by T. Greenwood
The house was warm and still smelled like Thanksgiving. Like every other Thanksgiving. Outside it was cold. Trevor touched the glass of the window. It was still snowing. The crystalline white kept coming down, relentless, covering everything in a layer of pristine white. He imagined it blanketing the house, the yard, the cars and people it touched. If it never stopped, maybe they’d all be buried in snow. Maybe they wouldn’t be able to open their doors, and he’d never have to leave the house again.
Four more days. Four more days before he had to go back to school. His suspension ended on Monday. On Monday, he was expected to return to that building, to the classrooms, to Ethan and Mike. To pretend as though nothing had happened. As though he were just a bad kid who’d been punished and forgiven. As if he weren’t changed. Weren’t found out. Weren’t proven to be the freak he was always afraid he was.
As he pissed, he couldn’t look at himself. He felt ashamed even holding himself to aim. He felt acid rising in his throat as he thought about what he’d done to Gracy. He was sickened by himself, his whole body quaking with shame. He knelt at the toilet, the lid still lifted, and vomited until there was nothing left inside him. Retching, his body feeling like it was trying to turn itself inside out. Until he was absolutely hollow, and then he felt his fingers wipe his cheeks with a bit of toilet paper. And watched, around and around, up and down, as they brushed his teeth again.
He tried to picture himself returning to school, dreamed the walk down the halls, the smells of the cafeteria, the sound of the bell, the hush hush of the other kids as they whispered behind his back. The feel of Ethan’s hands pushing him into lockers, into desks, into anything that would hurt him. He tried to pretend that any of this was possible. That life could go on as it always had. Monday. Monday. For everyone else, it would be just another day. Just another beginning to just another week. But to him, it felt like the end of the world.
He walked out of the bathroom, aware of the sound of his feet on the floor but unable to feel anything. Nothing. It was like his entire body had fallen asleep, not the prickly sensation of raw nerves, just the dead heaviness of sleep. He went back to his room, and Gracy was just coming out.
“Do you want some punkin pie?” she asked. She was clutching her hippo. Trevor couldn’t even look at her, he was so ashamed.
Everywhere across the country, families were sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner. Crystal tried to imagine them. A hundred million different families. Each of them convening over the same meal. Every father’s face peering over a turkey, every mother fussing over smudges on the silver, spots on the wineglasses. Kids arguing, babies crying. All of America sitting at an enormous table. When she was a little girl, thoughts like this were both comforting and terrifying. The notion of a shared experience like this, in whatever form it might take, made her feel small. She was just one of a billion children, digging into her mashed potatoes, hiding a creamed onion in her napkin. Just one, indistinguishable from all of the others.
When she and Ty were still best friends, she used to eat dinner with her own family and then, after she had helped her mother finish washing all of the dishes, she’d walk to his house and join the McPhees for what Ty’s dad called “Secondinner.” Their house on Thanksgiving was like a looking-glass reflection of hers. While she and Angie were expected to sit quietly in their straight-back chairs, hands and napkins in their laps, Ty’s house was loud and chaotic and wonderful. It was never just the McPhees. There were always cousins and aunts and uncles and friends. Music cranked up loud on their old-fashioned stereo. Their regular dining room table was too small for all the guests, so they cobbled together a string of tables, a mishmash of chairs. Her favorite was always the piano stool that spun up and down; no matter how old she was, how tall she was, she could always adjust it to the right height.
Crystal’s mother never let anyone in the kitchen to help her. She seemed to want to make it seem like the entire meal had appeared magically on the dining room table, as though she hadn’t spent the entire night before and day of preparing it. At Ty’s house, Lucia invited everyone into the kitchen, handed everyone a peeler or knife or rolling pin. By the time she was nine, Crystal had helped make apple pies, acorn squash, and buttermilk biscuits. Dinner itself was a loud affair, served on the McPhees’ collection of china dishes, each one hand-picked from flea markets and yard sales and secondhand shops. She loved the one with the yellow roses, and Lucia always made sure that one was in her spot. The food was different every year. Sometimes instead of turkey they had ham or beef stew or, one year, each plate had a trout with its head still on. The tradition was in the company, not in the various courses.
