Thanksgiving Night

by Richard Bausch

  “I think it’s best,” Holly says to Alison, “if we pretend that the crank on the roof isn’t there.”

  “That’s not easy to do,” Alison says, “given my job, and I’m talking about both of you. Please.”

  “How’s Oliver today?”

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  Alison manages to tell the other woman about the morning.

  “That’s common with strokes, honey. Sleepiness. It goes away.

  They’ve got it in hand. He’s still young.”

  Alison thinks of the long hours in the waiting room, the talk, and the feeling that she wanted to collapse in the arms of the two old ladies and be taken care of by them. She feels it now, though one of them is perched on the roof of the house, quietly peeling the paper away from the label of a Coke bottle she’s produced from a fold of her blanket.

  “How did she get all that up there with her?” Alison asks.

  “She made three trips.” Holly smiles. “You have to admire that, I guess.”

  “What are you talking about down there?” Fiona asks.

  “Not you,” says Holly, smiling. “Sorry.”

  “I hope not.” Fiona smiles back. “Lord. What a bad subject.”

  “Let’s go in and see about getting something to eat,” Holly says to Alison, approaching her with Kalie, holding Kalie’s hand.

  “I’ll be down in a little while,” Fiona says.

  Alison, Holly, and the little girl step into the apparent disarray of Oliver’s work on the house. Holly moves the plastic tarp aside like a curtain.

  She asks what she should make for them to eat, and Alison presses her not to worry about it. “We should go,” she says. But Kalie wants to stay a little longer, and so Alison takes a seat on the sofa, with its view of the stacked wallboard in the hall.

  “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain,” Holly says again, smiling.

  As if this speech were some sort of off-handed cue, a police car pulls onto the street and speeds to the curb in front of the house, lights flashing, no siren. Holly shakes her head. “Oh, Lord. Fiona’s got a cell phone.” She starts out of the house. Alison follows, remembering to turn and tell Kalie to stay where she is in the house.

  The police are Harvey and Eddie from the precinct, and Eddie will be trouble, because he’s rigid and narrow, unable to look to one side or the other; he goes by the book and is proud of it. Harv is too heavy for his own good, gentle and friendly and generally incapable of making a real decision on his own. Alison has, in fact, spent time advising him t h a n k s g i v i n g n i g h t

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  about his hapless love life. Now Eddie’s saying to Holly, “You mean she made the call? She made it?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Holly says. “I’m so sorry.”

  “That’s breaking the law,” Eddie says. “I’ve got to arrest her for it.”

  Then he sees Alison.

  “Hey.”

  “No arrest this time, Eddie, really.”

  Eddie moves toward the house a little and looks up at the old woman sitting there in the bright sun. “You know it’s a felony to call a false alarm in. You know that.”

  “I don’t know what I’m likely to do,” Fiona says. “So I don’t think it’s a false alarm. Although I know some people do. I really am feeling a little desperate. I think I might do something awful.”

  “Will you please come down from there?”

  Fiona says nothing.

  “We can talk about it,” Harv says.

  “There’s no telling what might happen,” Fiona answers with great seriousness.

  “Did you pull the ladder up after you?” Alison asks her.

  “I didn’t mean to cause trouble. I felt so good being useful. Ask her what she did.”

  “We don’t have time for this,” Eddie says. “You come down now or I’m going to take you to jail. I mean it. I’ll book you. I’m going to write you a citation.”

  “She said I was in the way. I only wanted to help.”

  Alison looks back at the house, Kalie standing there in the screen door, her thumb in her mouth. She moves to Eddie’s side. “Really,” she says. “I’ve got this one, Eddie. I’ll owe you one.”

  “It’s on the manifest,” he says. “The call went out.”

  “I’ll handle it.”

  He shakes his head, turning to Harv, who smiles and shrugs. Harv thinks it’s kind of funny: an old lady sitting on a roof, talking trouble.

  “I didn’t say she was in the way,” Holly says. “That’s only how she interpreted it.”

