Riley couldn’t stop staring at the dead Christmas tree.
He was sitting in the living room, kicked back in his father’s favorite black leather recliner with a blue bowl of steaming macaroni and cheese positioned on his chest. He wasn’t sure what time it was, but he knew it was late, well after midnight.
The multicolored lights on the tree hummed with an electric buzz, blinking with precision every five seconds. He was mesmerized and slightly amused by the sight of the withered tree and the pulsing lights. The branches were brittle and the color of coffee. The poor thing was barely standing, leaning to the left and threatening to hit the ground at any second. Around its base was a red velvet tree skirt with the words The Brewers embroidered in stark white.
A week ago on Christmas morning, Riley sat next to the tree while his mother fumed in silence from her usual spot on the couch. His father was in the recliner, trying his best to ignore the vibrating cell phone in the pocket of his blue plaid robe—the now-faded gift Riley had given him for Christmas last year.
His parents had given no gifts to each other this year. No new golf clubs or fishing gear. No jewelry or silk scarves or bottles of French perfume. They wouldn’t even look at each other.
And Riley knew why.
Her name was Amber.
During the week leading up to Christmas, the Brewers detonated. All hell broke loose in their two-story oversized house. When Emily Brewer discovered her husband was sleeping with a twenty-two-year-old college student, a battle began.
Riley was impressed by the amount of discipline it required for his parents to try to keep their raging war a secret from him. They would shoot each other a death stare before hurrying off and sliding behind closed doors. Their words simmered with strained force, dying to explode.
“We’re not doing this to him,” his mother said, during a particularly tense showdown on Christmas Eve. They were in the laundry room, a place Riley rarely ventured. They assumed he wasn’t around or listening. They were wrong.
His mother was seething. “I don’t give a fuck what you do once Christmas is over, but I’m not ruining his holiday just because you can’t keep your dick in your pants.”
“What are we supposed to do until then?” his father asked. “Pretend?”
“Why not?” his mother said. “We’ve been doing such a great job at it for eighteen years.”
To make his presence known in the adjacent kitchen, Riley tugged on the handle of the stainless-steel refrigerator and yanked it open. He slammed it shut as hard as he could. Inside, bottles rattled like bowling pins.
This killed the confrontation in the laundry room. His mother suddenly appeared in the doorway with a plastic red bottle of liquid laundry detergent in her hand. “Everything okay?” she asked. Her face was infused with wrath. Her eyes were gray-blue clouds of smoke.
Riley stared at his mother before he spoke. “You tell me,” he said.
She lowered her volatile gaze and said, “Just doing some laundry.”
He filled his words with enough suspicion to indicate he knew she was lying. “At midnight? On Christmas Eve?”
“You know what the holidays are like,” she said, struggling to keep up the facade. “Never enough time to get everything done. I’ve been so…busy.”
Riley turned away, ready to retreat to his bedroom and the cheesy holiday movie he’d left on pause. “Then maybe we shouldn’t have Christmas.”
His words stopped her, but only for a second. “No,” she said. “It’s important. We’re still a family.”
Riley had predicted the downfall of the Brewers over a year ago, when Amber first showed up on the scene. He’d met her only once but within the first five minutes of doing so, he knew her game. In fact, she made little attempt to hide her strategy, making it clear with her not-so-clever innuendo that victory was her goal and Martin Brewer was the prize.
He couldn’t see what Amber saw in the married man. He was pompous, played a lousy game of golf, and wore too much cologne. Yes, he was wealthy. He made sure everybody knew that. Years ago, he was even attractive. Yet his car-salesman-like smarm and constant bad jokes made him nothing more than a cheap hustler in an expensive suit.
To each their own. Maybe she likes sleazy men who cheat on their wives.
It wasn’t long before Martin Brewer started taking one-too-many business trips and breaking promises left and right. His absence was most felt at Riley’s baseball games. A quick scan of the bleachers always revealed another moment lost to show up and do the right thing.
You’re a dumb son of a bitch. You’re about to lose everything. I’m sure it won’t be long before Amber is gone, too.
Riley shoved a spoonful of the gooey mac and cheese into his mouth. His eyes shifted away from the dead tree and colorful bulbs and over to the wooden mantle above the stack-stoned fireplace. Trophies looked back at him, each gleaming with its own moment of glory.
There was a time you never missed a single game, Dad. Now, you’ve lost it all because of some redhead with fake tits.
I hope she’s worth it.
A week ago, Christmas morning was agony.
A nuclear silence mushroomed over their house, clouding around them like an invisible force hell-bent on severing ties and suffocating any remnants of love out of their now-broken hearts.
She was on the couch. He was in the chair. Both were trying to avoid the fuses of their own time bombs. She was fueled by scorn. He was resentful, wanting to be with his twenty-two-year-old girlfriend.
Riley was certain the unspoken anger his parents swallowed on his behalf was the very thing that murdered the Christmas tree. Their energy was toxic.
And so was their marriage.