Edie has brought wine.
Holly takes it, saying, “Oh, good. I like Spanish.”
There’s a lot of confusion now, people moving about the little room, Fiona acting to get everyone seated. Dinner’s about ready.
Brother Fire says the prayer—a simple expression of gratitude for the food, and the Lord’s Prayer. Fiona says a word of thanks for Holly, for all the love Holly has given her over the years, and Elizabeth looks at the child’s paintings on the brown paper hanging over the construction of the walls that will divide the house. She sees Edie looking at her, and gives a small smile. But no one says anything about the irony present in the room. Holly gives her thanks for Fiona and for Brother Fire and for her family. Gail stands to say she’s grateful for her family and for her new partner, Edie, and for the hope of someday looking upon her mother, but especially for the love and nurture she has gotten from Elizabeth. Mark seconds this, and everyone toasts Elizabeth, who has the suspicion that they all know now, that Edie has told them. But Edie’s smiling at her from her end of the table, and there’s no hint of complicity in her face.
Surprisingly, the afternoon settles into an ordinary-seeming few hours of people sharing a feast. All the conversations are polite, calm, considerate; the children are charming, though they squabble a little, but they are both so happy that their grandfather is out of danger; Holly and Fiona seem perfectly in tune; Oliver and the priest talk sweetly about swing music, Ella Fitzgerald, and Benny Goodman; Will and his two grown children are civil. He teases Mark about his salmon, but then t h a n k s g i v i n g n i g h t
391
has some himself. Mark has a little of the turkey. The little girl engages Edie in a conversation about knitting, because she herself has begun, with Holly’s help, to knit a scarf for her brother, and Edie remarks that this is such a kindly gesture, for one’s brother, because brothers and sisters often have trouble getting along, and she wishes she’d had brothers and sisters growing up. Mark and Gail talk about their early conflicts good-naturedly, and the conversation shifts again, to the coming millennium, the resilience of the president, and the unfortunate Mr. Petit and his troubles. Gail speaks separately to Elizabeth about everything she went through searching for her mother and how it was, discovering her love for Edie. She murmurs, so as not to disturb the priest, who talks to Mark about the Redskins and how they might actually make the play-offs after such a spell of losing seasons. Gail is talking about Internet searches and private agencies and records. The others are caught up in it briefly, but then Stanley engages Oliver in discussion concerning plans for construction, and everyone starts in again about the drawings on the hanging brown paper and the festive look of the half-finished room.
Through it all, Elizabeth, hurting, feeling her own love like a wreck-age in her heart, watches her husband move from conversation to conversation, apparently coming to some kind of ease, drinking the wine and pouring more, and drinking that, too, and it isn’t until near the end of the meal that she realizes how much of the wine he’s had. She watches him pour still another glass of it, to the brim, and drink it down. No one else seems to have noticed. The talk goes on around the table, and Holly brings coffee and desserts, and Elizabeth comes to see that all of it, all the talk and the whole afternoon of sociability, has been wo-ven over a fearful tension, everyone carefully skating around or past the cracks in the surface, an amazing show of the ability of people to keep a cordial tone even in a room whose pathology is not quite known or understood, or even, for that matter, fully perceived. The finest line of amiability, held fast to, while the cold mist runs down the windows and the wind blows like a fitful argument, slamming itself at the casements as if to push everyone into an admission of what is lurking under the soft observations and meaningless exchanges. Finally, Alison announces that she should be getting the children and her father home. She has to 392
Richard Bausch
work early in the morning. Oliver needs his rest. Oliver rises and offers a toast to everyone, especially to the hostesses, who nod and smile. “I wish to—thank you first. And to thank—everyone for their kindness.
The—best thing in the world. A great—gift. I wish it for you all.” His eyes brim and he loses his voice for a second. “I wish it for—you all as I have been—given it.” It’s Oliver’s only glass of wine, and he sips it slowly, standing there. On the other side of him, Will swallows more of his own and then tries to stand. “I’d like to offer a toast, too.”
“Don’t,” Elizabeth says to him. “That one was perfect. Don’t ruin it.”
