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The table is piled with more food than I have ever seen. The doors are propped open, the front and back, so a nice cold breeze comes through to wash out the heat of the cooking. Steven and his boys have brought in the turkey, steaming from the deep fryer. It is golden and the skin is crinkly and the scent of it is almost more than I can bear. I’ve been in the house since my awkward introduction to the boys, setting the table to match the one place setting Barb had put out as a guide. There are two forks at each plate, and I’m not so uneducated as to not understand the point of that. One is for a salad, one is for the main dish, so the same fork doesn’t have to be used. It seems wasteful, but at least I didn’t have to ask the point.
My feeling of not belonging had washed away as soon as I came back into the house and Barb put me to work. I mashed potatoes for the first time in my life, using a handheld mixer. She added generous dollops of butter and a slosh of milk, and the potatoes came out an eggshell white and creamed to a smooth, lump-free texture. We have green-bean casserole, pumpkin and cherry pies, a chopped salad, some fruit-and-marshmallow dish that Barb calls Ambrosia. The rolls take up two baking sheets as they heat in the oven. She was stirring the gravy over the stove when Will came in, giving her a pat on her bottom, where it shimmies with the stirring. “I love when you make gravy,” he had said, with such abject admiration in his voice that I felt a blush rushing up my already pink-from-the-heat cheeks.
“Oh, Will.” She had shooed him away then, and I had slipped out of the kitchen as he wrapped his arms around her waist.
I don’t know what I expected my mother’s people to be like, but I was in no way prepared for all this. These are people of which Dylan would be proud. These people could be Kelci’s grandparents. It just doesn’t make sense. Why would anybody leave here to live the life we lived? Then I think about how Dylan said his family had been at one time, back when his dad was drinking. It was horrible. Jake was a bad drunk, a mean drunk, a careless drunk. When his son drowned in a boating accident, he didn’t even know he had lost him. Yet they had risen out of that to be good FAMILY, upstanding people in the community. A solid couple, good father and mother. Is that what happened here? Was my mother’s life blown apart when she was a child, was it torn by fighting and friction? I look around the room as I’m finishing the last of the potatoes and gravy on my plate, sopping it up with a yeast roll.
I am stuffed. I am beyond stuffed. I lean back in the chair, letting my eyes travel over the walls, looking for scars. Looking for the scars where fists hit plaster or lamps shattered. Clear pristine walls meet my curiosity, and I let my eyes fall to the family around the table. “Barb,” I say, “thank you. That was a treat. What an awesome feast.” I am pleased to see that her cheeks flush at the compliment, and around the table, the sentiment is echoed by the men and boys. This meal was an EVENT, in a way that no Thanksgiving in my life had ever been, and it makes me feel sorrow for maybe what should have been. If she hadn’t been pregnant, but only “thought” she was pregnant, why did she leave? Why did she run away and hide from this family for the rest of her life? Why did she cut ties with her brother, with her mother and father, with her nephews? Why did she not just get rid of me? But I remind myself that she wasn’t pregnant when she left—she was only fourteen and I was born when she was sixteen. It’s a thought that causes my eyes to twitch, and I reach up to rub the twitch away.
Even though I know this is not the time, and really not the place, I ask the one question that everybody wants to know. “Why did she leave?” I ask it to the air, the walls, the room, more than the people in the room. Except for the silence that drops over the room, I wouldn’t know that I spoke aloud. All eyes are elsewhere, fingernails, forks, plates . . . except Barb’s. Her eyes stare right at me, and when I look into her eyes, I realize that my eyes are her eyes every bit as much as my mother’s.
She draws a shuddering breath, but doesn’t speak. I tell her I’m sorry. I don’t know why I asked. I wish I could go back in time to take away the words that took all the joy out of the afternoon. The sinking drops lower in my belly, and I look away, at my own plate, fork, fingernails.
I see from the corner of my eyes, Will reaching out to his wife, reaching out and taking her hand because I have made her sad. I should just get up and go, but before I get my legs under me, she says, “Well, Alison . . .” she speaks my name gently, with love that I have in no way earned, and I feel even more like a shit than I did before, “. . . I don’t know what kind of woman my Alice became, but she was a headstrong and difficult child.” She pauses, looking at Will. “I reckon she left because we couldn’t get along. I hate to admit it. She’s my daughter and I love her, but I swear we just could not ever see eye to eye. I would tell her the sky was blue, and she would swear it was green. I think I was a little stiff with her.” I hear Steven puff out a breath, and in glancing at him, I see his brows are raised, suggesting her words are an understatement. “Shut up, Steven.” Barb swallows hard. “It was my fault she ran away. I was too hard on her.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Will counters, not comfortable with the blame being placed on his wife, his bride, the love of his life, alone.
“We didn’t get along.” Steven says. “If we are all letting the laundry hang, I didn’t care for the kids she hung out with, and she thought I was a big nerd. People couldn’t believe we were brother and sister. We were too small time for Alice.”
I almost laugh, but tears spring to my eyes instead, because they think she thought she was better than they were and she died of a drug overdose. Tears trickle beside my nose, and I want to tell everyone here the truth—but how do I say such a thing without them feeling worse? There is nothing I can say. Nothing that will make them feel better.
"I always thought she ran away because she was pregnant,” I say finally, hoping to diffuse the tense air around the room.
Steven laughs. “She wasn’t pregnant. She didn't even have a boyfriend.”
“She did have a boyfriend,” I say. I get up from the table and retrieve the prom picture out of my bag. I hand the picture to Barb, and she draws in a breath.
“Oh my God.” She draws her hand to her mouth, handing the picture over to Will.
"This is after she left?” he asks, and Barb nods.
I look around the room, and every eye is lowered—nobody is looking at anybody, except for Barb, whose gaze is locked on me. Her eyes are soft, large, and tearful, and I know I screwed up. Why did I bring all this up now? Why the hell can’t I just keep my mouth shut and enjoy being part of something? Damn but I can’t, and here we are, the only sound being the creaking of the porch swing against the chain holding it to the column.