by Jane Green
Most years when I come down, Mom and Dad and whoever else is already there come pouring out the front door before I can cut off my engine. But as we sat staring up at the white Cape Cod façade, the door remained firmly shut.
‘Well, let’s get a move on,’ Jason said, rousing me out of my inertia. ‘Time for me to face the inspection crew.’
That thought – my folks inspecting Jason, and their inevitable fawning approval – was enough to put a spring in my step as I hurried up the walkway.
‘Hey,’ Jason called from behind. ‘Shouldn’t we empty the car?’
I waved him forward. ‘Dad and Ted and everybody will give us a hand with that in a couple of minutes.’
His smile conveyed that this sounded like a good deal to him, and he hurried up to my side. The day had barely warmed up at all from the freezing temperature of the morning. The wind had died down since our stop in Jersey, but the world felt icy and still. There wasn’t much traffic on the street, but it was still a day before Christmas Eve, so there were probably a lot of people who were at work.
My brother’s SUV was in the driveway, though, which meant that all his gang was here.
When no one appeared in answer to the doorbell, I dropped the heavy brass acorn knocker against the door. The resulting sound seemed to echo through the neighborhood; every neighbor for blocks around would now know I had returned. But the jarring sound had no effect where we were. ‘That’s weird,’ I said.
‘That there’s no one home?’ Jason asked.
That, too. But what had me really rattled was the fact that there was no wreath on the door. Had we entered some Twilight Zone where Christmas as I knew it no longer existed?
Before I could voice this troubling theory, the door’s deadbolt slid abruptly, the door swung open, and there stood Ted.
Except he didn’t look like Ted. My brother’s squared jaw, usually so smooth he could have been a Gillette spokesman, was unshaven; his hair was squashed on one side in a bad case of bed head; and his eyes were so bloodshot that the blue irises seemed almost to be glowing dully in their pools of red. He didn’t smile when he saw me. In fact, for a moment his expressionless eyes didn’t seem to recognize me. It was as if Lurch from the Addams Family had opened the door for us.
Lurch, hungover.
‘Ted? ’
‘Oh, hi,’ he said. A few seconds later the stench of his breath reached me. It was ninety proof. I looked down at his right hand, which was clutching a bottle of Jim Beam, three quarters full. He wasn’t hungover at all – he was still tanking up.
My voice wobbled as I introduced Jason. Ted was forced to switch the Jim Beam to his left hand so they could shake. ‘Hey,’ he said, completely without enthusiasm.
Jason, of course, had no way to know this was very odd behavior coming from my brother. For all he knew, Ted always looked like Nicolas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas.
‘Where are those nieces of mine?’ I asked, in that geeked-up way people use when they’re trying to inject cheer into a morbid ambience.
Ted sagged against the doorjamb and his bloodshot eyes puddled with moisture. Apparently I had asked the wrong question. ‘They’re not’ – his shoulders convulsed – ‘coming.’
‘Not coming?’ I repeated, stupidly. ‘Where are they?’
‘With … Melinda! ’ His wife’s name came out on a sob.
‘But how can that be?’ Ted and Melinda were such a perfect couple. They always seemed to be in perfect mental lockstep.
Ted unscrewed the top from the Jim Beam and took a swig. ‘She left me, Holly. She just loaded up the girls in the Escalade and drove off.’
‘Oh, Ted! I’m so sorry!’
I reached out to touch his arm, but he recoiled. ‘She said she’d been unhappy for years. Years. Said I was domineering.’
I shook my head. Oh, lordy. ‘It doesn’t seem possible.’
‘And that I was patronizing. How could she say such a thing?’ Before I could answer, he shouted, ‘And where the hell did she learn to throw around words like that? Not at that gym she used to work at, that’s for damn sure!’ His bleary eyes started scanning the street behind me, as if Melinda might be hiding behind a bush out there somewhere. ‘Little miss aerobics instructor wasn’t tossing around ten-dollar words back before I found her! ’
‘Ted.’ I grabbed his arm and tugged him inside, shutting the door behind us. Then I remembered Jason. I flung the door open again. ‘Sorry!’ I said.
