“Wait!” I spin around, holding one finger up. My voice is too loud for the holy quiet of this night, and Carter rushes over with a half-panicked look in his eyes. “That’s my car. You take it home, and I’ll get it tomorrow.”
“No that’s okay. My parents’ place isn’t far. Besides, a little walking sounds good about now.” He’s trying to make eye contact with me, but I won’t give in. I feel too humiliated.
“Okay,” I say. My muscles tense up, and I hold in a breath as he reaches for me.
Carter gently takes my clenched hand from my side, pries my fingers open, and presses my keys into my palm.
“Thanks for spending Christmas Eve with me, Shayna,” he says, and his voice clips my name short. I think for a second he wants to say more, but he doesn’t. Instead he dips his head low and kisses me lightly on the forehead.
I want to thank him back. I want to tell him how nice it was to spend time with someone who feels so many of the same things as I do for once in my life. I want to tell him how trapped I’ve been feeling and ask if he ever feels alone even in a room full of people he knows love him. I want to whisper every secret worry I brush off around everyone else, the worries that keep my stomach in knots and rob me of sleep every night.
“Yeah,” is all I can manage.
I feel stupid. I feel like I let my guard down and gave Carter a glimpse of the naive little girl inside, and now I’ll never hear from him again.
I know that and know my own vow to never come off as one of those desperate types: so why am I already trying to devise a stalkerish plan to get his number from Quinn so that I can text him to apologize for tonight? Since when do I care if I get a phone call the next day or ever hear from a guy again?
Besides that, nothing even happened.
But there’s a question that won’t stop gnawing at me. How can one night where so little happened turn into this much distraction?
I sure as hell don’t feel like going into the house and playing nice with my parents’ church friends.
All I want to do is forget tonight happened.
And I know just how to disconnect from it all.
I sneak around back and slip into the pool house, where I pull down the bottle of Fernet my parents keep in the liquor cabinet for guests. I take a few sips of the cough-syrup-like blend. It nearly chokes me up, but I manage to keep it down because it’s for such a good cause.
All by myself I lift the bottle, toasting the holiday, the beauty of being an independent woman instead of some lovesick ass, and try to ignore how incredibly sad the whole thing really is.
After a few more swigs, I spend a few minutes looking for slippers to replace my high heels, then flip through magazines and comb the place for snacks. My eyelids are heavy, and my body aches with that kind of exhaustion that leaves your eyes gritty and your body feeling hollow. The day has been too long, but there are still lights on in the house. To get to my room, or even the guest room, I have to pass through my parents’ get together. I glance down at my padded, white cotton slippers and decide I can do it. I just have to be quiet.
Two steps into the house and I fail at my mission by tripping over our dog’s food bowl. The bowl that has been in the same place since we got Trixie eight years ago.
The stainless steel dish flips three times before crashing down and sending bits of dog food to every corner of the port stone floor.
“Christ,” I mumble under my breath.
“Shayna?” My mom’s voice echoes down the hall.
I pull myself upright and try to decide what the likelihood is that I can make it past my parents and their guests and then up to my room without anyone seeing me. Maybe I could hide out in the coat closet until they’ve all left.
Instead, my alcohol-fuzzy brain tells me that I’ve totally got this, and I stumble into the living room in my party dress and terry cloth slippers.
“Hi, Mom, Dad,” I nod. I try to smile politely, but my mouth is tingly, and heavy and I know my lips aren’t doing what they’re supposed to based on the way all the faces of the guests staring back at me contort.
“Are you alright, Shayna?” Dad asks, his eyebrows knit with concern that has an extra dash of disappointed anger.
I’m not surprised. It’s always disappointing when his little angel screws up… in front of company especially.
I swat at the air. “I’m great,” I say, dragging out the consonants a little too long.
Mom smiles, the same nervous smile she gives when there are guest speakers at the pulpit who go a little off course and she starts to worry about what visitors to the church will think of her and Dad, thanks to the ramblings of some rogue intruder.
