Echolls Family Christmas 2006, Part II

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OK, so it wasn't exactly a Christmas out of the movies. But it went surprisingly well, given that most Christmases for the Echolls siblings have been one step removed from hellish.

And now Mary and Logan have gone home, and Chad's Grangran is snoring away in the guest room, and Trina is sort of absently tidying the living room, moving things from place to place, slightly restless, but not unhappily so.

Chad catches her arm as she goes past him, and pulls her down onto the couch beside him.

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"You don't have to do that on Christmas," Chad says, seriously (and in a loud whisper - you don't wake up Grangran, after all.)

"Leave it for the morning after."

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"I don't mind," she says, but she settles in next to him rather than getting back up.

"And why are we whispering? It sounds like she'd sleep through a earthquake, Chad."

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Satisfied, he settles his arm around her comfortably.

"Well - it's only polite," he says. Still whispering, though he sounds a little embarrassed about it.

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"Maybe," she says.

Beat.

"Did you have a good Christmas?"

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"Better now I'm here with you."


. . . come on, what other answer could he give?

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She swats at his shoulder.

"Be serious for a minute. This is important. My family doesn't have a great record where Christmas is concerned, and . . . I don't know, I guess I thought that might change this year. And then I incinerated a turkey and fought with Logan and it still went better than I had any right to expect. But please tell me someone here had a good Christmas."

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Chad listens, brow furrowed in an expression of serious concern . . . and, when she's done, presses a kiss to the top of her head.

"I was being serious."

Pause.

"You want to talk about it?"

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"No one almost died, so actually it's a pretty good Christmas by our standards. I don't know what there is to say. Give me 24 hours, and I'll find the humor in it, Chinese food and all.

"I'm sorry Logan's such a brat when you're around. I think he was trying tonight, even if it was hard to tell.

"Anyway," she says, managing a smile for him, "Merry Christmas."

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"Logan's going through a difficult time," Chad says, somberly. "I don't take any of it personally, you know that."

Which is a shame, because Logan certainly means at least a little of it personally.

"Guess the only thing to do is make sure next Christmas is better - right?"

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"It would help," says Trina, gently, "if you didn't take that attitude. Logan's been psychoanalyzed by a lot of people better trained in the job than you or me, and he doesn't take it well. And he's been going through a difficult time for the last 18 years."

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"I'm not trying to psychoanalyze him," Chad protests - a little injured by this accusation.

"I just don't think that reacting back with anger is going to help."

It's not so much psychoanalyzation as touchy-feely Dr. Spockian sensibilities, if that helps.

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"Okay," says Trina, "Okay. I'm really not trying to fight with you, Chad, I'm just trying to have something that even vaguely resembles a normal relationship with my brother. And part of that is that my brother and my . . . you getting along. So, for my sake, would you try not to patronize him? And I know that's not what you're meaning to do, but that's how he takes it."

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Chad shifts, a little, on the couch.

"What would you rather I did - shouted at him? I mean, I'm sorry he takes trying to be nice as patronization, but . . . what is the other option we're discussing here?"

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"God, I don't know," she says. "Look, I know he's impossible, but he's the only brother I've--well, no, he's not, is he?

"Just forget I said anything, okay? I'm sorry. Just forget it."

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"No - no, it's okay," Chad says, soothingly.

"I mean, if there's an issue here, we should talk it through - God knows I don't want to piss the kid off more."

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"The issue," she says, forgetting to keep her voice down, "is that when he was ten, and I was eighteen, I left him alone with those people. And the person I was dating when I did that was you. And you've always come at him like he's some misunderstood kid and you know what he's going through, and you don't, Chad. You couldn't, because we don't tell people about it."

She stops, lowers her voice back to just above a whisper. "The short version is, you cannot understand what our childhoods were like. I don't understand them, and I lived though them."

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Chad is silent.

He looks a little bit like he's been hit.

"I don't think," he says, finally, "I've ever, actually, said the words 'I understand' to you. Or your brother."

It's not exactly what he wants to say, but it's all he can think to.

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Trina closes her eyes, counts to three, then five, and then thirteen before she opens them again.

"This is why my family doesn't talk about things," she says. "We're really, really bad at it.

"Nothing we are talking about here, or not talking about, or talking about badly here, is your fault. I know that, you know that, hell, even Logan knows that."

And perhaps, she thinks, but doesn't say, perhaps the issue is that she needs, a little desperately, for someone to say the words 'I understand' to her.

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"I know that," Chad agrees. Slowly - he's still grappling with all of this.

"And it's not your fault or Logan's fault either - not from where I'm sitting anyways. That's what I've tried to -"

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"I'm pretty sure some of it is my fault," she says, very very quietly.

But out loud.

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Chad shakes his head.

He feels back on slightly more solid ground here - though the ground could shift back away from under him at any minute.

"You were eighteen, Trina. Just a kid."

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"Maybe," she says.

It's just, then she was nineteen and then she was twenty, and so on, and nothing changed. And she's not sure, even now, that if she had it over to do, anything would. Or even could. None of which she quite knows how to explain to him.

"There's just . . . okay, you know how most families have a few skeletons in their closets? Our skeletions have like their own wing. And I'm not sure it's at all fair to drag you into the middle of that."

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. . . Chad is back to not liking where this is going.

"Drag me in how?"

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Trina doesn't really like where it's going, either.

A shrug. "I don't even know, Chad. I just . . . I don't know."

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"I haven't . . . thought of myself as being in the middle," Chad says. Slowly, again, thinking as he speaks.

"More - on the sides? Supporting. But I guess I'm not doing that as much as I thought."

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"It's not you, it's . . ." Trina trails off, because she's one word away from one of those things it's just entirely too pathetic to say.

"You deserve a lot better than the freak show that is the Echolls family."

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"It's not about what I deserve, or you deserve. It's about what we want."

It's a line from one of his songs - Don't Connect The Dots.

Whether or not he's aware of this is open to question.

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Trina almost laughs, though not with a great deal of humor. She's certainly aware of it.

"'So, baby don't connect the dots, hey, change your mind, We'll just call it détente'?" she says, finishing the chorus.

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A faint smile.


"Hey, there's a reason that album went platinum."

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"Yeah, but, Sweetie, I don't think it was the lyrics," she says, with a bit of a smile.

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"They were heartfelt."






It's not exactly a subtle hint.

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Chad is not exactly subtle.

Neither, for that matter, is Trina.

"Yeah? So then I guess the question is, what do we want?"

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Chad looks at her.


"I thought you were pretty happy," he says; which isn't, exactly, an answer.

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"I was. Or I am. Or . . . what do you want, Chad?"

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"I'm happy," Chad says. A little helplessly.

He's not a complicated guy, is Chad.

"But it sounds like -

"It sounds like you're resenting me for reasons I didn't know were there.

"Are you?"

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"No," she says. "God no. It's just, there's a lot I can't really tell you, and I don't know that that's ever going to change. It's just always going to be there. And it's not anything you did. Or do. It just is."

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"I'm . . . beginning to get that."

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"I really, really hate Christmas."

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Chad doesn't say anything.

But he does reach over to take his hand in hers, and squeeze it.

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"Do you think we could possibly not do this?" she asks, quietly. "Or have I pretty ruined things?"

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"- we don't," Chad says, "have to do anything you don't want to."

And smiles. A small smile, but there.

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"Détente," she says, with a small smile of her own.