D
on’t do this,” said Wayne. “You don’t have to do this.”
They sat in his truck in the country club parking lot, still dressed for tennis. Risky, but Dinah couldn’t think of a better place. She didn’t trust herself to go to his house.
“I can’t live this way,” she said. “I’m not this kind of person.”
“You’re just feeling guilty,” he said.
“Of course I feel guilty. He almost died.” Outside, the autumn leaves were at their peak. A plane buzzed overhead. Dinah imagined how it must look to the pilot, the hills spattered with red as if there’d been a terrible disaster.
“I have to get back,” she said. Ken had an appointment with his cardiologist in an hour; she’d promised to drive him to the clinic.
“Wait.” Wayne touched her shoulder. “I still want to see you. Can’t we at least play tennis?”
“Maybe when things settle down.” Her shoulder burned under his hand. “After the holidays.”
“What are you going to do?” said Wayne. “You can’t stay with him forever.”
She thought of Ken the way she’d left him: lying on the living room couch, wrapped in his bathrobe like an old man. She had built her life around him; leaving him now would make her the sort of person she didn’t wish to know.
“He’s my husband,” she said.
“Come on.” Wayne’s eyes sought hers. “You’re miserable. You’ve wasted enough years on that selfish old bastard.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Am I wrong?”
She looked away, at the cars racing along the highway.
“You can’t divorce him; you’ve got a kid to think about. Fine. I accept that.” Wayne reached for her hand. “I just want everything the way it was before.”
“I do too,” said Dinah. “But it isn’t.” She opened the passenger door.
“I’ve made mistakes,” she said softly. “I married the wrong person. But you can’t undo fifteen years.”
“You don’t love him,” said Wayne.
“He’s family,” said Dinah.
L
ike every Saturday, Brendan slept in. When he came downstairs his mom was fixing his father’s lunch on a tray.
“Why don’t you go watch TV with your dad?” she said. “He could use some company.”
“He’s watching the news. I hate the news.”
His mom sighed. “Go sit down and talk to him for five minutes. Ask him how he’s feeling. Is that too much to ask?”
Brendan went into the living room. His father sat on the couch in a robe and pajamas, flipping through the channels.
“There’s nothing on,” he grumbled. He flipped past music videos, pro wrestling, a Mafia movie Brendan had seen twice but would gladly watch again. They had eighty-nine channels. There was plenty to watch.
“How are you feeling?” Brendan asked.
His father eyed him suspiciously. “How do you think I’m feeling? I can’t just sit here staring at the television all day. I don’t know how you do it.” He tossed aside the remote. He had switched back to the all-news channel. “Tell your mother to come in here.”
“Why don’t you just whistle?” Brendan muttered.
“What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
Brendan went into the kitchen. His mom was counting out pills from a bottle and placing them on the tray.
“He wants you to go in there.”
His mom looked up. “Coming,” she called out. And of course, she went.
She had changed. Since the heart attack, she waited on his father hand and foot; she came whenever he called her, like a trained poodle. His father didn’t even appreciate it; he never said “please” or “thank you.” If Brendan’s manners were as bad as his father’s, he’d never hear the end of it.
She seemed not to mind the old man’s rudeness; she cut him too much slack, in Brendan’s opinion. Though of course she cut Brendan slack too. She didn’t care that he was fat. She called him queer things like strong and handsome, which was embarrassing but in a way nice because you could tell she meant it. It made him wonder about her, if she was blind or nuts or just needed to get out more; but hey, she was his mom. He supposed it was because she loved him.
She did cool things. She was an amazing skier, fast and ballsy, if you could call a girl that. She could play tennis; she had a huge garden. She insisted on making everything herself—bread, ice cream, yogurt, things other people just bought at the store. Sometimes she went overboard—she squeezed orange juice every morning and wouldn’t let Brendan drink soda, which she said was full of chemicals—but she was a great cook. He would rather eat at his own house than at any restaurant in the world.
Compared to other mothers she was pretty. “Your mom is hot,”
his friend Guthrie said once when she took them to the pool and swam laps in her bathing suit. It was the last time they went to the pool with Brendan’s mother.
He liked her best when she was going about her own business: rolling pie crust, canning tomatoes from the garden. The rest of the time she asked too many questions. Every night at dinner he was supposed to talk about his day at school. He said as little as possible, which made her mad. She didn’t understand that talking about school was like adding minutes to his school day. Brendan couldn’t think of anything worse.
He could sometimes avoid her questions by barging in while she was busy cooking. Then she’d put a knife in his hand and make him chop things. Later, when they sat down to dinner, she’d forget to ask about school; they’d talk about other things, as if she’d forgotten he was her son. Sometimes she talked about culinary school, dishes she’d made when she worked in a restaurant a long time ago.
When his father was home she didn’t talk about anything; she just listened to the old man go on and on about his business deals. Luckily, his father worked late most nights; but once in a while his mom put her foot down. Then Brendan would hear them fighting through their bedroom door.