That’s what I feel like. An intruder in my own house. In my own family.
In my own life.
She makes her way to me, clutches my elbow in her firm grasp, and says loudly enough for everyone to hear, “I think you’re just worn out, it’s been such a long couple of days. And that flu, that flu that you’ve been fighting. Why don’t we get you up to bed?”
“Bed? I’m not tired,” I argue, knowing I sound like a disobedient toddler. I catch sight of the platter of meats and cheeses on the coffee table and my stomach growls loudly in response. “Hungry. Is that a Charcuterie tray? Oh, yum.”
The Sunday school teacher, her husband, and the rest of the guests watch with wide eyes as I stomp toward the spread on the table like an ogre.
“Shayna, I think you ought to go to bed. I can bring you up a snack,” Mom says, her voice low and just a little furious.
She reaches for me, but I shrug her off just as that godforsaken slipper slides off my foot. One second I’m reaching for a cracker, and, the next, I’m flat on my back on the rug my parents brought home from their trip to Istanbul last year. My head smacks into the wooden leg of the sofa as I hit the floor and my eyes well up from pain and humiliation. Sadly, I’m not too drunk to feel those things, and they slam into me full force.
Suddenly, there are feet shuffling, coats being fetched, and throat clearing. It all gets swept under the rug quickly, neatly. It’s become my parents’ MO when it comes to dealing with my shenanigans.
Dad helps me up to my room, his arm tight around my waist, his sighs loud and martyrish. When we get to my doorway, I slink across the carpet unaided and crawl into bed without bothering to change.
“Your mother will be up after she says the goodbyes to help you change, Shayna,” he says, and I can tell he’s holding back from saying more.
Funny how no matter how many times I screw up, part of me still feels like I did when I was a kid, and all I wanted was for my dad to look at me and be proud. Too bad for both of us I never managed to come close to making him feel that way.
“That’s okay, I’m fine,” I mutter, pulling the thick duvet around my chilled body.
Dad stares up at my ceiling and strokes his throat while he grimaces. “You most certainly are not fine.” He’s using the voice he takes out when preaches from Revelations. He must be really pissed.
“Just tired,” I say. Quinn’s problems with love, Carter’s rejection, my recent humiliation are all weighing like sacks of wet concrete on my shoulders. I should stay up and hear my father out, but I’m already dozing off.
“You’re drunk, Shayna. I’m not a fool. Do you think I haven’t noticed when you come in late? Do you really think so little of us that you believe we are that obtuse?” His voice is like a steel blade, slicing through my drowsiness.
“What?” I ask, trying to rouse myself enough to offer up some defense. “No, of course not.”
“Then you’re just disrespectful for your own gain.” His words are like a sledgehammer. Like when he’s making his point in the pulpit, thumping his fist to emphasize his words. Like when he’s talking to a sinner.
No, not a sinner. The sinner. The only person in his perfect life who doesn’t fall in line and do exactly as he expects every single second.
Sucks that person is his own daughter.
It’s su
ch an old argument, I’m not sure why I’m bothering to hash it out again. I guess it would just be great if my father had a tiny bit of perspective. If he realized there are way worse things than having a teenage daughter who drinks and lets loose every now and then.
Instead I sometimes feel like he sees me as the whore of Babylon and King Herod and Judas all rolled into one.
It would be great if my father could just stop harping every time I mess up and pay attention instead to the good in me.
If he believes there’s any good left.
I don’t know… sometimes I doubt there actually is.
“Disrespect—huh?” I’m fired up now, and I’m pissed. My head is throbbing, my dress feels too tight, my father is basically telling me what a failure I am on Christmas Eve, and I just want to forget tonight ever happened. Which is how I got into this mess. Instead I list the reasons why I’m not the awful daughter my father seems to think I am. “I don’t get it. I go to church every Sunday, Dad. What else do you want from me? I still sing in the choir, I wear those ridiculous skirts—”
“A skirt!” he yelps like my words physically wounded him. “You do these things and wear these things and you think that that makes it okay for you to then sin in private?” He throws his hands up. “C’mon, sweetheart, we didn’t raise you to be a hypocrite. And we didn’t raise you to act out when you have us, your church family, your friends… I just don’t understand how we got here, Shayna.”
