by Nicole Deese
My father turned his face back to the window.
Conversation over.
“Um, I think I’ll go let her know I’m here.”
In another life, his grunt could have been taken for a chuckle. But that life had ended the day he fell three stories from a rooftop, busted his pelvis into three parts, and nearly died from loss of blood. Most days, he acted as though death would have been the better fate.
I set the pan of brownies next to the kitchen sink and placed my fruit salad in the fridge before trekking down the carpeted staircase, so unlike the stairs Lisa and I had grown up with that belched and creaked if breathed on the wrong way.
“Mom?”
“Down here.”
I followed the zippy sound of a power drill into an open area to the left of the laundry room. Kneeling before a large plastic structure, with several loose screws and instructional diagrams surrounding her, was the owner of Closet Queens. Mom bit her lip in concentration as she connected a corner piece to a middle shelf.
“That looks good, Mom.” I skimmed a freshly screwed slab with my fingertip. “Very versatile.” High praise in the closet industry.
My mother spared me an impatient glance. “What time is it?”
“A quarter after four.”
She sighed heavily and clapped her hands hard before pushing herself to her feet. Her knees popped and cracked like an amplified version of Rice Krispies cereal. “You’re late.”
What did that matter? She was the one building a closet while cooking—and likely burning—a turkey breast she got on special during Thrifty Tuesdays. “I brought a fruit salad and brownies for the people who may want an alternative to pumpkin pie.”
She huffed. “You didn’t need to do that. You know I always have Grandma’s Cookies on hand.” As in the individually packaged treats she bought in bulk from Sam’s Club, not a recipe sourced from a blood relation. That would require communication with her extended family members. “Did Lisa tell you we could use you in the field soon? The Roth family over on Franklin Hill are downsizing. We could use another transport vehicle to haul some loads to the thrift store.”
“In the field” was mom-speak for cleaning out closets. Literally. That’s what she did for a living. But though she spoke like a commanding officer, throwing down military jargon the way a millennial abused emojis in a text thread, her family knew otherwise. At the end of the day, her arsenal included nothing more than dirty dustrags, flexible clothing cubes, and the occasional back-of-the-door shoe rack. But by the way she talked, she and my sister were in the trenches together every day. Saving lives one dirty undergarment at a time.
“When are you thinking? I could help after church on Sunday,” I began, keeping my tone light and unbothered by the inevitable eye roll that was coming. “I’d just need to run home and change and let Skye out for a bit, but I could be out there by two if that works?”
My mother’s harried expression locked onto my face. “You’re still doing that, then.”
“What? Going to church?” I asked, trying and failing to pull the same levity into my tone as before. “I try to go every Sunday, yes. I really enjoy the people, and my pastor is so friendly and down-to-earth. It’s a refreshing way to start off the week.”
She waved her hand. “I didn’t ask for a three-point lecture, Lauren. I get enough of those from your sister. I’ll let you know when we need you—likely won’t be till next week.”
I clamped my mouth shut. The postmenopausal sheen on my mother’s forehead glistened as she spoke. It seemed ever present these days. Much like the Closet Queens tank top she layered under the thin, knit-blend cardigan she usually discarded within minutes of putting on.
Mom’s cropped hair had thinned around the crown and silvered above her temples, an aging effect that drove Lisa crazy. “A bottle of hair dye could take twenty years off you, Mom. You can afford to go to a salon every few months, you know.” But like all things vanity-driven, our mother refused. Nina Bailey was too practical for such fanciful living like root touch-ups by a stylist. To our mother, there was always, always a reason to save for the worst-case scenario.
A door slammed somewhere above us, and the ceiling creaked in steady increments.
“Lauren? Mom? What are you two doing down there? The green bean casserole’s smoking,” Lisa called from somewhere upstairs.
Little did she know the casserole wasn’t the only thing smoking today, but that conversation would have to wait for another time, because tonight was about announcing my adoption. And if I didn’t say something soon, reserving a placeholder for an after-dinner conversation, the evening would pass us by the same way it had the last several times I’d planned to tell them.
