by Katie Henry
Jess looks unmoved. “I’m going to do what I want, no matter what someone tells me in an assembly. Doesn’t matter if it’s that chastity guy or Heretics Anonymous.”
“Like I said. Killjoy.”
“I’m just trying to get through this high school bullshit. It’s only going to make it harder on everyone else if these people start throwing public tantrums about St. Clare’s.”
I hear a foot tapping, and we all look up at Theresa, looming over our lunch table with her arms full of pamphlets. She’s flanked by two girls I don’t know, similarly buttoned up and fresh faced.
“I couldn’t help overhearing,” she says, focusing her attention on Connor and Jess.
“Sure you couldn’t,” Connor says.
“And I think you might be interested in these materials I’ve prepared—” She hands them two of the powder-pink pamphlets. “—to counteract the misstatements made by certain factions during the Life Choices assembly.”
“See what I mean?” Jess says. “They’ve already made it worse.”
“A group of us are planning to meet with the school administration this afternoon,” Theresa says, gesturing at her friends. “We’re asking them to finally make an official statement about the incident. I, for one, think we need swift, decisive action. Would you like to join us?”
“Not interested,” Lucy says.
Theresa rounds on her. “Why would I ask you? You’re obviously behind the whole thing.”
“Excuse me?” Lucy says.
“I know you ruined the DVD, that commentary has you written all over it—”
“Theresa, I wasn’t even there,” Lucy says, like she’s talking to an overtired toddler and not an unhinged future Bride of Christ.
“A ruse,” Theresa hisses, jabbing a finger at her. “A carefully planned ruse.”
It’s amazing how ridiculous someone can sound when they’re saying something true. Except for the “carefully planned” part.
“Really?” I ask Theresa. “You think she planned to be humiliated by some purity douchebag just so she couldn’t watch the movie?”
Theresa bends down, putting both hands on the table. “I’ll be watching you,” she promises Lucy, then turns to Jess and Connor. “Think about it.” She leaves with a flip of her braid.
Jess turns the pamphlet over. She doesn’t look sold but doesn’t look disgusted, either. Connor puts his down immediately.
“Say what you want,” he says to Jess, twirling his spoon with an almost philosophical air. “But they had good points. Like about condoms. I know what Sister Helen says, but there’s got to be times God’s okay with them, right?”
Jess pulls out her phone. “Connor, you hate using condoms.”
“Yeah, but that’s me and my life. What about people who have like, raging herpes? Or someone who would for sure abort the baby if she got knocked up. What’s worse, condoms or abortions?”
“I don’t know,” Jess says. “I’m on the pill, so, irrelevant.”
“It’s not irrelevant,” Connor says. “Just because it’s not about you or me doesn’t mean it’s irrelevant.”
Lucy’s looking at Connor with some kind of dazed amazement. I’m shocked, too. I had no idea he knew the word “irrelevant.”
“So I’m down with HA,” he declares, and, tipping his bowl to his mouth, slurps down the last of his chili.
12
I NEVER THOUGHT of Thanksgiving as a dressy holiday, but apparently, this year is different. Sophia’s in her freshly ironed Christmas dress, standing at the kitchen table, trying to build a Thanksgiving horn of plenty out of wire, burlap, and a malfunctioning glue gun. I, of course, am being wrangled into my least favorite article of clothing.
“But I already have to wear a tie every day to school.”
“Then you should be better at tying one,” Mom says, and reaches over to redo it.
“Mom—”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
“If we were at Grandma’s—”
She tugs too hard on the tie as she loops it around. “We’re not at Grandma’s. We’re here, and this is my Thanksgiving, so Sophia is making a cornucopia and you are wearing a tie.”
Sophia struggles valiantly with the hot glue gun. The floor beneath her feet is sparkling; Mom waxed it this morning. The whole place smells like the inside of a citrus fruit.
“He’s not going to notice,” I tell Mom. “He’s not going to notice any of this.”
She suddenly yanks on the tie, dragging me down until I’m eye level with her. “Michael Andrew Ausman, I love you more than life itself, but if you pick a fight with your father tonight, I am going to drive you into the mountains and leave you there.”
