“That sucked, right?” I ask Finn after Martha retreats to the kitchen to put in our order and tempt fate by standing anywhere near an open flame with her choice of hairstyle.
“I hope Brooke’s not holding her breath for a Michelin star.”
It wasn’t that Brooke burnt the ham, which she did, it was that she so thoroughly erased any glimmer of our family’s Christmas traditions. She was all manic smiles as she tripped over herself to suck up to Spencer’s family, who drove down from Maine for the day.
First of all, ham? We always had lasagna on Christmas. Then there was the white elephant gift exchange she insisted on where three different people brought taffy, some dumb in-joke with Spencer’s family. Grandma Betty was not thrilled to get stuck with my gift, a throw pillow screen printed with a bare-chested Nicolas Cage with his lower half encased in a banana peel for modesty. I bought it at a joke shop on Newbury Street hoping Finn would pick my gift.
The nail in the Christmas coffin was when Spencer suggested we turn off The Grinch and put on It’s a Wonderful Life and Brooke actually agreed with him.
Martha drops off a plate piled with fries doused in cheese sauce and two chocolate milkshakes.
“We should have stayed on campus.” I take a long pull of shake to drown my sorrows.
“Reginald Tiddlywinks could have joined us,” Finn laments. Reginald Tiddlywinks III—heir to the inventor of the children’s game—is the ritzy alter ego Finn invented for himself last Christmas. We scrimped and saved all of fall semester to book a room at the Copley Plaza hotel for the weekend. On Christmas, we went downstairs to the swanky wood-paneled bar and drank candy cane martinis in outfits borrowed from BC’s drama department pretending to be Reginald Tiddlywinks and his mistress, Miss Scarlett Oglethorpe.
The bar’s signature holiday cocktail was dangerous, it tasted like melted peppermint stick ice cream, and not at all like booze. The more we drank, the smoother Finn’s British accent became—he was perfecting it for an upcoming audition to play Henry Higgins in the drama department’s spring production of My Fair Lady—while the addition of alcohol sent my attempt at an accent careening back and forth on a spectrum between The Godfather and Cool Runnings. No one believed our fake backstories, but it didn’t matter, we spent the evening in a bubble of our private jokes laughing so hard Finn shed actual tears.
“Reginald has an open invitation next year, because I’m never going back there for Christmas again. Or maybe ever. I haven’t decided.”
“Fine with me.” Finn tips his milkshake toward mine to seal the promise with a cheers.
I feel lucky that Finn was there with me today, both as moral support, but also as a witness to my sister’s Olympic-level effort to replace our family with a shiny new one of her own. It’s clear now that ours was a pity invite. Not having a “real” family won’t be so bad. What Finn and I have is better than family anyway, because we chose it.
“Plus, I’m sure we’ll have way cooler plans next year,” Finn says. “Next year, we’ll live here.”
That’s the plan. After we graduate in May we’ll move to New York. Finn will become a big Broadway star. He has a plan to work his way up through the ensemble into feature roles within two years, and win a Tony by twenty-five. I, on the other hand, am less certain about the future. The career counselor at the campus career center gave me a worn copy of What Color Is Your Parachute? to read over the break.
This morning, before going to Brooke’s, we walked around Tompkins Square Park pointing out which buildings we’d live in when we moved to the city.
“These are definitely the best part of Christmas,” I tell Finn as I drag a fry through the pool of cheese sauce on the plate.
“Here’s a burnt one,” Finn points to a dark brown fry. Our complementary fry preferences—the well-done fries for me, the undercooked ones for him—seems to validate the perfection of our pairing. I look at Martha, standing behind the counter marrying the ketchups, and I feel bad for her. Alone, on Christmas. She doesn’t have a Finn.
“Okay, enough about Brooke,” Finn says. “What I really want to talk about is Spencer’s shirt. The white cuffs with the blue shirt, who does he think he is, Gordon Gekko?”
His comment catches me so off guard that I shoot milkshake out my nose laughing. No one can snap me out of a bad mood like Finn.
twenty-three
Hannah
This year, December 25
I’ve been sitting outside the rec room of the children’s wing for twenty minutes and I already have a nemesis. A teenage boy, jaw speckled with acne, stole a Christmas cracker from one of the younger kids. He’s a bully. Sure, he probably has cancer, but he’s still a dick. Plus, hating him is better than hating myself. What if Priya is right and I am a bad friend?
After I left, it felt good to slam the crash bar of the stairwell door and climb until I was out of breath. When I was panting, I stepped out on the ninth floor, aimlessly roaming the halls. But even after I recovered from the climb, my heart banged in my chest, and I could feel tears prickling behind my eyes.
On the verge of a panic attack, I wandered onto the children’s ward. The unit is oddly cheerful, the hallways painted with murals of Candy Land. I’m watching the theater troupe, which is really more of a folk band, sing Christmas songs to a circle of children through the rec room’s plate glass window.
I startle when someone appears at my side. I look over, expecting a nurse telling me I’m not allowed to be here, but it’s Finn.
“How’d you find me?” I ask.
“Are you kidding? You’re wearing a bright red ball gown and a feathered headpiece. Everyone in this hospital has heard about us and thinks we’re total freaks. I overheard two of the nurses speculating that we’re in some kind of cult. One of them told me you were up here. I think she was worried you were recruiting the children.”
I laugh in spite of myself, but I’m secretly disappointed that he wasn’t frantically searching for me. Ideally, because he needed to tell me how wrong Priya was. How unfair her words were.
But instead he says, “Our costumes are better.” He nods at the music group in the rec room. “I’m also a better singer than him.” The lone man in the group is butchering “Christmas （Baby Please Come Home），” an ambitious song choice for his limited vocal range. His attempted falsetto comes out crackly and sharp, but no one else notices. The kids are too hyped up on sugar and their parents are nearly catatonic, grateful for any distraction.
“We could challenge them to a duel?” I offer.
“I’m gonna guess dueling is frowned upon here. Also, what are you even doing up here? Isn’t it kind of messed up to gawk at all these sick kids like it’s some kind of sadness zoo?” He scrunches his nose in distaste.
“Shit, is that what I’m doing? I just wanted somewhere to think.”
“What are you thinking about?”
“Do you remember that Christmas we went to my sister’s? Our senior year of college?”
“I remember,” he says. “But why were you thinking about that?”
I shrug. The honest answer is that I’ve been trying to shove thoughts of what Priya said out of my brain. If I don’t think about it, I don’t have to deal with it. At least for a little while longer.