  “You can’t think this makes any difference to us,” Eddie says. “We’re not here to settle your disputes. I’m gonna get back in that car and drive 212

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  around the block and when I come back if she’s still up there I’m gonna arrest you both and put you in that car and take you to jail.”

  Alison says, “Bye, guys. Thanks for coming out.”

  “I didn’t call you,” Holly says to Eddie. “I’m going back in the house. I have nothing to do with this. If you arrest anyone, you know who it’ll be.” She turns to look at her aunt. “You heard that, Fiona. I’m going in the house.” She faces Eddie again. “I’m sorry she did this, Eddie, I truly am.”

  “Do I know you?” Eddie says. He’s offended now.

  “Eddie,” says Alison, “try to let yourself go a little and be nice, huh?”

  “I’m not moving,” says Fiona from the roof, “until she apologizes.”

  Holly says, too quickly, “I’m so sorry, dear.”

  “She doesn’t mean it.”

  Eddie says: “One revolution around the block, and if that roof ain’t empty I swear somebody’s going to jail.” The two policemen get into the car and pull slowly away.

  Alison gestures for Holly to go in the house and then stands facing the old lady on the roof. “You come down. Right now. I mean it. I won’t have my little girl exposed to this kind of behavior. Do you understand me, Fiona? Right now.” She doesn’t wait for a response but goes on into the house. She’s fairly certain that Eddie will return and she won’t be able to stop him from making an arrest. Pathology. And there will be no one to watch Kalie while she goes to visit Oliver. Oh, how she hates it that Marge is gone, though, in fact, she never felt quite at ease when Marge was babysitting, either.

  Holly seems amused, moving through the hanging plastic tarp to the back windows and peering through the curtains.

  “It’s fine,” she says. “Here she comes. Everybody look busy.”

  Alison sits on the couch quickly, while Kalie simply stands in the middle of the living room and stares at the door. Holly has gone into the kitchen and is rattling dishes. “I’m going to cut up some fresh moz-zarella,” she calls. “We’ll have Caprese. Fiona’s favorite.”

  And here is Fiona, entering from the back door, straw hat still on. There’s some shingle-grit on the palms of her hands. She’s gotten a streak of it on her cheeks. “I dropped the ladder,” she says. “It t h a n k s g i v i n g n i g h t

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  knocked over one of the tiki lamps out there. Broken glass on the patio.”

  “I’ll get it,” says Holly. “But right now I’m making Caprese.”

  “I’ve never been a fan of that,” says Fiona.

  “You always loved it. It’s your favorite.”

  “We really have to go,” Alison says, standing. She gives Kalie a look that lets her know she means business.

  “My niece is stubborn,” says Fiona with a little grin. “But don’t go.”

  “Yes,” says Holly. “Stubborn would be the word.”

  The two old ladies go into the kitchen together, and Alison watches Kalie stare after them with a dreamy expression of complete content-ment on her face. In the kitchen, there’s the sound of dishes being brought out, doors opening and closing. The two voices are soft and agreeable.

  Fiona comes in, drying her hands on a small dish cloth. “Would they h
ave arrested me?” she asks.

  “Yes,” Alison tells her.

  “I would never do anything, you know. Though I was feeling pretty desperate.”

  “Fiona, please.”

  “He’ll be fine,” Fiona tells her. “I’m sorry. Will you forgive me?”

  “I want you to do something for me,” Alison says. “Then I’ll forgive you.”

  “Anything, sweetie.”

  Alison points through the entrance to the dining room at the broken glass with its companion, lying there. “I want you to pick that up.”

  Fiona’s face takes on the look of a caught child. She frowns, actually wrings her hands, partly turning away.

  “That’s my condition, Fiona.”

  “I don’t know why it has to be me that gets singled out,” Fiona says.

  “Please,” says Alison. “For me. And for Kalie.”

  “Well, for you two.” Now there seems something like relief in the old woman’s tone. She walks over, bends down, and retrieves the unbroken glass and the largest shard of the broken one. Holly appears from the kitchen with a washrag.

