25 I Am Thankful for You

25

i am thankful for you

Alexander

Why didn’t it occur to me earlier that bringing Kate to Thanksgiving to meet everyone was a bad idea? Why now, when I’m ten minutes from my parents’ house, is it finally hitting me? Maybe it’s because Tristan is singing the Paw Patrol theme song over and over in the backseat and I’m about to lose my mind. He’s singing over a Talking Heads song that’s playing on the radio. I don’t know how he’s doing it, I’m actually sort of impressed.

My brain feels like it’s malfunctioning because my single working ear cannot process the two different melodies, so I turn the radio down. Kate is quiet and staring out the window.

“Are you nervous?” I ask.

“No,” she says.

I have to remind myself that Kate is usually nothing. “What are you thinking about?”

“Nothing.”

“You’d be dead if you were thinking about nothing,” I say with humor .

“I was just thinking about Thanksgiving and what a lovely holiday it is to be with family, sharing a wonderful meal. Do you think I’m dressed okay?”

“Yes,” I say. “You look very nice.” It’s true. She always looks good, put together and neat in her jeans and sweaters.

My parents live in a beautiful old Craftsman house in the Historic Highlands of Pasadena. It’s actually the house my mother grew up in. She inherited it after her dad passed away fifteen years ago. It’s redone and beautiful and has this huge wraparound porch and large yard that my parents have made into a gorgeous garden. It’s the kind of backyard you can take a stroll in and get lost.

When we pull up, I notice Dani’s Jeep is parked crooked in the driveway. I shake my head.

“What?” Kate says.

“Dani’s a horrible driver.”

Kate ignores the comment. “We’re here, Tristan! Be polite, okay, this is Alex’s family we’re meeting.”

“I know, Mom, you told me. Are Ethan and Noah gonna be there?”

“Yes,” I say with a sinking feeling. I don’t want this poor kid to get attached to my family. I just need to get past this day.

I walk through the unlocked front door without knocking. Pots and pans are clanking, there’s laughter coming from the kitchen. Kate and Tristan follow me into the living room, where Josh and my dad are watching football.

“Dad, Josh,” I say. They both look over and stand up. My dad is basically the older version of me, and Josh is a tall, skinny, crunchy guy who always looks like he’s smiling even when he’s mad. They walk toward us. Tristan is partially hiding behind Kate’s leg. “This is my…girlfriend, Kate, and her son, Tristan. Kate, this is my dad, Alex Sr., and Josh, my sister’s boyfriend. ”

They politely shake hands. Everything feels awkward despite all the smiles. “Well, welcome,” my dad says.

“How’s the garden?” I ask.

My dad’s eyes light up. Josh is just standing there smiling. He’s a passive guy, sort of like Kate. He’s…nice.

“You gotta see it, son. Go say hi to the girls and then come on out and I’ll show you.”

“Okay, Dad. Let’s go in here,” I say to Kate.

I lead Kate and Tristan into the kitchen. My mom has one of those swinging doors, so it’s like as soon as you push on it, you’re transported to another dimension, where everything is in motion. My mom is pulling something out of the oven, my sister is chopping celery at the center island, and Dani is standing at the sink with her back to us.

The kitchen is bright and full of life. It has butcher block countertops, white subway tiles, and a large, porcelain farmhouse sink. Every brushstroke on the light-yellow shaker cabinets was painted by my father, who also installed the countertops and refinished the old wood floors. There are always thriving plants on the windowsill, homemade bread in a bread box, and even though there are a ton of Thanksgiving dishes in the making scattered about, my mother still has a perfectly arranged bowl of fruit in an old yellow Pyrex bowl in the middle of the center island. There are oranges, apples, lemons, limes, and one magnificent yellow banana, without a hint of brown on it, lying over the top. It’s like a still life I have seen a million times. I don’t know how she does it. There’s music playing from a speaker in the corner. It’s some sort of hipster folk song that I know my mother didn’t put on. It was either Dani or Amanda—who, by the way, are like sisters.

Since Amanda’s so much younger, she met Dani when she was still in her early teens. Over the years she’s often turned to Dani for advice, and in many ways, they’re closer to each other than Amanda and I are.

Dani doesn’t love how, on holidays, only the women end up in the kitchen, so I’m usually in there with them instead of her, but today it looks like she had no choice.

“Hello!” I announce. They all stop what they’re doing and look up at us.

“Alex, come here and close this oven as soon as I take the casserole out,” my mother says. It would be a completely normal thing for my mother to say if Kate and Tristan weren’t standing right next to me. I hope she doesn’t ignore them all day.

As I walk over to the oven on the left, Amanda approaches Kate on the right. “Hi, you must be Kate? I’m Amanda, the little sister.” Amanda is pretty in a natural, no makeup kind of way. All she and Josh do for fun is tent camp, hike, and hug trees. They’re easy to be around and nonjudgmental, so that makes this part a little easier.

“Nice to meet you,” Kate says. “This is my son, Tristan.”

“Hello, Tristan.” Amanda bends and shakes his hand. He politely smiles, but he’s still quiet.

