Second Chances in New Port Stephen free digital audiobook - Chapter 8

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CHAPTER 8


December 18


Christmas tree trimming was a big deal at the Ward house.


There was already a tree set up in the sitting room, of course. That had been necessary for the party. But that tree, according to Eli’s mom, was the “aesthetic” one: artificial, tastefully decorated in shades of red and gold. It had been moved to the dining room to make space for the “real” tree. The “family” tree. The bonkers-as-shit mess of a tree.


Cora insisted on getting a live tree for this purpose, even though Sweet Potato would probably chew on the pine needles and puke them up. This tree was destined to be covered with a mishmash of ornaments, most of which had been hoarded in the attic since Eli was a baby.


Eli struggled to get the sawed-off base of the trunk into the tree stand, his nose mashed into the scratchy needles. He was inhaling nothing but that fresh pine smell, and personally, he did not care for it. But as long as Mom was happy, he told himself, that was all that mattered. He was a good son. Ostensibly with plenty of upper body strength.


Eli’s father stood between the armchairs in the sitting room and tried to direct Eli in arranging the tree. “A little more to the right. No, my right.”


His mom, meanwhile, sat on the satiny sofa and had a different vantage point altogether. “I think a little more to the left, actually, dear.”


“No, definitely right.”


“Which way am I going?” Eli half screamed into the pine boughs.


A beat of hesitation, then Wendall said, “To the left.”


“There, there, hold it right there!” Cora cried, even though, in Eli’s estimation, the tree was in the exact same spot it had been for the past ten minutes. “That’s perfect.”


Eli stooped and tightened the screws in the base as fast as he could. He could hear his dad opening the old pickle bucket that had served as their Christmas ornament repository ever since Eli could remember. The lid crackled as it was peeled off. Eli finished securing the tree and turned to find his parents bent over the bucket of shiny baubles.


“This is the first time we’ve been able to do this as a family in ages,” his mom said. She picked up one of the ornaments from the top of the pile, holding it up to the light. It was a cheesy plastic snowflake-shaped picture frame, and smackdab in the center of it was Eli’s baby picture. He was wearing a pink velvet dress with his hair done in two pigtails that shot up from the top of his head.


“Awww, look how cute you were,” his dad said.


A familiar feeling of disappointment wove its way through Eli’s stomach. It wasn’t like he hated the picture itself, which was a bit embarrassing but not soulsearingly terrible. It was the fact that his parents were cooing over it, tapping their fingertips against the plastic casing like they wanted to touch the baby’s chubby cheeks, treating it like it was—real. When Eli looked at that photo of himself as a baby, or one of the million other childhood photos his mom proudly displayed around the house, he didn’t see himself at all. It was like he was looking at a picture that had come with the frame from the store. That kid was a stranger. He felt no connection whatsoever.


Obviously, it was different for his parents.


“Do you want to hang this one?” His mother held out the snowflake.


“Yeah, you should have first dibs,” his father chimed in. “You are the guest of honor, after all.”


“I’m not a guest, I’m your son,” Eli mumbled, but he took the ornament and hung it on some random branch to get it over with.


They soon fell into a rhythm of tree decoration. Wendall managed to unknot the strands of lights reserved specifically for the tree. Cora dug through the ancient ornaments, choosing each new addition with all the care in the world,


even though they were mostly crumbling bits of macaroni that Eli had made in elementary school, his old name scrawled on the backs. Eli took each ornament she handed to him and applied it to the tree as quickly as possible. The faster they decorated, the sooner he could fling himself atop his childhood bed and stare at the text messages he’d received earlier that morning. The words were already ingrained in his head:


10:33 AM: I had a really nice time at the beach with you yesterday. 10:34 AM: And kayaking. That was also nice.


10:38 AM: This is Nick, by the way. You gave me your number.


10:47 AM: I guess I didn’t need to tell you who this is. It’s not like you went kayaking


with more than one family yesterday.


A rare quadruple text. Of course Nick would be the type to blow up his phone. Eli was sure that if they’d had cell phones back when they were teens, Nick would have been texting him nonstop. As it was, their moms had had to restrict their landline usage, since they both lived in fear that there would be an emergency and the line would be busy. God, he was old. Old enough to remember lying on his stomach across his bed, feet kicking in the air while he played with the curly phone cord. What had they even talked about? Whatever it had been, Nick had laughed a lot. That, he remembered.


He’d sent Margo a screenshot of Nick’s texts along with a voice note that said, “What time is it right now on the West Coast? Because here it’s DILF o’clock.”


