Chapter One
Purple condoms. My brother got purple condoms in his Christmas stocking. Mom must think things are heating up between Chris and Becca. Not likely. I got a diary.
“She gave me one when I was fourteen, too,” said Chris. “I used it for about a week. Then I forgot about it.”
Mom made a face at him.
“Well, don’t forget to use the condoms, okay?”
Mom’s pretty quick. We laughed. Well, the three of us did. Jean-Paul doesn’t understand our sense of humor. Or maybe he doesn’t understand period. He’s French.
“I learn more English in two day with your mother than I did in one whole year,” he said, the first time I met him. I believe it. My mother is, among other things, a non-stop talker.
“Yes,” he teased in his broken English. “We get along well. She talk, I listen.” I guess it was his idea of a joke. Ha. Ha. I didn’t laugh.
They’ve been going out for about six months. At first, I didn’t think it was serious. I was wrong.
“Jean-Paul is coming for Christmas,” Mom chirped one morning in early December.
So. This was different. My mother gets twisted about tradition and family rituals. This was the first time I ever remember there being an extra on Christmas morning. An invitation like this meant something was up. I wasn’t cool with the idea, but I didn’t have a say in the matter.
Jean-Paul arrived on Christmas Eve with meat pies, eggnog and presents for all.
“An egghead with eggnog,” I whispered to Chris.
“Be cool,” said Chris.
“I am.” I said.
“Liar,” he said.
“Hello, Julian,” said Jean-Paul. To Chris.
“Merry Christmas, Chris,” he said to me.
“Hell-oooo!” I said. “I’m Julian. The tall one. Blonde, brown-eyed smart-ass, remember? Chris is the oldest. The short little twerp. Brown hair, blue eyes. The saint. One more time? Me, Julian. Him, Chris.”
“Julian!” said my mother.
“Pardonnez-moi.” said Jean-Paul.
On Christmas morning, there was this real intense moment when Jean-Paul handed Mom a present. She opened it to find a jewelry box. Great, I thought, he is going to propose. But Sheree Fitch it was a pair of earrings. If my mother was disappointed, she didn’t show it.
“They’re beautiful,” she said. Then she oohed and aahed and kissed Jean-Paul. No tongue, just a peck on the cheek. Thank God. Still, Chris rolled his eyes. I stuck my fingers so far down my throat, I almost gagged for real.
To me, those earrings looked like hunks of banged up metal hanging from her ears.
And they didn’t go with the necklace I got her.
Then I found my diary. The diary is for getting out your innermost feelings, Mom had written on the inside cover. To learn to talk to yourself. In the end, you have to make friends with yourself and life will be easier.
When she says things like that I want to barf. In the end? Like what does this mean? When I’m ready to die?
“It’s really so you won’t have time to go your bedroom and jack off,” whispered Chris.
“What was that?” asked Mom. I swear she has a sonar implant in her ear.
“You don’t want to know,” he said, winking at me.
I guess some things are the same in any language.
My parents divorced when I was a year old. That’s always my opening line when I have to write about myself in English class. If nothing else, it’ll put the teacher on my side from the start. English is not my best subject. No subject is, for that matter. That line works okay with girls, too. They make little mouse-like squeaking sounds. Their eyes turn into puddles of pity. That’s all the information I give about that.
First, because it’s none of their business. Second, because I don’t really know that much. Chris tells me I’m the lucky one.
“That means you don’t have any memories, bad or good.”
He says he remembers too well a lot of late night angry noises. Not voices. “Just doors Sheree Fitch slamming and the spin of tires on gravel in the driveway. Mom bawling her eyes out.”
He’s only ever told me this in the dark when I couldn’t see his face. It means he’s the one who has a history with our father. Weekend visits, Christmas and summer vacations. That’s what I’ve had.
So now there’s Jean-Paul, another in a line of strange and stranger men my mother’s tried out over the years. Sometimes, I think she sees it as taking a new car out for a test run or something.
Okay, so there’ve only been three. But that’s three too many. Plus, Chris gets confused. Four year’s difference and he thinks he’s a father figure or something. Like I said, too many fathers. And, oh yeah, I almost forgot. There’s Poppie, my Granddad, too.
Jean-Paul better not try to do a Dad routine on me, I thought.
“Let’s clean up, boys,” he said just then.
“Let’s not,” I said. He just shrugged and gave me this dorky grin.
I turned on the TV and watched him and Chris stuff wrapping paper into garbage bags. Mom went to fry up some partridge meat. Same as always. With fried eggs and cranberry muffins. This year, though, she served the orange juice in wineglasses. Fancy shmancy.
“Who are you trying to impress, Mom?” I asked.
“Cool, cool.” said Chris quickly. And gave me the look.
It’s the look that means watch your step buster or you’ll have to answer to me later.
Chris and I played Nintendo while they started peeling the vegetables for dinner. It had to be an early dinner because we were leaving for Dad’s place. We had to eat there, too.
Strange, I thought. This was the first year Mom didn’t complain about how impossible squash is to cut.
“Why are there never any decent knives in this house?” she always whines whenever she’s preparing a big meal.
This year, she wasn’t complaining about a thing. In fact, she was humming. It Came Upon a Midnight Clear. Her favorite.