Thanksgiving Night

by Richard Bausch

  Years ago, during his first marriage, he drove up into the mountains alone—it was after some conflict involving the first Elizabeth and Mark and Gail—and, stopping to get out and breathe the air, he discovered a little place just past the nine-mile post, along Sky Line drive. It was at the end of a long declivity paved in loose gravel and then unpaved, a dirt path, leading by steady degrees downward to a trickle of a waterfall, a steep cliff, and a flat rock where he could sit and gaze through the top branches of trees at the other line of mountains across the Shenandoah Valley. He walked here simply to see where the gravel path led, since it seemed to lead toward the steep edge of nowhere. Finding the waterfall, he sat on the rock and waited for his equilibrium to return, somehow realizing that this was what would happen—that the scene itself, with its green silence broken only by birdsong and the small splashing of the water down the rocks, would calm his blood and return him to himself.

  He has gone back there several times since, and for exactly the same reason—to seek the sweet calm it has always yielded.

  Perhaps today he’ll make some excuse and drive up there. He thinks of meeting Ariana in that sun-dappled remoteness, and his stomach seizes up. He never told anyone about the little waterfall—not the first Elizabeth, nor this one, who now yawns, stretches, rises in her lovely nudity, and—oh, such pretty long legs, such a wondrously swaying stride—goes into the bathroom.

  Yesterday, in The Heart’s Ease bookstore, for some damnable reason, he told Ariana Bromberg about the path down to the waterfall, the nine-mile post.

  “Jesus Christ Almighty,” he murmurs.

  He hears Elizabeth start the shower and listens for a while, thinking 194

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  of the sleepy sound of a summer daybreak in the rain, the once-restful-ness of that seasonal music. At length, he rises and, still naked, makes his way down to the kitchen, where he puts coffee on, then stands at the window over the sink, looking out at the dim lawn with its uncut grass and its bare patches of dirt and tree root and stone. Bells sound in the distance, Sunday morning in his valley town. He scratches himself, a humble movement as ancient as walking upright, first the top of his head, then his backside, and then his groin, shuddering with the knowledge of the lies he will have to tell and go on telling. He looks down.

  Here is the equipment with which he has betrayed everything. It’s so humble, so harmless-looking, so insignificant. Oh, the hour is early, still. There’s a merciless quality to the way the day is beginning, as if nothing has changed at all. Light hasn’t even quite reached past the mountains in their autumnal spatters of color—burnished red, stark yellow, and brown. He pours himself a glass of milk, wanting to settle his stomach, waiting for the coffee to drip. He stands at the sink, swallowing the milk, remarking to himself the cold sweetness of it and the way it slakes his dry mouth, the pleasantness of it even in his disturbed state.

  The world’s sensations are not fundamentally changed by one’s failures.

  Well. Such an odd thought. The mind going on, presenting him with its own little suddennesses of image and motion. Back upstairs, he kisses his wife’s cheek and begins dressing himself. She goes downstairs, humming softly. It’s a lovely morning for her. He dresses and follows her down. As he reaches the bottom of the stairs, the doorbell rings, startling as death news. It’s like the tolling of the Last Judgment. Who in God’s name at this hour but someone with bad news, someone coming to tell everything? No one will ever know He thinks irrationally of the car in the driveway and hurries soundlessly back up the stairs. He hears Elizabeth call for him to open the door and remains quiet. And now he hears her come into the foyer.

  “Oh,” she says, rather too brightly, opening the door. “Good morning.”

  “Wanna have some coffee?” Ariana’s voice.

  He waits for her to go on and tell the rest. Your husband and I got naked on the floor behind the counter in the Heart’s Ease. He locked the door and t h a n k s g i v i n g n i g h t

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  put the gone to lunch sign up. We fucked like two people who’ve been denied it for centuries and were storing it all up. I told him no one would ever know.

  “I know it’s early,” Ariana goes on. “But I thought you might like to come over for a mimosa. A Sunday coffee.”

  Oh, Christ.

  “Um, I guess, sure. I think my husband may have gone back to bed.”

