Thanksgiving Night

by Richard Bausch

  “You’ll give it to me in expiation for your sins,” Holly says to her.

  “I’d hoped not to find myself belittled for it,” says Fiona, with a wounded expression.

  “I want you to have it purely because I want you to have it,” Holly tells her. “So that’s the end of it. I thought we’d settled this before Mr.

  Ward got here.”

  “I’d like to revisit it,” says Fiona.

  “No,” Oliver breaks forth. “Please, ladies.”

  And they look at him as if he has just uttered an oath, or emitted some impolite sound.

  “Can I show you what I’ve got?” he asks gently as he can. It’s as if he’s talking to Jonathan and Kalie. He thinks about this, and then goes on in the same tone: “I’ve got some very good things to show you.”

  “Well,” Fiona says to her niece. “All right, then.”

  “Now, the biggest problem,” Oliver says, sitting on their sofa and opening his plans, “is going to be the kitchen.”

  “One of us will have to have a whole new kitchen,” says Holly.

  “You take it,” Fiona says. “If I’m getting the extra window you should get the brand-spanking-new kitchen with all the best newfan-gled appliances and conveniences.”

  Oliver listens to them argue about that. He sits there looking from one to the other. It’s actually fascinating—the ways in which they communicate through their indirection and denial what they really feel.

  “No,” Fiona tells Holly, “I wouldn’t think of it. You take the kitchen and the extra window.”

  And Holly shakes her head. “Nonsense. I don’t need the window or the kitchen. We decided on the window. You get that. You take the kitchen too. You like to cook more than I do.”

  “Now that’s a complete mystery—that you could think I like to cook more than you do. I’m not half the cook you are.”

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  It goes on while Oliver waits for some semblance of agreement to fall upon them. It’s indeed almost as if agreement would be like a form of natural fate, something neither of them expects.

  They agree finally to wait until Oliver has drawn up more specific plans for the kitchen—they want him to suggest what might be best for it. Holly says she’ll spare no expense to have the best of everything for Fiona’s kitchen. Fiona grapples with this, harrumphing and seeming to falter, shaking her head, but she says nothing. The two women are willing to let the thing go for a while. Oliver has a rush of gratitude about this that surprises him, and he thinks about the effect these two odd old ladies can have upon him. Between the two of them, he rather likes Holly—there’s a fluidity to her motions that is complemented by her speech and by the alto music of her voice; the liveliness of her expressed thoughts has impressed him. He likes Fiona’s bluntness, but—he admits it to himself—he also fears her. There’s always the urge to take a step back when she starts to talk. Some of this is the result of the way she approaches anything: with a suddenness, a forward tilt, as if she means to walk into whomever she’s addressing—no, as if she means to collide with him. And her speech is so weirdly abrupt, as if she was born without the organs of reserve or anything like a sense of the boundaries that normally exist between people.

  After the question of the kitchen has been settled, they sit down to sandwiches Holly made, in the kitchen that she says she’s quite used to and doesn’t mind keeping, and Fiona opens a bottle of burgundy. They all have a glass. Fiona looks at Oliver as she sips hers and says, “You must get tired of explaining that you’re not saying no to everything all the time.”

  “I’m used to it,” he tells her, then uses this invasion of his old trouble to brazen out pouring himself another glass of the wine. It’s very fruity and thick-feeling on his tongue, and he doesn’t like it much, but the effect of it is pleasant. It’s been a long, uncomfortable, rainy morning, and he decides that he has earned a little liquid refreshment. He thinks of Alison, who must work an afternoon shift, into the night hours. He’s supposed to watch Kalie today while Jonathan is at school. Alison won’t be home until midnight.

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  “The thing that amazes me,” Holly’s saying, “is that they kept going even when they knew it was a lost cause.”

  Oliver has lost the subject. He looks at Fiona, who seems still to be watching his head. It makes him uncomfortable, which, of course, makes the tic even worse. “What were we talking about?” he says.

