“Rob,” Eden continues, shaking my father’s hand. Then she takes three steps backward, almost falling into me.
“Nice to meet you, Eden,” my parents say practically in unison. I wonder whether Eden thinks the unison speech patterns chart up there with their having held hands on parents’ day.
“Okay,” I say finally. Now I wish I hadn’t held Eden’s hand when we came out here. I could have kept up a pretense that we were just friends, and we were just studying together.
“Well, Eden,” my mother says. “That’s an unusual name.”
“Yes, well, my parents are unusual,” Eden says, and she laughs, and my mother does, too.
“Before I forget, honey,” my mother says, turning to me, “are Stevie’s parents coming for Thanksgiving next week?”
Stevie always comes to our house for Thanksgiving, and when they’re in town, his parents come, too. That sounds like they abandon him on Thanksgiving; they don’t. In theory, he’s supposed to go with them wherever they go, and he always did, until the year we were ten. For some reason, their trip was canceled at the last minute and we invited them here. Ever since then, Stevie’s opted out of traveling with his parents and spent the holiday with us. His parents have only come once since then, I think. But my mother always asks.
“No, they’re going to Aspen, I think.”
“A little early for skiing,” my dad says. I think that’s the first thing he’s said since I introduced Eden.
“I don’t think they even ski,” I say, shrugging. “There was some restaurant there that had a special Thanksgiving dinner thing they wanted to do.”
“You’re kidding,” my mother says. She takes off her coat and reaches for my dad’s, and I realize they’ve been standing in their own home for about ten minutes now with their coats still on.
“Anyway—” I say, ready to say something like, Eden and I have to go back and get some more studying done.
“What’s your family doing for Thanksgiving, Eden?” my mother interrupts.
“Um, I honestly don’t know,” Eden says, and I look at her, surprised.
“You don’t?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “We usually go to this other couple’s, these friends of my mom’s, but they’re getting divorced now so—”
“Your parents are getting divorced?” I interrupt.
Eden looks at me like I’m plain stupid.
“No, the other couple is.”
“Sorry.” Come on, it’s not the most far-fetched thought in the world.
“Anyway. So I don’t know. We might skip it this year.”
My parents look completely heartbroken. I mean, you’d think Eden had just intentionally stomped on Pilot’s foot or something. Thanksgiving is a very big deal in our house. My parents have been spending the holiday together since they first started dating, even though sometimes that just meant the two of them and fifteen pounds of leftover turkey. I know they think I should invite Eden, and I know they’re both surprised I haven’t yet.
And even though that seems like a lot of family togetherness, I still say, “Well, you should come here. If your parents are going to skip it.”
“Oh, I don’t want to—”
“If your parents won’t mind, Eden,” my father breaks in, “we’d love to have you.”
Eden smiles at my dad, in that big, warm way she doesn’t do very often, and I can tell my dad, at least, thinks I did a good job catching this girl.
“Okay, great, then,” I say. “Well, Eden and I were studying, so …”
“Yeah, midterms,” Eden says. “Your son is a big help.”
“I’ll bet,” my dad says, and I can’t tell if he’s joking.
I close the door behind us, though I’m not sure why since I can’t imagine messing around now that my parents are home. It never bothers me when Eden’s parents are home at her house. And I’m surprised that I feel this way about it now.
“Well, that went well,” I say.
“Yeah,” she says, and I can tell there’s something else on her mind.
“What’s the matter?” I say, even though I kind of don’t want to know. I mean, I want to be, you know, a good boyfriend and everything, but also have absolutely no desire to get into anything right now.
“Nothing,” she says, and I think she feels the same way I do; she doesn’t want to get into anything, but she’s also upset about something.
“You can tell me.” I wonder if my parents did something wrong.
“Umm. Listen.” She sits on the edge of my bed. “Your mother didn’t know who I was.”
I’m still standing up. “Well, she’d never met you before.”
“Yeah, I realize that. I’m not an idiot, Nick. But she’d never heard my name before.”
“What do you mean?”
“She said, ‘Eden, that’s an unusual name’—like she’d never heard it before.”
I open and close my mouth three times before saying, “Yeah, I know,” and sinking down on the bed next to her. “I know.”
“Well, we’ve been dating for two months now, and my parents certainly know you.”
“Well, we never come here,” I say, regretting it the minute I say it, since it just underlines her point.
“I know,” she says, and she stands up.
“You’re angry,” I say.
“No, I’m not,” she says, running her fingers through her hair, which fell completely out of its ponytail when we were messing around, and walking toward my window. “Not exactly.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What for?”
“For not telling them about you. For not inviting you here before. I really am. I just, I wasn’t, it had nothing to do with you. I honestly didn’t think about how that might make you feel.”
“What were you thinking about?”
“Come on, you’ve got to be impressed with the maturity and insight of that apology,” I say, trying to bring back our normal banter.
“What were you thinking about?” she repeats, insistent now.
“I wasn’t thinking.”
