by Jo Knowles
He looks at me in disgust. No arguing there.
“Everything all right in here?” Now my dad is standing in the doorway. “Sylvie? What’s wrong?”
I swear I haven’t heard my dad use my mom’s name, haven’t heard him address her, even, since I was a little kid. And that’s what’s wrong. That’s what’s wrong.
“All of this!” I yell.
“Josh, please,” Larry says.
My dad steps back, confused.
“Just forget it,” I say. “I’m sorry.”
My mom wipes her face dry. Larry stands up, then looks like he doesn’t know where to go. My dad stays in the doorway.
“Let’s just go make dinner,” Larry says. So we follow him out of my temporary room and into the kitchen. Only not my dad. My dad sits down on the couch and stares at the Christmas tree as though it is the most fascinating thing he’s ever seen.
And now — yeah — now it feels like old times.
“You’re really harshing my mellow, Josh,” Larry hisses at me.
My mom sits at the kitchen table, looking destroyed.
“I’m sorry,” I say. I sit down across from my mom. “Really,” I tell her. “I didn’t mean what I said.”
She shakes her head. “Yes, you did,” she says quietly. “And you’re right, Josh. I could have tried harder.” She reaches out to touch my hand. “But I wish you would talk to me. How can I know what’s going on with you if you never talk to me? I call and you sound OK. But how can I tell over the phone?”
“I’m sorry,” I say again. I know it sounds lame, even though I am. “I’m glad things are getting better for you and Dad. Really.”
So why do I feel so pissed off about it?
“Thank you, honey.” She pulls her hand back and sits up straighter.
“Well,” Larry says, as if that’s that. “From now on, Josh is going to talk to Sylvie once a week. Really talk. Glad that’s settled. Now come here.” He spreads his arms out and motions with his hands for us to get up. I roll my eyes.
“C’mon, c’mon,” he says.
My mom smiles shyly and gets up, so I do, too. Larry reaches out and grabs our hands, then pulls us together into an awkward three-person hug. God.
“All better,” he says, practically squeezing the life out of me. I realize this is a warning.
I slap his back heartily. “Yeah, all better.”
“Now, let’s get cookin’.” He hands us each a red apron with a candy cane on the front. Clearly, nothing is going to stop him from making this the Best! Christmas! Ever!
We spend the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon making a huge Christmas dinner together. At some point, my dad falls asleep on the couch in the living room, just like old times. But me, my mom, and Larry continue to cut and chop and stir in the kitchen. At first it’s awkward, what with the memory of my semi-outburst hanging over us. But Larry is good at bringing people around. Even me. And pretty soon things get less uncomfortable.
We make garlic mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, butternut squash with butter and brown sugar, carrots glazed with maple syrup, and homemade dinner rolls. Larry even makes roast beef with gravy for my parents and me, even though he’s a vegetarian. For dessert, we make gingerbread with homemade whipped cream.
“Larry, you’re a miracle worker,” my mom says. “I can’t believe how much you’ve taught Josh.”
“He’s a natural! My little karate-chopper sidekick.”
So not funny.
With all the food in the oven and simmering on the stove, the kitchen is hot and smells amazing. My mom’s cheeks are pink from the heat. I can’t get over how much younger she looks. And happier. Every time she passes me, she touches my arm or my shoulder, as if to be sure of me. Each touch feels like a silent I’m sorry. And maybe even I love you. It reminds me of how Caleb’s mom touches him. I used to wonder what that felt like. To be that close and comfortable around each other. Now I know. It feels nice.
This is probably the most time we’ve spent together since I was a little kid. No lie. But even though I’m glad it’s finally happening, I still feel this annoying seed of anger that won’t go away. I want to ask her what took her so long to get here. Not here, in this kitchen, but here in this new place. Where she wants to see me. Where she wants to be sure of me. Instead of rushing out of the house to go to work. To volunteer. To see a friend. To see anyone but my dad and me. Is it easier to act this way here, in this home that isn’t ours, that is only temporary?
