We had a family tradition on Thanksgiving mornings. Every year, Ali, Mom, and I each chose a different kind of pie to make—apple, pecan, or pumpkin. We wore aprons with turkeys on them and played the Dixie Chicks, shimmying around the kitchen and bumping hips. After Thanksgiving dinner, we all took a slice of each pie and voted on the best one. It wasn’t a real competition because Mom made all the crusts. But we each prepared our own fillings. It was our ritual—Mom, Ali, and me, cooking together.
At nine a.m., there was a knock on the back door, and I was shocked to see Sonja step into our kitchen. “Nine-o-one.” Sonja took off her shoes. “Is this polite enough, Sally?”
Mom smiled. “Just.” She called nine the polite hour—no phone calls or friends arriving unannounced before nine a.m. or after nine p.m., unless it was an emergency.
“Oh good,” Sonja said, glancing at the counter. “You haven’t started the pies.”
My sister glared at me. She thought I’d invited Sonja, but I’d only mentioned that my favorite part of Thanksgiving was making pies with Mom and Ali in the morning.
Will hadn’t yet graced us with his presence. Dad was reading the paper on the couch, while Ali and I were drinking coffee at the table, waiting for Mom to get the pie dough ready. She was carving floral patterns in small squares of butter, sprinkling chopped parsley on top. She held up the plate. “Aren’t these pretty?”
Dad closed the newspaper. “I bet the Quills decorate their butter too.”
“Who are the Quills?” Sonja asked.
“Our neighbors,” I explained. “They wear plaid outfits and play Celtic music at the solstice. Every year they invite us to their recital, and Mom makes us go. Dad calls them the cozey-
wozey family, and he calls us the failed family.”
“We’re nice failures,” Dad said.
“In your version of a failed family, what holds it together?” Sonja asked.
“Bargains,” Dad said. “In most families, love is based on bargains.” Dad loved an audience, and Sonja was his audience this morning. “My children shovel the sidewalk, and I let them use the car. Bargain. I fix the screen door, and my wife pays the mortgage. Bargain.” He held up two Post-it notes that Mom had left on his placemat. Put the white wine in the refrigerator. Bring up extra chairs from the basement. “See? I obey and I get a serving of turkey. Bargain.” He winked at Mom.
Dad was provoking Mom, a bad sign. She loved her holidays, and Dad tolerated them by making fun of them. While Mom rolled the pie dough with fierce concentration, Ali locked eyes with me, silently telling me: Sonja has to leave.
“Sonja.” I stood up. “Come upstairs. I need to show you something.” But Sonja didn’t move. Ali refilled her mug with coffee and headed upstairs. “Aren’t you going to help make pies?” I called after her.
“I think you have enough help.”
“I’ll do hers,” Sonja said. “I’ve never made pies before. What do we do first?”
“Wait a minute.” I ran upstairs to Ali’s room. “Please, Ali, we always make pies together.”
“Then tell her to go,” Ali demanded. “Tell her today is a family day. You need to draw some boundaries, Fran. Then I’ll come down.”
But when I returned to the kitchen, Sonja had already donned an apron and was studying Mom’s technique of rolling dough. “Isn’t Ali coming?” Mom glanced at me.
I shook my head.
Mom went upstairs to talk to her, and five minutes later, she returned alone.
I stared at Ali’s pile of red and green apples. She’d gotten up early and laid out her ingredients. I handed Sonja the knife. “Start peeling.”
Pie-making. It was a small thing. But it was my favorite part of Thanksgiving.
Without Ali, it wasn’t the same.
When Sonja asked me to taste her filling, I took a bite. “Fine.” But my voice was tight, my heart too. I was angry at Sonja, and even angrier at myself. The best part of Thanksgiving was ruined. I’d let Sonja ruin it. When the pies were finished and the kitchen cleaned, I told Sonja, “I’ll walk you halfway home. I need to walk the dogs.” I wanted her out of the house, so I could spend the afternoon with Ali.
Mom always invited guests to our Thanksgiving dinner, people who had no place else to go. This year she invited a new teacher at her school, Priscilla, whose boyfriend, Maurizio, was visiting from Italy.
“Al tavolo,” Mom said, trying out her college Italian on Maurizio. “I’ve made a huge tachino.”
“Gobo-la, gobo-la, gobo-la.” Will attempted an Italian gobble.
Priscilla laughed. Mom’s friends always adored Will.
Mom drew Maurizio into the conversation. “My last year of college, I spent three months photographing an archeological dig in your country, an Etruscan burial site south of Rome. It was amazing how much we learned from seeing which objects were buried in the tombs.”
Maurizio nodded. “We learn much this way,” he said with an accent.
“Since we’re on the topic of death,” Dad said in a jovial tone. “Why don’t we go around the table, and everyone can say what they’d want to be buried with?”
Mom glanced at the nearly empty wine bottle at Dad’s end of the table, shooting Dad a meaningful stare.
“Will?” Dad glanced across the table. “What would you take with you to the grave?”
“My soccer ball.”
“Si.” Maurizio smiled. “Anché io.”
“You, Ali?” Dad poured himself another glass of wine.
She raised her fingers, made her scissors motion.
“You’d take your scissors.” Dad laughed. “Frances?”
“Vinnie’s ashes and my journals.”
“What if I want Vinnie’s ashes?” Will asked.
“You can have half,” I told him.
