by Cat Mann
****
Ari and I lay tangled up in each other limbs, his chest serving as my pillow and his face buried beneath my hair. The blankets had been lost to the other side of the bed hours ago. I heard Ari’s door creak open, but I was too tired to give much acknowledgment to whoever was disturbing my sleep. I half-heartedly cracked one eye briefly and saw Andy walk into the room, with Rory and Thais standing behind him in the doorway. I groaned softly and buried my head more deeply into Ari’s chest, wishing all three of them would just go away.
“Ari,” Andy said as he shook Ari’s shoulder, “come on, get up. Tee-time is in a half hour.” Ari didn’t budge. “ARI!” Louder this time. “Wake up!” Andy said again, shaking his son so vigorously that I could feel the strength he put into the motion. I made another small moan and Andy gave me an apologetic smile.
“Ari,” I said in a whisper.
A smile spread across his face and he blinked his sleepy eyes at me. I tilted my head toward Andy and Ari’s smile faded. I rolled my head grudgingly off Ari’s chest to a nearby pillow. He gently covered me back up with the blanket, then rolled over and wrapped his arms back around my body, snuggling his face into my hair.
“Mmm, go without me.” He groaned to Andy. “I can think of much better things to do than play golf with you guys.”
Andy chuckled, “I’m sure that’s very true, but I reserved this tee-time over a month ago and you aren’t backing out now.”
“Nick could go in my place,” Ari mumbled.
“I don’t think so, Ari.” Andy’s voice had become deep and authoritative. No one in this family liked to be told no.
Ari knew when to give in; he kissed me on the temple and sat up, “Fine, I’ll go. I’ll be out in a second.”
I heard Andy sigh and mumble something unintelligible as he walked away.
Before the door closed, Rory sang out in his loud booming voice, “good morning, Ava!” I swatted my hand in the air at him and then rolled over in the opposite direction. Ari made his way to the closet, got dressed then came back to my side in bed.
“I’m only playing the back nine, so go back to sleep and I’ll be here before you wake up.” I pushed my head deeper into the mass of pillows and fell back asleep as he kissed me softly on the top of my head.
I don’t know how long I slept before the dreams came to me. I was once again in a dark room dominated by the round table. The men I had seen once before were sitting around the table in deep discussion of something I couldn’t quite understand. I remembered Andy asking me to stay in the dream as long as I could and to try to focus on my surroundings. The room was thick with cigar smoke and smelled musty. I sensed that the room was not large, but I couldn’t actually see the perimeters. I stood still for a bit, acclimating myself to the darkness and the cigar smoke, then took a few steps closer so the men’s faces were no longer hidden in the shadows. I stood for another short period of time, just looking at the six of them, studying them. Their features were all quite similar – dark hair, olive skin tones, and dark, old eyes – but their weight and height varied from one to the next.
I looked carefully at some papers that covered the table, but couldn’t make them out, I took a few more steps, trying to see what was written on them, but to no avail. I stepped even closer. A sudden silence in the room caught my attention. I swallowed hard and looked up. The man in front of me was staring right at me … not through me, but at me. Somehow, he knew I was there. He started to shout, “Moirai, Fate. Fate, she is there!”
Backpedaling as fast as I could, I tried to force myself to wake up. The man reached out to grab me. Terrified, I slammed my eyes shut. I could feel hands around my shoulders. He was shaking me and my own screams echoed in my ear. When I finally opened my eyes, all I could see was … Ari.
“Holy hell, Ava!” he said, cradling my face in his hands. “What happened, what’s the matter?”
Calming down and slowing my beating heart was a challenge and took several minutes. When I could, when the hysteria had calmed, I told him exactly what had happened.
“Are you positive they saw you?”
“Yes, I am absolutely positive. He looked right at me.”
Ari let out a deep breath then stood up. “OK, don’t worry. We’ll figure something out,” he said, echoing the words his father had used a week earlier.
“K.” I tried to brush the dream away and move on by grabbing some clothes out of my bag and walking down the hall to the shower. I took my time washing my fears away and calming my nerves. After drying off, doing my hair and applying a pinch of make-up, I put on a black knit sweater that fell ever so slightly down my shoulder, paired it with a pashmina and a skirt, and made my way into the kitchen.
I found Aggie busy working on a huge Thanksgiving feast, and was able to settle down for the better part of the morning to help her. She gave me the task of making the pies. I made seven pies, which struck me as horribly ironic since I eat almost nothing with sugar in it except for an occasional spoon of peanut butter. I embraced the chore – it was a pleasurable enough way to get my mind off my fears.
Aggie was very easy to talk with. She asked me questions about my childhood, my mother, the foods I like to eat. She was playful and at times sarcastic; in other words, she seemed to be a lot like me. This was the first holiday I would be spending without my mom and my mind kept floating back to her, Chicago and the brownstone. I think Aggie could tell that I was homesick; all of a sudden, she came around to my side of the big marble island and held me in a warm hug.
