by Ann Hood
“Perfect,” he said.
“And what’s going to happen when somebody spills gravy all over it?” Dana said.
She was chewing bubble gum very loudly, snapping it as if to punctuate each point she made.
“We’ll wash it,” he said. “It’s a new invention. Washing machines. Driers.”
“Very funny.”
Jenny’s parents had a lace tablecloth her uncle had brought them from Ireland. And heavy silver napkin rings with a big A engraved on them.
“Napkin rings,” he said out loud, and rummaged through the chest.
“Napkin rings?” Dana said, and snapped her gum again.
“That is a disgusting habit you have,” Troy told her.
She snapped it once more, even louder. “Is all this for the new girlfriend?” she said. Caitlin had told her that this girl walked like she had a stick up her ass.
“It’s for us. We’re supposed to be pulling together. Making a family.”
“Uh-huh,” Dana said.
She pulled her old cardigan tighter around her and walked to the window. Her knees were dirty through the rips in her jeans. It was too dark to see anything, but still she peered out.
“Do you still think about her?” Dana said. “Out there somewhere?”
For a minute he thought she meant Nadine. But then he realized she was talking about their mother. He felt the draft again. The hairs on his arms shot up. His skin got all bumpy. Troy could see John Lennon’s chin peeking out, and he tugged on his shirtsleeve again.
“Sometimes,” he said. “Yes.”
Millie wore her Annie wig on Thanksgiving. Renata pretended that her daughter’s face was not growing thinner, that she did not look even smaller and more lost under the tangle of bright orange curls.
“We could just stay home,” Millie said. “Eat our Cornish game hens. Watch the parade.”
Last year, in New York, Jack had taken Millie uptown to really watch the parade. They had left at dawn, eaten breakfast at a diner somewhere, then shivered through the whole Macy’s Thanksgiving Day extravaganza. When they got home, Millie had told Renata about every float, every Broadway star, in great detail. It seemed a lifetime ago now.
“This will be better,” Renata told her. “We’ll get out. Get fresh air. Be with people.” She arranged walnut halves in a circle on top of a pumpkin cheesecake.
Millie groaned. “I am so sick of fresh air,” she said.
Every day, Renata made Millie take a long walk with her. She brought books about birds and trees of New England. They stood together in the woods, trying to identify nature. But nothing looked like the glossy pictures in the books, and so far the notebook Renata had started to record sightings only had chickadee, birch, and pine in it.
Renata dusted the crust of an apple pie with brown sugar and cinnamon. “Are these gorgeous or what?” she said.
Millie shrugged. “They’re pies,” she said.
“I’ve got to tell you,” Renata said. “This guy. Tom. He was the hunk of high school.”
“Him?” Millie started to laugh.
Renata examined the lattice crust on top of the harvest pie, looking for any imperfections. She’d stayed up all night baking. She wanted everything perfect.
Suddenly, she started to laugh too. Who would ever have imagined that she, Renata Handy, would be bringing pies to a Thanksgiving dinner at Tom Harper’s? Tom Harper, who used to make wisecracks at her when she passed. Who had married the class beauty. Who had grown, through these twenty years since she’d last seen him leaning against the radiator at the end of the corridor in school, slightly paunchy and somehow more appealing.
“What’s funny?” Millie said. She stood on tiptoe and studied the pies.
“Everything,” Renata said. “All these things people tell you are going to happen, really do.”
“Like?”
“Like, I don’t know. The prom queen gets fat. The ugly duckling turns into a lovely swan. The class hunk invites you to dinner.”
“Mama,” Millie said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. But your pies are beautiful.” She took a small grimy finger and poked it right into the pumpkin cheesecake. Then licked it clean and smiled. “And delicious.”
Renata expected Tom Harper’s children to be beautiful, replicas of their parents. She’d imagined a blond frosty daughter, a tall athletic son. Instead, here were two scrawny teenagers who looked like ragamuffins. The word waif kept running through her mind. She kept thinking about a movie she’d seen about street kids in Seattle. That’s what they looked like. Or the teenagers that used to try to hustle her in Grand Central Station.