“Your son hasn’t seen you in a week.” Always in a whisper, as if Brendan couldn’t hear them that way.
“What do you want me to do? Leave the office at five and sit in traffic all evening?” That was always his father’s line, that by coming home at nine o’clock he was beating the traffic. This argument never got him anywhere.
“Yes,” she would whisper. “That’s exactly what I want you to do.”
Then, for a week or two, his father would appear at dinner, usually just as she was taking something out of the oven. They’d make a big show of kissing—on the cheek, like married people on TV. Brendan would have to turn his head. He hated seeing his parents kiss.
At dinner his mother would be especially annoying, asking a million questions about his day. His father would sit there chewing his brussels sprouts, his mouth not quite closed. That was the other problem: his father was always on a diet. He loved terrible food: spinach, lima beans, always without cheese or butter. Worse, he watched everything Brendan ate, made him feel like a pig if he took seconds of anything. It drove him crazy to have a fat son. This made Brendan want to eat more and more.
T
he house was silent Thanksgiving morning: no alarm clocks, no slapping sneakers on the treadmill. Ken slept deeply, hands folded across his chest, his heart pumping silently beneath them. Dinah crept out of bed and dressed in the dark. Dawn had broken; gray daylight peered from beneath the blind.
In the kitchen the massive turkey thawed in the sink. Dinah cut open the plastic and rubbed the skin with butter, the dimpled flesh cool beneath her hands. She hadn’t cooked Thanksgiving dinner in ten years. Usually Ken booked them a table at a restaurant downtown. The traditional meal was too heavy for him; he hated the endless leftovers.
She chopped onion and celery and scraped them into a pan; in a moment the kitchen smelled of browned butter. Guilt nudged her; these were foods he wouldn’t be able to eat. She thought of clots, lipids, the narrow passages to his heart.
You’re just feeling guilty,
Wayne had told her. As if guilt meant nothing, as if it weren’t a feeling she’d earned and deserved. Three weeks had passed since she’d broken off their affair. She’d forbidden
him to call; yet each time the phone rang her heart quickened, as though defibrillated. Meanwhile she brought Ken newspapers and drove him to the doctor’s, filled his prescriptions and served his meals on a tray. Sometimes she caught a glimpse of herself—her reflection in the kitchen window as she counted out his pills—and wanted to laugh. A casual observer would call her a model wife; yet she’d betrayed him a hundred times over. She had watched the seasons change through Wayne’s bedroom window. Five seasons: more than a year.
Ken’s heart attack had changed everything. She was disgusted by how cynical her life had become. As if she were a spectator she saw herself waiting: for her time alone with Wayne, for the day Brendan went away to college and she could be truly free. Meanwhile, sleeping next to Ken each night, letting him touch her (not often, but still). The picture repulsed her.
She blamed herself for his hardening arteries, his heart starved of blood. Early in their marriage she’d cooked to his specifications—salads, steamed vegetables, dry chicken breasts. She’d tried to eat as he did but left the table hungry. Soon she was pregnant and ravenous; at night, after he went to bed, she devoured piles of pasta, mashed potatoes with gravy, grilled cheese sandwiches browned in butter. Her belly swelled; her breasts grew to the size of grapefruits. After Brendan was born, she cooked as she pleased. In recent years she and Ken seldom ate together. He worked late; most nights he assembled his own meal and heated it in the microwave. At restaurants he gave the waiters meticulous instructions: no oil, butter, egg yolks, or salt. His fastidiousness irritated her; it took all the pleasure out of eating. She dismissed as neurotic his fear of gaining weight. There had been nothing to suggest his concern was more than vanity, that he was worried about his heart.
“How did this happen?” she’d asked his doctor the one time they’d crossed paths at the hospital. “He takes such good care of himself. How could he have a heart attack?”
“Familial hypercholesterolemia,” said the doctor. “I’m guessing, of course. In his parents’ day nobody monitored cholesterol levels, so it’s impossible to say for certain. But when a patient is this lean and this conscientious about his diet, and his numbers are still elevated, it usually indicates a genetic predisposition.”
Later, when she confronted him, Ken seemed irritated by her concern. “Genetic tendency, my ass,” he said. “My parents ate like field hands. There was nothing wrong with them that a little discipline couldn’t have prevented.”
His doctor recommended an angioplasty; the hospital sent him home the day after the procedure. For two weeks he’d moped around the house, complaining about the weather and the garbage on TV. He bought a blood pressure monitor and checked himself twice a day, announcing the results at lunch and dinner. The numbers never deviated from normal, but Ken kept checking; his health was his only hobby. Dinah suggested movies, drives in the country. Nothing interested him. All he wanted was to go back to work. Five years ago he’d sold his agency and started the Homes Project; he spent his days negotiating with loan officers and arguing with contractors, wheedling donations out of lumberyards and hardware stores. In between he fought downtown traffic, driving from one devastated neighborhood to the next. He’d been robbed twice, once at gunpoint. Still, he drove his Lincoln Town Car south of Pennsylvania Avenue, through the wasted streets of Anacostia. “I have to,” he often said. “That’s where the houses are.”
