I dialed the apartment one more time, and when the answering machine kicked on, I said “Susan, it’s—umm—it’s me. Listen, I’m—I’m really sorry about—you know—about how things went, earlier tonight. I just—things here are—complex.” The machine beeped just then to let me know I’d gone on too long, and that it wasn’t recording anymore. I hung up. I stood up. I watched the grass for a few minutes more, and looked up at the first star glaring out against the horizon. Night was coming. I thought I should go inside, but didn’t want to.
I thought about how I’d never been to thanksgiving at anyone else’s house. Back before things got weird, I’d wanted to go to Randy’s. I never got up the nerve to invite myself, though, and then he was gone. “Happy thanksgiving,” I said out loud. I thought that most people wouldn’t do something like that, because it sounded stupid, but I did it anyway.
I must not have realized how long I’d been outside, because when I came back in, dinner was almost done. I hadn’t realized how cold my skin had gotten until the heat hit it. Suddenly, it felt brittle. I got goosebumps, and my chest hurt. I put the phone down on its cradle and walked up to my old room.
I closed the door and sat down on the bed. Then I lay back. As my skin warmed, my brain started on its old track. Had it been cold where he was? Did they hurt him before they finally killed him? I thought about the preacher’s sermon tonight; about that set of bones. I wondered how many families had ever had to go without even a set of remains to bury, like the McPherson’s had. I wondered which was worse.
At some point I must’ve closed my eyes. When I opened them, it was Sarah crouched down near me. Her hand was on my chest, and the other was playing with my hair. She’d remembered. I didn’t realize I’d been dreaming until I woke up with a start. All I could remember of the dream was that endless row of clear plastic domes. In the dream, I’d seen someone moving around in one; the silhouette of someone short. As I got closer, I heard a little voice humming something familiar, but I couldn’t place my finger on it. Just as I’d started to unzip the plastic “door,” I’d woken up.
“Hey,” Sarah said.
“Mmmm,” I replied.
“You must’ve been dreaming,” she said, her hands still moving. I nodded. “You just kept saying ‘no’ over and over again under your breath.” I wrinkled my forehead. She shrugged. “Come on, Mom’s got dinner ready.” She moved her hands, and I sat up. I didn’t try to hide it, because I knew she wouldn’t look, but I woke up hard as a rock. She stood up and left, and I waited for it to go down.
Of course, no matter what happened, none of us ever looked at the empty chair. Katy’s chair. Funny thing about it is, I don’t remember anyone ever saying anything about her not being there, after she left, either. She just wasn’t there. We did all kinds of strange things to make sure that we didn’t even have to pass the peas over her empty space. We pretended that space had never existed at all.
“The President will be giving a Thanksgiving address later,” dad said, cutting into his turkey. Mom made her “Oh? That’s really interesting” face and put a forkful of mashed potatoes in her mouth. She always did that when she didn’t want you to know she hadn’t been listening.
“Yay,” Sarah said flatly, and I tensed. I looked down at my plate. This was why I never came home for holidays, anymore. They hadn’t even waited. I felt it building up in my bones the way you could feel a thunderstorm coming.
“What is that supposed to mean, young lady?” my father asked. Even though Sarah was his favorite, there were limits. We all remembered the conversation he’d had with Katy. We remembered being banished.
My mother made a sound roughly like mmmm and, mouth still full of mashed potatoes, said “These are good. Albert, don’t you think they turned out very well?”
My father turned to her, his face showing he’d been successfully derailed, “Huh? Oh. Yeah. They’re okay,” he looked down at his plate, and took a forkful, himself. Sarah reached for her wine without putting anything on her fork. My mother noted this at the same time I did. I looked back down at my plate. I felt very small, like I needed to ask someone to pass things to me.
“Sarah, dear, you should eat something,” my mother said, hopefully.
“I’m not really all that hungry, mother.”
“But we fixed it for—,” mom started.
“I said,” Sarah said, setting her wine glass down deliberately, “I’m not hungry. I will eat when I am. In the meantime,” she said, picking it back up and bringing it almost to her lips, “I just want to sit here and bask in the glow of the heady conversation.” I couldn’t help but think it was a scene from a movie. I tried to think of what was going to happen next.
My father set his fork down and asked, “What is that supposed to mean?” I had predicted right. The sinking feeling wasn’t just in my stomach; it seemed to come from everything under my skin. I thought ‘some writer guy would be able to describe this much better’. Susan would be able to say something smart and funny about this situation. I couldn’t think of what it might be, though.
Sarah sighed, and that’s when I knew; she was thinking of this like a scene from a movie, too. She wanted it to be this way. I didn’t know what to think about that. I thought back, trying to remember if she’d always been this way. “What it means, father,” she sipped, “is that I don’t feel like eating. Regardless of your wishes that I eat whatever is put on my plate because you’ve been told that’s what good girls do; and after all, you’re a good tax-paying Republican citizen, so why wouldn’t your girl be a good girl?, regardless of those wishes, Father,” she said, and I thought that maybe she should put more emphasis on that word. I tried not to smile thinking that we should do another take to get it right. I still felt almost sick, despite how funny it was to have figured her out. “I will not eat when I’m not hungry.” She sipped.
“Now you wait just a damn minute—,” my father started.
“Albert—,” my mother said, at the same time.
No matter how small I felt, I wanted to shrink down into the chair more. I wanted to go invisible. I looked over at Sarah, and she had her chin at an angle, and the glass held away in one hand, wrist slightly limp. She was waiting; I could tell.
“What does all that about being a Republican mean?” he asked. He already had a pretty good idea, though. That was obvious.
“It means—,” my sister started.
“Would anyone like some pumpkin pie? I made it specially for—,” my mother started. I felt strange to see how hard she was trying to derail the whole thing. I tried to remember if she’d always tried; if she’d always failed.
“—that you’re a conservative, father. It means that you don’t want the status quo fucked with,” she said and my mother gasped, dropping her fork. I lowered mine slowly to the plate. “it means that right now, children are being turned into prostitutes, smokestacks are belching god knows what into the atmosphere for me to have to try to breathe, and men are being assassinated because they don’t want to give the United States oil at the rock bottom prices, and you want that all to continue. This war? This ridiculous war we’re fighting? How is that in any way about freeing people, as he likes to say in his little speeches? How? I’ll tell you how,” she said, and pointed out the window behind my father with the rim of her glass, “Money. Oil, specifically. We all know that this is about securing a country that produces oil; setting up a puppet government that ‘owes us’,” she said, making the quotation marks in the air with her fingers, “so that we can dictate to them what prices they’ll sell the oil. It’s that simple; yet we have to listen to his bullshit rhetoric time and time again about ‘freeing people’ and ’empire or terror’. It’s bullshit.”