A Happy Catastrophe

by Dawson, Maddie

  Bedford stations himself under the table right by the twins. He knows who’s likely to send some turkey his way.

  I’m still discussing marshmallows when my cell phone rings from the kitchen.

  “It’s probably just my parents wishing us a Happy Thanksgiving. I’ll call them later,” I say loudly.

  But it rings again after it has stopped for a second. And then the whole series starts up again. And again. And again. Patrick gives me a pointed look.

  “Oh, dear,” I say. “Maybe I’d better get this after all.”

  “When you come back, can you bring the butter?” calls Patrick.

  “And the milk!” yells Fritzie.

  Marco rides on my hip into the kitchen, where I pick up my phone. It’s my mother’s number, I explain to Marco. He gazes at me steadily, as if he already knows we’re going to need to gird ourselves for this one.

  “Hey, Happy Thanksgiving!” I say when I click the green button. “Are you at Natalie’s? We’re just sitting down to dinner, so can I call you back in about twenty minutes? We can all FaceTime.”

  “Marnie?” she says in a staticky voice. “Marnie?”

  “Hi, Mom. Our connection doesn’t seem all that good. Happy Thanksgiving!”

  Marco tries to relieve me of my phone, but I twist it around so he can’t get it.

  “Oh, sweetie. There you are,” my mother says.

  “Yes, here I am. Listen. Can I call you back? We’re just sitting down to eat, and I’ll get everybody together in a few minutes and we can FaceTime. Are you at Natalie’s?”

  “What?”

  “Bobobobobo,” says Marco, and he now takes both of his wet hands and tries to wrest the phone away from me.

  “ARE YOU AT NATALIE’S?” I yell.

  “Bobobo.”

  “Am I . . . what? Is there a baby on the line?”

  “AT NATALIE’S, Mom. ARE YOU AT NATALIE’S?”

  Marco laughs at my yelling.

  “No, sweetie. I’m not. So your dad didn’t call you?”

  “No! I mean, I don’t think he did.”

  She laughs. “This is going to be a real shocker then, I’m afraid. But, honey, I’m outside your house; at least I think I am. I’m in an Uber. You are on Berkeley Place, right? I told the driver Berkeley Place, but then I wasn’t sure. What’s the number of the house?”

  “Yes, it’s Berkeley,” I say in a daze. I give her the address. “You’re seriously right outside my house?” I start walking to the front door. When I pass the dining room, Patrick gets out of his chair and follows me.

  “No, no, no,” he says. “This isn’t happening.”

  I tilt the phone out of the way so she can’t hear. “I think it is happening.”

  “Your mom is here? Like here here? Shit, Marnie.”

  “I think like in front of the house, here.”

  The Porcupine gathers his mental faculties and smooths out his features. He squares his shoulders and says in a stage whisper, “Okay, then. Let’s just go outside and meet her. I’ll bring in her bags. You know what, though?” he says. “At some point down the road I think we really need to examine what kind of life we have going on, that people keep surprising us on our own doorstep. Like, are we somehow asking for this?”

  I open the door. “I don’t know why it’s happening, to tell you the truth. But there she is.”

  My mother—wearing a fuzzy black coat, sunglasses, a black beret and leggings and boots, and with her blonde hair cut in a side-parted bob—is standing outside of a Lincoln Town Car. The driver gets out and opens up the trunk and hauls out three suitcases and puts them on the curb.

  “Surprise!” she says and flings out her arms. Big smile. “Bet you never expected this on your Thanksgiving Day!”

  “Hi,” says Patrick, heading down the stoop, looking manly and in charge. My mother smiles at him, and then when he reaches her, she grabs his arm and poses like they’re on a parade float.

  “I would have called!” she yells to me. “But then I decided it would be so much more fun and spontaneous to just show up! To see the expression on your face! This is what you’re all about, right? Spontaneous?”

  “It’s very spontaneous!” I call back down to her. “The height of spontaneity, if you ask me! Come on up!”

  She gets busy talking to Patrick and hugging him. He picks up two of her suitcases in his hands and tucks the other one under his arm and comes up the steps. She waves the driver off and picks up her enormous handbag and comes right behind Patrick, talking the whole way up.