She hasn’t resorted to that threat in years.
“Okay?” she says, and her eyes look too bright.
“Okay, Mom. Okay.”
She releases her grip on the tie. “Good.” She pats my shoulder. “Now help your sister with that chicken wire before she pokes her eye out.”
Mom wanted to go to my grandparents’ house for Thanksgiving, like we always do. I did, too, if only because that’s what we always do. But Dad got the long weekend off, and said that after his twelve-hour flight, a five-hour drive was out of the question. Mom took him off speakerphone after he said that and went into the bathroom to have a hushed, angry conversation. But we ended up staying here for Thanksgiving anyway.
A car door slams outside as I finish laying the festive brown-and-orange tablecloth out, and Sophia picks pieces of dried glue off the ends of her fingers.
“That must be Dad and Alex,” Mom says.
Alex is my older cousin, Mom’s brother’s son. All the family members we speak to are from my mom’s side. When we were younger, Alex spent most holidays holed up in Grandma’s garage and periodically returned to the house to steal half-baked crescent rolls out of the oven. Now, he’s at some grad program in the woods, an hour’s train ride from us. Dad picked him up on his way in from the airport.
But when the back door opens, only Alex walks in, wearing at least one article of clothing made from hemp and carrying a Tupperware of brown goo. I hope it’s not a communal offering.
“Hey, Alex.” I’m not sure if I’m supposed to shake his hand or hug him or what. I settle for sticking my hands in my pockets.
“Michael!” he says, looking me up and down. “Dude, wow, you’re like a real person now.”
I gesture at the Tupperware. “Should I put that with the rest of the food?”
He looks down at it, as if seeing it for the first time. “Oh. No, it’s just for me. Vegan chili. I didn’t want to put you guys out or anything.”
“Where’s my dad?” I ask, looking over Alex’s shoulder.
“He got a call in the car. Said he’d be in in a minute.”
I catch a glimpse of Dad out the back porch window, talking on his phone. He’s got that sour look on his face, the one that says the conversation isn’t going well. And when work isn’t great, Dad isn’t great. When his day is bad, it’s bad for everyone. Mom pulls the turkey out of the oven and ignores our conversation.
“We’re ready!” she says. “Let’s set the table.”
“Sophia, please stop picking at the cornucopia.”
Sophia looks up at Mom, pulling her hand back from the stray wire she was poking. We didn’t do a very good job with the burlap, and now the whole thing’s falling apart.
“I’m bored,” she whines. “And hungry.”
So am I. The bowl of mashed potatoes directly in front of my plate is slowly getting colder and colder. The green beans are getting cold too, and so is the turkey. I guess the cranberry sauce was cold to begin with.
“This is ridiculous,” I say. “Can we please start?”
Mom shakes her head. “He said he’d be done in five minutes.”
“Ten minutes ago. And he didn’t even say that, he held up five fingers. That could mean fifty minutes. It could mean five hours.”
“He meant
five minutes,” Mom says, craning her head to see the back porch. Sophia starts picking at the cornucopia again.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. I pull it out and see a text from Lucy.
Did you know they served lobster at the first Thanksgiving?
I’ve accepted Lucy’s never going to text me normal things, like “hey” or “how are you” or “I don’t want to be a girl priest anymore, let’s have sex.”
Me: what?
Lucy: I’m bored and reading Wikipedia
Lucy: They also served clams
Just then, I hear the back door close, and a voice behind me say, “Put the phone away, Michael.”
I glare at Dad as he sits down at the head of the table, next to me. Mom squeezes my leg under the table, so I stick my phone in my pocket and don’t say anything.
“All right,” Dad says. “We’re ready.”
“We’ve been ready,” I mumble. Mom takes a sharp breath in through her nose.
“Maybe you should say grace,” Dad suggests. “Show us what you’ve learned at Catholic school.”
“They don’t teach us that,” I say, and make the executive decision to start serving myself mashed potatoes.