We’d reached Priscilla. “This.” She lifted her fourth finger to reveal an engagement ring.
“We’re planning a summer wedding, and you’re all invited.”
Mom got up from her seat and hugged Priscilla. “I’m so happy for you.”
When she sat back down, Dad raised his glass of wine to her. “What would the perfect holiday hostess want to be buried with? Monogrammed hand towels? Post-its? A new husband?”
Ali gave Dad a fierce look. “I think we should toast Mom for this delicious dinner.”
Maurizio pointed at the sweet potatoes with brown sugar and butter. “I like this very much, Sally. Is very good.”
Dad raised his glass to Maurizio. “Want to be buried with Sally’s sweet potatoes?”
Everyone laughed. But we were all nervous, too, because the line between humor and sarcasm was getting thinner.
“What do you want to be buried with William?” Mom asked in a steely voice.
It was Dad’s chance to say something kind or funny or apologetic, but Dad lifted his glass to Mom. “You’ll decide. You’ll leave it on a Post-it.”
No one spoke. No one knew what to say. Except Mom, who began collecting the platters. “Hope you saved room for dessert.” She refused to look at Dad.
Usually we took a break before dessert and Dad played some songs on his guitar, but tonight, Mom began passing the dessert plates around the table right away. Even though she smiled, her eyes avoided Dad. I sensed she wanted the party to end as soon as possible. We cut the pies, small slices, so everyone could taste all three. Then we took a vote. Mom’s pie won. It was unanimous.
After everyone had left, we helped Mom with the dishes. Dad put on Al Greene and shimmied over to Mom, reaching his arms around her waist from behind. She turned and gave him a fierce look. “Really? You think I want to dance with you right now? Today was important to me, but you had to ruin it.” Her eyes brimmed with tears. “I don’t even want to be in the same house with you.”
Normally my parents took their battle to the bus in the alley, away from us.
But not tonight. Dad glared at her. “Sorry for being myself. Sorry for trying to bring some humor to the table. Why don’t you admit it? You don’t like me anymore.”
Mom threw up her arms. “You can’t see it. You can’t see anything beyond yourself. Is there anyone else in this family who matters besides you?”
Ali, Will, and I skulked out of the kitchen to our own bedrooms, leaving them to hash it out.
At seven minutes to nine, Sonja phoned. “Whose pie won?”
“Mom’s.”
“Save me a piece of each, will you?”
“Sure.”
Part of me wanted to tell her what had happened. It was the sort of drama Sonja loved. But if I told her how I felt, she’d do her Sonja-thing and interpret our dinner, planting her words, insights, and meanings inside me. And that didn’t help. It only made me realize what a huge space there was to fill.
Sonja felt my silence. “What’s up? Has your sister turned you against me?”
“No.”
“Truthfully? I pictured her as more of a freethinker.”
“Ali is a very freethinker,” I replied.
“What do you feel like doing this weekend?” Sonja asked.
“Actually, I might not be able to get together this weekend.”
She gasped. “The whole entire weekend?”
“Mom wants to have some family time, so I’ll call you.”
“I’ll call you?” Sonja repeated. “I’ll call you? I’m mezzo daughter. Under the loon magnet—”
“Sonja, stop!”
“What’s going on?” She waited, and when I didn’t say anything, she added, “I always come over. Why can’t I come over? I’d like to hang out with your sister.”
“I just want time alone with her.” There. I’d said it. And part of me felt better for laying down a line, but part of me also felt Sonja’s hurt.
“I hope you enjoy every minute of the whole weekend with your sister,” Sonja blurted before she hung up. I’d never had anyone hang up on me before. I trembled, actually shook in places that I didn’t know could shake.
All weekend, Sonja and I had no contact. I felt guilty for wanting family time. Sonja and I were so close that it felt like a betrayal. I ended up thinking about her the whole weekend anyway, worrying that she might not forgive me.
Sunday morning, I went into my sister’s room and lay down next to her.
“Have you told Sonja about Dad?” Ali asked me.
“No.”
“Good. The way she agrees with Dad? Way too chummy.”
“You barely know her.”
“I know her type. She’s a groupie. A Tannen wannabe.” Ali sat up and stared at me. “It doesn’t help when you pretend he’s funny and charming. He’s getting worse.”
No matter what I could say, her truth would always be bigger because she was the oldest and had spent the most time with Dad. Her truth swallowed my truth. I shrugged. The shrug felt lodged in my cells. Maybe-cells. I always got this way around my sister.
I sat up, shoved my feet into my slippers, and headed to my room.
“Frannyyy, don’t be a baby.”
I slammed the door closed. I needed silence. The line between family and friendship was blurred. How much of the truth did I owe Sonja? How much should I keep private to protect my family?
Ali left Sunday afternoon. Afterward the house felt empty.
Will stayed in his room to finish college applications. He was applying early decision to Madison.
I worked on my poetry project, gathering more poems about dogs. One poem was about a group of monks in the 1800s who trained alpine dogs to find stranded travelers in the pass between Italy and Switzerland. The dogs went in packs of three, and once they found the stranded travelers, sometimes under an avalanche, one of the dogs went back to get the stretcher-bearers, and the other two dogs dug down to reach the buried travelers and lay on top of them to keep them warm. The rescue dogs were renamed after the monk who began the program—St. Bernard.
I thought about Sonja and how much easier dogs were than people. I pulled Vinnie closer, his back shedding warmth against my leg.