“That sounds like fun.”
“That is a nightmare, they have eleven grandchildren under the age of nine. Everything will be sticky.”
I laugh. My friend Alana always said she didn’t want kids because they were sticky, and Aimee and I co-opted the phrase. It was more complicated than that for both of us, but at the end of the day, the fact that we both were childless by choice was a part of the strength of our bond. Especially as we got older and all of our friends started becoming parents and speaking that language that you vaguely recognize as English, but still feels like you need subtitles. Wiggleworms and Backyardigans and Graco and Britax and attachment parenting and helicoptering, and Aimee and I would smile and nod and look at pictures and go to showers and then head somewhere just the two of us and have a cocktail and toast the fact that we were in the no-kid thing together.
“Well, at least they’re good cooks.” Mr. Osborne is a whiz with the Big Green Egg smoker, and Mrs. Osborne was raised in Kentucky, and between them they can knock out a heck of a meal. We had dinner there the last time I visited my folks, and it was spectacular. He did a slow cooked brisket that was meltingly tender, and I’m still trying to figure out her recipe for cauliflower gratin.
“Why do you think we put up with all those little fingers in the appetizers? Dinner will be spectacular, and then all the kids go home to go to sleep and Daddy and I help clean up and drink a good bottle of Madeira with them.”
“Sounds like you will have a good time.”
“As will you.”
“Is Daddy around?”
“He ran to the store to get me some lemons.”
“Lemon cream pie?” My mom hates most pie, especially the holy trinity of Thanksgiving pies, pumpkin, apple, and pecan. But she makes a killer lemon cream, which is actually one of my favorite things to eat on Thanksgiving, a welcome bit of tart and bright after so much richness.
“Of course. So, what are you doing with your time these days?”
My parents are very confused about my work life, or lack thereof. I think they believe I should either still be working or doing some sort of major volunteering or something. And they aren’t entirely wrong, which of course puts an undertone of disapproval on their part and guilt on mine into all of our conversations.
“You know, just doing all the stuff I have to do.”
“Okay.” She knows I’m deflecting. “I’m sure you know what is best for you, sweetie.” Which means that I have no idea what is best for me, but she doesn’t want to argue about it today.
“I do, Mom.” Which means I probably don’t, but the one thing we agree on is that neither of us really wants to go into more detail.
“We are both so sorry for what you are going through, and we love you very much, and we are here if you need us.”
“I know, Mom. Thank you.”
“Love you to the moon.”
“And back again.” I’ll make a point to call when I get home tonight so I can talk to my dad. The older they get, the more the age issue complicates our relationship. By the time I was born, they were both forty. I never had young parents. I never had parents like Andrea who were cool and hip and even though they are older, don’t feel fuddy-duddy. The four-decade gap between my folks and me is a chasm, and since they live so far away and I only see them once or twice a year, it doesn’t ever seem worth it to be terribly confessional about my life with them. We keep things simple and surface. But I do sometimes wish that they were younger, more able to connect with me. I adore them and we have a great time when we are together, but it isn’t as intimate as it might be if they had had me in their twenties or thirties.
* * *
I feed Volnay and finish getting my stuff together. Brian texts me that he’ll be insane all day, but wishes me a Happy Turkey, and says he’ll call tomorrow. It still feels a little weird with him, and I’m realizing that this is the first time I’m dating someone new since we sold the company, and for the first time in my life, I am wondering if the person I’m dating might have ulterior motives. Not that I really think Brian would be with me because of the money, but it still feels weird how much he knows about my personal finances.
“Who cares if he wants you for your money, you aren’t going to marry him; as long as he also seems to want you for sex, enjoy! Isn’t landing hot partners supposed to be one of the perks of money? Pretend you are an old man, and you’ll be fine.”
The Voix finishes her speech just as the bell rings. Thank goodness.
“Happy Thanksgiving my soul sister!” Andrea envelops me in a big holiday-sized hug, wearing a terrific-looking wool coat in a fabulous shade of deep poppy orange, and a knitted brown mink infinity scarf Aimee gave her last Christmas.
