Call Christmas with the Barksdales the inflection point.
Oh, there have been problems, Jane thinks, or at least worries, and not having a good frame for which is which doesn't help her. The other thing that doesn't help at all is that the two of them manage to make their issues so damn esoteric and hard to get a friend's opinion about. What do you say—"three times now I've gone to bed unsatisfied because she fuzzed out and fell asleep five minutes after I cuffed her and finished the rope harness"?—and who do you say it to? They've both been busy, they're both the kind of people who can't escape trying to create and in college that translates to more work at least as much as an escape from work... That much, anyway, sounds like the kind of thing that couples just have to survive, and that plenty of them do, but the wear is real. And on top of all that, the looming holiday.
This will be Daria's first Christmas with her mother since her father died. Helen had moved to a condo across town after Quinn graduated. It'll be small, with maybe too few escape routes as Daria says, but if cutting back on the reminders helps them at all get along, Jane's for it.
One of Daria's friends bought a car for a dollar off the campus community exchange email list, for the purpose of carpooling out to some party in Western Mass, which is a very Daria's-friend kind of thing to do, Jane decides. He's been trying to get rid of it because parking is a pain and a half, compared to the use he's gotten from it since. Jane offers to take it off his hands. It'll probably get them to Lawndale and back, and it'll be scrap after they return, she can be sure of that.
The next worry had come when Jane had suggested that she could skip the Christmas lunch, if Daria preferred. "Don't you think that maybe me there with you will be more for her to handle?"
"She's the one who has problems with queer people, or with me being queer, not sure which."
"I'm just saying, it could be simpler if it's family-only, and I want to give you the option, right?"
"The option of saying that you matter less to me than they do?"
"No, for shit's sake. Just the choice of spending two hours apart to make a social event easier to put in the rear-view mirror without a major explosion."
And then, crossing the Tappan Zee westbound in the freezing rain: "I guess we are getting better at spending time apart."
"What the shit, Daria? Where is this coming from?!"
Daria shrugs. "We've both got college friends. We both have extracurriculars that we actually go to for actual fun."
"That's not the same as you and me being less close."
Daria plants an elbow against the car door and, chin in hand, stares out through the glass and the droplets and the Hudson into nothingness. "When we're not together, the time fills up with other things to enjoy. That didn't use to happen." She is quiet for a while. "Maybe it's good, right? We're becoming more fulfilled and complete human beings?" She doesn't sound like she believes this very much, but she doesn't elaborate, and by the time they stop for chicken sandwiches halfway down I-95, the weather is only overcast, and their conversation is normal Daria-and-Jane again, and Jane is willing to hope that it'll all blow over.
* * *
Jane attends the Christmas lunch. Quinn and Aunt Amy, at least, act like it wouldn't be the same without her.
"Passing on the ham, Daria?" her mother asks.
"I'm only eating mammal one day a week," Daria replies, portioning out a measure of scalloped potatoes. "Health reasons."
"And balancing that," Jane expounds, "with the fact that sometimes you're stuck with the only lunch option being the campus cafeteria, and the only palatable thing there that day is the pepperoni pizza. It's a real hazard."
No one explodes during the meal. Jane credits Quinn, who seems to have developed old-school Southron hosting skills, deflecting potential lines of trouble and lobbing easy questions that bring out commonalities. And Daria is... neutrally civil.
Up until everyone exchanges gifts.
They'd brought a bag from Boston, books and sweaters and such, chosen with Quinn and Amy's advice. And they have a stack of copies of the university literary annual in which Daria has an elegant, evocative short story.
Helen holds that and the wool scarf and says, "Why, thank you, Daria. These are charming."
And Daria comes out with a needle of ice. "You're welcome. They're from us both."
And Helen cracks. Just for a moment, not long enough to say anything out loud before getting her mask back on, but it's there and obvious and Jane knows that nothing has healed between mother and daughter.
* * *
Jane can't complain too much, because this was Daria sticking by her after all, but the needles don't stop. It's worse the next day, when they hit up their old pizza place and see a few of their erstwhile Lawndale High classmates. Each time after the cordial chit-chat is done and the old acquaintance has moved along, Daria has a barb under her breath, accurate and trenchant and, Jane finds herself thinking, not really necessary.
