by Lee Martin
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Tomorrow’s Thanksgiving,” she said.
“Have you told Jim?”
She nodded. “He doesn’t want to go to MCL with us.”
“Oh?” Tom said. “I’d quite hoped he might.”
“I told him we’d come by later,” Miriam said. “We’ll bring him some food. I don’t know what else to do.”
The only person not talking was Jim, because he had no one to talk to. He’d been to the Burger King drive-through, and he’d told the girl working there that he hoped she’d have a Happy Thanksgiving, and she’d smiled and said, “Same to you.”
Now he made the slow drive home, trying to let that moment last, that brief instant when he felt normal. The voices in his head were still tonight, and in that stillness he listened. He heard his life the way it used to be. His father’s voice deep and full, because this was before his accident, saying to him, “Get up, Jim. Get up, Jimmy Boy. It’s Thanksgiving.” His mother humming in the kitchen, something bright and cheery, and the sounds of platters and dishes and the oven door opening and then closing and the beaters on her blender whirring. Then his father’s voice asking the blessing, “Our Lord, we pray…” And later a football game on the television and Jim talking on the telephone to his friend who lived three streets over because he still had friends then. He wasn’t sick yet. He hadn’t gone to Austin and fallen in love with a girl. He hadn’t reached the point where he wasn’t going to class and he was about to lose his scholarship and his golf coach hadn’t yet told him he was mighty disappointed in his game—“Can’t you concentrate, Jim? Good Lord sakes alive, boy.”—and the girl hadn’t told him that she was sorry, but she couldn’t love him back—“I just can’t, Jim,” she said that night in his dorm room. “You can’t make me feel something that I don’t.”
But he tried. He pleaded and wept and wouldn’t let her leave. At some point, he had his arms around her trying to get her to stop screaming—“Please, Betsy. Please.” Then he was hearing the voice in his head, telling him to stop her before she hurt him more, to put his hands around her throat and squeeze. “I can’t do that,” he said. “I can’t.” But she wouldn’t stop, and he watched his hand move to her face and start to slip down to her neck. Then the door broke open, and there were boys in his room, and one of them pulled him away, and Betsy was sobbing, and sometime later there were policemen and the hospital and his mother was there and she was saying, “Jimmy? My God, what have you done?”
Now Jim turned down Bay Meadows Court. All of the voices were quiet. He was able to remember everything without shame. He hadn’t meant to hurt Betsy. He’d only meant to love her. The same was true for his mother, who was an old woman now. The same was true for himself. He’d never meant to hurt Jim. He’d only meant to love him.
He decided then to make a list of everything he was thankful for, starting with the years he’d had outside of institutions, his mother’s undying love, his father’s calm acceptance, this house, this night, this neighborhood, the girl at the drive-through window. Perhaps there would be blessings and blessings to come.
A car went down the court. He looked in his rearview mirror and saw that it was the young couple who lived at the end of the cul-de-sac. The man who had a telescope, the woman whose guest had startled him not long ago when he’d been starwatching. He needed to apologize for that.
He got out of his car and took a few steps down the sidewalk. Then he saw that the man and woman, who were out of their car now and standing in the driveway, were arguing.
The man said, “Jesus, Tip.”
“Happy Thanksgiving,” the woman said in a way that made it clear she didn’t mean it. She brushed by the man, bumping his shoulder with hers. The man reached his hand out for her, but she was gone.
It was a thing that pained Jim to see. He knew now wasn’t the time to try to apologize. Now was the time to let them be alone. He hoped tomorrow would be a better day for them because he liked the young couple. He liked the way the man talked to him about stars. He liked the sound of the woman’s laugh. He wanted them to be happy. He wanted everyone to be happy. He didn’t want anyone to feel the way he felt so much of the time.
The girl at the Burger King drive-through had smiled at him. She’d wished him a Happy Thanksgiving. All through the night, even in his dreams, he tried to remember that.
Tippy slept in on Thanksgiving. She heard Bart downstairs in the kitchen, banging cabinet doors, hunting up something for breakfast, and she rolled over and went back to sleep. When she finally came downstairs, it was nearly eleven. She saw the sheets and blankets in a wad on the couch where he’d slept after their argument.
