Start Without Me

by Joshua Max Feldman

  “You know what, Robbie? You know what? This has nothing to do with me. This is about your own insecurities, because the Group has a seven-figure budget and was named one of the most innovative nonprofits in the world by Fast Company, and the only people who’ll put money into your movies are Roz and Leo.”

  Marissa stared at Laila over Roz’s head, indulged fantasies of reaching over and wrapping her fingers around Laila’s throat. Her allegiance to Robbie was always sharpest when she felt him under attack. But she wished Robbie could come up with a better retort than momentarily lifting his hand from the phone to give Laila the finger. The photographer by now had the camera at her shoulder, was firing shots up toward the ceiling. “Big waste of time here, people.”

  “Personally, I see both sides,” Adam offered brightly. “I never made a dime when I was playing music. On the other hand, I love bukkake videos! Ha ha ha!” Roz and Laila adopted nearly identical looks of dismay, like they’d managed to forget Adam was there, and weren’t so happy to be reminded.

  Roz said, “Somebody want to explain to me what a bukkake video is? Or maybe I don’t want to know.”

  “Mrs. Russell?” Fred said to her.

  “Ms. Lichtenstein,” she corrected him.

  “I should put the food back in the ovens, if you aren’t going to eat . . .”

  “No, no, no, that’s a good idea,” Roz said, shaking her head wearily. “Let’s bring out the food and do the candids. Give us all a break. Go ahead and bring the food up, please, Ted.”

  Fred balanced the light reflector against the wall, set the dog on its feet on the floor. Laila intercepted Mash as he raced menacingly toward Marissa, teeth bared. Dog in hand, Laila pulled out a chair, sat down, held Mash before her face. “What’s that, honey? Yes, I do think Robbie has deep-seated inadequacy issues because his younger sister is three inches taller than him.”

  “Gotcha, I have issues, but you started therapy when you were nine,” said Robbie.

  “I suffer from depression, asshole. It is a disease.”

  “I’ll never understand why you two treat each other the way you do,” Roz commented. “I bet at my funeral, you’ll make peace, is that the idea?”

  “What are we even doing right now?” Laila complained. “It’s not like we can shoot the candids without Daddy.” She pulled out her phone. “Fuck it, I’m texting him.”

  Marissa walked the length of the table to Adam. “Bukkake videos?” she whispered hotly.

  Adam raised his palms to her. “I was trying to break the tension!”

  “Don’t. Don’t break the tension. Don’t do anything. Just stand there. Okay?”

  “Ooookay,” he mouthed, rolling his eyes toward the ceiling, like he were indulging her craziness. Then he added under his breath, “I’m just trying to fit in around here.” Something twitched in or pulled at his face, like a hidden regret, a suppressed smile. Abruptly, she realized what he smelled like. She swung her head to Laila, now tossing the dog in the air and catching him before her face; Marissa swung her head back to Adam, the regret having spread into a sort of guilty terror.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” she whispered, her lips barely moving.

  “Her idea,” he mouthed.

  She could hear the breath coming in and out of her nose, like she’d transformed into a snorting bull; the fearful way he leaned back made her aware of her hands, balled into fists at her sides. A cascade of foul-mouthed loathing, encompassing every one of his fuckups and outrages over the entire day, was right there on the tip of her tongue—and she wanted as badly to let it loose as she’d previously wanted to go to sleep. She wasn’t sure she could control it another instant when Leo walked in, his tread shaking the flatware on the table lightly. His eyes settled first on Adam and Marissa, standing an inch apart by the door, as though he’d caught them at something (which he had, though Marissa doubted he could guess at what). Next, he turned his flat, impassive gaze to Laila and Mash at the table; to Robbie, staring down into his phone; to Roz, looking over the pictures on the camera with the photographer. His disappointment with what he saw appeared total, but he dropped it all on his son, as he often did. “Something in there more important than what’s going on out here?” he said to Robbie.

  “You’re the one who’s been in his office all day,” Robbie answered, putting his phone in his pocket.

  “There’s a difference there I shouldn’t need to explain to you,” Leo responded dully. “What’s next?” he asked the photographer.

  “Let’s get set for the candids,” Roz ordered the photographer.

