“What?” they asked.
“I don’t think he’ll fit in the oven.”
“Oh, I didn’t even think of that!” Sunita ran up the stairs. Maribeth heard the sound of her oven door creak open, then slam shut, then Sunita yelling: “Gah!”
“There’s no way,” she said when she returned to the bathroom. “Not even if we take out the racks. And we have like fifteen people coming.”
“Can’t you get a new turkey?” Maribeth asked.
“The store hardly had any birds left,” Todd said. “It was why we had to get such a huge one.”
“Try a different store,” Maribeth suggested.
“But we already blew all our money on groceries. We spent more than a hundred dollars.”
“I can pay for the bird.”
“But you’re not even coming,” Sunita said.
“Also, we don’t have a car,” Todd said. “Miles left for Philly today.”
“I guess we could see what the markets around here have,” Sunita said.
“I’m not going to the ShurSave,” Todd said.
“Maybe we can cook it in someone else’s oven?” Sunita said. “Your mom’s house.”
“We’d have to get it to the suburbs. How?”
“Take the bus.”
“On Thanksgiving? With Fred?”
“I suppose we could just cancel,” Sunita said.
They looked so crestfallen. Maribeth couldn’t bear it.
“I may know someone who can help,” she said.
“Really?” They looked at her with such sweet hopefulness.
She left a message with the service. “Not an emergency,” she repeated, not wanting to alarm him. But when he called back within ten minutes, she knew he had assumed the worst.
“It’s not a medical emergency; it’s a poultry one.” She told him about the turkey, presently being defrosted in her tub.
“Ahh, clever. It’s what they do for hypothermic patients.”
“Good to know our practices are medically sound. Now we just need a place to cook it. Neither of our ovens will hold it. And I thought of you, well, because you have that huge kitchen. But you’re probably going somewhere.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “Tell me where you are, and I’ll pick you and the turkey up.”
“Fred,” she said.
“What?”
“The turkey’s name is Fred.”
33
Dr. Grant arrived by noon. Sunita and Todd wrapped the half-thawed Fred in a garbage bag and lugged him to the curb.
“You’re sure you don’t want us to come?” Sunita asked. “I feel like we’ve fobbed the whole thing off on you.”
“Do you know how to cook a turkey?” Maribeth asked.
Sunita shook her head.
“I’ll handle the bird. You do everything else. I’ll come back when it’s done.”
“Okay, but you have to come to the dinner now,” Sunita said. “Your friend, too.” She waved at Dr. Grant. “Thank you,” she called.
Maribeth said, “We’ll see.”
DR. GRANT HAD already preheated the oven and pulled out a roasting pan.
“My, you’re prepared.”
“I’m very comfortable being the sous-chef.”
Maribeth peered into the oven. It was spotless. She and Sunita had already made stuffing and put it in a Ziploc bag, and Maribeth had packed an extra onion, because she’d suspected, correctly, that Dr. Grant wouldn’t have one.
She instructed Dr. Grant to chop the onion while she salted the bird’s cavity and prepared to stuff.
When she had spooned in all the stuffing, she asked: “Do you have any olive oil left, or did it all go in my hair?”
“I think I have some. Or butter.”
“Butter! And you call yourself a cardiologist!”
He smiled and handed her a bottle of olive oil. “The entire thing drips in fat so I’m not sure it makes a difference at this point.”
While the onions sautéed, she hunted for some dried herbs in the pantry. They were covered in dust. “Do you think herbs expire?” she asked.
“If they do, then they have.”
“When was the last time you used your kitchen?” she asked.
“This morning. I made tea.”
“When was the last time you used your oven?”
“Why? Is it not working?”
“It’s working fine.”
“Does heating up pizza count?”
“No.”
“Then about two years ago.”
So, Felicity had died two years ago.
“Mallory’s not coming home for Thanksgiving?” she asked as she poured the oil and onions onto the turkey and massaged them into Fred’s still chilly skin.
He shook his head. “I’ll see her in a few weeks for Christmas when I go out to California.”
“And you really weren’t doing anything today?” she asked, sprinkling herbs and salt over the bird.
He seemed transfixed, as if he’d never seen anyone prep a turkey. “Louise has been on my case to come over. But I feel like one of her church projects.” He grimaced. “I had planned to watch football all day.”
“You can still do that.”
“I might do.”
“Do you have any twine? Or anything to tie the drumsticks together?”
“Hang on. I’ve got just the thing,” he said and went into his office, returning with a pack of surgical sutures.
She used the sutures to tie the legs together. “Unless you prefer to do stitches.”
“I yield to the expert,” Dr. Grant said.
She gave the pepper mill a few final twists and then began to lift the roasting pan toward the oven.
“Allow me,” Dr. Grant said.
“I’m past six weeks,” Maribeth said.
“This is about chivalry, not infirmity.”
“In that case.” She stood to the side.
When the bird was in the oven, she set the timer. It was twelve-thirty now. It would take at least five hours to roast, possibly longer because it was not fully defrosted. Really, it ought to be basted once an hour, though it wouldn’t be the end of the world if it went without. “Should I go and come back?” she asked. “Or I can stay here and babysit the bird if you want to go somewhere. I don’t want to put you out.”
