6. Charlie
6
Charlie
This is what I’m up against. Bea and I have so many minefields to navigate, it makes it hard to see a path forward.
I can’t comment on paying for the cabin in Here. I’m proud, but I don’t think it’ll go over well and, besides, it would open a can of worms, and there’s the NDA to think of.
I wish, for the thousandth time, that I’d understood at age twenty that what Bea and I had was irreplaceable. That I’d worked harder, saved more money, and kept Bea in my life. Would we be navigating this together?
We drive through a few small towns, the terrain getting hillier as the miles go by. In my senior year of college, I allowed myself one splurge—a friend’s family had a house in Lake Tahoe. I spent a week there learning to ski, and I know that the Catskills, while beautiful, offer a better beginner-skier experience than skiing out west. Which is good, since Bea doesn’t know how to ski.
Finally, we make it to Here. We have to drive through the town to get to the cabin, which is closer to the ski resort. Bea slows the car and we both peer out the windshield at the glowing Christmas decorations.
Bea gasps when she sees a giant Christmas tree in the town center, and something in me swells.
This year could be different.
A new leaf.
“Wow,” she says, and I don’t think she’s talking to me, but I agree anyway. The tree is enormous, and I’m not sure what magic exists in Here, New York, but the lights are moving along the tree, dancing and twinkling while they wind their way up.
There’s a honk and Bea lets out a small “whoops” before jolting the car back into motion. She glances in the rearview mirror, watching the tree fade away behind us.
Outside town, the car starts up a steady incline. We drive past the ski resort, which has its own Christmas tree out front, but this one looks to be planted. It doesn’t have magical dancing lights but big, shiny baubles adorn it and there’s a star on top.
The next turn is a small road. There are a few houses, but there’s enough space between them that the glow from one home doesn’t touch the other. Then, one last turn, and Bea gasps again.
I recognize the rental I booked. The house is glorious. Each forward-facing window has an electric candle in it and the double front door boasts two wreaths twined with gold ribbon and holly sprigs. White lights line the roof, a wire Santa and his sleigh perch next to a chimney, and the Christmas tree glows through the front picture window. People move around inside, reminding me of that scene in Home Alone where Macaulay Culkin creates a cardboard-only holiday party, but here all the people are real.
And when our headlights pan across the window, it reveals six faces pressed up against the glass.
We barely come to a stop beside my parents’ old Suburban when the door flies open.
“Watch the wreath!” someone shouts. One of Bea’s sisters.
“Watch it do what?” That’s Bea’s dad.
My mom cackles, ever the dutiful audience member for Erik’s dad jokes.
The crowd flows on either side of the car, and someone opens my door for me. I step out and am immediately wrapped in an incense-scented hug.
My mom.
She hugs me for a good thirty seconds and then rears back. “Your vibes are murky right now.”
“Vibes?” I raise an eyebrow.
She ignores me. “Desperation. And you’ve been working too hard.”
“That’s not new.” The interjecting voice is Bea’s sister Kayla. Once my mom gives her enough room, Kayla wraps her arms around my waist and squeezes too tight.
I blow a raspberry in her ear and she laughs. I have to bend down slightly to deliver it, as Kayla is the shortest of the Cummings girls. She squeezes again and I oblige with another fake fart.
I’ve always considered Kayla, Naomi, and Yvette to be my sisters. But never did I once think of Bea that way.
I work my way through eight more hugs with seven more people—Mom comes back in for another hug—before the crowd moves inside. Dad, Erik, and Lance, Yvette’s fiancé, are already handling our luggage, so I grab my laptop bag from the front seat and make my way inside.
The living room, the room with the tree we could see from the driveway, shows signs of a party—wineglasses on all surfaces, one of those pre-made cheese-and-veggie party platters on the table, and music playing from hidden speakers. One of Bea’s sisters is giving her a tour, and their dad hooks my elbow and starts our own tour.
“From the living room, you can go right into the kitchen from the butler’s pantry.” Erik gestures. “Would you believe there are zero butlers stocked in here? I told Jody we should have swung by Costco on our way up to grab a pack of twelve.”
Behind me, Naomi groans.
The kitchen’s huge, and we stall out there. Bea’s tour took the other route into the kitchen, and when she finally gets a good look at her dad, Bea laughs. “Dad, what the hell is up with your hair?”