  The two women step out onto the porch. They’re talking. Words that he can’t distinguish. And then there are other voices, too.

  He moves to the bedroom window and looks out. The red Subaru is parked out front. They’ve all come to confront him, the women in his life. He hurries downstairs, blood rising, a pressure under his eyes. Pulling the door open, he comes upon a scene of simple sociability. Elizabeth seems fine, is busy introducing Ariana to Fiona and Holly, both of whom, he sees now, do appear a bit ragged and the worse for wear. They have two children with them—the contractor Oliver Ward’s grandchildren—they hang back, the boy keeping his arm around the younger girl. Butterfield smiles at the boy, who can’t seem to decide what to do with his hands. They’re all gathered in the cool, slanting shade from the awning over the window to the right of the door. It’s a bright, cloudless day, with quick, cold breezes.

  “Where’d you go?” Elizabeth asks him.

  But now Fiona’s telling about the night she and Holly spent in the emergency room. “Full recovery, though,” Holly says. “It’s turned out to be a good thing because they caught something else that might’ve been trouble down the road.”

  Elizabeth says, “Hello, Jonathan.”

  “Hello.”

  “Jonathan’s in my first-period English class, aren’t you Jonathan.”

  “Quite so,” says Jonathan, smiling embarrassedly.

  “We’re going to spend the day,” Holly says, “so Alison can have the time at the hospital.”

  “It’s going to be just fine,” says Fiona, though her eyes betray her.

  Fiona can’t believe the good news, even as she repeats it. Being close to any kind of physical ailment exaggerates her already highly tuned belief in the fragility of life. Now she talks about going to church to make a 196

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  visit and light a candle. Her religious feeling has often seemed rather like something she keeps in case a need arises. Butterfield thinks she’s been scared back to her religious childhood by the long night she’s just been through. He understands the feeling while trying to dismiss the notion, for its unkindness.

  “We’re taking them to get some ice cream,” Fiona says, “and then I thought we’d come to The Heart’s Ease to look at the books.” She leans down to Kalie. “Don’t you worry, sweetie. It’s gonna be fine.”

  “We didn’t want you to wonder what happened to us,” Holly says to Butterfield. “We tried and tried to call you. Last night and this morning. Is something wrong with your phone?”

  Elizabeth gives her husband a look and says, “Let me go check.” She steps quickly into the house and closes the door.

  Fiona stares at Butterfield. “You look a little rumpled. You gonna wear that to the store?”

  “We tried to call,” Holly says.

  Elizabeth comes back and raises her eyebrows as if to express puzzlement. “Nothing wrong with the phone. I mean there’s a dial tone and everything.” Again, she sends a look Butterfield’s way.

  Holly walks with Jonathan and the little girl back to the car, and Fiona trails along behind them. “We’ll be at that ice cream parlor up the street from you,” Holly says over her shoulder. “Then we’ll bring them down. You’re heading out to the store, right?”

  “He looks rumpled to be going to The Heart’s Ease,” says Fiona.

  “Shouldn’t they have something like breakfast?” Butterfield asks.

  “Try not to think like a parent all the time,” Holly smiles back.

  “They’ve been through a rough night. It’s just this once.”

  T
hey get into the car and pull away—Holly driving.

  “Guess you don’t feel like coffee now,” says Ariana to Elizabeth.

  Elizabeth answers, “Sorry.” And there is in her voice the sorrow for other things, for the fact that a wonderful evening and night like the one she has just spent must end in new complications involving the Crazies. Though, when she passes close to Butterfield, she takes his arm above the elbow and leans into him. A nudge, gentle and, under the circumstances, harrowing.

  “Well, let’s get together sometime,” says Ariana.

  “Yes,” Elizabeth says without much feeling. “Let’s.”

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  She and Butterfield are inside the house before he can find the strength to say anything at all. “Poor Mr. Ward,” he says.

  She looks at him. “Are you all right? Your color’s not good.” She puts her hand on his forehead.

  “I’m fine,” he says, feeling sick to his stomach. “Really.”

