Just Big Brother Stuff

Every year on Christmas Eve, I book a room in a hotel ten minutes from my parents’ house in suburban Maryland. It’s been my routine for a while now, which is why it was unusual that I forgot this year.

Delilah and I were twenty minutes into our drive down I-95 when I realized it, so it became her job to frantically look online to see if any hotels had availability for that night.

“I don’t get it,” she said as she scrolled and clicked. She was annoyed, I could tell; Delilah didn’t like doing anything at the last minute. “Is it so bad with your parents that you can’t stay there for one night?”

The relationship was pretty new - we’d met in grad school four months ago - so we hadn’t yet shared the ins and outs of our family dynamics. She was coming home with me for Christmas because her parents were flying to Australia “to be with family” for the holiday, and, happy as I was to be bringing her home, I didn’t know why she wasn’t going with them. This girl was special, though - I knew that already. So I didn’t ask too many questions.

“No, I love my folks,” I said. “We’ll stay there Christmas night, and the 26th - it’s just Christmas Eve we need it. Well, I need it. You can crash on my parents’ couch.”

When I glanced over at the passenger seat, Delilah was staring at me, her forehead wrinkled in confusion.

“I’m not staying at your parents’ house without you, Matthew,” she said. “That would be so weird. I’ll crash at the hotel with you.”

I hesitated. “I’m - I’m not sure if you can.”

“Matthew, what the hell?”

It was a valid question. There was a lot we needed to discuss, and we had only about two and a half hours until we’d be in Towson.

“I’m thinking it’s time,” I said, “that I tell you about what happened to Lauren.”

*****

It all started when I was sixteen years old and wanted a little extra pocket money. If I had known what was coming, I don't know if I would've made the same decisions, but that's been water under the bridge for a long time now.

“There are some job openings at the mall,” my mother told me one day in early November.

There was something about her face just then - a twinkle in her eyes and a half-smile.

“What kind of job?” I said, narrowing my eyes at her.

She’d been at the mall that day doing some early Christmas shopping. “They’re hiring for mall Santas,” she said. “I saw a flier outside Macy’s.”

“Ma!”

“I know, but -”

“I’m not an old man!”

“Well, I know that,” my mom said calmly, “but you’ve got the perfect physique for it, and -”

“Rude, Ma. That’s rude.” It was - but I laughed anyway, because it was true. I was tall, like my dad, with a round belly and rosy cheeks. When I hung with school friends, I was often mistaken for someone’s dad.

“You know you’d be great at it,” she said. “You’re great with Lauren and Thomas.”

That was how it happened - how my mom convinced me to become a seasonal mall Santa, a decision that would alter the course of my Christmases for the rest of my life.

*****

“That’s adorable!” The story was helping. Delilah was laughing, and definitely less annoyed than she’d been a few minutes earlier. “But why -”

“The story’s just getting started,” I explained.

*****

I got the job, and Mom was right - I was great at it. It was excellent pay, and I spent every Saturday and Sunday being a mall Santa. The beard was itchy, but other than that, I had no complaints. Our family loved Christmas - my mother was the master of creating Christmas magic, and Thomas and Lauren loved to stay up as late as they could on Christmas Eve to look for Santa flying through the sky. Being adored by small kids, getting to listen to their Christmas wishes, which were often hilarious - it was a blast.

Everything was going great.

The part that happened next - the part when everything got screwed up? That was totally Mom’s fault.

*****

“What did your mom do wrong?” Delilah had shifted around in her seat so that she was leaning against the passenger door. She had abandoned her task, I noticed. Her phone was resting in the coffee cup holder.

“She went shopping,” I said, shaking my head.

*****

I couldn’t believe it when I spotted them across the crowd - Mom, holding tightly to Lauren and Thomas’s hands, winding through the throngs of people toward Macy’s. With me dressed in a Santa suit, on full display, in the middle of a faux Christmas village.

When I asked her about it later, she blamed holiday chaos. “I’d forgotten the teacher gifts,” she told me. “I didn’t even think about you - about Lauren.”

Things like this - people dressed up in costume - were always triggering for Lauren. We kept our front porch light off on Halloween and put her to bed early, because the sight of the costumes alarmed her. “Is she really a witch?” she had hollered in first grade, when she saw one of her classroom teachers dressed up. She had run away and hidden in a bathroom stall. They had to call Mom up to the school to coax her out.

Any costume would upset her, but this? Me, in a Santa suit? Lauren and Thomas were both believers who loved believing. This was not going to go well.

I had a kid sitting on my lap when I spotted them, and my entire body tensed up. I smiled for the photographer, digging my fingernails into my leg to keep calm. I looked around; the line of kids and parents looped around my Santa chair, and a row of ten foot tall Christmas trees stood behind me. Trying to get away would cause a commotion and attract attention. I had to just keep doing what I was doing, and hope -

“AHHHHHHH!”

