‘You went to school together?’ Olivia continues, cheeky smile now partially hidden behind her mug.
‘Yeah, you remember Poppy? We are, were . . . friends, for ages,’ I reply.
Poppy is standing still, doing her best to cover herself in her slip dress with both arms, smudged mascara under her eyes. My mind is whirling, no idea what is the right thing to do next in a situation like this. There is no precedent. We stare at each other, two animals in the woods.
‘Would you like a coffee? I just made a fresh pot,’ Olivia says, and I know she is not offering to be kind.
‘I’m okay, thank you, my Uber is about to arrive. I didn’t think anyone would be up yet.’
I almost feel sorry for Poppy, likely hungover and having to face the two captious sisters of her one-night stand. It is the kind of scenario that would probably send me back to hospital. She handles herself well, saying quick goodbyes to us both and heading out the front door before we can ask any more questions.
‘Oh my God,’ Olivia mouths, her eyes wide and her smile as mischievous as ever.
I smile back, confusion still reigning, and there is nothing else to be done other than sip my coffee and try my best not to imagine my old friend having sex with my brother. Gross. Dad is soon up, and then Mum, so we have no more time to discuss the bizarre walk of shame we have witnessed, and we are clearly in agreeance that it is not something to talk about with or in earshot of our parents. Christmastime is brutal enough as it is, though I cannot pretend I am not pleased to learn I may not be the only screw-up under this roof after all. By the time Luke rises, Olivia makes a well-timed beeline for a stirring child, and, not trusting my ability to play it cool, I head back to my room. The disconnect is stunning; I am stunned. Were Christmases always like this?
Our Christmases used to be brimming with people, all of our extended family – Mum’s parents, Grandma Sue and Grandpa David, until he passed away; her siblings and their children; Dad’s father, Grandpa William, while he was alive; and occasionally Dad’s brother and his kids as well. I cannot pinpoint it exactly, but that tradition stopped around the time the last child of my generation had aged into adolescence. Grandma Sue still does the rounds, dividing her time equally between her five children, and complaining about the ways the previous year’s host had gotten things wrong. Dad is, from what I understand, no longer on speaking terms with his brother, though it was more of a gradual drifting-apart of two very different people than any great rupture. Or maybe it had something to do with money.
The last Christmas I remember everyone together was at our house, when I was about sixteen. I can place it only because I remember I spent a lot of the evening sneaking to the back of the garden to smoke cigarettes purchased for me by Mara’s older brother – the nameless, faceless entity who would get us anything we needed, as long as the price was right – and that was a dirty, life-giving habit I started around that age. Before it got to nightfall, though, everyone spent the day gathered in our living room and spilling onto the deck, exchanging presents, eating towering plates of food, talking loudly at one another, and eventually, once a little bit of alcohol was introduced, having arguments. Mum’s younger brothers Daniel and Sam were roaring participants, but her older sisters Leah and Janet were the most deadly. Once dessert was done, children were expected to make themselves scarce, to give the adults space, and my cousins dispersed and split based on a rough breakdown of age, gender and interests.
Luke had his ball-kicking companions, and Olivia took to her room with those out of school and with an interest in gossiping about boys or makeup, or whatever it was they talked about. I wouldn’t know, I was not welcomed. In my room, I hosted the youngest as well as the leftovers, the odd ones out. My little cousin Hannah was the closest to me in age, and we had spent the most time together up until that point because of this. She was funny and sharp, too sharp for me, spilling more family secrets than her parents would ever have allowed. She was the one who told me about Daniel’s gambling problem, and how he and his family had not, in fact, moved to a smaller house in the city because they preferred the more central location. She also told me about how her mother, Janet, had been engaged before she had met Hannah’s dad, how this man had called things off at the last minute and how they were not allowed to speak his name, or even have friends who shared it, in their home. I found it endlessly fascinating, imagining the lives of these adults before they had become parents and started pretending they had never made a mistake a day of their collective lives.
This particular night, Hannah was bored, which was a dangerous thing. Christmas at her house at least involved a swimming pool, which was all a group of misfit cousins really needed. She wanted to steal wine from the parents, and so she did, drinking most of the bottle herself in my room, while our younger cousins played on my iPad or drew pictures at my desk. It was funny for a while, her increasingly bombastic stories and slurring words, but it soon dawned on me that, as their host, I would be taking the blame, despite only partaking in a few sips of the horrible shiraz.