Instinct took over as my mother trudged toward the stairs, passing in front of me. I whipped out a hand and gripped her forearm, nearly knocking her off her feet.
“For crying out loud, Lauren.” She swung around, and I had the impulse to duck, even though my mother had never once laid a hand on either of her children. “What is wrong with—”
“There’s something important I need to share with the family tonight.” There, I’d done it. I’d just taken the first step. I was basically Neil Armstrong all over again.
My mother’s eyes held a glimmer of . . . what was that look exactly? Excitement? Hope? “Have you put in for an administrator position yet?”
Much too late, I realized my mistake. “Oh no, Mom. It’s not job-related. I’m really happy teaching first grade at Brighton. I don’t have any plans to leave my classroom.” At least, not long-term. My adoption leave would fall under the umbrella of maternity leave in my school district, but after the benefit of those months ran out, I’d go back to teaching again.
My mother’s gaze chilled to suspicion in record time. “Then what is it? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. It’s something good, actually. Positive.” At least, I would choose to see it that way. “But, um, I would really rather wait till we’re all together before I say anything more. Maybe before we serve dessert—”
“Lauren? Where are you?” Lisa called down the stairs, only this time, her voice held the air of a Disney princess, not an overdramatic sister. “Come up and meet our dinner guest.”
My mother cursed under her breath and shook her head. “When will that girl start minding her own business?”
“Wait, what guest? Lisa invited someone to Thanksgiving?” An eerie premonition soured my gut as my mother tromped on ahead without another word. In that one regard, my parents were quite similar. Silence had always been their weapon of choice.
My baby sister waited at the top of the stairwell, motioning me forward with Oscar-worthy flair. “Hey, Lauren, this is Marcus. You remember him, don’t you?”
Panic pulsed through my head as I followed my sister’s pointer finger to a man wearing a fuzzy, milk-white sweater. He shuffled to stand beside her, his receding hairline glistening an oily sheen as he rotated toward the light. “Hello, Lauren. It’s nice to see you again.”
Without so much as a grunted greeting, my mother pushed past our odd grouping in the foyer on her way in to the kitchen. She didn’t have the social graces for awkward meet-and-greets. I wished I could play the same card.
“Oh, uh . . . hello.” My gaze flicked from my sister to the Gollum-eyed man with the shedding sweater. “We’ve met before?” For the life of me, I couldn’t place him. He didn’t have a look I’d easily forget.
“You remember, don’t you, Lauren? You two met at that cute little farmers’ market in Hillsboro last summer,” Lisa offered unhelpfully. “The one with that goat’s milk booth you loved so much.”
I vaguely remembered choking down a mini sample of the milk and stating it was better than I’d anticipated. A reaction that wouldn’t be considered noteworthy to anybody besides my sister.
I tried to connect the dots back to Marcus, who was picking at a piece of lint on his sleeve. “So you’re a goat’s milk vendor, Marcus?”
“No, actually.” He blinked upward. “I was in the booth next to the goat-milk guy. I farm alpacas.”
And just like that, my well of shallow conversational skills ran dry. I opened my mouth and immediately closed it again. As somewhat of an expert in surface-level niceties, considering all the blind dates my sister had arranged over the years, drawing a complete blank was rare for me. But alpaca farming might take the prize for the oddest occupation I’d encountered from one of my sister’s male acquaintances. And I once endured a two-hour wine tasting event with a taxidermist.
I blinked and tried again. “Alpacas? Wow, that’s . . . really unique.” My only reference for the hairy mammal stemmed from the book Is Your Mama a Llama? But something told me Marcus wouldn’t care for that comparison or my childlike recitation.
“Many people aren’t aware of this, but alpacas are some of the most harmonious creatures living on our planet today. I consider myself lucky to work with them.”
Harmonious creatures? But wasn’t YouTube full of spitting alpaca videos? Or was that llamas? And what was the difference between them anyway? Whatever the answer, this was certainly not the conversation I’d planned on this evening.