Margo had replied with a series of middle-finger emojis and one single eggplant.


He grinned at the memory as he hung yet another tatty handmade ornament, this one an inoffensive reindeer made from a clothespin.


“Oh, I like that one,” his mom said, breaking into his thoughts. “You were such an artistic child.”


“Yeah,” Eli agreed far too readily. “Thanks. Very talented at… reindeer.” He went back to quietly putting ornaments on the tree.


“Maybe try to space them out a little nicer.” His mom plucked a shiny orb that had lost almost all its red paint and moved it a foot down and to the right. “You’re clumping them all up, Eli.”


“He’s just out of practice.” His dad’s booming laugh echoed through the sitting room. “I bet it’s been a while since you’ve put up Christmas decorations, huh, kiddo?”


It was true. Eli rarely put up a string of lights on his fire escape, let alone tried to fit a tree in his tiny apartment. His Christmases in New York were nothing special. He usually treated it like any other day, got some work done, watched some TV, ordered Chinese food with Margo if she was free. His parents had expressed sorrow at what they considered his lonely and sad holidays, but Eli didn’t mind a quiet Christmas.


In fact, he could really use one right about now.


“All the more reason to focus on doing a good job today,” Cora said primly. “Who knows when we’ll get another chance to be together for the holidays like this?”


And there it was, the patented Ward passive aggression. Eli had known it would rear its head eventually, but he’d hoped to dodge it for at least a few more days.


He tried to make a joke out of it, like he usually did. “Maybe next year we can all get together in Aspen,” he said in a fakey posh accent, all Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Turning to the sofa, he picked up the afghan his mom had crocheted years ago and draped it around his neck. “The slopes are just to die for, darling. And that powder.” He gave a cocaine-esque sniff and then fauxwhispered behind his hand. “The snow isn’t too bad either.”


Wendall laughed, but Cora’s mouth thinned into a tight line. Tough crowd.


“I’m sorry you think it’s silly to want to be together at the most wonderful time of the year,” she said, ducking down to inspect the pickle bucket of ornaments again.


Eli unwrapped the afghan from his neck with a swallow. But before he could apologize, his dad swooped in.


“He’s not saying it’s silly, he’s just goofing around. That’s his job; he’s a professional goofer.”


Guilt formed a heavy stone in Eli’s chest. That was his job, past tense. Probably not the best time to update his parents on the latest, though.


“Well, I think,” Cora said, rummaging through the bucket with more force than necessary, “that our time together is precious. It would have been nice, for example, to see you at all yesterday, Eli. But you spent all morning and most of the afternoon out with Nick Wu, and by the time you got home, all you wanted to do was nap for hours!”


Eli spread his arms wide like he wanted to show he wasn’t hiding anything— which was a lie, but one he was committed to. “Mom, I went for a run and then kayaked down the river. That was more exercise than I’d gotten in, like, years. Of course I needed a nap.”


“I always liked that Nick Wu,” Wendall said to no one in particular as he tested bulbs along a strand of lights, trying to find the one that was causing a dead patch.


“When we were visiting you in New York,” Eli’s mom said, “I wouldn’t sleep a wink! Certainly wouldn’t nap. I wanted to spend as much time with you as possible.”


That was true. Eli had hosted his parents in his one-bedroom Brooklyn apartment once a year. He loved his mom and dad, truly, but his back always hurt from sleeping on the couch, and his head always spun with the myriad of museums his mom wanted to visit, and his feet ached from the million miles his dad wanted to walk to see the city “as it was meant to be seen.” Honestly, the one good thing about his trip down to Florida was the idea that he could count this as their annual get-together and skip the hosting duties in the new year.


“I want to spend time with you, too, Mom. But what was I supposed to do? Tell my childhood best friend to get lost?” He waggled a handful of deteriorating paper ornaments at her. “It’s your fault that you raised me to be so polite. So when you think about it, you have no one to blame but yourself.”


“Ha ha, whoa, zing! He’s got you there, honey.”


Eli shot a fond glance at his dad. At least he always laughed at Eli’s jokes.


Cora ignored her husband entirely. She propped her fists on her hips and said, “I’m going to use my I statements.” His parents were both big on I statements. I feel [fill in the blank with an emotion] when you [fill in the blank with an action]. It was the kind of thing progressive parents in the nineties


learned about in magazines. “I feel hurt when you act like it’s a chore to be here. Like at the party the other night—”


“I was fresh off a very long flight, Mom! I’m sorry if I wasn’t in the mood to watch Uncle Hank get plastered and rant about how the governor is going to force me into a dress.”


