On the day before Thanksgiving, school was out at noon but I still had my piano lesson. As I ran out the door with my books, Mom reached into the grocery money jar, grabbed five dollars, and slid it into an envelope, which explained how Mom was paying for my lessons. What else was going to come out of the grocery jar and who would refill it? Mom wrote Miss Mary’s name across the front. “Tell her I’ll give her the rest later this week.”
“It’s with an e,” I corrected. “Frances like her with an e and Francis like him with an i.” Mom erased the offending letter and corrected the envelope that didn’t hold enough money.
I had hoped we’d skip Thanksgiving this year since nobody was coming. We usually invited guests for Thanksgiving, but Dad said this year he didn’t want any “strays.” I looked at Mom in shock. What had happened to Dad? He had never used that word before. Mom took a poll about what we wanted for dinner, and Matt and I offered our suggestions—green bean casserole with the crispy things on top, turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, Mom’s fruit salad with marshmallows, and please no sweet potatoes.
On Thanksgiving morning, Mom removed a leaf from our dining room table, bringing us closer together, and spread out a gold cloth that spilled over the shortened table. She found the thumbprint turkey place cards I had made in first grade and set out four. I don’t know what she did with the one with Joel’s name on it—the one I wrote with a backward J, before I really knew my letters. After she set out the Pilgrim salt and pepper shakers, she filled a cornucopia centerpiece and surrounded it with two candles, each cradled in a tiny pumpkin. Then she slipped napkins in the feather napkin rings Matt had made in third grade—the ones we had only four of anyway, because there were only four of us then.
The table looked beautiful but empty. Our table was perfectly symmetrical now—one side for everybody. I longed for our neighbors, Uncle Troy and Miss Mary Frances, Miss Patti, Rita, to make it full. Except for the decorations, this really wasn’t any different from any other dinner. And this year we weren’t giving thanks for much of anything.
Dad sliced into the turkey. That was always his job. Matt plopped a huge helping of mashed potatoes on his plate and began eating. That was always his job.
“Hey, we didn’t say grace,” I said.
“Grace,” Matt said and laughed, taking another bite.
“God is great. God is good.” I motioned for him to put his spoon down. “Let us thank Him for our food. Amen.” Then I started singing my kindergarten song to the tune of “Frère Jacques.” “God our Father, God our Father, we thank You, we thank You, for our many blessings, for our many blessings. A-men. A-men.” Mom joined in to make it a two-part round but not Dad and Matt.
“Thank You, God, for food and family, and …” I stopped. Nobody added anything. “And for our home,” I added. “Amen.” After overhearing some church members talk about the parsonage, I had questions that needed answering.
“Look at those sweet potatoes,” Dad said as if they were the only thing he was thankful for. “They’re my favorite.” Matt and I exchanged frowns. No wonder Mom made them.
“Somebody said the parsonage isn’t really our house.”
“Of course it’s our house, but we don’t own it. It’s for whoever is the preacher,” Mom answered matter-of-factly as she spooned out ambrosia salad.
“Why can’t we own it? I don’t want to move. Ever.”
“I know, honey. And as long as Daddy is …,” Mom began and then stopped.
“But he’s not preaching …”
“Yes.” Mom sighed, setting down the bowl. “We have a dilemma.” Dilemma, the bad word for the day. Bad timing. Mom served me a huge helping of sweet potatoes, and then another scoop, staring down the table at Dad.
“I thought we were thankful for our home?” Dad said sarcastically.
“We are,” Mom countered. “For however long it’s ours.”
“Thank you, Renee, for clarifying that,” Dad said angrily, dropping the gravy tureen so hard it broke. Gravy flowed, dripping off the side of the table.
“You want someone to be angry with, and I don’t want to be that someone,” Mom said, tossing her napkin on the table as she stood. I stared at the pile of orange covering my plate. I had little room for anything else. “I thought the church and our home and us meant something,” she continued.
Dad didn’t seem to know what to say. Couldn’t he at least say, “It does! I love you so much! I’ll go back to preaching. We can make this all work out!” But instead he was silent.
“It’s Thanksgiving,” Mom said sadly. The gravy had spread across the table, saturating the tablecloth.
“Nothing’s the same. We’ve all changed. Now’s not the time for this,” Dad said.
“When is the time? When is it time to stop running away and run toward something?” Mom continued, as if picking a fight. I almost wanted Dad to get really mad. I wanted to find out what made him tick.
“I’m not running away.”
“You don’t think so? You’re tinkering in the basement with old clocks, avoiding everything and everyone.” Dad scoffed and that seemed to incite her. “And this isn’t the first time.” She pointed her finger. “You also ran away from the farm.”
“No, Renee, I wanted to be a minister.”
“There are plenty of Presbyterian churches between here and Washington State,” Mom pointed out.
“You wanted to live out there?” Dad asked, surprised. “And that ‘tinkering’ comment?”
“You know what I mean. When you avoid something, you get far away from it. I don’t believe distance heals, and I’m beginning to wonder about time healing all wounds. Look around you. Other people are wounded, too.”
“I think I’ll just excuse myself,” Matt said with a sarcasm that exceeded both parents. He picked up his plate and started for the kitchen.