“Happy Thanksgiving to you. And I thought you hated that, what did you call it? Shroud of dead weasels?”
Andrea looks sheepish. “I did. I mean, I thought I did, but then that last cold spell in February? I put it on, and, um, I kinda actually love it. I get all kinds of compliments on it, my dad says it makes my eyes sparkle, and it is really warm . . .”
“And I am a GENIUS. Why does no one trust my geniusosity?”
Of course. “Aimee Knows Best. Let me tell you about my morning a couple of days ago. It involves pink lounging pajamas with a matching robe . . .”
* * *
Honey, hand me that last platter, would you?” Jasmin gestures to the lovely silver tray that held a glistening pile of candied yams dusted with toasted praline pecans, it seems, mere minutes before.
I pick up the tray, sneak a last bit of crispy pecan topping from the corner as she swipes at me with a towel.
“Leave the girl be, Jazzy, she can’t resist my momma’s yams.” Gene reaches over me and picks his own little crumb, and Jasmin swipes at him as well.
Dinner was amazing, the turkey moist and savory, all the sides appropriately rich and filling, the wine free flowing, the conversation light and fun. Jasmin and Gene sparring lovingly. Their neighbors, empty nesters John and Sophie, who do their own thanksgiving on Fridays so that their kids can be with in-laws today, are a lovely couple, and she is originally from France, so I get to practice my French with her. Andrea engaging in some serious flirty banter with a new doctor from her mom’s group, a cute single guy in his midforties named Law, recently moved here from Cincinnati, who specializes in sports injuries and made us play “name the Cub” whose knee he recently scoped. Mike and Mark, two very sweet if somewhat sleepy residents from Gene’s department, both coming off of twenty-four-hour shifts with semibedhead and dark circles, and so strangely interchangeable in look and manner that I can barely tell them apart.
The guys are all crashed out in the den watching football, John and Sophie begging out early to do their own prep for tomorrow, and Andrea, Jasmin, and I doing a first round of cleaning up to help digest before the onslaught of desserts.
Jasmin shoos Gene out of the kitchen with some mutterings in Spanish, the only word I caught was loco. He grabs her around the waist from behind, kisses the side of her neck loudly, and goes to join the boys.
“Okay, Missy.” Jasmin points at me with the scrub brush, flicking some bits of foam in my general direction. “How are you doing?” This is not head-tilty. This is not patronizing or condescending or even presumptuous as these questions seem to be when you have lost someone close to you. This is pointed, specific, knowing.
“I am doing fine, I think.”
“Mami . . .” Andrea says in that tone that indicates this is delicate.
“Mami nothing, niña. There was an empty seat at our table this year.”
“Two,” Andrea says, reminding us all of the times Aimee and Wayne would come to Thanksgiving. Wayne is surprisingly unobtrusive at holidays. I think the crowds make him uncomfortable, and certainly at Jasmin and Gene’s house, the conversation leans fairly intellectual. Wayne would usually put his head down, pick around a plate, trying to convince himself that turkey is just a big chicken, and mostly eating rolls and mas
hed potatoes and waiting for dessert. I always sort of appreciated him at holidays, because he stayed out of the way and was quiet, and rarely did anything too annoying.
“You’re right, two. Thank you, honey. Wayne is doing okay as well?”
“He is,” I say. “He’s spending as much time as he can with Noah, and his friends have really rallied around him.”
“Andrea told us about the arrangement Aimee put you both in.”
I smile at Andrea to let her know that I’m fine with her having shared this information. She winks at me.
I try to find the right words. “It’s unusual. But we’re finding our way.”
“Well, it makes sense to me.”
“It does?” Andrea asks, incredulous.
“Of course! Aimee wants you to see him the way she saw him, and she isn’t here to make that happen. I understand that. Do you think your Dad was everyone’s top pick for me? Completely from outside my community, a surgical resident working insane hours, distracting me from my own residency, who knocked me up and eloped with me to Las Vegas? On a TUESDAY?”
