Secluded Cabin Sleeps Six
Lisa Unger
Part One
origins
Happy families are all alike;
every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
—Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
prologue
Christmas Night 2017
The carcass is splayed in the middle of the table. Carved, flesh torn away, eaten, ribs exposed. The turkey, brown and glistening when it was removed from the oven, is now just a pile of bones. Plates are smeared with gravy, wineglasses empty, stained red. A swath of maroon lipstick mars a white cloth napkin. The lights from the towering Christmas tree blink, manic.
The holiday, in all its glittering, wrapped promise, is over.
And there’s that moment, which Hannah remembers since childhood. After all the weeks of anticipation, the preparation, meals planned and served, gifts purchased, wrapped, torn open, surprises revealed and enjoyed, the inevitable time comes when it’s all done. There are no more presents to give or to get, just the mess to clean up, the dishes to do. When she was little, she always felt this moment, its quiet, its subtle sadness, keenly. Now that she was older, she knew it for what it was—the flow of life. The calm after the storm where you were meant to recalibrate, reset before the onset of the next event—good or bad.
“Too much,” says her mother, Sophia, pushing her plate away as if it were the culprit of this excess. “Too much food.”
Sophia is well and truly drunk. Not in a sloppy, word-slurring, falling down sort of way. No. Never that.
It’s subtle.
A sharpening of her tone. A hardening of her expression. How much has she had? When did she start drinking? Hard to say. She’s rambling now, sitting to the left of Hannah’s father, Leo, who resides at the head of the Christmas dinner table. Leo smiles indulgently as Sophia goes on.
“That’s the problem with this country, isn’t it? People don’t know when to stop—stop eating, stop buying.”
Hannah feels a slight tension creep into her shoulders. It’s only a matter of time now before Sophia puts out the first barb, or before a casual comment from someone, probably Leo, will ignite her mother’s temper.
Hannah decides to get up and start clearing the plates. Better to keep moving.
“Leave it, sweetie,” says her father as he draws a big hand though his still thick, snow-white hair. “Bruce and I will get it. You and Liza did all the work.”
Sophia tugs at her sky blue cashmere wrap with ringed fingers; the color matches her eyes. “I supervised,” chimes in her mom, still light.
Hannah’s mother hadn’t really wanted to host Christmas, mentioned multiple times in different, subtle ways how much work it would be. So Hannah and her sister-in-law, Liza, did all the shopping, all the early prep work, and all the cooking today to make it easier on Sophia. Now, the meal a success, her mother wants some of the credit.
“We couldn’t have done it without you, Mom.”
Hannah always knows what to say. She’s an expert on navigating this terrain. She earns an adoring smile from her mom, blue eyes slightly bloodshot, glistening.
“Your recipes, Mrs. M,” says Liza.
Actually, they’d used recipes from Dad’s side of the family. There was an old bound notebook, full of handwritten recipes for everything from lasagna to tripe, from white clam sauce to eggplant Parmesan, from mashed potatoes to the perfect roasted turkey, to standing rib roast. Recipes Dad said were collected from his Italian mother and his aunts, recipes from the old country and the new, expanded over time, splattered with decades-old stains, pages torn and creased. All of it tied together with a rubber band. It was a long-held family aspiration to enter everything into a document and create a self-published book. But this has never happened, everyone always too busy, and the project forgotten until the holidays rolled around, then forgotten again in the New Year.
“That book,” says Liza, still trying. “It’s a treasure.”
Hannah glances at her dad, who is relaxed at the head of the table, wearing his usual patient half smile, hands folded on his belly. Mom gives Liza a noncommittal hum. Liza clears her throat, casts a glance at Hannah. Her sister-in-law can’t win. She should know that.
Liza hasn’t been asked to call Hannah’s mother “mom,” or even to use her first name. Liza has been married to Hannah’s brother, Mako, for a year and has still not been welcomed by Sophia, not really. It’s all very cordial though. Polite. Until it isn’t. Why Sophia is like this, Hannah has no idea. Liza is lovely and kind, a good wife, a dutiful daughter-in-law. Hannah and her mother haven’t discussed it.
Hannah’s husband, Bruce, puts a comforting hand on her thigh. She glances over at him, his dark eyes, strong jaw, that smile. It calms her; he calms her. Together they peer at the video monitor on the table between them. Their nine-month-old daughter, Gigi, sleeps peacefully, a cherub floating on a pink cloud.
“She’s a good sleeper,” says Hannah’s mom, leaning in for a look as she gets up to pour herself another glass of wine. Hannah glances at her dad again, who still wears that pleased but somewhat blank expression. He’s a large man, standing over six feet tall. I have big bones, he likes to say. His doctor wants him to lose twenty pounds. That’s probably not going to happen.