Strangers at the Feast (16 page)

Deep breath,
he thought.
Do not give into negative thinking, Doug
.
Focus on positive solutions.

“You didn’t check the oven or the wiring. This whole place is probably wired with knobs and tubes.”

“English, please.”

“It can’t be fixed,” he said calmly.

Ginny rubbed her temples, then slowly crossed the room and opened a Yellow Pages. “Pizza Hut or Papa John’s?”

DENISE

God, she wanted a cigarette.

The twins had started playing mercy, loudly. Ginny was flipping through the phone book, trying to order pizza. Douglas was hammering away about the electricity, declaring the kitchen a fire hazard—the house could go
kaboom!
any minute—which brought the mercy game to an abrupt end as the boys rushed to carry their sister, wrapped in her tablecloth, behind their pillow fort. Douglas and Ginny stood at opposite sides of the telephone and regressed to a singsong whining, worse than the twins up past midnight. Douglas explained that they needed to leave the house, for safety reasons, and find a restaurant. Ginny planted her hands on her hips and claimed that if they ordered in pizza they could at least eat some of the vegetable dishes, even if they were a bit raw.

This isn’t my family, Denise thought.

She slipped into the foyer bathroom, shut the door, and flicked on the light. It was a small half bath with a pedestal sink; the wallpaper, which depicted some kind of bird perched on a branch, peeled from the ceiling, curled strips exposing ancient browned glue. She let down her ponytail and leaned in to examine her face in the mirror. Beneath the dusty fluorescent bulb, she looked tired. All the sheen and sparkle of her makeup had faded. She fingered the makeup-blackened balls of sleep from her inner eyes. She smeared away the loosened bits of mascara. She reapplied her lip liner and stared at her face.

What on earth happened to your eyebrows?

There
was
something wrong with them. Denise could see it. They were thin, too thin, the left one distinctly thinner than the right, throwing her entire face off balance. She ran the water for cover and from her purse pulled her tweezers. She leaned close to the mirror, then paused; something in her told her she shouldn’t. But then. She wanted to. She needed to. Just one little hair—pluck!—and it was all better.

Until a moment later, as Denise examined her face, it was not at all better. She could see that the excised hair only brought to light the strange arch of her left brow. It seemed almost… pointed, and this made her inexplicably sad. She leaned in again, raised the tweezers, and gripped a lone hair, until the sound of Douglas and Ginny’s quarrel brought her back to where she was, to the people on the other side of the door.

She shoved the tweezers into her purse, washed her hands. Slowly, she turned the knob.

As she stepped back into the living room, Douglas looked at her eyebrows, blinked hard.

“Let’s go,” he said to Ginny. “Now.”

“Fine, pick a restaurant,” she said.

ELEANOR

Restaurant!

“Oh, we’ll never get in somewhere,” Eleanor interjected. “Reservations on holidays are booked months in advance!”

“We’ll call the Hyatt,” said Ginny. “It’s a twenty-minute ride.”

The Hyatt! She could see the bill for nine ravenous mouths ordering off an extra-pricey five-course holiday menu. They’d include the gratuity—20 percent just to write down what you wanted to eat and carry the plate. It was ludicrous. She’d served dinner almost every night of her life, and whoever said,
Eleanor, excellent work getting those plates to the table
? Asking what people wanted to eat and then serving it was child’s play. The actual challenge was anticipating what dishes to prepare for hungry mouths that hadn’t yet sat down. Because if you forgot someone’s broccoli allergy, someone’s new diet, if you overlooked someone being kosher, well, at the end of the night you’d be looking at a garbage pail full of waste, waste, waste.

She could see it now, the turkey Ginny had spent good money on, half-cooked and stuffed in the trash can. The potatoes and carrots and parsnips piled on top.

The thought of paying several hundred dollars for what they could cook themselves made her stomach turn.

“The Hyatt?” asked Douglas. “What about the game?”

Never had Eleanor been so grateful that her son wanted to watch football.

“Thanksgiving at a sports bar?” Ginny asked.

“Ginny,” Eleanor cut in, “your brother has a point. The men have their traditions. I think we must respect their traditions.”