  “Darling, I’m so glad to see you—and I feel like I’ve done the most crazy, most out of character thing of my whole life! Isn’t this fun, though? Oh! And who are all these adorable children? Do they all live in the building, too? Now which one is Fritzie?”

  I look around, suddenly aware that in addition to Marco on my hip, I have four other kids hovering around me. The twins are behind me with their fingers in their mouths, staring—and Fritzie is jumping up and down on one foot, saying, “Is this your mom, Marnie? Is this your mom? Marnie! Is this really your mom? Really? Your mom? Can I show her how I can slide down the railing all the way to the bottom? Or can I jump down the steps by threes? Which thing do you think she would like best? Which one? Do you think I can do it, Laramie? I did it four times yesterday and I only got hurt once. Look at this scratch on my leg. That’s what happens if you don’t do it just right.”

  “She’s that one, the jumping one,” I say. “The talking one.”

  “Ah,” says my mother. I can feel her taking in Fritzie’s tangled, unkempt hair, her snaggletoothed grin, the too-short plaid cropped pants with the star-studded leggings peeking out from underneath, the black sweatshirt that’s all stretched out in the neck, the pink Ugg ankle boots, and the fact that she’s standing on one foot teetering on the edge of the concrete steps. But my mom maintains a steady, accommodating smile. (I know that smile; it’s saying, “Later I’ll start my improvement projects on these people.”)

  Laramie says he can jump down in threes, too—and the two of them push past Patrick and my mom and start hurtling themselves down the stairs. She applauds them all and then chucks Marco under the chin and says the thing she always says to babies: “Well, hi there, you squeezums!” (Babies are always squeezums, and puppies are poozums. I’ve lived my whole life under these conditions.)

  “Happy Thanksgiving, I am so glad to see you!” she says. “Isn’t this just the most fun! It is so good to see you, darling, and my, you look like your life has gotten so busy and happy since I saw you last!” She shakes Gloria’s hand. “Hi, I’m Millie MacGraw, from Florida. And I think I’ve just done the astonishing thing of moving to Brooklyn.”

  I am pretty sure I hear myself say, “You’re moving here? Where’s Dad?” but I can’t be sure because my head feels like a bunch of honeybees may have moved inside it. When did this become my life?

  She’s sailing past me into the house. “Oh, it’s so lovely in here! I always just love these old-fashioned brownstones! The history!” she exclaims. She’s come to visit before, so none of it is new, but she does always feel the need to rhapsodize about brownstones and compare them to Florida’s one-story stucco houses. “Patrick, honey, don’t worry about these bags. Let’s just put these down here for now, and I’ll figure everything out when I know where I’m going to live.”

  What?

  “Where you’re going to live?” I say. “You’re moving . . . here?”

  She turns, almost like a ballerina doing a pirouette, and looks at me with her wide, sparkling eyes. “Yes. I’m moving to Brooklyn.”

  What I want to say is, “Where is my real mother, and who are you?” But instead I say, “But why?”

  “Because you’re here,” she says, smiling. “And because I’m changing my life. And I just might be in need of your services, so it seemed smart to come get them right in person rather than over the phone. So . . . I’m here, darling, and I don’t want you to worry about this, because
I’m going to get myself situated real soon and take care of myself.”

  I catch a glimpse of Patrick’s face, which has an unreadable expression. He looks like somebody who might have just been hit in the head with a board.

  “Have you eaten, Millie?” he says, and she answers, “Why, honey, I haven’t! Looks like I’m here right on time. Is there enough?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  MARNIE

  When we go back into the dining room, I’m shocked to see Bedford standing up on one of the twins’ chairs, helping himself to a turkey leg.

  “Bedford!” I yell, and he jumps down, looking appropriately guilty. I wait for my mother to say something about the bad manners of poozums, but she is trying not to look scandalized. I can see it in her face. Suddenly I feel like I’m seeing the whole house—my whole life!—from her point of view. All the chipped, mismatched plates, the couch cushions stacked up haphazardly on the children’s chairs, the stained Thanksgiving-orange tablecloth, the scarred wooden floor, the ratty lace curtains that belonged to Blix, the funky, colorful artwork on the wall—everything I’ve treasured about my own life here looks a bit shabby through the eyes of Millie MacGraw, who has matching everything and sterling silver platters and who prides herself on “making a nice home.”

