Rebuilding What's No Longer Mine

My entire world collapsed and I don’t know how to build it back up correctly. I’ve been in a daze. Even on the drive home from school, the town looks different. Another sprawling field torn up, littered with cranes and huge piles of dirt and signs advertising the Coming Soon $500 thousand dollar homes. Another Sheetz has sprouted up, plus a new Sprouts. Or were they there before? Maybe my memory’s shot—my brain does feel like Swiss cheese. Or maybe being away changes how you view things, and my lens has already changed after one semester. It’s hard to miss this small county of corn and cows and conservatives, after living on campus where classes start with pronoun circles and nobody minds the rainbow pins on my backpack.

Tires crunching over salt, I pull up at home behind the Honda Accord Jude got for his 16^th birthday, parked in Dad’s old spot in the driveway. White Christmas lights string across the front gate, the frieze, the untrimmed boxwoods. An inflatable Santa and family of snowmen hum and flap around in the biting wind like they belong on a used car lot. I wonder if Mom has always wanted to put up outdoor decorations, and now felt free enough to do it now that no one was here to bark complaints about everything she did or felt or desired. We haven’t talked about it. I want to console her, but she redirects the focus back on me during every check-in phone call, not wishing to “influence my relationship with my father”, though she must know my contempt for the man is my own.

.

In my childhood bedroom, I peel off my knit pom-pom hat and my hair chases the static upward. I toss it onto the creaky twin bed and heft my suitcase next to it to unpack. This room already doesn’t feel like mine, though it’s largely the same as I left it. I left most of my stuff here—out of season purses, Sanrio plushies, polaroids featuring friends I don’t talk to anymore—only bringing essentials to not overload my shared dorm. I wanted college to be a fresh start, to reinvent myself, to find myself, to make new friends. Ha. Haha. I’m overwhelmed with relief that I’m back home, off campus, safe. I can breathe for the first time in a month. This break will be a welcome distraction and give me time to mull things over. I look up at the glow-in-the-dark stars and planets Dad stuck on the ceiling when I was little, and my chest hurts. I leave the room before I finish unpacking, before whatever is trying to make me cry succeeds. Staying in a guest bedroom might make things easier.

Downstairs, a huge evergreen burgeons out from a faux-snow skirt, decorated with classic shiny baubles and strung with red incandescent lights—someone must have climbed a ladder to get the glittery star topper on. It smells like pine and apple cider. An Elf on a Shelf lies sexily atop the piano like a lounge singer.

Mom comes out from the kitchen with two mugs in hand, offering one out to me. After I take it, she pulls me in for a hug. I press the mug into both of my palms and hold the cider under my face, steam warming my chin.

“Do you like him?” Mom gestures to the Elf. “I saw some people on Facebook doing it and thought it was cute.”

“It is cute,” I chuckle, then look around at the space again, jarred by how foreign it feels, the living room I grew up in. “Did you rearrange in here?”

“I wanted to move things around a bit, make it my own space. Your father never liked my sense of style.”

“Yeah, it’s very different.” I walk up to the tree and delicately hold one of the silver baubles in my hand. I wonder where our old artificial tree is, the same one we’d use every year, and where the old ornaments are—the mini baby pictures of Jude and I—the Looney Tunes ornaments that are essentially plastic action figures on a string—the retro cars we’d position in an imaginary race up the tree, declaring a new winner each year. “I’m not used to so much traditional festivity.”

“I thought it was time for us to make our own memories.” Mom stirs her cinnamon stick and takes a sip.

Things have changed here as much as they’ve changed for me—Mom’s internal world must have collapsed as much as mine. Thirty-two years of marriage. The entire future she saw for herself. Gone. She’s chopped her hair to her ears, isn’t wearing mascara or lipstick, and her bare face glows. She looks like she’s started eating again, no longer withering away, shrinking herself. Happier, I conclude. She looks happier.

.

A tablecloth printed with silver bells covers the dining room table, displaying a small centerpiece of pinecones, holly, and red poinsettias. It’s surrounded by tealights dancing through snowflake and reindeer-shaped holes in the glass holders. Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy twinkles through the golden horn of Mom’s ersatz vintage gramophone.

