by Matthew Crow
“Oh, there’s these as well. But there are conditions so don’t get too excited,” Mum said, handing me and Chris an envelope each, inside which was a ticket to Glastonbury.
“Your brother’s taking you . . .” she told me as I hung from her neck like a pet monkey, “. . . and bringing you back. And you are to ring me every two hours; otherwise I will drive down there myself and drag you back, do you understand?” I agreed wholeheartedly. Grandma didn’t look so sure. I’d made her watch the Glastonbury Festival with me that year on television. It took three different acts on the pyramid stage and a flash of a BBC helicopter before she would believe it wasn’t a documentary about the Somme.
“YOU CAN COME DOWN NOW!” Mum yelled from the front room the next morning, after we’d opened our stockings in her bed.
“Pull the curtains, Julie, let the day in,” Grandma said while I tore through my presents.
“Let the fire warm the place up first,” Mum said, coming to sit by me on the sofa.
Chris always pretends he’s not as excited by Christmas as I am, so he lets me open my presents first, but I could tell that each time I paused to glance at instructions or scan a blurb he was getting more and more riled.
Beside the fireplace, where the important family cards were displayed, a candle was lit. Next to the candle was an unopened card with Emma’s name on it, and next to that, an unopened jewelry box wrapped with a red ribbon. Since I was six, this shrine would be laid out for Christmas Day, exactly the same each year. It would be gone within a few days. Neither Chris nor I knew what happened to the offerings. We didn’t ask.
Sometimes through the day if you passed the kitchen door when Mum was by herself, you could catch her talking to Em, too. Not full on conversations, just little things, like “Merry Christmas, my lovely girl” she’d say, or “I’ll tell you one thing, you’d be glad you skipped this year.” Then, once, “Oh shit, sweetheart, I think I’ve left the giblet bag inside. . . .”
Nobody ever interrupted. Nobody even acknowledged it. It was nice, in a way. It was Mum’s way of keeping something going that made her happy. Some loves, like the one Mum felt for Dad, disappear forever and are best forgotten about; some are best suspended in the amber of memory—localized to a specific time and place, like a really great dish you ate at a restaurant on holiday; and other loves carry on forever, no matter how distant their nucleus becomes. Like Mum’s love for Emma. It didn’t matter that it didn’t have anywhere to go anymore; it was too much a part of her simply to no longer be. She could no more lose its active presence than she could stop loving me and Chris. It trumped everything, swallowing the sadness of Em’s absence. A love like that only stops if you let it.
Mum had outdone herself this year. Every item of clothing I had ever coveted, she had bought for me. She’d come up with books I hadn’t even mentioned to her, and a DVD of every film Amber and I had ever watched together.
On the table stood a jug of mimosas that she and Chris polished off in pretty much one gulp.
“Pace yourself, big lad. It’s going to be a long day,” Mum said as he downed his third glass just as I unwrapped the biggest present—a record player—and a stack of my favorite albums on vinyl.
“My turn!” Chris said when I was finished. He had fewer boxes than I did. But they were all bigger.
He opened the first one and there was nothing inside.
“Um, Mum . . .” he said.
“Oops!” she said, swallowing a mince pie whole without chewing.
Chris opened the second and the third box and each held just more and more wrapping.
“Julie, Christmas is no time for jokes. Look at the poor lad’s face!” Grandma said. Mum just laughed gleefully at his mounting frustration, like the villainous matriarch in a Roald Dahl story. I suspect a TV guide would describe her idea of comedy as “dark,” or, at very best, “alternative.”
“You’ve missed one, by the way,” she said, pointing to the edge of another parcel poking out from beneath a cushion.
“If this is a lump of coal, I’m emigrating . . . just saying,” said Chris, teasing open the wrapping.
The box inside dropped onto the sofa. It was long and velvety, the sort of thing that usually has a diamond necklace inside. Chris popped the lid and then stood up even faster than when he had been electrocuted.
“OH, YOU HAVEN’T?” he said, launching himself at Mum, who was practically in hysterics.
“Look at your little face . . .” she said, squeezing his cheeks before he dashed out and threw open the front door.
“Come on, handsome,” Mum said, helping me to my feet and leading me after him. “Your time will come.”
“What is it?” Grandma yelled as she hobbled after us all.
Instead of Mum’s car being in the garage, a new car for Chris stood in its place. She’d managed to put a ribbon around it and had tied a huge gift tag to the side mirror.
“Oh, you’re good!” Chris said, rushing over to look at the car, then rushing back to hug Mum.
“Merry Christmas, my love,” she said, giving him a kiss on the cheek. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Have a disposable income, probably,” he said, and Mum laughed as he opened the doors in turn and threw himself into the driver’s seat, pulling down visors and checking the glove box.
“By the way, you’re picking up Colette at half past ten, so have a coffee and put something in your stomach before you go,” Mum yelled, but Chris just cranked up the radio as we made our way back inside and left him alone with his favorite new toy.
“You’ve gone soft,” Grandma said to Mum as we sat back down with bacon sandwiches while they both opened their presents.
“It’s a passing phase,” Mum said.