  “Mom, here. Sit down in my place. I’ll go get another plate and a fork and knife,” I say. Patrick brings over an upholstered chair from the front room while Gloria moves the children over so we can squeeze in another place setting. When she comes over to take Marco from me, he bats her away and squeals. He may now be a permanent fixture on my hip.

  “I have never had such a dedicated fan,” I tell him and nuzzle his sweet little drooly neck. “You are pulling all the right strings with me, buddy.”

  Patrick grimaces. “Can you eat that way? With him, I mean?”

  “Of course I can! But anyway, who needs food when I have this much love?” I glide around the table to my chair, bouncing Marco on my hip.

  My mother gets herself settled in. “Ohhh, look!” she says. “You put the marshmallows on the sweet potatoes! I had no idea you still made it the Southern way.”

  “Well, sure I do. What other way is there? Right when you showed up, in fact, I was in here explaining about how sweet potatoes have to get marshmallowed up on Thanksgiving. Your arrival timing was perfect,” I tell her.

  She smiles at me. “Isn’t timing always perfect? Didn’t you tell me that once?” Then she reaches over and pinches my cheek. “Sweetie, you do look rather fantastic with that baby in your arms. Better watch out, Patrick. She’s going to be wanting one of those of her own, I bet. First, though, forgive me for saying this, but I think y’all should have a wedding.”

  “Me, too! Me, too!” says Fritzie.

  Patrick takes a big bite of turkey. “Wow, this is delicious.”

  My mother laughs.

  “But you don’t have to get married to have a baby,” says Fritzie. “In case that’s what you’re talking about. I am Patrick’s kid, and he didn’t get married to my mom.”

  I let out such a big sigh that Marco laughs and pokes me in the eye with a fat, wet finger.

  “Well,” says my mother and helps herself to the mashed potatoes, “there’s nothing wrong with that. I’m beginning to think marriage isn’t such a great thing after all myself. Are you married, Gloria?”

  “No—well, yes technically,” she says. “We’re . . . you know . . .”

  “My dad’s in jail,” says Laramie cheerfully. “But he’s getting out soon, and then we’re going to move to Massachusetts and have a house. Right, Mom?”

  “Right,” says Gloria.

  I roll my eyes so hard at my mother that she looks back at me with comically googly eyes, and then she does a pantomime of locking her lips closed to show she’s not going to say another thing.

  We recover. Somehow. Everybody goes back to eating dinner, my mom gives some mundane details about her flight, Gloria feels that she has to explain her situation and says she’s taking the kids to visit her mother in Massachusetts tomorrow, and that by the way her husband’s crime was completely overblown and nonviolent and non-drug-related, and then Laramie socks Fritzie in the arm very playfully and she socks him back, and then he and Fritzie finish their dinner and do some dance moves that Laramie learned on Fortnite, which is evidently a video game, and Patrick pours more much-needed wine for the adults. Marco gums my cheek and then stares rapturously into my eyes.

  The doorbell rings again. Patrick and I look at each other.

  He throws up his hands. “Your father, perhaps?”

  “Or maybe it’s your sister from Wyoming,” I say. “We’ll have all the families here.”

  “Maybe it’s my mom from Italy!” says Fritzie. She makes a face. “I hope Richard isn’t with her.”

  “It could be my dad, breaking out of jail,” says Laramie, and I see Gloria shake her head and take another big swig of wine.

  “It’s probably all of them. They shared an Uber,” Patrick says gloomily.

  But it turns out to be Ariana, who technically didn’t need to ring the doorbell since she has the front door key—but she tells me that she thought it would be more polite than just barging in. Especially since she’s standing out there on the stoop with Charmaine, Mookie, Justin, and Dahlia, and they are all laughing and leaning against each other, stamping their feet, looking like an advertisement for youth. Picturesque snow flurries, looking as though they were provided by the props department, are landing on their shoulders.