She counted out six sweet potatoes, one per person: Jody and her boyfriend, Charlie and his girlfriend, herself and Brendan.
(Ken was careful with his starches.) He’d been stunned when she told him she’d invited his children to Thanksgiving dinner.
“You did
what?
”
“Charlie and Jody. I called and invited them.”
His voice was oddly calm. “How did you find them?”
“I found Jody’s address in your wallet.” She chose her words carefully. “You never told me she wrote to you.”
“Oh, that. A few years ago she sent me a birthday card at the office.” Casually, as though it were a regular occurrence. “I thought I told you. I guess I forgot.”
Dinah tore at a loaf of bread, a stale baguette she’d saved for the stuffing. She assumed he had regrets. They’d been babies when he left: Charlie six years old, Jody still in diapers. Dinah had known this from the beginning, but it hadn’t seemed so bad then, before she had a child of her own. Before she knew what a six-year-old boy was: the sudden command of language, the stubborn independence that dissolved in a moment’s fright. When Brendan was six he’d run off in a shopping mall. He was sobbing when she found him, clinging to the leg of a security guard. He’d shadowed her for days afterward, followed her from room to room. He wouldn’t go to sleep unless she sat with him.
She broke an egg over the bread crumbs and added the onions and celery. She imagined Ken’s remorse a tentacled thing, squeezing tight around his aging heart.
She heard footsteps on the stairs, the scuff of slippers.
“Ken?” she called out. “Is that you?”
He shuffled into the kitchen in his robe and pajamas. His fine hair stood out like a halo; his chin bristled with silver.
“How did you sleep?” she asked.
“Goddamn blood pressure pills. They give me nightmares.” He
eyed the turkey. “Jesus Christ, that thing’s enormous. Who’s going to eat all that? As if I didn’t know.”
“Don’t start,” she said. “It’s Thanksgiving. He can eat as much as he wants.”
Ken grunted. “When is everybody coming?”
“I told Jody noon. Charlie and his girlfriend might be a little late.” She rinsed the potatoes under the faucet. “Can I get you some breakfast?”
“Make me some coffee,” he said, shuffling toward the living room. “I’m saving my appetite.”
In the next room the television came on.
D
INAH KNOCKED
at Brendan’s bedroom door.
“Can I come in?” she called out.
“I guess,” he said.
The room was cool and dim, the navy blue curtains drawn across the windows, blocking the sunlight. Brendan lay on the comforter in jeans and a T-shirt, his back braced with pillows. The smell of roasting turkey seeped through the floorboards.
“Everybody will be here soon,” said Dinah. “I wanted to make sure you were dressed.”
“I’m dressed.”
She glanced around. Piles of clothes everywhere, stacks of magazines near the computer. She sat on the bed.
“This has to be confusing for you,” she said. “It is for me too.”
“So why did you invite them?” He looked at her with her own eyes, clear gray flecked with green.
“For your father,” she said. “Besides, they’re your half brother and half sister. Don’t you want to get to know them?”
“What for? They’re his kids. Let
him
get to know them.”
Amen to that, she thought. “That’s the whole point,” she said. She ran her hand across a section of bedspread, ironing the paisley pattern. There was a hole the size of a pencil eraser at the edge.
“Your dad has missed out on a lot,” she said. “Charlie and Jody are adults now. He didn’t get to see them grow up.”
“Why not?” He stared at her. “Max’s parents are divorced. He sees his dad all the time.”
Dinah looked up at the ceiling. Years before, when he was little, she and Brendan had covered it with
glow-in-the-dark stars.
“Times have changed,” she said. “Back then fathers had very few legal rights in a divorce. Your dad and his first wife couldn’t come to an agreement, so he lost out. It’s sad, but that’s what happened.” It was the explanation she’d rehearsed, whether or not it was true.
His brow furrowed, a mannerism of his father’s. “How come he never talks about them? I’ve never even seen a picture of them.”
Dinah hesitated. For weeks she’d defended Ken to their son, tried to explain away things that didn’t make sense to her either. She could tell from Brendan’s face that he wasn’t buying any of it. She rose to go.
“It’s complicated,” she said. “I don’t understand it very well myself. But this is important for your dad.”
Brendan frowned. She resisted the urge to touch his hair, smooth his forehead like she had when he was small.
“He’s different since his heart attack,” she said, in a tone she hoped was convincing. “Doesn’t he seem different?”
Brendan leaned back into the nest of cushions. He placed a pillow over his face.
“No.” His voice was muffled. “He’s exactly the same.”