While Chris went to get the Spratts, Mum made me give her a hand in the kitchen.
“Put those nuts in that nice bowl I got,” she said. Grandma was in the front room watching Miracle on 34th Street, with a bottle of Baileys and a box of chocolates, and Mum was fussing about, jamming the Jurassic Turkey into the oven and fretting about cranberries and stuffing.
“You should relax,” I told her.
“I will,” she said, sitting down next to me. “I just want it to be perfect, you know, after . . . everything.”
“It is,” I said, and kissed her on the cheek. “Thanks for Christmas.”
“You’re very welcome, my love,” Mum said, pouring champagne and handing one to me.
“I do need to talk to you, though, Francis. You know, about Amber being here.” I drank my cocktail in silence, terrified that Mum would try to finish the sex discussion she’d never really had with me.
“You will just go easy while they’re here? I think she’s only coming so you’re not disappointed.”
“And because we’re in love,” I reminded her.
“And that. But you know what I mean, Francis. She’s really not doing too great at the moment, so let’s just take today as it comes, yeah?”
I was going to answer but at that moment the door flew open and we were greeted by Colette’s rendition of “Good King Wenceslas.”
In the front room Grandma turned up the volume of the TV. Mum shut the kitchen door.
“Season’s greetings!” Colette called, hugging each of us in turn. Even Mum didn’t try to stop her, which was testament either to Christmas spirit or else champagne for breakfast. “I expect you’re exhausted, what with all the chopping and peeling?”
It was Amber who looked exhausted, I thought, like a cheap photocopy of herself, but she gave me a wink and even a quick kiss on the cheek when she thought no one was looking.
“Oh, I don’t do chopping,” Mum said, preparing a tray of drinks to take into the living room.
“Is that the boys’ job?”
“Whole Foods’,” Mum said, leading everyone into the front roo
m.
Colette had made presents for everybody, including Grandma.
“From the heart,” she said as she doled out the gifts.
“Isn’t that excellent?” Grandma said unconvincingly as she dropped her handmade candle into one of her gift bags. Mum was given a bottle of elderflower wine, Chris a woodwork CD rack that was actually quite decent.
“You’re a dark horse, you, Colette,” Mum said, eyeing Chris’s gift. “You know, if you ever wanted to start selling these, I could have you a website up in no time.”
“Oh, no, it’s all for love, and of course fun. We had quite a time with the glue gun and paints!”
“It was literally nonstop,” Amber said, and Mum gave her a sly smile.
Mum had bought a dozen books and an art set the size of a pool table for Olivia. For Amber she’d pulled some strings and got a year’s free pass to a cinema in town that showed mostly black-and-white or foreign films. Chris had made her a CD of alternative Christmas songs and even designed a label for it in her own special font.
“I love it,” she said, handing him the homemade cookies that constituted the second half of his present.
“And what did you two get each other?” he asked with a meaningful glance at us both.
“Leave them alone,” Mum said, filling up everybody’s glasses. “They can do theirs later if they like.”
The room filled with noise again. Even though there were only seven of us, there seemed to be a thousand different conversations happening at once. Through the background sound, as Mum went over to fill up Amber’s glass, they had a secret chat. Amber nodded, and Mum gave her a stealth hug before dashing off to check on the parsnips.
Downstairs she and Colette wailed along to Christmas carols as they put the final touches to the meal. Chris said his main present to me would be a free half hour, so he cracked open the box of parlor games for Olivia and Grandma while Amber and I snuck off to my room.
“Merry Christmas,” she said, giving me a proper kiss once I’d helped her up the stairs.
“Are you enjoying yourself? Did you like the tree? It’s as good as the one on the box. I made Chris do it three different times before it was right.” Amber nodded and we went into my bedroom for the very first time.
I started to wonder if she felt the same way as I had when I first visited her house. Whether she had scanned photographs and evidence of my past to try and flesh out her picture of me. Or if I was behaving differently on my home territory. We’d hardly had a chance to speak properly, between the unwrapping of presents and the wall of sound that rose when two families collided. Also Amber seemed suddenly quieter, more delicate. Like she was no longer so sure she could take on the whole world in a fight, and win.
“Santa Baby . . .” she said, taking the presents I’d bought for her.
The first was a book of love poems that I know she pretended to like more than she did, which did not surprise me. I was the heart and Amber was the head of our relationship; this was long established. But she loved her necklace: a pewter Magic 8 ball that she put on straightaway.
“And it’s only got one response written on the bottom—Yes—so it always gives a good answer,” I said happily.
“What if you ask it a bad question, though?”
“I didn’t think that bit through. But it would be a big help if you didn’t, if that’s okay?”
“I promise to treat it with the respect and optimism it deserves,” Amber said, leaning forward to kiss me again.
“I feel bad now,” she said, hauling my present from her up onto the bed. It was big and rectangular and wrapped in brown paper like wartime rations. “I didn’t really spend anything,” she said, teasing her necklace between her fingers. I opened the present slowly, the huge square of starched paper coming off in one rewarding sheet.
