Have Yourself a Crazy Little Christmas

by Megan Crane

  And maybe a broader truth was that they always had and always would, or neither of them would be there, would they?

  If they didn’t like the circus, why would they keep showing up?

  “I can’t tell you how much I would like to believe that all of this is an extended power move on Mom’s part,” Sydney said later that afternoon when they were fortifying themselves before the compulsory ice-skating tragedy that was about to unfold with very large, very hot, and very sugary mochas. “Sometimes I even convince myself. Mom’s a free spirit, I decide. She’s always marched to the beat of a different drummer, careless in the face of other people’s hang-ups and condemnation.”

  “Sure,” Devyn agreed dryly. “She’s a freedom fighter.”

  “I want to believe it,” Sydney said with a sigh. “I just feel that a true mascot of feminist resistance wouldn’t completely change her personality, life goals, dreams, and history with every new boyfriend. But maybe that’s just my hang-up. Maybe I’m just, I don’t know, provincial.”

  “Last I heard you were a computer genius employed by the United States government,” Devyn said in the same dry tone. “And possibly also a CIA agent? Or NSA, maybe. Something with initials, but you can’t tell anyone or you’ll have to kill us all in our sleep, blah blah blah.”

  “I know some code,” Sydney murmured, with that mysterious little quirk in the corner of her mouth that always came up when people tried to talk to her about her highly classified life.

  “You live in our nation’s capital and are, if not in the room where it happens, adjacent to that room pretty much every day. I don’t think you’re provincial by any definition.”

  “I appreciate the rousing defense, I do. But that doesn’t make Mom any less problematic, does it? She’s the one who called me a wannabe Catholic schoolgirl when I was fifteen and came home early from my dad’s to find her lying naked in the center of the living room with her so-called lifestyle coach, doing some kind of Himalayan salt ritual.”

  “Maybe she’s not problematic at all,” Devyn said expansively as they stepped back out into the blast of cold and started toward Jackson Town Square, a part of which was turned into an outdoor ice-skating rink at this time of year. “Maybe she just falls in love with her whole heart, the way she says she does. With people, places, Himalayan salt rituals, whatever. Maybe it’s nothing more or less than that. And as long as she’s not dragging us around after her and every new lover any longer, who cares?”

  Devyn actually believed it while she said it.

  Or, as with all things involving Melody, she wanted to believe it.

  But that was before she had to take part in the sheer absurdity that was an ice-skating party for grown-ups. And not just any grown-ups, but all of her mother’s exes and the friends and family she’d roped into signing off on her madness with their skeptical presence.

  “Does Mom even know how to ice-skate?” Sydney asked as they stood there in the snowy, icy center of town as the crowd started to gather around them. Sealing their doom.

  “I’ve never seen her near a skate or heard a single story that indicated she knows anything about ice—unless it was that hockey player story she tells when she’s had too many tequila sunrises.”

  Which was a not-uncommon occurrence, sadly.

  “Oh my God.” Sydney looked pained. “The Canadian hockey player. I completely blocked that out. From Winnipeg or something.”

  “It’s called repression and it’s totally healthy when it has to do with a parent, in my opinion. And also I believe he was from Saskatoon.”

  “Something weird with three syllables. All I really remember is the beard.”

  “The abrasion,” Devyn said, over-enunciating to make it that much worse. “The beard burn abrasion is what she dwells on when she tells that story. On her breasts, Sydney.”

  Her sister was wheezing with some combination of horror, cold, and the dark glee that such stories always seemed to inspire in both of them. “You have to stop. Right now.”

  And Devyn did, so she and Sydney could stop sniggering off by themselves and start acting like the sweet, supportive, codependent little hostesses to their mother’s latest horror show they were expected to be.

  No matter what, they always were.

  Because it was the three of them against the world, whether they liked it or not.

  Chapter Twelve

  But old, hilariously awful stories of Melody’s past lovers were the least of the issues with the afternoon’s activity, Devyn discovered.

