On Turpentine Lane(44)

Joel shrugged—a yes if ever I’d seen one.

“Did she tell you he sat there and listened to her tales of woe? What guy does that? Nick, who saved my job—”

“She thinks we saved your job—”

“Who always pays his share of the mortgage on the first of the month and never leaves a dirty dish in the sink? Not that anyone’s falling for anyone. It’s just the principle of it. The prejudice. After Stuart? Jewish! What kind of selfish hippie husband would he have been?”

“I said all that, believe me. I also said, ‘Good luck with the Jewish husband campaign, Ma. Good luck in this century, in Everton, Massachusetts. And, let’s face it, ticktock.”

I didn’t love any of that, but what was there to contradict? “Did she believe you when you said he was gay?”

“She’ll forget about it. And when the time comes, you can tell her I made it up to throw her off course.”

“When what time comes?”

“Gee. Let me think on that. Oh, I’ve got it: when you two are sleeping in the same bed.”

“Not gonna happen. We work together. It’s against the rules.”

“I’m sure. And there’s a nanny cam recording your home life for the board of trustees?”

I abandoned the table to plate the lemon squares, which were still a little glacial. “These need more time,” and then, glancing at the clock, I asked, barely audibly, “Think we should call Dad?”

“No! Why would we?”

“Because we were a little brutal yesterday?”

“Aren’t you the enabler! He’s got Tracy”—pronounced as scornfully and dismissively as two syllables could be spoken—“for all his needs. She’s probably saying right now, ‘What horrible, selfish children you have. Don’t they want their father to be happy?’?”

“Okay. We won’t call him. I don’t want to be an enabler.”

He asked if he could take dessert to go—needed to hit the hay . . . late night, then early plowing, not to mention the sanding and the shoveling. At the door, he said, “About Brooklyn? Maybe I was thinking happier times. You got back here and, whammo, the job, then the Stuart thing imploded, then Mom and Dad split. Plus your haunted house . . . speaking of which, I don’t see why you have to give a crap about who died here fifty, sixty years ago. Now get a good night’s sleep. You look like hell.”

I said, “Gee, thanks,” then threw out, “You’re gay. I’m telling Leslie before she gets in too deep.”

“Ha! This is Massachusetts. You gotta do better than that.”



Against Joel’s advice and my own better judgment, I texted my dad. I typed, erased, typed, revised, and finally came up with only Dad—not the easiest lunch I ever had but better to know.

Uncharacteristically, he answered quickly. Why did I get the sense that it had been dictated by Tracy? Maybe it was the use of full sentences and its pedantic tone. You’re right, Faith. It wasn’t the easiest lunch for me, either. I need some time to settle in at Tracy’s & to let our conversation at lunch metabolize. I’ll be in touch.



Let our conversation metabolize? What did that mean? I’m the one who will be in touch when I feel like it. I, the professional scribe rarely at a loss for words on paper or screen be they personal or professionally shopworn, did not write back.





29





How to Avoid Thanksgiving


NICK DIDN’T SEEM to be noticing the unavoidable holiday hurdle ahead despite the turkey-themed decorations in the school cafeteria. Finally, I asked at breakfast, ten days before he’d need to get on a plane, “I don’t suppose you’re thinking of spending Thanksgiving with your own family?”

“Thanksgiving,” he repeated. “When is that again?”

Doesn’t everyone know it’s the fourth Thursday in November, and didn’t every family start chafing for RSVPs the first week of that month? I said, “It falls on the twenty-eighth this year.”

“And we get Friday off, right?”

“Of course! And a half day on Wednesday.”

“Love that,” he said.

I asked, not my trademark diplomatic self, why he sounded as if he’d just stepped on American soil for the first time.

“The usual reasons: marshmallows on the sweet potatoes, a big-mouth homophobic uncle, cranberry sauce in the shape of its can . . . my widowed dad roasting the turkey for twenty-four hours.”

“I thought he remarried.”

“True. So now it’s a huge thing with all of her relatives. At this point, I couldn’t book a flight even if I wanted to. And I don’t want to.”

I said, “My mother’s probably counting on Joel and me—this being the first holiday since my father dropped the bombshell.”

When Nick didn’t respond, I said, “Would you like to join us for Thanksgiving? My mother makes three pies, and her own cranberry sauce, in which you can see actual cranberries.”

He asked, “Do you need an answer now?” then returned to the sports pages.

I said no, of course not. No pressure. None.



Later, at my desk, while I was trying to find the euphemisms to inform a scholarship donor that his recipient was on social probation for peeing off the roof of the science building, Nick said, “Okay! Here we go. Thanksgiving solved.”