‘YOU KNOW WHAT tomorrow is?’ Nessheim asked, coming into the kitchen where water boiled for spaghetti and Stacey was stirring a small pot of tomato sauce.
‘They call it Thanksgiving,’ she said, enough acid in her voice to make him look at her.
‘You going to your mom’s?’ he asked, trying to sound uninterested.
‘No. You going to yours?’ The asperity was unmistakable now.
‘Of course not. She’ll be with her cousins in Bremen. And their kids and grandkids and God knows who else.’ He waited but Stacey kept stirring the sauce. ‘So what do you think?’
‘About Thanksgiving?’ She put the spoon down. ‘I guess I’ll spend the day at my apartment.’
He realised she was angry. ‘You can’t do that. There are mouths to feed. Mainly mine.’
‘Oh, yeah?’ There was the first hint of humour in her voice.
‘I’ll do the dishes if you cook. That’s a promise.’
She was wavering; he could tell. He went up behind her and put his arms around her shoulders, and she turned slowly, feeling soft as soap in his winter-chapped hands. He said, ‘I think we should spend tomorrow together. Just to make sure I count my blessings.’
She leaned up to meet his lips with hers as he tucked his head down to kiss her. She didn’t let go, and he realised she wasn’t going to let him get away with just a kiss. Eventually she stood back and dropped the wooden spoon into the pot of sauce, then grabbed him again. He only just managed to turn the stove-top burner off before she had him, half-pulling, half-pushing, into the bedroom, his tie off and his shirt unbuttoned.
Later they lay in bed, side by side, exhausted.
‘And you say I’m the hungry one,’ he said lightly.
‘That’s different.’
‘Why?’
‘Do I have to explain?’ Inexplicably she looked close to tears.
‘Sure you do.’ He was hoping to kid her out of the moodiness he sensed descending.
She took a deep breath. ‘When I was a girl my father would get a craving for clams once a year or so. He’d drive all the way down here and buy a great sack of them from Jesselson’s Steamers. He’d come home and give the cook the night off, then boil them up in a kettle the size of a ship’s cauldron. I liked them well enough but my mother only ate a few – she didn’t like the briny taste. My father ate them by the dozen. He’d tie a napkin around his neck and sit down with half a loaf of bread he’d use like a sponge to soak up the broth.’
‘And the point is?’ he asked like a benevolent Professor Fielding.
‘Nothing else would do. Not a T-bone steak or oysters wrapped in bacon or veal kidneys – the other things he loved to eat. That night it had to be clams.’
‘So?’ asked Nessheim, wondering where this was going. ‘Am I your clam?’
She didn’t laugh. ‘You’re the type who’d take the oysters or the steak or the kidneys – or the clams. You’re just hungry period.’ She added, ‘But I only want the clams. Even if they’ve got a gritty kind of shell.’
He didn’t say anything. After a while she got out of bed and put on her robe, then lit a cigarette. She stood by the window, looking out at the courtyard. He said, ‘I’m sorry I forgot about Thanksgiving. Something’s come up’.
‘You want to tell me about it?’
‘I can’t – I’m not even supposed to know about it.’
‘Okay, though you can trust me, you know.’
‘I know that.’
‘I hope so.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Nessheim, are you going to take me up to Bremen some time?’
He felt caught flat-footed; this had not even occurred to him in passing. ‘Why do you want to go there?’
‘So I could meet your mom and see where you grew up. Anything wrong with that?’
‘You’ve never done the same for me. And your mother lives ten miles away, not two hundred.’
She turned and stared at him. ‘Do you like your mother?’
‘I love my mother.’
‘Do you like where you grew up?’
‘Sure.’
‘Then there’s your answer.’ She was fumbling in her purse. ‘When can we go?’
He hesitated, visualising Stacey’s first encounter with his mother. Stacey read his thoughts. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll behave. I’ll even dress the part.’
‘What part’s that?’
‘I’ll let you know – I’ve got the feeling auditions aren’t quite over. But the costume’s easy – I was thinking a dirndl, with no make-up. So how about it?’
‘Let me give it some thought,’ he said with even less conviction than he felt. He didn’t want to rush into this. For him, Stacey meant his present, not his past.
‘Are you paying me back?’
‘For what?’
‘For leaving you when we were first together.’
He thought about this for a moment, then said slowly, ‘Maybe. Why did you do it, anyhow?’
‘I felt I didn’t deserve you.’
He laughed. This sounded just like the ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ that girls liked to tell guys to let them down easy. ‘I didn’t realise I wore a halo back then,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry – I don’t wear one now.’
‘I’ve noticed.’ But then she grew serious again. ‘I didn’t want to be with you because it made me feel bad about myself and bad about what I was doing to you.’
‘Couldn’t you have said so? You weren’t doing anything wrong as far as I was concerned. I was crazy about you.’
‘So have you been in love since?’
‘Since when?’
‘Since you were in love with me?’
Nessheim looked at her sceptically. ‘What’s all this love talk anyway, Stacey? You told me once you didn’t believe in love.’
‘We all say stupid things, especially at that age. And even later on if we’re scared.’
‘Scared?’ He looked at her and laughed. ‘What are you scared of?’
‘Not you,’ she said, as if stung. She looked as though she was through explaining, and stubbed out her cigarette on the little porcelain ashtray she had once lifted from the Palmer House. ‘So let’s have Thanksgiving together. But I really do need to go to my apartment for a while. I love Drusilla but she never could clean worth a damn, and now she’s turned seventy she doesn’t even pretend.’