  Unlike yesterday at the sleigh ride, the collection of exes who’d gathered to pay attention to Melody today were a whole lot less friendly and easygoing. Maybe because there were more of them. Devyn overheard one of the Tomachevsky twins, somewhat less gallantly than previously advertised, snap at Astral—who was, of course, far too evolved to reply in kind. He preferred to pass it on, in the spectacularly passive-aggressive manner Devyn recalled from her days on the bee commune, when poor Brody happened by.

  “We were asked to gather here at exactly two o’clock, friend,” Astral said, down the length of his nose and with a big smile. Devyn remembered that smile. Astral had claimed he was dispensing love and light when he wielded it. Devyn might have been too young to know the word supercilious, but she’d recognized it all the same when it was directed at her. “It shows how little you respect Melody’s stated wishes to show up late, without so much as an apology. I have to wonder if you can even see her aura. I know you can’t possibly read it or understand what her soul needs. I hope you can hear me.”

  It had taken Devyn months, way back when, to understand that when Astral expressed hopes about other people’s hearing, he wasn’t concerned that there was an outbreak of deafness around him. He wanted to know if the person he was speaking to was capable of truly listening to the great wisdom he was imparting.

  Devyn had fantasized about using his incense burner to set his carroty dreads alight. She didn’t know how she’d restrained herself.

  And lucky for Astral, he hadn’t tried his little routine on, say, Devyn’s father. Brody was a ski bum and better yet, for Astral, was pretty much constantly high. Where other men might have snapped back at little Astral’s display of condescension, Brody only blinked. Slowly.

  “Easy, bro,” was all he’d said.

  Devyn was considering possible ways to lighten the mood all around when a new form reared up in front of her and Sydney, so close to them that they both very nearly dropped their mochas. Which would have been a true tragedy, Devyn thought, almost as annoyed as if said tragedy had occurred.

  “I was sure we’d get a chance to meet your dad this time,” said Howie, the body-building loomer, who had commanded a very, very long year of Melody’s life when Devyn had been a sullen preteen.

  Devyn had so hoped he wasn’t coming.

  Howie looked pretty much exactly as Devyn remembered him. Halfway to roid rage with a side helping of a bad tan job, and no doubt the same more-gel-than-hair situation on his head. Not that she could see his hair beneath the obnoxiously bright green and yellow hat he wore with a duck plastered on it.

  “My dad’s been married for years,” Sydney replied, deadpan, clutching her coffee as if it was a shield. “Besides, you met him a thousand times, Howie. Every time he picked me up or dropped me off.”

  Devyn had never liked Howie. And now, looking at his belligerent expression and all those muscles that made his puffy coat fit oddly, she remembered why.

  “I’m pretty sure he means my dad, Sydney,” she murmured when Howie only glared. “They always mean my dad.”

  Howie let out a bark of laughter, though nothing was funny and he was the least amusing man alive. “I heard a rumor the big man was here. Thought I’d finally get a chance to meet the guy I heard so much about.”

  Devyn didn’t think that all her mother’s ex-boyfriends were actually particularly interested in meeting her father, despite the number of times they’d each mentioned it. Even Astral, s
upposedly a resident of a higher plane, had pulled her aside after the sleigh ride to ask if all of Melody’s lovers would be attending, hint hint. He had also not been terribly concerned about no-shows like Stanley Campbell, Sydney’s father, who lived with his wife of many years in Baltimore and, according to Sydney, hadn’t had any contact with Melody since the moment Sydney turned eighteen.

  They wanted to meet Derrick because he was the only outlaw, Devyn thought then, staring at Howie and his many muscles, especially the ones that made his neck look so upsettingly bulbous. This was a very old and boring pissing contest, that was all.

  It was also entirely one way.

  “Why do you want to meet my father?” she asked Howie then, as politely as possible. Because that would give her plausible deniability if he flipped out on her, out here in public. “You do realize that he has no idea who you are, right?”