“You can sit right back down and finish your meal, young man,” Dad commanded.
“Why?” Matt called back. “So I can listen to the two of you argue about whether or not to go to church?” He faced Dad. “Who needs it, anyway?” And with that Matt turned his back and headed for the kitchen, where he dropped his plate in Mom’s sink full of hot water and walked out the back door, which slammed like an exclamation point on the end of his sentence.
It was all my fault. I never should have said anything about the parsonage.
Now I had that nervousy-sick feeling. Would Mom cry? Would Dad call Matt back? Dad shot Mom a look of blame and Mom’s eyes said it was his fault, and then I knew I would be sick even though I didn’t eat the sweet potatoes. I didn’t ask to be excused; I just ran upstairs to the bathroom as quickly as my stomach allowed.
My stomach now empty, I splashed water on my face, then dried it without looking in the bathroom mirror. I knew I wouldn’t like what I saw. I shook out my arms and stamped my feet. The tingling was uncontrollable. My mouth tasted terrible. Then I went to my room and spread out on my bed. Why did they fight about that stuff? I flicked on the radio and heard “Vietnam.” Always Vietnam. I changed the station to some unfamiliar song that could drown everything out.
“Abby?” I heard Mom say from outside my door, her hand on the knob. “Are you okay?”
“I’m okay,” I lied.
The door handle seemed to hesitate and then turn, but not open.
“Abby, the door’s locked.”
“I just want to take a nap, Mom. Okay?”
“I’m sorry, Bee,” she said weakly. “It wasn’t a great Thanksgiving.” Sometimes her voice invited a discussion. Sometimes she would have said, “Can we talk?” But today she sounded tired, like she just needed to cry, but not in front of a fourth grader.
“Not right now, Mom,” I said. “Please.”
I didn’t help with the dishes or come down for dinner. When Matt came home later that night, he knocked the “one-two-three” knock and I opened the door. He smuggled up two plates of stuffing and mashed potatoes and the puzzle Mom had bought for this Thanksgiving.
“You shouldn’t have run away,” I said, picking at Mom’s creamy mashed potatoes. “But I know why you did it,” I added. “You just wanted everybody to get along.”
“Abby, you don’t get it. You just do everything perfect.”
“I left, too,” I defended. “But I had to throw up.”
Matt looked down at my plate of food, the new spoonful in my mouth, and then backed away.
“It’s okay.” I swallowed quickly. “I feel better now.” I forced down another bite to prove that I was good.
“Go get us some salad,” I begged. I wanted him to leave and then I would flush the food down the toilet. “You forgot the marshmallow stuff.”
“And the pumpkin pie with whipped cream,” he said.
“Punkee pie with whoopin’ cream,” I corrected, remembering how Joel pronounced his least favorite Thanksgiving dessert. Mom would have made Joel apple pie à la mode.
“Man, he really wrecked everything by dying,” Matt said suddenly.
“Joel didn’t ask to die.” I didn’t want salad or punkee pie anymore. I crawled up on my bed and stared at the ceiling, waiting for Matt to say something. He just lay there on the floor, then pulled out a cigarette and started to smoke.
“Matt, you’re gonna get in trouble.”
“No, actually, I’m not.” And he was probably right.
I hated the smell and it made me even queasier, but he seemed to relax and I didn’t want another fight.
“What do you think’s gonna happen?” I said at last.
“Who knows?” Matt answered more as a statement than a question and took a long draw on his cigarette. He obviously knew what he was doing.
“It scares me,” I whispered.
“I know,” Matt said, and I didn’t know if he meant he knew I was scared, or if he was saying he was scared, too.
“Why doesn’t Dad go back?”
“I think he’s mad at God.”
“God didn’t kill Joel,” I said.
“But He didn’t stop him from being killed.”
Matt had a point.
“Dad’s so different now,” I said.
“Maybe he’s mad at us, too,” Matt wondered out loud.
“We didn’t do anything.”
“Exactly. But maybe somehow we should have done something,” Matt said, his voice soft but heavy with guilt.
“Maybe we’re not enough,” I said, and Matt didn’t set me straight.
“What about Mom and Dad? Do you think they still love each other?” I asked, afraid of the answer.
“They might still love each other, but they sure don’t like each other.”
“The Hanleys got divorced.”
Matt was quiet. He had no reassuring words.
“Where’d you go this afternoon?” I asked, wondering where anyone would go on Thanksgiving afternoon when everybody has a home, and a Thanksgiving dinner, and a place card with a name at a special plate.
“Around.” I waited. I didn’t know where around was, but it probably wasn’t good.
“Can we finish my volcano tomorrow?” I blurted out, taking advantage of our sudden bond.
“It should be dry enough tomorrow so we can paint it.” He rolled my throw rug aside, dumped out the puzzle box, and began turning over the pieces.
“What is it this year?” I asked, grabbing for the box lid.
“It looks like Switzerland or something,” Matt answered. “All that white snow is going to be hard.”
The variegated whites and blues were near blinding. We’d need to make separate piles of blues and whites. I started the only way I knew how. I grabbed the smooth flat edges and tried to build a frame around nothing.