Thanksgiving Night

by Richard Bausch

  “That’s the trouble. All the surprises.” Holly looks across at Alison and shakes her head. “This morning, we argued over whether or not to put a separate egg yolk in the scrambled eggs, the way I have been doing them for at least forty years, and with her watching me about thirty percent of the time. She swore up and down that I had never done it, ever, that this was a new development and I was adding cholesterol to her diet because mine is low and hers is high. I saw where she was going with it and left it alone. That is, I allowed as how it was new and said I wanted the eggs to have more body. But I threw them out and started over and then she didn’t want any. Said she was never hungry in the first place and I shouldn’t have wasted the eggs. That’s life with Fiona.”

  “She’s been so wonderful with the children,” Alison says.

  “She’s always been that way, yes. With children.”

  They walk on to the end of the corridor and back, and they pass Drew going in the other direction with his wife. They’re heading down to the cafeteria. They nod at Oliver, and Oliver nods back. It’s like passing neighbors on a city street, so odd. He thinks about how it was in the war, and how he felt in that hospital, learning that he would live.

  “How am I doing?” he says to the two women, and, quite suddenly, something sinks inside him, far down, falling far, a great stone tumbling from heights into the little pond of his being. A desolation. Here is his daughter, whose life has been circumscribed, held back, limited to caring for a man like Oliver, with his needs and his amiable failures over and over. He can barely stand under the weight of this unexpected sorrow, a leveling force, so terrible. He was feeling so good only a moment ago. Holly and Alison look at him. They hold him up.

  They all return slowly to the room, and somehow he gets into the 282

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  bed again. He knows that this that is going on in his soul is something he must never tell them, never tell Alison or the old ladies or the children. No one. He will have to carry this, and try to find some way to make up for everything without seeming to be compensating.

  “You feeling okay?” Alison asks him, having, no doubt, seen something in his face.

  He looks directly at her and then finds that he can’t manage a smile.

  So he pretends a gruff sarcasm. “I look okay to you, do I? You like me in hospital blue?”

  “Well, you look like something hurt you.”

  “Something did—remember?”

  Stanley comes in for a little while and unwittingly provides Oliver with something to concentrate on other than the devastation inside; he has some diagrams for the wiring, which he wants to show Oliver. He’s also got sketches for another job, which involves building an enclosure for a swimming pool. He and Oliver go over the diagrams, and Oliver finds that he can muster the voice to suggest some changes. Alison and Holly melt back into the hallway, but then Alison looks back in and seems faintly agitated, removing Oliver’s water glass and filling it up and bringing it back.

  “I have people to do that,” Oliver tells her, hearing the gruffness in his voice. It comes to him without words that his way of hiding his sorrow over everything is to become surly and ill-tempered. “Really, honey,” he says, giving her a soft look.

  “Nothing to it,” she says, as if not quite thinking about it. She turns at the door and asks if he needs anything else. Does he want the newspaper?

  No. Oliver sees the way Alison’s gaze trails toward Stanley and then glides away. She goes back out, claiming curiosity as to where Holly has gone, and it strikes Oliver that this is a pretext. He says nothing.

  Stanley has watched her the whole time, quietly standing there with his sketches in his hands.

  “The ladies are having Thanksgiving on Temporary Road?” Oliver says.

  “That’s the plan.”

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  “We’re not near—finished.” It pleases him to be talking about it as though he’s up and out of this white room with its institutional art on the walls.

  “No,” Stanley says. “And they know it, too. Doesn’t seem to matter.

  Holly said she likes the idea because it’ll be like it must’ve been on the first Thanksgiving. Actually, I don’t think she’s very peaceful with dividing up the house.”

  Alison comes back into the room and sits in the chair next to Oliver’s bed. She’s snacking from a small bag of potato chips. She offers the bag to Stanley, who thanks her and reaches into it.