  “Okay, then,” Leo said to the photographer.

  Fred was just then carrying in the first two platters of food on oven-mitted palms: wilted Brussels sprouts, sweet potatoes topped with a layer of deflated marshmallows. As he set the food down, Roz assigned everyone their places: Leo at the head of the table, then Laila at his right, Marissa across from Laila, and Robbie to Marissa’s left. Seating herself at the head of the table opposite Leo, she asked Adam to wait until the candids were finished before sitting down. “We don’t want to confuse people,” she explained to him.

  “Yeah, sure, I get it,” Adam said with a complicated blend of gratitude and indignation. He leaned back against the wall, hands stuffed in the pockets of his jeans, like a human asterisk to the whole affair.

  “Are we doing the carve-the-turkey shots?” the photographer asked as Fred set down two silver trays of cranberry stuffing.

  “No one’s carved a turkey in this family since Grandpa died,” Laila said. “The only one here who knows how to cook at all is Marissa.”

  Marissa didn’t, in fact, and wondered why Laila believed she did. She was about to correct the record when Adam, breaking out another abrupt, oversized smile, chimed in: “If microwaving burritos counts, I’m Julia Child.”

  But the family appeared to have reached a collective decision to ignore him. Roz ordered Fred to take the dog down to the kitchen, and now, all in its place, she suggested, “How about some grace shots? My husband can say grace.”

  Leo pondered his wife, his eyes behind his glasses calmly surprised, calmly resentful. Then he pushed the glasses up his nose an inch and said, “Certainly.” He reached out and took his daughter’s hand, Marissa’s hand; they all joined hands. Click-flash-hiss, click-flash-hiss. To Marissa’s relief, Robbie gave her fingers an affectionate squeeze; it was easy to lose track of their current terms of engagement.

  Leo, his hand big, heavy, inert, around Marissa’s palm, lowered his head. She watched Laila lower her eyes with piety so childlike Marissa suspected it was ironic. She looked down at her own plate, ringed with a painted chain of interlocking petals. “Bless us O Lord for these Thy gifts,” began in her head, like a reflex.

  “Friends, family . . . welcome strangers.” Leo paused. “My father used to say that every family is its own Eden. I always took those words for comfort, but as I get older, I wonder if he didn’t intend something more than comfort. A gentle warning. Because Eden didn’t last. Maybe a family is just as fragile.” He paused again. “Well, today is a day in honor of a feast when bread was broken by red man and white man, immigrant and native, exile and host. We know that’s all a myth, and like every American myth, the truth is considerably bloodier. But we cling to the myth, for no better reason than because we need it. We failed in the past. We fail in the present. But maybe someday, we’ll find ourselves worthy of Eden. And all we lack will be restored. Amen.” He dropped Marissa’s hand.

  “Jesus, Daddy,” Laila said, raising her eyes.

  “Were you not supposed to be taking pictures?” Roz demanded, turning to the photographer. And then, seeing she was crying, said, “Oh, for the love of . . .”

  “That was really fucking beautiful, dude,” said Adam from the wall. It looked like he might cry, too.

  “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” the photographer was saying, wiping her eyes. “My mom was a quarter Wampanoag. This is a complicated day for us. Can we set up again—wou
ld you all, just, like you were before . . .”

  “No, that was seriously beautiful,” Adam repeated.

  “They heard you,” Marissa told him.

  “Okay, everyone, heads down, let’s go,” Roz ordered.

  Laila said, “Oh, Jeez-us, Roz . . . ”

  “Is it my fault she can’t do her job?” Roz answered. “Is it my fault? Come on, let’s go, heads down . . .” Click-flash-hiss, click-flash-hiss, as they all looked down at their plates, though this time Leo didn’t take Marissa’s hand.

  “So are we eating or what?” Robbie asked after they’d been posed in this manner for a full minute.

  “Okay, the rule for eating is that you don’t do any eating,” the photographer answered, all business again. “Pass some dishes back and forth, though. Smiles wouldn’t kill you.” Click-flash-hiss, as they half-heartedly pantomimed a Thanksgiving meal.

