Thanksgiving Night

by Richard Bausch

  Father McFadden thanks him.

  “Do you want to talk about our mutual worry?” Brother Fire asks him.

  “No.” The other seems embarrassed now.

  “Do you feel better?”

  He leaves a pause.

  “Because I feel a little better.”

  “No,” Father McFadden says. “I’m just waiting for it to pass.”

  “And it has always passed, right?”

  “Some times more quickly than others. You see, Father—sometimes I think—well, I think I’m probably a little ridiculous. I think I strike people that way.”

  The old priest can think of no form of response that would not be taken as pity, so he remains silent. He wants to reach over and take hold of the man’s shoulder, or step over and hug him. But it wouldn’t be appropriate, might even give away something of his recent thoughts, for which he now squirms inwardly.

  “Of course it shouldn’t even be a concern of mine. It’s pride. Vanity.

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  spiritual life. I’ve been out of seminary five years. It’s silly. I should’ve gone past these doubts.”

  “I’ve been having them, too,” Brother Fire says to him, exhilarated at the chance to say something. “I have, you know. And how long have I been out of seminary?” He smiles.

  “My heavens. You mean I can look forward to this terrible battle all my life?”

  There seems to be nothing to say to this.

  Father McFadden sighs and smiles. “Just a joke, Father. I’m sure it’s always a battle for all of us all the time.”

  Brother Fire helps him pack the car and stands waving at him as he pulls down the street and away. He won’t be back until after the holiday.

  It snows all night Monday. And he spends sweet hours with Saint Thomas and his great book. Calls are few. Something about a big snow, it seems to the priest, makes everything quiet, even the souls of men.

  Tuesday, though the roads are covered—the schools are still closed—

  he makes his way to the hospital to see Mr. Petit, who’s conscious now and wants to talk. Mr. Petit apologizes, as if the action for which to be forgiven is nothing more than a failure of manners—getting drunk or being rude. He says he wishes he’d had a son. His trouble stems from that, and the loneliness he feels is only the loneliness of a father for an absent son. A son who was never born. He believes he can recall the face of every child he has ever taught.

  There are so many different kinds of love, and don’t they all, finally, come down to gestures?

  The old priest reiterates to Mr. Petit that the province of sin is always self; self alone, to the exclusion of others. “And your whole existence has been other-centered,” he says. “Look at it directly and you’ll see that—anybody can see that.”

  “It’s how much I wasn’t ever like that, Father, that tortures me.”

  “But that’s a sin of pride, isn’t it? I mean it’s perfectly understandable and human. But it is pride. And I might as well tell you, that’s been my sin, too.”

  “I’ve got so far to go,” Mr. Petit sighs. “Such a long way back.”

  “Don’t go back. Go on.”

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  Mr. Petit looks off at the windows, and a small smile comes to his drawn features. “I appreciate the deftness of expression, Father.”

  “I’m trying to tell you the truth as I understand it, son. As I believe it.”

  “I’m sorry, Father.”

  Brother Fire places his hand on the other man’s wrist.

  3.

  Late Wednesday afternoon, Mark and Gail call to say they’re less than an hour away. Elizabeth’s still at school, and Will Butterfield isn’t at all certain that she’ll come home tonight. Each day of this week, she has talked about her dread of the holiday, her wish not to be here for it. Friday she came home, dragged the suitcase out of the car and back up to the bedroom. He thought she might be deciding to stay; but the bag remained packed and she remained distant and silent. The weekend was terrible in all ways, the two of them passing in the hallways of the house, and speaking separately on the phone to Holly, to Gail and Mark. Elizabeth gave no sign, let nothing of the awfulness of life now come out in her voice when talking to these others. This made Butterfield hopeful, until she would look at him again, with those measuring eyes, dismissing him, fencing him off. Monday, she lugged the suitcase out to the car again. He rode with her in silence to the bookstore, got out, and she drove away. He spent the long day there, mostly alone, sick with worry, looking for ways to keep busy, redoing inventory, re-arranging shelves of books. When she came and picked him up in the afternoon, it was a surprise, it filled him with a brittle hope, but then they went home in the dreadful silence between them. She put the suitcase back once more. Still, she talked very evenly and matter-of-factly, all business, about checking into a hotel, and Tuesday morning she had the suitcase out, but school was canceled. The hours from afternoon to night, each day, have dragged on like a season in hell.

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  rummaging through it looking for something. Yet something about the suitcase being there makes him fear her leaving even more, as if, in the final stage of her going, she won’t even take that with her. He tells himself this is panic thinking, and moves the suitcase into the closet, on the floor, closing the door on it.

  Mark and Gail pull in with Gail’s new love, Edie, who is short, squat, flat-assed—you can’t help but notice it—round-faced, and with black hair cut so close it looks like stubble at the crown of her head.

  There is nothing remotely attractive about her at first glance, but, when she speaks, an animation comes to her small, round, hazel eyes. She has a stub nose and small, grayish teeth. She’s thick through the chest and arms, but that may be that she’s bundled in a heavy, navy-blue suede coat with fringe on the sleeves. Also, she wears tight, faded jeans, thick black boots. Her legs are muscular and slightly bowed. There are gold earrings in rows up her ears, all the way to the tips.

