Danny
This is a super weird Christmas. It’s my first without Melissa. Also, Selena still won’t talk to me. It makes me really sad. It’s just me and Peter here today. This morning, we woke up early and worked at the bakery. It was fucking packed! The line was outside and around the corner! I took pictures! I’m exhausted. I think maybe I’ll just hibernate all day like a big, tired bear. I just downloaded a new game, but no one will be able to play today. They’re all with their families. Matt told me he’s jealous of me because I don’t have to see any weird grandparents or cousins. I acted all cool about it, but really, I’m jealous of him too.
Peter’s on the balcony smoking a cigarette. He’s sitting on a new outside chair he bought. He’s counting lots of cash. I decide to step outside with him.
“Go back inside, I don’t want you breathing this in,” he says, turning his head and blowing out smokey air in the opposite direction of me.
“Are you gonna come in soon?”
“Yeah, in a minute. Did you want boneless spareribs and beef lo mien?”
“You’re not cooking?”
“No, not tonight.” He takes his cigarette and presses it down into the ash tray. “Here,” he hands me some money from the wad. I count it. TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS?!
“Is this my Christmas gift?”
“No. You’ve been working all week, haven’t you?”
“Since when do I get paid?”
“Starting now.”
“Bet!” I shove it in my pocket and turn back toward the door.
“Something I need to talk to you about today.”
“Really, what?”
“I’m gonna place the Chinese order, and then I’ll come in and we’ll talk.”
“Alright.”
I walk inside and slide the glass door closed. What could he want to talk to me about? I wonder if Kara’s coming back. It’s kind of my fault that she wants to leave in the first place. I walk into my bedroom and grab my wallet. I shove my money in there and close the wallet up tight. I put the wallet down, but then I have the urge to pick it back up. I check to make sure the cash is still there. I mean, where else would it be? I don’t fucking know. I put the wallet back down… “Danny, do not check the wallet again!” I whisper angrily to myself. I hear Peter come inside, and so I walk back into the living room.
We have this little, tiny Christmas tree. Peter put it up last night on top of the coffee table. It’s nice I guess, but you can’t see the TV too well when you’re sitting on the couch.
“Crazy year, huh?” he asks as he takes off his jacket.
“You could say that again!” I exclaim. I flop down on the couch and do a great big sigh. “I don’t even want to think about this year. 2016 sucked big hairy balls!”
“Language.”
“Big hairy… NUTS!”
He laughs but tries to hide it. He shouldn’t hide it. I’m funny as hell!
“I want to give you your Christmas gift,” he says. He pulls a folded-up piece of paper out from the pocket of his jeans.
“You got me some paper?” I say, taking it from his hand.
“It’s what’s on the paper, Danny. The gift itself didn’t come in time.”
“It’s OK, I didn’t get you anything.”
“I kind of assumed so,” he says, shaking his head and grinning.
I open the folded paper. It’s a receipt. I read it closely. I’m not sure that I’m reading this right… I read it again. “Is this— Is it a 23+ Me?!”
“Yes.”
“You bought me one?!”
“Yeah, but it’s not here yet.”
“PETER! This is AWESOME!” I jump up from the couch. “THIS is the best gift ever!” I wrap him in a hug. I almost bulldoze him over, so I grab him and pick him up. I’m pretty sure he hates this.
“DANNY! Knock it off!”
I put him down and crack up.
“Since when can you lift me up? Jesus Christ!” he looks completely shook. “Don’t ever do that again, got it?!”
“Got it!” I’m so freakin’ happy right now! I gotta go find the instructions online! Wait, no I don’t, I know exactly how to do this! “You don’t have to talk to me about this Peter, I know exactly what to do!”
“Oh… Uhm. Right. OK. Yes, this is what I wanted to talk to you about. But uh— We’re going to have to talk about it later. I want to make sure you understand that you might learn some bad stuff—”
I run into my bedroom. I don’t want to talk about this stupid stuff. Wow! This is a really good Christmas after all! I pick up my phone and look up more videos on DNA testing. I’m finally gonna know who I am! I can’t wait for 2017!
Peter
When My phone rings, I assume it’s Kara. I assume correctly. She told me she’d call me today. I feel kinda bad about saying I didn’t want to meet her family, but it’s the honest truth, and I’m working on my lying habit. I don’t know how to talk to families. I don’t know how to meet someone’s cousins or their father. I don’t want to learn about their holiday traditions, and hear all the happy memories they have together. Most importantly, I don’t want to tell them that I don’t have a family. I don’t want to answer any questions. Kara and I—We truly have nothing in common.
“Hello.”
“Merry Christmas!” she shouts! “Can I FaceTime you?”
