by Rachel Cohn
I looked over at my dad, who looked mildly embarrassed.
“Come on, people!” Langston shouted. “The lady wants a circle, so let’s give her a circle.”
People made a very loose ring around the tree. In the shuffle, I ended up between Sofia and my mother. Boomer took his place on my mother’s other side. Then, in order to dodge a particularly garrulous cousin, my father stepped next to Boomer. Lily handed out red, green, and white candles. Then she went to turn off the lights and cue up “White Christmas” on the sound system. As Bing did his thing, Lily lit her candle, then touched it to her mother’s until the flame held. Then her mother did the same with Lily’s father. The circle began. Nobody said a word. We just traced the progress of the light, awaited our turn. Grandpa took about a minute longer than he should have to get out of his chair to take his place, but when it was his turn, his hand was steady as he passed his fire to Langston. Langston went wick-to-wick with Benny, who then pirouetted to face Sofia. Sofia smiled and cupped the flame as she turned to pass it to me.
Boomer, who had never really had a girlfriend before, clearly felt it was his boyfriendly obligation to be the recipient of Sofia’s flame. He jumped from his place and stepped in between me and Sofia. Sofia, not wanting to disrupt anything, dutifully touched her candle to his. I watched, then held steady as Boomer did a little dance over to me, cooing at the flame to stay alive long enough to make my acquaintance. Boomer lit my candle, then I turned and faced my stricken mother. Boomer’s jump had put her right next to my father. And it was too late for any of us to fix it without making it a big deal.
It’s fine, I assured myself. My parents are adults. They can act like adults.
My mother’s hand was shaking so much, I was worried the candle was going to fall. It took us three tries for her to be steady enough to transfer the flame.
“It’s okay,” I whispered to her. “You’re doing great.”
She nodded so slightly that I was sure I was the only one who could recognize it as a nod. Then she turned to her ex-husband and extended her candle.
For a second, I thought it was going to be okay. For a second, their candles were touching and it was just like it had been with everyone else. For a second, my mother was looking at her candle while my father was looking at my mother.
Then my father opened his mouth.
My mother wasn’t looking. She didn’t see it coming. When my father said, “And here I was, thinking you’d never light my fire again,” she wasn’t prepared. The shock that hit was real, and it was powerful. She recoiled. And as she did, her candle fell. As she called him a bastard, the flame hit a section of the Sunday paper that someone had left under the tree. As he told the room she had never been able to take a joke, the floor burst into flame.
I thought everyone would react, and maybe they would have, but I was the closest person who wasn’t an arguing member of my former family, and I was the one who got there first. Smother the flame, I thought. Smother it. So I belly-flopped onto the paper and the candle that had started this mess. I suffocated the flames. It was only as I was mid-flop that it occurred to me that this was a stupid reaction. I half expected to set myself on fire. But the smothering worked. I robbed the situation of its oxygen. I put out the fire my father had started.
I was conscious of Lily screaming. Langston yelling. Then Boomer in the air, to smother the smotherer. “Close your eyes!” someone yelled. I did, and was doused with a foamy, chemical substance just as Boomer landed on top of me.
Everyone was quiet for a moment. Then:
“You can open your eyes.”
I did, and found Mrs. Basil E. standing over me and Boomer, with a sizable fire extinguisher. We were covered in foam.
My mother kneeled down beside me. “Are you okay?”
I nodded, my chin squishing into the carpet.
“Boomer,” my mother said gently, “I think you might be crushing him.”
Accurate!
Benny and Langston helped Boomer up. Then Langston reached down for me. When I got to my feet, he said, “Oh, that’s not good.”
Was I hurt? Was there a burn so severe I couldn’t feel it?
No. I was fine.
But I’d murdered the sweater.
I looked down and saw a smear of wax and a field of singe. My dove looked like a toasted marshmallow. Lily’s looked like it had flown way too close to the sun. And the snowflake had undergone a precipitous meltdown.
