“I like you,” she said.
I saw no reason to challenge that. In fact I hardly doubted it. Still, I didn’t imagine that was the reason for my presence. I was making some kind of peace with my place in the rebellious daughter/overbearing parents tragicomedy in which I’d found myself.
She said, “I didn’t want you to be lonely on Thanksgiving.”
It was a lie, a patronizing one, that didn’t sit particularly well with me, and I found myself disliking Maggie and perhaps feeling a little sorry for myself. I looked over at her and found that, oddly, as my dislike took shape and grew, she seemed prettier. That minor observation meant little to me except insofar as it was an observation.
“So, why didn’t things work out with you and Robert?” I asked.
Maggie was caught off guard by the question and also by the relaxed tone with which it had been posed.
“They just didn’t.”
“Why?”
“Like I said, we’re like brother and sister.”
“I don’t know what that means,” I said.
“I love him but I’m not in love with him.”
I studied her face as she pulled into the grocery-market parking lot. “He seems like a nice enough guy,” I said.
“He is,” she said.
“Nice enough?”
“Very nice.”
Not caring was a comfortable place to sit. Comfortable enough for me to let the matter go. Comfortable enough to resolve to not actively pursue the having of fun, but to remain aloof and simply watch.
My mother had been, if not disdainful then suspicious of holidays; she thought that they were all either some form of corporate extortion, religious indoctrination, or governmental propaganda. Thanksgiving fell into the third category — one big glorious lie to put a good face on continental theft. Then she would point out that the turkey is not a noble bird. She didn’t dislike the holiday as much as the Fourth of July, but she disliked it plenty. The upshot for me was that I never experienced a so-called traditional Thanksgiving family dinner with the bird, cranberry stuff, and all the trappings. Ted had steadfastly maintained any boundary that might have confused our relationship with some suggestion that I was an adopted member of the family. And as for my staff, the women who cared for me through childhood, well, they were employees and they had families and lives of their own. So, in a rather peculiar and perhaps anthropological way I was looking forward to Thanksgiving dinner with the Larkins.
The dining-room table was fantastically long or at least it seemed so to me. Heavy. Wooden. And it was set for ten. There were two arrangements of plastic flowers, roses and something imaginary, that seemed to have little if anything to do with the occasion, and in the center of each arrangement was a silver reflective globe, what people put in their gardens and called gazing balls. From any spot a glance at a ball would yield a fish-eye view of most of the room. The tablecloth was red and the napkins were thick gold paper with a border of turkeys. I was standing alone next to the china cabinet watching Violet in the kitchen. I could hear Maggie and Agnes going at each other upstairs someplace, but I had no idea and every idea what it was about. Ward and Ruby were visiting in the living room with the first guests to arrive. Violet came to the table with a stack of plates.
“Can I do something to help?” I asked.
“No.”
“Why do you dislike me, Violet?”
“I don’t dislike you,” she said. “I don’t care enough about you to like or dislike you.”
“Thank you for clearing that up. Let me ask you something. Most of the people in this house seem a bit crazy. You might be one of them. So, here it is. Do you have a problem with my skin color?”
“What are you asking me?”
I did not beat around the bush. “So, you think I’m too dark for precious little Maggie?”
“Now I dislike you,” she said.
“So, you care.”
She put down the last plate at the head of the table. “As a matter of fact,” she said, then without saying another word walked back into the kitchen.
I followed her. “As a matter of fact what?” I asked.
“Listen, boy, Mister and Missus have worked too hard,” she said.
“Too hard for what?”
“To have a black boy like you come around Miss Maggie.”
“Listen to yourself, Violet. Mister and Missus and Miss Maggie. This is not the antebellum south and you’re not a house slave.”
“Why, you nigger,” she said.
“Violet, you and I are pretty much the same color,” I said.
“No, we’re not,” she snapped. “I’m milk chocolate and you’re dark cocoa, dark as Satan.”
I was stunned. Saddened perhaps, somewhat frightened, but mostly just stunned.
Maggie came into the kitchen, surprisingly cheerful in a dark blue dress that made me somehow think of the Pilgrims. “Everything smells great, Violet. What kind of pie this year?”
“Pumpkin.”
“You haven’t had pie until you’ve had Violet’s,” Maggie said to me.
Maggie took me by the hand and led me out of the kitchen and away from the burning gaze of Violet into the living room to make introductions. I was presented rather ceremoniously to Reverend Golightly, his wife, and their grown son. I nodded to each one in turn and was sickened that I had been so influenced by my experience in this household that I caught myself gauging the skin tones of the guests. Large Reverend Golightly was the color of coffee with a generous helping of cream. Slightly more cream had been added to Mrs. Golightly. Thirty-year-old Jeffrey was an albino. Jeffrey was also mentally challenged. He shook my hand too vigorously and for too long, prompting the Reverend to say, “Let go, Jeffrey.” When he did let go he smiled a genuine smile and became the first person I’d liked in days. I sat in a straight-backed chair next to him.
“So, how do you like Washington?” Reverend Golightly asked me.
“I find it interesting,” I said.
“We haven’t had a chance to do much,” Maggie said. “We arrived just yesterday.”
“Well, you must take him to the Mall,” Mrs. Golightly said. She sipped from her little glass of sherry. “The monuments, the Smithsonian, all of it. Maggie, you must take him.”
“I will,” Maggie said.
“I like Lincoln,” Jeffrey said. “He freed the slaves.”
“A lot of good that did,” Ward said.
The rest laughed.
It was all so absurd. I expected the walls to wiggle in and out of focus and change color at any second. Yet I couldn’t seem to rise to leave. Big fat Reverend Golightly, a mound of yellow Jell-O on the davenport and human stick-figure wife stuck into the cushion beside him stared at me, smiled. And there was Jeffrey, whom I liked immediately — sweet, innocent Jeffrey, completely lacking pigment and outside the bizarre game altogether.
Then Agnes came into the room wearing a red skirt, the hem of which was as far from her knees as her knees were from her red pumps. Maggie was immediately furious and gave me a look before stomping out. I sensed that I was expected to follow, so I stayed.
The Golightlys, Reverend and Mrs., cleared their throats. Jeffrey simply stared at Agnes’s legs and said, “Legs.”
“You look nice,” Ruby Larkin said, with unsubtle sarcasm. She nudged Ward with her elbow. “Doesn’t your daughter look nice?”
“Yes, nice,” Ward said.
Ruby stood and walked toward the door to the dining room. “Agnes,” she said. The come with me was clearly implied, and so Agnes complied. Ruby closed the pocket doors behind them.