A Kid at Christmas

I felt ridiculous. Five layers of fluff separated my skin from the December air, giving me the look of an unthreatening bear. One of a storybook that was clumsy and only kind. Woefully undermining her abilities. My mother watched out the window, receiving the occasional mitten-obscured thumbs up from my little sister, Bea. She wasn’t watching her over dressed bears though. She’d be watching the road. 

“Watch me, Betty!” the littler bear yelled my way. “Watch this move!” 

And with a muffled crunch, her whole body fell back into the snow. The perfect start to a snow angel. 

“She’s lovely, Bea,” I said by the time I’d made it down the drive to her. 

“She’s chubby,” she said, disappointed, cocking her head at the embossed angel. 

“Chubby? She’s in a flowing gown and likely a down coat in this weather,” I said. But added, “And you need to stop copying what mom says.”

“You make one, Betty,” she said. A challenge, I knew, to prove her own ratios weren’t just her coat. 

“I prefer to watch you though.”

“You’re a bore,” she huffed before heading back to the snow ramp I’d made for her. 

The squeak of the front door was louder than our mother’s voice that followed but we knew that was the call to come inside. A slog of a process, removing one wet layer after the next in a tidy order so to not make a mess of the foyer. Coat first, then boots. Next snow pants, the top socks, then the second socks. An unavoidable puddle pooled across the brown linoleum later to be soaked up by the garage towels.

“Find your jeans and sweaters, girls. Dad will be here soon.”

If there was one thing I’d learned from having divorced parents, it was that holidays were the few days of the year, more imperative than any other, to have the children around. I really wanted my dad to see my first guitar concert but since he didn’t have that weekend, and he’d apparently won Christmas Eve night, I’d been made to just tell him about it. I played for him in my bedroom, leaning into the phone’s receiver so he could hear the chords, but by the time I picked up the line again, he’d gone, and I felt childish. 

But there’s the rub. The holidays for divorced parents, centered around their children and, from what I can tell, mitigating their own guilt, are a time for childish behavior. Always a child in your parents’ eyes, the kids, at any age, are given a pass to act less mature, less knowing, and best of all, less responsible. I knew I wouldn’t be made to clean the snow puddle up myself. It was, after all, Christmas Eve and my mother wouldn’t see me until tomorrow afternoon. I also knew that the likelihood of receiving ‘Moving Pictures’ on vinyl was impossibly high. The one item I asked for. The one item I knew my dad would be jazzed to get me, being a roadie half his life. A kid of divorced parents at Christmas was still like being a kid at Christmas.

“Betty, how about the green sweater today?” my mother asserted like a question when I made it to the kitchen. “The one with the turtleneck we just bought?”

I wondered why in vain but my cheeks bloomed hot pink. The sweater I’d chosen came to my forearms and was admittedly tight. It matched Bea’s, embroidered with a goose in a Santa hat. It’d been my favorite for a few years now but that meant I’d chosen a sweater I’d received at age twelve and was now fifteen. Pulling the green sweater on, I realized I was no more comfortable but definitely looked more grown up. I ran a brush through my brown bob and pinned back the sides with clips adorned by red ribbons. I knew it would appease my mother, and it did. She regarded me with a smile on my way back down stairs.

The doorbell chimed through the house, freezing all the occupants like its melody was sung by a Siren.

“Dad’s here!” yelled Bea, in unison with her sock-dampened run. 

Against my better judgment, I looked at my mother first. She was fussing with her blouse. Commanding it to lay flat despite the dry static that had possessed our house since late fall. Her hair, its victim too, and mine, and Bea’s. We’d all been overly dry and now sharp to the touch, but my mother’s protest continued despite it. The greetings of Merry Christmas echoed from down the hall along with the shuffling of paper bags and foil topped somethings. And my mother took another deep breath, then looked my way. 

“Go greet your father,” she directed. 

Before I could take a step, one that entailed leaving my mother to her kitchen-panic alone, I’d missed the entryway greeting and was now joining the party in the kitchen.

“Betty! Baby!” he said into my hair, already having scooped me into a hug.

