So I’m just gonna lie on the couch and sulk for a while, licking the various wounds of body and soul that life seems hell-bent on inflicting. I probably deserve it. That’s the real insight, right there.

Peggy seems genuinely disappointed by my lack of interest in the topic of Willy Gimp and Chrissy Parsons. So she ups the ante.

“How’s Allie doing?” she says, as if she hasn’t already heard one godawful tale or another about her.

“Fine. Took too many anxiety pills. It was an accident.”

“How goes the little quest to dig up the family dirt?” she says.

“See me? Fresh outta fucks to give about whatever stupid secret you think you’re keeping,” I say, hunkering down under a quilt and taking a moment to lick the bottom of my broc-o-glop bowl.

Of course, I am lying through my broc-o-glop smeared teeth, and Peggy knows it. I can tell by the way she’s scrunching up her snout. By the way her top lip curls and twitches.

“Oh well. What you don’t know won’t hurt you. Or your mother.”

“That Betty White is a riot.” I jack the TV volume up to stun.

Peggy plods toward the door. “There’s a present there I forgot to give you. Merry Christmas.” Then, from out on the step, she hollers, “It smells like a Dutchman’s arse in there, by the way!”

I wait till I hear her car clatter down the driveway, then I grab the rectangular package she left. It is clumsily swathed in cross-eyed reindeer wrapping paper, the bejesus taped out of every seam, and “Crow” scrawled right on the paper in black marker. There’s a faint rattle clunk when I give it a shake. Every year, dollar store bubble bath. She knows I’m allergic. Dutchman’s Ass scented, I bet. Or maybe a box of Nova Scotia tartan-print thank you cards with little fiddle envelope stickers, from the sale bin at some stupid tourist kitsch shop. Whatever.

I shut off the TV and go to bed, chucking the box into the back corner of my closet on the way. But curiosity nags at me. I get up, fish it out, and open it to confirm the cheapness, the thoughtlessness of Peggy’s gift. But it’s not bubble bath or discount tourist schlock. Inside are photographs. One of me that I’ve never seen before, standing in front of the shocked and mortified crowd at my high school graduation, post-slideshow, my face flushed and my mouth wide open in that final “Caaaaw.” The others are the Wall of Shame pictures of the Spensers, and Lucy and Black Bernie Fortune, which Char saved from the bonfire on head-shaving night. And there’s a little tartan notecard etched with Peggy’s heavy scrawl that reads, “If you don’t come to grips with where you came from, you sure as hell won’t understand where you’re going.” Which is worse — even cheaper and more thoughtless — than I expected. So back into the box, back into the farthest corner of the closet, out of sight and out of mind goes Peggy’s rotten excuse for a Christmas present.