Now he looked sheepish, leaning against the counter, eating a bowl of cereal, still in his AussieFit T-shirt and his sweatpants. He hadn’t shaved and his face was slack. He looked at her with such a sadness in his eyes that she couldn’t help but say she was sorry.
“Me, too, Tip,” he said. He set the cereal bowl on the counter and gathered her up in his arms. “I hate it when we fight.”
She closed her eyes and let him hold her, remembering how every moment of every day had felt like this when they were first starting out. Now she wondered whether there was too much between them for it to ever feel like that again. Maybe that’s what life did to you, she thought. Takes you away from the people you were once upon a time.
“Guess we better hustle,” she finally said. They were due at Dinah’s for a family dinner at noon. “I’m surprised Dinah hasn’t been calling.”
Bart looked at her, and the sadness was still in his eyes. “Where are we, Tip?”
She didn’t answer for quite a while, so long that she had to tell the truth since it was evident in the silence.
“I don’t know,” she said.
Bart nodded once. He didn’t say anything else, and like that something was sealed between them, though Tippy couldn’t say what. She only knew the shiver that passed through her as she wondered whether it was the beginning of something or the end.
Down the cul-de-sac at Artie and Glory’s, Artie had found the number for Thomas Morrison on Waltham Road in Upper Arlington.
Glory was in the kitchen, cooking, and the first inkling she had that Artie had disobeyed her and made his call, even when she’d made it very clear that she preferred he didn’t, came when she went into the living room to ask him what time he wanted to eat. It would just be the two of them this Thanksgiving. A snowstorm in the west had stranded their son in Denver; their daughter was serving in the Peace Corps in Senegal. Glory saw Artie standing at the front window, his back to her, his cell phone to his ear.
“Is that right?” he said. “Well, I think maybe it is my business. I live right across the street, you know. He threatened my wife, said he wouldn’t want to see her get hurt. Doesn’t that sound like a threat to you, Mrs. Morrison?”
“Artie,” Glory said. “For heaven’s sake.”
He waved his arm to hush her and went on talking. “Perhaps I should speak with your husband. Maybe he’ll understand why I’m worried. He surely knows what it is to want to protect his wife.” He stopped talking and listened for a while. Glory said again, “Artie, I mean it.” Then he said to Mrs. Morrison. “I see. Well, then, maybe I should just speak with the police.”
“Artie, that’s enough.”
“I’ll be fucked,” he said. He took his phone away from his ear and stared at it in disbelief. “She hung up on me.”
Glory swatted his arm. “What did you expect? Really, Artie, where’s your decency?”
“I’m just looking out for you,” he said.
“I don’t need you to look out for me.” She started taking off her jewelry and throwing it at him, first a bracelet, then her earrings, then the three-stone drop diamond pendant he’d given her for their anniversary. He crossed his arms in front of his face and stooped over to try to escape. “Damn it, Artie, I need you…” She didn’t know how to finish the sentence. “I need you…” She failed ag
ain. “I need you,” she said a third time, still with no idea of exactly what she needed him to do.
She wouldn’t know that until evening. They ate their Thanksgiving meal. Artie watched football games. Glory worked on a jigsaw puzzle. The house grew so dim that she had to switch on a light. Then it was dark, and when she glanced up at the window, all she saw was her own reflection, an aging woman, a woman who’d left her best years behind her, holding a puzzle piece between her fingers, a woman working on a jigsaw puzzle on Thanksgiving.
Then someone was knocking on the front door, not a gentle knocking, but a loud pounding. Three, four, five, six hard knocks in succession before Glory could get into the living room. Artie was there before her. He said to her, “Knock, knock. Who’s there? Geez-a-loo. Ever hear of a doorbell?”
He flung open the door, and Jim stepped across the threshold with such force that his head bumped into Artie’s.
