Merry Christmas, Watch Out for Speed Bumps

*****

            The car rumbles idly along the asphalt road, my parents’ voices muffled as Andy Williams’ Silver Bells lulls me back to sleep. My feet are sprawled across the back seat of mom’s Honda Accord, my winter coat acting as the warmest blanket draped across my legs. The fuzzy haze of sound rings louder in my ears. Mom must have turned up the volume. I keep my eyes closed, hoping to catch my parents talking about what they got me for Christmas. With my 13th birthday coming up soon after, I hope that they don’t short me on the presents. I hear mom’s voice, warm and honey sweet.

            “I don’t know what else to do. No matter what I say. No matter what, there’s just no getting through to you.”

            “Here we go again. You never let things go; you do realize that right?” Dad’s quiet voice rumbles with sparking embers.

Now this wakes me up. I don’t dare to open my eyes, don’t dare to let them know that I can hear every single word. It’s usually best to just keep quiet. I can’t remember the last time it wasn’t like this, silent daggers mixing with miscommunication. They’d been good the entire day, each of them holding my hand as we walked through the snow-covered streets, pointing out the Christmas lights and laughing like everything was normal. But it isn’t normal, it hasn’t been for a while.

“I just want you to say it. For once, a single second of gratitude for everything I have done.” Mom sighs, loud and frustrated. The sound of the mechanical blinker ticks like a clock, and the car jerks a bit as we turn the corner. “Can you at least be mindful of him? He's not wearing his seatbelt.” I feel mom’s hand pull my coat further around me, and I try not to tense up. Don’t let them know you’re awake.

            There’s silence for what feels like years, before mom speaks again.

            “Can you tell me what you’re feeling right now? Where your head is at?” Her voice is softer; she’s trying to get an answer out of a cement wall.

            A humorless laugh. “I’m feeling like we should tell him tomorrow.”

            “That’s Christmas. It will break him. Do you not even care to spare him just one single day?”

            “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

            “I want you to say what you’re feeling. I just want to have a conversation. I want the truth.”

            I roll over in the back seat. Slowly opening my eyes and staring at the back of the car. They can’t see my face, I hope. They don’t notice, of course, too wrapped up in what is going on. I try not to let my breathing become ragged; I need to be calm for them. It would make everything worse.

            Dad skips the song. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas comes next, and the music turns up another notch. “Fine. You just can’t get over anything. You go on and on in circles and we never get anywhere. Good enough?”

            “No, not good enough. I go ‘on and on’ because you don’t take a second to consider anyone else’s feelings besides your own. I go ‘on and on’ because when I asked what you wanted to do after we went out earlier, and you said, ‘We’ll figure it out later,’ I assumed you didn’t want to spend time with us. I go ‘on and on’ because-”

            “I get it.” Dad’s voice is worn, tired from the same reactions to any minute thing he says. “Okay? I got the point. I was thinking we could watch something, or give him one gift to open, or something else. But you had to get annoyed and ask to go home early. You are the one that made it tense, not me.”

            The thing about mom is, this is just how she is. She is quick to react, quick to let her emotions drive the conversation. The thing about dad, is that he doesn’t say much at all. He shows his emotions through quiet actions, and very little else. Neither of them understands the other. I had to learn to read in between the lines of their conversations in order to blend into the noise instead of becoming the focus of it.

            Another sigh echoes through mom. “I don’t know why I bother with this. Seriously, I don’t even get why I try. You really are cold. It was your tone, your snarky comment about me wanting to leave because I was tired of pretending like you wanted to be there with us.”

            “I did want to be there with you. I said that then, I’m saying it again now, I don’t understand the problem.”

            “The problem is you can’t communicate a single fucking sentence to me Rich!” Mom’s voice rises, and I stifle a flinch. Here we go. “Every single time, it’s like you’re a god damn robot. Jesus, I ask you to show an ounce of emotion and you can’t even do that.”

            “Well, when you work every day besides Sundays it’s a little hard to be 120 percent all of the time like you.”

            It continues like this for a while and I glance up out the back window, tuning it out. The red-green hues of bright Christmas lights flash past, a sickly nostalgia burns in my chest, and I try to hold onto every single second of it. I remember when I was smaller, mom and dad told me they would play rock, paper, scissors to decide who got to carry me into bed when I fell asleep in the back seat. Every single Christmas, without fail I would wake up in my bed in the morning, tucked in with one of my parents’ coats at the end of the bed. That’s how I knew who won.