‘Nora, do you have anything I could smoke?’ she asked, in negotiation with my advice to drink some water, at least.
‘Yeah, I’ve got a few cigs,’ I replied, silly in my thoughtless honesty.
‘Can I have one, please?’
‘I don’t know, I don’t think so. My mum doesn’t even know I smoke, and she would kill me if she found out I had given one to you.’
‘I vape, I just forgot mine, which was dumb,’ she said, and I believed that, though perhaps she was only telling me what I needed to hear.
I still hesitated; it was only when she began turning my room upside down in search of them that I handed one over, unpacking one for myself as well.
‘Let’s go down to the back fence – the parents won’t see us there,’ I said.
We made the younger kids promise not to say anything, and in return I allowed them to purchase a movie on my account. I had to prop her up by her forearm as we snuck out into the garden. By the time we got to the fence railing, she was walking fine, and I allowed myself a calm moment in the quiet night air. If the night had not continued, I think I would hold this memory differently. Hannah understood parts of me perhaps more than any friend, and valued what I had to say certainly more. We were kindred cousins in a lot of ways. It was only when it was very late, when I had powered down and was watching the Disney movie with the littlies, that things went pear-shaped. She had left us ‘boring kids’ to go and crash Olivia’s bedroom gathering, and promptly vomited red-wine spew all over the cream carpet. Things get hazy after that, but I know I took the blame, Hannah snitching about the solitary cigarette to hide her shiraz tracks. Nobody seemed to question the colour or the stench sinking into and emanating from the expensive shagpile. And that was that, no more rabbling Christmases for us.
15
There are holiday traditions – the lights, tree, presents, carols, street parties, and shopping-centre Santa, and then there are Byrne family traditions, namely, the window-decorating competition. The story goes it was an activity dreamt up by my mother’s grandmother, an understandable approach to having to entertain five children home for the holidays in an era before smartphones and tablets and endless streaming services. My older aunties, younger uncles, and my mother the middle child, hold so much – anger, jealousy, shame, anxiety, and self-worth – in these memories, shared with us children in jagged pieces like battle stories. It seems to shape everything about the way they interact with one another, although that is now, for aforementioned reasons, quite rare. If I asked, which I have many times, Mum would say, ‘We don’t do that anymore.’ End of story. Now my cousins are just people who exist on social media, and we send comments to one another every now and again instead of literally anything else. Hannah has moved to Canada, I saw recently. She still seems to favour shiraz.
We have albums full of photographs of these decorated windows, from the modest and slightly sinister homemade beginnings right through to the extravagance of my mother’s post-marriage, pre-children attempt that included crystal snowflakes and an elaborate light show. After my siblings and I came along, the windows got craftier and less refined, but they were all the better for the shift – though Mum would perhaps not agree. Growing up participating in an annual family window-decorating competition, and then being taken into Brisbane City to see the Myer window displays and the giant tree in King George Square, I was of the mistaken belief that window decorating was a much more widely recognised festive pursuit. It was not until I became a teenager that I learned this was not the case. It is disconcerting the way the world can shift on its axis as your perspective is changed by new information.
Olivia is the mastermind behind our generation’s window-decorating rivalry, but Luke is the most intense about it. He is sourcing supplies from around the house and shed while Olivia and I reconvene over another coffee. We agree that we will hold off on mentioning our run-in with Poppy for the time being, for the sake of peace.
‘I can’t believe he’s already written his name on a window – he must have done that as soon as he arrived. And of course he’s chosen the one with the window seat,’ she says.
‘He asked Mum to put his name on it before he even got here,’ I reply.
Maeve is curled up on the couch with her iPad and her dummy, not quite ready to face the day. I wish I was doing the same.
‘What are your plans? Have you put much thought into this? Because it’s all I could think about on that last fourteen-hour flight,’ Olivia says, her eyes alight.
‘I’m not really sure,’ I reply.
It is only half true. I am not sure how much I will engage, but if I choose to engage, I am entirely sure of what I will create. There have been many times my design should have been the clear winner, but there are politics at play and Luke and Olivia are better at courting the approval of our parental judges. It is hardly objective.
