Thanksgiving, and I have a million things to be thankful for: I made general counsel by the age of thirty-one. I have a best friend from heaven, a church that I love, a great family. Well, okay. A really nice family, anyway. I’m going to be an auntie. (Three times over if you count Brea’s babies.) And of course, most importantly, I’m loved by Jesus. There, that’s the positive view. Now I can whine.
It’s another year where I’m technically alone on Thanksgiving: lost between a legitimate spot at the adult dinette and the folding table beside my ten-year-old second cousin. It’s a year when the draw of a foreign culture was stronger than my boyfriend’s love for me, and being dumped is fresh and raw—right before the Christmas season. Remember how in high school, guys would break up right before Valentine’s Day so they didn’t have to buy a gift? Well, bingo. Here I am, only worse than that.
Once, I read the story of Mumtaz, an Indian princess so loved by her emperor husband that when she died giving birth to their four-teenth child, Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal for her mausoleum. Mumtaz inspires love. I apparently inspire fear, and Seth’s escape to India, Mumtaz’s final resting place, is as close as I get to true devotion.
And yet there are all these men in my life that don’t run. All these possibilities that aren’t really possibilities. Like my boss. The way he looks at me makes me feel desirable. But then reality sets in. This is a man who hangs women on a tree like ornaments. Call me: Christmas 2003. And then there’s Kevin, who is clearly impossible. And then there are the Reasons.
Kay is organizing Thanksgiving dinner for the entire abandoned singles’ group. Their parents are somewhere across the country, and they’re here. Generally, the Reasons eat out, but there’s a paltry selection on Thanksgiving Day, and it gives Kay an excuse to use the fine china. So everybody’s happy.
“Everything looks great, Kay.” There’s a harvest-colored, plaid tablecloth with rust candles, and a huge bouquet of fall flowers adorning her antique table.
“You don’t think it’s too much?”
“Kay, you know everything you do is perfectly incredible, and you’ll be the talk of the Reasons for a month.”
She pouts at me. “That doesn’t make me feel any better. I want things to be nice, Ashley. None of these people have anywhere to be today. Our house is such a wreck right now. I hope everyone’s okay with that.”
“They could all be with me at the food kitchen. They need servers, Kevin says.”
“That’s not fair. You’re going to your mother’s for dinner later. The guys are going to watch football here. It’s so anti-Silicon Valley, there might actually be conversation. I would think you’d like us getting together. You’re always saying that we need to get a social life.”
I said that? “Forgive me, I’m Scrooge today, okay?”
“Seth hasn’t called?”
I toss my hand. “Oh, who cares about Seth? I’m loyal to the wrong people.” Rhett whines at my feet and I scrunch his face in my hands. “Not you, Sweetie. You are worthy of being loyal to.”
“Did you invite Kevin to your mother’s?”
“I’m just going to tell him he can come if he wants once we’re done.” I shrug. “I don’t want him to think I’m making any kind of move. I’m very leery of his attention, especially when I met this sweet little nurse the other day, who seemed enamored of him.” I crinkle my face. “Actually, she was a complete shrew, but I imagine Kevin needs a strong woman to put up with his mother.”
“You’re hopeless, Ashley. Just because a guy resembles Bill Gates, it does not make him good husband material. Sheesh, talk about judging someone by their looks. I honestly think you’re prejudiced against good-looking men.”
I laugh out loud. “I’m so not prejudiced against good-looking men. But come on, a doctor and a lawyer? That’s not exactly a match made in heaven.” I sigh. “Kevin’s under this delusion that I’d be a fun date.”
“And you’re refusing to check that out. Why?”
I shake my hands. “I’m not into that whole Mensa thing, the country club thing, the handsome-like-Hugh-Jackman thing. We’re from different worlds and that never works.” I puff out my chest. “I’m going to find myself a nice, middle-class guy and work from there. Move up in baby steps, you know, maybe a little more hair than Seth. Not a full, luscious crop like Kevin’s.” But thinking about his warm brown locks gets my fingers itching. I’d love to know what it felt like to run my fingers through. No, no, no. Don’t go there. So not healthy.
“Are you saying you’re looking for ugly? Because I can get you ugly. I have the nicest guy that works for me, but he’s hairy like a gorilla. It sticks out of the back of the golf shirts he wears every day and covers the back of his arms. You interested?”
“Okay, ick. I don’t want to talk about this. I’m just not interested in Kevin that way, and you can’t force that feeling if it isn’t there.” Instantly I remember that stolen kiss in the parking lot. I know too well that the possibility is there, but I don’t want to explore it anymore than I want to explore the Taj Mahal.
The doorbell rings, and Rhett barks.
“That’s gotta be Kevin now. Stay out of it, okay? I’m begging you.”
Kay shrugs. “No skin off my nose. But you wouldn’t know a good man if he brought you flowers and introduced you to fine dining. Isn’t that what Kevin did?” Kay winks, takes off for the kitchen, and calls back out at me. “If you want to meet Bigfoot, let me know. I imagine he’s free.”
I open the door and Kevin is standing there with huge yellow sun-flowers. I have a picture of a hairy Neanderthal engineer in my head. “Hi, Kevin,” I say through my giggles. “The flowers are gorgeous.”
