A Heartwarming Thanksgiving

by Amy Vastine

  “Well, let’s get that boy out of the car and start celebrating,” Corrine said, stopping to hug her friend tightly on her way to the car.

  “No, wait,” Corrine said, holding both of Corrine’s forearms as she went to pull away. “That’s just it. We aren’t staying….”

  The smile left her face. Or most of it did. The little bit that was left was tremulous at best. “Ms. Stevens invited all of the finalists to be in the audience for today’s Thanksgiving special live show. She wants the winner to appear on stage at the end of the show, as a promo for the upcoming season. She even offered to pay flight and hotel for those who weren’t local. So…I’m…”

  “Going!” Joe said, nodding, the pan still suspended between his hands. “We’ll be happy to watch Dawson for you!”

  Corrine was frowning. Why hadn’t Janie called her yesterday with this incredibly momentous news? As a single mother with no real marketable skills aside from cooking, Janie was having a difficulty finding a way to afford all the time necessary to get Dawson to the therapies that would greatly increase his chances of integrating into regular classrooms and lead a fully productive life.

  If she could make it as a chef, her financial and time worries would be over.

  “Thank you, but…” Janie said, stilling holding on to Corinne. She looked her straight in the eye, begging for forgiveness? Understanding? “I’m allowed to bring one guest,” she said, and Corinne instantly caught her meaning. She wanted Joe to watch Dawson alone so the two of them could—

  “And I’m taking Dawson,” Janie said. Then added in a rush, “It’s a family show. Families’ secret recipes. And Dawson…he’s my family…”

  When tears filled Janie’s eyes, Corinne finally clued in. “You want to win more than just about anything, but you can’t be on the show if Dawson is going to be an issue….”

  Janie had already lost two jobs due to situations with her son. Once, when Dawson flipped out in daycare and she’d had to leave work, and another time when she’d been unable to travel due to her son’s special needs. Corinne and Joe had been on vacation in Bali that time, or they’d have taken the boy.

  “Exactly,” Janie said. “And…I’m leaving the two of you alone.”

  True dawning hit, then. She looked at Joe, who was still holding the turkey, and knew that Janie hadn’t called earlier for one reason. She hadn’t wanted to give her and Joe the chance to make other plans for Thanksgiving dinner.

  The person who was taking their split harder than either of them was playing matchmaker.

  The gesture was so sweet, Corinne started to get choked up again. Like she had earlier in the bedroom when she’d put away her grandmother’s tablecloth.

  It wasn’t like her to get overly emotional.

  Unless she was overflowing with joy…

  Yes. That must be it.

  The day was overly fulfilling its promise of joy.

  * * *

  “So…you want help?” Feeling more than a little awkward, Joe leaned against the archway leading into Cor’s big, bright kitchen. It occurred to him that he should offer to leave, but he dismissed the idea.

  She had a twenty-pound cooked bird stuffed with dressing. He couldn’t leave her to deal with it by herself. Carving it alone would be a chore.

  His chore.

  Every year for the past twelve.

  “You can set the table,” Cor said, and he watched her, wondering if she was deliberately disrupting his equilibrium—and if so, why.

  “You want me to set the table?”

  She’d always reserved the task for herself. Always. Said she loved creating the aesthetic beauty that marked the most important meal of the year. Silver had to be polished—even when it had been the cheap stainless they’d had in their first apartment. Napkins ironed and perfectly rolled so the same exact leaf showed at the top of the hand-painted ceramic napkin rings.

  “I was thinking we could just eat in here,” she said, motioning toward the small breakfast nook. “Or there,” with an elbow she indicated the two bar stools at the counter across from where she was working.

  She wanted to eat Thanksgiving dinner at the bar?

  Something definitely was not right.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Focusing on how excited and nervous Janie would be feeling, thinking about Dawson’s aversion to crowds and new settings, Corinne unstuffed the bird.

  Joe had left the room.

  Left it lacking…something. Or rather, Janie’s absence had done that. Still, next to Joe, she loved Janie more than she’d loved just about anybody, and the news she’d just received filled the entire day with joy.

  “Did you talk to your mom?” Joe was back, leaning in the doorway when he should have been setting the table.

  It was a small task. She could rely on him to handle that for her, couldn’t she? Without being all wifely and needy?

  “Not yet,” she told him. Her parents, still in the home she’d grown up in in Chicago, would have an overflowing house for the next few days. With seven kids, many of whom who had spouses, and a few of whom had children, they took their dinners in stages. An event that had been overwhelming to Corinne—the one who most often was doing dishes, re-heating food, taking care of the chores that had fallen naturally to her.

  Not that she’d minded. It had given her a way out of the chaos that always seemed to surround her four youngest sisters. Most particularly when her brothers were on their rampages. Back then, instead of siblings’ spouses and kids, the house had been overrun with aunts and cousins and grandparents, as well.

  “I half thought you’d go home this year.”

  His words made her angry. Because they pointed out how little he knew her anymore. She took a moment to breathe. And then turned. “How could you possibly think that?” she asked him, the first directly personal question she’d uttered in months.