When Crystal was pregnant, she had imagined that first Thanksgiving with the baby. She imagined them passing her back and forth, taking turns holding her as they ate, the entire family clamoring to hold her, to pinch her cheeks and tickle her belly. She would feed her sweet potatoes from a tiny little spoon. She could hardly wait to sit by the fireplace after the meal, sprawled out on the worn Oriental rug with her as Ty’s father and his friends played old Van Morrison songs on their guitars and mandolins, the sound of the stand-up bass like a heart beating through the floorboards.
But here she was, just a year later, and Ty was gone. The entire McPhee family was gone. The house that had once been filled with people and music and good smells was empty. There was no baby. She was just a name etched in skin, a name carved in a windowpane.
Crystal sat at the dinner table, hands in her empty lap, as her mother moved purposefully and silently from the kitchen to the dining room, covering the table with the same food she and a million other mothers had spent the day preparing. Light from the brand-new candles caught in the wineglasses, each rubbed with a soft cloth until they were so clear they were almost invisible.
Her father sat at the head of the table where he had sat every single Thanksgiving of her entire life. The turkey carcass lay before him like an offering.
“Just think, next year you’ll be coming home from college for Thanksgiving. Maybe have a new boyfriend with you?” her mother said cheerfully.
Crystal felt her entire body tense.
“I can’t believe my little girl is so grown up,” she said. “Eighteen years old already.”
“I’m moving out,” Crystal said.
Her mother’s perfectly plucked eyebrows raised, and her eyes went dark beneath them.
“Of course you are,” she said, laughing. “Your dorm assignment came last week.”
“I’m not going to live in a dorm,” she said. “I’m moving away.”
Angie sat quietly next to her. Crystal didn’t mean to hurt her, and it killed her as she watched Angie’s eyes fill with tears.
“That girl Fiona’s roommate is transferring to another college next semester. She sent me the nicest e-mail. We both put in requests that you be placed with her.”
“You’ve been e-mailing her?” Crystal said, stunned.
“I wanted to surprise you,” her mother said, frowning.
“I don’t think you heard me,” Crystal said. “I said I am not going to school. I’m moving out.” Her voice grew and she felt her chest expanding. “I’m eighteen years old. You can’t tell me what to do anymore.”
“Well, Crystal, if I hadn’t told you what to do, you’d be sitting here with a screaming baby on your lap right now,” she said. Her face was red and furious. “You’ve at least got to be grateful for that.”
Crystal felt like she might explode. “I’m not just some shitty piece of property you can slap a For Sale sign on, Mom.” She was screaming now, saying anything she could that would make her mother hurt as much as she did. To make a hole in her heart as big and wide as the one that the baby had left behind. “Did the Stones pay you or something? How much did you make? How much was your commission on my life?”
Her father cleared her throat then, slamming his fists down on the table. When he spoke, she knew exactly what he would say.
“Crystal, it�
�s your turn this year. Can you please say grace?”
On Friday, Kurt went to the salvage yard and took the envelope of emergency money out of the safe. For the first time in five years, he counted it. There was three thousand dollars inside: a fortune by anybody around here’s standards. Just nickels and dimes over years and years. His heart had nearly burst out of his chest as he counted the wad of cash again.
Goddamned Pop.
On the work computer, he did a quick search for local lawyers, grimacing at their smiling faces, their suits. “Fuck it,” he said to no one. Then he started typing in the names of some of those sites Elsbeth had mentioned. That one Will Shatner did the commercials for. He was shaking as he plugged in the dates. April 9–16. The kids’ spring break. Burlington, VT, to Orlando, FL. Airfare. Hotel. $525 per person. That would still leave about a thousand dollars. Tickets to Disney World. Meals. Rental car. He knew it was crazy, but also knew that this might just save everything.
And as he printed out the itinerary, he couldn’t stop smiling. He thought about the beach, pictured Elsbeth, legs long and tan. And so much sand. He thought about himself, swimming in the ocean, taking Gracy into the water, holding her on his shoulders. He thought about Trevor, about teaching him how to ride the waves.
