Thanksgiving Night

by Richard Bausch

“Settle down and try to get some sleep,” says Butterfield, seeking to keep a reassuring tone.

  Apparently, she hears condescension. “Don’t talk to me like I’m crazy. I’m not crazy. I’m a victim.”

  “Shut up,” says Holly, having come in from the bathroom. “Shut up and go to sleep or I swear to God something will happen.”

  “Nothing’s going to happen,” Butterfield says. “Come on, guys.”

  “You smell like a brewery,” Fiona says. “And you talk about me.”

  “Okay,” says Butterfield. “I’ve had it. I’m heading back to the house.

  I don’t want to spend another minute in this chaos.”

  He moves to the door.

  “Will,” Elizabeth says.

  “No, I’m gone.”

  “Go ahead,” Fiona says. “That’s just like a man. The slightest sign of trouble.”

  He’s out and on the sidewalk and then crossing the lawn, and Fiona screams from the yellow windows of the house.

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  “Slightest sign of trouble!”

  He’s going along the sidewalk, muttering to himself about his great-aunt, and when the sidewalk gives way to grass and weeds, he steps down into the street. The trees along the road whisper in the summer breeze, and he stops a moment, shakes her out of his thoughts. He stands here and reflects that it is indeed the kind of night one might want to watch the stars. He goes on, listening to the leaf-murmuring on either side of the street, and finally he comes to the empty next-door house. Lying down on the lawn, he remembers having done so with Elizabeth on just such a summer night, full of pasta and wine, happily anticipating the rest of a weekend. He looks up, recalls enjoying the summer stars—the clarity of the light and sparkle, all those immeasurable spaces, and the breeze moving across his face like a soft cloth wielded by a loving hand. When was that? Earlier this summer? For a moment, he can’t place it. And then the urge to call it back is swallowed by the sound of Elizabeth coming along. Perplexed, irritable, unhappy.

  He keeps silent, feeling dimly guilty, as if he has spied on her. And so he has—unless, just as she is opening the door to go inside, he speaks, says her name, shows her where he is, lying here in the dark of the neighbor-ing yard, in the long moonshade of a sycamore. But he doesn’t do so.

  Instead, he whistles. A wolf’s whistle, and he feels momentarily like a character in a movie. She whirls around, startled.

  “It’s just me,” he says.

  “What’re you doing there?”

  “Waiting for you.”

  He rises and crosses the space of grass to the door. She has already gone inside. She’s in the kitchen, standing at the counter with a slice of the pizza, chewing. She doesn’t look at him. And then she does. He’s surprised to see sympathy in her eyes. “They’re my family,” he says. “I shouldn’t’ve left you there.”

  She shrugs.

  “We’re gonna have to do something,” he says. “They’re both completely bonkers and we can’t keep going on like this with them.”

  “That’s a helpful way of putting it, Will.” She stares at the room, not really seeing anything, crying quietly, one tear making its way down her left cheek.

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  He touches her shoulder, realizing the seriousness of the situation, completely unready for it and appalled at his own denseness: how could he have missed seeing what a sorrow this has been for her, too? At the precise moment he has this thought, the beer he had drunk causes him to belch.

  “Excuse me,” he tells her, and she gives him a look. “Baby,” he says,

  “I should’ve—” But he can’t finish the thought.

  She takes another bite of the cold pizza and shakes her head. There’s something else on her mind.

  “Baby,” he says. “What is it?”

  She shifts slightly, but says nothing.

  “Elizabeth?”

  She only glances at him, closing the pizza box and then seeking a place for it in the refrigerator. “I don’t know what we can do. There isn’t really anything.” Then she seems suddenly to be searching for some answer to the question she hasn’t even asked yet. “Is there?”

  c o s t o f l i v i n g

  1.

  In the predawn, having turned down anything to eat, Oliver Ward is put in leg chains with five other men (he must have slept, because he has no memory of the three new prisoners), and they all ride in a van over to the courthouse, to be arraigned. It’s going to be sunny and cool, with little fresh breezes out of the north. Two of the men are together, arrested only an hour ago for sleeping in the street and public drunkenness. The police know one of them, and call him by name: Mickey.