Her daughter looked wounded. Eleanor would never harm her children; she would do anything to protect her daughter. But Eleanor was acting in the interest of thrift. There was, she believed, no greater cause than thrift.

“Where exactly do you suggest we go?” asked Ginny.

“Let’s pack up all this food,” said Eleanor, “so that it won’t go to waste. And we’ll just heat it up at another house.”

Part II

DENISE

Denise stared at her watch. The ride along the Hutch shouldn’t have taken more than thirty minutes, but they were stuck in a galaxy of brake lights. Douglas refused to take the interstate because it meant driving through downtown, past Obervell Tower and his office. So the Navigator sat. As the food containers warmed, the smell of gravy seeped into the upholstery, her clothing, her hair.

Denise was hungry and exasperated, but also strangely satisfied at having foreseen, better than anyone else, the mess the day would become.

“Kyee-aaaa!” Brandon kicked at Brian’s seat.

“Cut it out,” she said.

“Sensei told me to practice for my yellow belt.” He whacked again at his brother’s seat. “Kyee-yaaa!”

Brian fastened a mask and snorkel on his face and gazed out the window.

Douglas kept his eyes on the road, as usual leaving the scolding to her. Whenever she asked for backup, he’d say, “These things sound softer coming from a mother.”

Denise did not think she sounded soft. But when you had two boys, someone had to be firm and, when necessary, scary. If you didn’t clarify who was boss, you’d spend your life paying for it. Denise now leveled the threat of all threats: “Act up once more, and you’ll regret it. No more
I Shouldn’t Be Alive.
”

This was her sons’ favorite show, their weekly Discovery Channel
fix. Every episode charted the near-death drama of hikers lost in the Amazon, honeymooners clinging to capsized yachts. There were dramatic reenactments of shark attacks and kidnappings. Gangrene, frostbite, hypothermia. Disaster porn, Denise had thought the few times she tried watching these so-called survivors narrate how every small decision—
Drinking water? Nah, who needs drinking water? It’s only a ten-mile hike up a deserted mountain—
added up to near ruin. They’d hike without a guide, without a map, without rain gear. “Boys,” she would announce, “they
shouldn’t
be alive. They’re morons!”

“But he’s got gangrene and they’re gonna amputate his foot!”

“He should lose both feet.”

“Shssh, Mom.”

After her recent tirade against the young couple who, with a half tank of gas, no food, and their newborn in the backseat, drove their truck into a snowstorm, scouring a map for open back roads despite the severe blizzard warning, inspired by five minutes of sunlight to remove their snow chains—Einsteins!—the boys no longer desired the pleasure of her viewing company. They claimed the show made her too emotional. She said stupidity made her emotional.

“We didn’t even get to watch the game!” they now whined.

“Call the cops.”

“We’re
huuuuuuungry
.”

“One more kick and we can see if the Discovery Channel wants to do a show on two ten-year-olds surviving alone along the Hutchinson Parkway.”

Denise remembered one of Ginny’s trivia tidbits, something about Anne Hutchinson and her children having been scalped by Indians. Ginny had called Hutchinson a visionary: an outspoken feminist who, when excommunicated and banished from Massachusetts, packed up and founded the colony of Rhode Island. Denise wondered why all the so-called heroines of history ended up scalped, beheaded, or burned at the stake. Wasn’t part of greatness staying
alive
? And whose bright idea was it to present young girls with role
models who met brutal ends? Surely there were some smart, slightly less ambitious women to pluck from the encyclopedia, heroines who died of natural causes.

“If we could somehow just shake them before we get to Den Road,” Douglas said, glancing in the rearview mirror at the car with Eleanor and Gavin, “I could zip over to the McDonald’s drive-through. I should be able to cut into that lane, zigzag through these cars, pop a wheelie. I’d sell my mother for a Big Mac.”

Laura, half asleep, mumbled something that sounded like “I’ll buy Grandma.”

Jokes or presents. Hypothetical situations. Douglas never wanted to do the real work of parenting.

“Douglas, let’s just get there.”

“There should be a way to order pizza and have it delivered to your car when you’re stuck in traffic. Maybe a helicopter that drops pizzas on parachutes. Like those food parcels in Africa. Now, there’s a business idea.”

