My checkerboard slip-ons slipped halfway off, laptop dangling dramatically in hand, bomber jacket draped over forearm, I attempt an exasperated simper, hoping to signal to security that I have less than six minutes to make this plane. I must board this plane. For the first time in the history of dysfunctional homecomings, I have complete immunity from killing Baby Jesus—for on this day, exceedingly east of Bethlehem, I learn that Little Brother has blown a sizable chunk of his college tuition on a sword.
I don’t know much about the sword. I don’t know what the fuck my brother—already on academic probation and berated daily for sleeping until two or three in the afternoon—was thinking. I only know that I could have breezed through baggage claim at Islip-MacArthur with graphic recollections of a botched double abortion and not raise as many eyebrows as He Who Thinks He’s Ninja.
I feel for the kid. I know first semester culture shock is debilitating. I know my parents will chart his missteps according to my academic trajectory. I know that I am a horrible person because I will publicly condemn the sword, but truly cannot wait to see that shit unsheathed—can I hold it, have you named it, can you take my picture with it?
I sprint to Gate B16. I will make it in time to not ruin Christmas.
..
When I set my luggage down in a bedroom that was once mine (1988-1994), the first thing I notice is a crucifix made out of clothespins tacked above the twin bed. Really.
At this juncture, the most I can do is shrug and comment bemusedly—“well, that’s special”—in the way that Kay did when a man sitting behind her on the Clark Street bus started stroking the faux fur lining the hood of her winter coat. My parents’ fundamentalism leaves me fundamentally unphased.
I decide that part of my mother’s Christmas present will be me dressing up and going to Mass and eating Jesus wafers, even though I haven’t been confessed or holy watered in years. Personally, I’m curious to see if that Eagle Scout with the Prince Albert I blew sometime ago in Manny’s mother’s car will be sitting a few pews ahead. Or I can climb the donkey in the manger and ride. Sacrilege, yes—but I’m not the one who squandered my tuition on a sword.
..
As is the native custom, we go to a casual dining establishment my first night back in town. We decide on Smokey Bones, though the parking lot is shared with a marginally superior Red Lobster. Well, I’m not so sure about this—I debate the competitive virtues of congealed butter versus congealed barbecue sauce, but end up casting my vote No Confidence when it dawns on me that both meals end in a moist towelette.
Am I getting too old for calamity? I’ve been away so long that I can’t tell, but by the way my parents fret over (possibly recessionary) portion sizes and swear that $11.49 once bought more than a plate of buffalo wings, cole slaw and fries, I reassure myself that I am not an entitled snob. I feel sorry for them for dragging us into deep-fried purgatory, but that doesn’t keep me from wearing everyone’s palpable discontent as a narrowed and vacant expression on my face.
“Go hit on the old men,” Little Brother goads. These are not my old men. Smokey Bones is No Country For Old Men. The restaurant (“restaurant”) services a nearby Courtyard by Marriott and lures a combed-over business class with a circumstantial lust for chatting up local horse faces—makeup by Mary Kay, wardrobe by Donna Karan, perfume by Kohl’s—slurping Long Islands (“wow, that’s original”) by the bar. Despite a yearlong intensive tutorial, Little Brother still can’t identify a colloquial Dad. No wonder he's on academic probation.
“Would you like to see a dessert menu?”
“No, we’re going to Dunkin' Donuts. This place sucks.” Ever tactful Littlest Brother comes to our rescue. Since last I saw him, he’s packed on fifteen pounds with his Michael Phelps diet—apparently it doesn’t work when you don’t swim eight hours a day—and is testing the tensile strength of his cuteness.
I don’t think I was ever cute in a way that is paraded before wait staff. Little Brother was, surely. Fuck, was Little Brother adorable. But his child actor guild badge is tarnished, unrecognizable now. Maybe this is part of what makes him sleep in so late.
..
Within a span of twenty minutes, I spill a Diet Coke, dollop my skirt with spinach dip and break a plate at our pre-pre-pre Christmas party. “Opa! This means good luck in the New Year.” No Mom, this means I’m suffering delirium tremens as a result of spending the last 48 hours completely dry. I try to reverse the course, pouring a glass that is three-quarters brandy and one-quarter egg nog. The course leads me to the couch, where I fall asleep on a partially gift-wrapped bundle of slippers and socks.
..
“Do you think Mom would like the movie Juno for Christmas?”
My father frowns. “Your mother is a conservative like me.”
“She doesn't kill the baby, you idiot!”
I can’t help what happens next. My eyes water, my face grows hot, I take shallow breaths. Every time I come home and show that I’m trying, he aches to be nothing more than an ideology. And all that I am to him—despite being his mature, unsuspicious child with an unusually oceanic capacity for love—is an oversimplified political orientation masquerading as an unruly passing phase. It takes my father a verse of Daryl Hall singing “Jingle Bell Rock” for him to realize that I’m crying.
He cuts the silence demurely. “No, I think your mother would like that.”
..
It wasn’t an outright goal, but I am completely tanked before the first guest arrives for our pre-pre Christmas party with the Polish side of the family. Not wanting a meal where I break dishes, I dust off an ancient bottle of bourbon I find on the topmost kitchen shelf, scavenge a snifter from the curio (or maybe it's a votive holder) and swallow like a sailor lost at sea. My 17-year-old cousin Ellie is the only one kind enough to call me out, unless you count my godfather demanding to know who massacred the dinner rolls (answer: me) or my cousin Sergei smiling wily every time I accidentally bump into him (or a misplaced wall). I had always thought Sergei was gay, but when I learn that he’s a University of Chicago alum, I consider that he might just be heinously awkward.