He held up a hand to indicate he understood. ‘Maybe I should go get the bags.’
You mean you still want to stay? I didn’t actually ask the question, but it must have been clear in my eyes. Jason smiled reassuringly. I could have thrown myself into his arms and kissed him.
But then I heard a crash behind me and whirled to discover that Ted had disappeared. Where were Mom and Dad? Did they know that their son was stumbling around their house in an alcoholic stupor?
I found him in his old room on the first floor, lying on the lower bunk, where Schuyler usually slept now. The room still had a striking sports motif, including posters of Larry Bird and Pete Sampras. ‘The girls probably hated staying in this room,’ he said, in a raw, choked voice as he looked up at Larry and Pete. ‘I should have given Mom money to have it redone for them. At least to get new sheets without footballs on them.’
‘We could still do that,’ I said. ‘It’s not as if Schuyler and Amanda won’t visit their grandparents anymore.’
My brother emitted a low moan.
‘And this is just temporary, I’m sure!’ I added quickly. ‘All couples have problems sooner or later.’
‘Not like this. She just went berserk, Holly. One minute we were having this great family evening – a Kodak moment, trimming the tree. The girls were singing along with that Chipmunks song, and Melinda seemed fine, and then I just happened to mention that I didn’t think she should use this tinsel she had bought that afternoon. We’d always used garlands on the tree before. Tinsel gets everywhere – makes a mess, really – and what if Amanda swallowed it?’
I frowned. ‘Why would Amanda eat tinsel?’
‘Because she’s a child, Holly. You just don’t understand about children. You have to be careful around them.’
‘But Amanda’s almost six.’
For a moment I feared I was going to be clubbed upside the head with a Jim Beam bottle.
I held up my hands in surrender, remembering whose side I was supposed to be on. ‘So … what happened?’
‘She told me that I was being alarmist, and that she was tired of garlands. Said she thought garlands were stodgy. And I told her that stodgy was better than foolish any damn day of the week.’
‘Wait,’ I said, interrupting. ‘You mean this entire argument was over garlands versus tinsel?’
‘On the surface it was an argument about garlands versus tinsel, but it went deeper than that, believe you me! The things she said in anger I just can’t forget.’
I suspected Ted threw a few choice words back at Melinda, too. ‘Still … that doesn’t sound too terrible,’ I said. ‘What makes you think you can’t work it out?’
He looked at me, stunned. ‘After the things she said to me?’
‘Patronizing? Well come on, Ted, you do like to have your way.’
‘Actually, she called me a patronizing son of a bitch.’
‘Oh, well …’
‘And that was some of the nicer language.’
Truly, I couldn’t imagine Melinda in a screaming fight with anyone. She was the type of woman who would apologize for saying damn. Even if she had just suffered a third-degree burn she would say something like, ‘Dang! That stove is hot!’
‘Where is she now?’ I asked.
‘At her parents’.’
‘Well, then. There’s still hope.’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘How long would you want to live with Melinda’s mother?’
My mother-in-law joke failed to squeeze a chuckle
out of him. He remained gloomy, lying on the bed and clutching his bottle of whiskey like a corpse holding lilies. ‘I’d do anything to get her back.’
‘Have you tried?’
‘What?’
‘To get her back.’
‘How?’
‘Well, for instance – and this is just a suggestion, mind you – but you could, maybe, apologize.’
He bolted upright. ‘What for?’
‘For insulting her tinsel – or whatever you two were fighting about.’
‘Hell, no, I won’t apologize! Why should I apologize for being right?’
‘Ted …’
‘Go away, Holly. I need to be alone.’
‘No, you don’t,’ I said. ‘You’re a mess. You’re drunk.’
‘And I intend to be a lot more drunk before the day’s over.’
Oh, God. I didn’t know what to do. I had never seen Ted less than perfectly composed. Usually he was the life of the party, making eggnog for everybody and giving the girls piggyback rides around the house. I’d never witnessed a total Ted meltdown.