“Uh… Sure. OK.”
Soon enough, I get the Facetime request. I accept it reluctantly. Holy shit. There’s a lot of people there.
“Everyone, this is Peter.”
I quickly sit up straight and fix my hair. Of course, the doorbell rings. “Danny! Please get the door. It’s the food!” I turn back to look at the phone. I can’t look at the crowd of people. I look at my own face instead. I look bewildered. FIX IT.
“Uh… Hi, Kara.”
“Let me introduce you to everyone.”
People start saying their names, but I’m not even listening. Holy fuck. This house is huge. Is this her parent’s house? Does she come from money? Why the hell doesn’t she want to live there?
“And this is my aunt Tracey, and her dog Mimi! Who’s a good girl Mimi? Who’s a good girl?” The small dog has bows tied around its ears. It dances to Kara’s sing-songy voice. “Isn’t she just so sweet?”
Thank fuck I’m not there right now. I think I’d have a complete meltdown. “So cute…” I say.
“Oh! Peter! I have to tell you something! SO funny. Wait—CLAIRE! Claire!” She starts walking through the house until she finds a chubby brunette in a Christmas sweater. “Tell Peter about the cookies.”
“The ones Tilda made?” she asks.
“Yeah!” she cracks up. “Tell him! Tell him!”
I don’t really give a fuck. I’m smiling, I think. But I just want my wonton soup. Danny plops down next to me on the couch. He’s already dug into his ribs. He leans in over my shoulder to look at the people on the phone.
“That’s Peter’s brother, Danny,” Kara tells the girl.
Danny makes a peace sign with his hands, and then goes back to eating. I’m quite embarrassed of what Kara’s family is seeing in our apartment. Do they know she lives here in this tiny box? They’re probably gonna ask her what the fuck she’s thinking when she hangs up with me.
“BURNT!” the girl adds in.
“So burnt! Like literally hockey pucks.”
“Huh?” I ask.
“The cookies our aunt made. The literal worst cookies I’ve ever eaten. I was telling them all about you. They said you should have come and brought dessert from the bakery!”
“Yeah… Well—”
“It’s totally OK. We get it. You hate us,” the girl adds in.
“Claire!” Kara yells playfully.
“I— I don’t know any of you,” I say.
“Well how are you ever gonna get to know us if you don’t even show up here on Christmas. What kind of boyfriend are you?” She laughs and laughs. Kara throws the phone down. I hear smacking.
“BOYFRIEND?!” Danny yells.
“Uh… I didn’t know that part either?” I say back to him. I roll my eyes and throw my head back. “Kara… Kara? Kara! Pick the phone up!”
I finally see her face again. “Claire’s just kidding around,” she answers.
“Right…” Great. Everyone there thinks I’m her boyfriend… The one that didn’t show up to Christmas with her family… And who lives in a dark, small, box of an apartment. At least they don’t know I’m also an absent father with a type of cancer that comes from alcoholism. What a catch!
I think about Hayley and Eve… They’re spending Christmas in a homeless shelter. Why is everything all fucked up?
A text pops up on my screen. It’s from Kara.
I glance over at Danny. He’s slurping down lo mien. When he sees me looking, he grows closer to me. I quickly close the text box.
“Kara, do you know what Peter got me for Christmas?” he asks.
“What?”
“A 23+ Me!”
“Super cool!”
“Yeah… Really cool,” I say. “Well… I’m gonna eat dinner now.”
“Us too,” she says.
“Have fun… Enjoy your family.”
“Love you guys!” She says. She hangs up before I can respond. I’m kind of glad… Because like I said, I’m trying to work on my lying habit… and I don’t love her. Well, maybe as a friend I do… Maybe even a sister… But not— There’s only one woman for me.
Seonaid
As I head toward the bakery this morning, I recite exactly what I’ll say to Taog.
“I think people here have the wrong idea about us. I have no intention of pursuing this further,” I whisper to myself as I kick a pebble down the cobblestone street. I hope he doesn’t take it too harshly. I try to remember my bread recipe, just in case he does. I might be doing a lot more baking in the near future.
When I enter the bakery, he smiles at me. I smile back politely. This time, I’ve wiped my boots off outside of the store. I remove my hat as I approach the counter. He leans in to kiss me, but today, I back away. He looks unpleasantly surprised.
“What’s wrong now?” he asks. He rolls his eyes at me as if I’m just another bothersome woman to him.
“I don’t want to do this anymore. I just came here to talk to you about it today.”
“Do what—Aye? We haven’t done anything.”
“They’re talking, Taog.”
“Who? Who’s doing what talking?”
“It’s a small town.”