  Mickey introduces his companion, Stanley. The police call Oliver Mr.

  Ward, because they know Alison; they assume, too, that Alison is aware of Oliver’s fate for the night. Mickey and Stanley are in their late twenties. They joke about sleeping on a sidewalk—Stanley says he went into a phone booth to call his cousin and fell asleep there. “I remember trying to make a date with an operator in, I think, Peoria, Illinois, no kidding—said she was based in Peoria. Figure that. And I ended up going to sleep. I wasn’t exactly in the street or on the sidewalk. It could’ve t h a n k s g i v i n g n i g h t

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  rained and I’d’ve kept dry.” He turns to Oliver and says, “Remember me? About fifteen summers ago?” Oliver does remember him. Oliver’s suffering a terrible headache and dry mouth, and desires nothing more just now than to be on his way home, but he does remember Stanley, and now he has a bad sense of belonging in this company, though, intellectually, he’s certain that he doesn’t know Stanley from this sort of thing, since he’s never been arrested before. Over the years of doing contract work, he has occasionally hired part-time help, and, often enough, the help has turned out to be undependable, erratic, irresponsible.

  Like this boy, who stands chained to him now with the others: Stanley.

  Young Stanley, not long out of high school then, hired fifteen—yes, fifteen—summers ago. His hair is cut off now, and he doesn’t even look like the boy Oliver knew. Stanley’s gotten heavier around the face. He looks rugged, roughed up, in a way.

  “Has it been that long?” Oliver asks him, merely to be polite.

  “I liked working for you,” Stanley says, smiling. “What’d you do to get in trouble?”

  “I got pulled over last night. DUI.”

  “I fell asleep trying to call somebody to come get me,” Stanley says.

  “I don’t even drink. I had two glasses of beer at a bachelor party for a buddy of mine and I was scared to try driving home. I hadn’t slept in two days because I already did drive here from Knoxville—didn’t want to miss the wedding.”

  The other one, Mickey, says almost proudly: “I lost my driver’s license for repeated DUI.”

  They are led out of the building and asked to get into another van.

  Their chains rattle; it’s absurd. Oliver glares at the police, as if to say he’ll tell on them. The cuff of the chains abrades the skin of his ankles. “This is just a little ridiculous,” he says to Stanley. “Chains? They know us.”

  “It gets your attention,” says Stanley.

  “State law,” one of the officers says. “Sorry, Mr. Ward.”

  The ride to the courthouse is quiet. Light is coming to the sky. Alison will wake and find that her father hasn’t been home; the children will worry. This is the day her best friend and neighbor, Marge, leaves for Montana to have her baby at home. Oliver won’t be there for Alison.

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  He won’t be there to say good-bye to Marge. He has an appointment at seven a.m. with a couple named Gilman—at their insistence—about painting their house and adding a sunroom. He’ll be late for that, too, if he doesn’t miss it altogether. Everything is fucked up. No, he, Oliver Ward, is fucked up. Has fucked up. As usual, he thinks, clasping his ha
nds tight in his lap.

  The arraignment amounts to the assignment of a court date. Stanley and Mickey go first. It turns out that Mickey is in violation of parole, and will have to go back to jail. Stanley is let go, and then it’s Oliver’s turn. It’s all cut-and-dried: court date, the signing of the release form.

  A woman in a gray pantsuit hands him his truck keys. The truck has been impounded, is parked in the police garage. Oliver’s chains come off; he’s released. The morning is brightening. It turns out that Stanley has waited for him outside. In the new sun, his skin looks smooth and healthy. “Can you give me a lift?”

  “Where to?”

  The young man falls into step with him, assuming that his question is agreement.

  “I’m in a hurry,” Oliver says. “I’ve got to get home.”

  “I think I’m on your way.”

  They go through getting Oliver’s truck out of the police garage, and soon they’re riding along in the first light, with nothing whatever to say to each other. Oliver decides that anything is better than the silence, and he is a little curious, so he asks Stanley what he’s been doing with himself. The young man says he just left a job with a contractor in Knoxville and is looking for work. He’s staying for the time being with a cousin and his wife and two children. He’s been doing spot work to stay ahead of bills—electrical, drywall, general carpentry, and even some plumbing. It pays to get as proficient as possible with all the various jobs there are. But the winter’s coming, and things are about to get thin. This is all very familiar to the older man, who nods and searches his mind for something encouraging to say.

