by Homes, A. M.
At the Lionel Store, it takes a while before the sales guy realizes exactly who the train is for, but once he does, he gets into it, and seven hundred dollars and lots of accessories later, we leave the store—each of the boys carrying a heavy bag. I take the boys out for ice cream. It turns out Nate has never had a banana split. I order two for the table, and Cy scowls at me. “It’s my big day,” he says. “Let us each have our own.”
And we do.
When we are done, we rendezvous with Ashley and Madeline, who have had not only their hair done but their toes and nails as well.
“One more stop,” Cy says, as we cram back into the minivan. He directs me to the Eighty-first Street side of the Museum of Natural History.
“I’m not sure how close I can get—they close a lot of the streets ahead of the parade.”
“Your best is all I ask,” Cy says.
I park in a lot a couple of blocks from the museum and, like a line of ducks, we follow Cy, bumping into people as we go, echoing a chorus of “Sorry, sorry, sorry.” At the barricade on the corner of Eighty-first and Central Park West, Cy whispers something to the cop and pulls his old driver’s license from his wallet. I glance at Madeline, who seems to know exactly what Cy is doing. She smiles.
“Of course,” the cop says, opening the barricade and ushering us all through.
Cy smiles, pleased with himself. We are now among the select few pedestrians on the block where the Macy’s parade floats have been laid out in the middle of the street and are being inflated. “There’s a hose going right up Betty Boop’s ass,” Cy points out.
“Betty Poop,” Ricardo exclaims.
“How did we get here?” Nate asks.
“I’ve still got a card or two up my sleeve,” Cy says.
“We used to live right here on this block,” Madeline says. “For many, many years. Our girls grew up playing in Central Park if it was sunny, or among the dioramas in the Natural History Museum if it was cold or raining.”
“Cool,” Nate says.
“This parade is the stuff of my childhood,” Cy says. “I was here when Mickey Mouse first flew, and when Ethel Merman sang.”
“I had no idea,” I say as we walk up and down. The children are in awe of the giant floats, Betty Boop, Kermit the Frog, Shrek, Superman all swelling to life. Under bright, nearly forensic white lights tended to by workers in Tyvek suits, the giant balloons are held down by netting, sandbags, and ropes. I can’t help but notice that on the other side of the museum there are also floats—and an enormously long line that snakes for blocks—public viewing.
“This is the coolest thing ever,” Ricardo says. “Thank you.”
It is magical, almost fantastical, and what I’d call the good kind of melancholy—as sweet as it is, it’s also sad. We linger until it is dark and cold and our bones have begun to ache.
As we are driving home, they all fall asleep in the car. I am alone and awake. Driving up the Henry Hudson Parkway to the Saw Mill, I see the glowing eyes of a raccoon staring me down at the edge of the road. It begins to snow—first small white flakes, and then fat ones, the size of the doilies under the lamps in Aunt Lillian’s house. I open the window; the snow blows into the car, dusting everyone as if with a kind of magical powder.
Thanksgiving. It has been a year—and a lifetime. The table has been set. Ashley and Madeline have handcrafted a cornucopia centerpiece that spills autumnal bounty across the freshly pressed tablecloth: gourds, squash, pumpkins, and, if you look carefully, the silver-buckled Pilgrim shoes Ashley and I bought in Williamsburg overflowing with plump red and green grapes.
Thanksgiving morning, I am up early, laying piecrust in tins. Glancing out the kitchen window—past the stump from the maple tree, which has been chopped, chipped, spit out as mulch, and sprinkled around everything in the garden, like funeral ashes scattered in remembrance—I spot four deer soundlessly tiptoeing through the yard, a father followed by two fawns and the mother. Their tails twitch as they bend to taste the garden. I have to smile. The only deer I’ve seen near here have been bloody carcasses on the side of the road. Madeline shuffles in, sees that I’m staring at something, and comes to look. She leans over the sink and raps heavily on the glass. “This isn’t a grocery store,” she yells. The father deer’s ears twitch, his tail goes up, and they take off, having gotten word that they are no longer welcome.