“It was a party. You could have tried to have fun instead of moping around. As it was, you couldn’t get out of here fast enough.”


“You’re the one who sent me to the store!”


“Because I didn’t know how else to deal with you!”


Wendall stood slowly, leaving a trailing nest of half-lit Christmas lights on the terrazzo floor. He raised his hands in his usual gesture of peace. “Hey, maybe we should all take a break. The holidays are stressful for everyone. Why don’t I mix up a pitcher of sangria, and we’ll just sit on the lanai and chill out?”


Eli pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut. “Dad, I have been sober for years.” Wendall always seemed to forget that when it suited him.


“I’ll make yours a virgin.”


“That’s not a thing! A virgin sangria is just fruit salad!”


“I don’t want sangria,” Eli’s mom said, pointing at Eli with verve. “I want to discuss why our only child is so hell-bent on ditching us at every opportunity.”


“I’m not ditching you. I’m here right now, aren’t I?” He could feel his pulse ratcheting up. Visions of the doughy governor danced in his aching head. “Even though this isn’t the most welcoming spot in the world.”


Cora’s hand flew to her mouth with a gasp. “My home isn’t welcoming to you?”


“Honey, he probably meant Florida in general,” Wendall jumped in.


“It’s not only that, Dad.” Eli could see himself as if watching from a great distance, like he was in the audience at a movie theater. There he was on the big screen, about to make a huge fucking mistake. But all he could do was eat popcorn and let it happen. “This whole house creeps me out.”


“What? How?” Wendall demanded at the same time Cora wailed, “But I just cleaned!”


Eli focused on his dad’s somewhat more coherent questions. “The baby photos and the high school photos and—all of this stuff!” He tore the plastic


snowflake ornament off the tree, waving it in the air. “This place is a shrine to my deadname. How do you think that makes me feel?”


“Use your I statements,” Wendall said.


Deep breath in. Then, letting it all out, Eli said, “When you talk about how cute this picture is, I feel like you don’t want me here, not really. You want this kid.” He tossed the ornament on the coffee table, the sunny child in the photo grinning up at them.


“But that’s you.” Cora dabbed at her damp eye with the inside of her wrist. She always tried to fight off tears when they happened, unsuccessfully. “I know you’ve changed a lot—everyone does. But it’s still you.”


Eli clicked his tongue and looked away. He stared at the tree, at all the crumbling handmade ornaments and the gaudy tinsel. Why had he even bothered coming here?


Oh, right. Because he was a failure. At pretty much every aspect of being an adult.


He glanced over at his mom. She was weeping openly now, tears streaming down her face. She wiped them away with her fingertips. “You should have told us. If seeing our old photos makes you uncomfortable—” Her lip trembled. She looked around the room. From where they stood, at least a dozen childhood pictures were visible in various frames on the walls or standing on tables. “Oh, it makes me sad to think about throwing away all these memories. Is that really what you want me to do?”


“I didn’t say that.” Eli was so tired. His body still ached from overdoing it with Nick, and now his head was pounding. He couldn’t begin to think of a solution that would feel right to him but also keep his mother from dissolving further into tears. He wasn’t out to hurt his mom or cause drama, but what could he say when it was clear her precious memories came first?


Wendall crossed the room to hug Cora to him, letting her cry against his neck. His eyes met Eli’s, and for a moment, Eli wasn’t sure if his dad blamed him for the sorry state of their tree-trimming afternoon or not.


He didn’t really want to find out. He headed for the door, snagging his flip- flops from the shoe rack. “I need some air. See you later,” he said, and pushed his way outside. The sunset was starting, the sky turning all the colors of sherbet.


Eli walked to the end of the driveway before realizing there was nowhere for him to go. There was nothing within walking distance unless he wanted to cross a busy thoroughfare. No stores, no public park, nothing to do. He was trapped in the honeycomb of his parents’ suburban neighborhood, hemmed in by palm trees and jacarandas.


He needed an escape route.


He took out his cell phone to call an Uber. The app informed him that the next available ride was about forty-five minutes away. Way too long to wait. He swiped out of the app and saw Nick’s text messages staring back at him.


It wasn’t even a decision. Eli pressed the call button before he could think about the consequences.


It rang twice before Nick picked up.


“Eli! Hi! How are you doing?” He sounded genuinely pleased to be called by his ex. Weirdo.


“Oh, I’m spectacular,” Eli said, drawing the word out into about ten syllables. “Can I ask for a favor?” He squinted into the sun. “Can you come pick me up?”