He rolls his eyes and swats his hand in my face, like I’m just a gnat to him. He walks away from the counter and into the back of the kitchen.
“Can’t even look me in the eyes? I thought we could be friends. Actually, I thought that we were friends!”
“We’re not friends, Seonaid! Leave me be, aye?! All ye care about is gossip!” he yells from the kitchen.
I know I shouldn’t, but I walk around the counter and follow him to the back. I don’t want to be romantic with him any longer, but I don’t want to lose our chats and all the excitement he brings to my life. “I’d miss ye if we didn’t see each other again.”
“What’re ye doing in my kitchen? Out!” he yells. His face contorts. I’ve never seen him this angry. It feels domineering, but I don’t hesitate or shrink.
“I just want ye to talk to me,” I say.
“Talk about what? There’s nothing to talk about here!” He approaches. He feels bigger than he really is. The pleasant thrill I usually feel around him turns to fear. Maybe that’s what it’s been all along. Sometimes it’s difficult to discern between excitement and danger. It’s all just adrenaline after all.
“OK…I’m going to leave now,” I say quietly. I step backwards. I don’t take my eyes off him.
“Don’t you want to come with me to Inverness? What happened to that, aye? What happened to our plans?” He grabs tightly to my shoulders. His eyes don’t look kind anymore. They look mental. I try to wiggle from his grip, but it’s tight and oppressive.
“We don’t have plans… Let go of me, Taog.” I try to pry his fingers off of my body one by one, but his grip is stronger than I’d imagined.
“I know you want to be with me. Maybe you can’t admit it, hm? I can tell. The way your body talks, not loudly, but in a whisper, hm?” he says with a strange laugh, looking me in the eyes.
“No…No. Let go!” I kick him, but he doesn’t flinch. It only agitates him further. Suddenly I’m wrapped up in his arms, and I can’t escape. “Taog! Stop it! Stop!”
“You want this. You can’t admit it, but you want it, hoor! Along with that free trip to Inverness ye thought ye’d get out of me.”
I cry and I yell, but I don’t think it’s possible that anyone can hear me from outside. Won’t anyone come into the store?! He pushes me down, first into a table, and then down on to the floor. He holds me still. The tile is ice against my vulnerable skin. There’s no escaping from him. He’s all around me and inside of me. He consumes every bit of my soul, until there’s nothing left of me but an empty shell. I’m no longer present; I may as well have died. I watch it happen from outside myself, like my spirit has exited my corpse. I know I’m still alive because I feel the pain, the tearing, the burning. It goes on for what feels like centuries. I only return to my body once he’s finished. He leaves me there on the ground and walks to the front of the bakery when the doorbell rings. He helps the next customer as if nothing happened, as if I’m not here, as if I never was.
Peter
I picked Danny up from home right after the meeting today. It was very intimidating, and there were a lot more people in the room than I assumed there would be. It started as a regular exam, but then a few doctors sat down and questioned me like I was in a police station. They asked me if I had family who could help care for me. I told them I didn’t. They asked me about my insurance, and I told them I don’t have any. They suggested Medicaid. They told me that there’s an income limit. I lied, so there goes the whole trying to be a better person thing. I told them I make much less than I do… It’s mostly off the books though. I don’t think I’ll get caught. I never get caught. How else am I going to pay for this?
Danny and I walk into the bakery together. He turns on the lights and heads to the kitchen.
“Start frosting those cupcakes.”
“OK!” he yells back, but then he turns around.
“Am I getting paid today?”
“Yup,” I say as I count out the money left in the register.
“How much an hour?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“I wanna buy Selena something nice. Maybe like a big stuffed animal that says ‘I’m sorry’ or something.”
“Can’t you buy it with the two hundred I gave you yesterday?”
“Well, yeah, but still!”
I’m finally making decent money, and now I have cancer… and oh yeah, a daughter in a homeless shelter. Fuck. Why did I agree to start paying Danny? Well, he is a big help, I guess. And he’s cheaper than hiring an employee… But the real reason? Guess I was just in a good mood.
“Like fifteen an hour?”
“Hell no, minimum wage is like ten dollars.”
“Can I get eleven then since I’m your brother?”
“Ten, off the books.”
“Deal! I hate reading anyways! Yes!”
“What?” Now I lost count. I put the cash back in the register. I need to start all over again.
“You said no more books.”
“That’s not what I said. Off the books means you don’t pay taxes. You get the full ten dollars in cash.”
“Throw in the no books thing, and it’s a deal.” He approaches me and sticks his arm out to shake my hand.
“You still have to read ‘Of Mice and Men,’ Danny.”
“IT’S SO BORING THOUGH!”