The girl, Dana, kept eyeing her suspiciously. She had a bad haircut that looked like one of Millie’s wigs. She wore ripped jeans and a shirt that could have belonged to Tom. She looked slightly tough, like a girl who already knew too much. And the son, Troy, looked like a juvenile delinquent dressed to see his probation officer. The edges of a tattoo were visible under the frayed cuff of his pale blue dress shirt.
The house was a mess. Run-down, neglected. It looked like a house someone had once loved but had given up on. In fact, Renata thought as she put her pies on the kitchen counter, that was exactly how the kids looked too.
“I never cooked a turkey before,” Tom told her. He blushed a little, and shrugged. “Usually we have Thanksgiving at my sister’s. Mandy? Do you remember Mandy?”
Renata shook her head.
“She’s younger,” he said. Then peered through the smudged oven door at his turkey.
Someone had set the dining room table beautifully, with linen and silver and candles. It looked ridiculous against everything around it, like a mirage.
“The pies look great,” Tom told her.
She had placed a walnut over Millie’s finger hole. Now it seemed silly to have worried so much. This was not at all what she had expected. She thought that Tom Harper would have everything under control, clean and polished. She thought she would be stepping into a glossy photograph, like the ones in Gourmet magazine.
He was standing close enough to her that she could smell the soap on him. “It’s so hard,” he said. “Doing everything alone.”
She realized then that he saw the two of them as kindred spirits. The thought surprised her.
“It’s like, you want to stay a family and everything. But you’re not sure how,” he said. “You make lists, right? Families have holiday dinners together. Families go on day trips. They watch Wheel of Fortune, the nightly news.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Renata said. “It’s always been just Millie and me.”
He did not try to hide his surprise. “But her father—”
“The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker,” she said. She remembered how in school some Italian kid, Jerry Iannone, had called her Renata Putana. And Tom Harper had chimed in. What the hell was she doing here? she thought, and stepped back, away from him.
He turned away and pretended to be busy with something.
They were not, Renata thought, kindred spirits at all. She watched him spoon a wiggly blob of cranberries onto a small plate.
“God,” she said. “I could have made cranberry sauce. That stuff is awful.”
When he looked at her, his face was still covered with surprise. “Make cranberry sauce?”
He was still a hunk, she thought. Extra weight or not. She was sure the guy could melt women’s hearts.
“Yes. You just buy fresh cranberries and—”
He shook his head, laughing. “Of course,” he said. “I never even thought about that.” He shook his head again. “Fresh cranberries. Remember in ninth grade? That class trip to Plymouth Rock? Cranberry bogs and the little fake colonial town?”
“Yes,” she said slowly. Renata did not have anyone with shared memories. Ninth grade, she thought. Plymouth Rock.
“All I wanted was to sit next to Libby for that long ride back home,” he said. His voice was sad, distant. “I only got to within two rows of h
er.”
Renata had sat alone on that trip. Up front, behind the driver while behind her the rest of the class sang—the theme from The Monkees and Gilligan’s Island and F Troop. She had known all the words, but when the others faltered, forgetting what the line after “The end of the Civil War was near when quite accidentally … ,” she had not spoken up. Instead, she had completed the song in her mind, staring straight ahead at the headlights going the opposite way in the dark.
“Now that would be a good day trip for me to take Dana and Troy on,” Tom was saying. “A little history. Some cranberry bogs. I mean, they probably think cranberries only come in cans.”
Renata put her hand on his arm. “They’re too old for that kind of trip, Tom. No teenager wants to spend a day in a village filled with phony Pilgrims.”
He seemed surprised. “No? But it’s educational. It’s … history. We’ll take Millie too. We’ll all go.”
He seemed so hopeful, so optimistic, that she said, “Yes. All right. Some Sunday we’ll all go.”