  His shrug looked uncomfortable. “I just thought…with us…that you’d go back to what you did before you and me…”

  For an intelligent, articulate man he sounded just plain stupid.

  Frowning, Corinne paused with her hand on the foil that would cover the dressing in the baking dish before it went into the oven with the cooked bird. Everything would hold on low heat while she made the Waldorf salad, mashed potatoes, gravy and green beans. She’d heat the rolls while Joe carved.

  “Do you not remember me at all?” she asked, looking him in the eye. “Didn’t you ever listen to me? Really listen?”

  “Of course I did.” He put his hands in his pockets as he stood up straight. “I just thought, now…with everyone older…”

  “I hate holidays with my parents.” Which was why they’d never spent one in Chicago. Ever. “If that makes me a bad person, it does, but the cacophony upsets my equilibrium and I’m edgy and no fun and end up in the kitchen all alone, feeling horrible because everyone wants me to join them and then think I somehow look down on them because I can’t be one of them…”

  What on earth was she doing? Spitting drama all over the room. As Joe would say. He hated that.

  Mostly, she did, too.

  Which was why she didn’t do holidays with her family.

  “I can’t find my joy when everyone is together,” she finished, softly, feeling the threat of tears for the third time that day.

  She was uncharacteristically weepy, thinking of that evening six months, two weeks and three days ago when he’d been as emotionally distant as a stranger. She’d blurted out that she thought they should get a divorce. She hadn’t really wanted a divorce. She’d just been so tired of hurt feelings. He’d been nonplussed, but not really all that shocked, and it was when he’d calmly agreed that she’d realized she wanted it, too.

  That night they’d vowed to always remain close friends. Later that night. After hours of talking. They’d finally both acknowledged the ways they’d grown apart. His career had taken a hold of him as hers had her. Both of them loved their jobs and neither one of them had any desire to give
them up. They’d both agreed that in order to succeed, to climb their career ladders, they had to be present in their own individual career worlds. Always ready. Focused. The things that they used to do together, holding Sunday breakfast as a date for just the two of them, always saying ‘I love you’ before they left each other or hung up the phone, going to bed together every night, had slowly gotten lost along the way. Losing out to Sunday morning golf games with investors, hurried telephone goodbyes with others in the room, late nights and early mornings that didn’t coincide.

  She remembered the night so well because it had been so ironic how, during their conversation agreeing to divorce, she’d felt closer to Joe than she had in years.

  Until the next day when he’d texted her to let her know he’d seen their lawyer and put in motion the friendly, uncontested divorce they’d settled upon. His rush had hurt her all over again. Until she’d realized that he was right. They’d chosen to move on and the least painful way to do so was to just get it done. Like pulling off a bandage. It hurt less when you did it fast.

  Now here they were, alone in her brand new life, getting ready to be thankful. He hadn’t said anything since her tirade about her family and, realizing that an awkward amount of time had passed, she finished with the foil, put the dish in the oven and turned toward her soon to be ex-husband. Damage control on her mind.

  And the tip of her tongue.

  Her efforts weren’t necessary.

  He wasn’t standing there anymore.

  * * *

  It wasn’t hard to find her tablecloths. She’d been storing them in the big bottom drawer of her childhood dresser—the one thing she’d taken that her parents’ had offered when she’d moved to California had been her bedroom set. Bypassing the cloth he already knew was too big, he dug in the piles of neatly folded linens, looking for something a little smaller.

  He shook one out before walking to the table and putting it on. Knew she’d hate how the corners of the table weren’t covered. He went back for a second. The edges hung on the floor. She wouldn’t like that, either.

  After a third unsuccessful attempt, he turned toward placemats. There were blue ones—left from the tiny apartment they’d first shared. The kitchen had been painted a putrid shade of blue, but they’d had neither the resources nor the time to do anything about it. She’d taken lunch money to the dollar store, added a fake plastic flower arrangement, a couple of cheap plaques along with those placemats and the room hadn’t made either of them lose their appetite during the six months they’d lived there.

  Shoving the placemats aside with the memory, Joe sought others. Discarded the white and red ones. Even if he could make the colors work, the hearts all over them loudly proclaimed Valentine’s Day.

  He knew which one, too. In his mind’s eye saw the blanket in the middle of the hard wood living room floor of the home they’d just bought. Their first home. Cor had been certain that the fact that they’d closed on Valentine’s Day had been an omen.

  He’d left the closing to go straight back to work—the day’s trading had called to him like a siren—and though he’d made it home in time for the champagne and steaks his wife had lovingly provided, he’d failed to even so much as pick up a card for her.

  As he recalled, though, he’d made it up to her. Moving on past the red and white placemats, he thought about the trip he’d surprised her with just a few weeks later. That week in Bali was hands down one of the best memories of his life….

  They’d just bought their first home. Were both still at the bottom rungs in their fields. They hadn’t had a lot to spend, but Corinne had made the most of the bare little table on the balcony of their very discount motel room, laying out their fast food breakfasts every morning as though they’d been fine dining….

