The Comeback(8)

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My parents lock themselves in the kitchen as Esme and I dress the Christmas tree, filling each branch with garish, flashing baubles, each more hideous than the one before it. My dad found a crate of decorations in the attic, and when he brought them down, I had to try very hard not to think about the first Christmas I didn’t come back, or any of the ones after that. I would like to say that I’ve thought about it before, but I would probably be lying.

As we work, I hum Christmas songs to drown out the sound of my parents arguing, even though Esme is still refusing to talk to me. It’s a throwback to when we were younger, back when our parents’ arguments used to be loud and fiery instead of ice cold, always when they thought we were sleeping. Esme would wake up and climb onto the foot of my bed, turning to face the wall so that her forehead was pressed against it. While our parents fought over my mother spending twelve pounds on a moisturizer, or going out dancing with her friends when the water bill still hadn’t been paid, I would make up stories or songs about a pirate-fighting mermaid called Patrice to distract her. Esme was young then, only eight when I left, and I think I thought of her as mine for a while.

I steal glances at her while we decorate, and it strikes me as so strange that I don’t know this serious, dark-haired teenager any more than I know my parents’ next-door neighbor. She has rings of violet underneath her eyes and a small gap between her front teeth that she must either love or despise.

As a result of what has been happening in the kitchen, dinner consists of defrosted hash browns and boiled hot dogs, with a watery pile of spinach in the middle. Esme takes one look at her plate and announces that she needs to lie down in her room. She’s usually the definition of polite, so this is entirely unprecedented. There is this moment where my dad stares helplessly at my mom but they let her get away with it, and I can see how it starts, how someone can slip through your fingers even when you care so much it hurts.

I settle down next to my mom on the sofa for an episode of Real Housewives. My dad hands me the tray with the poppies on it by mistake, and my mom and I wordlessly swap before we start to eat. I open with the spinach and work my way to the hot dogs, leaving the hash browns until last because they’re the best part. I really like hash browns. How can my mom say that I’m not happy?

“Grace . . .” My dad cuts across the show at a pivotal moment and I frown at him slightly. My mom mutes the TV.

“I know your mother tried to talk to you earlier, and I wanted to say that I support her 110 percent. Whatever she said, I agree.” He seems like he’s in physical pain with the effort of having to involve himself in this, but it’s still not enough for my mom, who makes a small sound.

“Great, me too. We are all on exactly the same page then,” I say brightly. My mom keeps her eyes fixed expectantly on my dad. I frown at the TV but they don’t turn the sound back on even though the show has restarted. We stay frozen like this in a silent showdown for a couple more minutes. I could do this forever, but I also kind of want to know how the episode ends.

“What was the scale?” I ask eventually. My dad just looks at me, confused, but my mom shakes her head because she knows what’s coming.

“You said 110 percent but I have no idea what the scale was. It devalues the whole system. What about 500 percent? You could even support her a million percent if you tried really hard.” I think I can hear Esme snort from her bedroom down the hall, but maybe I’m imagining it.

“Grace,” my mom snaps, and I sink back into the sofa.

“I don’t want to have to remind you that I bought you this house. So this is actually my home,” I say, hating myself more with every word that comes out of my mouth.

“You guys can obviously stay as long as you want,” I add graciously.

“Grace, please,” my dad says, and I feel horrible because I think he’s going to cry. Sometimes I wish he could just figure out how to repress his emotions like the rest of us.

“This is ridiculous,” my mom says, throwing her hands in the air. “You can’t pretend that your life there never existed. That it doesn’t still exist—”

“Mom,” I interrupt, and then I count to five in my head. “Can we talk about something else?”

I walk over to the TV and turn the sound on manually. One of the Real Housewives is upset that her friend said she had an alcohol problem. I let her voice wash over me as my heart rate returns to something close to normal. It never occurred to me before, but maybe this is what people outside of LA and New York do to meditate.

“You know, I heard something today about the Independent Film Awards,” my mom says after a moment. I keep my eyes trained on the TV, even as my heart rate picks up.

“Where did you hear about that in Anaheim?”

“It’s a figure of speech, Grace. I saw it on Facebook. Anyway, Able Yorke is being honored. They’re giving him a lifetime achievement award for his commitment to the industry. I thought you’d want to know.”

I swallow hard but I don’t lift my eyes from the TV.

“Not really,” I say, then I collect her plate on top of mine and put them both in the kitchen sink.

I watch the rest of the episode with my parents before excusing myself, but I know my mom will think she has won anyway. Because surely that’s what she was doing—appealing to my engorged celebrity ego, thinking that I would never be able to resist the slithering pull of awards season. Surely I would never miss seeing Able win for his body of work that couldn’t have existed without me. That this entire time I’ve been pretending to rebuild Grace Hyde, we all knew my alter ego was always going to win in the end.