..
I had forgotten that I do, honestly, like New York City. The most immediate trade-off I observe is between cost of living and namedropping. At Harmony House, I recognize television guest star and theater actor Joey Slotnick at the table next to ours. I think he got his start in Chicago, but I could be wrong. I consider relaying the sighting to Gawker. Then I realize they don’t care about this fuzzy-haired nonentity for blind items.
We carry on to the Rubin Museum of Art. We shop for Asian trinkets near The Bowery and eat dim sum opposite a wall of television sets. We eat arepas in East Village and I treat myself to an $11 glass of non-boxed wine. We go to Arrow Bar. We take a free water taxi from Wall Street to an IKEA in Brooklyn.
IKEA represents all I’ve ever wanted out of a relationship. Minimalist, inexpensive, pre-fabricated, Scandinavian, sustainable, obnoxious, matching, adorable. Every showroom dually exposes my domestic and romantic shortcomings. Every smooth edifice of furniture yells—“Use a Phillips head, Terror, and true love will inevitably follow!”
When we take photographs of our group living out my wildest fantasies in mock homes, I am well aware of how pathetic this is. But I should be unnerved when all I aspire to is a status totally within reach. That’s probably why I’m still at my job and have no framework or future for this blog.
But I guess you would have to understand where I came from. I can’t help what I'm attracted to.
..
The misconception about me is that because I know things about some things, and because I know how to do some things, and because I can influence people to do some other things, I can’t possibly be a girl who is easily impressed. And so to the doubters, I say—you’re wrong; fuck off.
..
For reasons I can’t figure out, the little girls in Littlest Brother’s third grade class are in awe of me. Three of his classmates tug at my shirt and exclaim some combination of “You’re so pretty!,” “You’re very pretty!” or “You’re so very pretty!”
Seriously? Have they even seen Marco's mom?
This was revelatory. Why do I drop hundreds of dollars at bars every month looking for similar validations that seldom come? Do you mean to tell me that instead of drinking and being forgetful, I could volunteer and be revered? That’s messed.
Those three little girls almost make up for the class’ disorderly behavior and desecration of the "Mexican Hat Dance."
..
I don’t feel so very pretty when I arrive at Dean’s house with a bottle of Jameson in hand, but I suspect that the odds are stacked in my favor (see: bottle of Jameson in hand). I suspect that this is the Christmas where Dean and I consummate a ten-year friendship and add another chapter to the history of our feuding families. I suspect right.
To be clear, there isn’t really a feud between us and the Crowley clan. It is simply a case of my mother hating Mrs. Crowley. I know my mother hates Dean’s mom as far back as Older Brother dating Dean’s sister, and then Older Brother moving in with Dean’s brothers after he and the sister broke up. After Older Brother killed himself, my mother became obsessively fearful that Mrs. Crowley, already a mother to 11 children, wanted to steal me and Little Brother and add them to a burgeoning brood. I can’t explain how my mother became so irreparably irrational because I could never seem to see the same things she did in the same tragedy. I can only tell you that my relationship with Dean stands on the back of well-conceived lies, the faultless removal and reattachment of bedroom window screens and a three-year precautionary hiatus.
To be clearer, I should mention that I slept with a Crowley brother at my graduation party—a divorcee who lived with Older Brother and is 11 years older than Dean. I realize, Reader, that you might be polarized into Camp Creeped Out or Camp Highly Amused. Suffice it to say, this is how a small town functions. We function by barely functioning. And now I function, having been reminded that casual sex does not have to be a wrenching, dispassionate affair. Even when we were in relationships with other people, we sensed the inevitable would happen—Greg Dulli crooning from the speakers, a jealous cat clawing at my head. It was as sad and beautiful as I could have hoped.
I left his house feeling ready for winter’s wrath.
..
Sword sword sword.
My hometown suffers from severe stereotype threat and we middle siblings, though expatriates, are willing to fall headlong into diagnosis. We are in the dining room and I smile at a worked up Little Brother and tell him, “You’re the depressed one. I’m the one who suffers from anxiety. Calm the fuck down.”
The family thinks I’m incorrigible, yet they hardly know me. When prompted, they overshoot my actual promiscuity by a minimum of two standard deviations. I just say everything that I am thinking because I think it will help. It will cure us. Nothing else was working.
..
The Eagle Scout I blew in Manny’s mother’s car shows up for Mass on Christmas Eve.
..
After Mass, we pile in the Chevy. In our skirts, shirts, blouses, blazers. We go to Taco Bell. My mother has decided to give up, play dead. No fondue this year.
If she’s phoning it in, so am I.
..
Christ, a savior, is born. He brings me roller skates.
..
There is frost on the windshield but my father won’t let me get out of the car to scrape it. I can tell, not knowing when I’ll be in New York again, he is nerve-racked, a little miserable. “I wish we could do more for you.” There is a lilt at the end of his lament, but it is not a cue to have me reassure him otherwise.
“Don’t worry, Dad. You guys do enough for me. And whatever I need that I don’t have, I go out and find.” Only half true, but he doesn’t need to know which part.
When I exit the vehicle, I know I am in the midst of a renaissance.
Coming out here, I wasn’t so sure. I had spent the prior four weeks overextending myself for a small business with a questionable profit margin. Balancing the business with the full-time research gig. I had been self-medicating with booze in a less humorous vein. I had reached a stalemate with a boy I had been devoted to.
But there is equal nobility and mobility in still being able to exit. And because I do, I know that I flew in for an immunity I never actually needed. I know that this time I will make him cry, because I am the one of us two who understands the difference between coming and going.