  “The war,” says Holly.

  “The Gulf War?” he asks.

  “No,” Holly says. “Yours.”

  “Oh.” For a moment, he can’t say anything. “Actually, you know—it wasn’t my war.”

  Fiona laughs. “Have some more of this wine.”

  “Don’t mind if I will,” he says.

  They laugh about his odd phrase, and then, out of nowhere, Fiona introduces the subject of Brother Fire. She’s worried about him. Something’s eating at him. She’s never seen him so sad and distracted. And why doesn’t anyone notice it? Why is it always left to Fiona to perceive these things that are happening right under everyone’s nose?

  “I noticed it, too,” Holly says. “And furthermore, he’s talked with me about it. Because I’m not religious, like other people he knows, I can talk to him on a level he’s more at ease with.”

  “He talks to me, too,” Fiona says and then quickly adds, “but he’s more relaxed, I’m sure, with people he doesn’t have to be a priest for.”

  “Do you mean moral cripples?” Holly asks.

  Oliver has the disconcerting thought that this is a reference to an earlier conflict, about to be revisited. He’d like more wine, but he doesn’t want involvement in another argument between these two. He stands so suddenly that he almost has to sit down again. “Ladies, I really have to leave, I’m afraid.”

  “We’ll look forward to finalizing everything,” Holly says in the same instant that Fiona says, “Why don’t you stay and help us finish this wine?”

  He pretends not to have heard Fiona. As he takes his leave, feeling the wine, a pleasant yielding heaviness behind his eyes, he again notes the broken glass on the dining-room floor. He almost asks if it’s all right for him to clean it up. But then he rejects the thought. He goes out into 120

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  the lessening rain, hurrying, and climbs into the truck. He has five minutes to get home, so Alison can leave for her shift, and he’s ten minutes away. If he makes up for it by speeding, he might get pulled over by one of her colleagues, and certainly the Breathalyzer test will show that he’s had more to drink than he should have. Well, in fact, he has had more to drink than he should have. That’s the simple truth. And he is speeding.

  That, also, is true. “God damn,” Oliver says. “I wish I had one goddamn ounce of self-control sometimes.”

  2.

  Brother Fire has taken to reading in The Summa Theologica again, after all these years. Something in him feels drawn to the spirit of this youthful enthusiasm of his—and it is indeed enthusiasm that he feels, wandering in its genial provinces once more. Such fun. An aspect of his earliest training tells him that the spiritual quest is not supposed to be so much fun. And what about that? Surely Aquinas must have found tremendous enjoyment, great delight, high spirits, jolly hours, in exercising his powers of mind, his gift for phrasing, for the ladders of meaning in words, the subtle shadings of thought that come from merely rattling the language and letting it run with one’s perceptions until the surprises are complete. Nothing like it. Brother Fire has experienced this very thing, working out the simple progression of ideas in his weekly homily, and he knows something of the sublime pleasures of writing. He asks himself, what is it about the spiritual life that precludes enjoyment—plain, human, earthly gladness of one’s own gifts? Aren’t the gifts from God?

  And isn’t it blessed to make a joyful noise? And why does the joyful noise have to be shepherd-simple? Why couldn’
t the Summa Theologica itself be taken as a vast joyful noise? Fun?

  He’s thinking these things, sitting in a chair with the book, when Father McFadden walks in from the soaked afternoon, carrying a bag of football helmets. He’s tired but undaunted, braving his own darknesses to seem lighthearted. Brother Fire cannot find in himself the words or the gestures, or the prayerful thoughts, to express for himself the blaze t h a n k s g i v i n g n i g h t

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  of admiration that surges in him at the sight of the other priest with his sharp, hawklike face, those black brows forming a single shelf across the bridge of his nose, the brown eyes set back in deep, narrow sockets.

  Courage is so rife in the world, and it is mostly invisible, unappreci-ated as the miracle of a sunrise.