  At length, Laila let out a plastic chuckle. “I’m sorry, why are our holidays like bad Ibsen?” She looked at Adam. “Tell the truth. This is the worst Thanksgiving you’ve ever been to, isn’t it?”

  “Nah, I’ve had worse than this,” Adam answered.

  “Oh yeah?” Robbie said, curious. “What happened?”

  “I don’t remember,” Adam replied casually, folding his arms across his chest. He laughed. “I don’t remember. The thing is, I—”

  “This food looks great,” Marissa interrupted. “Is the caterer from around here, Roz?”

  “Oh, he’s a big boy, dear,” answered Roz. “He wants to tell his story, let him tell his story.”

  “Thanks, Roz, I really appreciate that,” Adam said, lifting a shoeless foot to the wall behind him—settling in for story time, Marissa concluded with dread. “It was a year my family was doing Thanksgiving at my brother’s house in Framingham. My parents were there, both my siblings, all their kids. The whole gang.” His tone was forthright, matter-of-fact—confessional, as earlier, in the car. “And—you all have heard of mulled wine, right? It’s like red wine, you put oranges and cloves and shit in it, and you heat it on the stove. Y’know, New England in winter, big pot of hot wine. It’s festive.”

  “I’ve had it a time or two,” Leo said mildly. “Festive. Like you said.”

  “Well, anyway, you’d think—how drunk could you get off mulled wine? I guess I tried to find out!” He laughed again, one of his laughs without a floor of happiness, just an empty, throat-shaking sound. “I mean, I probably showed up drunk to begin with. Like I said, I don’t remember. But it’s a good bet I had a few on the drive over. I used to keep an eighth of peppermint schnapps in my glove compartment, because cops think it’s mouthwash or whatever if they smell it on your breath. Anywho. I was at my brother’s, drinking the mulled wine, and I guess to cut me off they hid all the mugs. So after I tore around all the cabinets for a while, I just, uh, dunked my head in the pot. I probably thought it was a joke, y’know, for the kids. But the thing was, the burner was still on. So everybody panicked, they thought I burned my face off, they started dunking my head in ice water. I’ve still got this one little scar, down here . . .” He tapped the stubble on his face beside his left ear. “Anyway, spending Thanksgiving afternoon in the burn unit, that sort of tops all the constant bickering you guys got going on, y’know what I mean?” As he’d talked, his voice had gotten progressively heavier, like he was drifting, word by word, into the shame he’d been too drunk to remember incurring. He ended with a painful grin—a last, broken-winged attempt to conjure some humor.

  Marissa’s worst Thanksgiving had been spent sitting across from Caitlyn in a McDonald’s: a little girl babysitting her younger sister while their mother “took care of some business.” They sat there for five hours before the guy pushing the mop by for the hundredth time gave up and called the cops. When Mona finally showed up at the police station, she said their aunt was supposed to be watching them. They didn’t have an aunt, Marissa wanted to scream—but her mother had taught them never, ever to talk to cops.

  Adam was looking at her. He smiled weakly, apologetically. But her anger at him had evaporated. Some other feeling had replaced it, too dense, too intricate for her to parse. She wondered if her mother remembered leaving her and Caitlyn like that; she wondered if her mother felt the same shame over it that had sunk into Adam’s features. She hoped so.

  In any event, Adam’s story had struck the Russells dumb. They stared ahead mutely, hopelessly, Laila baring her teeth behind a square of lips, thinking God knows what—though if Marissa had to guess, it was probably something along the lines of, I can’t believe I fucked this guy.

  “Did I mention I’m sober now?” Adam finally announced. “Nine months and four days!”

  “We’ll leave the wine downstairs,” Roz said. “We don’t need to make anybody’s life harder.”

  “Don’t worry about it, I’m around it a lot.” Adam looked at Marissa. “On the airplanes!” he added abruptly.

  “Here’s a radical notion,” said Robbie. “How about we start eating?”

  And in this way, the awkward silence was broken. Adam took a seat between Roz and Laila, angling his chair to face away from the latter. The photographer went downstairs to the kitchen to eat with Fred. And everyone at the table piled their plates with food.