“You want to take out a third mortgage and invest in that?” asked Denise.

Douglas’s hands clenched the steering wheel. His eyes fixed on the road, he switched on the radio, twisting the volume to high and jabbing at the search button. “Brown Eyed Girl” sliced into a frenetic salsa, hip-hop into something choral and ponderous. He stopped at the game. The twins, sensing the tension, slunk back in their seats and quieted.

How could she be expected to pretend everything was fine?

As they inched through Greenwich and Old Greenwich, the sky turned from blue to gray and Denise laid her head against the cold window, listening to the roar of the crowd, the excited commentator:
Detroit has its back up against the wall. It’s third and long, and they are deep in their own territory. If the Packers can hold them here, they have a shot at a solid field position. They’re at the line, the Lions in spread formation. The ball is snapped, Kitna rolling to his right. It looks as if he’s got a man open… no. He’s tucking the ball and running, Kitna past the thirty, the forty, the fifty. Look at him go. They finally bring him down inside Packer territory. Jim, that’s amazing. Incredible. The home team stands strong.

Home, she thought. I just want to get home.

ELEANOR

When her husband drove, he did not like to talk or listen to the radio. He was careful to signal every lane change, to check his blind spot, and to leave a car’s-length following distance. The man could give a ten-hour lecture on the subject of following distance. If someone cut into his following distance, he would lift his hand from the wheel and calmly offer his finger.

On the ride from Ginny’s house, Eleanor sat quietly, fiddling with the vents, which were assaulting her with arctic air. Then she fiddled with the thermostat and a button that looked, quite reasonably, as if it controlled air circulation. Wiper fluid sprayed the windows.

“What’s the problem, Eleanor?”

“I didn’t do that.”

“What
are
you trying to do?”

“I am simply trying to address the fact that it’s warmer outside this car than inside.”

“Roll down your window.”

“You know very well it took me an hour to set my hair.”

“Don’t push at dashboard buttons while I’m driving.”

“In my car, I have the thermostat set at exactly seventy-three.”

“If you want to drive your car, don’t polish off every wineglass in sight.”

The wipers squeaked across the glass, an arc of sparkling clarity, and she knotted her scarf and buttoned her coat and looked at the other cars—at all the coatless, scarfless, and hatless people luxuriating
in interior automotive heating. In the backseats, children ogled mounted screens, thumbed electronic gadgets.

How she missed the days when children, little castaways in the land of backseat boredom, could be counted on to liven up any dull stretch of interstate, pressing their noses to the windows, furiously waving. What delight it gave them when you simply smiled. Yes, I see you. You have made a friend.

Now all the passengers were chattering away on cell phones or nodding resolutely to the music in their earphones. Or sleeping.

Eleanor let out a long yawn. She hadn’t slept well. She never slept well.

She couldn’t recall when it began, but her friends said it was related to menopause. Take hormones, don’t take hormones. Get hot flashes, get a blood clot, go weeks without a proper night’s sleep, and in the morning tell the toaster what errands you had planned for the day. You couldn’t win.

And why on earth did they call it menopause?

It wasn’t a pause; it was a full stop, the end. It wasn’t as if you ever went back to being fertile.

These were the things she thought about when lying in bed, unable to sleep. Eyes closed, she saw a hazy kaleidoscope of colors. Like Christmas lights on a foggy night. Or a carousel in the mist. But where did the colors come from? Her eyes were closed, so she shouldn’t see
anything
. She wondered if they were blood vessels in her eyelids. But if Eleanor concentrated on the colors, they brightened, changed faster, until finally they bled together into a curtain of black.

Or, the sound of her own breath kept her up.

Sometimes, Gavin would watch television. The History Channel,
Nightline,
or, if he thought she was asleep, something with topless girls splashing around a pool. Through closed eyes, she could see the light flickering on the ceiling. She tried counting sheep. But not sheep; cats, because living in New England, she had only vague sheep
images. Past twenty-nine, though, the cats became frightening. Thirty cats was a plague.

Or Gavin would snore into his pillow. A snore that started in his abdomen, nearly shook the bed; a power tool underwater.