It's worse than that when they go to the Zon and watch the Harpies. The latest iteration is the best yet, Jane thinks, and Lyra does a damn fine metal cover of "You're A Mean One, Mr. Grinch". It ought to be the most fun they've had in Lawndale while vertical, and yet whenever she is audible, Daria has a glass edge for somebody in the Dega Street scene.
Jane lets it out as she pulls the car into the Lane driveway. "Jesus, Daria, what hugged your face and got into you? You're acting like, well, a catty bitch."
Daria opens her door and swings her booted feet onto the driveway. "Funny. I thought I've been the same insightful cynic as before."
"I dunno, Sunflower. This used to be our survival mechanism, right?" Jane walks ahead of Daria to the house's front entrance and flips through her keyring as she talks. "But we're surviving out there, you know? Better than just surviving, even." She unlocks and opens the door, holding it for Daria. "Do we really need the old mechanism on 100% when we're on holiday?"
Daria crouches down and begins untying her boots. "Maybe this town brings out the worst in me."
"It's just for a week—"
"And then back to what? Our ongoing adventure of discovering that we need each other less?" Daria's hands stop. She stands and locks eyes with Jane.
"We started all this because I was in pain," Daria says.
"We started this while you were in pain," Jane shoots back. "And because we love each other."
"Jane, if the pain is weaker..."
"Is that what this is all about? You're making yourself sour, you're trying to get me comfortable with the idea of not being together anymore—"
Daria is retying her boots. "I need to go for a walk. Or a drive."
"We left the Zon at closing time, nothing will be open—"
The keys are loosely held in Jane's hand. Daria takes them. "Then I'll drive in circles. I'm sorry. I just... can't trust myself to talk right now."
* * *
One place Daria knows is still open. The Taco Pit is 24-hour. Which, coincidentally, is about how long the nachos taste like they've been under a heat lamp.
She doesn't particularly care. It's food, technically.
She has a booth to herself. She has something violently orange from the soda fountain. She's just bitten into a pickled jalapeño that, against all the odds, still has flavor, when she realizes she has a new problem.
Wearing fleece for winter, navy blue and charcoal gray mixed in with the black, but still the long eyelashes, still the lipstick that pops.
"It fucking would," Daria mutters to herself.
And now Alison has spotted her.
Daria wants to get up and leave. She wants to suffer through whatever happens if she stays. Of the two, it's the second that she feels she deserves.
She looks down into her industrially orange soda, and this is all the time it takes for Alison to approach and ask, "Are you back for the holidays too?"
Daria glances up. "Is that the opening gambit you're going with after all this time?" She had meant to make that sound more hostile, but her voice is stuck in neutral.
Alison rummages in her pockets. She drops a six-month AA chip on the table and slides it forward with her index finger. "I'll risk moving my queen out early."
"Congratulations," says Daria. "Far be it for me to point out that your being drunk wasn't the problem at the critical juncture."
"May I?"
Daria stays expressionless.
Alison slides into the seat across the booth from her.
"You still with Dotson?" Daria asks, gathering nacho sauce onto a chip.
"Not so much 'with' as 'adjacent to'. For mutually beneficial reasons." She leans forward. "I'm sorry. For us. For what I said to Jane. I need to say that I'm sorry, and... I am."
Daria uses the time it takes to eat the chip and its burden of dubious cheese to think. Apologizing out loud and in so many words is better than Tom had treated Jane, all those confusions ago. Aloud, Daria says, "That pose would be more convincing if you were still dressed for summer."
Alison sits back and brushes the forward-fallen locks of her hair behind her. "Once upon a time, I would have hoped that was flirtatious. Now I'm pretty sure you're calling me meretricious."
"And a Happy New Year."
Alison asks, "So, are we talking?"
Daria makes a little wave with the hand that is not holding extruded nacho product. "So talk."
And so they do. Alison tells about a showing of her pastels that has been successful, riding on Dotson's name, and one she'd tried without that had been less so but still good enough that it hadn't crushed her spirits. Daria tells about the poems that placed in a competition, the short story that had appeared in the literary annual, how a few seeds in that story had started to grow into a novel. She makes Alison laugh a couple times. Alison gets up, orders chips and salsa for herself, and returns. They keep talking.