Mom, Jude, and I sit around one end of the table, each with a distinct themed gingerbread house kit before us. I choose the Oreo one because they’re my favorite, even though I have no intention of eating it. Our mismatched candies sit between us, so we can use whatever looks best, and I’m not inclined to try Sour Patch and chocolate flavored hard biscuit.

“How’s school, Kelsy?” Mom asks in the lull between songs, placing gumdrop lights across her roof.

“Oh, you know. Fine.” I do need to talk to her about it. I look to Jude, using tweezers to place an orange sprinkle nose on his marshmallow snowman. Now isn’t the time.

“How’s classes?”

“They’re fine.”

“Making new friends?”

“Uh,”

Jude looks up with a cocked brow, silent. He’d never pry in front of a parent.

My focus is drawn back to the house as one of walls topples. I catch it with a sticky hand, smearing white across the dark cookie. How are they both already decorating?

“Do you need help, honey?” Mom looks at my failing structure and reaches to offer a supporting hand.

“I’m fine. I don’t need any help,” my tone sharper than I intended. Her hand winces back. I quickly glance over at her wounded eyes, then back to my mess. “Sorry.” I say, then again more quietly, “Sorry. I need a glass of water.” I stand, using my forearms to push myself out from the table, “And to wash my hands.”

Holding my hands out in front of me, I walk through the archway to the kitchen. Recalling the years-long argument, I’m glad Dad wouldn’t let Mom knock down this wall and replace it with a half wall—I need a moment unperceived to calm down. Muffled music carries over from the next room. Not wanting to get frosting on the light switch, I don’t flip on the overheads—enough moonlight streams in through the glass sliding door. Or so I thought—I bump into the island.

I rinse at the sink and there’s no hand towel in the immediate vicinity, so I wipe my hands on my jeans. I open the cabinet to grab a glass, but something falls out of it onto the granite countertop. It sounds breakable, and fear rises in my chest. I pick it up, a small lamb made of cool stone. Not broken, but maybe fractured in a way I can’t see. In the cabinet, there are no cups, no dishes at all—instead, a full Nativity scene of figures kneeling under a hutch around the Baby Jesus. I gape at it for too long before tucking the lamb back into the hay next to a sleeping donkey.

Maybe Mom isn’t handling this whole thing as well as I thought. Or, maybe the freedom of being able to decorate however she wants without consequence is pushing her to explore some weird options. I guess, besides social convention, there’s no real reason for anything to go anywhere in particular.

I open another cabinet, and a hundred little black eyes stare back at me. It’s full of Mom’s complete Santa Around the World collection, each porcelain figurine lined up too closely along the edges of the shelves. Santas wearing turbans and quilted skirts and feathered hats, holding bagpipes and Russian dolls and cuckoo clocks. I close the door slowly. It still feels like I’m being watched.

Not wanting to explore any more cabinets, I decide I don’t need a glass. I pull a 50ml Peppermint Schnapps from my pocket. I haven’t had a single thing to drink since I’ve gotten here—could explain why I’m so tense. Just need something to loosen up.

I down the mini bottle and look around for a trash can, because of course it isn’t in the corner where it used to be. My head stops mid-swivel as I make eye contact with an Elf on the Shelf, clung to little a rope descending from the stove hood—but instead of looking up to where it’s climbing, its head is screwed toward me. Did Mom already move it? I thought that was only supposed to happen overnight. My heart starts racing. I put the bottle back in my pocket and cough the burn from my throat. Why is everything so violently unfamiliar and constantly changing? Why can’t I get a break?

“Join me outside?” Jude’s voice startles me as he walks through the archway zipping up his hoodie.

“Yes, please.”

.

Soft light seeping from the windows behind us stretches our shadows across the patio. It’s colder than I expected, and I want another glass of cider, or another shot of my festive Schnapps. Jude and I stroll to Mom’s garden, on the tiled path between solar lanterns staked into the dead grass. Jude pulls a pack of Marlboros from his hoodie.

“You sneak off to smoke now?”

