Page 65 - WTP Vol. IX #2

I stare at Rosa for a moment after she delivers this final bit of news, and announce that I am going for a walk. As I leave the house, Liam paces around the kitchen, earbuds set to cancel ambient sound, hum- ming in a soft monotone, like a monk, as he begins mixing sugar and corn syrup in a double-boiler.
I walk into the rain, heading for the little creek near our house. I love the creek: the ducks are
not worried about lethal pathogens; they have no windows or doors to lock; they never hoard toilet paper. The geese fly in defiant arrows of more than ten, yodelling from east to west. There are over a hundred pigeons packed like strung beads on the wires over the harbor, most likely coughing on one another and touching one another’s faces with unwashed wings.
In the rain, I walk alone. A man in a truck shouts “Happy Thanksgiving!” to me and I shout it back. The rain intensifies and I pull my hood up over my head. Water trickles into my pocket where my left hand is hiding.
When I finally meander back home, my pulse has slackened and my mind is made up, or at lease re- signed. I’d rather not go to Grandma Linguini’s house, but I am in no mood to have even the mildest of opin- ions (read: altercations). It’s Thanksgiving. I am ready to go with the potentially contagious flow.
I contribute to the festivities and make a coconut custard pie as Liam pours his gummies into their molds. He says I can leave early with him if I need to. Neither of us are party people.
We pull up to Grandma’s house and shuffle inside. There’s already more than ten people here, naked- faced and hugging one another. My brother Aaron and his wife are the only mensches who wear masks. They want to know for a fact that if Grandma gets sick, it wasn’t their fault.
I’m slightly afraid of Aaron, who is ten years older than me and once described us in one of his short stories
as a “Frankenfamily.” It was funny because it was true. And it burned for the same reason. We are a little monstrous, a little unnatural, more than a little embar- rassing. Aaron’s cocktail of clearsightedness and disen- gagement makes him a just but unmerciful judge.
Political and theological lightningstorms rake from one end of the table to the other. The Italians comfort- ably scream over each other. Vocally, might is right.
I scrunch myself up and press my arms and legs together, taking up as little space as possible. They might be loud, I remind myself, but they can cook.
The food is magnificent. Be grateful, you Thanksgiv- ing Grinch.
I endure through dessert and then slip out and begin walking home. I’m looking forward to clearing my head, but then Liam comes hurtling after me in his car and demands to drive me; he feels bad, I think, that I didn’t ask for a ride. I try to refuse, but he’s as implacable as grandma.
I only remember Liam’s degree of altered-stated-ness once I’m buckled in, and then it’s too late: I’ve hopped into the car with someone who, in one morning, has taken two Clonopins, smoked at least one joint, and eaten an unknown amount of pot gummies. As we ac- celerate, it occurs to me that I am an idiot.
So there’s the portrait: Liam, chivalrously driving un- der the influence. Here I am, resolutely and imbecili- cally mute, preferring to risk injury or death over giving offense. There is my father and my stepmom, back at Grandma’s, propounding their cherished be- liefs at top volume and with military intensity. There’s George, concentrating on ingesting the ideal quantity and ratio of carbs-to-protein. Boudica is seconds away from leaping into the frey with the brave and doomed javelin of her unpopular perspective. And Aaron is inspecting us all coolly, weighing us in the scales of his eyes and finding us lacking, maybe wittyly encapsulat- ing our failings in neat barbed phrases.
I can see us that way, now. The stitches that hold us in one greenish, mouldering body are barely holding. Everyone contributes one or another brand of broken to the cauldron. I see each one of us dead-ending into the failures that define us: permanently partially dis- abled. Locked in the speeding cars of our lives. Head- ing who knows where.
And then, like a bolt of energy from a totally different source, I remember an interview I saw with Brene
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