Works and Days

Thanksgiving

Part Two

That night, Patti McLlarchlan had taken a walk and thought, “I’ll have to find a job sooner or later.” She did not want to teach and—she realized—she enjoyed staying at home. She liked getting up whenever she wanted. She liked the leisure of smoking half a pack of cigarettes and watching the world go by. And she liked talking to people so, in the end, opening up a private practice had only seemed natural.

Russell came and went as he pleased, and Patti saw no reason he shouldn’t. Divorce was not quick. Chuck did not complain a great deal, but now again he had something to say.

“Sometimes I wonder if you really want to divorce Thom.”

“No one wants to divorce anybody,” Patti said. “At least I hope not. But no, I’m not clinging to anything. I don’t even see him or speak to him.”

“Do you think about him?”

Patti looked at him incredulously.

“Do you think about Jane?”

Chuck caught his breath, pursed his lips and shook his head.

“I’m sorry, Patti,” he said.

She touched his hand. It was warm. When he looked at her with blue-green eyes and the lamplight shone on his head, she remembered what his touch was like at night, in his apartment. She could not bring him into Thom’s bed or sleep with him in Russell’s house, but when she went over to Chuck’s she was as close to free and single as she’d been in almost twenty years and his kiss, his touch, the heat of his body, reminded her of the girl she’d once been.

 

The air grew cooler, the sky seemed to lose that deep rich blue. It thinned out like an old candy lozenge and became transparent. The green in the leaves gave way to suffusions of red and yellow, but the flowers still held up. 1421 Curtain Street was still filled with the smell of apples though, as Chayne predicted, the weeds began to die. Russell began to wear his jacket more. No one was sad to see summer go. It’s reign had been long and successful, and like the all long reigns, at the end, wearying. The smell of fried chicken that arrived in the air over town at midday lessened only a little in the cooler air. At three o’clock it still smelled as if biscuits were being baked somewhere.

Faye went back to Chicago after a long stay. The Society degenerated—or evolved—into Friday nights that involved poetry and story reading but also cigar and cigarette smoking, gin drinking, guitar playing, singing, laughing, knee slapping, ribs and friend chicken, rolls and biscuits, cobbler, pie, greens, whisky, and no one going to bed till two in the morning. School was not bad now for Russell because right now it was only a very small part of an otherwise rich life.

And then there were kids from school that actually made their way to Chayne’s house. Two seniors, Curtis Brown and Nick Ballantine would show up some Friday nights. Both of them wanted to be writers when they grew up.

Nick was a senior at Our Lady of Mercy, weedy, blond, thin faced with a friendly smile he always turned Russell in the hallways. Curtis was a cousin of Chayne’s on the Wynn side, and no longer went to Our Lady of Mercy. He was a senior at Richland High and the one that wrote the most. He and Chayne could have nearly been twins, the same glasses, the same long hands, the same loud laugh though Nick claimed Curtis had never laughed so hard until recently.

And many nights Jackie and Diggs were there, as usual, and Chuck Shrader whom Russell was getting used to. Occasionally Thom stopped by but, thankfully, never when Chuck was there. He and Chayne stood in the kitchen quietly arguing while Thom pushed money at Chayne and Chayne pushed it back and then after a long time jostling, Chayne took it only to wait for Thom to leave, then gave the money to Russell.

Russell did not know what to make of Thom, or rather, what to feel about him. He told Chayne this one night.

“I want to love him,” Russell said. “But also... I’m afraid to.”

    

In the midst of the the Society, Chayne felt a duty to begin writing again. Everything he sat down to write was bad, and this, he reflected, was probably the reason he hadn’t written at all. He bought a hugh black ledger and took a golden tassel from Great Grandmother Prince’s Bible to make a bookmark, and then kept extensive notes. He wrote a great deal in that book, wrote to find a story. And he spent a great deal of time in empty Saint Adjeanet praying for a story too.

    

The mailman came one day while Chayne was deleting the beginning of another story. There was a letter addressed to him, and he opened it up and read, wondering if maybe a story would come up out of this.

 

Dear Mr. Kandzierski,

I think I have to tell you now, after all these years, what your work has meant to me. You see I don’t really read, and I write even less so this means something big. But it was in my first semester of college—and the last—that my professor made me read your poems. I’ve read all of your poetry books, and all of your novels except the new one. My favorite one was The Blue Season because it made me feel like I wasn’t alone, like I wasn’t the only ugly duckling, and it gave me hope.

I think the real reason I wrote you is to tell you that now I think I know where you get all of your talent from.It must be from your mother who was by far the sexiest woman in all the Windy City the weekend she came down. I think she’s actually about half of your characters. Thanks for the books, Thanks for your mother (I don’t mean that in a gross way)

Robert Keys

 

“Mama, who the hell is Robert Keys?” Chayne showed Sharon the letter one day when he went over to the apartment on Royal Street.

She looked at it, read, it, tilted it to an angle as if to get a secret message, and then laughed and told Chayne the story of that Friday in Chicago.

“I knew you had in you, Old Woman,” Chayne said.

“The letter’s addressed from Europe,” said Sharon. “Well that is another thing to be thankful for.... That somehow in a world that seems so troubled you can touch another soul. Makes me happy.”

October turned into November and November turned redder and oranger, and then one particularly chill day, when Chayne and Russell were drinking cider in front of the fireplace, Felice came over.

“Cousin Chayne.”

“Felice?”

“Me and Mickey and LaVelle were talkin’ and we were gon run this by Sharon later on but we thought we should run it by you first.”

“Um hum?”

“Seein’ as this is your house and all.”

“Okay?”

“We want to have the family Thanksgiving dinner here.”

And, at once, Chayne wanted to say no and at once he knew he couldn’t possibly say no and that it made all the sense in the world, but he did say, “I forgot that it was almost Thanksgiving.”

“Next week, Cousin. Next Thursday.”

Life has a funny way of racing by.

 

For the first time in months, the Geschichte Falls branch of the Lewis family met in the house on Breckinridge Avenue.

“Thom’s going to move into the house for Thanksgiving?” Jackie raised an eyebrow.

“Both of our families are coming,” Patti said, “and they’re used to having dinner here. It would be stupid for your family to come and Thom not be present. And my family’s going to wonder where the hell he is”

“So basically,” Jackie assessed, looking at Thom, “you all are going to pretend to be together. I’m going to pretend to be happy with Chip. John’s going to pretend not to have a crush on me. Patti’s going to pretend her sister is sane. I’m going to pretend that I actually like Kristen, she’s going to pretend to like me. And to top it off, Mom’s going to pretend she’s still thirty-five years old?”

“And,” added Russell looking at his parents, “we’re going to pretend to be one happy, united nuclear family.”

“But we are happy,” Thom said. “Just not... when we’re together.”

Russell raised an eyebrow to his father, who tried to smile.