Leave it to Lisa to destroy my agenda by making one of her own.
“That’s lovely. I wish you well with all your alpaca farming endeavors.” Because what else could I say, really?
“Dinner’s ready!” Mom bellowed from the kitchen.
I pinned my sister with a look that said, Whatever you’ve done, undo it. Now.
Lisa patted Marcus on the back, and a cloud of microscopic white hairs puffed into the air. “I invited Marcus to join us for Thanksgiving. I figured it would be the most convenient way for the two of you to get to know each other, considering how busy you’ve been lately, Lauren.”
But we both knew this little stunt had nothing to do with convenience. It was punishment, payback for my lack of engagement in Lisa’s primary communication style lately. Unlike normal people who texted in short paragraph form, my sister texted like a woodpecker after too many margaritas. I simply didn’t possess the supernatural ability to respond to every whim and thought she sent off into oblivion.
Sweat gathered under my arms and at the nape of my neck as the herd of my family—and one stray alpaca farmer—migrated toward the dining room. I shot Lisa a glare that would translate in every language and clasped my hand around her skinny arm. No way was she getting out of this that easily. I squeezed, and she jolted to a stop before rising up on her toes to call into the next room over. “We’ll just be a second, Marcus. Find a seat anywhere. Trent! Help Marcus find a seat. And not the one nearest the window, that chair leg is wobbly. Mom needs to fix it.”
“Am I the only one capable of working a screwdriver around here?” Mom grumbled.
I yanked my sister into the alcove between the pantry and the hall closet, planting my hands firmly on my hips so I wouldn’t throttle her. “What do you think you’re doing? Why would you invite a stranger to Thanksgiving dinner to ‘get to know me better’?”
Lisa had the audacity to quirk her microbladed eyebrow into an arch. “I’m helping my big sister out.”
I pinched my lips tight to hold in a string of words I hadn’t used since eleventh grade. “Helping me? No, Lisa. This is not helping me. I’ve told you at least a dozen times: I’m not interested in dating. I’m happy with the single life. I want to be single!”
She actually laughed. “That’s ridiculous, Lauren. You’re not happy, you’re just way too set in your ways. And you’re wasting precious time. You may not know this, but there’s an expiration date on finding a decent man—preferably one without a trunk load of baggage.” She pointed in the direction of the dining room. “Marcus has a lot going for him.” She ticked off her fingers one by one. “He’s in his early forties, he’s never been married, no kids, has a steady career—albeit an unusual one. But still, that package is hard to find at your age.”
“At my age? You’re only two years younger than me.”
“Yes, but I’m married. With a family.”
Twice. My sister had been married twice. And before her twenty-fourth birthday, no less. And her family often looked more like a leaky rowboat than the fancy cruise liner she pretended they were on social media. But those contrary details were never mentioned during these get-married-or-rot-to-death lectures of hers. Most of the time I wondered if the only reason Lisa was so desperate to see me married was to prove the old adage that misery really does love company.
“I want different things for my life, Lisa.” Things I’d hoped to share with the family before my sister had invited Old MacDonald to dinner. “Please stop with the matchmaking stuff already. If it ever does happen for me, it won’t happen like this.”
I blinked away a sudden image of Joshua’s smiling eyes as Lisa’s expression pinched into suspicion. “What’s going on with you?”
I exhaled a courageous breath, ready to launch the proclamation like the firing of a cannon. “Well, a lot actually. I’ve decided to—”
“Girls! Stop gabbing over there and come to the table already! Thanksgiving only lasts for a day. I can’t reheat the turkey a second time.”
Lisa huffed and rolled her eyes at our mother’s beckoning. “Come on. But this isn’t over.”
No, it isn’t. Far from it, actually.
Together we moved toward the insanity of Thanksgiving with the Baileys.