I should deny everything, or at least insist he’s exaggerating, but clearly there’s no point. Instead I hug my pillow to my chest like I used to hug my stuffed walrus when I was a kid. God, I wish I was a kid again. There was nothing better in the world than being a kid in Christmas Eve and listening to my parents’ Bible study end with all the sad, sweet Christmas hymns.
But I’m not a kid. And it’s time my father and I both faced that fact. It’s time we started being more honest. And I plan to start now.
“Why haven’t you ever said anything?”
He smooths his hand over his thinning hair over and over again. I remember how young and handsome my dad was in my eyes when I was a little girl. When did he get those wrinkles around his eyes and between his eyebrows? When did his eyes stop twinkling with energy and look so sunken and tired?
He sits on the edge of my bed and pats my hand, his voice weighted with sadness I never noticed. Seems like there’s a ton I hadn’t been noticing lately.
“I thought it was a phase. I thought if we just cared enough, just showed you how much we loved you, you’d straighten out. And I thought it would hurt your mother.” He casts me a look that makes me hang my head in shame. My father has always wanted to protect my mother, and I feel that way too. She doesn’t do very well when she had to confront real life, so we both do what we can to spare her from having to. I’ve failed at that lately. “But you’ve done a fine job of that tonight. A real fine job.”
I wince. It’s like a nail piercing my heart.
My voice shakes, and, I don’t know if it’s the booze or the fall or a combination, but I have a blaring headache that’s making the world a little blurry. “I don’t… I don’t want to hurt Mom. Or you.”
I really don’t.
I don’t want to be the daughter that hurts her parents.
I know in my heart they haven’t really even done anything to make me feel so out of place, not intentionally anyway: this trapped, hopeless feeling I’m running from, it’s all my own doing.
They chose their lives—good, loving, righteous lives—and probably logically figured they’d have a kid who fell in line with those choices and lifestyle decisions. They want to include me. They want me to be like they are so we can preserve our family.
They have no grasp on why I just can’t. Why I have to buck the system when it’s what the people who love me most think is best for me.
Maybe I just shouldn’t be allowed to get close to anyone.
“Shayna, if you don’t want to hurt the people you love, you have to grow up. You have to stop acting like a spoiled child. Stop acting like this world is out to get you when you’ve been given so much.”
He holds my hand like he did when I was a kid and he’d read me a story from the big children’s Bible I got after my dedication ceremony before he tucked me in. He’s being tough, but he’s holding my hand, and his eyes are soft. He wants me to grab onto the lifeline he’s throwing me.
“What if… what if what I want isn’t the same as what you and mom want for me?” I ask, my voice a scratchy whisper. I think back to Carter, to his question.
What do you want?
It seemed so simple then. But here I am, asking my father to consider it, and he’s looking at me with a mix of pity and frustration that lets me know what I want isn’t even on his radar.
“Honey, the reason you have parents is because you’re too young to know what’s going to come up years down the road. We’re here to give you a foundation to root you now so you’ll withstand storms later. We’re here to surround you with a community to carry you through the rough times. It may feel a little constrictive at this time in your life, but, I promise you, when this wildness is out of your system, you’re going to be glad we helped you keep your feet on the ground.” He squeezes my hand before he lets go and stands, like this matter is done.
Case closed.
“But—” I begin and he turns, frowning. I almost chicken out, but I can’t. I have to press this. “But what if I need the opposite of roots, Dad? What if instead of community I need freedom? What if instead of roots… I need wings?”
So it sounds a little melodramatic… my father loves a good dramatic speech. It’s one of the reasons people come from three towns over to hear his amazing sermons.
