“HOW’S THE MEAT loaf?” Stephanie asks as Leo pushes it around on her plate.
“It’s great,” she says with a smile, and it is, but the smile is so forced that it hurts her face. Stephanie’s a great cook (way better than Leo’s mom if she’s being deeply honest here) but there’s a tension at the table that wasn’t there the last time she came over for dinner.
Christmas is approaching like a train without brakes, Leo thinks, and it’s coming for all of them.
“It’s really good,” she adds, then takes another bite for good measure. The turkey meat loaf is a new recipe for their Friday night dinners, as was the meal last week, and the week before that. Leo’s noticed that Stephanie hasn’t cooked a single meal that Nina had eaten, and certainly not one that she enjoyed. She’s not sure if that’s a coincidence, and she’s not sure she wants to find out, either.
Across from her, her dad’s shoveling in the meat loaf like he’s about to go on a hunger strike and is trying to prep beforehand. He’s a nervous eater, always has been. So was Nina. Leo and her mom are the ones who pick at food whenever something’s wrong. They’ve both lost weight since August.
“Um, Dad?” Leo says, setting down her fork. She can’t eat anymore. Her dad will probably polish it off when he does the dishes later. Leo and Nina used to clean up when they came over, but now her dad insists that she sit with Stephanie, that he’s certainly capable of loading a dishwasher and scrubbing a pan. Leo misses being in the kitchen, though, moving in perfect rhythm with Nina as they put away leftovers and loaded the dishwasher. She misses the physical motions of her sister and the way she could anticipate them, both of them so used to one another’s presence that they could move perfectly around one another.
There are so many empty spaces to fill, Leo thinks, that sometimes it’s hard to find the solid ground.
And she’s about to create another hole.
“What’s up, sweetie?” her dad says now, glancing at Stephanie before he looks at her. Leo’s gotten used to that move from him, the quick “oh shit, maybe we broke Leo” look.
“Um.” Leo wipes her mouth, pushes her plate away, knowing full well that Stephanie won’t say a word about her mostly full plate. She’s too nice for that. “I know that it’s your turn for Christmas this year.”
Her dad leans back. Stephanie leans forward. Leo doesn’t move.
“And I know that this year is, just, yeah, really weird and hard and all of that, but I was wondering if I could do Christmas with Mom this year. Or, at least,” she rushes on, “Christmas Eve and morning, and then maybe come over here on Christmas afternoon, maybe? Because I don’t think I should leave Mom totally alone this year, and not that you should be alone either, but at least you and Stephanie have each other, and Aunt Kelly and Uncle David are going to Vermont because I guess Gertie wants to drop out of college? And yeah, it’s just that thinking about Mom being alone—”
“Leo. Honey.” Stephanie leans forward more and puts her hand over Leo’s. It’s cold but still feels warm somehow. “Of course. We understand.”
Leo’s dad looks like he’s less understanding, his mouth in a thin line, and Leo wonders if he’s going to call her mom and fight it. But then his face softens and he nods. “Of course, Lee.”
Leo still feels terrible, like no matter what she does this Christmas Eve, it’s going to be weird and wrong. Every year, Aunt Kelly sends her and Nina clothes for Christmas that were never quite right. Too big, too small, too itchy, and one memorable year, too orange. She tried, of course, and they always sent a thank-you note afterward, but that’s how Leo feels now, like her efforts to please were going to fail, and the harder she tried, the worse it would be.
“It’s really okay, Leo,” her dad says again, and Leo believes him a little bit more this time. His mouth is less thin, in any case. “We can do Christmas afternoon, that’s fine. Really,” he adds when Leo doesn’t respond. “I know that this year . . .” He clears his throat and Leo catches the quick wobble in his chin as Stephanie reaches for his hand, the silent fulcrum between Leo and her dad. “It’s going to be a tough one. We can’t get around that.”
“Yeah,” Leo says, because what else is there to say?
“Um,” her dad says, and he never says “um,” and Leo sits up straighter. So does Stephanie.
Oh shit.
Oh shit.
“Stephanie and I,” her dad begins, “have something we want to talk to you about.”
Leo wishes her big sister was sitting next to her.
“We found out,” Stephanie says slowly, looking back and forth between them like she’s waiting for someone to interrupt. And Nina probably would have, is the thing. They all have habits that still revolve around her.
“That I am pregnant.”
The air leaves Leo in a whoosh. It’s like every emotion is crashing through her, rendering her motionless, and apparently her dad and Stephanie take that as a bad sign because they both looked worried.
“I know,” is all Leo can say at first. “Gertie told me.”
“Gertie told you?” They both echo each other.
Leo nods, still absorbing the news. Fucking Gertie, she thinks.
“How does Gertie even know?” Stephanie asks. “You’re the first person we told!”