“You’re not putting me out. And I have nowhere to be,” he said. “You can leave the bird if you have somewhere to be.”
“I have nowhere to be either,” she said.
BY THE TIME Fred was ready, it was getting near six, and Maribeth was somewhere on the road between tipsy and drunk. Around three, she and Dr. Grant had gone down into his basement wine cellar and picked out several bottles for the dinner that by some unspoken agreement they had both decided to attend. Somewhere around four, they had uncorked a bottle of Rioja. Somewhere around five, she’d stopped calling him Dr. Grant.
“Oh, thank god,” Todd said when they arrived bearing Fred on a platter. “We thought we were going to have to eat the nut loaf.”
“Nut loaf?” Maribeth asked.
“Sunny’s friend Fritz made a nut loaf because he thought she was vegetarian because she’s Indian. And because he totally wants to jump her bones.”
“Hush, he does not,” Sunita said. She turned to Dr. Grant—Stephen—and held out her hand. “Hi, I’m Sunita. Thank you so much for helping us out.”
“I’m Stephen,” he said. “And you’re welcome.”
“And you brought wine! Excellent!” Todd said, gesturing to the bottles in Stephen’s hand. “All Sunny’s philistine friends brought beer. And nut loaf.”
“Shut up about the nut loaf already,” Sunita said.
“Can I have a glass of that?” Todd asked Stephen, pointing to the Shiraz.
“I feel like I should perhaps card you first.”
“He acts immature but he’s of age,” Sunita said.
“Then show me to your corkscrew.”
“Follow me,” S
unita said.
As soon as Stephen was out of earshot, Todd nudged Maribeth in the ribs: “Who’s the silver fox?”
“A friend.”
“Hmm, mmm. A friend? Is he the friend you cut your hair for?”
He was the friend who cut her hair, but she didn’t say anything.
“Your grin gives you away,” Todd said.
She bit her lip, though what was there to give away? He had been her doctor, and he had become her friend. It seemed official now, though had it not been heading in that direction? Consider her appointments: increasingly short physical exams, followed by ever-longer conversations in his office after. And those conversations—metaphysical, intellectual, philosophical, meandering—they’d become the highlight of her week. She couldn’t remember the last time she had talked to anybody like that.
“He’s just a friend. Like you and Sunny are friends.”
“So he’s gay?” Todd asked, misunderstanding.
“Not that I know of.”
“Then why exactly is he just a friend?”
AFTER THE MEAL, after the bottles of Australian Shiraz and Chilean Pinot and a very expensive French burgundy had been sunk, after everyone had gone around reciting what they were grateful for—nearly all the locals had said something Steelers related; Maribeth, drunk by then, had blurted “not being dead,” to much laughter; Stephen had said “the unexpected” to much confusion; and Fritz had said his statistics class, to much derision, until Todd asked wasn’t that the class where he had met Sunny, and then poor Fritz had gone as red as the cranberry sauce. After Sunita and Todd tried to snap the still-wet wishbone and knocked over a candle, after half the group had decamped to the living room to watch the tail end of the Eagles game, after the other half had gone to the kitchen to haphazardly do the dishes, Maribeth flopped onto the couch and Sunita sat down next to her, kissing her on the cheek and saying that it was the best Thanksgiving she’d had in ages, and Maribeth had said, “Me too.” Only then did she think of Oscar and Liv.
It was the first time she’d thought of them all day.
34
The hangover came, as hangovers will, the following day.
Maribeth woke to a weak light peeking in the cracks of her shades. Her head was pounding.
She reached for her phone. It was past noon. She’d been lamenting her inability to sleep late like this since having kids, but now that she’d done it, she remembered that sleeping late, like unconsciousness, happened for a reason. Because your body knew you couldn’t handle being awake.
Staggering to the bathroom, she put her head under the tap and drank. Then she brushed her teeth, and put on a pot of coffee. While it brewed, she pulled up the shades and squinted. Outside the sky was gray and flat, threatening snow. Not that anyone seemed to care. Even the humble streets of Bloomfield were buzzing with Black Friday shoppers.
She lowered the shades and padded into the kitchen, where she cooked a pot of oatmeal, but as it bubbled and burbled on the stove, it looked like vomit. She felt perilously close to throwing up. She tossed the oatmeal in the garbage and made some toast instead.
She picked up her latest book, a collection of postmodern short stories, another big book she’d meant to read—and though she’d been thoroughly enjoying it two days ago, today she found herself reading the same paragraph over and over.
It was not a day for reading. It was a day for surrendering. She poured the coffee, put the toast on a plate, and gathered all the blankets in the apartment into a nest on the couch. Then she channel surfed until she landed on something bland and mindless, one of those Lifetime-type movies, though she didn’t actually get Lifetime, only the network channels and a few weird off-brand cable stations that seemed to come with the reception. She was watching it for about ten minutes before she realized that the story revolved around an alcoholic mother who had abandoned her four children.