“You sneak off to get drunk now?” Jude retorts.

“I’m not drunk.” I add extra slur to my voice and stumble to make him laugh. It works.

“So, what’s wrong with you?” He lights up. “You dropping out of school?”

“What? How’d you—”

“You aren’t exactly subtle. Not as rage-y as you used to get, but still snappy.”

“I’m not dropping out. Well, not exactly. Did she pick up on it? Were you two talking?”

“She didn’t say anything to me.” He flicks his ash into the bowl of the frozen-over birdbath. “What’s ‘not exactly’ mean?”

“I’m thinking about taking the semester off.” I survey the dead flora. There are still a few dead flowers hanging on, with darkened, hardened pistils and wilted petals. A clump of hydrangeas the color of old paper looks like it could break of and start a new life as a tumble weed.

“You’d move back here?”

I sighed deeply, “Yes? I don’t know how to ask Mom about it. I’m nervous to even ask her to sleep in a guest bedroom tonight.”

“I don’t think she’d care. She’d probably grab your bags and move you over herself.”

“I know. It’s just. I don’t know. I’ve only been gone for one semester and everything feels so different.” I say. I don’t say, it’s almost like I don’t belong here anymore either.

“Yeah, Mom’s kinda gone bananas,” He snickers.

“Jude!”

“It’s true! I heard you open the nutcracker cabinet.”

“Oh no, there’s one full of nutcrackers too?” I try to cover my mouth, but can’t help joining in his laughter.

“It’s definitely weird. But—” he sits on the white wrought iron bench nestled between two bushes of dead twigs. I stay standing because I’m sure the metal is freezing. “She’s been moving everything around, needing everything to ‘transform’ or ‘evolve’ since Dad left. And it has been different. Mostly in a good way.”

“You don’t miss him?”

“Are you kidding?” Jude snorts. “I do miss you though. Are you really coming back? Why would you leave school?”

I silently stare into the swirl of roses twisted into the bench behind Jude.

“I got assaulted.” I spit out before the word can snag itself on my tongue.

“Oh, shit.” He offers his cigarette out to me.

“I’m good,” I wave it away. “It was the best friend I’ve made there—I spent the night in his dorm room. His roommate was away. We were having a movie night because I hadn’t seen any Ghibli movies and they’re his favorite.” I stop. I don’t want to start thinking about it. I shift my gaze to Jude. “It’s funny, it took me multiple sessions with the school counselor for me to admit that to her.”

“Thanks for trusting me with it,” the pity in his brow softens.

“You don’t need to use therapy speak! Of course I trust you.” I lightly shove him. I didn’t realize how much I missed my baby brother while I’ve been away. “But I do think I need to get off campus. I can’t do it anymore.”

“That makes sense.” He bends to twist his cigarette into a frosted mulch bed, then hugs me. “You don’t need to tell mom, but she’d support you. No matter what, I’m here for you.”

.

After Jude gets me a glass (most of the cups are in the fridge so they’re “pre-cold” like an oven is “pre-warmed”), I linger in the dining room before heading upstairs, and the water washes the sour taste from the back of my mouth. O Holy Night spills from the gramophone as the tealight candles flicker, yet to be snuffed out, left to melt until they drown their own flame.

My gingerbread construct more resembles an A-framed cabin rather than anything traditional, but at least it’s still standing. Between the houses, the leftover candies still sit out and the frosting has been left to harden in the bowls and piping bags. An Elf sits on the edge of a bowl of M&Ms, looking longingly at my cabin, head tilted slightly, hands on its cheeks. How many of these does Mom have? I wonder if there’s another cabinet full of them somewhere, and am just grateful this one is more cute than creepy.

The red light of the Christmas tree guides me to the stairs, and I sink my hand into the garland wrapped around the railing. I head back to this room that doesn’t feel like my room in this house that doesn’t feel like my house to get some sleep. I don’t need to switch to a guestroom tonight, and I can unpack in the morning. Nothing is urgent or dire. Everything may be disparate—but right now, I’m safe enough to fall asleep under the familiar glowing stars and planets.