“MAMI!” Andrea says in mock horror.
“What? We were working a million hours, and were constantly exhausted. I barely remembered to eat, let alone take my birth control pills regularly.” This? Right here? Is the kind of thing that would never come out of my mom’s mouth.
Andrea shakes her head and takes the platter Jasmin has now finished washing to dry it and put it with the others on the counter.
“I’m sure everyone loved Gene,” I say, reaching for a gravy boat from the dish rack to dry it off.
“Everyone did not love Gene. There was a language and culture barrier. It was still shocking to some to see an interracial couple. My family thought he was a gold digger, a know-it-all, and a corrupter of their perfect child and ruiner of the American Dream.”
“Gold digger?” Andrea laughs. Her maternal grandparents were hardworking middle-class Dominicans, who always had their tiny house full of recently emigrated cousins crashing on couches and floors. They owned a small bodega in their neighborhood on the northwest side, and would never have been thought wealthy by any standard. Gene, on the other hand, was raised in Bronzeville in a huge gorgeous brownstone by parents who were leaders of the black bourgeoisie, owners of over a dozen local businesses including five banks, three grocery stores, two clothing stores, and a popular soul food restaurant chain run by Gene’s Aunt Bettie.
Jasmin laughs as well. “They were immigrants. They had their prejudices.”
“They thought any black man must be a poor, nappy-headed thieving Negro from the housing projects, on welfare with ten illegitimate children and a heroin habit,” Gene pipes in, having wandered in to get a round of beers for the football crew.
“So there was that,” Jasmin says.
“I’m just saying,” Gene says, heading back out of the kitchen with an armful of bottles.
“I never knew that,” Andrea says.
“By the time you came along, you were the great peacemaker. My family loved you so much, and they could see that your dad was a good father to you, and they met his family and could see they were good people. Just like you can see Wayne is good people, even if he is not the person you love most in the world.”
“Of course Wayne is good people. It’s just . . .” I don’t know how to explain. Or if I should even try.
“I know. He doesn’t fit. But your Jack didn’t fit so well either, as I recall.”
Andrea smacks her forehead.
I turn to her. “You didn’t like Jack?” News to me.
“No one liked Jack. We called him Jackass. He was a putz. And SOOOO BOOORING.”
“I thought he was a little, um . . .” Andrea stammers a bit.
“Um, dull, dim, uninteresting . . .”
“Self-involved,” Jasmin offers.
“Exactly!”
“That’s a good way to put it, Mom, self-involved. He seemed to always interrupt you when you were talking to tell about something related to himself.”
“I didn’t really notice.”
“BULLSHIT!”
“Well, you loved him, but that is the point,” Jasmin says. “To you, he was probably just telling interesting stories, sharing about himself and his life, because you loved him. To us, it looked like he only wanted to talk about himself all the time to the exclusion of you being able to speak. But that’s the whole point. Not every person we love is immediately lovable to everyone else. But that doesn’t mean we are wrong to love them. Aimee was a brilliant, wonderful woman and an amazing friend, and she loved Wayne. So I have to trust that he’s lovable, even if I don’t love him.”
“Jasmin, you rock my world, girlfriend! Can I get a WIT-NESS!”
“I’m trying.” Which I really am.
Jasmin comes over and clasps my face between her hands. She is still a strikingly beautiful woman, despite being near seventy, her olive skin practically unlined, her dark hair not unlike mine in color and texture, shot with white that sparkles instead of dulls. “I know you are, niñita. And I know that Aimee knew what she was doing when she made this decision. I also know that you are doing a great job of convincing everyone, especially yourself, that you are okay. I hope you know that when you stop being okay, we are all here for you. Including Wayne. Probably especially Wayne. And I hope that when that time comes, you come to all of us. And I do mean ALL.”
