My family has spent nearly every Thanksgiving with my parents’ college friends the Brennans. Occasionally we would host it at my parents’ house and my mom would cook, leading one boyfriend to remark, “I appreciate how much your mom has done for women’s rights, but this food is the by-product.” I couldn’t disagree. So after many dry turkeys and green bean casseroles, my parents threw in the towel, and now we do it exclusively at the Brennans’ in Maryland.
My brother formed lifelong best friendships with each of their four kids and dated two of them, but because I was the oldest, I regarded them like additional little siblings and bossed them around relentlessly. When she was four, I cut Maddie Brennan’s bangs with a pair of gardening shears.
Steve Brennan is my dad’s best friend and the person my father prioritizes above everyone else on Earth. They have had breakfast together every Saturday for thirty years, and during the pandemic they’ve shared this ritual over Zoom. Lorraine Brennan is the gentlest woman, who never has an unkind word to say about anyone. The opposite of my mom, though the two of them were incredibly close friends.
Thanksgiving dinner plays out the same way every year. Lorraine cooks all day for all fifteen of us and then everyone pitches in to clean up but me. Having kids has really solidified my role as the person who does absolutely nothing to prepare the meal or pick up after it. The kids nap till five! I have to get the kids to bed!
The cast of characters rarely changes. The Brennans, Fletcher and me, and whoever we’re dating or are married to, my dad and mom, later my dad and one of his girlfriends, eventually my dad and my wonderful stepmom, Marjorie, Lorraine’s mother, her sister, Judy, and Judy’s husband and their son. Things play out pretty much the same every year. After drinks Lorraine calls us all to the table and we take our seats. If my dad isn’t seated near the younger set he’ll mouth to Fletcher and me, “What about Daddy?” mournfully, and if we ignore him he’ll whimper like a dog louder and louder until someone makes a spot for him. He hates being left out.
Two years ago, the conversation turned to politics when someone brought up the #MeToo movement. “Someone” was most likely my dad, who had and has a lurid fascination with who will be outed next. Each time a new man is accused he calls me breathlessly, like a teenage girl reporting hot goss, and says, “Guess who’s going down now?!!?”
He uses this same tone when he waaaaaay too enthusiastically reports terrible news about his beloved friends:
“Jerry Richardson died! Riddled with cancer. Tip to tush. Doctors told him he had three months. Wrong. TWO. WEEKS.”
“Your uncle? The one I wouldn’t ever let you be alone with because I was afraid he would molest you? Donnie Jr.? Dead. It’s real sad. I’m gonna help pay for the funeral.”
But most of the time the information he’s sharing is just wrong.
“Tom Cookler died. Fletcher’s soccer coach? Awful.”
One day later, a voicemail update: “Shoot. Tom’s alive. Got that wrong. It was your preschool teacher who died. Murdered. By a VERY jealous ex. She was always very pretty so. . . . What was her name? Brandi. No, Brielle. Damnit. MONICA! Monica was murdered. Tom, on the other hand, couldn’t be better. Joined a new indoor soccer league.”
It’s always a roller coaster. My brother is the most horrified by this tendency of my dad’s, and calls him out when he joyfully REPEATS tragic news to us, having forgotten he shared it the second it happened. Fletcher will get really fired up, telling him, “It’s almost like you’re turned on by it. Extreme weather, too. You’re titillated by the idea of millions of people on the verge of losing their homes.”
So when the #MeToo movement came up at dinner, I knew my dad’s interest would be piqued. “Anyone new gone down?” he asked the table, in case he’d missed any breaking news between grace and pie. Right off the bat, Lorraine’s elderly mother hits us with five words you don’t want to hear, “So men can’t flirt anymore??!” I contemplated calmly standing up and flipping Lorraine’s beautifully set eight-foot table but realized that then I would have had to help with cleanup.
“I think it’s been really hard on everyone.” I looked up to see who was piping in next. It was Lorraine’s sister, Judy. I had known her for years and never known what to make of her, but after moving to the West Coast I realized what I’d been seeing all along. A Palo Alto hippie-liberal/struggling visual artist who prided herself on her funky chunky jewelry and New Yorker subscription. We gave her our full attention.
“I’m just saying, the #MeToo movement’s been hard on everyone. On . . . me.” No one moved. Judy was about to confide in us and share a difficult incident from her past right here and right now. And my dad was here for it. He leaned so far forward he almost dropped his Kahlua and coffee.
“I just mean . . . everyone’s coming out and saying they were raped or touched or fondled or ogled inappropriately or whatever and . . . well . . . what about those of us who . . . weren’t?” We cocked our heads gently, struggling to follow her train of thought. “How are we supposed to feel that no one even wanted to do that stuff to us?”
