Chapter 10
The time comes for my annual Christmas trip back to Michigan.
My family is pretending to be excited to see me, but I know they probably have a more enjoyable time when I don’t come home.
No one at the table hitting them with the hard facts about how nonsensical their worldviews are. Their little echo chamber
is all they know and they like it that way.
I should really start skipping the holidays altogether, but I guess I still feel like I’d be a bad daughter if I completely
dropped out of my parents’ lives. They’re the type of bad parents who think they’re good parents and don’t leave mounds of
evidence, just little breadcrumbs, that prove the contrary. When the breadcrumbs add up, it’s a mountain, but I still haven’t
been able to justify the case for going full no-contact. I also don’t like the feeling that my family can just move on from
me so easily. Physically being there sometimes is good so I stay fresh in their minds.
Plus I’ll be meeting my new niece this Christmas, so I suppose I’ll try to infuse some nonconformist energy into the little
one before it’s too late. Jessica Hannah Davies is her name, how basic, but my sister seems happy and healthy so that’s good
news.
When I arrive at my parents’ house, my sister puts the baby in my arms before I can tell her I don’t want to hold her.
The baby is still tiny and wrinkly, only six weeks old with this big, horrendous pink bow that reminds me of the ones my mom used to put me in.
But she has piercing blue eyes that seem to see right into me.
I don’t like the feeling but I admire her for it, like she’s tuning in to extrasensory vision so she can see through the bullshit programming that will be forced on her.
“She’s a very alive baby,” I say, handing her back to my sister. The rest of the conversation revolves around the baby—her
sleeping habits, what this gurgle or that babble might mean, how utterly exhausting it is to be a parent. Then in the same
breath as lamenting all the trials of motherhood, my sister turns to me and says unironically, “You know, Emily Jane, I feel
like having kids will be so good for you.”
“Hmm, and why is that?” I say, keeping my voice neutral or at least as neutral as I can. She’s trying to rile me and I won’t
let her.
“Well, it’s impossible to be selfish when you’re a mother.” She smiles, but it doesn’t reach her baggy, sleep-deprived eyes.
“Impossible to have a self, you mean,” I correct. “What a compelling proposition.”
“Girls, don’t bicker,” my mom says because that’s how she thinks conflict is resolved. By avoiding it altogether. “It’s time
to get to church—seats will fill up early.”
“You sure about that?” I say. “I’ve read that church attendance is way down.”
“In Brooklyn, maybe,” my mom says, her intonation making it perfectly clear just what she thinks about where I live. “But here we’re doing
just fine.”
“You missed the baptism, Emily Jane,” my sister says, as if she hasn’t brought that up twelve times already. “But you should’ve
seen how Baby Jessica felt right at home in church.”
“Good thing the priest was there to cleanse her of her sins,” I say, straight-faced. “Given she must have racked up quite
a lot of murders in her few weeks on Earth.”
My mom snaps at me to stop being sacrilegious. My sister looks like she almost wants to laugh but doesn’t.
We all pile into the old minivan for Christmas Eve Mass. I could put up a fight and not go, but it’s honestly easier just to tag along and dissociate to another planet, somewhere where outcasts are celebrated, not stigmatized.
I keep my coat hood up through Mass, partially to convey my spite about having to go to church and partially to hide. My old
classmates probably wouldn’t recognize me because of how different I look, but still, you can’t be too safe. There’s nothing
and no one from high school I care to see again. Let’s just say I didn’t peak back then.
Going back to my hometown is such a horrendous time warp. I think I’ve made all this great progress, transformed into this
endlessly large and independent self. And then when I’m back here, I shrink right up to fit inside the two-stoplight town
limits.
My sister’s baby starts shrieking nearly right away, and I decide I’m pretty fond of this tiny creature after all. The only
problem is the preferential treatment she gets. I would be thrown out for causing a fit and speaking my mind, and she’s just
given little sympathetic smiles as people accept that it can’t be helped. The baby also achieves her goal of being removed
from church. My sister takes her outside, so it seems the little nugget is figuring life out pretty fast. Perhaps she sees
me as a role model; she probably does.
Back at the house after Mass, my sister puts the baby to bed and my mom starts making her famous chili. It’s not actually
famous; that’s just what she calls it. My dad ends up saying there’s not enough spice in it, and back and forth they go about
the proper ratio of chili powder. These really are the important things in life, being solved one snippy comment at a time.