  “OH MY GOD! It’s snowing! It’s snowing! It’s snowing!” Fritzie shrieks. “Marnie’s mom, come see this! It’s snowing!”

  “Honey, you can call me Millie,” says my mother. “Or Grandma Millie, if you would like.” And she gets up from the table and comes to the door to admire the snow and immediately she gets swept up with the Amazings, who, once everything gets explained and sorted out, can’t get over the fact that I have a mom right here on the premises.

  “This is your mom?” Dahlia says. “Omigod! Guys, isn’t it literally so surprising when you find out older people have actual moms?”

  “I’m ancient,” says my mother. “I’ve been around since God was wearing diapers. I used to change his diapers, in fact.”

  “No, no, I totally didn’t mean that,” says Dahlia.

  Fritzie, who serves as our resident mandated reporter, is required by contract to explain that my mother showed up “by surprise” just a few minutes before, and for some reason, she has to jump up and down on one foot while she says it.

  “Just like I did!” she says. “Millie and me are the Surprise Girls.”

  Ariana points out that she’s also a surprise girl, since she didn’t call either.

  “And Dahlia and Charmaine,” says Mookie.

  “Yes. There are surprise women all over the place,” says Patrick. “What we have here is an epidemic of surprise women.”

  I do all the introductions and go make the coffee and get out the pumpkin pies. Everybody’s talking at once, and I think how Thanksgiving might be one of those holidays that can’t help but turn into what it’s supposed to be about, especially in Blix’s house.

  I love how it feels as though Blix herself might somehow be orchestrating this from the sidelines. It’s just the kind of mishmash of people that she would approve of, I think. Justin is swinging Fritzie around, which may lead to breakage of some sort, and which makes the twins also want that kind of treatment—never mind that they’ve never seen him before, they are in—and everybody is talking at once. Dahlia and Gloria are in an animated conversation about Massachusetts, and Mom is telling Charmaine and Ariana that she left her stodgy old hairdresser because she wouldn’t do the hair-painting thing, and how do you get that rich purple shade? And Ariana is laughing and saying her family was hideous and she couldn’t wait to get out of there, so much judgment about her life choices, like how do they expect her to want to hang around after dinner if all they’re going to do is
find fault with everything, and my mother—my mother!—is agreeing that family members can be the most judgmental people of all, and that it’s simply terrible the way they assume they know everything about us, when they may actually know next to nothing. And then we sit down to eat the pies, and there’s a small flare-up when Ariana takes out her video camera and wants to film all of us with our mouths full, but Justin takes it away from her very deftly, and kisses her on the mouth, which makes the children all go, “Oooooh,” along with my mother.

  The pie dishes and coffee cups seem to vanish off the table while I’m talking to Mookie, and when I look around for Patrick, so we can roll our eyes together in that companionly sort of way, he’s nowhere to be found. He’s gone to the kitchen and is doing the dishes, which is a nice thing, of course. Perfectly fine impulse: tidying up.

  But just like that, he segues into being MIA for the rest of the evening. Absorbed back into his studio. Everyone moves into the living room, and the teenagers finally drift downstairs, and Gloria gets her brood ready to depart. Marco and I are in despair at the prospect of parting, but I tell him we’ll meet again, even if I have to drive to Massachusetts to find him.

  When I’ve gotten Fritzie packed off to bed, and it’s finally just my mother and me left, she says, “Where did that sweet Patrick go?”

  I find a note from him on our bed saying that my mom should sleep in our room with me. He’s got lots of work to do, and this will be better for him, he wrote. He can stay up all night painting if he wishes, without disturbing anyone. And there’s a perfectly good futon in the studio, too. He signed the note with a big giant P. No love, no hearts, no anything a person could cling to.

  I stand there reading the note, and my hand shakes a little.

  “Oh, this is terrible,” says my mother, behind me. “Maybe you should go in and talk to him.”

  “No,” I tell her. “He’s probably sleeping by now, and anyway I’m sure it’s fine. I’ll talk to him tomorrow.”