Erik threads his fingers on either side of his head and pulls his hair away from his scalp. “Do you like it?” When he lets go, his brown wavy hair falls to brush against his shoulders.
“That’s like, Matthew McConaughey hair.”
“All right, all right, all right.”
“Don’t give him bongos, for the love of god,” Naomi shouts.
“You know why he keeps getting invited to Naughty By Nature concerts?”
This time, the entire room groans—except my mom, predictably.
“Because he’s Matthew Ma-conna-heyyyy, ho, hey, ho!”
There’s a chorus of “Daaaaddddd!”
The tour of the house goes like that for the next hour. Mom assures me she’s saged the house and she’ll put the furniture back before she leaves, but “isn’t the feng shui of the room so much better ?” In the sunroom, Jody has set up her yoga mat and tells us she’s gotten into yoga because it keeps her “hips flexible.”
“She has to keep up with her hot young husband,” Erik jokes, planting a smacking kiss on Jody, who’s six years older than him.
“Ew,” Naomi says.
“Now, honey,” my mom starts, and I know where this is going. “Your mother is a vibrant woman and has needs. There’s nothing gross about her sexuality.”
“Moving on,” my dad says, saving us from more sex conversations by herding us out of the room to finish the downstairs tour. Each space is decorated for Christmas, from a Nativity scene to miniature trees with tiny ornaments to real garland twined around the banister on the stairs.
Everyone else has been here for hours already, but they still feel the need to show us around and provide their own commentary. After a long car ride of mostly silence with Bea, it’s a welcome cacophony that continues through dinner, meatloaf made by Yvette and Lance.
(Erik tells us meatloaf is the best safe word to use, and Naomi tells him she’s heard that joke before. Erik shrugs and says, “What, do I have to have original content?” and then we have to explain to my dad what a safe word is.)
Finally, when everyone’s done eating, Jody says, “It’s time to draw for the secret Santa!”
I groan, because this is going to take ages.
Jody gets up to gather supplies, and my dad pulls a pen out of his shirt pocket.
Bea clears her throat. “So, uh, remind me what the new rules are again?”
Everyone stills for about two seconds, glancing at each other until they burst out laughing.
“The rules haven’t changed, ” Jasper, Kayla’s husband, says.
“There was a whole email thread,” Bea insists.
“Yes, well, your father got the harebrained idea that we should do white elephant gifts instead?—”
“I found the perfect gag gift,” Erik interrupts.
“—but we unanimously vetoed him because we’re all adults and the last thing we need is people fighting over gifts that are just going to go into the trash in a month or two.”
“Exactly right,” Mom agrees.
Our secret Santa rules are simple: we draw names the first night together, and then we have to buy the present from somewhere local for less than twenty dollars. In Pithole, this was often a favorite snack from the supermarket or miscellaneous crap from the fly-fishing store (completely negating the idea that our secret Santa gifts have never been wasteful and each recipient cherished their gift, but I digress). This year, we’re excited to have actual gift shops to shop in, and that was the third biggest reason not to change the rules—behind tradition and no one wanting to feel bad for stealing the better gifts.
“I still have the white elephant gift from my office exchange two years ago.” Erik turns to the rest of the table and brags, “It’s a reindeer that poops candy.”
“I’m sure someone will get you something just as tacky as a pooping reindeer,” Jody assures him, returning to the room with paper and a glass bowl.
Erik sighs good-naturedly with a lopsided grin.
“So,” Jasper reiterates. “No changes.”
“God, Bea, read your emails,” Kayla gripes.
Bea glares at her sister. “I read my emails?—”
“Clearly.”
“—I have a job .”
“Girls.” Jody uses her no-nonsense tone and Bea and Kayla snap their jaws shut. Bea’s sisters love to razz her about my big-city job.
“Okay, now, everyone write your name on a paper, fold it up, and throw it in the bowl,” Jody explains, as if we haven’t been doing this for the past decade.
She distributes pens and paper and soon the bowl is full of wadded-up paper balls. Jody produces a twelve-sided die and rolls it, reading six from the ivory face, and counts clockwise from her left till she points at Lance. He draws a name, reads it, and stuffs it in his jeans pocket.
The next roll is eleven, and Jody starts the count from the seat to Lance’s left, until she lands on Bea. And so on, until Jody’s finger points at me.
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.