I looked up and saw Lily. Everything I needed to know was right there in her eyes. She wanted to cry but wouldn’t let herself. Which was worse than her actually crying.
“I’m so sorry,” I told her.
“No,” she said. “It really doesn’t matter.”
Suddenly everyone was talking. The lights were back on. My mother was taking deep breaths. And my father…
My father was gone.
Mrs. Basil E. insisted on inspecting me for any “errant burns.” Benny started to refill people’s cider. People blew out the candles they were holding and put them down on the floor where the newspaper had been. Lily flicked on the tree’s electric lights. Nobody oohed or aahed.
I had no idea how to make it better.
—
We all rallied—tried to fill that apartment with a joyful noise. But mostly it felt like we were trying to cover up another noise, an uncertainty that had crept into our party and wouldn’t leave no matter how unwanted we made it feel.
I’d been planning to stay later—to help Lily clean up, to talk about everything that had happened, to try to turn it into a comedy so it wouldn’t linger as a tragedy. But as the cousins started to exit for their respective boroughs and Sofia and Boomer left for an evening date, Lily summarily dismissed me, telling me that I should probably head home with my mom. I knew she was right, but at the same time, I worried that Lily might need my attention more than my mom.
This was especially true after Mom and I left, and it became quickly clear that my mother Didn’t Want To Talk About It. When we emerged from our subway station back home, my phone buzzed with a text from my father.
Sorry 2 have left. Seemed best.
I refused to reply.
Which seemed best.
Monday, December 15th
I texted Lily later that night after the party, to check in.
No response.
The next day, I texted her a few times during the school day. At first to check in. Then to make sure she hadn’t checked out.
It wasn’t like her to fail to respond.
I asked her if she wanted to get together after school. I called her and left a message along the same lines.
Nothing.
By the end of the night, all the birds had gone quiet.
Tuesday, December 16th
Christmas was still over a week away, but it was already ruined. I hate to use such harsh language, but everything felt motherfudging suck.
I woke up to the sound of my parents fighting, loudly. Boris lay at the foot of my bed, his paws covering his eyes, whimpering from the angry tones coming from the next room.
Mom: “I will not move to Connecticut!”
Dad: “Do you want me to be unemployed? I left an excellent job in Fiji because of your dad.”
Mom: “You hated that job! You hated Fiji!”
Dad: “You hated Fiji. I wouldn’t have left the job so soon if you hadn’t insisted.”
Mom: “My father had a heart attack! We couldn’t be so far away!”
Dad: “Your father has four siblings, your brother, and a trove of grandchildren and nieces and nephews who could have cared for him just fine. Even if your brother says he’ll help but can never bother to budge from his vacation cabin in Maine when we need him.”
Mom: “You hate my family!”
Dad: “I don’t hate your family. How dare you accuse me of that? I just don’t know why in our twenty-six years of marriage we’ve never been allowed to live farther than a five-mile radius from them. Except for a few
god-”—I covered my ears for the rest of the word that rhymed with slam—“months in Fiji.”
Mom (now shrieking): “I WILL NOT MOVE TO CONNECTICUT!”
(The f-word that isn’t fudge also appeared in that shriek, but my ears redacted it.)
Just then my phone dinged with a text message from Dash. I’m so sorry about the sweater! Are you ok?
I certainly was not okay. Connecticut?!?! How was that distant place a conceivable option? I knew headmasters usually lived on the grounds at boarding schools, but the school that hired Dad had said it was fine if he lived in the city and commuted, even if it was a two-hour commute each way. He could work on the train. (Or so Grandpa and I had been told soon after my parents returned from Fiji. Perhaps it hadn’t been a whole truth, but a convenient fib to get us through the early days of Grandpa’s recovery.)
I’d heard my parents fight before, obviously. But their “fights” were more like typical old-people bickering, and they usually shushed it if Langston or I was in hearing range. But this fight? It was loud, it was epic, and it was scary.
