less aware. Her attention just…goes where it wants to. She sees what she wants to see. Growing up, it was usually focused on the little floral shop she and my dad run. So, when she was cursed with a brooding, stoic daughter, she simply didn’t pay attention. She plastered on her signature smile and pretended she could mold me into Bethany 2.0 with princess dresses and Barbie Dreamhouses. Our conversations usually went something like: “Detention again? What hap—Ope! I forgot—can you help unload the poinsettias from the van? Welcome to Fox Valley Floral and Gifts!”

I, in response, grew closer to Thad and Jeremy, who were happy to include me in their daily regimen of mud fights and blowing up green plastic army men with firecrackers.

I watch Andy as he approaches, hands tucked behind his back. He’s dragging his feet as he walks. He wasn’t quite two the last time I saw him in person. He was round cheeked and baby faced, still wearing diapers and smelling of spoiled milk. Now he’s in kindergarten, about to turn six next month. When he arrives before me, round belly leading the way, his eyes fall to the carpet.

“Hey, Andy.” I lean forward so I don’t have to shout to be heard, and Bethany narrows her eyes suspiciously. She’s a drill sergeant, demanding perfect obedience, but I refuse to hug a kid who’s not comfortable with it. “I like your Spider-Man socks,” I whisper.

His button nose wrinkles as he smiles. Like Abi and his big brother August, he has my dark hair and slate-colored eyes. Only Aiden, Bethany’s second, shares her blond-haired, blue-eyed fairness. Do I find this amusing? Yes. Yes, I do.

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