Dad goes for the turkey and takes his time selecting a piece. He’s weird about food, and way pickier than he’d ever tolerate me or Sophia being. When we used to go on road trips, Mom would pack us all PB&J sandwiches. Except Dad. He got his own sandwich, specially made.
“So,” he says to Alex, “what’s your major, again?”
“Cinema studies,” Alex says, his mouth full of weird vegan paste.
Sophia perks up. “You make movies?”
“No, cinema studies is more about analyzing films.”
“I watched a really good movie yesterday,” Sophia says.
“What movie, Soph?” Mom asks.
“On TV. It was called How the West Was Lost.”
“How the West Was Won,” Dad corrects her. “Henry Fonda. Great movie.”
Sophia hesitates. “No,” she says. “How the West Was Lost. On the History Channel. It was about how white settlers took Native people’s land, even when they promised they wouldn’t, and they said the West was ‘won’ when it was obviously really lost for the people who’d always been there, which is why the movie’s called that. And then they started talking about all these massacres—”
Mom clears her throat. “You know, honey, maybe this isn’t the best—”
“And I wanted to know what happened to the Wampanoag—the tribe that was at the first Thanksgiving—and the internet said they got mostly killed or sold into slavery, eventually.” She takes a split-second breath. “I like turkey and I like the Thanksgiving parade, but this holiday is really sad and I sort of don’t get why we celebrate it.”
“I’m not sure I like you learning about all this,” Dad says.
Sophia blinks. “Why not? It happened.”
My phone vibrates again, and I discreetly fish it out of my pocket.
Lucy: What do you think seal tastes like?
Me: im at dinner
Me: shouldn’t you be too?
Lucy: Still waiting on the turkey. Cooking isn’t my calling.
“I already told you once, put the phone away.”
Dad’s glaring at me across the table.
“Sorry, I got a text, it buzzed—”
“Who could possibly be texting you at six p.m. on Thanksgiving?”
“Canadians,” Sophia suggests.
“My roommate doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving,” Alex offers up. “He says it’s a testament to, like, American imperialism, so he’s in DC protesting oil drilling.”
“Imperialism! They talked about that so much in the movie!” Sophia says.
“No more movie talk,” Mom says, at the same time as Dad repeats, “Who was texting you?”
“Lucy,” I say. “My friend from school, Lucy.”
Sophia cuts right to the chase. “Is she your girlfriend?”
“No, she’s—”
“Turn your phone off,” Dad says to me. “Your friend can leave a message.”
I pretend to but don’t. Who turns their phone all the way off, ever? Or leaves messages? Old people.
Mom makes small talk with Alex, asking about his parents (fine), his classes (also fine), and his romantic interests (he doesn’t believe in labels and is keeping it casual) until Sophia leans across the table, peering at Alex’s Tupperware.
“How come you brought your own food? It looks like primordial ooze.”
“Sophia!” Mom says.
“I’m a vegan,” Alex says.
“How would you even know what primordial ooze looks like?” I ask.
Sophia shoots me a withering look. “From textbooks.” She turns back to Alex. “My old best friend, Hannah, didn’t eat anything with a face.”
“I don’t eat anything with a face, either,” Alex says. “Or any of the stuff those face-havers make. Like the butter on the green beans. And the potatoes.”
“It’s actually margarine,” Mom admits, then shrugs at Dad. “With your cholesterol.”
“Really? Sweet!” Alex shovels several helpings of green beans into his Tupperware, but then stops. “Wait. Is margarine vegan?”
“It doesn’t have a face,” Sophia reasons.
Another buzz in my pocket. I try to ignore it, then feel another buzz, ten seconds later. Then another. I wish I wasn’t sitting right next to Dad. I sneak a glance under the table.
Lucy: This holiday is the worst
Lucy: SERIOUSLY IT IS WORSE THAN ARBOR DAY
Lucy: Talk to me before I start watching the parade highlights out of sheer boredom
I feel a surge in my stomach, and not just from the mashed potatoes making their way through my intestines. Of all the people in the world, I’m the one Lucy wants to talk to on her least favorite holiday. The moment’s brief, though, because Dad smacks the back of my chair harder than he needs to, and I bang my arm on the underside of the table.