I cringed, scooting the little kid off my lap and jumping to my feet. That scream was Lauren’s, and anytime I heard that scream, it meant my parents needed my help.

*****

“She was scared?” Delilah asked.

I considered this.

Had Lauren been scared?

It wasn’t as simple as that. For Lauren, it was like - sometimes things just didn’t compute, didn’t make sense. Those were the moments when she would implode.

*****

When I got to Mom, the crowd around had cleared away, leaving my mother wrestling my sister to the ground.

When Lauren lost control, she was wild and insanely strong. She scratched at Mom’s face, over and over; I saw a smear of red on her cheek.

“Thomas, go sit right there,” I yelled, pointing to a spot on the floor about six feet away. I needed him close so he wouldn’t get lost - he was nine years old at the time - but not so close that he’d get hurt.

With Thomas situated, seated and clutching my mom’s purse, I reached my hands out in front of me as a shield and moved closer to my mother and sister. Lauren was shrieking something, over and over, and when I got closer I realized it was my name. “Matthew! Matthew! Matthew! Matthew!”

My heart was pounding in my chest. I met my mother’s eyes; she was about to start crying. I knew she was scared. She told me how much she worried about Lauren having an episode in public. She didn’t want anyone to think she was dangerous, because she wasn’t. Lauren just got overwhelmed.

I pointed toward Lauren’s legs, and I grabbed my sister’s arms while my mother wrapped herself around Lauren’s lower half. Mom, Dad, and I had learned how to do this a few years back when we realized we needed a safe way to restrain her momentarily when she was physically out of control.

“Shh, Lauren, shh,” I whispered in her ear. She was still thrashing, but it was slowing down; my voice did typically have a calming effect for her. “Shh, Lauren, shh.”

I must have repeated it twenty times before she became still.

“Do you need assistance, ma’am?”

A uniformed mall security guard was standing near Mom, evaluating the situation and looking unsure of whether he should step in to help us or not.

“Lauren, we can go home and I can explain everything, okay?” I said quietly to my sister.

She nodded. Her face was bright red and she was sweating profusely. Thomas crept forward with a water bottle from Mom’s purse. He opened it for Lauren, and I held it steady so she could drink.

“We’re okay, sir,” my mom said briskly to the security guard, standing up. “We were just about to head home.”

*****

“You know, if you don’t get back to the hotel search, I’m going to end up sleeping in my car,” I said jokingly to Delilah.

We were stuck in traffic in Delaware, at a standstill, which gave me the chance to watch her face.

Delilah is gorgeous - by far, the most beautiful woman who’s ever agreed to go out with me. When she laughs, it lights up her entire face.

But right now, she's not laughing. Her face is scrunched up in concentration.

“You told me about Lauren, didn’t you?” she asked me.

“A little,” I said.

“She’s younger than you?”

“By five minutes.”

Delilah looked at me, her eyes wide. “She’s -”

“-my twin sister,” I finished.

*****

It wasn’t until Lauren and I started kindergarten that it became evident that something was different about the way Lauren experienced the world.

She was smart - she taught herself to read before we ever set foot in a school. But she couldn’t seem to process even the slightest change in our routine. Once we had to eat lunch in the classroom because the cafeteria was closed for a special event, and Lauren wailed and howled at the top of her lungs and wouldn’t eat a bite. When we had a substitute teacher, she stood at the door of the classroom, paralyzed, until I came over and coaxed her inside.

There were other things that were hard for Lauren, too. She needed things to be as they were, and she couldn’t seem to tolerate the concept of pretending. A little girl in our class wore a T-shirt that said Princess across the front and Lauren bluntly told her that she was not a princess and could she kindly change her shirt. I went to our teacher, Ms. Mahoney, that day and asked her to change the little girl to a different table in the room.

“Matthew, you don’t have to worry about that,” Ms. Mahoney had said. She switched the seats promptly, and every time Lauren piped up again - “But she’s not a princess!” - Ms. Mahoney would shush her gently.

At the school’s recommendation, Mom and Dad took Lauren to some specialists, and it was helpful. They learned about other kids like Lauren, and they learned some strategies that worked for helping her to deal with the world. I heard a lot of diagnostic terms get thrown around referring to Lauren - the word autistic was probably used the most, and she had a mild intellectual disability, which for everyday purposes meant that she functioned at a much younger social, emotional, and developmental level than her actual calendar age. For me, though, she was always just my sister, my twin, someone who sometimes drove me mad with her inflexibility and bluntness, and other times made me feel like the luckiest kid in the universe.

