by Sarah Dessen
I made a face. Being privy to the reproductive drama was one thing, but specific details, in all honesty, made me kind of queasy. A few days before, I’d gone light-headed when she’d only just mentioned the word uterus.
The doorbell rang again. The promise of visitors clearly won out over the fear of the oven, as Roscoe wriggled loose, taking off and disappearing around the corner.
“Traitor,” Cora muttered.
“Okay. Enough.” I got out of the closet, brushing myself off, then turned around to face her. “This is happening. So you need to go downstairs, face your fears, and make the best of it, and everything will be okay.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “When did you suddenly become so positive?”
“Just get out of there.”
A sigh, and then she emerged, getting to her feet and adjusting her skirt. I shut the closet door, and for a moment we both stood there, in front of the full-length mirror, staring at our reflections. Finally I said, “Remember Thanksgiving at our house?”
“No,” she said softly. “Not really.”
“Me neither,” I said. “Let’s go.”
It wasn’t so much that I was positive. I just wasn’t fully subscribing to such a negative way of thinking anymore.
That morning, when Cora had been in serious food-prep freak-out mode—covered in flour, occasionally bursting into tears, waving a spoon at anyone who came too close—all I’d wanted was a reason to escape the house. Luckily, I got a good one.
“Hey,” Nate said from the kitchen as I eased in through his sliding-glass door, carrying the four pies stacked on two cookie sheets. “For me? You shouldn’t have.”
“If you even as much as nip off a piece of crust,” I warned him, carrying them carefully to the stove, “Cora will eviscerate you. With an eggbeater, most likely.”
“Wow,” he said, recoiling slightly. “That’s graphic.”
“Consider yourself warned.” I put the pies down. “Okay to go ahead and preheat?”
“Sure. It’s all yours.”
I pushed the proper buttons to set the oven, then turned and leaned against it, watching him as he flipped through a thick stack of papers, jotting notes here and there. “Big day, huh? ”
“Huge,” he said, glancing up at me. “Half our clients are out of town and need their houses or animals checked on, the other half have relatives visiting and need twice as much stuff done as usual. Plus there are those who ordered their entire dinners and want them delivered.”
“Sounds crazy,” I said.
“It isn’t,” he replied, jotting something else down. “It just requires military precision.”
“Nate?” I heard his dad call out from down a hallway. “What time is the Chambells’ pickup?”
“Eleven,” Nate said. “I’m leaving in ten minutes.”
“Make it five. You don’t know how backed up they’ll be. Do you have all the keys you need?”
“Yes.” Nate reached over to a drawer by the sink, pulling out a key ring and dropping it on the island, where it landed with a clank.
“Double-check,” Mr. Cross said. “I don’t want to have to come back here if you end up stuck somewhere.”
Nate nodded, making another note as a door slammed shut in another part of the house.
“He sounds stressed,” I said.
“It’s his first big holiday since we started the business,” he said. “He signed up a lot of new people just for today. But he’ll relax once we get out there and start getting things done.”
Maybe this was true. Still, I could hear Mr. Cross muttering to himself in the distance, the noise not unlike that my own mother would make, banging around before she reluctantly headed off to work. “So when, in the midst of all this, do you get to eat Thanksgiving dinner?”
“We don’t,” he said. “Unless hitting the drive-through at Double Burger with someone else’s turkey and potatoes in the backseat counts.”
“That,” I said, “is just plain sad.”
“I’m not much for holidays,” he said with a shrug.
“Really.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Why is that surprising?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I just expected someone who was, you know, so friendly and social to be a big fan of the whole family-gathering thing. I mean, Jamie is.”
“Yeah? ”
I nodded. “In fact, I’m supposed to be making up my thankful list as we speak.”
“Your what?”
“Exactly,” I said, pointing at him. “Apparently, it’s a list of the things you’re thankful for, to be read aloud at dinner. Which is something we never did. Ever.”
He flipped through the pages again. “Neither did we. I mean, back when we were a we.”
I could hear Mr. Cross talking now, his voice bouncing down the hall. He sounded much more cheerful than before, and I figured he had to be talking to a customer. “When did your parents split, anyway?”
Nate nodded, picking up the key ring and flipping through it. “When I was ten. You?”
“Five,” I said as the oven beeped behind me. Instantly, I thought of Roscoe, huddling in my closet. “My dad’s pretty much been out of the picture ever since.”
“My mom lives in Phoenix,” he said, sliding a key off the ring. “I moved out there with her after the divorce. But then she got remarried and had my stepsisters, and it was too much to handle.”
“What was?”
“Me,” he said. “I was in middle school, mouthing off, a pain in her ass, and she just wanted to do the baby thing. So year before last, she kicked me out and sent me back here.” I must have looked surprised, because he said, “What? You’re not the only one with a checkered past, you know.”
“I just never imagined you checkered,” I told him. Which was a massive understatement, actually. “Not even close.”
“I hide it well,” he said easily. Then he smiled at me. “Don’t you need to put in those pies?”
“Oh. Right.”
I turned around, opening the oven and sliding them onto the rack, side by side. As I stood back up, he said, “So what’s on your thankful list?”