            Please Come Home for Christmas is up next, my favorite. Mom used to dance with me on the couch with it blaring in the background while my dad filmed on his video camera. I wonder if he still watches the tapes. I hope so.

            It’s harder to tune them out now. The older I get, the more difficult it is to pretend like this is how normal parents fight. Mom’s voice grows louder and angrier with each sentence.

            “It’s all you ever do! Every day you get more and more distant.”

            “You want me gone, what else am I supposed to do? Keep trying to fix it? You don’t want that.”

            I shut my eyes again, listening to the sounds of Christmas and feeling the warm air from the car’s heater on my back. It’s cozy, as cozy as it can be given the circumstances. It is getting harder to remember my birthday last year, the only memory being a screaming match that led to mom slamming her bedroom door and coming out after dinner. She loves to make other people’s important moments about her. Dad took me outside to teach me how to sled though, so I call it a successful day.

The instrumental of the music grows, and for just a second, I can imagine that I’m 10 again, and they are singing along to the sound of the guitar, out of tune and so, so wonderful. Instead, the music comes to a close, and with that so does the conversation.

            Mom takes it upon herself to end things. “Ok. Fine. Let’s just not talk about it anymore.”

            Dad tries his best, “You can talk. I just don’t have anything to say.”

            “That says enough. It’s fine. Just go home.”

            The ticking signals again, and I’m left with an unbearably empty feeling. The music doesn’t come back on, but the nostalgic yearning stays all the same. Too familiar, I’m not ready to let it go yet. I close my eyes again, trying to find comfort in the now uncomfortable tension that’s been laid out and stripped of anything that was once kind and warm. Each bump we ride over, the further I find myself from being twelve years old and hopeful for a connected home.

            I lay there and wait. For what, I’m not sure. Every memory I have ever had of mom has been tainted by her quickness to create a conflict. Dad has been someone who goes with the flow, with whatever the party wants to do with no real understanding of how to speak up for himself. We hit another sharp turn, the coat falling slightly off my body. I don’t move it.

I am twelve, and I already feel like I know what it means to be thirty. Forced to grow up quickly to avoid causing further conflict. The seat feels tiny, the cozy suede now rough and scraping against my hip. I’m itching to move, to say anything at all to show them that I am here, and I heard everything. But I’m frozen in time. The world seems to turn to liquid around me, the lights outside blurring together, their colorful hues bringing up a new memory from a time when the most difficult decision was what game I wanted to play on my PS2. The silence is thick and heavy; the smell of mom’s vanilla perfume is as comforting as it is suffocating.

We’re almost home now, I feel it in the familiar speed bumps that line our street. Ever since that truck ran the stop sign and crashed into a house across the road, the speed bumps are there as a precaution. Mom told me it was an accident, but the way she threw out the alcohol and held my dad a little closer that night made me think otherwise. My coat is still sticking to me like glue, attempting to preserve me in this hopeful naivety for a little while longer. If I pretend like I’m still asleep, maybe they’ll still carry me inside. Maybe everything I was hearing will be a dream in the morning, and the fighting will be just another hazy memory.

            ‘13 is a big number’, that’s what dad says. He says it’s when I’ll ‘become a man’ or something. I hope I turn out differently than him. A second speed bump, and I’m jostled a bit by the force. The coat slides off my body, the warmth from mom’s hands putting it over me is gone, only the artificial heat and the chill from the snow starting outside the car windows. I need to get up. I can’t keep laying here like something will change as long as I don’t open my eyes. But I do. Blinking slowly, making a show of stretching and pushing myself to sit up, I push my coat aside, yawning.

            “Are we home?”

            Mom smiles at me, strained, fraying at the edges. She thinks I can’t see it. “Almost, hun. We’re at the end of our street.”

            Dad is quiet, because of course he is. I am not sure what to say in this moment, but I attempt with, “Can we still open a present, or are you guys too tired from the ride?” I hope they don’t catch my slight disdain in my words, but mom just reaches back to hold my hand, glancing at my dad.

            “I’m sure that is fine. Rich? What do you think?”

            Dad’s grip on the steering wheel loosens, and he looks at me through the rearview mirror. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s fine.”

            I try to mediate. “We don’t have to if you just want to go to bed, I can always just open it tomorrow.”

            “No, of course not bud, I want to see the look on your face when you open your present. I think you’ll really like it.”

            We pull into the driveway. Dad puts the car in park as I get out by myself. It’s not perfect, but maybe, just for tonight, I can have one more Christmas eve before I need to grow up.