Leo starts to answer, but her dad cuts her off. “We’ll address that part later.”
“We just didn’t want to tell anyone until we were sure,” Stephanie says, and now it’s her mouth that looks thin, and Leo realizes that the possibility of another loss is on the horizon, and it might be the thing that shatters them all. She wasn’t even sure how she felt about it, not since Gertie first brought it up at Thanksgiving, had even decided she didn’t want to know how she felt since it probably wasn’t even true, but now that it’s on the table, something pulls at Leo’s gut the way it hasn’t since that August night.
“When are you—when is it supposed . . . ?”
“May,” they both say at the same time.
Leo nods. Her brain hasn’t allowed her to think past Christmas, much less into a new year, her first without Nina, and this news doesn’t do much to change that.
“It was a surprise,” Stephanie tells her. “But we’re excited and hopeful and sad, too, that Nina can’t be here to share this.”
Both Leo and her dad look away, her dad thumbing at his eyes again and Leo focusing on a crumb on the floor. “Is this a new rug?” she asks.
“Yes,” Stephanie says without missing a beat. “A wholesaler sent it for a promo post.”
“It’s nice.” When Leo has collected herself, she looks up again. “I’m happy for you,” she says, and she is, but she’s also sad and scared and tired, and everything’s so tangled up inside her that she can’t sort it out, and so it sits.
“However you feel is truly fine,” Stephanie reassures her, and it sounds like something she read in a book, or in an online article that a friend texted to her.
“Okay,” Leo says, and she tries to smile.
That night, Stephanie says she’s tired and goes upstairs to lie down while Leo and her dad tackle the kitchen. They work in silence for a while, the only noise coming from the small transistor radio that plays the local jazz station. That radio used to be in their house back when her parents were still married, and it’s odd to see it in a new kitchen but still playing the same sounds. Nina would always try to change the station to something more current, would always complain that this was “music for old people, Dad, why are you trying to age yourself?”
“I like this song,” Leo says as she dries a pot, watching the warm water evaporate in a spiral.
“Do you?” her dad asks with a wink. “Or are you just saying that?”
“No, I do,” she says, and she does.
“It’s Jimmy Forrest,” he says. “You know, every time I turn on this old guy”—he gestures to the radio—“I keep waiting for a new station to come on. Nina would always change it, you know. I’d be expecting Bill Evans and would get Bieber instead.”
Leo rolls her eyes at the reference, but she warms a little knowing that her dad is trying to be dorky.
“Hey,” he says, then bumps his elbow against hers. “How are you doing with all of this?”
“Fine,” she says, and she’s grateful when her dad doesn’t push it. She suspects he knows what she’s really trying to say, how the word “fine” stands in place of “I have no idea and I need to figure it out first before I talk about it with you.” He’s a good dad that way. Nina was the one who would announce her feelings to the world, the human equivalent of a Times Square billboard. Her dad was good at navigating that, too, but it’s different with Leo.
“I know it’s a lot,” he says, and Leo turns away to put the pot in the cabinet. She can’t look at him while he talks or she’ll dissolve on the floor right then and there. “But I’ll tell your mom tomorrow. I don’t want you to have to—”
“Oh my God, Dad, no.” Leo shuts the cabinet with more force than is necessary for something that holds dishes from IKEA. “You cannot tell Mom, she will freak out.”
Her dad frowns a little. “Lee, this isn’t exactly going to be a secret for the rest of her life.”
“I’ll tell her,” Leo says, then shakes her head when her dad starts to interrupt her. “No, I’m serious. I know how to talk to her. You always get her riled up and then she doesn’t hear anything.”
Her dad opens his mouth, closes it for a few seconds, then opens it. “Are you sure?” he finally says.
“Definitely,” Leo says.
“Okay. But I would like to go on the record and say that I am very happy to talk to your mom if you don’t want to.”
“Let the record show,” Leo replies.
“How’s she doing anyway?” he asks in that faux-casual way that makes Leo know that he’s been trying to figure out how to ask that question for the past two hours.
Leo just shrugs and starts to wipe down the counter in circles. Apparently it becomes noticeable because her dad reaches out and takes the sponge away from her. “Leo, sweetie, look at me.”
Leo looks up but not at him. She can’t make eye contact because she knows it will shatter her and she needs to keep it together for everyone else’s sake.
She’s the only one who’s left.
“Leo,” her dad says again. “This baby, no matter what happens, they’re not a substitute for Nina, okay? No one, nothing, could ever . . .”
Leo’s just nodding and looking at the radio, can feel her own mouth trembling as her dad’s voice shakes.
“Just tell me you know that,” he murmurs.
She keeps nodding, and when her dad finally grabs her and pulls her in for a hug, she presses her face against his shirt and closes her eyes.
That way, it’s easier to pretend that they both aren’t crying.