She stroked my hair for a moment, then pulled back and took my face in her hands.
“Ava, I know I am not your mom and that I can never come close to filling the void her death has left in your life. But I want you to know that I will always hold you in my heart and that I am here to help you whenever you might need me.”
Tears pooled in my eyes and Aggie threw her arms around me once more until I caught my breath.
“Here,” she said, walking over to a shelf in the kitchen that held both cookbooks and pictures in expensive looking frames. She grabbed a 5x7 frame and handed it to me.
“This is your father, and this little guy here is Ari when he was just one year old. It was taken a few months before you were born.”
The picture was of a smiling, good-looking man holding a little boy on his knee. Both of them had mischievous grins on their faces. Little Ari looked exactly like grown-up Ari – his eyes a bright, clear brown, his smile broad, and his hair stuck up all over his head. I felt a pang of jealousy and found myself wishing I had been the baby sitting on my father’s knee in the picture with my dad instead of Ari.
“Adrian loved Ari so much. We were all so close. Your father was the best man in our wedding and Andy and I miss him dearly. I know there hasn’t been a day that has gone by that Andy hasn’t spent time searching for you. Adrian was so cryptic about your mother. He said so little about her; he wouldn’t even tell us her name. It hurt us a bit to know that he was keeping such a large part of his life hidden from us, but now I know that he was trying to protect you … and us as well. Whatever was out there, he didn’t want it finding our home. I will never forget the last time we saw him. He told us that you would find us someday and he gave us the letter to keep for you. He held on to Ari for dear life and cried. Thinking about how he was that day makes me suspect he might have known something that we didn’t. I think Adrian somehow knew that Ari would one day grow up and fall in love with you.”
I took in a sharp breath at her last comment, but Aggie didn’t seem to notice. I gazed at the photo a little longer, then handed it back to Aggie.
“No, Ava, I want you to keep this; it’s yours.”
“Aggie, I can’t take this photo. Thank you for showing it to me, but it belongs with you.”
Aggie playfully shook her head at me. “Ava, you are just as stubborn and bull-headed as your father was, maybe even more so. I can tell that you and I are going to have some fun arguments and I
look forward to them.”
Ari’s home began to fill up around noon and friends and family started in on decorating the three Christmas trees – a fir in the entryway, a spruce on the sun porch and then the largest one, a white pine, in the living room. Ari just shook his head and laughed at his mother’s tree fixation, but I have to admit that the house, little by little, was being transformed.
Lauren sat at the piano punching the keys in an attempt to play some Christmas songs. I took a seat next to her and showed her the right notes to hit. She soon gave up and let me take over; I finished her song, then quickly threw in the Peanuts theme song for my own enjoyment. Lauren thought my choice was hilarious and gave me a couple of requests. I obliged her for a little while then snuggled up with Ari on the couch to watch The Wizard of Oz on TV. I was feeling at ease with the Alexanders; I didn’t even mind playing the piano with them around me.
Aggie prepared a huge Thanksgiving meal with all of the traditional menu items. There was the turkey, of course, and the stuffing, the mashed potatoes, the gravy, green beans, rolls, some strange cranberry concoction that traditionally no one ever ate – and of course my pies. The spread was endless. Everyone sat at the dinner table, talking over one another, sharing stories and laughing loudly. Afterwards, I helped Aggie clean up by clearing dishes and wiping tables and counter tops.
Once we were done and the kitchen spotless, I found that most of the people who had stuck around into the evening were hanging out together on the deck. The air was mild and soft; the sky, a perfect clear black, was littered by millions of stars shining down on us. The deck was adorned with yards and yards of twinkling lights and lanterns, and music came softly through the outside speaker system. I walked out to join the others and started talking with Rory, who carried on and on about football until Harry Belafonte’s “Banana Boat Song” came on. Rory let out a great sigh but had a smile on his face. He was trying desperately to feign a look of annoyance, but was failing miserably.
The music was infectious. Ari was all smiles as he pulled Lauren up off her feet and twirled her around on his way towards me. He pulled me into his arms and we danced while Ari playfully sang along with Belafonte. Ari is a great dancer, even when he is just being funny. He moved his body along with the beat and rocked me back and forth, sweeping me off my feet. My face hurt from smiling and laughing so hard. Several other people began to dance, Aggie and Andrew included, and when the song was finally over, all of the bystanders were clapping and laughing along. Ari didn’t let go of me, though … he held me to him and kissed me with passion right there in front of everyone and the laughing turned into whistles and whoops. My cheeks burned with embarrassment and I tried to cover them up with my hands. Ari pulled my hands from my face and wrapped my arms back around his waist, and kissed me again, causing a giggle to escape my lips.
“That little noise you just made has become my new favorite song; it speaks directly to my heart,” he whispered.
If my cheeks could have gotten any redder, they would have. I immediately felt shy and buried my face in Ari’s shoulder; he kissed the top of my head and swayed with me back and forth to the sweet, soft rhythm of the next song on his playlist.