“You,” Jim said. His Titleist cap was crooked on his head, and he was breathing hard. He kept jabbing his finger into Artie’s chest. “You had no right to call my mother. You shouldn’t have done that. You leave her alone. You leave me alone. I can hurt you if I choose. Don’t you understand that? Is that what you want? Well, is it? No, I don’t think it is.”
The bill of Jim’s Titleist cap was frayed, and a sharp edge had gouged into the skin above Artie’s eyebrow. It was bleeding a little.
“You can’t come in here like this.” Artie had his handkerchief out of his pocket and he pressed it to his brow. He bent at the waist, his other hand on his knee. “Who do you think you are?”
Jim took Artie by the arm, pulling his hand away from his head. Glory saw the blood on the handkerchief.
“Don’t ever call my mother again,” Jim said. Then he turned and walked out the door.
Glory hurried to close it. She set the deadbolt. Her heart was pounding in her chest.
“Are you all right?” she asked Artie.
He was dabbing his brow with his handkerchief again. “I could have him arrested,” he said.
“Oh, let it go, Artie. Let these people have their privacy.”
She went back to her puzzle, but soon Artie came to her, and he said, “What say we go for a drive? Just to be out of the house. Just to be around people.”
Glory laid down the puzzle piece she’d been holding. “What people? Everyone’s with someone else. It’s Thanksgiving.”
“The stores are open at the mall tonight.” Artie snapped his fingers. “We’ll watch people shop.”
“Have we become like that, Artie? Do we have to pretend we have places to go and people to see? Have we become that irrelevant to each other?”
“Glory, can’t you see I’m trying to tell you I’m sorry?”
So they went. At least they tried to. They got into Artie’s Miata, and he hit the garage door opener and started the car and put it into reverse and backed out onto the driveway all the way to the street, tapping the opener again to put the garage door back down, and then Glory happened to glance in her sideview mirror, and she called out, “Artie! Artie! For God’s sake, stop!”
It was Jim, lying on his back in the street, illuminated finally by the Miata’s taillights as it got close to him.
“Oh, geez-a-loo.” Artie put the Miata into neutral and set the parking brake. “I told you, Glory. Didn’t I tell you? I could’ve killed him.”
Just then, a car turned down Bay Meadows, a car coming too fast. The headlights swept over Jim, but he didn’t move.
“Oh, good Lord,” said Glory, as she pushed open her door and for the umpteenth time cursed Artie’s squat car that made getting out of it such a chore. She waved her arms back and forth over her head. “Stop,” she said, shouting because the car, a white SUV, was getting closer, and still Jim wasn’t moving. “Stop,” she said again, and she saw that it was Tippy and Bart in the SUV. He was driving, but his face was turned away from the road toward Tippy, who was pointing her finger at him. It came to Glory, then, that they were fighting, and distracted, they had no idea what was about to happen.
That’s when Glory stepped out into the street. She didn’t stop to think about what she was doing. She just did it. She put herself between Jim and the speeding SUV.
Miriam was driving the old Volvo, the 1973 model that she and Tom had bought for Jim when he graduated from high school. She’d never been able to part with it. She was driving behind a white SUV that was going much too fast. Tom sat in the passenger seat, a Burger King bag on his lap—a double cheeseburger, onion rings, a chocolate fudge sundae, and a Coke ICEE. For Jim.
“Reckless people,” Miriam said under her breath. “Foolish, reckless people.”
Then the brake lights on the SUV came on, and she heard the tires squealing on the pavement, and she saw the heads of the man and woman inside jerk forward and then back, and she realized they’d come to a stop in front of Jim’s house.
“Tom?” she said.
“Pull over,” he told her in his high-pitched whisper, filled now with as much urgency as he could muster. “For God’s sake, pull over.”
When Bart’s SUV finally came to a stop, its front bumper was touching Glory’s legs and Tippy was screaming.
Artie ran to Glory and threw his arms around her. “Oh, Jesus,” he kept saying, rocking her back and forth.
Tippy threw open her door and jumped down from the SUV. “Glory,” she was screaming again and again. “Glory, Glory, Glory.”
Bart got out of the SUV and was so overcome with what had almost happened that he could barely get a breath. He bent over, his hands on his knees, and tried to draw air into his lungs.