“Right,” Will says. And sits heavily down. He drinks the wine and pours more and drinks that, too. Seeing this, she catches herself feeling sorry for him, glancing now at Holly and Fiona, the people in whose company he had to try growing up. She turns her gaze back to him, thinking to give him an encouraging smile if he would only look her way. But he’s watching the others, and now he stares down into his wine glass. Finally, he sets it down with a thump, then gets up and walks to the door. “Li’l air,” he says, going out into the dimness.
“Let him go,” says Gail.
Elizabeth follows him. He makes it to the end of the street, then stops, puts his hands on his knees, the pose of a man having run a distance. The mist is already darkening his shirt and pants. “Will,” she says. “Come back inside. You’re making a spectacle of yourself.”
“Just needed a li’l air,” he says. Not looking at her. “Happy Thanksgiving, dear one.”
“Stop it,” she says.
On the lawn where he’s standing is a baby carseat. She sees it and thinks how strange, what a place to leave a carseat, lying out on a lawn in the falling mist. He sees it, too, and staggers on to it through a snow patch. It’s sitting there in a little semicircle of wet grass. “Look at this,”
he says.
“Will. I’m going to leave you here if you don’t come in right now.”
“You’re gonna leave me here?”
“Stop it, Will.”
“Here, darling?”
“Will, please.”
t h a n k s g i v i n g n i g h t
393
He sits in the carseat, or on it. The thing actually holds him up, like the base of a statue, and he folds his arms over his stomach, half-lying there propped by the seat. Elizabeth looks at the house, the closed windows, all the other windows along the street. There seems to be no one home anywhere.
She walks over and reaches down to take his hand.
“Naw,” he says. “Here’s me. This is me. This is my speed, right here, kid.”
“Stand up,” she says. “I swear I’ll leave you here.”
“Said that,” he says. Then: “It hurts so much. I wish it didn’t hurt you.”
“Stop this, now,” she says.
“I love you,” he says. “Din do a very good job, I know.”
“I’m gonna leave you here,” she says. “Please.”
“Well,” he says, “then leave. Leave. Christ.” He’s crying. Sitting there perched, ridiculous, in the little seat, weeping, the tears running down his cheeks. “It hurts so much, Elizabeth. It hurts. I—I wish I didn’t hurt you.”
She takes a few steps away, then turns and stops. “Are you going to stop this and act like a man now? Please.”
After a time, he gets to his feet, stands over the seat, and seems to sa-lute it, faltering, as if he might topple over. “I’ll come back and see you, there, baby seat.” He wipes his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt, first with one arm and then the other, and now he wipes his nose that way, tottering, sniffling.
She waits for him.
“You go on,” he says. “We just wanted a little air, right?” He sniffles again. “I was just going to offer a goddamn toast. Nothing bad, you know?”
“I’m going inside,” she tells him. And she makes her way back to the house and up onto the stoop, where she turns to see him walking along, slow, ruminating, mumbling to himself. “You big baby,” she says to h
im. Then she steps inside, where the others seem studiously to be avoiding watching her. Holly gives her a slight nod as she takes her place at the table. Edie is looking at her with understanding that she 394
Richard Bausch
doesn’t want—and then she does want it. She nods, and Edie’s eyes glaze over. Will comes in and stands looking around the room. “It’s cold out,”
he says. “But the snow is melting.” Then he moves unsteadily to his place at the table. “The snow is melting. And it can’t help itself, either.”
For a time, everyone’s silent. Alison remarks about Fiona’s dressing, for perhaps the fifth time, and Fiona behaves as though the compliment has never come her way. “Oh, I just throw it together,” she says.
“You only wear that when you don’t care how you look,” Will says.
“What is he talking about?” says Fiona.
Again, there’s a silence.
“Matter of character,” says Will to nobody in particular. “I accept full respons’bility.”