Kurt hadn’t gone swimming in years. It seemed crazy now; when he and Billy were kids, they were always in the water. They used to swim in the river, in all the small ponds and larger lakes, in any body of water they could find.
When Kurt was about ten, his mom had talked Pop into taking them all to Maine for a weekend. She said she wanted the boys to see the ocean. To be able to swim in the Atlantic for once in their life.
Pop hadn’t been happy about leaving Lloyd in charge of the shop, but Larissa had been so insistent. “These boys deserve a vacation. I deserve a vacation.” And so Pop had reluctantly packed up the station wagon and driven them silently along Route 2, past all the weird roadside attractions: Santa’s Village and Six Gun City, the sixty-foot Indian in Skowhegan and the giant Paul Bunyan statue in Bangor. Kurt knew that somewhere there was a picture of him and Billy sitting next to Paul Bunyan’s big boots. He recollected the strange feeling of being at the feet of a giant. And by the time they got to Acadia National Park, even Pop seemed to have relaxed a little and was enjoying the sights.
Though it had been warm in Two Rivers when they left, it was still only June, and remarkably freezing cold and windy at the beach. They parked in an empty lot and clambered over the rocks at the beach’s shore to the sand below. The wind was so cold it made Kurt’s ears ache. Kurt and Billy stood looking at the crashing waves.
“Go on,” Pop said. “I didn’t drive all this way for you to just look at it.”
“Jude,” Larissa said. “It’s too cold.”
Kurt looked at Billy, whose teeth were chattering, wondering what to do. Billy bit his lip and glanced back at Pop.
“Come on,” Kurt said softly to Billy. “Let’s just get this over with.”
Kurt slipped his sneakers off and rolled his pant legs up. He motioned to Billy, and Billy followed him hesitantly to the water’s edge. It felt like ice water as the waves crashed around their bare ankles. Kurt glanced back at Pop. Pop was standing there, arms folded across his chest. Smug. Kurt knew he wouldn’t be happy until they’d both gone in. Really, better to just get in and get it over with, he figured.
The beach was deserted. Kurt pulled his shirt over his head and pulled off his jeans. Billy followed suit and Kurt said, “Let’s just go in, real quick. It’ll be over before you know it.”
Kurt ran into the glacial water, and his entire body went immediately, gratefully, numb. Billy next to him, they allowed the waves to pummel them, not resisting the pull of the undertow, and then, finally, when they couldn’t take another second of it, they dragged their anesthetized bodies out of the water and collapsed on the sand. They yanked their clothes back on and trudged through the heavy, wet sand to where their father stood, alone now, at the shore.
“Where’s Mom?” Kurt asked, his lips feeling like the time he’d gotten a shot of Novocain at the dentist.
Larissa was in the car, staring silently out the window.
“Happy now?” Pop said to her as he slammed his door shut and the boys shivered in the backseat. “Nice vacation, huh, Riss?”
“Don’t be such an asshole,” she’d said.
And it was like somebody had turned the light on in Pop’s dim head.
“I mean really, Jude. They’re just kids.”
“I’m sorry,” Pop said, putting his hand on the back of her neck, rubbing the tight tendons there as if he could simply will her to relax. “Rissy, let me go get us some dinner. You like those lobster rolls, right? With pickles?” He turned to the backseat, smiling a big, broad smile. “What do you boys want? Cheeseburgers? Some fries?” He knew he’d screwed up. Only Larissa was capable of making him see when he’d gone too far.
Pop dropped them off at the small cabin they had rented, and inside Larissa ran a warm bath. Both boys shivered as they climbed in, grateful for the steaming heat. Grateful for the water that enclosed them like a watery blanket. They stayed in the tub only until the water cooled, and then buried themselves under the blankets in one of the double beds.
Pop came back with giant milkshakes and greasy paper bags filled with food. They stayed up late watching reruns of I Love Lucy, Larissa and Pop sharing one bed, Billy and Kurt the other. It was the only time they all slept in the same room together.
