The family begins to show up shortly before the Detroit Lions kick off their annual Thanksgiving Day game. My father has already gridded a sheet of paper for the football pool. Squares go for a dollar apiece, and I buy five, marking my initials in spots scattered across the graph. At the end of each quarter, we check to see who has the square that corresponds with the current score. The numbers across the top half represent the Lions, and the numbers down the side represent their opponent—this year, the Chicago Bears.
When Uncle Tim and Barry arrive, they shed their coats, and Tim pulls out a twenty-dollar bill. “I’m feeling good about the Lions this year. Sanders is unstoppable.”
“He’s still young. How can you be so sure he’ll come through?” Barry snaps, grabbing a handful of mixed salted nuts from a bowl on our coffee table.
“Never underestimate the power of the underdog,” my father interjects. “Come on, Barry, why don’t you help me fill out these leftover squares.”
Aunt Helen arrives with my cousins and even Uncle Richard this time—I guess lawyers get Thanksgiving off. She asks me to help her carry in paper bags of wine and 7-Up. “For the kids,” she explains, as though I’m unclear. Mom is bent over peering at the turkey in the oven.
“Don’t keep opening the door, it’ll just take longer,” Aunt Helen scolds, as if she has her own cooking show.
“Yes, I know, I’m just keeping an eye on it.” Mom sighs, turning off the oven light.
“Where’s Betsi?” my cousin Kristen asks, pouring herself a large glass of soda without ice. “She promised she’d show me how to do a French manicure.”
“Aren’t you a little young for manicures?” I say under my breath.
“I’m sure she’s on her way,” my mother says.
“I don’t think we’ve all been together since the cottage. Is that possible?” Aunt Helen asks, helping my mother fold cloth napkins and slide them into fancy silver rings.
“That was a long time ago,” I blurt out.
“It wasn’t that long ago, Presley,” Mom points out. “Just a few months.”
“Yes, but everything is different now.” Once again my words come out without warning, before I realize what sentence I am forming.
Mom and Aunt Helen exchange a quick glance they think I don’t see, but they don’t reply. Kristen pauses briefly midsip and then adds more 7-Up to her glass so it is once again full.
“I…guess I’ll put the napkins on the table,” I say, gathering the rolls bound together by only the thin, simple curve of silver.
Mom added the extra leaves to our mahogany dining table so there would be enough room for everybody. But even with the extra space, the spots are nearly overlapping, the outside salad forks of one place setting butting up against the soup spoons of another. I wanted to sit near Barry, but he has taken the seat at the farthest corner. With Uncle Tim on one side of Barry, that leaves only the head of the table, which is Dad’s traditional spot. I anchor myself in the middle, so I can still keep an eye on Barry but have a better chance of second helpings of the best dishes.
Mom starts bringing the food to the table, spacing out the covered tureens. I can hear the buzz from the kitchen, where Dad is slaying the turkey with his electric knife; no one else in the house is allowed to touch it, not even Mom. Earlier this morning, I asked Dad why he’s so in love with the gadget.
“Because,” he explained. “It does exactly what it’s supposed to do—quickly. It lets me get to the core of what I really want.”
The turkey is sliced, light and dark meat arranged on my mother’s large white porcelain platter, and set on the table last. We are all seated except for Mom and Dad, who hover in the kitchen having a whisper conference. Only two empty seats remain at the table, both of which had been reserved for Betsi and, as she confided in my mother when they didn’t know I was listening, the person she has called “the best fuck of my life.”
My mother’s reaction was surprisingly calm and blasé. “Betsi,” she said, sighing, “that’s not exactly the best reason to get swept up so quickly in someone else.”
“That, dear sister, is a matter of opinion,” Betsi said.
