Page 11 of Ghost of Ex-mas Past
I close my eyes and reach into the bowl, swirling around the rustling balls until it feels right.
I pluck the paper out and read the name while Jody moves on.
Bea.
7
Charlie
Somehow through theyears I’ve managed not to draw her in the secret Santa game, so the last gift I gave Bea was our final Christmas as a couple, eight years ago.
It was a disaster. Worst holiday ever, and only partly because I didn’t come home for Christmas for the first time.
At Stanford, I still needed money for all the small expenses my scholarship didn’t cover. I worked a retail job, and the manager had offered me additional hours during their busiest time of year. My parents had been disappointed but understood—Bea was a different story. I told her that if I worked over the Christmas break, the wages, bonuses, and tips would carry me through the summer.
“So you’ll be home this summer?” Bea had asked.
“For a few weeks,” I said.
She’d gone silent. Dangerously silent. And then we’d argued about it for hours.
“I miss you. Come home. We can live together and save more money.” This was her constant position, that everything would be better if I abandoned the opportunity that I’d worked for, the money that was handed to me, and came home.
“And go where? Alabama doesn’t have any schools that compare to Stanford. And I’ve already got a mentor and he’s helping me choose a summer internship. This was always my plan.”
“But I never see you. We don’t even talk anymore. I’m building this life here and you’re building one there and how will they ever be the same?”
“I don’t know!”
Even as angry as we were, we stayed together for a few more weeks. I thought sending the necklace would help, that it would remind her of how much I loved her every time she wore it.
Instead it was the final nail in the coffin. Bea and I barely wished each other a Merry Christmas when Mom passed the phone around, and her whispered “Thank you” after opening my present was sad.
The next week, we broke up.
You know what they say about long-distance relationships: they never work.
I tuck the paper into my pocket without looking at Bea. After the names are all drawn, the party moves to the kitchen and resumes while Bea and her sisters jockey over doing the dishes (because whoever doesn’t clean up tonight has to clean up after Jasper tomorrow night; he’ll be cooking dinnerandbaking up a storm) while the rest of us help ourselves to the store-bought sugar cookies.
“Not as good as yours,” I say, and Jasper raises his cookie to me in a salute.
I end up next to my dad. He’s shorter than me, shaved bald and with a neatly trimmed goatee. Working in the Frito-Lay factory gave him a stocky build and for most of my life, I remember him as a fit man, stripping off his back brace when he got home from work. Now he’s still exercising, but he has the paunch of a man whose body is succumbing to age.
“Hey, Dad.”
His lips tip up in what passes for a smile. He’s a quiet man, the opposite of Erik. “How’s your new place?”
“Really nice. I have a great view.” My new condo in the city is a block off Central Park, and I can see patches of the green expanse if I angle my head just right. I lower my tone and step closer to my dad so no one else can hear. “When are you going to let me improve your view?”
He grunts and crosses his arms. Mom and Dad still live in the same house we moved to when I was sixteen and Dad got laid off. When we had to move away from the Cummingses. “There’s nothing wrong with our house.”
I bite my tongue on criticizing it. It’s cluttered, but with my mom that’s par for the course. She collects a lot of shit and the yard in front of the run-down two-bedroom house is full of tchotchkes, and the roof over the tiny front porch sags under all of Mom’s wind chimes.
“Mom could quit working if you let me buy you a house. They’re so cheap in Mobile, I can buy you one back in Morning Dale.” That’s the neighborhood where we used to live next door to Bea’s family—the one they still live in.
Dad’s gaze meets mine. “That argument would hold more weight if you actually got your mother on board first.”
Okay, so Mom loves waitressing at the diner. She likes chatting with the regulars and thinks she makes good money in tips. The reality is that she makes a pittance and she’s fifty-eight; she can’t stay on her feet forever.