She should’ve changed the station, but she couldn’t look away. She was riveted by the melodramatic scene of the wayward mother sobbing in a phone booth—the phone booth dating the film much the way her request for a Yellow Pages had dated her—hitting herself with the receiver after her collect call home was denied. Tragic as this scene was, Maribeth knew there would be a happy ending. This mother would be redeemed because she was the one on-screen. It was when the mother was not present, when she never got any air time, when she was defined only by her absence, because she’d missed court dates or forgotten birthdays, that you understood implicitly that she was a villain, her sole purpose a vehicle for someone else’s redemption.
When the commercial came on, Maribeth wondered about the made-for-TV movie of her own life. Which mother she would be? The answer came to her, immediate and obvious. The mother who had upped and left home a month ago, who had not uttered a word to her family, had not even bothered to see if her four-year-old children, whom she claimed to love more than anything else in her life, were okay. Who had got drunk and had a wonderful Thanksgiving last night even though her children were probably crying in her absence. The mother who had not called those children once, had not even sent a single e-mail.
Sure, she’d written letters. But those letters would never appear in her movie. They would not be submitted as evidence to her defense, proof of her love, flawed though it might be right now.
In Maribeth’s made-for-TV movie, she was the villain.
35
The library was generally quiet when Maribeth visited in the late mornings, but when she dragged herself over later that day, it was jammed with teenagers, who had not only taken possession of all the computers—the ones in the teen section and the ones for general use—but of the library itself. They were talking to one another in nonlibrary voices, monopolizing all the computers to watch YouTube videos. As Maribeth hovered, waiting for a terminal to open up, the teens regarded her with the sort of suspicion that mothers at playgrounds reserved for lone men.
She had no idea what she was going to say to her children. She only knew that she had to say something, she had to communicate to them that she wasn’t that mother. She was one of the good mothers, the one who fought her way back to her children. Only how could she tell them that and explain why she wasn’t coming home? If walking to and from the library had been her barometer of health, she had reached that. She could climb that hill. But now that she could, she had seen all the other peaks beyond it. And she knew she wasn’t ready to go back.
But she would be. She needed Oscar and Liv to know that. She needed them to know that she wasn’t the villain, the one who would desert them forever.
When a computer finally opened up in the teen section, Maribeth swooped over to it just before a young girl with pink bangs and a pierced lip got there. “Hey,” the girl said, angrily. “You’re not allowed over here.”
Maribeth ignored her and launched Gmail. She had not gone this long without checking e-mail since she’d had e-mail, and the anticipation and fear were sending waves of panic through her. It was so much worse than that time after she’d gone offline at Tom and Elizabeth’s retreat. She could only imagine what Jason had written as the days of her absence added up. And oh, god, what if her mother had found someone to send an e-mail for her?
It was almost a relief when the first screen was all junk: ads for Black Friday sales, credit card offers, pleas for year-end charitable donations. She deleted them and brought up a fresh page of messages. There were notices about Career Day at BrightStart, endless threads about the best organic baby food on TribecaParents, and double jog strollers for sale on the twins’ e-mail list, but nothing from Jason.
She went back five, then ten, then fifteen screens’ worth of messages. Two, three, four weeks. There was nothing from Jason. She did a search, for both his personal and work e-mail addresses. The last e-mail from Jason Brinkley was from late October. Two days before she’d come to Pittsburgh.
She had left, in precarious health, two and a half weeks after having emergency bypass surgery. And he had not e-mailed h
er once. Not to ask: Are you okay? Not to yell: Fuck you. Not to beg her to come home or order her to stay away.
She started to laugh, only it wasn’t really a laugh, because two seconds later, she was crying. The snarky teenagers were looking at her with something like concern now.
“Are you okay?” the girl with the pink hair and the pierced lip asked.
“He didn’t fucking e-mail me.”
The girl looked startled. Maybe it was the profanity. Or maybe she’d never seen a grown-up so spectacularly losing it before. But after a second, the teenager regained her equilibrium and rolled her eyes. “Guys are such dicks,” she said.
36
Friday night, she stewed. All that trouble—paying cash for everything, keeping herself hidden, the false identity—for what? She was playing hide-and-go-seek . . . with herself. Nobody was looking.
By Saturday morning, though, she had convinced herself, they had to be. She had missed an e-mail or it had gone to her spam folder. Given when she had left, how she had left, why she had left, surely, someone would send up a flare.
She returned to the library that afternoon. It was less crowded and she got a computer right away. She logged onto Gmail, paging through each screen. There was nothing. She checked her spam file. Nothing. The trash. Nothing. She checked her work account in case he’d accidentally e-mailed her at the wrong address, but there was nothing from him there either. She logged on to her Facebook page. Old get-well messages and random tags from people unaware of what had happened, but from Jason or Elizabeth, nothing.
It was like she didn’t exist.
She sat there refreshing the screen, unable to comprehend this. She told herself she would wait until three o’clock, and if there was no message, she’d leave. Three o’clock came. Then four. Then five.
Nothing.
By the time the librarians blinked the lights to announce closing in ten minutes, her sorrow had iced over. One month gone and not a word. She opened a new message window. She began to type in his name. Google autofilled it.
I was under this crazy impression that in spite of everything you might actually give a shit.