“And now she’ll hear her mom’s foul-mouth,” Lo retorts and then slow claps.
Ryke joins in, sprawled on the loveseat with the thickest, messiest hair, as though he just rolled out of bed. Daisy handed him a Santa hat earlier, but he’s too lazy to put it on, the red velvet cap still on his chest.
He finally catches my hot gaze and raises his hands in defense. “I’m in support of foul fucking language.”
Daisy hops over a present, almost dropping the video camera—everyone may be too sick from the jumpy footage to watch anyway. “I can edit it…” Daisy starts, but then stops at my glare.
“I don’t want Jane’s first Christmas edited.” I would really like the video to be level too, but I don’t mention it. I’m not that rude.
Daisy mock gasps. “Who suggested such a thing? They should be fined with a dozen chocolate chip cookies.”
Without budging from his lounged position, Ryke gestures for her to near him. “I can give you something better, Calloway.” I try not to read far into his blatant sexual innuendo. Their flirting has the same boundaries as their personalities. They both rip through danger zones and No Trespassing signs.
Daisy whips her head to him. “Cake?”
“Better than fucking cake.”
She feigns confusion. “There is no such thing.”
He flips her off and then gestures to her again. She skips over to him, careful to avoid crushing the many assortments of presents.
Seeing them together reminds me that Ryke’s surgery is in about a week, the day after Connor’s birthday. With the horrendous weather—cold, rain and snow—Ryke has had almost no opportunity to climb since he went to the gym. Which wasn’t really his preference of climbing anyway.
When Daisy reaches Ryke, he clasps her hips and lifts her shirt a fraction, kissing the small of her back. She glows, her smile illuminating her features. I’ve never seen Daisy as radiant as she is in Ryke’s presence. I just truly hope it can last, even without him.
“Hey, Santa,” Daisy grins, slowly spinning around.
He raises her shirt again and kisses below her belly button, which is cute but also a bit inappropriate due to the setting. I’m too used to groping from Loren and Lily (which is a thousand kinds of shield your eyes) that Ryke kissing my little sister’s body is tame in comparison.
I live in a weird world, and I wouldn’t trade this atmosphere for any other.
“Alright,” Lo cuts in from the floor. “No Christmas flirting.” Moffy has unwrapped a plastic Spider-Man action figure, meant for infants his age. “And can we all not refer to Ryke as Santa Claus? I don’t want to confuse my kid.”
“I agree with Lo,” Lily says with an adamant nod. “You’re not Santa.” She also cups her hands over Lo’s ear, whispering to him. I’m almost positive it has to do with him banning all Christmas flirting.
“Fuck all of you,” Ryke says lightheartedly before putting his head up my sister’s shirt and kissing her…ugh, you know what—I don’t want to know what his lips are touching.
Connor leans closer, passing me our joint crossword, folded from this morning’s newspaper. Since his right arm is behind my shoulders, he filled it out with his left-hand, annoyingly ambidextrous. Like he needs another talent in his arsenal. My eyes glaze over the square boxes, the descriptions scratched out and the title written in his neat handwriting: Fornication.
Instead of doing a normal crossword, we just fill the boxes with words pertaining to our chosen category. Fornication. I swear Connor is trying to make me aroused or incensed.
He filled in ten boxes with the word: Acrophilia
Also known as the fetish of fucking someone in high altitudes. Like in the mountains or on rooftops. Also known as Ryke Meadows.
I shoot Connor a quick glare, but he’s tickling Jane’s foot, putting her on his lap while I concentrate. I want to use the word fellatio, but the only eight boxes available uses the “p” from acrophilia which screws up everything. There is no damn “p” in fellatio.
I could go with testicles, nine-letters somewhere else, but I don’t think that fits the category well enough.
“About this fictional character…” Connor begins.
Lo interjects, “They’re going to believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny and everything else that you think is a crock of shit.”
We’ve never had this conversation, not outright, but there have been numerous moments where it almost surfaced.
I hold my pen on the newspaper too long, an inkblot bleeding into the thin sheet and almost staining my pajamas.
Ryke is out of Daisy’s shirt, and she sits on his lap, his arms wrapped snugly around her waist. She powers off the camera.
I snap my fingers at her. “Keep it on. Unedited remember?” I’ve had too many people edit my life. My children won’t see the edited version either.
Daisy switches the camera on. “I don’t understand why Jane can’t know the truth while Moffy knows the kid version.” In my youngest sister’s head, there is a happily ever after for everyone. And my black heart understands, too well, that happiness for all is a cruel myth.
Lo crumples the red wrapping in a ball. “Because Jane will ruin it for him.”
“And for every other fucking child in Kindergarten,” Ryke adds. He nods to Connor and me. “Your daughter will literally be that kid who fucks up Christmas.”
This issue hasn’t been important to me, not enough to disagree with Connor; so my opinions aren’t as strong as everyone else’s.
“And what was your childhood Christmas experience exactly, Ryke?” Connor asks. “How was Santa so special to you?”
Ryke shrugs. “The way it is for every kid.”
His answer is too vague to appease Connor. “Describe it for me.”
Ryke sighs in frustration. “I don’t know.” He shakes his head in deeper thought.
Jane drops her stuffed lion at Connor’s feet and tries to climb down his legs to reach the toy. I bend forward to collect it, passing the animal to her. She clings to it with such fervor that my black heart nearly softens. I stroke her head. I love every little piece of you.
“Eloquent,” Connor says.
Ryke combs his hand through his wild hair. “Wasn’t Christmas just your mom and you?”
“I’m assuming it was for you,” Connor says, both raised by single mothers. I thought they’d find common ground through this tiny similarity, but it hardly strengthened their uneven, slightly bent relationship. I know Connor trusts Ryke. I know Ryke trusts Connor. Analyzing anything beyond that gives me an unwelcome, pulsing migraine.
“Yeah,” Ryke says, “so when I saw a present from Santa underneath the tree, I got fucking excited. It felt like…” He struggles for the precise words.
“Like someone else cared about you,” Connor finishes.
Silence heavies the room, Ryke not denying this fact.
Lo frowns, as though realizing the true loneliness of his brother during holidays. Loren spent Christmas with us, the Calloways, and his father. My grandmother, with her chewy stale fruitcake and god-awful hyena cackle, adored Loren and always bought him gifts.
One year, I may have broken his Game Boy after he compared me to Angelica from Rugrats, and then he shaved my Furby, proving that he is just as much Angelica as me.