  “Here,” she says cheerfully. “Let me help you, dear.”

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  5.

  Oliver dreams he’s in a dark place on a dark path leading to more dark.

  A terrible dark ahead, and there is ominous music all around him. It’s a horror film, and he’s both a character in it and the person watching it. He takes a step, and then someone else is there. Jesus. He realizes, it is Jesus. Actually. The Son of God. But then also, in the logic of the dream, this presence is Death, too. The terrifying thing itself. Jesus/

  Death approaches him reassuringly. “Don’t worry,” Jesus/Death says in a voice Oliver knows—intellectually, without quite feeling it—is the voice of hope, comfort, respite. “It’s fine. It’s going to be fine.” Oliver looks into the human-shaped light of this companionate presence and abruptly does feel the peace that passeth understanding coming over him. He has the thought, feeling the sweet cessation of fear. It’s going to be fine. The voice has told him, and the human-shaped light is standing there by his side. Pointing to the darkness ahead, he speaks to the shape:

  “Will you walk there with me, then?” And, out of the warm light, the voice says, “Are you out of your mind? I’m not going over there. Uh-unh. Not me. You’re on your own.”

  And Oliver wakes up.

  Early evening in the hospital. He turns his head slightly against the bandage on the side of his neck and looks to the entrance of the room.

  A nurse walks by the door, pushing a cart with something smelly on it.

  It’s the dinner hour, and the malodorous something Oliver breathes is ten hospital-food trays, each of which contains a serving of broccoli. He hates broccoli. He has joked about how he never puts anything in his mouth that smells as though it has already been eaten and then brought up again, and never mind the health benefits.

  In the bed next to him, Drew, with his phlebitis, groans softly, and then says, “What’s that?”

  “Broccoli,” Oliver tells him.

  Silence.

  “What is that?”

  “Broccoli.”

  Drew sighs. “Mary Kate.”

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  Oliver’s silent.

  “Helena Marie. Baby.”

  “Dinner’s coming,” Oliver says. He’s tired of the names.

  “Did you say something?” Drew asks.

  “I said din—” Oliver begins.

  But then he can’t say the word. This enrages him, though he knows somewhere down inside himself that this is not a reasonable reaction to the experience. The rage goes out toward poor Drew, who groans again and says, “I was dreaming something. Woman I knew. What’re you telling me?”

  Oliver manages to say, “Noth—ing. For—get it.”

  Drew’s wife comes in. And Oliver listens to them talk—there’s an irritability in their voices, though the words he hears are mostly endear-ments: darling, sweetie, angel. These are evidently terms that Drew and his wife have used so often and for so long that they issue forth even in expressions of mutual annoyance or impatience. Oliver finds himself thinking about love that has weathered everything, like a petrified old tree with thick roots churning up the ground at its base. He pictures the tree. His condition, he thinks, has made him philosophical. The thought amuses him. But it has been so many years since Mary’s death.

  He has been alone so long, and now he has the desolate thought that Mary wouldn’t have wanted him to be alone like this, in a bare room, with a television that now flicks on—Drew’s wife, wanting to watch Jeopardy! —and a painting on the wall, of a sunny field full of unreal, yellow wildflowers and a fantastic blue, blue sky. He’s lying here weeping quietly, feeling sorry for himself and then feeling sorry for all human frailty, the whole world of striving and worry, and all the children suffering everywhere. Life is infinitely sad.

  Into this darkness, the nurse comes with the smelly cart. She sets the tray up, cranks Oliver to a near-sitting position. Takes a napkin and efficiently, off-handedly, almost roughly, wipes away his tears. “Dinner time,” she says.

  “No—broccoli,” Oliver says to her.

  She says nothing but takes the broccoli away. He eats slowly, nibbling—

  some mashed potatoes, already getting cold. There’s turkey, too, thin 216

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  slices, bland, so flavorless that when one part of it does taste like what he remembers as the taste, it’s a shock, and makes him want to gag.