Miriam was out of the Volvo and hurrying, as best as her arthritic knees would allow, to see what the alarm was all about. Tom was slower. He still had the Burger King sack in his hands.
“Mother,” he said to Miriam. “Oh, Mother.”
She came along the side of the SUV and saw Jim lying in the street, these people wailing around him. She paid them no mind, for she was a mother and this was her son, and, no matter that she and Tom had left him to fend for himself, he was hers, would always be hers, to tend to.
“Jim?” She bent over as best as she could, trying to look into his eyes. She thought the SUV must have hit him and sent him sprawling. She looked for signs of injury. “Jimmy? What are you doing down there?” she finally asked.
“I’m waiting for the comet,” Jim said. “I want to see its bright light.”
“The comet?” she said.
Bart was leaning against the front fender of his SUV now. “The comet ISON,” he said. “The comet of the century.”
“Traveling at 845,000 miles per hour tonight,” Jim said. His voice was dreamy and sounded far away from Miriam, who did her best to hear what he was saying, something about the comet catapulting around the sun. “We’ll see it,” he said, “if it survives the heat and doesn’t burn up. It’s something we’ll never see again. A bundle of ice and dust, three miles in diameter, hurtling through space toward the sun. It’s…” He tried to find the words to finish his sentence, but they escaped him. “It’s just so wonderful,” he finally said. “It’s…”
Miriam felt that he was on the brink of saying something that would make all the difference, something that would forgive them all: Tom and her for moving him to this house, the man across the street who had been so rude to her on the phone, and the young couple whose bickering had nearly led to disaster. But then Tom arrived and, when Jim saw him, he stopped talking.
“Jim, do you know where you are?” Tom said.
Everyone had stopped talking now. Glory and Artie and Tippy and Bart waited to see what Jim might say. Glory was finally getting around to realizing how frightened she was and how foolish she’d been, but at the same time she was sensing something glowing at the edge of her fear and her stupidity, some beacon calling her, telling her she could do whatever she wanted to do. She might even leave Artie, probably not tonight, but some night she’d pack a bag, she’d t
ell him goodbye. Artie marveled over how brave she’d been. He was still holding her in his arms. He remembered the first time he saw her. It was at a high school basketball game. He couldn’t stop looking at her, and when she finally caught him, her eyes told him they were about to start a glorious adventure.
And Tippy and Bart had found each other, and what had seemed so important only minutes before—a silly fight about the fact that Bart had insisted on leaving Dinah’s early to rush home to his telescope—seemed small and inconsequential now. They had years and years ahead of them, enough time to disappoint and redeem each other many times over.
“Jim?” Tom said again.
Jim’s voice, when he finally spoke, was so calm and clear, as if he weren’t lying in the middle of the street, as if he hadn’t almost been killed, as if he were as peaceful as he’d been in quite some time, which he was. It was Thanksgiving, and his parents were there, and he was alive, and, at least for the time, he suffered no torment.
“I’m in my neighborhood,” he said. “I’m in my neighborhood, and these are my neighbors.”
As if summoned, as if Jim had created each of them, the neighbors began to speak. They were able to tell Miriam and Tom the story of how, throughout the autumn, it had been Jim’s habit to come out at night to lie down in the street to gaze up at the stars. Working together, each adding to the story, they were able to tell it in a way that didn’t pass judgment on Jim or on Miriam and Tom. Even Artie was subdued. He offered Jim his hand, and Jim took it, and Artie helped him to stand. Tippy and Glory brushed the dust from his back with gentle sweeps of their hands, and Miriam struggled to hold back her tears, so overwhelmed she was by the sight of them treating her son with kindness and concern.
“I didn’t mean to disturb anyone,” Jim said, and his voice was so apologetic, so injured with the thought that he’d caused them alarm, that for a while no one knew quite what to say.
Then Bart stepped forward to suggest that everyone come down to their house and sit on the deck. He’d light a fire in the fire pit, he said, and he’d help them all take a look through his telescope, and like that they’d keep watch for the comet—the comet of the century, he reminded them.