Troy lit the candles. In their soft light, Jenny looked like an angel. Now that she had arrived he didn’t even mind that his father had invited this weird woman and her sick kid. Jenny made everything seem calmer, almost normal. She’d brought something called a horn of plenty, a basket filled with colorful little pumpkins and squash and autumn leaves. The squash, she’d told him, were just decorative. Gourds. It seemed silly to grow something you couldn’t eat, but he’d accepted what she said and placed the horn of plenty between the candlesticks as a centerpiece.
Jenny squeezed his arm. “Everything looks so lovely,” she whispered.
He thought he might burst, he felt that accomplished. And Renata had baked these incredible pies. Wait until Jenny saw them.
During dinner, the phone rang.
“Let it ring,” his father said.
But the little kid, Millie said, “What if it’s an emergency?”
Then he and Dana and their father exchanged a look. What if it’s her? That’s what they were all thinking.
“I’ll get it,” Troy said.
He answered the phone in the kitchen.
“Fuck you, you slimy asshole!”
Troy looked around, nervous, as if everyone could hear all the way in the other room.
“What would you do if I burned your fucking house down? Huh? Answer me, you lying fuck.”
He kept his voice low. “Nadine,” he said. But he couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“Is that little blonde your girlfriend?” Nadine was saying. “Huh? I’ll fucking kill her. What is she, twelve? Huh? Answer me, you fuck.”
Gently, Troy hung up the phone. He held on to the door frame, to steady himself. He took a few deep breaths. Then he went back into the dining room.
He smiled at everyone. “Wrong number,” he said.
“You sure you don’t want to take some of this pie home?” Tom asked Renata.
“Positive,” she said.
Renata and Millie had stayed much later than she’d expected. They had watched two football games. Had turkey sandwiches. Played charades. And now she was helping Tom clean up in the kitchen. It was dark outside, and cold. From the living room came the sounds of the Wicked Witch cackling. Everyone else was in there watching The Wizard of Oz on video.
“What did we ever do before VCRs?” Tom said.
“Regular old TV,” she said. “Gilligan’s Island. F Troop. “She bit her lip to keep from saying more. The day had gone too well to ruin it. And standing here in the too warm kitchen with Tom, she felt an intimacy that she did not want to lose.
He turned to her, clutching a plate to his chest. A fine crack ran across it. “This was really nice,” he said. “I mean, today. Everything.” He laughed that self-conscious laugh.
“Yes,” she said. “It was.”
A thought popped into her mind. I hope he kisses me. Her heart sped up. She felt her cheeks burning. I hope he kisses me. She shook her head, girlishly, to get rid of the idea.
“It’s really nice,” he was saying, “to be, you know …”
“Yes?” I hope he kisses me.
“Friends,” he said. That laugh again. “To be friends,” he said.
“Friends,” she said. But still the thought stayed. She was wondering how he kissed. What he would do first. A small gentle one? A deep passionate one?
Tom said, “I could really use a friend.”
“Me too,” she said. “Definitely.”
He picked up another plate, concentrated on rubbing it dry. “So many women are, like, sex fiends or something,” he said. “You can’t imagine. And sex gets in the way of being friends, I think.”
She nodded with exaggerated enthusiasm. “Absolutely. The two don’t mix.”
He was smiling at her, a broad honest smile.
“I’ve got to go,” she said suddenly. She had to get out of there.
“Oh. Okay.”
She felt all turned around. She stumbled, trying to get out of the kitchen as quickly as she could.
“Slow down,” Tom laughed from somewhere behind her.
The living room was dark. Dana was upstairs with a friend of hers, Caitlin, who had shown up a few hours ago. But Troy and Jenny and Millie were all sitting together on the couch. They had stopped the movie, leaving Dorothy frozen, asleep, in the poppy field.
“I don’t have a daddy,” Millie was saying.
“That’s all right,” Troy said. “I don’t have a mother.”
Millie gasped. “That’s much much worse,” she said.
At the door, Tom kissed Renata goodbye on the cheek. It was as quick and dry as a brother’s would be. She clutched Millie’s hand and hurried away, to the safety of their car.
