Family and Other Accidents by Shari Goldhagen Page A

me, let me have the whole bed.”
    â€œI’d rather sleep with you. You don’t warm your feet on my
stomach.”
    â€œIs that the way to get rid of you?” Connor rolls over and looks at the clock glowing two fifteen. “It’s after midnight. Merry Christmas, Jack.”
    â€œSo you’re Tiny Fucking Tim, now?”
    â€œGod bless us, everyone.”
    An hour later Jack wakes with the dead weight of Connor’s arm across his throat. Pushing him away, Jack remembers the strangling-Mona dream. Connor moans, flops to his front, mumbles something about Beth, who may be someone at school or might be a dream creation. Jack doesn’t get to know those things anymore.
    He goes to the bathroom and finds Santa figurines even there, in a neat row across the toilet top. Instead of getting back into bed with his brother, Jack goes downstairs. Mona’s parents are still sleeping, but they’ve shifted, solidified into each other. The CD changer shuffles back to Bing Crosby, who, like Mona, dreams of an unrealized white Christmas. Mammoth and bright, the tree glows like trees in movies, the biggest box underneath it is the food dehydrator wrapped in red foil. A blue light sizzles and slowly loses its brightness. Jack worries a short might ignite the dry branches, bends over to unplug the tree, changes his mind and leaves it glowing.
    In her bedroom, Mona sleeps on her back. Eyes closed, freckles across her nose, and all that red hair strewn across the pink pillowcase—
a girl from a douche commercial
. For a split second, he imagines smothering her with a pink throw pillow—how her body would shudder, arms fighting him. He climbs into the bed, lays his head on her breasts.
    â€œJack?” she murmurs, touching his forehead with drowsy fingers.
    â€œShhh, go back to sleep.”
    â€œChristmas kisses?” she asks, sleepy and childlike.
    â€œOkay.” Inching up so they’re at eye level, he lightly presses his lips to hers. Turning on her side, she pulls him closer, kisses more urgently.
    â€œI love you,” she whispers in his ear.
    â€œI love you, too,” he says, and means it, loves warming her hands, loves the way she sleeps on him. Still, he has figured out the “but” from earlier. “But I’m not a Christmas-tree kind of guy.”
    â€œI know, you’re a pretending-to-be-Jewish kind of guy.”
    Her heated breath raises hairs on his neck. Maybe she does know that her family likes him for the wrong reasons; that she’s only in his house to fill the emptiness; that in a parallel universe, he keeps trying to kill her. But he doubts it.
    â€œI’m freezing,” she says, slides frigid hands under his pajama top, then looks at him, suddenly wide awake. “Did it snow?”
    â€œNo,” he says without looking through the window.

all those
girlie-girl
things
    For almost four years Mona has been living with Jack, but she’s still “and guest,” still an accessory. Thumbing the parchment place card with Jack’s name written in calligraphy, Mona nods when the waiter comes by and offers to refill her chardonnay. She can’t decide if she’s sad because she’s drunk or just sad. She does know she’s annoyed Jack won’t dance with her at
his
friend’s wedding—annoyed that Jack has spent most of the reception talking with his very pregnant, very married ex-girlfriend; with the ex’s parents, who’ve apparently known Jack for almost three decades; with the ex’s cousin, who happens to be an appellate court judge.
    â€œWhat’s wrong, Mo?” It’s not Jack who asks, but Connor, seated on the other side of Jack. “You look like you can’t keep your shoelaces tied.”
    Jack doesn’t notice because he’s busy being charming and easy. Left foot balanced on his right knee, he trades billable-hour stories with the appellate cousin and the