Beast(72)

She loses it, reliably, either Christmas Eve or Christmas morning, which is the worst because it means the rest of the day gets a shroud draped over everything until at least dinner.

Unfortunately, this year it’s Christmas morning.

I knock on her door when she’s not up yet, a cup of coffee for her in my hand. After a feeble go-ahead, I enter.

The blinds are drawn and she sits on the bed, sinking into the middle like a bowling ball. “Merry Christmas,” she says in a dull voice. Yup, this is Christmas.

“You okay?”

“Yup.”

She is not okay.

“I brought you coffee,” I say.

“Thank you, sweetheart.”

I sit down next to her and we stare at the wall. I’ve learned it’s best not to say anything. In time, Mom sips the coffee. She doesn’t need to bother blowing on it; it’s plenty lukewarm by now. She does the same thing she always does: turns her head, smiles at me with all the joy of an old shoe left in a puddle, and says, “Just miss him, you know?”

“I know.”

“We’ve been chatting, he and I.”

“What’s he saying?” Because I don’t know. Because it feels like I will never know.

“Afraid that’s between me and your dad,” she says.

“Does he say anything else?” That no matter what happens, I’ll be okay?

“You know you can always ask him anything, sweetie.”

Merry Christmas. Here’s a punch to the gut because goddammit, I’ve been asking him things for over a decade and looking for signs in every dead crow and lost penny I see and always coming up with nothing on top of nothing.

She gets up, I follow, and we go into the living room to open presents.

I got my mom a garlic press for Christmas and some new slippers. She got me a gift certificate to our local bookstore, a new pair of shoes, some extra wiring for the train set, and this amazing salmon jerky from a place we like to visit in Astoria. It’s seriously fish candy, but it’s pricey as hell, so I know what a treat it is. Someday when I’m rich, from football or being brilliant or both, I’m taking my mom to the smoked-fish shop and we’re buying the whole store.

It’s a good goal.

I have a lot of them now. They are short and don’t involve much more than do this, get a small reward. Like a scientific experiment. If you floss today, you get ten extra minutes with this book. If you look ahead and do five problems from tomorrow’s homework, you get five more sets of push-ups. Stupid stuff like that. Doesn’t matter what it is—it serves a purpose: don’t think about Jamie.

We have a few tapes of Dad. I watch them on holidays and my birthday. Not too often. Like if I watch the tapes too much, they’ll turn to dust because that’s what Mom told me when I went on a bender in the sixth grade. Even though we had them digitally transferred after that, I’m still afraid to take my chances.

I boot up my computer to see him. The clips. Nothing movie length. Nothing longer than five minutes. But there he is, taking up the whole screen. Laughing. Talking, listening. Eating an entire ham in a time lapse and then dabbing his face with a napkin, pinkie up. The ones my mom shot are hilarious because the camera is aimed as high up as it can go and he chuckles because she’s still so tiny compared to him. But they love each other, that much is clear. This is why they can still communicate. It makes me feel disastrously whole. And then immediately empty.

The clip of him I secretly did and didn’t want to see comes up. There’s his buddy goofing around in their frat house at college. Clear and brown bottles and empty red cups lie across the dingy old couch, the coffee table, and the windowsills, and even on top of the curtain rods. Greek letters on the wall. My dad takes up three-quarters of the couch, and his drunk friend tries to crawl across him, misses, and his ass breaks the window. Dad hollers with laugher and states, clear as a bell, “That’s so gay.”

I pause the clip and rewind. Watch it again.

Was it condemnation? Turn of (stupid) phrase? I can’t tell.

I leave the screen frozen on his face, full of life and laughing at his friend’s rear end hanging out a cheap, single-paned window.

In time, I turn it all off.

I don’t know if I want to see this one when I turn sixteen.

After Mom’s perked up long enough to throw a turkey into the oven, I check my phone because if I don’t, even on a major holiday, I will curl up in the fetal position. When I check my phone, I imagine a rat in a lab somewhere getting a little pellet every time I click. Today the rat is hungry. I look at the screen and blink. Four texts from Jamie. She wrote to me. I tamp down the leaping in my gut and pretend I don’t have all the anticipation of someone else’s Christmas morning.

Hey, it’s me. I wanted to wish you a merry Christmas.

I left you a present on your front step.

If you take it inside and eat it, then you still think about us.

J.



I get up from the couch and head to the front door. The air is cold and sharp and floods the hallway as I pull it wide. On the front step, as promised, sits a little package wrapped inside a napkin. I peel back the layers. Inside is a pretzel.

The street is still as death. No strange cars, no movement aside from an occasional gust. I look everywhere for Jamie, for her bike. I leave the house and hobble down the front walk, risking a lecture for leaving the door wide open, but Mom’s still too steeped in her seasonal depression to notice.