“Sure you were,” she says, and now I stand up, too.
“Sure I was. But”—I take a step toward her, an effort that seems particularly futile—“look, I don’t know.”
“Sure you do.”
“I didn’t tell them about you.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.”
“Sure you do.”
“Jesus Christ, Eden, stop telling me I know. Maybe I really don’t know.”
She looks at me, surprised. I realize how mean I sounded.
“I’m sorry.”
“Again?” She sounds irritated. Impatient.
I look at her blankly.
“That’s your second apology in two minutes after two months without any.”
“Sorry,” I say again.
“Okay, but I can’t really know how I feel about it until you tell me why.”
“You mean you can’t forgive me until I tell you why.”
“Right.”
“Right,” I echo.
I run my fingers through my hair and look at the ceiling. “Look, I just, I haven’t been … I haven’t been spending all that much time with them lately.” It’s the first time I’ve thought about it like that.
“With your parents?” Eden says.
“Right.”
“On purpose?”
“Well, I spend so many nights at your place.”
“I know. But you still spend plenty here.”
“I know, I just, I don’t spend time here with them.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say I ‘spend time’ with my parents,” she says, “but they’re there, at my house. I mean, they see what I do and where I’m going, and whatever. Unless I don’t want them to.”
She looks back at me now, and she sounds genuinely concerned, not angry. “Are you guys fighting? You’re not talking to them?”
“No. I mean no, I’m not not talking to them
.”
“They’re really nice, you know?”
“I know.”
“So?”
“It has nothing to do with whether they’re nice or not. Sure they’re nice. They’re the nicest people most people will ever meet.” I take another step, but not toward her; I’m beginning to pace.
“I don’t know. I didn’t want to tell them about you.”
“Why?” she says, and she sits back down on the bed, which makes me feel better.
“Because … I can’t quite explain it,” I say, and I sit down next to her, genuinely relieved to be close to her again. “Because this is mine—it’s ours.”
“Well, sure.”
“But it’s not theirs.”
“You kept me a secret because this is our relationship not theirs? Or did you just forget to tell them about me?”
“I don’t know—wait,” I say, because I know she’s exasperated with that answer. “I really don’t. I’m trying to work this out.”
“Okay,” she says patiently, softly. “Work it out.”
“I didn’t forget to tell them about you. I thought about telling them about you. I just—I think I liked having a secret to keep from them.”
“Why?”
I slouch beside her, look at the floor. “I told you, remember that time, I told you I was angry at them.”
“Yeah?”
“I think I’ve been angry at them ever since then. But not like I wasn’t talking to them or anything. It was more … more subtle than that. More like—I just thought it was my turn.”
“Your turn for what?”
“My turn to have something that was a secret from them.”
“Oh,” she says, and she doesn’t ask for any more of an answer, and I’m grateful. We study for about an hour, and then I walk her to the subway. I’d like to say it’s out of chivalry, but it’s really so we can make out on the corner above the subway station, since I still don’t want to kiss her while my parents are home.
Thanksgiving
So, anyway, my parents are really into Thanksgiving. My mother cooks everything from scratch and my dad actually decorates. I once told him that I’d gotten old enough that the turkey balloons weren’t necessary, and he said, “Don’t flatter yourself, kiddo. We did this long before you came along.”
“You did?”
“It’s our favorite holiday,” he said, as if that explained why a young couple would decorate their house with paper turkeys.
On Thanksgiving morning, my mom’s already in the kitchen when I wake up. From my bedroom, I can hear her laying out ingredients for one of her two stuffing recipes.
“Morning, Nicky,” she says, barely looking up from her cookbook when I walk into the room.
“Hey,” I say, reaching for an apple.
“I’m really happy Eden will be able to join us this afternoon,” she says. I shrug.
“She seems lovely,” my mother tries. I shrug again and turn to head back to my room.
“Nick,” she says to my back, and I stop and look over my shoulder. Having called my name, she seems lost. She looks down at her cookbook and turns the pages, as though the words she wants to say might be written down in there somewhere. Finally, she looks up and says, “Listen, I just want you to know that I’m here, if you want to talk about what’s going on with your father. Or about Eden.” She smiles. “Though I doubt you’d want to talk about that with me.”
I almost smile back. But then I just shrug again and say, “Yeah, I doubt it, too.” My mother turns back to her cookbook, and I head back to my room.
A few hours later, my dad is proudly showing me his latest Thanksgiving purchase: squash-shaped napkin rings.
“But we don’t use cloth napkins.”
“Why can’t you put a paper napkin in a napkin ring?”
I shrug. “I don’t know, I guess I never saw anyone do that.”
“Well, I’m going to,” he says. “Want to help?”
“Um. I’m gonna call Stevie. See what time he’s coming over.” I say this half to end the conversation, and half to answer his question: Stevie is always willing to help with the Thanksgiving decorations. As I retreat from the festivities to my room, it occurs to me that that was actually one of the longer conversations my father and I have had in the last few weeks. Or maybe months. I’m not keeping track.