I haven’t heard that kind of deafening silence since a wealthy mom-friend encouraged the members of our Mommy and Me class to buy a seventeen-hundred-dollar earthquake kit from Goop.
Judy was staring at us, awaiting our heartfelt condolences. It was challenging. But it was Thanksgiving, so everyone mumbled a word or two all at once. The words tumbled out on top of one another like waves upon the shore.
“Huh . . .”
“Yeah . . .”
“I guess I never thought of it that way . . .”
“Well . . .”
“That’s really . . . something to ponder . . .”
“Did I black out?”
“WHAT IS HAPPENING?!”
“So men can’t flirt anymore?”
On the drive home, had my mom been alive, she would have 100 percent used her favorite sound bite for when someone does something ABSOLUTELY INSANE. It’s a southern phrase her dear friend Nancy Foil’s mom used in moments like this. “It doesn’t do to talk about it.” And then after a pause, “It doesn’t do.”
So many moments haven’t “done” since she passed that I wish to God I could tell her about. One such moment happened soon after her funeral, my first week back in Los Angeles. I was trying to lie low and limit my interactions with humans because I was in an absolute daze. I was having trouble finishing sentences, let alone appearing the way I wanted people to perceive me at all times, which is upbeat and normal. Normal is a label I prize above all else. This stems from growing up with parents who didn’t care what people thought or how they were perceived. One year, during a Christmas decorating party at our church my mom stretched out and fell asleep on a pew. “She’s just tired!” I frantically told fellow parishioners as we dragged garlands over her face and body. My dad was up to stuff a normal person would never dream of. If he was late for a flight (which was always) he would routinely abandon his car in front of the airport, using their towing company as his own personal valet and the impound lot as his parking spot. “Cheaper than missing the flight!” he told us, proudly.
Hats off to them, but as their child I felt like I had to play the straight man to balance them out and keep people from writing us off. I was constantly following them with a metaphorical dustpan and broom and a panicked “nothing to see here!” look in my eyes. I was like the hot young wife in a multicam sitcom who is inexplicably married to Kevin James and can’t have any fun of her own because her sole purpose is to finger wag and tamp down her “crazy husband”!
And so here I was, wandering into Joan’s on Third in a fog, praying I wouldn’t see anyone I knew. Joan’s on Third is an upscale, trendy, glorified deli where the sun bounces relentlessly off the aluminum outdoor furniture and you sit on the sidewalk on display and wonder why you ever moved to Los Angeles.
I was in line ordering when, naturally, a comedy writer I knew, Andy Secunda, got in line behind me. Andy is a sweetheart. He once called me after seeing how little screen time I was getting on SNL and volunteered to send me sketches I could pass off as my own. I knew him from my Upright Citizens Brigade days back in New York, but now his sister was my agent and I hadn’t seen him in a while. From his jaunty, chatty tone, I could tell he hadn’t heard about my mom, and this plunged me into darkness. Bumping up against cheerful, normal people who are ditty-bopping about their days, ordering mac and cheese and Chinese chicken salads, is a jarring injury when your world has collapsed. You feel angry at them, though they have done nothing wrong, and jealous of them, from inside your private bubble of hell. I felt like there was actual glass between us as he went on, updating me on his improv show and asking me what I was working on. Burying my mother! I wanted to say.
“This and that. June and I are writing a movie . . .” He lit up, genuinely happy for me. We started talking about an exciting new project he was pitching but it was as though he was speaking in a different language. I couldn’t understand a word he was saying. Because we were in fact speaking two different languages. It was clear. His life was moving forward and mine had ended.
And then. As we paid for our food and were walking outside, I remembered. A couple months ago, his sister had told me their mom was sick. This whole time he had been in the same hell as me. I cut him off midsentence and touched his shoulder, reaching out of my bubble to connect us.
“Andrew. Your mom. How is she doing?”
A taxi pulled up in front of us. “I’m so sorry, I’m late for work. My car’s in the shop so this is for me.” He started getting in the car but looked back at me meaningfully. “My mom’s doing great, Casey. Thank you so much for asking. She’s made a complete and total turnaround. I’m so happy!”
Before I could respond, the taxi started to pull away from the curb. As it merged into traffic, Andy furiously rolled down his window and stuck his entire head out of it, shouting back to me, “Wait! Did I hear something about your mom?”
The taxi suddenly lurched forward, and as it sped away I yelled back, as not to be rude and leave this question unanswered, “OH, SHE’S DEAD! MY MOM’S DEAD!”
It does not do.