This Christmas (22 page)

“Well maybe we should go make some ourselves.”

His can-do optimism got me going again. We trotted off to the kitchen and started hunting through cookbooks for a recipe. “Mostly what we need are milk and eggs,” I said, after I had found one.

He laughed as he shut the refrigerator door. “That’s a problem then.”

“Why?”

“Because your mom’s out of eggs. And milk.”

This I had to see. When I opened the fridge, it seemed ominously bare. There were a butter dish, a six-pack of Heineken, a bottle of white wine, a couple of wilted-looking stalks of celery….

And that was it. Amazed, I started checking cabinets. Nothing. The cupboards were bare.

I cast a doubtful look Jason’s way. “We did get this right, didn’t we? This
is
two days before Christmas, isn’t it?”

“Is there a store nearby?”

I nodded.

“Then let’s go play elf and refill the fridge and cupboards before your folks come home.”

“You’re too good,” I said.

He shook his head, smiling ruefully. “No, I’m just too hungry.”

Jason’s brief turn through my mom’s pantry must have alarmed him; judging from our shopping basket you would have thought we were stocking up for a month in Yak valley. We bought bread (two kinds); cheese; chips; milk; every type of carbonated drink available to mankind; and more salad fixings than a hutchful of rabbits, never mind a houseful of humans, would be able to munch their way through in three days. Then, as we passed the deli section again on the way back to the checkout, Jason tossed a rotisserie chicken onto the top of the heap.

I couldn’t help looking on that shopping basket as my family’s cart of shame. Obviously, he was afraid we were going to starve him. And after staring deep into the cold empty heart of my mom’s fridge, I couldn’t reassure him to the contrary.

I had been hoping that my parents would be home when we got back, but the house was just as it had been. When we walked in the door, I heard an odd keening moan from down the hall and discovered that Ted had now barricaded himself in his old room. The door was locked and he refused to answer. Nothing could budge him, not even the lure of rotisserie chicken and Stilton cheese.

Jason and I pulled bar stools up to the butcher block island in the kitchen and started preparing ourselves a feast. For a month I had been passing up spritz cookies and foil-wrapped chocolate everything in hopes that my tummy, in the event Jason ever saw it, would be as flat as I could make it without resorting to truly drastic measures, like sit-ups. But hell, it was Christmas, and he had done the shopping. It could be I’d followed the wrong tactic completely. Maybe the paunchy Mrs. Claus look turned him on.

I hacked off a wedge of cheese and lovingly placed it on a butter cracker.

“Maybe we should go to the Smithsonian.” Now that we seemed to have fallen into a holiday black hole, I was desperately casting about for ways to entertain him. I felt like a tour guide who had promised a sunny island paradise and had instead delivered a deserted volcanic wasteland. We couldn’t sit in the house and listen to my brother’s muffled sobs all afternoon.

Before Jason could respond to that suggestion, the front door opened. My mother’s voice, rather shrill, said, “There’s nothing wrong with me.
You
were the one who sat there like a lump all through lunch, boring the Finleys with your lecture on Oliver Cromwell.”

“What makes you think they were bored?” Dad asked peevishly.

Uh-oh. I winced, recognizing the tone my parents reserved for their rare squabbles. Jason cut a glance at me, and I wanted to run out into the hallway screaming,
Shut up! You’re supposed to be Ozzie and Harriet!

But I was frozen, and those voices kept coming closer.

“
Laird
, their lids were drooping, and they were weaving.”

“They didn’t say anything about being bored.”

“They were being
polite
. Do you think people actually go to Christmas parties to be lectured on the English Civil War?”

“I thought I was interesting.”

Mom was emitting a strangled cry when she rounded the kitchen door and caught sight of Jason and me sitting there on our stools, blinking at being the unintentional audience for their spat. As she took us in, my mother’s face changed from annoyance to frozen confusion to hostess with the mostest, all in the space of a split second.

“Well, look who’s here!” she exclaimed, beaming at us. “Laird, come in here. What a surprise!”

“Um…isn’t this when I said I would be here?” I asked.

Mom rolled her eyes as if to say,
Silly me!
“I must have let it slip my mind.”