  After Howie fumed at that, visibly, and then stormed off, Sydney slid her a look. “He didn’t like that. I think you knew he wouldn’t.”

  “I don’t know what all these men are expecting,” Devyn retorted. “But my father has literally never, ever, indicated that he’s aware that Mom met another man in her entire life. Which for people like Howie is probably a positive, because I don’t think my dad would be all that into his whole gym rat thing.”

  “Your dad is the one who got away,” Sydney said matter-of-factly, as if this was a fact so well-known and over-discussed that it hardly bore mentioning again now. “He’s the one Mom measures all the rest of them against. Of course he doesn’t care. But she did, so they do. Simple.”

  She swiped Devyn’s empty coffee cup and made her way toward a garbage can, then kept going to greet all of their cousins, which left Devyn behind at the edge of the ice with that bombshell. Because Devyn had never viewed her parents’ relationship that way. Did all the men here see it differently? Did Melody?

  And did that mean Devyn had been ignoring something else all these years?

  She was still trying to process that when Vaughn appeared, walking up with his father to join the so-called party there in the park.

  And this time, Devyn didn’t pretend she didn’t know him. Or couldn’t see him, the way she had the day before, to her shame. This time, she smiled at him and didn’t care who saw it.

  Her cousins. Her collection of would-be stepfathers. Even her mother.

  “You do not look happy,” Vaughn said, coming over to stand next to her.

  “I’m the personification of delight,” Devyn replied, trying to make her voice a little less flat. She failed. “This party is already the best party I’ve ever been to in my life. Random boyfriends from my mother’s past keep asking me where my father is, as if they’ve been waiting thirty years to fight him in the high school parking lot, or something.”

  “He’s very mysterious. Everybody wants to solve a mystery.”

  “I don’t really think that sleuthing is foremost on their minds when they ask about him.”

  “They just want to measure themselves against the one guy your mom never got over,” Vaughn said.

  Devyn found herself staring at him, which wasn’t exactly a hardship. But this time she wasn’t knocked off her feet by how beautiful he was, so dark and perfect against all the snow and ice. Or that wasn’t the only thing that was happening, anyway.

  “You too?” she asked, her voice...small.

  Vaughn laughed. “You know that your father is the only one who broke up with your mother, right? Everyone else, she left, one way or another. That’s the story I always heard.”

  “My parents were together one summer. They’re still friendly, though I don’t think they...hang out or anything. That’s it.” She thought about the lazy, electric way Derrick had watched Melody that first night and made a face. “If there are more details, I certainly don’t know them.”

  “I guess you wouldn’t.” Vaughn grinned at her and she didn’t understand how he did that. How he made her forget they weren’t the only two people in the world, three feet away from most of her family. “Who wants to hear true stories about their parents, anyway? Nothing good can come of it.”

  “I hope everyone is prepared to be disappointed,” she said when she recovered herself enough from that grin of his to remember that she was supposed to be carrying on a conversation. “Because Derrick Voss no more subjects himself to ice-skating parties than he enjoys a seasonal sleigh ride. He won’t be joining the party this afternoon.”

  She’d tried to convince her father otherwise, though she wasn’t planning to share that information with the group. He had been there that morning, after all, though it wasn’t clear where he’d slept and, obviously, neither Sydney nor Devyn had wanted to ask.

  There were a lot of rooms in Melody’s house, after all. He could have slept anywhere.

  And Santa is real, a chiding voice inside her had chimed in.

  Devyn had left Melody dancing in the kitchen with Sydney so they could have a little mother-daughter catch-up without her, and had gone to find her father out in Melody’s sun-room. He’d had his back to the rest of the house, staring out at the mountains and the river down below, all of it covered in snow and almost impossibly pretty in the morning light.

  He was dressed the way he was always dressed, in jeans and boots and leather, and she could smell fresh air and the hint of cigarette smoke, which told her he’d just stepped back inside from feeding his habit.