Madeline asks if I’ve noticed Cy sitting on the floor of the living room, in his pajamas, hooking up his train set.
“He looks happy,” I say.
“He is,” Madeline says, confessing that she’s glad he got the train now—she doesn’t think he’s going to make it until Christmas.
“The doctor said he was doing well,” I say.
“He’s going,” she says, “bits and pieces are flaking off. But he’s not suffering. We should all be so lucky.”
The children are in their pajamas, watching the parade on TV and helping Cy set up the train. Nate’s friend Josh is dyslexic. He calls Nate “Ante.” Nate explains that whenever Josh texts, he types “Ante” instead of “Nate” and the nickname stuck. My suspicion that they are more than friends is quashed when Nate comes in for breakfast and tells me that Josh is not the average academy student: next year, after Josh becomes Jenny, he’ll transfer to a coed school so that the academy doesn’t have to address the gender-bender issue.
“How did you become friends?” I ask.
“We’re both knitters,” Nate says. And then Nate helps me slide the twenty-eight-pound trussed, stuffed bird into the oven. “I wrote to my father,” Nate says. “Well, I started to write a letter, but it got really long—eighty pages. I gave it to my adviser, who said it’s not a letter, it’s a memoir, and he wants me to keep going. Am I too young to write a memoir?” he asks.
There is no right answer.
Between making “holiday punch” and looking for a platter big enough for the bird, I’m texting back and forth with Cheryl—I invited her and her family, but Thanksgiving is big in Ed’s world. His sister cooks, and Cheryl and Ed double up on their Plavix and Lipitor the week before. “Be sure to shove a lemon into the bird’s hole before you put it into the oven,” Cheryl texts.
“Too late.”
“Never too late,” she writes. “And before it starts to get brown make an aluminum foil tent—save the browning for the last 30 min—helps the skin stay crisp.”
“Does anyone use an actual pumpkin to make pumpkin pie?” I ask.
“No,” she writes.
Mr. and Mrs. Gao arrive, carrying a hot turducken, which they deep-fried at the restaurant and brought directly to us.
“I have no idea what a turducken is, but I like the way it smells,” Madeline says, welcoming them.
“We don’t know either,” Mrs. Gao says. “We saw it on TV and they said it was very American. We ordered it online.”
Ricardo’s aunt and uncle come in with a gigantic sweet-potato-and-marshmallow casserole and an enormous glass bowl of ambrosia. As a way of saying hello, Ricardo gives us a long demonstration of what he’s learned on the drums.
Ching Lan and her parents have taken the train from New York, carrying big bouquets of flowers and Lucky Break Wishbones for the children. “You know how turkey have only one,” her mother says. “Well, now you can have as many as you want, spread lots of good luck. We sell them all week in the deli—very popular.”
With each new guest, introductions are made all around. In the middle of it all, Ashley descends the stairs wearing her dress from Colonial Williamsburg along with the shawl and head covering that Sofia got her for the bar mitzvah. She has become increasingly religious, defining herself lately as “Orthodox.” I accept the notion as a phase, a heartfelt adolescent identification offering her comfort, and, I hope, part of the progression towards a healthy sense of self.
“I want to light the Thursday-night candles and pray,” she says.
“There are no Thursday-night candles,” I say.
“But Aun
t Lillian and Jason have never seen me do the prayers.”
“I hear you, but today is Thanksgiving; the day belongs to our Christian brethren. Would you like to say grace?”
“Let Cy or Ricardo say grace, but I want to speak at the table.”
“About what?”
“I’ll prepare something,” she says, going back upstairs.
“Okay,” I say.
Jason and Lillian arrive with the famous cookie tin, laden with product.
“I taught Jason how to make them,” Lillian says proudly.
“We did it together last night,” Jason says. “Now we can have cookies anytime, as many as we want.”
“Are you saying you don’t need me anymore, that you only wanted me for my cookies?”
“Mother, I am saying that I am glad you trusted me with your secret recipe,” Jason says.
