“Please give it to Dash,” Langston said.
The doorbell rang. I said, “Take off the sweater, Langston. Our guests are arriving.”
I checked myself in the foyer mirror and smoothed down my hair, hoping I looked presentable. I was wearing my favorite Christmas outfit, a green felt skirt with reindeer figures sewn on the front, and a red T-shirt with the words DON’T STOP BELIEVIN’ circling a picture of Santa Claus. The food was here, the lights had been strung around Oscar’s ample branches, the animals were confined to my bedroom as a courtesy to our guests. Christmas could begin. Magic could happen.
I wondered if it would be Dash’s father at the door. I really thought that if Dash and his dad spent more time together, they’d like each other more, and a small, unassuming party to launch Christmas could be just the occasion to help them along. I’d sent an invite last night to his mom first, but she declined, saying she had a client meeting at the same time. So this morning I had the thought to invite Dash’s dad instead.
It was a surprise, then, to open the door and see Dash standing between his mother and father. “Guess who I ran into?” he said.
I don’t think his parents have been in the same room together since Dash was a child and had to testify in court during their divorce.
Dash did not have a party face. Neither did his parents.
Finally, cold had arrived for Christmas.
Sunday, December 14th
I knew that if you put Lily into the most elaborate X-ray machine ever devised, and if you scoured the resulting X-ray with the most powerful microscope available in all the universe, you wouldn’t find a single bad intention in any bone in her body. I knew the matter at hand was a mistake born of ignorance, not cruelty or mischief. I knew there was no way for her to understand the cosmic scale of her failure.
But, holy shit, I was pissed.
Bad enough that as I was leaving my mother’s apartment, Mom called out, “Where are you going? I’m coming with you!” Okay, I thought. Mom and Lily have always gotten along. I’ve always been happy about that. And it’s great that Lily wants to share her tree lighting with a wide range of people. Go with it.
I even chose not to mind when my mother said, “Are you really going to wear that?” and made me put on a tie. This was probably the first mother-son outing we’d had since puberty had ousted mother-son outings from my to-do list. Still, I tried to rise to the occasion. We chitchatted on the subway about what her reading group had chosen that month. After I professed a complete ignorance about the works of Ann Patchett, we found our way to other subject matter, like the fact that I was going to stay around for New Year’s while she and my stepfather were heading out of town. It was fine.
But then we got to Lily’s subway stop, and at the top of the stairs, Mom gripped my arm and said, “No. That can’t be—no.”
At first I thought, What a coincidence. Of all the places Dad chose to be this afternoon, he happens to be here, in our way.
Then I saw he was holding a present…and it dawned on me that the afternoon was exquisitely fucked.
This registered with my mother, too.
“Lily couldn’t possibly have…?” she asked.
The problem was, I didn’t have to answer. We both knew it was possible.
“Oh no,” Mom said. Then, punctuating each word with a deep breath, “No. No. No.”
I know plenty of children of divorce who are sad about the turn of events that turned their family into rubble. But I have never been one of them. Even a casual observer could see that my parents brought out the worst in each other—and I was hardly a casual observer. When things fell apart—I was nine—it felt like a full-time job to observe the way my parents acted around each other. They both thought they were arming themselves with their strengths, but really they were just grabbing for amplified versions of their weaknesses. A seesaw of panic and rage from my mother. A swirl of arrogance and righteous indignation from my father. I tried not to take sides, but ultimately my father’s meanness was far worse than my mother’s need. He’d done little to disrupt the pattern since.
Lily knew how I felt. She knew I kept a wide demilitarized zone between my parents. It was the only way to prevent constant warfare on my father’s end, and hurt on my mother’s.
Now she was hurt. Just seeing him, she was hurt.
“I had no idea,” I told her.
“I know,” she said. Then, after a clear moment of decision, she started walking forward, following my father.
“You don’t have to do this,” I told her. “Really. I’ll explain to Lily. She’ll understand.”
Mom smiled at me. “We can’t let the terrorists win, Dash. I’m going to this tree lighting whether your father is there or not.”
She even picked up her pace, so by the time we got to Lily’s block, we were only a few feet behind my father. Characteristically, he wasn’t looking back.