The fight would never have happened if it hadn’t been for the other night. Dash’s parents must have infected mine with their dysfunction and callous disregard for each other. One could also say it was my fault for having invited both of Dash’s parents, but that was actually their fault. I invited his mom, who declined, so I thought it was safe to invite his dad instead, as a gesture of goodwill that this stupid season is supposed to be all about. It was Dash’s mom’s fault for saying she couldn’t come and then coming anyway, and Dash’s fault for bringing her, and Dash’s dad’s fault for even agreeing to come just to make a point that he could be all supportive dad–like for once in his relationship with Dash. It was Dash’s fault for running into his dad on the street while he was with his mom but still continuing on to the tree-lighting party. Dash had to have known no good would come of it. Those people together are toxic. No wonder Dash is so snarly.
But now it was me who felt snarly. “BE QUIET!” I shouted. I hurled my phone against the wall I shared with Mom and Dad. Stupid text messages about sweaters. Stupid fights.
That stupid sweater, charred and ruined. Not even the stupid cat would sleep on it. That sweater was such a symbol of everything wrong between me and Dash. Trying too hard plus good intentions does not necessarily equal happy fairy-tale endings.
Fairy tales aren’t even real. They’re stupid, like everything else. Fudge. STRESS!
After the thud of my phone against the wall, my parents’ voices lowered, but their arguing continued. I could hear it in occasional loud intonations of “Your fault!” and “Just how many people exist in this marriage, anyway?”
I didn’t want to get out of bed, but I didn’t want to stay at home and listen to this upsetting nonsense any longer. Connecticut?!? What could that place have to recommend it besides New Haven pizza?
My bedroom door opened. “Can I come in?” Langston whispered.
“Can you knock first?” I said, irritated. My brother loses his mind if I don’t knock before going into his room in case his boyfriend is there and they want to be private, but he never knocks first at my bedroom door, since it’s always safe to assume nothing too private is happening in there. That’s its own kind of annoying assumption, because the assumption is right. My family can barely tolerate me having a boyfriend, and that’s only because he’s broody but bookishly non-threatening, and we don’t see each other that much, and he’s never allowed in my room with the door closed, and I still have a curfew.
Langston almost smiled. “Ha-ha,” he said. He closed my bedroom door behind him and hopped on my bed. He was still wearing his pj’s even though I knew he was supposed to be at an early morning class about now. It was almost like Christmas mornings when we were kids, both of us huddled on my bed wearing our pj’s, waiting for our parents to come in and lead us outside to the presents. From my bed, Langston and I would eavesdrop on our parents’ Christmas-morning squabbling in the next room. But those “fights” were more lighthearted jabs, like one of them said they’d finished wrapping the presents but hadn’t, or one of them said they bought coffee the day before but hadn’t. Oh, the good ole days. Before “Connecticut” was a mean, hateful word that augured bad things to come. When life was so innocent.
God, I love presents. Especially when they come with fresh-baked Christmas scones, drizzled in red and white frosting. I don’t even mind if there’s no coffee. Sometimes it’s impossible not to remember how much I love Christmas, and then my heart pangs extra hard for how everything is fudging suck this year. I just can’t get into the holiday mood no matter how hard everyone else tries to coax me there.
It might be all the coaxing that’s holding me back from getting there. These feelings have to happen organically. Forced gaiety is the worst. I need sincerity to feel the season.
“What’s going on?” I said to Langston.
“I think it’s pretty apparent what’s going on!” he said, but not jokily. He looked too serious.
“Are they getting divorced?” I asked. I assumed that’s what happened to parents who fought so loudly. I wondered if I should suggest to Dash that he get his hearing tested to check for any ear damage caused by exposure to his crazy parents’ fights when he was a kid. Probably not. Knowing Dash, when they fought, he probably wore headphones while he was lost in a book, even as a little man.
“Hardly,” said Langston. “It’s just a rough patch.”
“Like you and Benny have?” My brother and his boyfriend break up about every other month, and then there’s a flurry of five thousand text messages, and crying and heart emojis, and Robyn songs, and then they can’t live without each other again.