Whoever this new guy is, the one thing he’s not is in our dining room, and neither is Betsi. Aunt Helen stares at her watch, although there’s a large grandfather clock right behind her. Uncle Richard uses the edge of the tablecloth to wipe off his glasses. Uncle Tim cracks his knuckles. My other cousins begin to fidget, especially Kristen, who whines just loud enough for everyone at the table to hear: “Can we start passing the dishes?”
Barry stares at his empty plate.
I catch Peter’s eye. We both know very well what cue needs to be given before the meal can proceed with parties still absent. Our parents’ whisper conference turns into a swirling hum building into a crescendo of my father declaring, “We will not wait for her anymore.” He storms in the room and takes his seat, unfolding his napkin and placing it in his lap. My mother follows slowly like a dog that’s been scolded and sinks into her chair.
“Now,” my father finally says, “who wants to say grace?”
The call from Betsi comes as we are clearing the dishes, the phone ringing just as Dad drags Uncle Tim and Barry into the garage to look at the new lantern he bought for their ice shanty. They are planning to go to the lake this weekend, early, during that time when the light of day hasn’t quite started to peek from the horizon. “Now we won’t have any problems seeing what we’re doing. Trust me. This is the best light you can buy,” I overhear him boasting.
I know immediately it’s Betsi on the phone, because it’s just my mother and me in the kitchen, but Mom turns on the garbage disposal to muffle any transcriptions of her conversation. The cordless phone is tucked into the crevice between her neck and shoulder so she can use both hands to push the scraps down the drain. I refuse to touch other people’s left-behind bits without giant yellow rubber dishwashing gloves, but my mother is fearless about it—usually. Right now she stops completely, and the garbage disposal makes that empty sound like it’s clearing its throat and looking for more.
Mom flips off the disposal in time for me to hear her say, “…in Vegas, while we all sat here waiting for you. I know you’re happy, but really, Betsi, I just can’t talk to you right now. Be safe.” My mother’s hands are dripping all over the buttons of the phone as she more or less hangs up on her sister.
“You’re going to ruin the phone,” I try to tell her, but she ignores me, dropping it back in the cradle without wiping it off.
“Presley—”
“I don’t want to know.” My words come out hard, serious—final. Remarkably, she nods in agreement and then presses start on our dishwasher, which is packed with more dirty plates and glasses and silverware than one household should ever have.
“Hey, Presley.”
It’s Barry’s voice at my bedroom door. He raps gently when I fail to respond, and continues. “Can I come in for a sec?”
“Sure,” I say from my window seat. We already said our family goodbyes at the front door. I fled immediately afterward to avoid any further discussions with Mom, just in case she tried to share more details about Betsi’s impromptu Vegas trip. Down below, I can see Uncle Tim’s truck idling in our driveway, my dad leaning in to talk, shoving his gloveless hands into his pant pockets to shield them from the wind that is beginning to pick up again.
“Sorry, am I interrupting?” Barry asks politely, as if I am a stranger.
“No, I was just reading,” I lie. There’s a book open on my lap—it’s the one Barry gave me for my birthday,Tender Is the Night . But I’ve been rereading the same sentence for the past five minutes, the words on the page replaced with images of Betsi in Vegas feasting on all-you-can-eat shrimp and feeding quarters into slot machines with the best fuck she’s ever had.
“What do you think?” Barry asks. My face is blank. “About the book. Do you like it so far?”
“Oh! Yes, I do. Though I’m not really sure why Dic
k Diver is so dedicated to his wife. She seems so unstable.”
He nods. “But he loves her. And it’s not really her fault.”
“Isn’t it? I guess I thought she sort of thrived on the craziness, the drama, around her.” I slide my finger into the book to hold my page. “You were right, though. He writes about being in love in a way that’s different from anything I’ve ever read.”
“So hey, I meant to give this to you before I left tonight.” I expect to see another book in his hands, but he’s holding his varsity jacket. He extends it to me as if it’s wrapped in a bow.
“Your jacket?”
“Yes. I want you to take it.”
“Why? It’s got all your varsity pins on it, your letter, everything.”