Libby had fallen head over heels, hopelessly, in love. Although it wasn’t fair to compare, and women’s magazines always advised against it, she couldn’t stop herself from doing it. Jeremy versus Harp. It was like night and day. In some ways, she decided, Harp was still like a boy. He loved TV and sports. He guzzled beer and talked about cars. He loved action-adventure movies and the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. Why, he subscribed to that magazine just for that one issue! Even the way he made love was still like a teenager, all rough and eager.
Jeremy was a man. He had a chest thick with hair and made slow careful love. Later, at work or on the freeway, Libby could actually get dizzy remembering it. And he read! Serious books by writers like Kafka and Chekhov. Books most people only read in school because they had to. He had never seen Bewitched or The Munsters or I Dream of Jeannie. He had never seen Butterflies Are Free. He liked jazz, Ben Webster and Dexter Gordon. Libby was certain he was the man she had been waiting for her entire life. She spent hours in the library, reading up on everything he talked about.
She was certain now there was a bigger reason for her coming here. It wasn’t about becoming an actress at all. It was to meet Jeremy, to have her eyes opened. When she thought of all those women her age, the ones magazines did stories about, she felt as if she was getting in on their secrets. They read the New Yorker and listened to jazz and watched movies with subtitles. Libby realized she had gone about everything all wrong. Jeremy was setting her straight. Jeremy was smart and talented, an intellectual. He was also married.
“Separated, actually,” he told her.
This after it was too late and she was already in love with him. Then she remembered. “I am too,” she said. “I’m married too.”
He seemed almost pleased. “Kathleen is a harpist. In the symphony. Beware of musicians,” Jeremy said. “Especially harpists.”
“Tom is a mechanic,” Libby said. “I got married too young. He’s back in a small town in Massachusetts, waiting for the Red Sox to start playing again, drinking beer and playing poker with his buddies.” She felt a little guilty describing Tom that way. But everything she said was true.
“How awful for you,” Jeremy said. “Did he beat you? That sort of thing?”
“Noth
ing like that,” Libby said. “He’s just completely dull. Not at all evolved.”
“In a way,” Jeremy said, “that’s even worse.”
There was a dark side to Jeremy. He brooded and drank straight vodka. He had insomnia. She sometimes found him hunched over his computer, unshaven and drunk. If he caught her watching him like that, he threw things at her—shoes, the empty vodka bottle, pens. She imagined that this was what it must have been like to be in love with Poe or Chopin, scary and exciting. It was frightening, but Libby thought that was part of being creative. Hadn’t she locked herself in her room for days at a time back home?
For a while, Libby had written poetry. She had followed the guidelines from a book called How to Find the Poet in You. The book had exercises at the end of each chapter, which she did carefully. In a few months’ time she had written a sonnet, a haiku, a limerick, and a free-form poem. She thought they were beautiful. She’d read them out loud to Tom, and he’d loved them. The sonnet had almost made him cry. She sent them out to magazines listed in The Poet’s Market. No one bought them. But now she wondered if maybe she was like Jeremy, too deep, too artistic for the commercial market.
More and more she was afraid that he would make fun of her. He was going through an especially bad case of writer’s block and the smallest thing could set him off into a tirade. Last week he had refused to go out in public with her because he thought she looked cheap. “Go back to your mechanic if you’re going to dress like that,” he’d told her. She had on her favorite dress too, the electric blue spandex one. Sometimes, after a movie, he called her stupid. He told her she didn’t understand real art. The truth was, despite her excitement at first, she still got sleepy when she had to read subtitles. It took her forever to finish one New Yorker, and as soon as she did, yet another appeared on her doorstep. They seemed to multiply at a very rapid rate.
On days she didn’t see him, Libby snuck off to a multiplex movie cinema and went from theater to theater watching what Jeremy called “junk.” Then she ate at a Big Boy. She marked Excellent for every category on the comment card: COURTESY, CLEANLINESS, QUALITY OF FOOD.