  A nurse brings Oliver’s lunch. She’s someone they haven’t seen before, a thin, dark, narrow-lipped girl with acne-scarred cheeks and a look of discouraged efficiency, which reminds Oliver of the young woman who does the yearly inspections of automobiles at his service station. He thinks of that place, Carl’s Auto Service, and wonders uselessly once more if he will ever look upon it again, ever worry about a thing as small as the inspection sticker on a truck.

  Lunch is grilled chicken breast with red potatoes, corn, peach cob-bler, coffee, milk—and broccoli.

  Oliver says, “I’ve told this hospital five times I can’t stand that stuff.”

  “I’m sorry,” the nurse says, looking wounded. “I didn’t know.”

  “Actually,” says Stanley, “I’ll eat it.”

  “Take it outside, then,” Oliver says. “I can’t stand the smell of it.”

  Stanley takes the dish and Oliver’s fork and walks out into the hallway, where he stands, looking one way and then the other, like a man waiting to cross the street. He steps out of view. Oliver looks at what remains of the meal and moves the tray aside.

  “Come on, Dad,” Alison says to him.

  “In a little while,” he tells her. “I’m not hungry just now.”

  “Do you feel all right?”

  “Sure.”

  They’re quiet. They hear Stanley talking about the broccoli to a nurse out in the hall.

  “Something—going on with you—and—and—Stanley?” Oliver asks 284

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  his daughter.

  She seems a little flustered, turning slightly from him, one hand going to her hairline. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “And why, little girl—would that—be ridiculous?”

  “I don’t know.” It’s clear that she wishes him to drop the subject. He touches her hand.

  “Daddy,” she says.

  Presently, Holly returns, looking as if she doesn’t really know where else to be. She has been downstairs with Fiona and Kalie, but those two are playing Go Fish. She asks Oliver about his uneaten lunch, and Oliver, still reeling inside, tries to imagine that it is all a product of what he has been through. He would like to sleep. He would like everyone to leave, and he would like to go to sleep and stay that way for a long time.

  Days. He would like the black clouds to lift.

  And now Drew enters the room, creaking along slow, on his cane, with his wife. There’s a lot of rickety motion as he and his wife try to get the curtain drawn around him. He says loudly that he wants to watch television. His wife turns it on as Stanley comes back, carrying the empty plate. Stanley puts it down, sheepishly, on Oliver’s tray. They all watch the television for a time— Eyewitness News at noon. A poultry truck has overturned on the highway south, and turkeys are scattered everywhere, living and dead, injured or simply wandering around in the road. Stanley remembers that he brought some pork rinds for Oliver, remembering that Oliver always liked them.

  “He can’t eat those,” Alison says.

  Oliver says, “Oh—yes—I can. Save—save them.”

  “We’ll save them, then.” She gives Stanley a look.

  “I should’ve thought it out a little,” he says.

  “It’s a thoughtful gift in its way,” Alison tells him.

  “Well,” Stanley says. “Guess I better go do some more work on the house.”

  After he’s gone, Oliver says, “Nice fellow,” to no one in particular.

  “I think that’s true,
” says Holly.

  For a moment, no one says anything. Oliver closes his eyes and breathes, and the despair begins to change, lessening slightly. He sees it now as despair, and it frightens him. He wants to fight his way out of it, t h a n k s g i v i n g n i g h t

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  away from it.

  “Janice,” Drew murmurs from the next bed. “Delores.”

  Oliver looks at his daughter and shrugs, pulling the bandages at his neck slightly. It makes him wince.

  “Are you okay?” she says.

  He smiles. “Fine—there, kid.”

  “Arletta. Carolyn,” Drew says, sputtering.

  “Wouldn’t you love to know?” Alison whispers.

  “I’m afraid I—do know,” Oliver tells her.

  She leans a little to look at Drew, slack-jawed and helpless-looking in his sleep. Drew’s wife is dozing in a chair.

  “I’m unreasonably afraid he’s going to say my name,” Holly murmurs. And then laughs.

  A little later, Alison leaves to go to work, and Holly sits next to the bed. Oliver feels the oddness of this, even after all the warm attention.

  He wants to say something about it, and then he does. “I hardly—know you, lady.”

  She nods. “And here we are.”