I flinch. Because she is so serious, and Andrea is looking at me with the goddamned head tilt, and suddenly my colon clenches and I can feel one of my attacks coming on. “I will,” I promise, moving away so that she can’t feel the clamminess that is sprouting on my face. “And now I have to use the powder room.” I force myself to smile and walk casually out of the kitchen and down the hall to the bathroom. I run the water in the sink full tilt to hopefully cover the sound of a complete and rapid intestinal evacuation, my heart beating half out of my chest, sweating like I’ve just run a four-minute mile, and clenching my teeth against the wave of nausea. It takes ten minutes for my pulse to slow, for the sweating to abate, for me to feel like I can move without being in danger of revisiting my recent Thanksgiving feast in reverse.
“It’s okay to be okay. I’m not insulted.”
It’s not that . . .
“It’s that you feel like the world expects you to be broken.”
Maybe I should be.
“What would happen?”
I don’t know.
“Maybe that’s the problem. If you knew what would happen, you could decide if it was worth it.”
Worth it to be broken?
“Worth it to miss me differently than you are doing now.”
Jasmin clearly thinks I’m going to have some sort of breakdown. So does Andrea probably, probably everyone. And who am I to argue? I’m in the bathroom sweating like a pig, being chastised by my dead best friend.
“So what if you did break down?”
I don’t want to.
“Then don’t.”
What if I can’t help it?
“Then do.”
You suck, you know that?
“Hey, I’m dead. The dead cannot suck. It’s in the handbook. For what it is worth, Wayne has not once implied you are doing it wrong.”
That’s true. He hasn’t.
“I’m not saying, I’m just saying.”
I find the air freshener and give a thorough spritz to the small room that I have violated. Flush again. Wash my hands. Pat my face down one last time, and head back out to the kitchen.
“Auntie Jenna!” I don’t have time to look at their faces to see if I was gone too long, if they are worried, because my arms are full of gangly twentysomething.
And something about Benji arriving makes my shoulders unclench. “Hello, boy. Happy thanksgiving.”
“Yes it was. Shavon let me exec chef the whole meal, and everything turned out awesome!”
“Congrats, kiddo. I’m sure it was delish.”
Jasmin come
s up and kisses me on my cheek. “You ready for dessert?”
I smile at her, giving my best imitation of cheer. “There is always room in the dessert compartment.”
“That is what I want to hear, because I put some LOVE in this pie,” Benji says.
“Pretty sure that’s bourbon,” Andrea says.
“God, I miss pie.”
“I don’t care what it is, I’m about to eat it without you,” Gene yells from the dining room.
And we all head in the direction of sweetness.
10
By the time I get to the Library, the table is set, and the kitchen island where we do the cooking demos is half-full of casserole dishes and containers. Lois is poking at something in a saucepan, and Eloise is arranging what appear to be forty different types of cookies on a platter.
“Happy Thanksgiving, ladies,” I say, dropping my bag on the counter. Lois immediately turns to put out my offerings, a bag of the rolls I made yesterday, some of the cranberry sauce. Lois reaches down and offers Volnay a piece of turkey, which she takes gratefully and retires with it to her little dog bed in the corner.
I drop my coat on the rack in the corner, and go to receive my kisses from Lois and Eloise.
“Liebchen, how was your day?”
“It was lovely. Too much food and wine.”
Eloise stops arranging cookies. She hugs me with one willowy arm, and kisses the top of my head. “Happy Thanksgiving, Jenna.”
I squeeze her back. “Happy Thanksgiving, Weezy.”
Leftovers Brunches were one of the first traditions Aimee and I came up with at the Library. We were always closed the day after big holidays, which we originally thought would give everyone a day to recover from parties. But it became clear that we all just sort of wanted to be together to share the cheer, and so we started having everyone bring all their leftovers to the Library for brunch the next day, so that we could taste what everyone else made and get the stories out while they were fresh. We have them for Thanksgiving, and Easter, and they are always enormous fun. We tried doing them for Christmas, but it never seemed to work out so well, so we gave up and instead do a late-January brunch to talk about the upcoming year and for everyone to show off recipes they’ve been playing with.
Out to Lunch Page 9