She had given me her whole history, or just about. Every scrap of paper she’d had pinned above her bed in hospital had been glued to sheets of card, all of them stacked neatly and bound together with brown twine, and on each page she had written a paragraph, like at an art exhibition, about why every piece was special to her.
“It was either that or a laptop,” she said with an unusually nervous laugh.
“It’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever given me.”
“You wouldn’t be saying that if you’d got a car,” Amber said. “Here, I added a new one too,” she said, peeling back a stack of pages until she reached what she was looking for. On this piece of card was a bus ticket from her ride to the hospital, an empty Toblerone packet, and a sketch of my face.
“It’s from the first day we met. I stole the chocolate wrapper from your bin that day you got locked in the toilet,” she said, tarnishing the moment somewhat. “Just so you remember.”
“I’d remember anyway. But I love it. And I love you. . . .” I said, trying not to cry. “And I know it makes you uncomfortable to hear it, and you’ll say something nasty just so you don’t feel shy, but it’s true and I can’t not say it. So there it is. You’re the only actual friend I’ve ever had that I’m not related to, and I know that’s weird, and it’s even weirder that I fancy you so much. And I know I text you all the time even when I know you should be resting, but I just get scared sometimes that you won’t get better. And then I get scared that you will get better and realize you could have anyone else in the world that you wanted, and I hate myself for thinking that, and—”
Amber leaned in and kissed me to shut me up. It worked. I can’t say I wasn’t relieved.
“You’ve got nothing to worry about on that front,” she said, with such conviction that I immediately felt stupid for being so dramatic. “And in case you haven’t noticed, I’ve hardly been inundated with visitors. Or phone calls. Or gentlemen callers, for that matter.”
“That’s because you never stop snarling.”
“I stop for you,” she said, “sometimes.”
She teased her fingers around mine and I held hers, pulling her arm farther and farther from her body until she was forced to lean close to me, with her boobs pressing against my chest.
“Give it up, wise guy,” she said, pulling our hands back to her side of the bed. Amber had surprising upper body strength. “You won’t win this,” she warned.
We sat in silence for a while, staring up at the star mobile that had hung above my bed for as long as I could remember.
“Maybe fifteen’s just not our time,” I said eventually, pulling our joined fists to my lips and kissing the knuckle of her middle finger.
“Maybe it has to be,” she said, kissing me back.
Just when things were starting to get interesting there was a knock at the door.
“There goes that moment,” she said, releasing her hand from mine. “Entry granted,” she yelled unenthusiastically.
Chris came into my room, making a big show of covering his eyes with one hand.
“Time’s up, I’m afraid. I’ve done the parlor games charades, the Minister’s Cat, and we nearly cremated Grandma when Olivia spilled the Snap Dragon bowl. I’ve done my brotherly duty, guys. Time to face the music again.”
“You’ve done a fine job, young Wootton. You’ll get your reward in heaven,” said Amber, pulling me up from the bed.
Lunch was a triumph. Nobody commented that the turkey was a bit dry and the vegetables a bit watery. At Christmas you don’t notice the finer details, like how the house is a bit hot and the hats tickle your head. You get swept up in the big picture. And besides, what we lacked in quality we made up for in quantity. We all wore hats and made jokes, and the Christmas pudding was so big that when we poured brandy on it and set it on fire per tradition, everyone pushed their seats back for fear of being incinerated.
“Of course . . .” Colette was saying—she’d already had three glasses of Mum’s special mulled wine, which is a bit like normal mulled wine but with brandy in it,
and had moved on to champagne—“. . . Amber wouldn’t sleep at all throughout the night. She’d wail and yell and I’d be at my wits end. I exhausted myself trying to lull her. Then her dad would come home from night shift, lift her to his chest, and . . .” Colette’s voice rose an octave and she held her hand to her mouth. Everyone went quiet.
“Don’t, Mum,” Amber said, abandoning her uneaten pudding. “Not today.”
“Come on,” Mum said, uncorking the bottle of homemade elderflower wine and topping up her glass. “Any port in a storm, eh? Port . . . port? Oh, I should have been on the stage,” she said, taking a sniff of the wine and shrugging as she slugged it back.
Colette smiled and took a sip of her own drink, wiping her eyes with her napkin.
“Ask Mum about Christian,” Amber said with a secret sort of smile.
“No, you’ll make me blush!” Colette cried.
“The hippy with the goatee?” Mum asked. At one point on the unit Christian had attempted to do a family therapy session, only Mum and Chris started arguing. Christian had to leave the room and when he came back I could tell he’d been crying. He didn’t try again after that.
“Oh, he has been a help. He’s got a good soul, that man,” Colette said.
“I reckon he’d be a bit of all right if you gave him a good wash and a shave,” Mum said. “Bit scrawny, but I’m sure you could toughen him up.”
“Well, I quite like the gentle type . . .” Colette giggled.
“You are a dark horse all right. Let’s us girls have a chat after dinner. I reckon I could match you tit for tat,” Mum said, making Colette go all coy.
When Grandma asked if this meant Mum was courting again, she just shrugged and tapped the side of her nose.