And then they're standing out in the chill that for Lawndale passes as cold, Daria is trying to remember which of her many pockets she dropped the car keys into, and Alison is closing the distance between them. Her head is inclined down, her lips are just now parted, and Daria says, "Presumptuous much?"
"What?"
Alison's hand has gone for Daria's shoulder. She shrugs it off. Her needles of ice are fully deployed. "I've been told my abrasiveness is on overdrive today, so I'm going to use it for good. I've hardly thought about you. My poems aren't about you. And now that you've crossed my path again, I've realized for the first time that I could never actually go back to you. Once, yes, but not anymore." Her fingers locate the car keys. "Have a nice life, but don't try to make a space for me in it."
* * *
Jane leaps up from her half-eaten waffle. "Daria!" She's about to wrap the shorter woman in a hug, but pauses to double-check that Daria is welcoming the idea.
"I'm sorry," Daria says. It's the best start she can think of. "A lot of little things have been piling up, and I'm no good with change, and I've had nothing left for dealing with the big stuff like whatever my mother's goddamn deal is, and because I'm me I have to wonder if losing you fast would hurt us both less than drifting apart slowly, and..." She runs down.
"We're not drifting apart," Jane says firmly. "We're both busy as fuck being college overachievers, and we've been able to find college friends who make both of our lives better because they mean we're not moping all the time we're apart. I benefit from yours, you benefit from mine. OK?"
Daria puts her arms around Jane. "Something happened tonight. A mystique died."
And Daria tells the story.
Jane asks to kiss her at the end, and Daria agrees. It's far from their most heated, but it's definitely on the scoreboard for most lingering.
"I love you, Belladonna," Daria says at last.
"See, that should have given me a clue, Sunflower. You need a little mystique, don't you? One more reason you could never be a Sloane wife, despite that emotional repression you practiced for almost the entirety of a family dinner. You're afraid we can't work if we turn ordinary."
"Yeah. Damn. Hazards of dating a writer. Sorry, my love."
"Sunflower, let's you and me blow this popsicle stand."
"What?"
"Let's get back on the road. Do New Year's in Boston."
"But our dorms won't even be open yet."
"So? Those friends of ours, some of them live off campus, right? You're saying we couldn't beg a few nights of crash space among them?"
"Maybe..."
"Look, we'll do one brunch with Quinn and Amy, because it'll be good to see them without the rest of ou... the family involved. We'll call around. And then we'll kick the Lawndale dust off our boots."
"Excuse me, did I almost hear an our family in that?"
Jane makes a featherlight touch upon Daria's ear. "It's crossed my mind."
"The madness required for someone wanting to join all that," Daria muses. "You have a mystique all your own." Then, "I'm dead tired and I need to shower off industrial taco dust. But tomorrow morning, I need to make a few things up to you."
Meeting the New Year with cold instead of a drizzly imitation of it feels right. It's clarifying. "Like the etymology of crystal coming from the Greek for 'frost' is actually meaningful," as Daria says, because Daria can't agree with anything in a normal way.
They luck out. Marina has moved to an off-campus shared townhouse, and there's more than enough couch space for two, particularly when one of them is tiny.
Daria and Jane head out into the festival night with Marina and Jane's BFAC friends Errol and Isaiah. Boston Common has ice sculptures and fire-spinners and roasted chestnuts and what looks like the world's supply of sparkly hats and glow-in-the-dark goofy glasses. There's a trip-hop band playing in Copley Square. They run and they loop back and they laugh themselves silly and their breath makes great clouds of vapor.
"Hey, Sunflower," Jane says in the warm fuzzies after a joke that depended entirely on the moment but worked perfectly well. "Can I say something that risks sounding mawkishly appropriate to the occasion?"
"Hmmm. I will give you a pass, once, if you let me have the last chestnut in that bag."
"Hey guys!" Marina is calling at them from down the street. "Free fiber-optic sparkly wand things!"
"One second," Jane calls back. She takes Daria's gloved hand in her own. "Sunflower, it'll all be different."
"Agreed."
"But we'll find out how together."
"Also agreed, Belladonna."