That’s when I realize why I feel angry. Because her being here is a constant reminder that here isn’t my real life. My real home. And in a few months, I’m going to have to leave it.
“So, Sylvia,” Larry says quietly to my mom after peeking out the door to the living room to make sure my dad’s still asleep. “What’s with Hal not drinking? Is that for real?”
My mom glances over at me, then taps the whisk she was using to stir the gravy against the side of the pan. The brown sauce dribbles down through the wires. My mom studies it like it’s the most fascinating thing in the world. But I can tell what she’s really doing is choosing her words carefully, because we both know Larry is asking for me.
“Yes. It’s for real,” she says.
I smile back at her, because I want her to know I’m glad. I really am. I can be angry and glad at the same time, right?
“He’s been walking, too,” she says. “Every day. He takes Rosie out when he gets home from work. They’ve both lost weight. Could you tell, Josh?”
I wipe my hands on my apron. “Yeah,” I say. “Definitely.” I try to imagine my dad actually walking anywhere. Rosie, too. It seems so . . . un-Hal-like.
“He has a long way to go, of course,” my mom adds. She gets a sad look on her face. “But this is a big first step. And I’m trying really hard to be . . . supportive. I know I haven’t been much help in the past.”
Larry opens the oven to check on the roast beef for the millionth time. “You’re the best thing that happened to old Hal, Sylvie. You really are. Well, besides Joshy here.” Larry reaches over to ruffle my hair.
My mom smiles weakly. “Things are better,” she says quietly. Almost guiltily.
“Better all around,” Larry says, reaching over to squeeze my arm. The guy can’t seem to stop touching me all of a sudden. Maybe it’s contagious.
“Yeah,” I say, ignoring Larry’s hand. I try to sound more convincing than I did earlier. In so many ways, things actually are. Better. But this day feels so unreal. My parents here. My dad not drinking. My mom not running away from us. It seems too good to be true. And I feel like I’m waiting for the sucker punch that takes it all away.
The kitchen smells amazing by the time we’re finished. Larry brings out a bunch of serving dishes while my mom goes into the living room to wake up my dad. I stand in the kitchen doorway and watch her walk over to him and put her hand on his shoulder. When he opens his eyes and sees her, he looks confused for just a second, then smiles awkwardly. I can’t hear what she whispers to him, but he nods and gets up. They are still so formal with each other. Not like you would imagine a longtime married couple would be. It’s like they still don’t quite know how to talk to each other. I’m glad they’re trying. I am. But watching them like this makes me feel so empty and alone. So I go back into the kitchen and help Larry.
Just before we’re about to sit down for dinner, there’s a knock on the door and Larry announces we’re having more surprise guests. That Larry. He’s just full of surprises.
It’s Stella, Star, and Calvin. Stella looks even more pissed off at her mom than she did last night.
“It smells so goooooood in here,” Calvin says.
Star clutches his arm. “Thanks for inviting us, Larry. That was so sweet of you.”
Larry introduces my parents to everyone. Then Calvin and Star join my dad on the couch.
“Merry Christmas,” Stella says to me. She’s wearing the Santa hat again.
“You, too,” I
say.
She glances toward her mom and Calvin uncomfortably, then back at me. “He spent the night,” she mouths, a disgusted look on her face.
I wish I could hug her. She looks like she needs one. Instead, Larry puts his arm around her and whispers something in her ear. She laughs weakly and follows him into the kitchen to help bring out some hors d’oeuvres. We still have some folding chairs from last night’s party, so we all squish around the coffee table. Larry turns up the cheesy Christmas music and tries to come up with stuff to talk about. My mom actually tells some pretty funny stories about the old people she works with at the nursing home. And my dad shares a few crazy stories from the body-shop place he runs, about people totaling their cars doing stupid stuff while they were driving. His favorite is the guy who was brushing his teeth in traffic.
I notice that Stella keeps watching Calvin as if she would like to spar with him. I catch her mom giving her warning looks to “behave,” but Stella ignores her.