“Cupcakes. Now!” I point to the back of the kitchen, and he silently walks in that direction.
I start counting the cash again. I have to report some of these earnings. I take out my phone and pull up the calculator app. I have deals with twelve breweries, and usually make around a seventy-five-dollar profit from each of them per weekend… Let’s see, that’s nine hundred dollars right there. The parties are lucrative too. I can charge fifty dollars per person when I throw in drinks. The events and breweries alone can bring in around thirteen hundred per week… That’s over five thousand per month. Calculate my bills at home…Rent, car, gas, electric, cable, groceries… Calculate the bills at the bakery… Calculate doctor bills… What’s that gonna cost? No idea yet. Oh well, calculate Danny’s pay… Calculate whatever I can send to Hayley… A negative number appears on my screen. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Maybe Kara can chip in more? She makes good commission, right? I put my hands on my head and tug tightly at the roots of my hair. I stop… I remember the chemotherapy thing. I won’t have hair soon. I let go. I feel nauseous. Is it too late to negotiate Danny’s pay further?
I need someone to talk to. I’m not a baby, but right now I really want my mum. Not that she ever hugged me or consoled me, but I wish that I had that kind of relationship with her. I’ve been thinking about her more since I learned I’m a father myself. I feel acid rise up from my stomach. I’m thinking too much, I’m making myself sick. I head through the kitchen and toward the bathroom. I stop when I notice the cupcakes Danny’s decorated. WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?
“Danny?! What is this mess?”
“I thought they looked pretty good!” he says. He puts the piping bag down on the counter. Icing spills from the nozzle. The consistency is all wrong! It’s much too thin. Icing drips off every cupcake.
“Did you use the icing I made?! This doesn’t look like my icing!”
“I used your recipe.”
“This is most certainly not my recipe!” I hold up a cupcake next to my face and inspect it, spinning it around with a twist of my wrist. The frosting slowly falls onto my fingers. Disgusting! “Do it over!” I yell. I grab a butter knife and scrape the frosting off each cupcake and into the garbage. The liners are all wet and sticky too! FUCK! “This is no fucking good! What a waste of money!” I take the entire piping bag and fling it into the trash. I hold up four sticky fingers in his face. “FOUR! FOUR cups of powdered sugar!”
“That’s what I used!” he yells back at me.
“Start all over and count correctly! Get your mind off your little girlfriend and think about these FUCKING CUPCAKES!”
I wipe my hands together to try to get the soupy frosting off my fingers, but it doesn’t work. He’s staring at me, like he wants to beat the shit out of me, but I know he won’t. “What are you looking at?! Start over!” I yell and point at the mixer. He licks his teeth under his closed lips and walks away from me toward the pantry. I still feel sick, and yelling didn’t help, so I rush to the bathroom.
I lean over the sink and take a few deep breaths. Vomiting feels awful, I don’t want to do it. I’m hoping I can meditate my way out of this, but I don’t think I can. I turn on the sink and wash my hands. I get all the icing off my skin and out from under my fingernails. I take one more deep breath in and look in the mirror. What would I even look like bald? I try to imagine it. Unfortunately, I don’t have to try too hard. He appears, right there, in the mirror. I walk backwards away from him until I bump into the wall.
“You’re going to look just like your dear old da,” my reflection says. But it’s not my reflection. It’s Glas.
“You’re the reason she fucking hates ME!” I yell. I lunge forward and punch the mirror with all of my might. His image, my image, shatters all around.
Suddenly the bathroom door flies open and bangs square into me. I fall to the ground on my hands and knees, on top of all the shattered glass. It’s Danny.
“What the fuck is going on?!” He asks. He walks over to help me up, but I won’t take his hand. I’m covered in blood and glass splinters…. And— I can’t hold it in anymore, I crawl toward the toilet, but I vomit all over the floor instead.
Danny pulls his phone out from the pocket of his hoodie.
“Don’t you dare call anyone!” I yell in between deep, shaky, breaths. “Just… Finish the cupcakes!”
“Peter—”
“STOP IT AND GO!”
He walks away slowly, but doesn’t take his eyes off of me. He’s only looking out for me, I know. Damn it. I push myself into a sitting position and lean my back against the wall. I take a look at my right hand. Fuck, I might need stitches.
Seonaid
I can’t tell anyone. I won’t tell anyone. It’s humiliating. Not just that, they’ll never believe me. Lachlann celebrates when I tell him I’m pregnant. He’s donnered by the fact that I’ve agreed to name the baby Seamus, should he be a boy.
I don’t think you’re meant to feel like there’s a parasite living in your body when you’re pregnant. I don’t glow. I burn from the inside out.