  He pushes the plate aside. A moment later, Stanley walks in, explaining that he asked at the front desk for him. “I stopped by your house yesterday,” he says. “Alison told me.”

  Oliver stares at him.

  “I was—I mean I saw a job I thought we might bid on, you know.

  It’s a two-man job.”

  “I can’t—do it,” Oliver says.

  “Well, it was just a shot. I wonder if there’s anything you had under-way that I could maybe help you with. See—the—well the truth is, I’ve got to catch a break with work. See.”

  “What—do you want—me—to—do,” Oliver gets out. He can’t help the impatience in his voice.

  “I was just wondering,” Stanley says, seeming a little lost now. He reaches for a piece of the turkey. “You’re not gonna finish this?”

  Oliver says, “No.”

  “You mind?”

  “Help your—self.” He watches the younger man eat what’s on the plate. Stanley cleans it off, turkey, mashed potatoes, peas, cranberry sauce, and a small piece of vanilla cake.

  “Didn’t know how hungry I was,” he says. “Damn.”

  Alison and Holly come in. Fiona is downstairs in the cafeteria. Alison is in uniform, having come from work. She tells him that the nurse on duty has determined that Oliver needs some rest before he can withstand the turmoil of children. Oliver wants to ask why they don’t let him decide that, but the words won’t come. Or they come in a garble, whose effect on Alison makes him stop. He touches her wrist and smiles, indicating Stanley, who says, “Hello again.”

  Alison introduces Holly. Stanley explains why he stopped by, and Holly says, “Actually, we do have work for you. You can help Mr. Ward with our house-partition project.”

  Oliver makes himself smile. A big chunk of thirty thousand dollars out the window.

  Holly pulls a chair up and sits close. It’s odd. She looks into him, t h a n k s g i v i n g n i g h t

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  with this pleasant, excited expression. “We’ll increase the total amount, Mr. Ward, and you can give this young man whatever you deem necessary for him to continue with the project.” She looks at Stanley. “You do this sort of work? You’re good at it?”

  “I’m a hard worker, yes ma’am.”

  “Well,” Holly says. “There we are.”

  “I can start right away,” says S
tanley.

  “Give him the—plans,” Oliver manages, looking at Alison.

  She seems worried and depressed. But she nods, and he feels his pride in her, like returning strength.

  Holly says, “The sooner the better.” She leans close and begins to talk about how it will be to have her own separate part of the house, as if this is a café and she and Oliver are having lunch.

  “Can—I see—the children?” he says.

  “Tomorrow,” says Holly. “The hospital people insist.”

  He sighs, and Alison squeezes his hand.

  p e r d i t i o n

  1.

  With the last days of October, as if to mark the time change, the weather turns quickly to the cold of midwinter. Oliver Ward has developed complications—a persistent fever—forcing a delay of his release from the hospital. The old ladies have been helping Alison with the children, and Elizabeth has taken on a project at the school, having to do with developing a new, programmed text for grammar.

  And so several of Butterfield’s evenings have been free lately.

  Each time, he drove over to Macbeth’s. Just to have a drink, he told himself. Each time. But, of course, Ariana Bromberg was there, and, on two separate occasions, he waited around for her shift to end. On the first occasion, they went to her car and necked like teenagers, steaming up the windows, but it didn’t go further than that. There wasn’t time: Shostakovich was picking her up that night. But the next time, they went to the railroad-depot parking lot. It was snowing, the kind of pow-dery fall that seems too thin to gather but does gather on every surface, making a deep quiet everywhere. He held her hand while she squatted next to the car to pee, and then they got into the back seat. Some part of him stood apart in amazement. He would never have believed this of t h a n k s g i v i n g n i g h t

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  himself. They had little, really, to say to each other—though they had talked in the bar. She made observations about the patrons of the place, and he talked about his mother and great-aunt, the process of dividing the house on Temporary Road. It was all rather humdrum and practical as talk, with no slight suggestion of flirtation in it. Yet, that night, in the back seat of her car, they were avid for each other. He suggested a motel in the next town, Strasburg.