  It turns out that the cousin lives only a couple of blocks from him.

  He pulls the truck next to the curb and looks at the litter of toys in the yard. “I do some babysitting for them, too,” Stanley says. “They pay me t h a n k s g i v i n g n i g h t

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  for it. I do worry about this winter—first one in a while I’m not with a contractor. Anyway, somebody somewhere’ll need some things done.

  And I’m pretty good, so there should be some demand.”

  Oliver, who believes in doing business without regard to personal feelings, recollects that Stanley was indeed very good at a lot of the tasks involved. And he remembers liking him, too—for all the times he didn’t show, or was late, or knocked off early. Like so many young men who have come and gone over the years.

  “Well,” he says. “I know where you are anyway. I can’t afford to hire any help right now, but if things change—you know.”

  “Thanks,” Stanley says, getting out of the truck. “I really wasn’t asking you for work.”

  “Nevertheless,” says Oliver. “If things change.”

  Stanley smiles and waves, turning to go on to the house and in. Oliver taps the horn, pulling away.

  Five blocks past the turn to his own house is the Gilmans’ place. It’s a low rambler, L-shaped, tucked into thick shrubbery and in the shade of a giant chinaberry tree. Past seven-thirty now. Oliver notices the car is gone from the driveway. He was going to tell the Gilmans that materials are often slow arriving, and it’s time to decide about things: the Gilmans have been going back and forth; the wife can’t settle on a color for the outside. Mr. Gilman keeps waffling about the size of the sunroom, how far across the rear of the house it should extend. They both work in the town and are gone into the nights. Oliver gets out of his truck and approaches—he sees Mr. Gilman standing in the front door, behind the screen.

  “It’s late,” Mr. Gilman says. “I’ve had to call the office.” The Gilmans have an oblique way of putting things. Oliver knows that what is meant by this is “You’re shiftless and lazy.”

  So, he apologizes and makes up an excuse—car trouble. He looks back at the parked truck and talks about how old it is. “One thing after another,” he says.

  “Dorothy already left,” Mr. Gilman says. What this means is: I can’t talk to you now. I can’t decide anything without Dorothy. I never do anything without Dorothy. Oliver’s familiar with the pattern.

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  “I could come back tomorrow morning if that’s better,” he says.

  But, in fact, Mr. Gilman and his wife have already decided something. “I don’t think we’ll do this until the spring, now. She and I discussed it before she left, actually.”

  “Oh, well—I could get it all done in a couple of weeks.”

  “That’ll be fine in the spring.”

  Oliver says, “If you’re sure.”

  Mr. Gilman nods at him, looking him up and down. “We’ll need our deposit back,” he says.

  2.

  Not quite a mile away (a left turn at the end of one street, a straight-away for eight-tenths of a mile through the splashed shade of lovely black locust trees), Oliver Ward’s daughter, Alison, stands outside her rental house with her friend Marge Creighton, soon to be Myers again.

  Because they’re in the cool shade, and it’s so early in the morning, Alison has a sweater draped over her shoulders, tied with the sleeves; she’s off duty today, too. Marge wears a turtleneck and a light sweat-shirt. This day’s hard for both of them, each with trouble that is ongoing and separate from this problem of Marge leaving for Montana for six months. Her mother is a midwife, and her mother’s husband is an asshole. That’s how Marge has expressed it. She and Greg are splitting up. Because Greg is indeed the number-one all-time champion asshole (again, Marge’s phrase). They haven’t been able to sell their house, but Marge can’t stay there anymore, with him moving through the rooms, a bad presence, a heavy worry, a selfish emotional infant unable to see beyond the next moment, the next physical need, the next opportunity to bask in a mirror admiring himself. A vain, self-satisfied nullity. A bully and a bore. The champion. They’re going to have to keep the house for a time, because they don’t have the money or the credit to buy two separate places. He’s seen to that with his bad habits. So, she’s going to her mother’s to have the baby and start over, and he’s staying, at least until t h a n k s g i v i n g n i g h t