The children want more pie. Alison relents and gives them permission, and everyone has seconds. Will has still more of the wine, then gets up and pours himself some coffee. Elizabeth keeps track of him out of the corner of her eye as the others go on talking about the pies, and Oliver says he’s looking forward to Christmas this year, more than others. Elizabeth sees Alison put her head on Stanley’s shoulder, and she wants to cry, holds it back, getting up to deposit some of the dishes in the sink in the kitchen. Holly stops her. “You sit down,” she says. “Enjoy your coffee and dessert.”
“I’m not hungry anymore,” Elizabeth says to her. “I can’t really enjoy another thing.”
“Sit down anyway.”
The windows have grown dark. The mist has become rain now, a steady, cold downpour on the glass. Alison stands and gets the children moving. The party’s ending. Oliver and Alison and Stanley and the children gather at the door and express their gratitude for having been invited. It’s been a fine feast, such a warm occasion—Oliver’s words.
Elizabeth feels only the deepest sense of oppression, as if all of it had been a show to hide sorrow, and now the falseness of the afternoon and evening causes her to reel inside, and falter. She feels spiritually sick.
She can’t look at the others.
She thinks she might begin screaming. “Have none of you seen what’s happening between my husband and me?”
Edie murmurs something to Gail, who hurries to get her coat, and, t h a n k s g i v i n g n i g h t
395
expressing the same warm gratitude that Oliver and the others expressed, starts out the door. Edie comes to Elizabeth and murmurs,
“What Gail said—that came from her. I haven’t told her anything.”
“Thank you,” Elizabeth tells her.
Edie reaches up and kisses her on the cheek. “We’ll be friends, you and I.”
“Yes,” says Elizabeth. “We already are.”
Will is still at the table, his hands cradling another glass of wine. Fiona stands over him, one hand on his shoulder, watching the others leave.
Mark remains behind, with the priest, who, probably because he is so gracious and thoughtful, manages to seem oblivious to all of the tides of misery here. Elizabeth thinks this, and then strides over to thank him for coming.
“I wouldn’t have missed it,” he says. “And now I must go, too.”
“Will you stop in on Mr. Petit?”
“Tomorrow morning, yes.”
“Will you tell him hello from me?”
“Of course.”
She wants to cry on his shoulder. He goes out, and she stands with Holly, watching him hurry in the rain along the walk to his car. “There goes a good man,” Holly says, as if she has identified something quite rare in nature. “He had no idea what he was looking at today.”
“Nobody does,” Elizabeth tells her.
“Well, that was lovely,” Mark says, starting to clean up.
“I’ll take care of that,” says Holly.
Elizabeth sits down, unable to believe how queasy she is. “I’m sick.”
“You didn’t eat much,” says Fiona. “You coming down with some -
thing?”
“Here’s to everyone,” says Will from his end of the table. He drinks more wine; it’s as though he’s alone.
Holly says, “Lighten up on that stuff.”
“Here’s to you, too,” he says. But he doesn’t look at her.
“I feel sick,” says Elizabeth. “I have to go.”
“I’ll walk,” says her husband. “You take th’ car.”
She rises and puts her coat on and walks slowly over to him. She bends down and carefully takes his face into her hands. He seems al-396
Richard Bausch
most alarmed, resisting slightly, but she holds on. “I forgive you,” she whispers. She didn’t quite know she would say it. And, having said it, she feels a rush of frustrated anger go through her. She speaks through and against it, with a bitter will, holding his face tight. “I’ll be waiting up for you. Do you hear me? I forgive you and I don’t care anymore. I forgive you, Will.”
His eyes brim, but he says nothing. She has the realization that he himself must work to find some way back from where he has been. He gives the slightest, unconscious nod of his head, staring into her eyes. It comes to her that she has always felt something essential had been denied him from his earliest living, and, in her own way, she depended on that. She loves him. That’s all she knows now, in this awful hour, after this endless afternoon of people trying to be kind.
When Fiona offers her a plate of leftovers to take with her, she gently refuses it, kisses the old woman on the cheek, and makes her way out into the cold rain. Mark comes with her, carrying what’s left of his salmon on a big platter. The two of them move to the car, and she holds the door for him, then walks around and gets in, without speaking. The car groans and doesn’t want to start, but then it does.
