Peter drove the car home an hour later. He put the heater up full blast to defrost his toes, but then had to kill it when the windshield fogged over. Peter felt the car hydroplane a couple of times, but was able to keep it moving straight ahead. He wanted to get off the highway as soon as possible, but feared the local streets would be even slower going with all the accumulated snow.   The last thing he wanted was to spin his bald tires over a six-inch drift. He was home twenty-five nervous minutes later to a house where all hell had broken loose.

The tree was off its pedestal, had been dragged, from the looks of it, by the lights to the center of the living room. Tara stood at the foot of the stairs red-faced and screaming. “I don’t care! I don’t care! Damn her, she does it to herself!”

“Get upstairs!” his father screamed. “Get the hell up to your room!”

He stood by the recliner, which was pitched all the way back. Caroline knelt beside it, and his mother had been thrown onto it, rigid as a board, her mouth wide open in a spastic gasp. To Peter she looked two days in the grave.

“Dad,” Caroline barked, “call an ambulance.”

The old man flared his hands out from his sides, as if to settle the whole matter. “Sugar. Sugar.” He didn’t move.

Peter felt a wave a rage pass over and through him. He clamped it down. “I’ll get the sugar,” he said. He passed between his father and the chair. Caroline rubbed their mother’s hands and patted her wrists.

“Ambulance!”

In the kitchen, Peter threw open the refrigerator and grabbed the pitcher of orange juice. He poured a glass and heaped some sugar into it, one, two, three tablespoons, then stirred. Then he rummaged through several drawers before finding the oral syringe. He ran back to the living room.

“Call a fucking ambulance!” Caroline wailed.

“They…won’t come,” their father stammered. “They have to come!”

“There’s bills from the last time.”

Peter knelt beside Caroline and filled the syringe. He emptied it into his mother’s open maw. “Watch, she may gag.”

A cough, a gurgle, some juice overflowed the rim of her maw, but she swallowed. “More,” Peter said and filled the syringe again. “Did she take her insulin after lunch?”

“I don’t know,” Caroline hacked. “I think so.”

“Did she eat enough?”

“She didn’t eat anything!” Tara screamed from upstairs. “She fucking does this on purpose!”

“You shut your mouth, you fucking brat!” their father yelled from the foot of the stairs.

“Coma’s a long way to go for sympathy,” Peter muttered.

“C’mon, Mom,” Caroline called. “Wake up.”

She rolled her eyes. Peter let out a breath. “That’s something.” He gave her more juice. Her limbs softened, her head bowed.

“She coming around?” their father asked.

“We still need an ambulance!” Caroline snapped.

Their mother was a sloppy drunk now, snorting and laughing, licking at the syringe as though a flick of her tongue might turn it upward. “I can’t watch this,” Peter groaned. He stood up and turned away. Caroline continued to massage her wrists.

“Get a coat for her,” Peter barked at his father. “We’ll take her in the car.”

“What?” the old man started.

“I brought the car home. C’mon, emergency room.”

They bundled her up as well as they could, but she still howled when they left the house. “I’m cold! I’m coooold!”

“Sorry, Mom,” Peter whispered. “How it’s got to be.”

Peter and his Father got her down the stairs, then over to the back seat of the car. Peter went in through the street side and his father handed him the limp body of his mother. “Please! Please, I’m coooold!”

“You want to drive?” Peter asked his father.

“I’ll be here,” the old man barked, meaning the back seat. “You might as well drive, so long as you’re feeling your manhood.” He ducked his head and disappeared into the back.

*                                                          *                                                          *

There were loud screams in the examination room, and his father stormed out, his hands thrust deep into his trouser pockets. Peter stared at the man whose chin pressed hard into his chest, whose fist rose to his belt, whose eyes swam for a second before settling on a corner of the floor. “Go see your mother.”

Peter rose from the bench and headed into the exam room. His mother was sitting up on the table, buttoning her blouse. “He’s made a mess of it,” she said.

“What?” Peter asked, hoping she’d pick up on his tone and drop it. After what she’d just put them through, she had no standing to bitch anyone out. She was undeterred.