He hasn’t asked me about Eden once since they met her. Not that I would want to tell him anything. But he hasn’t even asked.
Stevie’s not picking up his cell phone, so I leave a message. “Dude, when are you gonna get here? Are you still sleeping? Call me back on the landline.”
The phone rings two seconds later. “It’s for me!” I call out, and answer it before either of them can pick up. I don’t want them to hear me begging Stevie to come over early. It’s strange, but I’m actually nervous being alone with my dad. I think it would help if Stevie were here to do the talking.
“Hey,” I say, already pacing around my room.
“Hello.”
I recognize the voice. “Hello,” I say back. I’ve stopped pacing; now I’m perfectly still.
“You must be Nick; I’m Sam.”
“Yeah, that’s me.”
“Happy Thanksgiving.”
“Thanks. You too.”
“Your dad says you guys put out quite a spread.”
I start pacing again, circles this time, around the edge of my room. “Yeah, he loves Thanksgiving.”
“Me too. My favorite holiday.”
“Must be hereditary,” I say, and I freeze in my steps as I say it, actually lifting my hand to my mouth, as though I can catch the words before they fall into the phone.
But Sam just laughs. “I guess it could be, huh?” He’s cracking up, like really laughing hard.
“Dude,” I say, “it’s not really that funny.”
“No, I guess it’s not. Not to you.”
Well, what the hell is that supposed to mean? Like there’s some clandestine adoption humor I can’t understand, but just accidentally tapped into?
“May I speak with Rob?” he says finally, still kind of laughing.
“Yeah, I’ll get him,” I say, and walk into the living room with the phone.
“Happy Thanksgiving,” Sam says again as I walk toward my dad.
“Happy Thanksgiving,” I mumble back, but I’ve already begun to hand over the phone, so I don’t think he hears me. On the way back to my room, I hear Dad laughing. Maybe Sam told him what I said. And even though technically it’s my joke, I feel left out.
I pick up my cell phone and call Stevie again. This time he picks up.
“Dude, stalker much?”
“When can you be here?”
“I just woke up.”
“What do you mean you just woke up?”
“I understand it’s a complicated concept. You see, Nicholas, at night the body does what is commonly known as sleeping, which is to say, enters a state of unconsciousness—”
“Shut up.”
“You shut up.”
“Will you come over now?”
“Can I shower first?”
“I really don’t care.”
“Dude, are you really this nervous about Eden coming to Thanksgiving?”
I’m grateful to hear that that’s why he thinks I’m acting this way.
“Whatever, just get here ASAP.”
“Did you just say ASAP?”
“No, of course not.”
“Okay, then.”
“Okay.”
Thirty minutes later, and Stevie is standing in the kitchen, looking at my mother’s turkey in the oven. His hair is still wet from the shower.
“Hey,” I say, coming out of my bedroom, “I didn’t hear you get here.” The doormen never buzz him up, and my parents must have left the front door unlocked today. I’m not quite in the living room; I’m standing at the edge of the hallway that leads to our bedrooms. But from here I can see into the kitchen, which is just kind of an alcove o
ff the living room. And I can see that Stevie looks more comfortable in our kitchen than I’ve been in a long time. My mom has her hand on Stevie’s shoulder when he leans down to smell the turkey.
“It’s going to be a good one this year,” he says, smiling at her.
“It’s always good,” my dad says, watching them from the dining room table. I don’t know when he got off the phone. He’s putting paper napkins into his new napkin rings. Stevie looks across the kitchen counter at the table.
“Dude, cool napkin rings, Rob. I call the zucchini!”
Well, lucky him, between Stevie and Sam Roth, my father has the perfect son now, one who appreciates his knickknacks and gets his jokes.
Eden comes over around three. I told her that we don’t dress up and also that she didn’t have to bring anything, but she’s wearing a skirt anyway and brings flowers for my mom. Stevie, Eden, and I sit on the couch, Eden in the middle. There’s a football game on, but none of us is watching. My parents are in the kitchen, and we speak quietly, like little kids who’ve been told to keep it down.
“What kind of flowers are those?” Stevie says finally.
Eden raises her eyebrows at him. The flowers are roses. Even Stevie can see that.
“Sorry,” Stevie says. “Just trying to break the tension.”
“What tension?” I say quickly.
“Umm, have you noticed that you haven’t said a word to your parents since I got here?” he says.
“That’s not true.”
“Yes it is.”
Eden breaks in. “He said, ‘I’ll hang up Eden’s coat.’ ”
“Quite the conversationalist you are this Thanksgiving day,” Stevie says to me.
“Sorry. What would you like to talk about?”
Stevie perks up. “Let’s talk about what your parents think of Eden.”
Now Eden becomes alert.
“Did they say something to you?” she asks Stevie.
“Would you care if they did?” I ask sullenly, a sour taste in my mouth.
“Of course I would. Wouldn’t you?”
The Lucky Kind Page 7