“And your memory wasn’t jarred when you saw a strange car in the driveway?” I pressed, incredulous. Most of the time it wouldn’t have fazed me that my parents had forgotten me, but I had specifically told Mom the date and time because I was bringing Jason.

She put her hands on her hips and turned, laughing, to Jason. “You see what I have to put up with, Justin? It’s constant criticism around here, twenty-four, seven.”

I could have sunk through the floor tiles.
“Jason.”

My mother smiled obliviously on and shook Jason’s hand. “We’re so glad to have you here. And good—you found yourselves something to eat!”

“We had to go to the store.” It was hard to keep the reproach out of my tone.

“Laird!”
My mother yelled, in a voice loud enough for moose calling. “Come meet Jason!”

I suppose I should have been glad that she didn’t call him Justin again, but for some reason, I was finding myself shrinking back like a twelve-year-old on parents’ night.

My dad wheeled in, grinning, but his smile froze when he saw me. I didn’t have to ask who he’d been expecting. “Holly! For some reason, I thought your mother said Maddie was here.”

I gave him a brief hug, feeling the usual sting of being second best. (Okay, third best.) “Disappointed?”

He laughed a little too jovially. “No, no—”

“Laird, this is Jason,” Mom said, steering him away from me.

“Pleased to meet you,” Dad said.

“Holly tells me you teach history,” Jason said.

Mom and I both jumped on that statement, which most of the time my father mistook as an invitation to deliver an impromptu lecture. “Now, no work talk!” Mom singsonged, no doubt still thinking about Oliver Cromwell and the unfortunate Finleys he’d buttonholed at the party. She opened the fridge but didn’t comment on the fact that elves had restocked her dwindling supplies. “Oh, look! Eggnog!” She pulled out the carton we had bought and poured herself a glass. “I love this stuff. Ted used to make it fresh, remember?”

She acted as if this were decades ago.

“Speaking of Ted…”

“Have you seen him?” she asked.

“He answered the door.” I couldn’t help adding, “Since no one else was here….”

“Oh, good! So he’s okay.”

Okay?
My brother looked like suicide hotline material. “I’m worried. He’s locked himself in his room.”

Mom’s brows knit together. “There’s nothing too dangerous in there, except maybe his old chemistry set…and I imagine all the chemicals in that are expired. We gave away his BB gun when Amanda came along.”

It was all I could do not to clutch my head and let out a primal howl. “Mom, your son is doing a reenactment of
The Lost Weekend
.”

She shook her head at me. “Just try to have a little understanding, Holly. Ted’s having a rough time.”

“I know, but…” I didn’t know what more to say, or whether I should say more while Jason was standing there. “When’s Maddie coming home?” Since everyone else had completely flaked out, I suddenly craved seeing my sister. I wondered what she would make of what was going on with Ted, and my parents. And what was up with the artificial tree, and the absence of Christmas collectibles? This was my mom’s first ever half-baked holiday.

And naturally, it
would
have to be the year I brought home Jason.

Jason, whom Mom didn’t even seem to be appreciating. She had barely looked at him! Hadn’t she noticed how good-looking he was? How perfect in every way?

Mom lifted her shoulders in answer to my question about Maddie. “I’m not sure….”

“You’re sure she
is
coming, right?”

Mom laughed. “Well, of course.” Upon reconsidering, the smile was erased from her face as quickly and thoroughly as an Etch A Sketch screen after a good firm shake. “I think so. I talked to her before she left.”

“When did she leave?”

“Oh, days ago.”

I frowned. “She’s not taking a plane?”

“No, she wanted to drive down on that new motorbike of hers.”

“Her
bike?
” Maddie had been talking about her bike all autumn long, every time I spoke to her. But her bike wasn’t a real motorcycle. It was one of those little European scooters. “She’s driving from Boston to Virginia
on a Vespa?
Those things were invented for Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn to putter around Rome on, not for cross-country traveling with a Canadian cold front moving in!”

My father, standing in front of the open fridge, shook his head in admiration. “You know your sister! It’s always something new with her. And she never does anything halfway.”

“But it’s
dangerous
,” I said. “She could have an accident, or break down, or meet some nut on the road.”