“This Christmas,” she spat. “I even went out. To the Rite Aid. Got tired of waiting for him. There were things, you know, for stockings I could get down the Rite Aid.” She reached for her coat. Peter picked it up and held it open for her. “He kept saying money was coming in. He’d take care of it. Now…now we’ve got Christmas gifts from a drug store. That’s our Christmas.”

Peter hung his head and shrugged. “I don’t think anyone cares.”

His mother tightened the belt of her coat until it pinched hard at her waist. Her back stiffened, jaw clenched, and her eyes retreated beneath a mist. “Is that how far we’ve come? That nothing we do can ever make a difference?”

*                                                          *                                                          *

His mother checked herself out over the objections of the attending physician. His father drove them home. It was a solemn, silent drive. Caroline had dinner waiting when they got home. Tara stayed in her room until dinner was served, came down, ate without speaking, then retreated upstairs. His mother also went upstairs and napped for an hour. Peter righted the Christmas tree, untangled and rehung the lights. He picked up some broken ornaments off the floor, then ran the vacuum over the carpet.

Around ten pm, his mother, fully dressed for Midnight Mass, came downstairs and sat bolt upright in the living room recliner waiting for everyone else. Peter went to his room to change. After a few minutes, there was a knock at his door. It was Caroline.

“That was great what you did for Mom,” she said. “To bring her around.”

Peter shrugged.

“Is she okay?”

“She’s Mom, right?”

Caroline nodded. “I just wish I didn’t feel so…”

Peter buffed his shoes with a dirty sock. “Then don’t feel.”

His sister sneered. “It’s not that easy.” She sat next to him on his bed. “I wish I could be like you and just turn it off.”

Peter slipped his foot into a shoe. He shook his head and chuckled quietly. “Turn it off? Yeah, that’s good. I turned it off this morning.”

“What?”

“Just flipped the switch.”

“You mean you couldn’t move?”

Peter nodded. He slipped on the other shoe. “Do you know how they found out about it?”

Caroline shook her head. She leaned back against the headboard, as if getting comfortable for the long, sad story. Peter hesitated. He had no intention of being long and sad. Just clear.

“It started happening when I was fourteen. Mom was raging, like daily. It was a Saturday morning, maybe eight o’clock, and I was sleeping. I guess I had been to a dance Friday night, got in like one o’clock. But she’s screaming to, I don’t know, take out the garbage or vacuum the stairs, or some shit that can’t wait ‘til I wake up, and she slams open the door, and I’ve got my eyes wide open, but I can’t move. I can’t speak. And she yells, “Get the hell up, you leech!” and she smacks me. And I can’t cover up, and she slams me again and again. And I’m lying there, staring at the ceiling, feeling her slap my face and pull my hair and she punches me. Then she backs off, all red in the face and sweating, and she sneers at me and goes, “What the hell is wrong with you?” And then I could move again, and I turned my head and said, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” and I’m starting to cry, I was scared, y’know? But I go, “Do you have any idea what’s wrong with you?”   And she just backs up and leaves the room.”

Caroline looked away. She ran her fingers through her hair, looping it behind her ear. “So you went for those tests that proved you were an eccentric genius.”

“Bullshit,” Peter sighed. “They needed someone to tell them it was my problem, not theirs.”

“It must be hard for you to come back.”

Peter finished tying his shoes and stood up again. He looked into the mirror above his dresser, not at himself, but at the woman slumped on his bed. Hard to think of her that way, but that’s what she was.

“I’ve been living,” he said, “surrounded by people that would never get this. This house would not make sense to them. And it’s not making sense to me anymore. I’m done making excuses for it.”

Caroline nodded and rose from the bed to the door.

“When I saw her,” Peter blurted, “lying there stiff. I just wanted to smack her. I just, I remembered what she did to me when I couldn’t even fucking move, and I wanted to wail on her.”

“But you didn’t,” Caroline said. “You helped her.”

“Yeah.”

“You must have felt something else then, too.” She forced a smile.

Peter stared into the mirror. “Duty.”

Caroline opened the door. “I’m glad you got away. You needed to.”

Merry Christmas to me, Peter thought. Caroline closed the door, sealing him in with her suffocating sympathy.

*                                                          *                                                          *