Page 149 of Across His Line

“It’s not lopsided,” Rafe says from the ladder.

“The whole left side is bare.”

“We haven’t done the left side yet.”

“Then do it properly. If you’re going to do it, do it properly.”

He hangs a glass ornament on the left side. Then another. He steps back. He moves the first one two inches to the right.

“He loves Christmas,” Mrs. Waleska says to me, not quietly.

“I tolerate Christmas,” he says.

“He loves Christmas,” Rafe says.

“Get down off that ladder before you scratch the floor.”

“I’m not touching the floor. I’m on the ladder.”

“The ladder is touching the floor.”

I watch them, and I’m waiting for something bad to happen. I can’t help it. I’m standing there with my box, and every time somebody’s voice goes sharp, my whole body gets ready. When his father says properly. When his mother says of course you are. When Rafe says I’m not touching the floor in that flat voice I know. My shoulders come up. My stomach goes tight. I wait for the next part. The part where it turns. Where somebody says the thing you can’t take back, and the room goes cold, and everybody goes quiet, and somebody leaves.

It never comes.

His mother tells his father he bought the wrong hooks, the short ones, and nothing stays on. His father says the short ones were on sale. She says they were on sale because nothing stays on them. Rafe drops a hook off the ladder, and it bounces under the couch, and both of his parents tell him to get it at the same time, and he doesn’t, and nobody makes him.

His dad picks up a star cookie off the plate and eats it in two bites.

“Mom said those were for after,” Rafe says.

“I paid for the cookies,” his dad says.

“You did not make them,” his mom says from across the room without turning around.

His dad takes another one.

Nobody slams anything. Nobody leaves. They laugh, the music changes to a different song, and Rafe comes down the ladder for more lights.

He notices me watching and doesn’t make it a thing.

I realize that they’re just three family members being annoying to each other in a room. And it doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t turn into anything. It isn’t bad. I didn’t know it could be like this.

“Tessa.” His mom is next to me. I didn’t see her come over. “Want to do some? You don’t have to just hold that.”

She takes the box from me and sets it on the arm of the couch and opens it. Inside, wrapped in old tissue gone soft as cloth, there are ornaments that don’t match anything. A wooden reindeer missing an antler. A glass bell with a crack in it, mended with clear glue. A tiny pair of ice skates on a red ribbon. A felt mitten with a crooked R and a date stitched on it in white thread.

“These are the old house ones,” she says. “They go in front. Where people can see them.”

She hands me the reindeer.

I hold it. It weighs almost nothing.

I hang it on a branch in front, at my eye level, where she points. My hands are shaking a little. I don’t know why. It’s a wooden reindeer.

She hands me the bell. I hang the bell. She hands me the skates, and I hang those, too, and she nods at each one like I got it right and goes back to the ladder.

Rafe comes over and digs in the box next to me without saying anything. He takes out the skates I just hung and moves them three branches over.