“How about tomorrow we go fishing?” Pop said after the lights were out. “Maybe rent a little boat.”
And that night Kurt dreamed of the ocean. Cold watery dreams, the deafening sound of crashing waves. But in the morning, Kurt awoke in excruciating pain. Billy too was miserable. They had caught matching ear infections, it seemed, and so instead of staying in Maine for the rest of the weekend, they had to turn around and go home. As they both sobbed, their ears throbbing, in the backseat of the car, Larissa ran inside the little mom-and-pop shop near the cabin, and came out with Dramamine, offering them each enough to knock them out for the entire long drive back to Two Rivers. Kurt remembered nothing now about the drive but incredible pain, and then the sudden sucking relief of sleep.
“El,” he said on the phone. “I got a surprise.”
It was easier than he thought it would be. School was out for the entire week of Thanksgiving, which meant nobody was in the building. He knew from the school calendar that the hockey team had a game that Friday, an away game. But the team would meet in the boys’ locker room first, to get their equipment. The bus would pick them up out front. His mom had taken Gracy out shopping with her, and his dad was working back-to-back shifts between the 76 and the yard. He was alone.
He knew his dad had played hockey in middle school and high school; he was a goalie. He’d seen his dad’s old duffel bag in the closet before: Two Rivers Hockey in peeling red letters. Trevor dragged it out of the closet, amazed that it still had his old uniform and pads inside. The only thing that was missing was the mask; luckily he still had the Jason mask left from Halloween.
The walk to school took twenty minutes. He got to the school and could feel every inch of his skin prickling with fear. The hockey guys were all milling around outside the entrance to the gym, waiting for the coach to come and let them in. He hung back, near the Dumpsters by the cafeteria, waiting for his window. Once most of the guys had disappeared into the building, he pulled on the hockey mask and followed, hoping that anyone watching, that those little red eyes watching from the cameras above him, would think he was just another hockey player.
He pushed the door, relieved to find it unlocked. He could hear the distant echoing voices of the guys, laughing and slamming their locker doors open and shut. But instead of heading down the stairs into the basement locker room, he kept going, through the breezeway, to the main building where he took off the mask.
The art room was dark, but he knew his way around like a
blind man knows his own home. He felt his way past Mrs. D.’s old desk, past the wooden tables, to the darkroom. He unzipped his duffel bag, and within a few minutes, he was done and ready to go. He couldn’t believe how simple it had been. Of course, this was the easy part. But still, he felt lighter as he made his way down the long, dark corridor back toward the gym.
He could hear the sound of the hockey players making their way toward the exit as well, and so he hung back. He was worried that if he was the last to go, he might get locked in, so he knew that timing was everything. He heaved the duffel bag onto his shoulder and, head down, moved toward the door.
“Hey, Miller!” a voice said.
He ignored the voice and kept moving toward the exit. Once he was out, he would just dash toward the woods behind the school and wait until the bus was gone.
“What’s the matter, Miller? You deaf?”
Miller was the team’s goalie. The only other kid in the school nearly as tall as Trevor. Trevor quickly put the hockey mask back on and turned around.
“Get a move on!” the coach said. “The bus leaves in five minutes. And take that fricking mask off,” he said.
Trevor nodded and moved quickly toward the exit. Luckily, no one seemed to notice as he ducked behind the Dumpster again and then ran as quickly as he could toward the woods. When the school bus lurched away from the school, plumes of exhaust curling like dragon’s breath behind it, Trevor could barely believe his luck. He’d done it.
On Friday night, they were eating Thanksgiving leftovers for dinner. Each of them had two pieces of white bread smothered with turkey and hot gravy. Kurt scooped some cranberries on top; he liked the cold bite of them, the sting.
“So what’s the big surprise?” Elsbeth asked. She was still pissed off about Pop ruining Thanksgiving. When he’d gotten back from dropping Pop off that night, she’d said, “We are not spending one fucking cent on that bastard. I swear to God, Kurt. It is time to just let this go.”