‘Where are Mom and Dad?’ I asked, in growing desperation.
‘Dunno. Out. Maybe to a faculty party or something.’
I couldn’t believe they would leave Ted in this shape. Of course, maybe Ted hadn’t been in such bad condition when they left. Still, it was hard to fathom that they would be gone when they knew I was going to be home today, and bringing a friend. Mom was usually very conscientious about providing a welcome wagon for people.
I left Ted in the lower bunk and skulked out to find Jason … if he hadn’t already turned around and headed back to New York.
As I padded around looking for him, I got a strange feeling. Not that there was anything too amiss in the house. It was spotless. But that was part of the trouble, I realized. There was none of the typical holiday chaos. No messy table full of Christmas cards propped up in an impromptu display. No hastily abandoned wrapping projects in evidence, or even boughs of holly or pine decorating every available surface, as there usually was. Outside of a troublingly symmetrical and smallish tree in the living room, there was no evidence that it was Christmas at all.
Mom hadn’t decorated, I realized with growing hysteria as I hurried from room to room. Where were the snow villages, the angel choir, the monks? What happened to all the walnut people? I skidded underneath the archway leading to the living room and gasped.
‘What’s the matter?’ Jason asked.
‘No mistletoe!’ By this time, I was almost yelling.
Jason narrowed his eyes. ‘What?’
‘There’s always a sprig of mistletoe right here,’ I insisted, jabbing my finger at the spot. There was even a little hole in the plaster where it was usually nailed in.
How was Jason supposed to kiss me underneath the mistletoe if the damn mistletoe wasn’t there?
What the hell was going on here?
‘Are you okay?’ Jason said, approaching me cautiously.
I admit I was breathing hard. And then I pivoted for another look at that tree, and I almost started hyperventilating. The reason the tree looked so fake was because it was fake! Mother had put up a dinky artificial tree. That’s why there was no scent of pine in the house. No vexing trail of Douglas fir needles trailing across the living room carpet. That’s why the house seemed so uninviting, so sterile, so not Norman Rockwell.
‘Holly, I think you need to sit down,’ Jason said.
‘It’s not usually like this,’ I breathed, still not quite trusting my eyes.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.
‘This place is usually decorated within an inch of its life. And I promised you this big traditional Christmas. Mom didn’t even put up a real tree!’
Jason whirled. ‘Oh, I hadn’t noticed.’
How could he not have noticed? The tree wasn’t even a good fake. ‘She might as well have bought one of those aluminum things.’
‘I like those aluminum things.’ As I eyeballed the room in a glazed stupor, Jason put a bracing arm around my shoulders. ‘What about that eggnog you promised me?’
I thought about the frothy, nutmeggy concoction usually served up about this time, prepared by Ted. Then I thought about my brother all liquored up in his old bunkbed. Something told me there wasn’t a bowl of homemade eggnog waiting for us in the fridge. ‘Ted’s the eggnog maker, but in the condition he’s in …’
‘Well maybe we should go make some ourselves.’
His can-do optimism got me going again. We trotted off to the kitchen and started hunting through cookbooks for a recipe. ‘Mostly what we need are milk and eggs,’ I said, after I had found one.
He laughed as he shut the refrigerator door. ‘That’s a problem then.’
‘Why?’
‘Because your mom’s out of eggs. And milk.’
This I had to see. When I opened the fridge, it seemed ominously bare. There were a butter dish, a six-pack of Heineken, a bottle of white wine, a couple of wilted-looking stalks of celery …
And that was it. Amazed, I started checking cabinets. Nothing. The cupboards were bare.
I cast a doubtful look Jason’s way. ‘We did get this right, didn’t we? This is two days before Christmas, isn’t it?’
‘Is there a store nearby?’
I nodded.
‘Then let’s go play elf and refill the fridge and cupboards before your folks come home.’
‘You’re too good,’ I said.
He shook his head, smiling ruefully. ‘No, I’m just too hungry.’