  “This is Will,” Gail says, indicating her father. She’s dressed more like Edie, and Butterfield notices that she, too, has more piercings up the side of her ears. Gail’s hair is also cut very short now.

  “Oh,” says Edie in a very pronounced New York accent, “how awe ye-oh,” stepping confidently forward and holding her hand out. He looks down, into the palm with its rough calluses and at the cigarette-stained fingers, and he thinks, for some reason, about workman’s compensation; there’s something distinctly blue-collar about her appearance, except for the fringed sleeves of the coat—for that, she might as well be a country-music singer. He grips the hand, then eases his grip for the clammy inertness of it. She winces and then steps back, nervously looking up and down the street. He half-expects her to offer to shovel the sidewalk. Gail keeps studying his face, searching for signs that he feels what he, in fact, does feel—dismay. A profound, sorrowful consternation and disappointment. And do we not, anyway, wish normal life for our children? He allows himself the thought, ushering them into the house, determined to keep a pleasant front and to say nothing about this trouble with Elizabeth. He’s not acting out of any rational plan or intention; it is pure cowardice and avoidance: he doesn’t want it to come up. He watches them move through the house toward the kitchen with t h a n k s g i v i n g n i g h t

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  their bags. The two women are following Mark automatically, and Edie is remarking on the house. “Oh, wuhn derful,” she says, lugging her own heavy bag to the entrance of the kitchen and then stopping and seeming faintly confused.

  “Show Edie to where she’s staying,” Butterfield says to Gail. Mark is at the refrigerator, already unpacking his salmon, his sea bass and tuna.

>   Gail apologizes for being a clod and leads Edie up the stairs.

  Butterfield stands in the entrance of the kitchen, leaning on the frame.

  “Jesus Christ,” Mark says softly. “I think they must’ve consulted the magazines.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “It’s like they’re playing to it, Dad. Gail told me that when they met, Edie was wearing a business suit, high heels, and had her hair long and permed. She looked like a—well, like an average middle-aged woman, in other words. This is some kind of coming out.”

  “You don’t think this is a true expression of either one of them.”

  “Not my sister, I know that much. That lady’s almost fifty, for God’s sake.”

  Butterfield is surprised at the avidity he feels for this as a subject; it is far from him in its way—his son and daughter’s private lives. The trouble with Elizabeth is a dark backdrop, and even that fraction of removal feels a little like surcease. But then the whole thing rides over him again, the weight of what neither of his children knows yet, the mess that everything will be in when Elizabeth gets home with her grievance and her intentions. Mark crushes the paper bag in which he had packed the fish. The noise itself is grating on the nerves. Butterfield discovers a desire to take a swipe at his son’s complacency. “I’ve seen married women with their hair cut that short,” he says. “Aren’t you being a bit stereotypical in your reactions to them?”

  Mark looks at him, having paused in the act of picking up his bag.

  “You weren’t in the car with them. I felt guilty for having a prick. They kept going on like I wasn’t even there.”

  “So, your feelings are hurt.”

  “Maybe. Yeah.”

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  “Well, get over it,” Butterfield says, and the urge to tell Mark everything rushes through him like a wave of fire.

  “It’s no skin off my nose,” Mark says. “But the ride down here—

  Jesus. Edie’s—that accent, too. I have never liked that particular accent.”

  “Happy Thanksgiving,” Butterfield says. “You don’t know the half of it.”

  His son stares, standing there holding his bag.

  The two women are coming back down the stairs, and they are talking about the first Elizabeth. Edie has been in touch with the records division in San Francisco. It’s best, she says, always to start with the person’s actual name, though it’s fairly certain now that the name is changed, has changed several times, first and last.

  Without her coat, she looks rather less squarish of build. She’s wearing a soft pink blouse and a belt with a large silver buckle, with darker facets in it, suggesting the look of the full moon at its zenith.

  Gail pours a glass of milk and offers it to Edie, who politely refuses it. “I’m just fine.” Gail drinks it down. They talk more about the house and the work Butterfield did on this kitchen—new ceiling, track lighting. Gail remarks that her father is good at track lighting. “He knows how to do that, don’t you, Daddy?”

  Butterfield sits at the table in the breakfast nook and forces a smile in response, folding his hands in front.

  “Should I make coffee?” Gail asks.

  “Not for me,” says Edie.

  “I don’t want anything,” says Mark, heading out to go up to his room.

  Butterfield looks at his daughter, with her new earrings glinting in the light, and says, “Sure. Make some coffee.”

  She gives a little shrug at his tone, and sets to work. Edie stands at her side, talking to her about different teas she used to drink and how there’s more caffeine in some teas. Gail takes this up and goes on about using caffeine to cut the effects of drinking, she never has a hangover, because she has a lot of coffee when she’s drinking. They talk about caffeine and alcohol. They’re both full of chatter, as if they don’t want to allow space for the discussion of anything serious.

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  “Where’s Elizabeth?” Gail asks finally, sitting at the table across from her father and setting his coffee down. “School let out a while ago, right?”

  “Well, honey,” Butterfield says, then stops.