“There’s something I have to tell you,” Langston announced.
“They are getting divorced!” I cried out.
“Shut up, not so loud. Of course they’re not. They’re fighting because I told them last night what I’m about to tell you, and I think it tripped their alarm on other issues.”
I gasped. “You have cancer? And you can only be treated in Connecticut!” Cruel universe, why, why, why? My brother hasn’t even finished college yet. Don’t take him away so soon.
“Would you just shut up and let me finish? No, I don’t have cancer, and if I did, why would I go to Connecticut for treatment when I live in the city?”
“Exactly!”
“Listen, Lily…I wanted you to hear it first from me and not Mom and Dad. I’m moving out. Benny and I got an apartment together.”
I laughed. “Now’s not the time for jokes, Langston.”
“I’m not joking,” said my brother. A traitor, just like Dash. Pretending like everything’s okay and status quo when clearly it’s not.
—
I realize there are much worse things happening in the world, but my East Village apartment is the only place I’ve ever lived. It and the people in it are my world, and it felt like my world was ending. My brother was moving out. They hadn’t told me yet, but Mrs. Basil E. had offered to have Grandpa come live with her. That left my parents open to possibly leaving the city—if they could just figure out what to do about me in such a way that didn’t cause me to have a meltdown. (Funny how everyone worried over that dilemma without asking me. Funny, and infuriating.)
The world as I knew and loved it was disintegrating, and maybe Dash and I were, too. I could see how hard Dash was trying, and it only made me feel more distant from him. He shouldn’t have to try so hard. It should just be or not be. As if he also knew it, Boris had just finished ripping Dash’s charred gift sweater to bits, and I didn’t even care. I was almost glad. It seemed the appropriate way to dispose of the sweater once and for all.
My parents were late for work after their argument, and they didn’t stop to say goodbye to me, or sorry for ruining my day. Langston left to go thrift-store shopping for new furniture for his new apartment rather than console me through the pain of his announcement that he was deserting me for
his boyfriend. Grandpa was still asleep, and probably wouldn’t wake up till his home health worker came to check on him later in the morning.
Grudgingly, I put on my uniform and prepared to leave for school, even though I was late and Mom hadn’t left me a note to excuse the tardy. I gave Boris a kiss and told him to nap for the day until I got home, and I reminded him not to pin down Grandpa’s visiting nurse again, because she carries mace in her purse and doesn’t like sudden movements. I was about to leave my apartment when Edgar Thibaud’s number appeared on my phone, calling me on FaceTime.
“What?” I answered. I sat on my bed. Edgar’s face appeared on my phone screen, looking sweaty and disheveled. He’d become quite the club kid in the last year, and he was probably calling me as his previous night’s shenanigans were ending and my already ruined day was just beginning.
“Lily! Dude! Ramen emergency.”
“Excuse me?” I could see a group of club kids laughing and stumbling around on the street behind him.
“We need ramen to soak up the drunk in our tummies. But every ramen place we went in Koreatown after karaoke wasn’t open this early.”
He did not deserve my help, but I didn’t feel like going to school just yet, so I didn’t hang up on him. “Where are you now?”
“How do you expect me to know that?”
“Put your camera on the nearest street sign instead of your face.” That face. So stubbly and amber wolf–eyed and full-mouthed. Also, stupid.
His camera wobbled first to his feet, wearing men’s black-and-white saddle shoes and showing a glimpse of pink-and-black plaid pants (“Urban Caddyshack” is how Edgar Thibaud describes his personal style). Then the camera dropped to the ground, was lifted up again to reveal a fire hydrant that looked freshly peed on, and then up and over to a street sign. Bowery and Canal.
I did my mental food-map brain scan and said, “Great N.Y. Noodletown, Bowery and Pell. They open early.” I only knew this drunk info because it was my brother and Benny’s favorite post-dancing-the-night-away spot—when they weren’t broken up.