“If I see you touch that phone one more time, I’m going to put it in the blender,” he says.
And suddenly, I can’t take it anymore, and I don’t care what I promised Mom. I don’t see Sophia anymore, trying to rearrange the disintegrating cornucopia, or Alex, debating whether our green beans are ethical to eat. I’m like a horse with blinders, and all I see is Dad, sitting at the head of the table like he owns it. We leave that seat open at dinner every night. He’s never there to sit in it.
“You took a half-hour phone call while we were all waiting to eat, and I can’t answer one text?”
Silence. Mom’s knife scrapes against her plate. Dad takes a breath in.
“It was a work call. This isn’t a holiday in Europe. It’s just Thursday.”
“So we had to sit here and wait for you because Belgians don’t celebrate Thanksgiving?”
“The whole world doesn’t revolve around you, Michael.”
“No,” I grind out. “Just you. It revolves around you.”
“Dude,” Alex says gently, but I barely even hear him.
“Everything gets set up for you,” I say, “everything gets perfectly arranged for you, and you still act like a jerk, because you’re mad at other people half a world away, and that’s not Mom’s fault and it’s not Sophia’s and it’s not mine, so back off.”
Dad halfway stands up then, his mouth open, but Sophia’s faster. Her chair squeaks against the freshly waxed floor as she pushes it back and runs from the room. Dad follows after her, but not before he throws a dark look in my direction.
Alex and I sit quietly as Mom removes the dishes one by one from the table.
“You can’t abandon me in the mountains,” I argue. “He started it.”
Mom sets down the bowl of mashed potatoes, as if it’s suddenly too heavy to carry. Then she leaves too.
My phone’s buzzing in my pants pocket. Alex stares straight ahead. He should have gone with his roommate to protest oil drilling. Even if they got arres
ted, it would be less awkward than this.
“Alex,” I say. “Please tell me you have weed.”
“Oh man,” he says. “I was about to ask you the same thing.”
It turns out Alex does have weed, but I can understand why he wanted to ask me first.
“This is shit,” I tell him in between coughing my brains out. “It tastes like burnt tires.”
Alex doesn’t say anything. He’s too busy inspecting the leaves of the giant tree we’re standing under. It’s not even our tree. It’s so big, its heavy branches droop over the neighbor’s fence into our backyard. My mom hates it. Alex wants to molest it.
This was a bad idea. It seemed like such a good idea when I was mad, but I’m not as mad anymore. I’m cold. And hungry. And really, really need a glass of water.
“Michael!”
Shit. Dad. I thought we’d have more time. Usually, it takes Dad forever to console Sophia after stuff like this. She’s so dramatic.
“Where are you?” I hear him stomping up the stairs, probably checking in my room, which buys me maybe a minute.
Oh crap, and I probably smell like this terrible skunk weed, too. I strip off the hoodie I put on over my shirt and tie and stash it in the bushes. I throw the joint there too, and hope Mom doesn’t decide to do any gardening tomorrow. Alex doesn’t move.
“Alex,” I whisper, gesturing at his jacket. “Take it off.”
“Chill,” he says, reaching inside his cargo pants and taking out a small purple bottle. I might be hallucinating, but I think it has sparkles on it.
“The fuck is that?”
He uncaps it and starts spritzing himself. “Body spray.”
“What, for nine-year-old girls?”
“Whatever, it works.”
And it better, because I hear the back door open.
I have butterflies in my stomach. A million butterflies. How did that become a phrase? What caveman was super nervous about trying to kill a saber-toothed tiger and decided it felt like he swallowed butterflies? Why not rocks? Because it does feel like butterflies, but it also somehow feels like rocks. Flying rocks. Maybe the caveman really did swallow a butterfly, so that’s how he knew. Maybe he ate it on purpose. Bugs have iron in them, or actually protein, I think it’s protein. I wonder what a butterfly would taste like.