When Larry finally announces it’s time for dinner, we load up our plates in the kitchen and come back out to our seats in the living room. The food is delicious, and everyone’s quiet while we stuff our faces. Larry doesn’t offer any wine or eggnog or booze of any sort, and I think Calvin and Stella seem a bit disappointed, especially when Larry was so generous with the stuff at last night’s party. But I’m grateful to Larry for keeping it dry, for my dad’s sake.
After dinner, Star and Calvin help clean up and then say they should be going. Stella asks if she can stick around for a while, and they seem eager to let her. When they leave, she leans against the door and takes a deep breath with her eyes closed, like she’s trying to keep herself from crying.
“You OK?” I ask.
She opens her eyes and shrugs. “I guess. I just wish she’d sent him home last night so we could have Christmas morning, just the two of us. But of course my mom’s so afraid he’ll dump her if she disappoints him. It’s pathetic. I don’t see what she sees in him, anyway.”
“He seems to genuinely like her,” I try. “Maybe he’ll be different from the others.”
“He better be.” She takes my arm and leads me back to the living room. My mom eyes the hand on my arm and raises her eyebrows. But I act like I don’t notice.
My dad gets up from the couch and stretches. “Guess we better hit the road,” he says. My mom gets up, too. They seem smaller to me, and not just because I’ve grown. Not smaller in a bad way, just . . . more like two parts of a whole.
“Are you sure you can’t stay over?” Larry asks. “You’ve already driven so much today.”
My dad puts his arm on my mom’s shoulder. “Nah, we’ll be fine. I got a nice nap in, and we’ll stop for coffee at some point. We gotta get back to Rosie. Josh’s friend Caleb was going to walk her at lunchtime, but she’ll need to go out again tonight.”
Larry hugs them good-bye and I walk them out to the hall.
“It was so good to see you, honey,” my mom says. “Anytime you want us to visit, just let us know and we’ll come. And you know you can come back home whenever you want.”
My dad puts his huge paw of a hand on my shoulder. “You need any money, son?”
“Nah, Dad. I’m good.”
“Larry says you finished all your college applications,” my mom says. “I wish you’d have let me help. I would’ve been happy to, you know.”
“It’s fine, Mom. The school has a really good guidance counselor who helped us put everything together.”
She looks sad. Like she feels left out. “You didn’t even tell us where you were applying. I hope you didn’t apply to anywhere too far away?”
I shake my head. I don’t want to tell her that’s exactly what I did. Especially not now, when she seems on the verge of tears again.
My dad pats my shoulder a few times. “We’re real proud of you, Josh,” he says. “I know it’s rough, bud. But you’re doin’ good here. I can tell.”
“Thanks, Dad. I — I’m proud of you, too.”
I think I embarrassed him, because he turns away and picks up their bags. I didn’t mean to. I just . . . I wanted him to know.
“Give Rosie a pat for me,” I say. My voice cracks just a little as that ache in my throat comes back. I hug them fast, because it is really time for them to go. Really. Time.
I watch them climb down the stairs. They both look up at me from the floor below and wave. “Drive carefully!” I call. “Don’t brush your teeth or anything!”
“Merry Christmas, honey,” my mom says.
And then they’re gone.
I take my time going back inside. When I finally do, I find Stella and Larry sitting on the couch. Stella is leaning over, her face in her hands, and Larry is rubbing her back.
Stella sits up and wipes her eyes when she hears me come in.
“Time for cocoa,” Larry says. He gets up and leaves us.
“What happened?” I ask.
She slides over a bit, so I sit next to her.
“I guess I’m more upset than I thought,” she says. “I’ll be OK. I just wish . . . I wish for once she’d put me first. You know? It makes me feel like she doesn’t care.”
“I’m sure she does,” I say lamely.
She shakes her head. “I know. She just has a warped way of showing it sometimes. Your parents seem real nice, though.”
“Yeah,” I say. “They’re OK.”
“At least they came to see you, right?”
“True.”
“But?”
“They’ve got their own issues, that’s all.”
