Chapter 15
FIFTEEN
ELI
Mrs. Benson swoops Widget into her arms when we get to the house, rubs a towel over him, gives him a treat in the form of a bite of cheese, and calls him onto her lap on the couch with a blanket.
“You’d think he just came back from war or something,” Jack says.
“He didn’t choose to stay out in the cold wet snow, poor baby,” Mrs. Benson insists. “Besides, he needs some snuggles before it gets crazy again.”
Hugh pulls Jack to the car mat to play with him.
I press the button to turn on the lights on my ugly sweater and walk into the living room, arms spread wide so Mrs. Benson can see the sweater in all its hideous glory. “Happy Christmas Eve, Mrs. Benson,” I say, half smiling, half grimacing.
She presses one hand over her mouth as if to stifle her laughter but gives it up after a few seconds, laughing outright. “That’s what Jack gave you?” she gasps.
Jack sniggers. “And he’s worn it twice now!”
Hugh stares at the glowing lights on my sweater and frowns at them, looks at Mrs. Benson with a wrinkled nose as if he doesn’t get why she’s laughing, and goes back to racing his cars.
I do a spin and make a show of turning off the lights, then peel the sweater off and toss it at Jack. I fix my T-shirt and shake my head at Jack. “Like I said, Happy Christmas Eve. I’m never wearing it again.”
Mrs. Benson is still laughing. “Oh, you boys certainly keep things entertaining.”
“What did you do to Mom?” Janet asks, walking in with a steaming mug and sitting down.
“Looks like you have to wear it one more time,” Jack says.
I sit down next to him. “Nope.”
Mrs. Benson tries to explain about the ugly sweater but keeps laughing as she does, so Jack holds it up and turns it on. Janet cringes and sips from her mug.
“How’s giving up coffee going?” Jack asks innocently.
Janet breathes in deeply. “I decided my sanity is more important.”
Three hard raps sound on the door, and it opens in the ensuing seconds, Uncle Henry entering singing “Jingle Bells” in a loud voice. Mrs. Benson looks at Janet. “Better brew another pot.”
“No music going, Lilah?” Uncle Henry asks.
She points toward the TV, which shows her Pandora playlist running, and the sound seems to hit his ears.
“Ah. Didn’t hear it.”
“No wonder with you bellowing carols—after inviting yourself in,” Aunt May says.
“We’re family! We’re always invited.”
Mrs. Benson chuckles. “He’s right, May.”
The rest of the family appears, filling the space. Uncle Henry rolls up his shirtsleeves and claps his hands together. “Time to make a holiday feast! Jack, Eli, Janet, Georgia, report to the kitchen!”
“Me too!” Hugh says.
Aunt May crouches next to him. “If you help them you won’t be able to do a craft with Diana.”
His eyes dart from the kitchen to Aunt May, and settle on her. “Craft with Diana.”
“What kind of craft is she doing with two toddlers?” I ask as we troop into the kitchen.
“Probably Christmas cards with markers and stickers,” Jack says. “We’ll help them with gingerbread houses later.”
“You really pull out all the stops at Christmas, huh?”
Jack brushes against my side as we stand at the counter and wait for instructions from his uncle, who’s launched into another verse of “Jingle Bells” in the ten second walk from the living room.
Georgia, Jack’s youngest, quietest cousin, joins her father, then Janet.
I peek at Jack and add my own voice a heartbeat before he does.
Delight brightens his smile to an incandescent glow.
Jack’s Uncle Henry is the uncle I wish I had.
He’s warm and outgoing and one look shows you how much he cares.
His oldest daughter and his sons apparently don’t care to help with the brunch, but we have a great time—and we make sure to clean the mess before Mrs. Benson can see it.
We make cinnamon pancakes and eggs and ham steaks, French toast and sliced fruit and, surprisingly, chicken tenders and fries (“it isn’t brunch if we don’t have something that passes for lunch food,” Uncle Henry says).
We cram in the dining room and eat and talk, and the afternoon is spent making gingerbread houses and watching The Grinch.
Jack and I steal away for a bit after that, when Hannah, Jared, and Diana go back to their hotel so Diana can nap in peace and the family quiets, the cousins on their phones or outside, the adults talking over late afternoon cups of coffee.
The air is cold and clear and invigorating as Jack and I walk aimlessly. It gives me the courage to say something that’s been my mind all morning.
“I think your cousin Grant is ignoring you because I’m here.”