  As they began to eat, Laila described a talk she was giving at a UN summit on free speech in Switzerland the following month. “They have me on a panel with this queer Turkish blogger and Ed Snowden’s lawyer in Europe,” she explained, pushing a dollop of creamed spinach on her plate away from the mashed potatoes. “It conflicts with this other panel in Stockholm I’m supposed to do, but there’s nobody else at the Group I trust to do that one, either. I’m spread so insanely thin, I feel like I spend my whole life in airports.”

  “You should be grateful you found an endeavor worthy of your best effort,” Leo told her.

  “What matters is that you’re getting people’s attention,” said Roz. “That they’re listening.” Robbie sawed viciously into a slice of turkey. Marissa reached under the table to put her hand on his knee, but he moved it away.

  This was the family back on its bearings, though, after the jolt Adam had given them. Listening to Laila talk was something all the Russells knew how to do: the reactions and resentments all clicked into place, like it was a song, and they each had their parts.

  And as Marissa finished off her first scoop of stuffing, she realized she’d been starving. Maybe it was remembering that Thanksgiving in McDonald’s: God, she’d been hungry that day; it was as if she could still smell the greasy odors of the place, jeering at her empty stomach. As Laila continued on about German surveillance laws, Marissa ate indulgently: turkey smeared with gravy and cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes swirled up with their marshmallow topping, glazed Brussels sprouts bursting between her teeth. She didn’t care that the food was lukewarm, had an overcooked dullness: There was more on the table than she could eat.

  Buttering her third dinner roll, she checked her watch: a little before one thirty, still another five hours before she needed to be back at the hotel in Connecticut. For the first time that day, she had plenty of time. Laila was wrong, this wasn’t a terrible Thanksgiving, she concluded. In most of the ways that mattered, it was the opposite. Whatever else they were, they were a family. The tensions, the gripes and grudges coursing beneath every word didn’t only pull the Russells apart; they bound them together. If there was unhappiness here, it had the virtue of intimacy, familiarity.

  Adam had begun tapping his crystal wineglass with his fingernail, watching the twisting path of the bubbles in the seltzer Fred had poured him as they floated up to the surface. He flicked the glass too hard, nearly toppled it over, caught it over his plate just in time. What would become of him? Marissa wondered. Would he ever find the place where he belonged? What quality did she possess that allowed her to keep at least a toehold among the Russells, while he couldn’t even make it to the table with his family?

  A shrill ringing startled
her enough that she dropped her fork on her plate. Leo took his phone from the pocket of his cardigan. “Weren’t you just giving Robbie shit about this, Daddy?” Laila said.

  Leo didn’t answer. He rose from the table with a token “Excuse me,” and walked from the room, the dishes shaking a little as he departed. The adrenal fear of the startle lingered with Marissa, and she would think later there was some sense of foreboding in this. Her mother had always told her that the Cavanos had “the sight”—a dubious gift, as old as the rocks of Sicily, not to forestall disaster, but rather to feel in its wake like you saw it coming the whole time.

  “These screens are so toxic, though,” Laila was saying. “It’s a real threat to public life when we can’t pay attention to one another for five minutes.”

  “You are fucking obsessed with Instagram likes,” Robbie pointed out.

  She shrugged. “I’m not saying I’m immune. Anyway, most of what I do on Instagram is about building awareness for the Group.”

  “You post your breakfast every morning.”

  “You’re the one who checks it.”

  “You know what I think’s depressing?” Adam joined in. “How you go to a show and people don’t even watch the band. They just hold up their phones. I mean, you don’t have to watch this on video. It’s happening to you.”

  “Even ISIS is addicted to social media,” Laila resumed before Adam could elaborate further. “Think about that. Motherfuckers want to live in the sixth century, but the one thing they want to bring with them is Twitter.” She pushed a scrap of turkey into a mound of mashed potato. “None of it matters, though. Thirty, forty years tops, the ice caps will be melted, and this whole shitshow will be underwater.”

  Roz was watching Laila with a sharp little smile. “You won’t get off that easy, princess.”

  “May I speak with you in my office, Marissa?” Leo was standing in the doorway.

  Marissa looked at him: His face was as expressionless as a sheer cliff; she felt her cheeks burning. “Entschuldigen?” she heard Laila saying. “Speak with her in your office?”