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  someone buys the house. Eventually, he’ll head north, to start over in his hometown, Albany. A job in his father’s bank. The old man’s been a loan officer there since Christ was a zygote. Greg’s been running from the job in the bank for ten years, and now, at thirty-five, it’s time, Marge says, to give up the fight. She and Greg spent a lot of time drunk or stoned in their first years together. Last year, they got married and moved to Point Royal, where they met Alison and her father. Greg had a job with a radio station, doing the graveyard shift. The marriage hasn’t even lasted out the year. If Greg wasn’t such an asshole, Marge says, he’d be a dick, and, in fact, he cannot think beyond the end of that particular organ. It’s her pregnancy that has snapped everything. So, he’s going to go home and she’s heading west. She’ll drive as far as the Indiana line today.

  For a little while, the two women have talked only about the specifics of the journey. Alison holds her youngest, Kalie, on her hip, while Jonathan, her fourteen-year-old, sits on the little rise of grass and red dirt a few feet away, under the mailbox. He looks like someone waiting sadly for something bad to happen. And, since the divorce, he’s become rather heavily bookish, more so than Alison herself. He spends hours every day turning the pages of big tomes: biographies and histories and books about science and anthropology. His vocabulary’s laden with four-and five-syllable words, as if he’s trying to impress everyone with his intellectual acumen.

  He has one of those end-of-summer colds, and is sniffling now, though that could just as well be attributed to this farewell. He comes to his feet and offers to take Kalie from her.

  “She’s okay here,” Alison says.

  He turns to Marge. “It’s going to be quite difficult not having you next door.”

  “I know, sweetie,” Marge says, “I’ll miss you, too.”

  Alison thinks how Marge, in the space of this one year, has become her closest
friend. Other friends are childless, or have no immediate plans to have children, and the ones with children are in stable relationships. They appear to be, anyway. Nobody seems quite comfortable with her anymore, and, in fact, many of them were more her ex-husband Ted-72

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  dy’s friends than hers. Her partner on the job, Roy, is a young father, and he’s completely flummoxed by the fact that it’s twins. He’s scared, and seems always after her for reassurance (and so even her conversations at work are about babies). Then there’s the job itself, the odd hours, and her father and Marge have been so good about seeing to the children, though Jonathan is old enough to take care of his sister, and often does.

  “Please,” she tells Marge, standing out by the packed jeep. “Call me a lot?”

  “I will,” Marge tells her. “I’m gonna want to know how to do this.”

  She indicates her abdomen. “It scares me to death.”

  “I don’t know how to do it,” says Alison. “And you have been doing it, with mine.”

  “I’m talking about that little matter of the passage through the birth canal, darling.”

  “Oh.”

  “And you’ve done it twice.”

  “I still don’t know.”

  Marge smiles, pushing her blond hair from her forehead—a nervous, appealing gesture of hers. Her hair is luxuriant, thickly shining in the brightness. “I thought I’d get to say so long to Oliver.”

  They look up the street, shaded by these giant spreading trees that are still as a picture. For this moment, it’s almost supernaturally quiet.

  Alison says, softly, “He called and said he had some luck yesterday and ended up with sixty dollars without doing any work. So I bet he went on a little toot last night. I didn’t hear him come in, and I went to bed after midnight. He was gone when I got up this morning.”

  “Well, tell him I’ll miss him.”

  Now Kalie has begun fighting to get down. Alison hoists the child, jutting her hip out to support her.

  Jonathan says, “Why don’t you allow me to take her, Mom.” Such a sensitive boy, always thinking, always looking out at the world with that sorrowful, troubled gaze. His father has left him alone and rarely comes to see him. “I’ve got her,” Alison says, jostling Kalie again. All the child wants is movement. She’s four years old, and, since the divorce, she’s become very quiet and needy. Some nights, when Alison’s off duty, the girl sleeps with her (as does Jonathan, too, now and then; a thing t h a n k s g i v i n g n i g h t