I’ve noticed him giving Jack looks that border on scowls a few times, though he hasn’t said anything. Jack stops walking. “I haven’t noticed anything different than last year. He’s never had much to do with me. And before you say anything about wanting to leave—”
“I don’t,” I interrupt. He closes his mouth, and I continue. “I just don’t want things to fester and pop later, like with my family at Thanksgiving. I don’t want to cause any trouble for you or your family.”
Jack is shaking his head before I’ve finished.
“If any of my cousins have a real problem with someone, they don’t wait to say it.
You haven’t seen it, but Uncle Henry’s got a sharp temper, and he gave it to all his kids.
Problems are aired in the moment, if they’re big enough to air at all.
We’ve all been together most of the day.
I’m sure you’ll see some sort of argument before everyone leaves. ”
A bit of relief goes through me that Jack isn’t expecting giant family drama. “Okay.”
He’s right about seeing some sort of argument.
It’s in progress when we get back, and Grant is one of the parties.
Janet is the other. Georgia tells us Grant was calling Hugh a horrible name because Hugh is a bit behind developmentally, and Janet overheard and went into protective mother mode, hurling insults at Grant.
Uncle Henry forces Grant to apologize when he hears Janet’s raised voice and comes running into the yard.
Janet mutters a half-hearted apology after Grant does, and everyone is quiet until Aunt May suggests we play a card game.
It’s strange to see the tension lift away so easily.
Janet seems more serious than before we got back, Grant as surly as he’s been since I met him, but the game lightens everything, overwriting the strain that had been showing.
It makes me think of my dysfunctional family, and how an argument like that between my uncle and I would end in us avoiding each other more than we already do, for several days. This is so much healthier.
Mrs. Benson orders Chinese food for dinner and we play charades with Christmas song titles once everyone’s done.
Hugh goes into meltdown mode when he wants to take a turn but doesn’t know how to do it.
Aunt May says they should head back to the hotel, then, since it’s been a long day for everyone, and the big family Christmas Eve is over.
The little family Christmas Eve isn’t quite done.
Janet calms Hugh down and sits on the couch with him.
We watch an animated Christmas short, and then Mrs. Benson pulls Hugh onto her lap and reads “The Night Before Christmas,” helps him put a few cookies on a plate for Santa and leave it on the end table near the tree, and gives him to Janet to bring him to bed. It’s a late night for him.
“Thank you for letting me stay,” I tell her once she’s put Hugh in Janet’s arms.
Mrs. Benson faces me fully, her expression serious. “I wanted to talk to you about that, Eli.”
My heart constricts. Does she not want me to come over tomorrow?
“If we asked your uncle if you could stay here tonight, would you want to?”
The stupid worry flies away in an exhale. Jack is grinning behind her back, so he must have known this offer was coming. I can’t look away from Mrs. Benson. “You’d let me?”
“Your bed is much more comfortable than the couch, but this couch isn’t bad.”
I’d take a sleeping bag on the floor tonight, if she offered it. “Absolutely!”
Her face is still more serious than usual, though a tinge of a smile shows through. “This way you can have Christmas morning with us, from the start. Unless you have plans with your uncle.”
“Nothing.”
She nods and grabs her purse. “Then let’s go ask him for permission.”
It’s about nine-thirty when we reach my house. Jack and Mrs. Benson wait in the kitchen while I find my uncle. He walks out from his study when he hears me call for him.
“Took you long enough,” he says by way of greeting. “I almost watched White Christmas without you.”
I falter. “You waited for me?”
He nods stiffly.
I gesture over my shoulder. “Jack and Mrs. Benson are here, waiting in the kitchen. We wanted to ask you something.”
He frowns but follows me to the kitchen, where Mrs. Benson immediately says, “Merry Christmas, Remington. I hope you’ve had a nice holiday so far.”
“Yes, it’s been fine. You all have a question for me?”
Mrs. Benson explains.
“You don’t want to watch the movie, then,” Uncle Remington says, looking at me. “You could have texted and said as much.”
“I don’t want to take away what little you do have to do with your nephew,” Mrs. Benson says in a rush, “so if you want to watch a movie with him, I can come pick him up after. But I want him to have a true Christmas morning, with everything that entails.” Mrs. Benson’s voice hardens.
“I promise you I can give that to him, if you won’t.
And I don’t think you will. Am I right in that assumption? ”
“We don’t have specific plans for tomorrow, if that’s what you mean.”
Her gaze could pierce armor. “It is.”
