My new neighbor, Julia, with her dangly snowflake earrings and how close she’s standing, laughing at my jokes, touching my arm, electric—the way her red dress clings in all the right places that I could never pull off and I’m basting the turkey and glazing the spiral ham as my fifteen-year-old son calls me a Nazi right in front of her, twinkle lights and mistletoe, Christmas themed mugs, tables with large crystal bowls containing eggnog or mulled wine, laden with charcuterie boards, create the landscape of my living and dining rooms, and our new, ridiculously hot, impossibly cool neighbor, Julia, who looks and dresses (fuck she’s cool) just like Zoë Kravitz, standing so close I can smell her shampoo, and I’m trying to impress her, talking technique—quick pickles, marinade profiles, ferments, rubs and homemade buns but white heat spreads out from my center up to my cheeks, and I think about when my son found my laptop on the kitchen island and told me to be embarrassed because it was open to the google search “hot lady buns” and said damn mom, do that shit in your room, don’t leave it out for everyone to see, Jesus, and I don’t know if he’s mad at the hot lady buns or that his dad is gone, and now, before I can tell him the other oven is going with Tofurkey roast and mushroom Wellington, before I can tell him his favorite vegan ambrosia is in the fridge, he’s calling me a Nazi in front of the hot neighbor, getting louder, cursing the dinner, the charcuteries, saying that cows and pigs and turkeys scream for their lives and did we know that the Nazis modeled the Holocaust train cars after the meat industry and I want to cry or kick him in the shin but I just try to gauge her reaction and then my son yells to the whole party YOU ALL HAVE BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS and fucks off upstairs and I don’t look around at my guests, I look down at my sticky hands, half expecting to see actual blood but it’s just artisanal ham glaze and Julia gently lifts my chin, smiles one of those knowing, warm mom-smiles, and says she’s got a teenager at home, too.