Jason’s brief turn through my mom’s pantry must have alarmed him; judging from our shopping basket you would have thought we were stocking up for a month in Yak valley. We bought bread (two kinds); cheese; chips; milk; every type of carbonated drink available to mankind; and more salad fixings than a hutchful of rabbits, never mind a houseful of humans, would be able to munch their way through in three days. Then, as we passed the deli section again on the way back to the checkout, Jason tossed a rotisserie chicken onto the top of the heap.
I couldn’t help looking on that shopping basket as my family’s cart of shame. Obviously, he was afraid we were going to starve him. And after staring deep into the cold empty heart of my mom’s fridge, I couldn’t reassure him to the contrary.
I had been hoping that my parents would be home when we got back, but the house was just as it had been. When we walked in the door, I heard an odd keening moan from down the hall and discovered that Ted had now barricaded himself in his old room. The door was locked and he refused to answer. Nothing could budge him, not even the lure of rotisserie chicken and Stilton cheese.
Jason and I pulled bar stools up to the butcher block island in the kitchen and started preparing ourselves a feast. For a month I had been passing up spritz cookies and foil-wrapped chocolate everything in hopes that my tummy, in the event Jason ever saw it, would be as flat as I could make it without resorting to truly drastic measures, like sit-ups. But hell, it was Christmas, and he had done the shopping. It could be I’d followed the wrong tactic completely. Maybe the paunchy Mrs Claus look turned him on.
I hacked off a wedge of cheese and lovingly placed it on a butter cracker.
‘Maybe we should go to the Smithsonian.’ Now that we seemed to have fallen into a holiday black hole, I was desperately casting about for ways to entertain him. I felt like a tour guide who had promised a sunny island paradise and had instead delivered a deserted volcanic wasteland. We couldn’t sit in the house and listen to my brother’s muffled sobs all afternoon.
Before Jason could respond to that suggestion, the front door opened. My mother’s voice, rather shrill, said, ‘There’s nothing wrong with me. You were the one who sat there like a lump all through lunch, boring the Finleys with your lecture on Oliver Cromwell.’
‘What makes you think they were bored?’ Dad asked peevishly.
Uh-oh. I winced, recognizing the tone my parents reserved for their rare squabbles. Jason cut a gla
nce at me, and I wanted to run out into the hallway screaming, Shut up! You’re supposed to be Ozzie and Harriet!
But I was frozen, and those voices kept coming closer.
‘Laird, their lids were drooping, and they were weaving.’
‘They didn’t say anything about being bored.’
‘They were being polite. Do you think people actually go to Christmas parties to be lectured on the English Civil War?’
‘I thought I was interesting.’
Mom was emitting a strangled cry when she rounded the kitchen door and caught sight of Jason and me sitting there on our stools, blinking at being the unintentional audience for their spat. As she took us in, my mother’s face changed from annoyance to frozen confusion to hostess with the mostest, all in the space of a split second.
‘Well, look who’s here!’ she exclaimed, beaming at us. ‘Laird, come in here. What a surprise!’
‘Um … isn’t this when I said I would be here?’ I asked.
Mom rolled her eyes as if to say, Silly me! ‘I must have let it slip my mind.’
‘And your memory wasn’t jarred when you saw a strange car in the driveway?’ I pressed, incredulous. Most of the time it wouldn’t have fazed me that my parents had forgotten me, but I had specifically told Mom the date and time because I was bringing Jason.
She put her hands on her hips and turned, laughing, to Jason. ‘You see what I have to put up with, Justin? It’s constant criticism around here, twenty-four, seven.’
I could have sunk through the floor tiles. ‘Jason.’
My mother smiled obliviously on and shook Jason’s hand. ‘We’re so glad to have you here. And good – you found yourselves something to eat!’
‘We had to go to the store.’ It was hard to keep the reproach out of my tone.
‘Laird! ’ My mother yelled, in a voice loud enough for moose calling. ‘Come meet Jason!’
I suppose I should have been glad that she didn’t call him Justin again, but for some reason, I was finding myself shrinking back like a twelve-year-old on parents’ night.