Mom seemed unfazed. “She said she was going to take little side roads—really get to see the country.”

Dad, having rustled up a plateful of food, sidled up to Jason. “Do
you
think mentioning Oliver Cromwell in a friendly conversation is a federal offense?”

Not about to allow him to put that question to the test, I hopped between them, hooking my arm through Jason’s. “No time for that now, Dad—Jason and I are going to the Smithsonian.”

“What a good idea!” Mom exclaimed.

“But they just got here,” Dad complained.

“No, Laird,
we
just got here,” Mom shot back. “They’ve already done the grocery shopping.”

“Okay,” I interrupted. “We’ll be going now.”

During the car ride, I let vent all my worries. “Riding cross-country on a motor scooter? In December? How could someone who’s been to med school be so idiotic?”

“It sounds adventurous…if a little harebrained.”

“A little!” I drove a few blocks (Jason had let me at the wheel, since this was an impromptu trip and I knew the territory), then pulled out my cell phone. I tried dialing Maddie’s cell phone number. Of course there was no answer. She probably wouldn’t have been able to hear the ring through the icy wind in her hair.

From Maddie, I moved on to other fears—like whatever might be happening at home. Seeing Ted in his current condition still gave me a shock. He was always such a brick! The ultimate big brother. And what was going on with my parents?

How was I supposed to seduce my boyfriend with family holiday magic when everything had turned so sour?

“Not one single snow village scene has been put out,” I said. “That’s got to mean something.”

“What would it mean?”

Unfortunately, I didn’t have the slightest idea. “She
always
puts the villages out. They’re her pride and joy. Especially the Alpine village. She’s spent years trolling eBay to get all the right pieces for it. And you’d think she would have tried to make the place cheery for Ted’s sake, at least.”

“Ted looked like he was beyond the reach of miniature housing displays.”

I heard the cheery “Deck the Halls” ring of my cell phone and picked it up again. Maybe this would be Maddie.

“How’s it going?”

It was Isaac. I bit my lip with disappointment, yet there was something comforting about the sound of his voice. My lifeline. “Disaster. Melinda left Ted and now he’s rattling around the house like Foster Brooks, and my sister is riding a Vespa home from Massachusetts, and my parents are bickering and seem to have forgotten that there’s a holiday going on at all. The house is bare.
Bare
.”

Isaac seemed really disturbed by that last bit. “The house isn’t treed?”

“It’s treed,” I allowed, “but only artificially.”

He clucked in a way that was very reassuring to me. I wasn’t going crazy. This was weird. “Is your Mom okay?”

“As far as I know. She and my dad are just being
really
cranky.”

“I’ve never seen them cranky at all.”

“That’s because you’re company.”

“Exactly. And you’ve got company now.”

“Who?”

“Jason.”

Oh, right. It wasn’t that I had forgotten him, but it was hard to think of someone as company after they had bought your parents groceries. You tended to start thinking of people like that as members of the family. Or social workers.

“Are you coming over tonight?” I asked Isaac.

“Are you having dinner?”

I thought for a moment. “I wouldn’t count on it.”

I took the ensuing silence for a no.

Then, out of the blue, he asked, “Holly, what do know about this Jason guy?”

I cut a glance at Jason, who was studiously not paying attention to my conversation. “Why?” I asked nonchalantly. “What do you mean?”

“A month?”
he asked. “And no sex?”

“That’s not that weird.” Were we such a degenerate, sex-crazed society that waiting a month seemed odd now?

Though, of course it had been driving me crazy.

“Not that I mind,” he said. “In fact I’m glad.”

“Why should you be glad?”
Celibacy loves company?

He sighed. “Think of it. Is this person for you? What kind of guy can’t think of one thing he ever wanted and didn’t get?”

Now I started to get mad, even though the very same thought had crossed my mind. Or maybe because of that. I felt disloyal even having this conversation, especially with Jason right there. “What’s your point?”

“I think this guy has some kind of saint complex. He’s just too perfect.”

“That’s a terrible thing to say!” I said.

“Don’t have a cow,” he said, chuckling. “I just thought I should mention it. As a friend.”