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This stung Peter. "There's nothing wrong with my gifts! You sound like I give you used Band-Aids or something."
"Your gifts always look like you bought the cheapest things on sale and then decided after you got them home who you'd give them to."
Which exactly nailed the process Peter went through. "Gee, Valentine," said Peter. "And everyone calls you the nice one."
"Can't you two ever stop bickering?" said Mother wistfully.
"Peace on Earth, good will toward brats," said Peter.
That was last year. This year, Peter's investments--anonymous investments, of course, since he was still underage--were doing very well, and he had sold off enough shares to pay for some nice gifts for the family. Nobody was going to say there was anything wrong with this year's crop. Though he couldn't spend too much, or Dad would start to get way too curious about where Peter's money was coming from.
His Christmas shopping was done. He wasn't going to do a paper on this topic, and he wasn't ready to start researching another one. There was nothing to do in this miserable town but go home.
Which is why he came into the living room to find Mother crying over--of all things--a Christmas stocking.
"Don't worry, Mother," he said. "You've been good. It won't be coal this year."
She gave him a thin little courtesy laugh and quickly stuffed the stocking back into the box it was stored in. Only then did he realize whose it was.
"Mom," he said. He couldn't help the tone of frustration and reproof in his voice. It's not like Ender was dead. He was just in Battle School.
Mom got up from the chair where she was sitting and headed for the kitchen.
"Mom, he's fine."
She turned to him, gazed at him steadily with eyes like fire, though her voice was mild. "Oh--you've had a letter from him? A phone call? A secret report from the school administrators that they didn't provide to Ender's parents?"
"No," said Peter, still unable to keep the impatience from his voice.
Mother smiled acidly. "Then you don't know what you're talking about, do you?"
Peter resented the contempt in her tone. "And stroking his stocking and crying over it, that's supposed to make anything better?"
"You really are a piece of work, Peter," she said, pushing past him.
He followed her into the kitchen. "I bet they hang up stockings for them up in Battle School and fill them with little toy spaceships that make cool shooting noises."
"I'm sure the Muslim and Hindu students will appreciate getting Christmas stockings," said Mother.
"Whatever they do for Christmas, Mother, Ender isn't going to be missing us."
"Just because you wouldn't miss us doesn't mean he doesn't."
He rolled his eyes. "Of course I'd miss you."
Mother said nothing.
"I'm a perfectly normal kid. So's Ender. He'll be busy. He's getting along fine. He's adapting. People adapt. To anything."
She turned slowly, reached across and touched his chest, then hooked a finger through the neckline of his shirt and drew him close. "You never adapt," she whispered, "to losing a child."
"It's not like he's dead," said Peter.
"It's exactly like he's dead," said Mother. "I will never again see the boy who left here. I'll never see him at age seven or nine or eleven. I'll have no memories of him at those ages, only what I can imagine. That's what the parents of dead children have. So until you actually know something about what you're talking about, Peter--human feelings, for instance--why don't you just shut up?"
"Merry Christmas to you too," said Peter. He left the room.
His own bedroom, when he entered it, felt strange to him. Alien. Bare. There was nothing there that expressed a personality. That had been a conscious decision on his part--anything individual that he put on display would give Valentine an advantage in their endless dueling. But at this moment, with Mother's accusation of his inhumanity still ringing in his ears, his bedroom looked so sterile that he hated the person who would choose to live in it.