“You’ve been my mother,” he says. “Nobody else.”
She pulls out onto the road, sniffling. He’s quiet on the seat at her side, with his enormous half-eaten fish in his lap.
“I guess this was a bad idea,” he says. “This fish.”
“No,” she says. “It was just fine. It’s all fine, Son.”
12.
The two old ladies begin to squabble over the dishes, so he kisses them both, and thanks them, and then starts out. His heart is hurting him, a physical pang, like an injury to the chest wall.
“You okay?” his mother says. “What was all that about at the end of dinner?”
“Needed some air. A li’l damned air.”
t h a n k s g i v i n g n i g h t
397
“You went out and got wet. Everybody got quiet. It was embarrassing.”
“Just needed some air, Mom. Sorry.”
“But you’re all right.”
“I’m flying,” he tells her. “You can’t have missed that, right?”
“You’re going straight home.”
“Where else?”
He has struggled into his coat, and he lets himself out and walks in the chilly rain to the end of the sidewalk. The snow’s almost completely gone. Here’s his mother’s divided house. No lights on across one side of it. The two old ladies are bustling around in the one lighted window.
They will, because they have started to, finish dividing their house in two. And then, whatever their new arrangement will be, they’ll adjust, and, in the end, of course, they’ll be whatever they will be, together or separate, it will be the two of them.
He stands in the dark, water dripping down his face and into his collar. Elizabeth has forgiven him, and he has come to this. Knowing how far there is to go now, to get back anything of what they used to have.
And it’s entirely probable, he knows, that they never will. And it’s all entirely, only, all the way to the bottom of it, his fault.
Remorse comes over him lik
e a fever; it stops his breath.
The years of getting used to everything, trying for faith again, for trust and peace, stretch before him, and he gasps, shoving his hands down in his pockets. Regret hurts more than anything he could’ve ever imagined in his life.
The street is so dark in the rain. He walks down the long declivity toward the old part of town, the train station. He hears traffic out on the interstate, beyond the houses to his right. All the houses are dark, with the occasional flicker of television. America in cold night. This night.
At the station, he moves to the platform, under the one lamp whose circular pool of illumination seems to be producing the speeding drops that move in it.
The clock on the station wall shows that it’s eight-thirty p.m. At eight-forty-five, the train from Charlottesville will come through on its way into Washington. Just out of high school, he worked here as a ticket 398
Richard Bausch
clerk, and he knows that this train doesn’t stop. It will come through at about forty miles an hour. He walks out of the light and on up the track a few yards, past the end of the platform. Something moves off in the bushes nearby—something scurrying away from him in the icy pelt-ing of the rain. He isn’t quite aware of himself as being on the edge of something. He knows he doesn’t want to go home, and he knows he can’t really go forward, either. He feels quite blocked inside, as if some inner wall is there, beyond which he cannot see or hear. He waits. Far off, through the patter of rain and the murmur of the wind, there are the sounds of night in the city—sirens, traffic, one dog barking, and then another. He can’t hear the train yet. Looking back at the station, at the angles of cornice and ledge and beam, the boards with their age- and soot-stained surfaces, the frames of the windows with their leaded glass, and the signs advertising travel merchandise, he has a moment of understanding something of the intricacy and strength of order. This doesn’t arrive as an intellectual thing; it enters his bones, a stirring, deep down, of panic. When he was a child, riding in his father’s car, he would see tall, weathered, falling-down barns in the fallow farm fields passing by the window, and it would come to him with a little wordless shock that someone long before had labored to build it; abruptly, his imagination would take him back to the sunny days of work on it, the hammers pounding nails, men raising a barn, nothing more ordinary, of course, and Butterfield was for the time being one of them, a part of that force of human industry. This was all without words or even without much understanding of what it signified, other than that he, Will Butterfield, in a strange turn of a boy’s mind, saw himself among others putting together something that decades of weather would reduce to this desic-cated hulk whose appearance was a sort of a natural phenomenon, like a tree or an outcropping of rock.
Thanksgiving Night Page 44