I breathed him in and back in time I went. Hair gel, Marlboro, and Tide. That’s the way my dad always smelled and that smell lived in a nice, cushy spot, right in the back of my mind. 

The unfamiliar portion of this hug happened when I looked over his shoulder to see a woman standing in front of Bea. She was pretty. Really pretty, in the way that when you see someone that pretty, you stop and gawk a little bit. It was her hair that caught me off guard. Roots the same color as my family’s hair, nearly black, but they wore like an outline around her forehead followed by shoulder length blonde. Her eyes were painted with blue sparkle and black, and her lips were as pink as my Barbies’. Well, Bea’s Barbies’.

“Girls,” my dad started, using the sudden silence as his que. “This is Veronica. My girlfriend.” 

The leader of our pack spoke first, stepping toward Veronica with arms out for a hug. “Veronica, hi. I’m Margaret. Welcome.”

I hated it. It was weird and Veronica didn’t do her head right. Like she was trying to not touch my mother. That’s not how I would have hugged someone who’d just welcomed me into their home. In that moment, she seemed hardly older than me. Someone who was young and didn’t know how to act around company. 

“Let’s get comfortable in the living room,” my mother suggested. A proper hostess by anyone’s measure. “Who would like some eggnog?”

“So, hey guys, that’s the other thing,” dad started. 

Bea and I had already secured our most favorite couch spots before either of us realized the others hadn't left the kitchen yet. My dad continued from there. 

“Veronica and I, we gotta get back on the road tonight. Got a show in Vancouver tomorrow if you can believe it. I just couldn’t take off without seeing you guys for Christmas, ya know?”

The words might as well have been a foreign language. A vinyl spun backwards maybe. I couldn’t make sense of what he was saying and more specifically, why he was saying it now when he hadn’t even taken off his shoes yet. He was sitting at my side by the time I was able to process the part where we weren’t spending Christmas Eve with my dad. 

“Couldn't run without getting my girl something though,” he said to me. 

Without meaning to, I looked to my mother who was pouring herself eggnog. Should I wait? I thought. Does she want to take a picture of me opening my present? That’s what she usually did. But when I looked down at the gift, it didn’t resemble an album at all. Albums share a shape with exactly nothing else. The weight, size, shape. It was all uniquely its own and this small, thick rectangle was an imposter. So I opened it. Under the paper was a picture frame. A framed picture of a sonogram. 

“Surprise,” my dad smiled, and waited. 

“Doc thinks it’s a boy,” Veronica chimed in, chomping gum like I’d always been told not to. “You’re going to be a big sister!” 

“I already am a big sister,” I said. The start of the fight. I knew it as soon as the words danced in vulgar prowess across my lips. Fight, I thought. You deserve it.

And so they did. My mom and dad and now a stranger pretending to be a grown up with my half brother in her flat tummy yelled amongst each other in the kitchen. The voices grew muffled as Bea and I ascended the stairs to find some Christmas books and turn a program on in my mom’s bed. The sheets smelled like her. Like memories, not things. I breathed them in, choking out the memories of ghosts. 

“Sorry you didn’t get your album, Betty,” Bea cooed over the commercial. 

“Maybe Santa will bring it.”

I left Bea to the movie and perched myself on the top stair to review the fight’s final showdown. From what I could tell. Dad and Veronica weren’t coming back for a while. Mom would be happy about that until the toll of the title ‘step sister’ took full effect on me and, God forbid, Bea. My instincts were exactly right about Veronica. She was, in fact, twenty years old. Half my father’s age, my mother made sure to point out, and five years my senior. 

The door closed behind my father and his new family. One quick jolt of panic rushed its way through my body. The same as a missed bus or a test you’re yet to finish. False panic because they weren’t actually leaving without me, they were just leaving without me. My mind raced over all the fruitless pleas. “Wait, come back!” “I’m sorry!” I recited silently. I’d said them before and they’d always gotten me right here. Perched in the nosebleeds at the worst show I’d ever been to. My mother turned from the door to find me in the cheap seats. 

“Please wipe up this floor, Betty.”