  “I don’t—under—under—stand.” He has never felt a deeper need to be honest and straightforward. It’s as if the very possibility of a mistaken idea about his relation to her is too much to risk, as if having experienced this awful inner collapse, he must strive to be exact and precise, for fear of the last strands of himself unraveling altogether—and now he wonders if this, too, is a result of the stroke, this sense of crisis in a simple, polite passage with this woman who has been so helpful and friendly.

  “Do you want me to go?” she says. “Do I make you uncomfortable?”

  “I’m a little—uncomfortable.”

  “I’ll go.”

  “Wait,” he says as she starts to rise. “I—didn’t mean—that.”

  “It seemed pretty straightforward,” she says with an edge of annoyance. “I’ve let my crazy aunt lead me to intrude, I’m afraid. Forgive it.”

  “No, don’t—ask forgiveness. Please.”

  “Well.” Holly clears her throat. “I remember when I was your age,”

  she says, and laughs; she has amused herself. It’s one of the things he finds charming about her.

  “Dividing the house—wasn’t—your idea,” he says.

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  She looks over her shoulder and then leans closer. “I like to let her believe it was her idea. It’s easier that way.” This is spoken in the low tones of a joke between them, but then her eyes swim, and he realizes that she’s hurting. It stops him.

  “You know, she can be quite sweet,” Holly says, controlling herself.

  “I’ve noticed,” he tells her.

  2.

  That evening, the Butterfields stay inside. She looks at student essays.

  Calvin’s paper is disturbing, and she puts it aside, thinking about how it’s one she would normally show Will, deciding not to in the moment of realizing that before this trouble of Ariana, she wouldn’t have hesitated for a moment.

  She feels more alone than she ever could’ve imagined.

  For his part, he buries himself in a book—a biography of Winston Churchill. How strangely consoling are completed lives: the triumphs, travails, and failures done with. He’s reading for the solace of other people’s sorrows, and he’s aware of her sitting near, the one he’s wronged, the one he loves.

  They do not speak.

  After an hour of this, he forges the courage to ask if she wishes him to make something for them to eat.

  “I’m not hungry,” she says, feeling—as she has all day—that she’s about to begin crying.

  “I’m going to make a sandwich,” he says. “Do you have another headache?”

  “No,” she tells him. Then she goes on precisely as he begins, so, they speak at the same time: she says, “There’s a kid at school,” just as he says, “Gail’s in love.”

  She says, “Excuse me?” exactly as he says, “What’d you say?”

  And then, just as he says, “Gail’s gay,” she says, “He’s a psycho, I think.”

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  He stops.

  “You start,” they both say.

  Now she almost laughs, shaking her head, holding up one hand.

  “No—you,” he says.

  “Wait a minute,” she says. “Gail’s what?”

  So, he tells her. He has wanted to say something all day, and now he can. But because he learned of this in the company of Ariana, he feels harrowingly close to faltering through some sort of confession.

  After a long pause, she says, “Jesus.” It seems to him that all the color leaves her face.

  “She’s bringing her to Thanksgiving. I mean they’re living together.”

  “Jesus,” Elizabeth says again.

  “I told her it was fine, of course. Though I did try to discourage it for Thanks-fucking-giving.” He gets up and moves to the entrance of the dining room. He can’t sit still, so he paces a little, thinking about the imposition, Gail bringing her new love home. He’s aware of the essential ungraciousness of the idea: if it were a man she was bringing, there would be no such feeling. He looks at this in himself and is ashamed. “I just don’t want any more to deal with on that day than the usual,” he says softly, confidingly. Through the window on the other side of the dining room, he can see the next-door house. It makes him quail inside, and he steps back to where she is, on the sofa. “I love you,” he says.

  She hands him Calvin’s paper, without quite looking at him. “This kid. Take a look at what he wrote today.”

  Butterfield looks at the paper and then reads it aloud, softly, almost to himself. “‘The fog on the mountain is like the shirt covering your tits. The fog on the mountain is your—’” He stops. The word is pussy.