  Joe shut the dresser drawer.

  Sometimes it was best not to remember.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Outside of the office, Corinne didn’t like to judge people. As a prosecutor, she spent her days proving to juries and judges that people had done wrong and should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. Which was why tried extra hard to make certain that she didn’t treat her loved ones that way. But she was pretty close to pinning a guilty verdict on her best friend as she stood alone in her kitchen, cutting up celery, grapes, bananas and apples for a salad she wasn’t sure she’d able to swallow.

  Unless she got lucky and found the joy in spending Thanksgiving day alone with the man who’d once made her feel as though he couldn’t live without her and now hardly even seemed to know who she was. The only thing that kept the guilty verdict at bay was the mitigating factor of Janie’s motive. Her friend loved her and Joe. Wanted only the best for them.

  It wasn’t her fault she didn’t understand that them living apart was best.

  In truth, spending the day completely alone would have been preferable to spending it alone with Joe. She could have driven to the ocean, spent the day in an entirely new and freeing way.

  So maybe, as she sliced, the thought of being at the ocean didn’t fill her with joy, but that was because Joe was there.

  And the loss of their love still hurt.

  He could have made some excuse and left right after Janie did. She could have made it easy on him, asking him if he wanted to go, but, remembering the speed with which her suggestion of divorce had been met, she’d kept silent.

  Joe’s friendship really did mean the world to her and she wanted him to feel as though he was welcome in her home anytime. Particularly on holidays.

  Because while he might have forgotten her, she still remembered the few glimpses Joe had given her of the man who lived inside him. The most intimate peeks into who he was. A loner. A foster child whose parents had been killed in a boating accident when was twelve. It had been just the three of them, on vacation and…

  He was back. “I’ve got the television tuned to the channel Family Secrets will air on,” he said, reaching for plates.

  So that’s where he’d gone. And he was going to set the table after all. Funny how quickly her joy returned.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “So…Monday’s the big day….” Joe was back in the kitchen after carrying silverware into the other room. Apparently he’d vetoed her suggestion of dinner at the bar or in the breakfast nook.

  “Yep,” she said, moving aside to make room for him to empty a can of green beans into a pan. And then remembered exactly what was big about Monday.

  The divorce. They had an appointment to go together to sign the papers on Monday. Their fourth appointment. She’d had to cancel the first one due to a trial that had run over.

  He’d canceled the next two. Once because of a mini market crash. And the second time to attend a celebrity golf outing in Florida with a group of high-yielding clients who attended the Bob Hope classic with him every year in Palm Springs.

  She’d offered to sign the papers herself and let him do them at his own convenience. When he’d vetoed the idea, sticking to their original agreement that they’d go out of the marriage as they come in—signing together or not at all—she’d actually had hope that he still cared.

  That he didn’t want the divorce.

  But nothing had changed. They still met for the occasional lunch. Texted each other several times a week. Acted as each other’s escort now and then when a date was needed.

  And shared nothing more personal than a cab ride.

  Listening to the whirr of the electric can opener she’d installed all by herself the weekend she’d moved in, Corinne poured whipping cream and sugar into a bowl. Joe loved Waldorf salad. And he liked his dressing sweet.

  He dumped canned mushroom soup into another pan. Joe’s cooking was plebian at best, and most times he’d been happy to steer clear of it, but he liked his beans and soup straight from can to pan on Thanksgivings.

  In years past, she thought his attachment to the tradition he’d brought into their marriage endearing. Had seen it as proof that the deep waters she’d always
sensed inside her husband did exist.

  That the dish held an emotional tie to the past he rarely spoke of.

  Now the beans in the pan just annoyed her, symbolizing yet one more thing she knew nothing about. Because Joe didn’t share his emotions with her.

  “You okay with things, then?” He stirred, and the sound of the spoon scraping against the metal pan jarred her nerves.

  “What things? You mean the divorce?” Why wouldn’t she be? Nothing had changed.

  “Yes.”

  “Of course I’m okay with it. Aren’t you?” She waited. Holding her breath because…she didn’t know why.

  “Of course.”

  She breathed. Got herself some water, took a sip, before getting out the hand mixer. She’d whip the cream, stir it into the fruit, sprinkle it with walnut pieces and be ready for him to carve the turkey.

  The turkey! She forgot about making gravy. Or putting the potatoes on to boil. Granted, she hadn’t been in charge of Thanksgiving dinner…ever. First she took orders from her mother, and then, gladly, from Janie. But she knew how to cook.

  “I’m curious,” Joe said casually as she turned off the mixer and moved immediately to put potatoes into a pot.

  “About what?”

  “In the beginning you were so happy with me. I didn’t change. But you got less happy. Why?”

  She stared at him. Then filled the pot with water, carried it to the burner. Turned on the heat. And then, back at the mixer, said, “I don’t know what you mean.”

  He’d been unhappy with her. But she wasn’t going to play the blame game with him.

  “In the beginning you knew how much I loved you and you were satisfied with that. With me. After a while, you seemed to want more.”