  Father McFadden puts the bag of helmets down with a clatter, next to the umbrella stand. He turns and gives forth a sigh of weary relief. “I found them at a flea market. I had to act. I think we should have a football team in the CYO league.”

  “But it’s October,” Brother Fire says. “Hasn’t the season started?”

  “I think there’s still a window—if we get started right away.”

  “Isn’t it just a matter of announcing in the Sunday bulletin that we want to put together a team? Say, boys from twelve to sixteen? Something like that? Seems to me that was how it worked when I was at Saint Catherine’s, in the city.”

  “Yes,” Father McFadden says. “But that’s the city.” He holds one hand up, almost as if to shush the older priest. “I’ve got something else outside.”

  Brother Fire watches him go out, then closes the book with a mild sense of loss.

  The other priest returns, carrying a bag of shoulder pads and another full of pants. He also has a football and still another bag, in which there are shoes with cleats.

  “You’ve certainly got all you need for everything, there, Father.”

  “Well, uniforms. And a name.”

  “We can ask for those things from our parishioners, I’d expect.”

  “I was thinking, how about The Confessions?”

  “I don’t think so,” says Brother Fire.

  “Guess not.”

  “How much did this cost?”

  “Only twenty-eight dollars. I got it all for one price.”

  “And where was this?”

  “Oh, by the way, Father, a Mr. Petit called while you were gone this morning. He left a number.”

  Brother Fire waits for the young priest to find the piece of paper with the number on it. When, finally, he produces it, his embarrassment is so 122

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  acute that he hiccups. Poor Father McFadden often has this gastric tic, brought on by nerves—by worries as well as excitements: that is, he’s as inclined to hiccups in response to happiness as he is inclined to them in reaction to trouble.

  “He left the number but then said you shouldn’t call him.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Neither do I.”

  Climbing the stairs to make the call anyway, Brother Fire has a moment of realizing how pleasurable it was reading Aquinas’s book, how for those moments he forgot his own increasing sense of having come upon some trouble for which he is ill equipped.

  There isn’t any answer when he tries to call.

  3.

  Several days after his midday-wine visit with the two old ladies, and one day after a night spent sleeping in the truck with too much to drink, Oliver wakes from a late-morning nap with a dull headache and an increase in the tic in his neck. He finds Kalie sitting on the floor in front of the television, watching a large Slavic woman do exercises. He recognizes the sound of the language and, for a moment, wonders if he isn’t dreaming it all. Alison’s off today. He recalls waking earlier and fearing that he was alone in the house, wondering where she and Kalie might’ve gone, and then Kalie came in from the bedroom, carrying one of her rag dolls. He thought of rising, and then dreamed he had risen, and now here he is, awake again, listening to a heavy female voice count in the language, trying to lessen the shaking back and forth of his head. Kalie has happened on some cable channel and is watching this, hands clasping her small knees, fascinated.

  Alison is probably downstairs, working on the laundry, in the basement that Oliver finished after many delays, when his Mary was alive.

  He reaches over, picks up his guitar, and plays a few notes that he always plays for Kalie when he wants her to come to him—a little bluesy riff with which he used to play her to sleep when she was younger.

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  Then, he played it slowly. Since then, he’s added a little to it and made the tempo more sprightly, and she loves it. She turns and looks at him with the glazed eyes of having been engrossed in the television, and then comes to her feet and strides, smiling, over to him. He puts the guitar down and brings her up on his lap.

  They remain like that for a time, without speaking.

  “Where’s your mother?” he asks.

  “Basement.”

  It’s a good sign, to get even this from her. He has treated her reticence as if it’s normal, and he talks to her as if she’ll answer him, and sometimes she surprises him. “I’ve gotta go visit my new lady friends in a little while.”

  She just nods, toying with the buttons of her dress, looking down.

  She’s almost weightless in his lap. He can’t believe the lightness of her little body.