  She says something in a vaguely flirtatious way about the fact that there’s time for a little more frolicking. But she doesn’t act on it. He can’t clear his mind. His sense of calamity unfolding increases as she follows him upstairs. “Come here,” she says. “Cuddle me.” So he holds her, lying on the made bed. It’s hard to believe that she doesn’t feel the throbbing in his head, the culpable shuddering at the heart of him. Finally, she props herself on one elbow and looks down at him, so lovely.

  “I guess we should go,” she says. Sunday is usually a busy day in the bookstore. The sliver of light from the window illuminates her exquisite brown hair. The heel of her hand is against the side of her face, pulling the perfect skin next to her eye up slightly. Gazing at this does something wonderful to him, deep—her eyes are so dark, so depthless, almost Asian-looking. Everything about her pleases him. And the knowledge of this sends him into an inward spiral of self-loathing and fright.

  “It’s been a lovely time,” he manages.

  She frowns. “I swear there’s something—are you sure everything’s okay?”

  “Yes,” he tells her, though he can’t look her in the eye.

  “Fiona surprised me. I’ve never seen her so—tentative.”

  “Maybe it’s just lack of sleep.”

  “Will.” Elizabeth suppresses a laugh. “She was positively grandmotherly.” Then her face changes, a shadow crosses. She sighs.

  “What is it?” he says.

  She moves to get up. “I’m thinking about last night. I wish all our nights could be like that.”

  Sometimes it seems to him that the only true simplicity is far outside himself—the view from two thousand feet, near a little waterfall in the mountains.

  “I might go for a drive this afternoon,” he says.

  She appears to consider this. Then she shrugs and moves into the bathroom. “Maybe we’ll both go.” She closes the door.

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  He opens the door and walks in to where she’s standing before the sink, brushing her hair. He cleans his teeth again, brushes his own hair.

  He tells her about the little waterfall, the path down to it through the trees, through leaf shade and sun. It brings about a refinement of his guilt, like an invisible hand turning a knife blade under his breastbone.

  He almost chokes on the words.

  She drives him to the store. He kisses her good-bye and watches as the car goes on down the street and through the blinking yellow light there. It’s as if she’s driving straight to the bottom of the mountain at the end of the road, but then the road takes her down and out of sight to the left, past the row of buildings at that end of the street.

  He opens the store, walks past the guilty space, breathing deeply, thinking about being up in the mountains, in that secluded little spot, and then thinking intentionally about the slaughter of the innocents in fifteenth-century Europe. He makes himself keep moving through the rows of shelves, dusting the surfaces. He’s always been proud of this place, and now it’s changed forever; and he wishes he could’ve taken the car and headed up to the nine-mile post, to walk the path to the falls, alone, he tells himself, no one else there, not Elizabeth, not Ariana, not anyone—just to look at the valley, his home, in the bright, clear morning. The leaves at altitude will be such a profusion of color, that miracle of death and transfiguration.

  Opening the blinds of the front windows, he sees Holly and Fiona pull up, with the two children in the car.

  Fiona leads them through the store, pointing out likely candidates for them to get—she’ll buy whatever they like—and Holly stands with Butterfield at the counter, Butterfield watching it all and trying to pretend an interest. He turns to his mother at one point, as Fiona chatters with the little girl about the book Goodnight Moon, and murmurs, “Did you know this about her?”

  Holly stares. “What?”

  “The way she is with kids.”

  “We both love them. These are sweet kids, too. Very well trained and brave.”

  He wishes he had some bravery. He feels utterly craven and alone and even cowardly, not to say black-hearted. Leaning across the counter, he t h a n k s g i v i n g n i g h t

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  kisses his mother on the side of the face, while Fiona reads to the little girl, sitting on a small stool, the girl standing between her knees, head back on Fiona’s heavy chest, staring wide-eyed at the book. He would never have believed this of the old woman, and this incredulity must show in his face, because his mother leans over to him and murmurs,

  “She used to do that with you, you know.”

  He shakes his head. He doesn’t remember.