My dad goes into another room to watch some sports game on TV.
“Turn it down, George,” my mom calls out from the kitchen. “The baby is sleeping.”
“It’s fine. She’ll wake up every fifteen minutes anyway,” my sister says, as if she’s quite proud of how difficult this has been on her, how she has had to mold her entire life around someone else.
“Facts,” my sister’s husband says, and then he slinks away to join my dad in the other room for the game.
My sister starts retelling all her grisliest motherhood stories.
“Yes, you’ve already told me about the varicose veins and your twenty-seven-hour labor and that night when you thought the
baby was dying but it was just gas,” I tell her.
“You could pretend to be interested in the fact that I just gave birth to an entire human,” my sister says, all huffy. “Otherwise I’ll ask about
your dating life.”
She knows that will provoke me, so I stay nonplussed. “Fine,” I say. “Ask away.”
“Did you see Dylan Flanagan at church today?” my mom interjects, then says what a nice young man he’s turned into and how
we should invite him over for pecan pie tomorrow.
“I’m pretty sure Dylan is engaged now,” my sister says, which sets my mom off about how all the good guys are dropping like
flies and she just can’t understand what I’m doing, wasting my prime childbearing years.
“Honestly, Emily Jane, you’re almost thirty and still running around like a teenager,” she says.
I could fight back and spell out exactly how I took an oath to never ever get married, or tell them maybe I’ll bring a woman
home next year. But I’m not feeling motivated enough to cause a scene, so I just sit there and play my own drinking game where
I have to take a swig of wine every time my mom says the phrases “settle down,” “nice guy,” or “almost thirty.”
My phone starts buzzing. It’s Jenni, FaceTiming me. I know right away this can’t be good because she’s aware that I hate FaceTiming.
I’d always rather text.
I step out of the kitchen to answer.
“EJ!” Jenni squeals through the screen. “Hang on, let me loop in the others.”
My worst fears jolt awake, the kind of foggy consciousness that says they were never asleep, not really. Then we’re all on
the call together, four tiny rectangles on my phone screen. Jenni is wagging something sparkly in our faces, holding it up
to the camera so the rock is all we see, abrasive and unfaithful. I brace myself for the blow of the engagement, reminding
myself that she was engaged once before and that didn’t last. There’s still time to get her to see the light before she goes
through with it.
“We got married!” Jenni shrieks. The phrase circles around a few times, looking for an escape, before it lands and detonates.
Tara and Hal are as silent as I am. We’re all waiting for the punchline that doesn’t come.
Jenni storms ahead, says she and Peter had been talking about getting engaged at Christmas, but she had such bad flashbacks
from her last proposal that they decided to skip an engagement altogether and just run down to the courthouse this afternoon,
just the two of them. “How modern is that?” she squeals proudly. “And I’m keeping my last name, so I’m not caving to the patriarchy.
I know I’ve technically broken the pact, but I’m still going to stay true to the Redstockings my whole life. Don’t worry.”
I glare at the screen because those statements completely contradict each other. She can’t be married and still be loyal to
us.
None of us are saying anything and Jenni says she thinks her Wi-Fi is spotty because the screen is frozen and she can’t hear
us. Hal says the screen isn’t frozen; we’re all just processing this news.
“Well, can you process faster?” Jenni wants to know. “Because I want you to get on my level. We’re having a party over here.”
Sure enough, there’s champagne popping in the background, probably Dom Pérignon or something just as bad.
Peter comes up behind Jenni and they kiss right there on camera.
The whole thing is like one of those spiraling nightmares where you keep trying to wake up but your body won’t move; it’s paralyzed.
I hang up, but I doubt Jenni even notices. She’s too high on her own bliss. Hal and Tara both call me, but I banish them to
voicemail. I’m not in the mood for talking. I’m not in the mood for anything, so I go outside without a coat and trek through
the snowy streets I grew up on, boots dragging like they’re wary of leaving the ground, or just tired from trying.
My parents still live in the same cookie-cutter house in the same cookie-cutter neighborhood where I grew up. All the houses
look exactly the same, everyone scared to stand out. I retrace my old path to the bus stop, past the overgrown field where
the neighborhood kids would play capture the flag and never invite me because they thought I cheated.