“I know. It’s just—things are tough—right now. You know, with Lyndon and the team and my grades…” His voice trails off.
“And other things too, right?” I dance around specifics.
Barry sinks into my desk chair, clutching the jacket in his hands like a rope. “Why didn’t she come tonight, Pres? I really needed her to be here.”
I sigh. “I think she just got…tied up. I don’t know.”
“I do. She’s with someone. That guy. I know it.” He stands up again, walking toward me with his offering. “I need to straighten things out, like a do-over. So please. Take it.” Now Barry is the one whose voice sounds hard and serious, his eyes certain and final.
“How about I just keep it for you? For a little while?” I ask. “Like a loan.”
“Okay, Presley,” he says, handing me the cluster of leather and wool. “Okay.” He starts to leave but pauses in the doorway. “I don’t think it was her fault—the wife in the book, Nicole Diver? I think Dick just thought he could save her and save himself. Maybe he just lost himself along the way, and by the time he realized it, it was too late to go back and change things.” I keep my eyes focused on Barry’s varsity pin attached to the front pocket as he adds a quick “See you,” and then he is gone. I am left clutching his two gifts—a jacket representing so much of what he’s accomplished and a book I am struggling to finish, full of words and ideas I might never understand.
My back is to my bedroom door when my father pokes his head in to say good night. Barry’s book is still open in front of me, though my progress has been minimal since he left: fourteen pages. I tried to switch locations to speed along the process, but moving from the window seat into my bed just made me more tired. Underneath my covers, I’m still wearing my favorite pair of gray corduroys and my eggshell-colored cardigan, but if my dad notices, he doesn’t say a word.
“Whatcha doing?” he asks, sitting on the edge of my bed.
I turn over toward him. “Just reading.”
“You were awfully quiet tonight.”
I shrug. “The turkey made me tired.”
“Yes, well, that’s the tryptophan.”
“Right. I can never remember the name of it.”
“I noticed Barry came back in to see you?”
“Oh…yeah.”
“Did he want anything in particular?”
“No, not really.” Barry’s varsity jacket is on the desk behind my father, but he doesn’t notice. I stare at the cover ofTender Is the Night.
“Is there something I should know, Presley?”
“No.” I sigh. “He just wanted to ask me what I think of the story so far.” I hold the book up to Dad so he can see what I’m reading.
“Oh. Anyway, I came up here because I have something for you.”
“What is it?” I ask, now feeling neither calm nor sleepy.
My father reveals what he has been concealing in his left palm—a nearly perfect wishbone, plucked and cleaned dry. “Do you want to make a wish?” he asks, holding the bottom of one end.
I stare at the U-shaped bone with a thousand possibilities held in its tip, thinking how this will be the first time in years that Betsi is not holding one end and I the other.
Dad reads my mind. “I know she’s not here, but you should still get to make your wish.”
“It only comes true if I get the end with the tip at the top.”
“Well,” my father says, patting my leg hiding underneath the blanket, “why don’t you give it a try.”
I sit up and grab the free end, close my eyes, and pull. The bone snaps easily, just a quick pop, and when I open my eyes and see what I am left holding, I believe for just the briefest moment that my wish might come true.
Chapter7
Ice Fishing
On Thanksgiving night,I fall asleep with the broken wishbone on my bed stand and dream that I am treading water in Lake St. Clair in the middle of the night. There is snow on the banks of the lake, but the water is as warm as a bath, and I can feel the strands of algae tickling the bottoms of my feet. My legs cycle in the water to keep me afloat, but they are heavy sandbags, and I blame too much turkey for the exhaustion. I squint and try to spot any signs of cars approaching in the distance on the road. There is nothing—just the light from the full moon skipping across the surface.
