Page 25 of Bossy Bride: Emma and Jesse

“How old were you?”

“Mmm… maybe six?”

“So he was eight?”

“Yeah. Eight.”

“Did you find the Christmas boxes?”

“No. And I was pretty sad about that because I looked really hard for those glitter-glue stockings. But we did find Easter stuff. And we decorated the tree with pink and green Easter grass and filled up the baskets with forgotten junk-treasure we found while we were searching for the Christmas shit, and those were our presents that year.”

And even though this is kinda sad, it’s also kinda cool too. These three brothers found a way to celebrate. “Was it fun?”

“I guess. Sure. I guess it was, even though it wasn’t really a Christmas.”

“What was in your Christmas basket?”

“Oh, man. This kinda was fun. Johnny and Joey were good junk-treasure hunters. I got an old World War II medal, a glow-in-the-dark yo-yo, and a whole bunch of metal toy soldiers that I’m pretty sure were part of some very expensive custom chess set.”

“What did you give them? Do you remember?”

“I remember.” He’s smiling big now. “I found this little dog statue for Johnny. He always did want a dog, even when we were kids. It was kinda ugly. And it was actually probably an ashtray.”

I laugh.

“But he loved it. I wonder where that thing went?” He ponders this for a moment. “I dunno. But he had it around for a long time. Maybe it’s still up there? Up in his apartment?”

“You should go look.”

“I don’t think that place is ours anymore. And besides, Johnny probably wouldn’t like me nosing around in his shit.”

“And what did you get Joey?”

“Joey… I found Joey this cool sword. It was a real one too.”

“What kind of sword?”

“You know, like one of those martial arts swords. A katana or something. He always wanted to be a ninja growing up.” Jesse snaps his fingers. “You know what holiday we did do, though?”

“Which?”

“Halloween. Joey was always a ninja. Every freaking year. We would dress up and go trick-or-treating inside the building.”

“What?”

“Yeah.” He laughs. “Thinking about it now, I’m kinda embarrassed. Like… what were all those people thinking about us? Not all the floors were ours, ya know? They’re actual companies. Big-time companies. And here come the Boston brothers begging for candy. They must’ve wondered, Who the fuck is taking care of these kids? Don’t they have parents?”

“But they couldn’t say anything, could they?”

“Nah. We owned the building. And my father was a scary dude. They gave us lots of shit. Filled up our pillow cases with candy. Or if they didn’t have candy—because no trick-or-treaters were supposed to be showing up at the end of a freaking workday, right?”

“Right.”

“So sometimes we got office supplies instead. We had a lot of staplers at our house.”

I lean into him, feeling simultaneously happy and sad at his childhood memories. “Still,” I say, after a few moment of quiet introspection. “It’s special in its own way, don’t you think?”

“My childhood? Yeah. Definitely not typical.”