“Darling, you’ll get your wings when you earn them,” he says, walking back over to kiss my cheek. I can smell the tobacco from his pipe mixed with his aftershave and a hint of peppermint, the same mix of smells I always associate with my father. “When you’re ready for them. If you get them too soon, it would be like that old Greek tale. The one about Icarus flying too close to the sun and then plunging into the sea.”
“What if, by the time I ‘earn’ my wings, it’s too late for me to learn to fly?” I wait for his answer, wait for him to put some faith in the fact that I’m not a total screw-up. That if he and Mom would just trust me to be my true self, I’d rise to the occasion and manage to make them proud.
I know I could.
But Dad’s face is granite hard, and he shakes his head like he can’t believe what he’s hearing.
“You want freedoms so you can do what, exactly, Shayna? Drink? Party? Get yourself into trouble we may not be able to pull you back out of? Your mother and I have given you everything in the world, young lady. If you’re acting out as some sort of payback—after the life we’ve given you, the freedoms we’ve given you when you earned them—well, you’re even more selfish than I thought. And it isn’t going to continue. You’re eighteen now, Shayna. We want what’s best for you, but tonight? This utter embarrassment? Putting yourself in danger? That will never happen again. You know the rules of living in this house, and if you want to continue to live under this roof, you’d better learn to follow them.”
We lock eyes for a long few seconds. I draw my knees up to my chest and hug them tight to my body, shaking a little when I realize I have no choice but to stop arguing. Because he’s right. Everything I’ve done has been a childish act of rebellion. I’ve hurt myself and my family.
I came in sloshed on Christmas Eve after trying to throw myself at a boy who clearly wanted nothing at all to do with me. Would it have killed me to have come home at a normal hour? Maybe peeked in on their little get together—sober—and wished them a Merry Christmas. Hell, I could have gone ahead and made myself a hot cocoa with a splash of mint and tequila—the way Quinn mentioned her grandmother drank hers—and snuggled down in my room for the night.
But no. I got crazy, and then I brought my crazy
home and made my parents endure it.
I open my mouth to tell my father, from the bottom of my heart, how sorry I am. That I’m an idiot. That I am a spoiled brat.
But, before a single word leaves my mouth, Dad has already turned away and slammed my bedroom door behind him.
I spend a few hours in my room crying and sleeping. When I finally wake up, the house feels cozy and warm. It’s got to be inching close to dawn, but it’s still pitch black out. I love this time of day, when the entire world feels like it’s asleep, and I can just drift in my own thoughts, free of the usual pressuring worries that crowd into my head.
This time of day feels like the gift of a new beginning. Anything is possible. Nothing is unfixable.
Which is a good thing, because I have a ton of fixing to do.
I screwed up. I made some huge mistakes. And I need to make things right. I dig out the snowman pajamas Mom got me this year. She loves dorky pajamas for our Christmas morning family photo. I shimmy out of the clingy party dress, and into the cozy flannel, braid my hair back, scrub the runny makeup off my face, brush my teeth, notice that I only have one diamond earring in, so I take it out and hope my parents don’t ask about it, then creep to the stairs to see if Mom and Dad are still up.
I lean around the wall to listen better, and my heart pumps faster at the sound of their voices. At first it’s just mumbles, but I listen closer, my heart sinking when I realize they’re worried about me. A night that should be pretty fun and peaceful is spent worrying if I’m going to nosedive off the deep end.
“Should we be worried?” Mom asks Dad in a hushed voice. I can practically see her wringing her hands.
Dad’s sigh carries all the way up the stairs. “Worried? I’m not sure. I think it’s probably normal to experiment, Trish.”
I creep down a few more steps. I can see them in the warm little living room, illuminated by a fire crackling in the fireplace. The tree is my mother’s pride and joy, and she meticulously hangs every blown glass German ornament so there isn’t a single empty branch. It’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.
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