Lillian looks around. “Where is your mother? I thought for sure she would be here—I was looking forward to our rapprochement.”
“She and Bob are going out with friends,” I say.
“That seems strange, doesn’t it? You making a holiday dinner without your mother?”
I make no mention of my anxiety about what would happen, or how I would introduce Madeline and Cy to my mother and Bob. Who would they be to each other? Would there be a fight for turf?
“Well, Bob’s children only invited him but not Mother to their Thanksgiving, and their feelings were hurt,” I explain. “Of course, I invited them both to join us, but as my mother put it, ‘I don’t want to burden Bob with the complexity of family, he’s suffered enough. We’ll go with friends, there’s an early bird at a local place. The minivan will take us from here; we’ll have a good time.’”
Before we sit down to dinner, we take lots of pictures—group shots in the living room. Almost everyone has a camera or a phone, so we take turns, some friends and some family.
“Should this be our Christmas card?” Madeline asks Cy.
“What’s with all the Chinese?” I hear Lillian ask Jason, as we make our way to the table. “I thought he got divorced?” She takes her seat at the table. “Is he running a boarding house?” she mutters. “It’s like a freak show, a random collection of people.”
I am at the head of the table, bearing witness. I am thinking of Sakhile and the e-mail he sent this morning: “When the road narrows, the guy to the rear of you has the right of way.”
I am thinking of George and his proctitis in prison and wondering what they’re serving for Thanksgiving dinner an hour north of here. I am thinking of Cheryl and her family. I am thinking of Amanda, wondering if she is in this country or out of this world, and of Heather Ryan’s parents having this first holiday without her, and of Walter Penny likely out for a long run before supper.
Stay, I tell myself, as I take a breath. Stay here, in the moment. And I breathe again—deeply. I think of Londisizwe and his tea, and even though it has been months, I burp and the flavor repeats.
I look down the length of the table and see young and old talking, passing platters of turkey and stuffing, sweet and savory, embracing the season. Ricardo hands me the cranberry sauce. “Ashley and I made it,” he says, proudly. “We squeeeezzzed the lemons.”
“No such thing as too much gravy,” Cy says as the gravy boat circulates.
I look at Nate and Ashley and remember Thanksgiving last year, when they were curled in their chairs like spineless lumps, their electronics in hand, eyes focused on the small screens; the only things engaged were their thumbs. I remember looking at them with disdain as they sat inert, unaware of their mother enslaved in the kitchen, their father bloviating at the guests. And now Nate turns to the guests and inquires, “Does everyone have everything they need?” And Ashley asks Lillian, “Can I get you anything else?”
In the living room, the television is on—the movie Mighty Joe Young is playing, and I ask Nate to turn it off, and he does. I am surveying the situation, comforted that I can actually feel pleased. In fact, I notice that I feel nothing except benevolence—free-floating good will.
It is Thanksgiving and I do not fear the other shoe falling; actually, I am not even wearing shoes. There is a distinct absence of tension, of worry that something might explode, erupt, or otherwise go wrong. I note the absence of worry and the sense that in the past that absence of anxiety would have caused me to panic, but now it is something I simply notice and then let go—carrying on.
I am looking down the table thinking of everyone I’ve ever known; every hello and goodbye sweeps through me like an autumn breeze. I am porous, nonstick.
“A prayer?” Cy suggests.
Our heads are bowed.
“Itadakimasu,” Nate says in Japanese. “I humbly receive.”
“Our Father, for this day, for this food we thank Thee,” Ricardo’s aunt offers.
“My turn,” Ashley says, standing up before the aunt is done. “So, like, it’s been a really wild ride,” she says. “But there’s a book I read this summer and I wanted to share it with you.” Ashley then begins to read from a page she’s printed out:
I do not think of all the misery, but of the glory that remains. Go outside into the fields, nature and the sun, go out and seek happiness in yourself and in God. Think of the beauty that again and again discharges itself within and without you and be happy.
“Very nice,” Cy says. “Was that Whitman? Longfellow?”
“Anne Frank,” Ashley says.