  There’s another long silence.

  “The hell,” he says.

  “I sent him to Mr. Petit when I got it.”

  After another pause, he says, “Jesus.”

  “It’s nothing I can’t handle,” she says.

  “Did you report it?”

  “I just told you, I sent him to Mr. Petit.”

  “What else are you gonna do about it?” he asks. “Because I’ll tell you 288

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  what I’d like to do about it.”

  She shrugs. “It’s a kid, Will. A fucked-up, confused, ugly, sorrowful mess of a kid.”

  He gives the paper back to her and sits down on the sofa. “Goddamn,” he says.

  Shostakovich and wife appear at the door perhaps twenty silent minutes later. He’s carrying a bottle of champagne. “This is to make up for the other night,” he says. “And I’m not having the slightest touch of it, either.”

  “Well,” Butterfield says, and then manages to stop himself from saying that he should help drink it. “Thank you. That’s nice.”

  “We wanted you two to have it,” Ariana says with terrible brightness.

  There’s a painful moment of bad quiet. They’re waiting to be asked in. Butterfield does so, and the four of them go into the kitchen, where, out of sheer force of politeness and with trembling fingers, he opens the bottle of champagne. Ariana is a shape in the corner of his eye, wearing what she had on—and took off—this morning at the store. Shostakovich apologizes again for their last visit, scratching the back of his head and seeming puzzled that any of it could’ve taken place. “I think it might’ve been the dope.”

  Elizabeth stands at the counter, arms folded, her face a blank stillness, neither smiling nor frowning. She seems to be observing everyone.

  Ariana begins chattering about Macbeth’s and the fact that she doesn’t have to work tonight. Finally, she says, “Why don’t we all go out?”

  “I’ve got too
much work,” Elizabeth says quickly but evenly.

  “Maybe you can join us,” Ariana says to Will.

  He avoids responding to this by pouring the champagne. Three glasses, because Elizabeth hurries to say that she has too much work.

  This is true, but it’s also rather pointed. Her tone is direct and matter-of-fact and not at all hospitable or inviting. She gives Butterfield a look that expresses her displeasure at the fact that he asked them in. A second later, he realizes that he’s getting the same kind of look from Ariana, t h a n k s g i v i n g n i g h t

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  who lifts her glass to her lips and drinks, and then nods at him. “One of life’s best pleasures,” she says, also directly and matter-of-factly. “That first delicious sip of champagne.” Shostakovich seems blissfully unaware of anything, drinking the champagne and talking about Coltrane as if Coltrane were a colleague of his. There are several things Coltrane does that could be better, he feels, and, in his opinion, a lot of the jazz masters have a way of messing with tempo. It’s an indulgence, he says, precisely as though he knows what he’s talking about. Butterfield swallows the champagne like something medicinal, barely palatable.

  Shostakovich picks up the bottle and pours more into his glass. “We can’t stay too long,” he says.

  3.

  At the hospital, everyone’s gone now from the evening’s visiting. Dinner’s over. Oliver feels that everything’s over. Holly and Fiona came, with the children. A little later, Stanley, too, showed up. And Alison, after her shift, acting nervous around Stanley, and Stanley looking like a man with hopes for the evening. Oliver took his daughter’s hand and looked love at her, and confidence in her, and approval, too. This made her smile. While Oliver’s head went on saying no, no, no, every minute, and he kept looking yes with his eyes, wanting her to go now and find her way without worry about him. She didn’t see it, talking about her day, which was uneventful, thank God, nothing like the terror of the other night, only three little traffic citations today. Small potatoes, and that’s the way she likes it. Holly and Fiona tried to get Oliver to eat the asparagus that the hospital served, and he refused, and they had a little murmured argument about the vegetable, Holly saying she always hated it and Fiona saying that Holly always loved it. They came close to a full-blown argument and then seemed to remember themselves, turning to the task of trying to get Oliver to eat. It became something of a game they played: coaxing Oliver. And then they were all listening to Drew’s sleepy murmuring of names. It was lighthearted, and Oliver felt 290