“Gorgeous like you.” It sounds cheesy, but not the way he says it. Kevin is just suave, like there’s a soap opera writer behind him, feeding him the words. Taking his jacket, I twist him around and study his arms, which sport the perfect amount of hair. Enough to be manly, not enough to resemble my local primate.
“Are you ready to go?”
“Yeah, let me get my coat.” I put on my new Ralph Lauren navy peacoat, and maybe I do a little spin to get into it waiting for the forthcoming compliment.
“Is that new? It’s beautiful.”
I smile. “Got it on sale. Do you like it? Just my part to support the troops. Isn’t it patriotic?”
He breathes deeply, then speaks. “It’s a little fancy for the food kitchen. I wouldn’t want you to get it dirty.”
I sigh audibly. Duh. Like the food kitchen is fashion week in New York. “Right. You’re right.” I put the peacoat back on its hanger and get out my balled-up Lilly Pulitzer sweater. It doesn’t match what I’m wearing, but what do I care? “Let’s go.”
His eyebrows lift, and I think he’s about to point out my lack of color coordination, but he quickly sizes up my response and says nothing. Then his beeper goes off just as he opens the door. He looks at the phone, then at me. “Can you wait just a second?”
“Go for it.” I plop back on the couch and sniff deeply to get the turkey aroma and to try to get into this day. Maybe matching clothes would help. I go to the closet and get out a red cardigan I bought at Bon-Macy’s when I traveled to Seattle for work. It has seen better days, and I would have given it to Goodwill long ago if I didn’t love it so much. There are those pieces that just define an era and make you feel good when you wear them.
The doorbell chimes again, and I open the door to Seth’s leech, I mean, roommate, Sam. “Hi, Ashley, you staying?” He’s carrying a pint of mashed potatoes from Boston Market. Now I remember who did that the last time.
“I’m going to serve at the Food Kitchen. Want to come?”
Rhett gets so excited by Sam’s presence, he whizzes all over the entryway. Sam laughs like a little boy in a movie’s obligatory burp scene. “Nah, I don’t want to come.” He says through his laughter.
I shove a rag and some Pine Sol into his hands. “Good, then you have time to clean up.” I walk onto the porch into the crisp fall air and breathe the heady scent of sycamores. Reset. Lord, I need a reset. Tell me what to do with my life. I need more than a map. I need GPS like Kay has in her Lexus. Tell me where to turn!
The door opens and Kevin appears. “You ready, Ashley?”
“Don’t you need to go to the hospital?”
“No, I just needed to consult with someone on duty. Let’s go. We’re going to have such a great day.”
He leads me down the pathway, which Kay has lit with little turkey luminaries.
I look up the street. “Where’s your Porsche?”
“I got rid of it. I felt like a jerk driving into the hospital. There’s all these sick children, and I’m driving a sports car. It’s like a bad joke. I worried I’d run into one of their parents in the lot.”
I swallow my obvious response, like that I drive an Audi convertible, but maybe I am heartless. Kevin looks at me as if he reads my mind and lifts my chin.
“Because I make my money curing sick children, Ashley, not because I’m suddenly pious. I know you love your car, and it wasn’t any kind of judgment.”
I’m so transparent.
Sam comes out onto the porch and shouts at me to the sidewalk. “Ashley,” he says, holding up the phone. “Seth’s on the line. From India.”
I look at Kevin and his smile disintegrates. I’m having a rotten holiday. No reason to ruin his, too. “Tell him I left already.”
I take Kevin’s arm and we walk to his new Dodge Stratus. He opens the door for me and kisses me on the cheek as I get in. “I can’t wait to serve beside you.”
Something about that comment feels so intimate that it makes me tingle. I shake it off and look straight ahead as we drive. Mensa. Mensa. Mensa, I remind myself. Different kind of freak altogether. And the country club set?
I’d like to say that I’m so into serving at the food kitchen that I don’t think about Seth and his phone call, but I do. I wonder why he called. What, if anything, he had to say about India. I wonder if he’s seen Arin, and secretly, I hope he hates life without Thai food and Mexican cuisine. I plop a pile of mashed potatoes on a child’s plate, and he smiles up at me from his five-year-old height. He has the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen next to Seth’s.
“Thank you for the potatoes. They’re my favorite!” He smiles and it lights up the room. “You’re very pretty.” He looks up at his mother for approval.
“You’re going to have to watch out for this one,” I say to his mother and she nods back to me.
Kevin leans over to the boy. “You have a good eye.”
The little boy bobs his head up and down. Kevin drops the end of his spoon into the stuffing and gazes at me like I’m the whipped cream on the pumpkin pie. He opens his mouth to speak, but says nothing. The action leaves me breathless, like the time I macked this poor man in a San Francisco parking garage. I focus on the mashed potatoes in front of me.
“So . . . Ashley, where should we go so you can show off that new peacoat?”
“I have dinner at my mother’s. You know it’s Thanksgiving, right?”
“Are you inviting me?”
I nod. He notices the line is getting backed up and goes back to putting stuffing next to the turkey. I watch him momentarily, and decide he won’t last an hour at my parents’ house. With Dave there? Maybe ten minutes. All those country club manners he learned in Atlanta are useless against the Stockingdale clan.