Austin and Andrew shoved their way in through the back door, selecting the seats farthest away from their father, Trent, who was heavily engaged in some kind of war game on his iPhone. Marcus sat beside him, his ice water halfway guzzled—likely an attempt to stop from overheating under the polar-bear pelt he wore as a sweater.
Lisa called for her daughter, Iris, who, like usual, was in the living room trying to coax the geriatric cat from under the sofa. So far, she was zero for a thousand.
“Iris, I said right now,” Lisa repeated sternly.
My sister’s cherub-faced preschooler, with strawberry blond pigtails braided on either side of her head, begrudgingly obeyed. She was promptly positioned in the chair between her father and mother, her bottom lip pushed out in a weighty pout.
“Art,” my mother hissed through clamped teeth. “Did you not hear me? I said dinner was ready.”
“I think I’ll take it out here tonight.”
No matter what the occasion, major holiday or a random Wednesday night, this conversation never failed to be the opener of every Bailey mealtime.
“No, you’ll take your seat in here. At the table. With your family. On Thanksgiving.” My mother clunked down a bowl of soggy-looking green beans with a crusty top layer. “Lauren has something she wants to say to us.”
Every noise in the house seemed to fizzle out at once.
Trent cut his gaze away from his iPhone, both boys stopped adding rolls to their plates, and Lisa paused filling Iris’s glass with milk mid-pour to stare at me.
Every part of my body blushed with the kind of prickling heat that could set a person aflame.
The only sound in the room was the hollow drag of my father’s cane working its way to the table. The tap-slide-tap sounded ten times louder than usual. My mother reached over my place setting and planted a steaming pan of freezer-aisle cheesy potatoes in front of her granddaughter.
Iris crinkled her nose. “But I don’t like yellow cheese, Mommy.”
Lisa pinched her daughter’s upper arm and leaned in close, though her voice could have been heard outside. “Hush, your aunt is talking.”
Confused, Iris looked up from her oozing plate and met my gaze. “No, she’s not. She’s just standing there. Her mouth isn’t even moving. See?”
My niece, the only sane member of my entire family.
“Well, she’s about to talk. Go ahead, Lauren. What is it? What do you want to say to us? Now that you have everybody’s undivided attention.” Lisa had been fluent in snarky remarks since the age of eight.
M
y father continued his slow shuffle to the opposite end of the table.
Sweat prickled the length of my spine. Why was it ten thousand degrees in this dining room? And why did it feel like my throat was closing in on itself? “Actually, um . . . well, I wanted to . . . um . . .”
And then, as if he could sense my silent mortification, Alpaca Man, who up to this point had done nothing more than observe my circus of a family, stood and pulled out a chair for me. One point to the farmer. Could farmers sense fear in people the same way animals could?
“Do you need to sit down? You look pale. Here.” He gestured to the empty seat, and I didn’t hesitate to sit in it. For his kindness, I’d willingly purchase a lifetime supply of whatever alpaca goods he sold on his farm.
Ironic that my only allies at this dinner table were a stranger and a five-year-old.
The wrinkle between my mother’s eyebrows pulsed with impatience as she took her seat at the head of the table and placed a paper towel over her lap. “Well? What is it, Lauren? We’d all like to eat before Christmas.”
“Right, exactly . . .” I said with a forced chuckle as sweat adhered my shirt to my back like glue. “I realize we’re all super hungry, but I just thought it was important, on this day of gratitude, to thank Mom for taking time to put together this delicious Thanksgiving meal for us. Way to go, Mom.” And then I gave my mother a thumbs-up. My mother. A woman who frowned at every cheer routine my sister had ever performed in high school. “Anybody else have anything they’d like to add?”
It looked like the tell-them-sometime-before-my-kid-graduated-from-college plan was what I was going with now.
A mumbling of awkward thank-yous ensued around the table as I scooped a big helping of greasy potatoes onto my plate and passed the tray to my left. The orange and yellow oils pooled around the white rim, nearly splashing onto my mother’s white tablecloth. Lisa’s suspicious gaze was still trained on my face.