My mind tells me I should start heading toward the shore, yet my body refuses to cooperate, and my legs continue to circle in the same spot, stuck in a pattern and moving at a much slower speed. I think maybe if I dip below the water for a moment, it will break the spell and set me free so I can swim to safety. I stop fighting and let myself fall under, closing my eyes, because at this time of night, I won’t be able to see anything.
Hey, Presley. Down here.
The voice is so close it sounds like it’s coming from inside of my ear. I am only inches below the surface, but the words startle me enough to spring me waist-high out of the lake. My body lurches toward the shore, arms crawling through the water at remarkable speed in an attempt to save me from whatever was waiting at the bottom.
It’s way too early in the morning for phone calls, especially for a holiday weekend. The shrill rings roll into one another without an answer, then begin a second round. My eyes pop open. From my bed, I can see that the streetlights are still burning outside, competing with the early daylight. I lie under my covers with my quilt pulled up to the bottom of my chin, listening to the phone cry out over and over again, begging for someone to pay attention.
The sky begins to take on shape and color, a red glow seeping into my room and swooping across the walls. I wrap my blanket around my shoulders and shuffle closer to the window.
The phone is still ringing.
There are two police cruisers parked outside.
It’s the busiest shopping day of the year, I think.
I watch the officers get out of their cars. There are four of them, one woman and three men, bundled in state-issued parkas with a silver name tag on the left breast. The female cop says something into her radio as they all begin closing in on our front door. I wander out of my room, and as I head for the stairs, I hear my parents’ closet door sliding on its tracks and imagine my father is looking for his robe. I am already at the bottom landing when the phone rings are finally cut off by the sound of my mother’s muffled “Hello?”
I open the front door before any of the police officers have taken one step onto our porch. The tallest cop, a man with broad shoulders and a mustache and a tag that saysPOLARSKI , takes lead.
I wonder if he remembers our house from the fire in the fall.
“You shouldn’t be standing in the doorway without any shoes on,” he says.
I look down at my bare feet as I hear my father approaching behind me. As the winter wind sneaks in and whips around my ankles, the police dispatcher’s voice crackles through Polarski’s walkie-talkie: “The body has been recovered.”
“Presley,” my father says as the feedback squeals through the house. “Go upstairs. Now.”
I scurry away from all of them as Polarski turns down the volume and mutters back some sort of confirmation. When I get to the top of the stairs, I can hear my mother weeping in her room. I duck around the corner in case she decide
s to come out, and slide down against the wall with my blanket just outside my bedroom door. I hear Polarski providing details to my father, and though the officer tries to keep his words low, I pick up enough bits and pieces even over my mother’s sobs.
Truck found near lake. Headlights left on. Ice shanty. Accidental drowning.
When I realize who they are talking about, I crawl back toward the shore of my bed, wondering how, in a million years, Barry could ever forget how to swim.
Chapter8
The Last Monday in
November
I can hear signs of life downstairs—mostly the opening and closing of things: the front door, the refrigerator, the stove, the garage. There are voices as well, though they are unidentifiable, overlapping into one constant hum like the dehumidifier my mother puts in my room when I have heavy congestion. The visitors start showing up early in the morning, and they rotate through the house during the day, their cars pulling up and parking in our driveway or on our street. I hear people stomping the snow off their shoes in our front hallway, and then, after a while, gathering their keys at the end of the day and warming up their engines to leave. But I never see their faces.
It has been two days since I moved from my bed. Trays with triangles of peanut-butter sandwiches, bowls of chicken soup, and glasses of milk begin to stack up untouched on my nightstand. When I hear my mother’s footsteps approaching, I close my eyes and listen to her watching me. Eventually she sniffles or sighs and gives up. After I hear her leave, I count to a hundred before opening my eyes again, just to make sure she is gone.
The milk she brings me begins to curdle within twenty-four hours of exposure to the open air. In the middle of the second night of my self-imposed exile, I hear my mother return. She whisks away the milk from my room, as if it never existed in the first place.
The Girl I Wanted to Be: A Novel Page 11