  With anyone else in the entire world, she found the scent of cigarette smoke disgusting. With her father, she found it comforting.

  “You should come this afternoon,” she’d said.

  He hadn’t exactly laughed. “I don’t skate.”

  “Do you not skate or have you never tried to skate?” she’d asked. “Because they’re not the same thing.”

  “It wouldn’t matter if I was an Olympic skater in my spare time,” her dad had replied in that tempered-steel, zero-arguments way he had. He’d turned from the view to settle that flinty gaze of his on her instead. “I’m not playing that game.”

  She’d known what he meant. She knew exactly what game this was, and so did everyone else—but maybe she’d been a little crazy after another night of too little sleep. And not enough Vaughn.

  “If you weren’t playing the game, you wouldn’t be here, would you?” she’d dared to ask.

  Her father’s face had gone hard and he’d subtly changed his stance, as if he was squaring himself off for a fight. The kind of fight they’d never had, because he wasn’t that kind of father. He didn’t leave any room for complaints or whining or tantrums or anything else, not now and not ever. He made rules and they were followed, the end.

  Devyn had swallowed, hard. She had no idea why she’d asked him something like that. Derrick Voss wasn’t the kind of man who took a challenge lying down.

  Or at all.

  She expected him to get mad, but he’d only stared at her like that for a moment. Then something in his face had gotten...less hard.

  “Does it bother you?” he asked.

  “The game? Or the fact that you’re here, playing it in your own way?”

  “I don’t play games,” her father said again. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not willing to hang out while games are going on around me. Or that I won’t win.”

  “Do you want to get back together with Mom?” Devyn had asked, feeling...unhinged. Off-balance, as if the earth wasn’t making sense beneath her feet.

  But then again, what was there to lose? Her parents hadn’t been together, ever. And her father had always viewed his contributions to her parenting in the most liberal possible sense of that term. It wasn’t as if she would lose something if her father stormed off after this conversation. Or even if Melody ripped his heart out and stomped on it, or whatever it was she did to all these men that had inspired them to come running back to take part in this madness.

  “I never thought that was something you wanted. Either of you.” Devyn swallowed. “And yet here you are.”


  “I’m not real sure any of this is your business.”

  “I’m one hundred percent sure it’s not my business at all,” Devyn had agreed, hotly. “But you and Mom have made it my business, because you’re both here. In her house. In the middle of this...thing she’s doing.”

  “Fair enough.” Her father’s eyes had gleamed in that way they did, that was him laughing. Or maybe mocking her, himself, the world—she wasn’t entirely sure. “Your mother has never much cared for things she can’t control. And I’m one of them. That’s all. That’s the long and the short of our relationship, right there.”

  “So you’re here because she can’t control you—or because she does?”

  “You look a little flushed, Devyn,” Derrick had said quietly. Much too quietly, all steel and granite. “Not quite yourself. You need to go lie down?”

  “I’ll take that as a no on the control.” Devyn had frowned at him. “So is this the plan, then? You’re just going to hang around in the house while all these other men dance attendance on her?”

  Derrick had laughed again, big and loud that time.

  “I don’t compete, kid. Ever.”

  That had been the end of that father/daughter chat. Devyn had felt...turned inside out. She still did.

  And standing there side-by-side with Vaughn didn’t help. It made her feel more raw, not less. More exposed, more out of control.

  She wanted to wrap herself around him. She wanted to bury her face in his chest, and breathe out while he wrapped those strong arms of his around her. She wanted to lean on all that strength, all that height, and lose herself in that dark, honeyed drawl until her world made sense again.

  And she hated the fact that she couldn’t do any of it.

  Or wouldn’t do it, to be more accurate. Not here. Not when there were cousins all around, aunts and uncles and even her grandfather. Grandma had been aghast at the very idea of a skating party featuring Melody and what she called that peanut gallery, which was just as well. Devyn couldn’t imagine what she’d make of all the tense exchanges between Melody’s...peanuts.