  “She did. You were this girl’s age, too. And it was that book.”

  Butterfield watches his great-aunt read to the little girl, and the scene takes on an aspect of lightheartedness that he wishes he could feel.

  It comes to him with something like a shuddering in the connective tissues on either side of his chest that he was once, in spite of a tendency to a dark frame of mind, a very happy man.

  2.

  Alison tries several more times to call Teddy, and she leaves several messages, trying to control her anger. She takes time to put the house in order, before going over to the hospital. She thinks Teddy might call. She wants him to call. It occurs to her that some part of her actually desires to curl up in his arms and sleep. It’s only, she realizes, that she wishes to be held. She’s about to leave the house at last, when Teddy does call.

  Somehow she gets everything out without crying. He’s in Atlantic City.

  He’s sorry about Oliver; he’ll come by as soon as he gets back to Point Royal. He’ll wire her some money.

  “Forget it,” she says. “I wasn’t calling you about money.”

  “I know that,” he says impatiently. “Why do you always have to turn things around on me like that?”

  “There’s someone at the door,” she tells him. “I have to go.”

  “See who it is. I’ll wait.”

  “Bye, Teddy,” Alison says, and hangs up.

  It turns out there is indeed someone at the door. The knock startles her, and she feels as if she’s been caught in a lie. She moves to the window and looks out. A sandy-haired man in a T-shirt and jeans, standing 200

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  there with hands folded in front. He looks vaguely familiar. She opens the door.

  “Hi,” he says. “I was wondering if Oliver was around?”

  Alison tells him what has happened. “I’m on my way over to the hospital right now.”

  His face drains of color. She notices that his freckled hands shake as he pushes them through his hair. One of Oliver’s drinking buddies, no doubt. “I’m awful sorry,” he says. “I worked for him a few years back.

  My name’s Stanley.”

  She nods, and she remembers him now. He offers his hand, so she takes it. “Alison,” she says. “I’ve got to go.”

  “I’m sorry.” H
e steps back. “I had a possibility for some work he might want to do. I’m really sorry.”

  “The doctors say he’ll be fine. It was minor.”

  “Well, please give him my best. Tell him Stanley, you know, if you don’t mind. I ran into him—” He pauses, looking down. “I—we bumped into each other, you know, a while back.”

  “The county jail?” Alison says. She can’t help herself.

  “Yeah. I fell asleep in a phone booth.” His smile is shamefaced. He shuffles slightly, looking off. “Ridiculous.”

  “I’m not going to argue with you,” she tells him.

  “Well,” he says. “Of course not. Tell Oliver—well, yeah. You know, give him my best.”

  “Do you want him to call you?”

  “If he’s up to it. Or I could stop by and say hello.”

  “I’ll tell him,” she says.

  Later, she sits next to her father in the small hospital room, watching the football game. Usually, when they watch, they make fun of the announcers, and, at first, her father, even with his slightly halt speech patterns, seems much like himself—funny, noting the failures of expression, the malapropisms and unconscious revelations of an astounding poverty of values, the hypocrisies inherent in the sport. How empty the highly touted values it supposedly teaches actually are: if you don’t get caught, no penalty; if you get a chance to hit someone beyond the rules, take it; build on intimidation, dominance, fear, pain, gang action, vio-t h a n k s g i v i n g n i g h t

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  lence that is purely designed to make mayhem. They love it. Oliver calls it “watching the millionaires.”

  Now, after the first few minutes, he seems to grow sleepy. He squeezes her hand and mutters: “Watch. They’ll—call—somebody—a wa—water—bug. If he’s black. If he’s—wh—white, it’ll be something—

  ph—physical, inanimate, like a—a machine.”

  She smiles, and he smiles back. He’s already made a little progress toward recovery. But, of course, this trouble has brought home to her in the most potent way how much she depends on him and how wobbly everything is. She moves her chair closer and tries to keep the spirit of things cheerful. She holds his hand, here, in the little room, and, on the television, men in bright colors pummel each other in the roar of the stadium crowd.