We both lean our heads back and look up at the ceiling.
“What kind of issues?” Stella asks.
“My dad used to drink a lot.”
“Oh. But he stopped?”
“Looks like it. I don’t think he was an alcoholic or anything. But he used to drink a lot on the weekends.”
“What made him stop?”
Me.
“I don’t know.”
“Your parents have been married for a long time, huh?”
“Yup.”
“That’s cool. You’re like, one of the only people I know whose parents are still together.”
“Me, too, actually. I always thought they would end up getting a divorce, but they’re hanging on.”
“Why did you think that?”
“They used to avoid each other like the plague. Today was the first time the three of us have spent more than a few minutes together in years.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. Guess I should have left home a long time ago.”
She elbows me. “I’m sure that’s not true.”
Well, not totally. But sort of.
Larry comes in with a tray of mugs, and we all take sips of cocoa in silence. Larry leans back on the couch and says, “You know, for the most part, this was one of the best Christmases ever. With the exception of your mom dissing you for that dude. No offense, Stell.”
She rests her head on his shoulder and sighs. “None taken.”
He pats her knee. “Whaddaya say we watch a movie? I’ll make popcorn.”
“Larry, how can you even think about eating after that huge dinner?”
He shrugs. “I think it is physically impossible for me to watch a movie without stuffing my face. No matter how sick I feel later.”
“Well, I’m game,” Stella says.
“As long as it’s not Jackie Chan, I’m in,” I say.
“What do you mean?”
“Not everyone shares your love for Jackie.”
“How is that even possible?” he asks seriously. “Never mind. I have the perfect choice just for Stella,” he says, acting all fake-mad at me. He jumps up and runs down the hall to my room, then comes back waving a Rocky DVD in his hand.
“Stell-aah!” he cries, shaking it in her face.
“You do know Rocky’s girlfriend’s name is Adrian, right?” I ask Larry.
“I know, I know,” Larry says. “But I just like
saying it. Stellllaaaaa,” he cries again, just to prove it.
We all get comfortable and start watching, but after about ten minutes, Stella jumps when her phone vibrates. She reads the message and frowns.
“Uh, sorry guys. I think I’m gonna call it a night.”
“Oh, Stell. You’re not leaving us for another guy, are you?”
“Cute as you are, Larry. Sorry.”
“Say hi to Britt for us,” Larry says.
“Don’t say his name like that,” she says.
“Like what?”
Stella looks at me.
“Like shit,” I explain.
Larry laughs.
“Shut up,” Stella says.
“They do sound the same,” I try.
“You two are so funny I forgot to laugh.” She gets up to go, then turns back. “Merry Christmas, boys. Wish I could stay.” The funny thing is, the way she looks at us just then, I think she really does.
“Well, that was a little ironic, don’tcha think?” Larry asks when she’s gone.
“What do you mean?”
“Hmm. Stella’s mad at her mom for blowing her off for some guy and . . . there she goes doing the same thing to us!”
“It’s not really the same thing,” I say.
Larry sighs. “Close enough.”
When I wake up later, I’m sweating.
The baby was screaming. In my dream. He was crying in his little plastic bed next to all the other new babies, and the nurses were ignoring him, and all the parents smiling through the glass were too busy admiring their own babies to care. I pounded on the glass to get the nurses’ attention, but they didn’t look up. I kept pounding and pounding. And then I saw her. Ellie. The room had a glass wall on the opposite side, and she was behind it, pounding on the glass just like me. I could tell by the way her mouth was open that she was screaming. “I want my baby!” over and over. Her fists were white crescents against the glass. She was crying. Sobbing. I pounded harder, too.
That’s when she saw me. Recognized me. And screamed, “No!” She shook her head, then pounded on the glass even harder. So hard the glass smashed. Some nurses ran over to her. Someone grabbed her and started pulling her away. I pounded harder on my own glass wall to get them to stop. I pounded and pounded until the glass wall broke on my side, too. I could feel my fist scrape through the shards, ripping the skin open. But they ignored me and took her away.