*****

When we got home from the mall that day, Mom sent Thomas upstairs to play video games, and she and I sat on the couch with Lauren.

It was the Santa suit - that was the issue. I hadn’t told Lauren about my job, because she loved Christmas and Santa, and I didn’t want to ruin the magic for her. Lauren disliked pretend - but for her, Santa was never pretend. There was a Santa, she was certain, and there was nothing fanciful or costume-related about it at all.

That was why seeing me in a Santa suit had messed her up. When Lauren processed something she didn’t understand, if it was an emotional thing for her - she’d break down. She’d struggle until things made sense again.

That was our job that afternoon - to help things make sense again.

I thought quickly.

“I’m a helper,” I explained to my sister. Lauren was tall like me, but she had long red hair and a default expression that was more pensive than jolly. She looked focused and serious as I talked to her. “I’m one of Santa’s helpers. And my job is to be at the Mall and listen to kid’s wishes and send a note to Santa about them.”

She looked at me and shook her head. “That’s not true.”

I looked at my mother, who closed her eyes and leaned back, waiting to hear what Lauren would say next.

“You would never lie or pretend or wear a Santa costume if you were a helper, Matthew,” Lauren said, her voice sounding strong and confident.

“No, I would -”

“You are Santa.”

My sister was looking only at me. I looked at my mother, willing her to help me. She shrugged her shoulders and nodded her head.

“You are,” Lauren said firmly. “I should have known it before. You’re the best guy in the world, Matthew.” She wrapped her arms around me in a hug.

Mom and I didn’t disagree with her, and Lauren had no more episodes that day.

*****

“You didn’t think it through, though,” Delilah said, laughing.

“We did not.”

*****

When Christmas Eve morning arrived, Lauren looked at me over the breakfast table in surprise, her eyes wide. “Don’t you need to - go?” she whispered - a stage whisper, loud enough for Mom and Dad to hear too.

When I tell people this story, they don’t understand this part. They think we should just have told her. We weren’t at the mall - she was home, safe and sound, with her family - and she was sixteen years old. She’d have to find out sometime - right?

But I looked around the house - impeccably decorated, Santas on every wall, lights strung through every room, my mom with the happy glow of a parent who delights in the giving of all the things at Christmastime - and, you know, it just didn’t seem like the time.

“Yup,” I told my sister, who squealed with delight. “I’ll see you tomorrow, though.” I wrapped her in a hug.

“Where are you going to go?” my mom whispered to me at the front door.

“You tell me, Ma,” I said, slipping into my winter coat. “This whole thing is your fault.”

She smacked me on the arm. “Go to Nana’s,” she said, “I’ll tell her you’re on the way.”

I walked the five blocks to my grandmother’s house. The next morning, I arrived at my own house and pretended to be exhausted from a night of magic, and Lauren’s eyes were filled with delight.

*****

“My nana passed away a couple of years later,” I explained to Delilah as we pulled into a rest area about a half-hour from my parents’ house. “That’s why I do the hotel. It’s not bad, really - like, of course I’d rather be home with my family, but I usually watch some Christmas movies, my mom has food delivered - I’m used to it now.”

I put the car in park. We needed a bathroom break, and then we either needed to find a hotel or start calling some of my high school buddies to find someplace to crash.

It was worth it - that was the part I didn’t say out loud.

Nothing in my life has ever made me happier than making my sister smile.

I had a feeling that this whole charade would end someday - Lauren’s an adult now, and while she still lives at home with Mom and Dad, she’s out and about in the world, working a job, taking classes. There will be a day when something will slip, and she’ll know the truth about Santa Claus - and me. That day will be incredibly difficult, I think, and it’ll be hard for her to process. I truly hope it doesn’t come anytime soon.

There have been moments when I have wished for things to be different. For things to be easier for Lauren. To have a twin sister that I joked around with casually, and not someone I have to be so protective of.

I never wish for any of that at Christmastime, though.

“It’s just big brother stuff,” I said finally. “You’ll see, tomorrow. It’s worth it when you see Lauren’s face when I get home.”

It was quiet for so long that I turn to look at Delilah, who was staring at me, her face unreadable. I got worried for a moment - that she thought we were all nuts, that she wouldn’t want to go along with our plans.

“Just big brother stuff,” she repeated. “Matthew, I -”

She doesn’t seem to be able to get any more words out, and I realized that her eyes were filling with tears. I breathed a sigh of relief.

“It’s okay,” I said solemnly to Delilah, leaning closer to her. “It’s a big deal - learning that your boyfriend is Santa Claus.”

She kissed me on the cheek, smiling, and I smiled back. This girl was special.

I couldn’t wait to introduce her to my sister.