“I haven’t exactly gotten it down yet,” I said, easing the oven shut. “Though, actually, you being checkered might make the top five.”
“Really,” he said.
“Oh, yeah. I thought I was the only misfit in the neighborhood. ”
“Not by a long shot.” He leaned back against the counter behind him, crossing his arms over his chest. “What else?”
“Well,” I said slowly, picking up the key he’d taken off the ring, “to be honest, I have a lot to choose from. A lot of good things have happened since I came here.”
“I believe it,” he said.
“Like,” I said slowly, “I’m very thankful for heat and running water these days.”
“As we should all be.”
“And I’ve been really lucky with the people I’ve met,” I said. “I mean, Cora and Jamie, of course, for taking me in. Harriet, for giving me my job. And Olivia, for helping me out that day, and just, you know, being a friend.”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “Uh-huh.”
“And,” I continued, shifting the key in my hand, “there’s always Gervais.”
“Gervais,” he repeated, his voice flat.
“He’s almost totally stopped burping. I mean, it’s like a miracle. And if I can’t be thankful for that, what can I be thankful for?”
“Gee,” Nate said, cocking his head to the side, “I don’t know.”
“There might be something else,” I said slowly, turning the key in my palm, end over end. “But it’s escaping me right now.”
He stepped closer to me, his arm brushing, then staying against mine as he reached out, taking the key from my palm and sliding it back onto the table. “Well,” he said, “maybe it’ll come to you later.”
“Maybe,” I said.
“Nate?” Mr. Cross called out. He was closer now, a
nd Nate immediately stepped back, putting space between us just before he stuck his head around the corner. He glanced at me, giving a curt nod instead of a hello, then said, “What happened to five minutes?”
“I’m leaving right now,” Nate told him.
“Then let’s go,” Mr. Cross said, ducking back out. A nearby door slammed and I heard his car start up, the engine rumbling.
“I better hit it,” Nate said, grabbing up the stack of papers and the key ring. “Enjoy your dinner.”
“You, too,” I said. He squeezed my shoulder as he passed behind me, quickening his steps as he headed out into the hallway. Then the door banged behind him, and the house was quiet.
I checked on the pies again, then washed my hands and left the kitchen, turning off the light behind me. As I walked to the door that led out onto the patio, I saw another one at the end of the hallway. It was open just enough to make out a bed, the same USWIM sweatshirt Nate had lent me that day folded on top of it.
I don’t know what I was expecting, as it wasn’t like I’d been in a lot of guys’ rooms. A mess, maybe. Some pinup in a bikini on the wall. Perhaps a shot of Heather in a frame, a mirror lined with ticket stubs and sports ribbons, stacks of CDs and magazines. Instead, as I pushed the door open, I saw none of these things. In fact, even full of furniture, it felt . . . empty.
There was a bed, made, and a bureau with a bowlful of change on it, as well as a couple of root beer bottle caps. His backpack was thrown over the chair of a nearby desk, where a laptop was plugged in, the battery light blinking. But there were no framed pictures, and none of the bits and pieces I’d expected, like Marla’s fridge collage, or even Sabrina’s tons of cats. If anything, it looked more like the last apartment he’d taken me to, almost sterile, with few if any clues as to who slept, lived, and breathed there.
I stood looking for a moment, surprised, before backing out and returning the door to exactly how it had been. All the way back home, though, I kept thinking about his room, trying to figure out what it was about it that was so unsettling. It wasn’t until I got back to Cora’s that I realized the reason: it looked just like mine. Hardly lived in, barely touched. Like it, too, belonged to someone who had just gotten there and still wasn’t sure how long they’d be sticking around.
“Can I have your attention, please. Hello?”
At first, the plinking noise was barely audible. But as people began to quiet down, and then quieted those around them, it became louder, until finally it was all you could hear.
“Thanks,” Jamie said, putting down the fork he’d been using to tap his wineglass. “First, I want to thank all of you for coming. It means a lot to us to have you here for our first holiday meal in our new place.”
“Hear, hear!” someone in the back said, and there was a pattering of applause. The Hunters were effusive people, or so I’d noticed while letting them in and taking their coats. His mom, Elinor, was soft-spoken with a kind face; his dad, Roger, had grabbed me in a big hug, ruffling my hair like I was ten. All three of his sisters shared Jamie’s dark coloring and outspokenness, whether it was about the pond (which they admired, loudly) or the recent elections (about which they disagreed, also loudly, albeit good-naturedly). And then there were children, and brothers-in-law, various uncles and cousins—so many names and relationships to remember that I’d already decided to give up trying and was just smiling a lot, hoping that compensated. It would have to.
“And now that we have you here,” Jamie continued, “there’s something else we’d like to share with you.”
Standing at the entrance to the foyer, I was behind him, with the perfect view of his audience as he said this. The response was two-pronged: first, hopeful expressions—raised eyebrows, mouths falling open, hands to chests—followed by everyone looking at Cora at once. Oh, shit, I thought.
My sister turned pink instantly, then pointedly took a sip from the wineglass in her hand before forcing a smile. By then, Jamie had realized his mistake.