  The lack of progress on plans for partitioning the house on Temporary Road has been a source of anxiety—the ladies have new complications all the time. Recently, over the telephone, Holly proposed that he build another floor, an addition. And he looked at the expense, the necessary equipment, the buttressing and reframing that it would require, and how long it would take to do it. He drew up some alternate plans, and, of course, Holly decided to drop the idea, because she and her aunt couldn’t agree on who would have to climb stairs each day. Last night, he went to the Mexican restaurant and had too much tequila, and slept in the cab of the truck. One of Alison’s colleagues woke him and was kind enough not to take him in. He did the little walk, the Breathalyzer. It had been long enough; the alcohol had worn off. He drove home, shivering, hungover, and full of regret.

  Now, he brings Kalie to his chest and squeezes her. “What’re you watching there, little girl?”

  She shrugs, not looking at him.

  He breathes the sweet shampoo-fragrance of her hair, the strands of which are silky and soft, dark blond, and so perfect they cause a turning in his soul. The long night he spent in the truck is laced across his back, a reminder, an accusation. He feels the ghost pressure of the door handle in his side. It seems to him that he’s not a man this little girl can ben-124

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  efit from knowing. He rocks her gently and then when she decides she wants down, he lets go. It seems to him that so much of family life is fraught with the sorrow of parting, and that love is rounded with grief, like something lying in the folds of a blanket. Love and sorrow, mingled in all the tender moments. Mary knew that. Well, no time to think these somber thoughts. He has to get going now. There’s so much to do, keeping afloat. He moves to the top of the basement stairs, those curves and angles of wall that he built himself, after all the stops and starts, though it no longer feels quite like his. It is part of the country of his failures. He comes to the first step. “Alison?” he calls. “I’ve got to go.”

  She calls something back that he can’t hear, so he waits, and here she is, hurrying up the stairs. “Can we come with you?”

  “I don’t know how long I’ll need to be,” Oliver says. But she looks so sorry to hear this that he goes on: “If you don’t mind waiting around.

  I’d love to have you along.”

  They have accompanied him a couple of times. The ladies entertain Kalie, and Alison likes being away from the house now that Marge is gone. Marge has only called twice, and both times she seemed od
dly distracted, not wanting really to talk. Absorbed in her new life far away, and Alison fully expected it, and it still wounds her each time.

  They get into the truck, taking a little trouble to get Kalie safely in the seat belt in the middle. And Oliver drives over to Temporary Road.

  It’s a sunny, hot, breezy, pretty day. Kalie sits staring out, and seems calm, not terribly unhappy. She appears to like the going-by of the houses on either side of them.

  They pull onto Temporary Road, and Oliver sees that Fiona’s making her way along the sidewalk with a wagon full of what looks like packages of food. He slows and says out the window, “Need a ride?”

  “Where would I go—in the bed of that thing?”

  “I can take your groceries.”

  “She wouldn’t let me drive my own car. Wouldn’t say where the keys are. And I wouldn’t ask.”

  Oliver pulls over to the curb, stops, and gets out. “Here,” he says. He picks the wagon up and puts it in the truck bed.

  “I had to buy the wagon,” she tells him. “Imagine that. Walk down to the strip mall, buy the wagon, fill it with groceries and haul t h a n k s g i v i n g n i g h t

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  it home.” She huffs at the thought, then looks in at Alison and Kalie.

  “You both look tired. You tired?”

  “We’re fine,” Alison says.

  “My niece is batty,” says Fiona. Then she turns and marches on toward the house, only a few yards away. She crosses the lawn as Oliver pulls up to the curb and gets out again.

  Inside, they find Holly sitting on the sofa, reading a book, Benjamin Thomas’s biography of Abraham Lincoln. Fiona says, “I bought a wagon.

  Hah!” Then she strides into the kitchen, followed by Oliver, who can’t help but mark again the fact that the broken glass still lies in its area of dust under the side table in the dining room. He thinks of archeological digs. What would some future anthropologist make of this array of broken glass under a wooden table in what these ancient Americans called a dining room?