Cy waits a moment before raising his glass. “Well, I want to thank you, all of you. It has been a very good year for Madeline and me, moving back into our home. I don’t know why we ever left. La-hoolum!”
Madeline leans over and whispers loudly to Cy, “Thanksgiving is an American holiday, not a Jewish holiday.”
Lillian leans over and, while pointing towards Madeline and Cy, asks Jason, “Whose people are those?”
Jason shrugs. “Dunno.”
“I didn’t know Claire’s parents were Caucasian,” Lillian says.
“Maybe Claire was adopted,” Jason suggests.
“And where is Claire anyway?” Lillian asks. “I thought they killed Jane, did they kill Claire too?”
We eat, we gorge, we stuff ourselves, greedily devouring everything. Plates are passed for seconds and thirds. Aunt Christina’s ambrosia is oddly addictive; after my third helping, she tells me that the secret ingredient is heavy mayonnaise. I skip a fourth serving and load up on turkey. We eat until we are sated and still we keep going, eating until we are in pain, until we are suffering, because that is the new American tradition.
“I don’t even like sweet potatoes and I had two helpings,” Ashley says, pushing herself away from the table.
“The bird was perfect,” Madeline says.
We take a break before dessert; the children work as a team and clear the table.
Mrs. Gao and Ching Lan and her mother insist on helping to clean up. Mrs. Gao brought Tupperware containers—“my gift to you,” she says. “I love these things; they burp when you close them.”
I am so overstuffed that I can literally go no farther than the living-room sofa. I lie there thinking of George eating pressed turkey breast, jellied cranberry slices still bearing the ringlike indentations from the can, lumpy gravy, and glutinous white-bread stuffing, and I wonder: Is there pumpkin pie in prison? If there is, does it have any flavor at all?
The children are outside, playing football on the front lawn with Ricardo’s uncle and Cy; there are joyous shouts as the pigskin passes from hand to hand.
There is talk of an early snow, freezing rain.
It is three hundred sixty-five days since the warning, three hundred and sixty-five days since Jane pressed against me in the kitchen: me with my fingers deep in the bird; our wet, greasy kiss.
It has been a year in full, and still the thought of Jane fills me with heat. I feel myself rise to the occasion.
May we be forgiven; it is a prayer, an incantation.
May We Be Forgiven.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
With great thanks for their support, friendship, and editing skills: Marie Sanford, Amy Hempel, Katherine Greenberg, Amy Gross, Elliott Holt, Lisa Randall, Laurie Simmons, and Syd Sidner, who sat next to me for days and weeks, bringing me way too much coffee, and Claudia Slacik, who quite literally gave me a place to write.
Zadie Smith, who asked the question that got the whole thing going; William Boyd, who picked the first chapter for Granta’s 100th issue; Salman Rushdie, who later selected the piece for The Best American Short Stories 2008; and Heidi Pilator at Best American Short Stories.
Agents Andrew Wylie, Sarah Chalfant, Charles Buchan, Jin Auh, and Peter Benedek on the West Coast. And lawyers Marc H. Glick and Stephen F. Breimer.
Paul Slovak, my editor at Viking, who met me for lunch many times along the way, and Sara Holloway at Granta, UK, who has been a wonderful friend and editor for the last ten years.
Françoise Nyssen and Marie-Catherine Vacher in France; Carlo Feltrinelli, Fabio Muzi Falconi, and Maria Baiocchi in Italy; Robert Ammerlaan in the Netherlands; and Helge Malchow and Kerstin Gleba in Germany.
Elaina Richardson, Candace Wait, and the staff of Yaddo, without whom I would never write anything. Special thanks to Catherine Clarke, who retired in 2011 after spending twenty-five years at the front desk saying, “Good afternoon, this is Yaddo,” in her wonderfully calm voice to anyone who called.
Andre Balaz, Philip Pavel, and the staff of the Chateau Marmont—my West Coast Yaddo.
My colleagues at the Pen American Center, Poets and Writers, and The Writer’s Room in New York City.
And my brother and parents—what a long strange trip it’s been.