“I don’t need your help to win an election, Oscar!” she says, hitting the table so hard with her open palm that the dishes rattle. “I didn’t need it when I was in Congress, and I didn’t need it to become president the first time, and I don’t need it now!”
“You need to get serious about what you’re up against! You think the other side is going to play fair this time? Eight years of Obama, and now you? They’re angry, Ellen, and Richards is out for blood! You need to be ready!”
“I will be! You think I don’t have a team on all this shit already? I’m the President of the United fucking States! I don’t need you to come here and—and—”
“Mansplain?” Zahra offers.
“Mansplain!” Ellen shouts, jabbing a finger across the table at Oscar, eyes wide. “This presidential race to me!”
Oscar throws his napkin down. “You’re still so fucking stubborn!”
“Fuck you!”
“Mom!” June says sharply.
“Jesus Christ, are you kidding me?” Alex hears himself shout before he even consciously decides to say it. “Can we not be civil for one fucking meal? It’s Christmas, for fuck’s sake. Aren’t y’all supposed to be running the country? Get your shit together.”
He pushes his chair back and stalks out of the dining room, knowing he’s being a dramatic asshole and not really caring. He slams his bedroom door behind him, and his stupid sweater plays a few depressingly off-key notes when he yanks it off and throws it at the wall.
It’s not that he doesn’t lose his temper often, it’s just … he doesn’t usually lose it with his family. Mostly because he doesn’t usually deal with his family.
He digs an old lacrosse T-shirt out of his dresser, and when he turns and catches his reflection in the mirror by the closet, he’s right back in his teens, caring too much about his parents and helpless to change his situation. Except now he doesn’t have any AP classes to enroll in as a distraction.
His hand twitches for his phone. His brain is a two-passenger minimum ride as far as he’s concerned—alone and busy or thinking with company.
But Nora’s doing Hanukkah in Vermont, and he doesn’t want to annoy her, and his best friend from high school, Liam, has barely spoken to him since he moved to DC.
Which leaves …
“What could I possibly have done to have brought this upon myself now?” says Henry’s voice, low and sleepy. It sounds like “Good King Wenceslas” is playing in the background
“Hey, um, sorry. I know it’s late, and it’s Christmas Eve and everything. You probably have, like, family stuff, I’m just realizing. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. Wow, this is why I don’t have friends. I’m a dick. Sorry, man. I’ll, uh, I’ll just—”
“Alex, Christ,” Henry interrupts. “It’s fine. It’s half two here, everyone’s gone to bed. Except Bea. Say hi, Bea.”
“Hi, Alex!” says a clear, giggly voice on the other end of the line. “Henry’s got his candy-cane jim-jams on—”
“That’s quite enough,” Henry’s voice comes back through, and there’s a muffled sound like maybe a pillow has been shoved in Bea’s direction. “What’s happening, then?”
“Sorry,” Alex blurts out, “I know this is weird, and you’re with your sister and everything, and, like, argh. I kind of didn’t have anyone else to call who would be awake? And I know we’re, uh, not really friends, and we don’t really talk about this stuff, but my dad came in for Christmas, and he and my mom are like fucking tiger sharks fighting over a baby seal when you put them in the same room together for more than an hour, and they got in this huge fight, and it shouldn’t matter, because they’re already divorced and everything, and I don’t know why I lost my shit, but I wish they could give it a rest for once so we could have one single normal holiday, you know?”
There’s a long pause before Henry says, “Hang on. Bea, can I have a minute? Hush. Yes, you can take the biscuits. All right, I’m listening.”
Alex exhales, wondering faintly what the hell he’s doing, but plows onward.
Telling Henry about the divorce—those weird, tumultuous years, the day he came home from a Boy Scout camp-out to discover his dad’s things moved out, the nights of Helados ice cream—doesn’t feel as uncomfortable as it probably should. He’s never bothered to filter himself with Henry, at first because he honestly didn’t care what Henry thought, and now because it’s how they are. Maybe it should be different, bitching about his course load versus spilling his guts about this. It isn’t.
He doesn’t realize he’s been talking for an hour until he finishes retelling what happened at dinner and Henry says, “It sounds like you did your best.”
Alex forgets what he was going to say next.
He just … Well, he gets told he’s great a lot. He just doesn’t often get told he’s good enough.
Before he can think of a response, there’s a soft triple knock on the door—June.
“Ah—okay, thanks, man, I gotta go,” Alex says, his voice low as June eases the door open.
“Alex—”
“Seriously, um. Thank you,” Alex says. He really does not want to explain this to June. “Merry Christmas. Night.”
He hangs up and tosses the phone aside as June settles down on the bed. She’s wearing her pink bathrobe, and her hair is wet from the shower.
“Hey,” she says. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he says. “Sorry, I don’t know what’s up with me. I didn’t mean to lose it. I’ve been … I don’t know. I’ve been kind of … off … lately.”
“It’s okay,” she says. She tosses her hair over her shoulder, flicking droplets of water onto him. “I was a total basket case for the last six months of college. I would lose it at anybody. You know, you don’t have to do everything all the time.”
“It’s fine. I’m fine,” he tells her automatically. June tilts an unconvinced look at him, and he kicks at one of her knees with his bare foot. “So, how did things go after I left? Did they finish cleaning up the blood yet?”
June sighs, kicking him back. “Somehow it shifted to the topic of how they were a political power couple before the divorce and how good those times were, Mom apologized, and it was whiskey and nostalgia hour until everybody went to bed.” She sniffs. “Anyway, you were right.”
“You don’t think I was out of line?”
“Nah. Though … I kind of agree with what Dad was saying. Mom can be … you know … Mom.”
“Well, that’s what got her where she is now.”
“You don’t think it’s ever a problem?”
Alex shrugs. “I think she’s a good mom.”
“Yeah, to you,” June says. There’s no accusation behind it, just observation. “The effectiveness of her nurturing kind of depends on what you need from her. Or what you can do for her.”
“I mean, I get what she’s saying, though,” Alex hedges. “Sometimes it still sucks that Dad decided to pack up and move just to run for the seat in California.”