  Edie squeezes in next to Gail. Now they’re both waiting for him to go on. He has the unpleasant thought that they already know everything, that Elizabeth may have called them.

  “They’re not doing afternoon-club stuff the day before Thanksgiving,” Gail says.

  “I’m gonna broil the salmon for tomorrow,” says Mark, coming back in. “I brought some wine, too.” He sets a cardboard carrier of three bottles on the counter and then makes a lot of noise reaching into the drawer under the oven, bringing out the broiler pan. He retrieves the salmon from the refrigerator, unwraps it, and then opens the refrigerator door again, looking in. “If a person wants not to be found,” he says,

  “then it’s pretty certain they won’t be, unless it’s the cops looking for them—and even then.”

  “Well,” says his sister, “we weren’t talking about that just now.”

  “Let me know when it’s okay to talk about it again,” Mark says with a smirk.

  “I understand you own a bookstore,” Edie says to Butterfield, with nothing like real interest. It’s only to change the subject.

  He wonders what kinds of disagreeable exchanges she had to hear in the car on the way down from Philadelphia, no one there with whom to change the subject. “Yes,” he tells her. “Used books. Guy came in the other day and bought something like seven hundred dollars—” He stops, having received the image of Ariana Bromberg that day, walking into the shop, jingling her car keys. Did he know, even in that moment, where it was headed, where it would end up? It’s hard to believe he didn’t.

  Edie says, “Books?”

  He nods. Gail stares. “Claimed he didn’t have any, never read any.”

  He doesn’t want to go on with it, but they’re waiting. “He was starting from the beginning.”

  “How old was he?” Gail asks.

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  “Roughly my age.”

  “You okay?”

  “Sure.” Butterfield watches his son poke around in the refrigerator.

  At last, he brings out a stick of butter, tears the wrapper off, and greases the broiler pan, using it like a big crayon. The salmon he’s going to prepare is an enormous pink slab lying in a crown of butcher paper.

  “Salmon,” Butterfield says. “On Thanksgiving.”

  “Don’t alienate me,” Mark says. “I’m on your side.”

  Butterfield looks at his own white knuckles. So, Elizabeth has spoken to them, he thinks. He looks across the table at Gail, who simply stares back. But then she shakes her head. “That was for our benefit.”

  She turns her attention to her brother. “I guess you felt left out on the drive, little bro?”

  Mark ignores her. “I put melted butter and lemon juice on it,” he says, “and seafood seasoning. It’s very good, actually.”

  Butterfield watches him.

  Butterfield gets up from the table and crosses to the sink. He pours himself a glass of water and drinks it down. The whole sense of things now is of a deadening unreality. He looks at the napkin holder on the counter, the little wrinkle of green napkin falling from it, and tries to master his own breathing. He wants to sob, wants to move off, leave them here, retire to his room and sleep. Disappear.

  Lose consciousness. He pours more water and drinks it. Gail asks Edie to move, slides out of her place, and walks past him. “Bathroom,” she says.

  Edie remains standing, hands in the pockets of her jeans. Butterfield can’t help picturing her with Gail in some sexual pass; he wonders what they do, has a flash of tangled limbs in an expanse of rumpled sheets, and then attempts not to think at all. His own mind repels him for its ceaseless grasping at everything, its stream of unwanted images, remembered and imagined.

  They hear the door open, Gail’s voice, the clamor
of greeting. A moment later, Elizabeth enters the room with two bags of groceries. She hugs Mark, and then, to Butterfield’s astonishment, she hugs him, too.

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  are around him. She turns to Mark, being animated for Edie’s sake, and says, “My Lord. Fish. A fish for Thanksgiving?”

  “I’m numb to teasing,” Mark says. “Go right ahead.”

  Gail introduces Edie, who repeats, “How awe ye-oh.”

  Elizabeth shakes hands, then pats the other woman’s shoulder. “Welcome to the family,” she says.

  Edie appears moved, looking to one side and stepping back. The little eyes show moisture. “I haven’t been to a Thanksgiving—haven’t been to someone’s home to celebrate it in some—in some time,” she says. Her demeanor is actually shy now.

  Elizabeth pats her shoulder again and then busies herself with taking things from the grocery bags—bread and fruit and boxes of crackers and more wine. All reds, claret bottles with a ruby shine to them and rustic, brown labels. “Has your father spoken to you?” she asks Gail.

  The evenness of her voice goes through Butterfield like a blade. Her face is completely without expression.

  “Where do you want this to go?” he interrupts, holding up a bottle of the wine.

  She hesitates, looking blankly at him. “Where do we usually keep it, Will?”

  “Spoken to me about what?” Gail asks.

  Her stepmother seems briefly perplexed, but she recovers. “Nothing.

  Your year. Your search for your mother.”

  “Marginally,” says Gail. “We think she’s living in San Francisco somewhere.”

  “This holiday is going to be fun,” Elizabeth says. “A real treat.” With the word treat, she sets down a carton of eggs with such force that it breaks open.

  “What’s wrong?” Gail says.

  “Not a thing,” Elizabeth tells her. Then she turns to Will. “Will you put the eggs away?”