“And they haven’t yelled once. I spied on them from the balcony for a while.”
I knuckled my sleepy eyes. “Well, damn. I figured Christmas was canceled.”
Renny stretched his legs, flexing his hairy feet. He was practically part Hobbit. “Don’t get your hopes up. It’s not like they bought a tree or put up decorations.”
By the time I’d turned ten and Warren twelve, Mom had taken over Christmas-decorating duties. Each year she sent Dad to buy a fifteen-foot-tall tree that barely fit in the house and spent over a week hanging her expensive Lennox ornaments carefully and precisely. Mom had worked hard to transform the house into a delicate winter wonderland we weren’t allowed to touch or breathe near. When I needed my kindergarten-crafty-ornament-and-multi-colored-blinking-lights fix, I hung out at Lua’s house.
But even though I didn’t care for Mom’s holiday aesthetic, I’d grown accustomed to our traditions, and the last couple of weeks without them had killed my Christmas cheer. If Mom and Dad had joined forces, even just to prepare breakfast, I’d consider it a Christmas miracle.
“Did you get them a card?” I asked. “I wasn’t sure if we were doing presents, so . . .”
Warren winked at me. “I got you covered.” He pulled a glittery card and a blue pen from behind his back and tossed me both. Our parents believed gifts should flow from parent to child, not the other way around, so cards were the only thing we were allowed to buy them.
The cartoony smiling people on the front of the card looked too happy to be real, and the poem inside was mushy and not at all what I would have chosen. “Could you have picked a lamer card?” I asked as I signed it and stuck it in the envelope.
“Don’t think I didn’t try,” Renny said. “But that’s the price you pay for not buying one yourself.”
My brother had a point. I licked the envelope, wondering if my morning breath would adhere to the paper, and tossed it aside. “You think Mom’s boyfriend will make an appearance?”
“God, wouldn’t that be weird?”
“I can’t believe how young he is,” I said. “And he ‘bro’d’ me.”
Renny rolled his eyes. “Our mother’s a cougar.”
“Please never say that again.”
We laughed even though we were both mortified.
“Do you think Dad has a girlfriend?” I asked.
“No way.”
“How do you know?”
Renny’s smile faded. “Are you blind, Ozzie?” When I didn’t answer, he said, “Dad’s still totally in love with Mom. He’s going to be lost without her.”
Mom and Dad had met while attending the University of Florida. Dad had been a teaching assistant in a Renaissance literature course, Mom the student from hell—smarter than him and not afraid to call him out when he was wrong. Dad had made the fatal error of giving her a B on a paper about Doctor Faustus, which she’d challenged in front of their professor. And won.
Most men would have been too ashamed at being shown up by an underclassman to ever speak to her again, but Dad was shameless. The last day of class, after the final exam, Dad followed Mom into the hall and asked her on a date. She turned him down. That might have been the end of it, but the following semester they ran into each other at a party neither had wanted to attend. They started talking—though depending on which of my parents told the story, they might have also been arguing—and stayed out until dawn. Dad proposed two years later. Mom said no to him that first time too.
Mom used to say she’d given him a second chance because she hadn’t met anyone better. I’d always figured she was joking, but maybe she hadn’t been. Maybe she’d spent the last twenty-four years waiting for someone better, though I seriously doubted Ben Schwitzer was that guy.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s not like Mom’s the only one who’s been unhappy.”
Renny played with the hem of his pajama bottoms. “I didn’t say he wasn’t unhappy. You can love someone and still hate your life.”
“Do you think Mom still loves Dad?”
“You know how Mom is,” Warren said. “When she’s through with someone, she’s through. Remember when Nonna died and she and Aunt Mary fought over the antiques?”
“Who could forget?” Even though Nonna had left a will, Mom and Aunt Mary had still waged a bloody war over every belonging in Nonna’s house, and even over the house itself. They hadn’t spoken since. “But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t love him.”
Renny nodded. “You know they’re not getting back together, right? Dad’ll pine for Mom until he dies, but their marriage is toast.”
“I know,” I said. “But it’s hard seeing Mom move on before their divorce is official. That’s got to be killing Dad.”
“Dad’s a big boy,” Renny said. “He’ll survive.”
I understood something about surviving. I understood the person Dad loved disappearing from his life and having to go on as if he wasn’t gutted and bleeding out. Only, that isn’t living, and I wanted more than for my father to simply survive.
But I couldn’t explain that to Warren without bringing up Tommy, and I wasn’t in the mood to start that conversation on Christmas morning.
“Planning any last hurrahs before basic?” I asked.
“Not really. Brent and Kris and Emilia set up a couple of gaming nights to finish the Orb of Lokaedyr. Don’t want to leave the campaign unfinished, you know?”
“Dungeons & Dragons? That’s how you’re spending your last days of freedom?”
“What? You think I should party and get shit-faced?”
“Well, no. I guess not.” Warren was not a “get shit-faced” kind of guy. As far as I knew, he’d avoided parties during high school. He’d skipped prom and would have bailed on graduation if Mom and Dad hadn’t forced him to walk so they could live their dream of spending four hours sitting in cramped seats in a sweltering hot auditorium while they snapped a couple of faraway, blurry shots of Warren accepting a sheet of paper and shaking the hand of a principal he’d never spoken to before that day.
“I just thought you’d want to do something exciting.” The smell of bacon and sausage had crept upstairs and into my room, and my filmy mouth began to water. “You might not have the opportunity to do much of anything for a few years.”
“I’m shipping off to the army, not prison.”
“Spend some time alone with Emilia,” I said. “You’ve had a crush on her forever, right? You should tell her before you leave.”
The tips of Warren’s ears flushed red. “Do you even live in the real world, Ozzie? You think I’m going to spill my guts to her and she’ll tell me she’s felt the same and has been waiting for me to make a move, and then we’ll do it the night before I ship out?” He sneered. “That’s not even a good fantasy; it’s bad porn.”
“I just don’t want you to leave . . . you know . . .”
“A virgin?” Renny forced a chuckle. “What? Because all the sex you had with your imaginary boyfriend makes you an expert?”