From a Distance: Stories in Second Person

04. Winter

Father and son reconcile through a door.

***

Winter for you is red and green pillows, sultry Christmas carols and the crack of light that seeps through the slot under the door. Silence, but for the snow falling outside and the hissing static of the radio, sitting atop a stack of dusty, half-read classics. The snow interferes with the signal, but you lean back against your unpainted wall and pick out the strains of a carol for yourself.

You aren’t sure why you’re doing this; you hate Christmas carols. Too damn cheerful. All about gifts and love and fireplaces. Propaganda, you liked to call it. Christmas propaganda. You sigh, pick up a pencil, and scribble it on the wall. Another phrase. You crane your neck back and inspect the four white walls in your room, no longer white. In a record-breaking fourteen days, you’ve managed to coin at least three hundred new phrases. 

Bored minds revert to strange past-times.

“Todd?”

You get up to make sure the door is locked, then sit back down.

“Todd, please. It’s Christmas Eve.”

“Merry Christmas, Dad.” You slide upon the window and breathe in as the snow charges into your room. As you have every night for the past fortnight, you stick your head out and peer down, feeling awfully ostrich-like.

Two floors, you remind yourself. Only two floors. 

People have certainly survived a fall like that.

And with the snow—

“Can I come in?” asks Dad.

“Can you?” you counter, hating yourself, but enjoying it, too.  The answer is no, he can’t. Your pockets jingle with the weight of the room keys as you walk.

“May I?” Dad repeats, bitter again. He sighs. “Todd, I didn’t mean what I said that night. I was angry, you know. I wasn’t...you know, thinking straight.” The teacher part of him leaps at the opportunity to invite me into his little discussion. “Haven’t you felt that way, Todd? When you’re extremely mad, and you’ll just say anything?”

But what if I make it?

Where the hell are you gonna go, idiot?

“Actually, I think I’m about to experience it,” you respond, tightly.

You take up the pencil again and find a blank wall space. A plan, you think, a game plan. Mom, first, obviously. She’d take you in, wouldn’t she? She’d have to. She was your—

The custody, though. The custody. 

“Talk, then,” Dad demands. “Please do. Angry people talk, right? Talk, because I want to know what you’re thinking. Do you think I like this? Talking to my son through a door for 14 days? On Christmas Eve?”

“You have Ridge. And Amber. And your wife.” Something inside you warns you against following this path, against getting angry. It’s what he wants, after all. Because as soon as you’re angry, you’re done for. He’ll try to understand, be sympathetic, calm you down with his teacherly tactics. 

“I don’t care, Todd—you’re my son. I love them, but we’re blood.”

“What, it’s not like that with Mom? She’s my blood relative too, you know.” God, if only he’d shut up. Then you could think clearly and formulate the plan. A crazy part of you wonders if this is his goal, if he knows. 

“Todd, your Mom is mad.” 

In the distance, Camille’s voice calls out. “Jake! Dinner!”