Uncle Remington shifts his attention to me. “I have no problem with you spending the night there tonight, provided you’re in your own bed.”
“Of course,” Mrs. Benson says, before Jack or I can say anything. “He’ll take the couch.”
“Are you staying for the movie?” Uncle Remington asks.
It would be easy to say no, to leave with Jack and Mrs. Benson right now.
Part of me does want to watch it, though.
I don’t understand that part. I have no love for my uncle, like he has no love for me.
Maybe it’s that I feel like I should do something with him, and this is effortless.
We sit on opposite sides of the home theater and don’t talk, watching a movie we both love.
I don’t know if he can ever make up for the damage he’s given me, raising me the way he has, but if he does try someday, we’ll need common ground to build from.
One experience together we can say neither of us hated.
It's pathetic to even think that. He’ll never want to change, and honestly? I doubt I’ll ever want to try and bond with him. But it’s Christmas, so in this instance . . . I’ll listen to that nonsensical part of me that wants to continue the tradition.
“I’m staying. But it’s late,” I tell Mrs. Benson. “I can walk over after the movie. You should go home and go to bed.”
“I’m not having you walk over in the dead of the night,” she says.
“Then you should stay and watch it with us,” I say, the words flying from my lips as soon as I think them. Uncle Remington stiffens. Mrs. Benson’s eyebrows shoot up.
“Elliot—” Uncle Remington starts.
“I know you don’t care if we watch it together, but you waited for me, in case I did.
So I could tell Mrs. Benson you were decent to me over the holiday.
” A faint shock flits across his face that I know how he thinks.
“I’d like to watch it on Christmas Eve, like we always do,” I say.
“But I want them to stay, too. If they will.”
Jack is grinning like he’s proud of me, and I fashion my lips into a small smile in return.
Mrs. Benson is looking at Uncle Remington. “What do you think?”
His lip is slightly curled, but he sighs and nods.
Maybe he realizes if he puts up with this, Mrs. Benson will think just marginally better of him.
I doubt he cares what she thinks, but he knows she could confront him about his treatment of me at any time, and seeing him give me this—it might make her less inclined to randomly visit and berate him.
I know she’s been curious about his behavior toward me since she met him at Thanksgiving.
She’ll make sure he doesn’t do anything to hurt me.
“All right,” Uncle Remington says. “But don’t even think about kissing during the film.”
“We’re not animals,” Jack mutters.
Both Jack and Mrs. Benson have wide eyes when they step into our home theater.
It is something, with several squashy chairs spread around the space and a massive TV mounted on the wall, and speakers around the room.
It’s heavily sound-proofed, too. Uncle Remington sits on the far left once he gets the movie started.
Mrs. Benson takes a seat in the middle. Jack and I take two seats on the right.
I lean back in my comfy chair and reach for Jack’s hand, and lose myself in the splendor of the film. Two hours later we all head to the kitchen—until I realize I need a few things. I run to my room to put some clothes and toiletries in a bag, snag my pillow, and race back to the kitchen.
Uncle Remington shakes my hand and says, “Enjoy your Christmas.” It almost sounds sincere.
“You too,” I tell him, and leave with Jack and Mrs. Benson.
“Well that was cozy,” Jack says as we get into the car.
“The movie? Absolutely? Best not to dwell on the rest,” Mrs. Benson says.
I meet her eyes in the rearview mirror. “I hope you know how much I appreciate you, Mrs. Benson.”
She sucks in a sharp, quiet breath. I turn and look out the window, though I can’t see much outside. I don’t need her to respond, and I think maybe she can’t. Not in words. But when we get back to their house she wraps me in her arms for a long moment.
“Right,” she says when she lets go, wiping under her eye. “I’ll get you a few clean blankets for the couch, and we all better get some sleep. Nothing guarantees an early morning like a kid on Christmas.”
“It’s almost midnight,” Jack says.
He spreads a blanket over the couch and takes a ridiculously long time smoothing it and tucking it in. I’m about to ask what he’s doing when he checks his phone and smiles. “Merry Christmas, Eli.”
I breathe out a laugh. “You waited for it to be midnight, to say that?”
“I waited to say it first.” He touches my arm. “See you in a few hours.”
He goes down the hall and into his bedroom. I look at the milk and cookies on the end table, stand, and take a big bite of one of the cookies (which turns into eating one cookie and a big bite of a second) and drink a swig of the milk.
Then I settle onto my bed for the night.