36. The Brother Concept
“A crone! A troll! I don’t know.”
It’s a well-known fact that I’m not a big fan of Christmas. I’m the oldest daughter of divorced people who live 2,000 miles apart. Both sides of my family are overstuffed with what I will diplomatically describe as “big personalities.” A few years ago, my brother added ninety minutes to our journey to Christmas Eve because he’d forgotten his gift to our stepdad at his apartment — it turned out to be a women’s Wisconsin Badgers t-shirt with a scoop neck and sparkly cursive writing (note that he forgot to get our mom any gift at all) — and that was one of the less stressful parts of the day. I spend most of December 20th to January 2nd swearing to myself that next year I’ll get my shit together and Gone Girl myself for the duration of the holiday season.
Even if I set all that aside, there’s something about the holidays that makes an adult regret every single decision they’ve ever made, something that forces us to take stock of our places within our lives and within our families. Nothing about Christmas is as good or exciting or warm-and-fuzzy as pop culture makes us believe it should be. No one is ever on their best behavior — or even, frankly, good behavior — during the holidays. It’s sort of like the birthday anxiety that you’ve done nothing meaningful in the past year, but worse because it’s steeped in the anxiety of being a disappointing member of your family rather than just a disappointing individual.
But that feeling doesn’t fly as a marketing tactic, so you don’t see it reflected in holiday media much, outside of, like, A Christmas Carol and “To Save Us All From Satan’s Power.” Tony has an intense case of the holiday blues, and while the fact that he’s unable to see Gloria is not a non-factor, his mood amounts to more than self-pity over having to curb his hedonistic instincts. His ability to compartmentalize is in shambles; every part of his life is bleeding into everything else. Guilt and paranoia boil over until he can’t function at home, can’t function during normal work conversations (including a delightful moment when he gets owned by newly-single, glowed-up Charmaine), and starts having panic attacks again.
It’s so dark — and such a sharp decline from last week’s unbridled, oblivious happiness — that it starts to feel like he finally might give into the forces nudging him toward grappling with how unsustainably he’s chosen to live his life. But the reason it all feels so dark is that he declines every opportunity to be honest with himself, thus ensuring the darkness won’t go anywhere. He grabs on to the first opportunity for self-justification he sees — the idea that Pussy started informing earlier than previously assumed — even though that breakthrough 1) comes at the expense of poor, sweet, shy Bobby Bacala; 2) isn’t grounded in legitimate evidence so much as a collective hunch; and 3) inspires some new shitty feelings in its own right.
“It’s fine that I murdered my friend because he betrayed me way worse than I thought” does not strike me as a fun emotional state — and, on top of that, this epiphany doesn’t change anything. Being more betrayed might justify killing Pussy, but it also forces Tony to acknowledge the magnitude of Pussy’s betrayal, to consider how and why he read his friend so incorrectly. He avoids examining that too closely; he discards this new information as soon as it exceeds its utility as an excuse.
Even if he really sat with it, one instance of honest self-reflection wouldn’t be enough to stop the wall between his family self and his Family self from crumbling, despite all his efforts to get himself and everyone else to believe they’re two discrete entities. There’s one weird exception to those efforts, though: his relationship with Janice. Tony (along with Furio, both of them in Santa hats) roughs up the Russian who roughed up his sister, and she’s profoundly touched by this. She hadn’t asked for him to — at least not explicitly, though you could argue that she knew what she was doing by bringing up the assault — and I don’t think there’s any one reason he feels compelled to.
Maybe he feels guilty about Janice being attacked in the first place. Maybe he just wants to do something violent as an outlet for his shitty feelings. Maybe he genuinely wants to do something that she’ll be moved by — which is the most fucked up explanation, but the one that makes the most sense. For as contentious as their relationship is, Janice is one of the only people who knows and accepts both family Tony and Family Tony. For better or worse, they understand each other and their shared history so well that they never need to hide their horribleness from one another. Which is, I guess, a gift in its own way.