“It’s about UMe,” he said quickly, and everyone slowly directed their attention back to him. “Our new advertising campaign. It rolls out officially tomorrow, all over the country. But you get to see it here first.”
Jamie reached behind a chair, pulling out a square piece of cardboard with the ad I’d seen blown up on it. I looked at Cora again, but she’d disappeared into the kitchen, her glass abandoned on a bookcase.
“I hope you like it,” Jamie said, holding the picture up in front of him. “And, um, won’t want to sue.”
I slipped through the foyer, missing the Hunters’ initial reactions, although I did hear some gasps and shrieks, followed by more applause, as I entered the kitchen where Cora was sliding rolls into the oven, her back to me. She didn’t turn around as she said, “Told you.”
I glanced behind me, wondering how on earth she could have known for sure it was me. “He felt horrible,” I said. “You could tell.”
“I know.” She shut the oven, tossing a potholder onto the island. From the living room, I could hear people talking over one another, their voices excited. Cora glanced over at the noise. “Sounds like they like it.”
“Did he really think they wouldn’t?”
She shrugged. “People are weird about family stuff, you know? ”
“Really?” I said as I slid onto a stool by the island. “I wouldn’t know a thing about that.”
“Me either,” she agreed. “Our family is perfect.”
We both laughed at this, although not nearly loudly enough to drown out the merriment from the next room. Then Cora turned back to the oven, peering in through the glass door. “So,” I said, “speaking of family. What does it mean to you?”
She looked at me over her shoulder, one eyebrow raised. “Why do you ask?”
“It’s a project for school. I’m supposed to ask everybody.”
“Oh.” Then she was quiet for a moment, her back still to me. “What are people saying?”
“So far, different things,” I told her. “I haven’t made a lot of headway, to be honest.”
She moved down to the stove, lifting up a lid on a pot and examining the contents. “Well, I’m sure my definition is probably similar to yours. It would have to be, right?”
“I guess,” I said. “But then again, you have another family now.”
We both looked into the living room. From my angle, I could see Jamie had put the blown-up ad on the coffee table, and everyone else was gathered around. “I guess I do,” she said. “But maybe that’s part of it, you know? That you’re not supposed to have just one.”
“Meaning what?”
“Well,” she said, adjusting a pot lid, “I have my family of origin, which is you and Mom. And then Jamie’s family, my family of marriage. And hopefully, I’ll have another family, as well. Our family, that we make. Me and Jamie.”
Now I felt bad, bringing this up so soon after Jamie’s gaffe. “You will,” I said.
She turned around, crossing her arms over her chest. “I hope so. But that’s just the thing, right? Family isn’t something that’s supposed to be static or set. People marry in, divorce out. They’re born, they die. It’s always evolving, turning into something else. Even that picture of Jamie’s family was only the true representation for that one day. By the next, something had probably changed. It had to.”
In the living room, I heard a burst of laughter. “That’s a good definition,” I said.
“Yeah? ”
I nodded. “The best yet.”
Later, when the kitchen had filled up with people looking for more wine, and children chasing Roscoe, I looked across all the chaos at Cora, thinking that of course you would assume our definitions would be similar, since we had come from the same place. But this wasn’t actually true. We all have one idea of what the color blue is, but pressed to describe it specifically, there are so many ways: the ocean, lapis lazuli, the sky, someone’s eyes. Our definitions were as different as we were ourselves.
I looked
into the living room, where Jamie’s mom was now alone on the couch, the ad spread out on the table in front of her. When I joined her, she immediately scooted over, and for a moment we both studied the ad in silence.
“Must be kind of weird,” I said finally. “Knowing this is going to be out there for the whole world to see.”
“I suppose.” She smiled. Of all of them, to me she looked the most like Jamie. “At the same time, I doubt anyone would recognize me. It was a long time ago.”
I looked down at the picture, finding her in the center in her white dress. “Who were these women?” I asked, pointing at the elderly women on each side of her.
“Ah.” She leaned forward, a little closer. “My great-aunts. That’s Carol on the far left, and Jeannette, next to her. Then Alice on my other side.”
“Was this at your house?”
“My parents’. In Cape Cod,” she said. “It’s so funny. I look at all those children in the front row, and they’re all parents themselves now. And all my aunts have passed, of course. But everyone still looks so familiar, even as they were then. Like it was just yesterday.”
“You have a big family,” I told her.
“True,” she agreed. “And there are times I’ve wished otherwise, if only because the more people you have, the more likely someone won’t get along with someone else. The potential for conflict is always there.”
“That happens in small families, too, though,” I said.
“Yes,” she said, looking at me. “It certainly does.”
“Do you know who all these people are, still?” I asked.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “Every one.”
We were both quiet for a moment, looking at all those faces. Then Elinor said, “Want me to prove it?”
I looked up at her. “Yeah,” I said. “Sure.”
She smiled, pulling the photo a little closer, and I wondered if I should ask her, too, the question for my project, get her definition. But as she ran a finger slowly across the faces, identifying each one, it occurred to me that maybe this was her answer. All those names, strung together like beads on a chain. Coming together, splitting apart, but still and always, a family.