My mom walks over and puts her hand out to Kate, “I’m Brenda. Nice to meet you, happy Thanksgiving, and welcome,” she says like she’s rehearsed it a hundred times.

Kate smiles and says, “You as well, thank you for having me. You have a beautiful home and I’m grateful to be able to be here and spend this holiday with you.”

My mom smiles, but I notice that she doesn’t really acknowledge Tristan except for ruffling his hair a little. “Well, that’s what it’s all about today,” my mom says.

I’m watching the exchange and so is Dani from the other side of the island, where she’s now leaning her back against the sink. Dani smiles and throws up a motionless wave, “Hi, Kate. ”

“Hi, Danielle.” No one except for me calls her Danielle and it’s only when I’m mad. I know Kate said it because it’s how I’ve referred to Dani now and then. She doesn’t realize how it sounds to everyone else. My mother and Amanda are standing still and silent. Dani is actually the one who breaks the silence.

“Hey, Tristan, I’m Dani. You want to come here and check out some mollusks?” I laugh quietly to myself. Dani can do and say the most bizarre things, but usually it always ends up working, and sometimes it feels like fresh air. She successfully diffused the tension. I mean, who eats oysters on the half shell at Thanksgiving? But why not? Kate pushes Tristan’s back, encouraging him to approach Dani. He walks over to the sink while Dani grabs a step stool and puts it next to her. “Hop up here, Captain.”

Tristan giggles and stands on the stool.

I approach the sink on Dani’s left side. “Are you shucking oysters?”

She looks up at me and whispers, “This holiday is stupid.”

Dani always had an issue with Thanksgiving, but she still goes along with it to make the parents happy. I know the oysters are her way of trying to update the tradition.

She’s shucking while we’re talking. “Yeah, well, oysters will be a welcome change,” I tell her.

“I think so,” she says. “All right, Captain T, I have to do this part with the knife to open them up, then you set them on the plate.”

“Gross. Are we gonna eat those?” Tristan says.

My mom chimes in from the other side of the kitchen. “I think oysters for a Thanksgiving appetizer is a great idea!” Dani can do no wrong in my mother’s eyes…or my father’s. Dani looks at me and winks. She’s rubbing it in .

Tristan is holding a shucked, raw oyster in a half shell in his hand and staring like he’s just discovered an alien life form.

“You debating?” Dani says to him. She always talked to our kids like adults too. She’s a warm and loving mother, but she has this way of making kids feel like individuals, which they should.

“Should I try it?” Tristan says.

Dani shrugs, her face inscrutable. “It’s sort of an acquired taste. Do you want me to give you a pointer?”

I turn around and notice Kate has stopped chopping celery with Amanda. She’s watching the exchange between Dani and Tristan.

“Yes, please,” he says. “I’ll take all the help I can get.” Now he’s talking back to her like an adult. People used to marvel at Noah and Ethan’s vocabularies. It’s because Dani never dumbed anything down for them. She didn’t baby them, and she gave them choices.

“Okay, listen, let me get some lemon.” She turns back toward the center island, where the reliable bowl of fruit is. She looks at Kate and smiles warmly, then digs a lemon out of the bowl before turning back toward Tristan. She’s essentially ignoring me, but that’s okay. Dani cuts the lemon, then squeezes some onto the oyster Tristan is holding. He starts to lift it to his mouth. “No, not yet!” He pulls it away. “I haven’t told you the trick yet.” He’s staring at it with disgust. “Watch me,” Dani says as she slides one out of the shell and into her mouth quickly like it’s second nature. She opens her mouth to show Tristan the oyster is gone. “The trick is, once you send it sliding off the bow of the boat, you chomp once, then down the hatch, Captain.”

“Just chew once?”

“Yep. Exactly. It’s the taste after you swallow the oyster that we’re trying to get to. If you can do that, you’ll be smooth sailing. ”

Tristan does exactly what Dani told him to do. He still looks revolted for a second, but then opens his mouth to show Dani it’s gone. He smiles from ear to ear.

“You did it! Nice work. What did you think?”

“It was great!” I know for a fact Tristan didn’t think it was great, but he wanted to.

“Well done,” Kate says. I walk over to stand next to her. In a low, almost inaudible voice…for me anyway, Kate says, “I can’t believe he ate that.”

How is Dani being so normal right now? I don’t think I could handle going to Thanksgiving dinner with her new boyfriend, but this situation doesn’t seem to be fazing her. I’m guessing it’s because she’s already imagined it and prepared for it. That’s just how her brain works.

Later, right before dinner, my mom comes up to me and says, “You gonna get a little red Corvette next?”

“She’s thirty,” I say back.

My mom shrugs, then continues into the dining room.

Everyone finds a seat. It’s not an organized process and there’s no hierarchy. It’s sort of like throwing chess pieces into the air and seeing where they land. Except that Kate is clinging to my right and Tristan to my left. This part is awkward. I glance at Noah and open my eyes wide. He makes the exaggerated frown face, like he’s sucking air through his teeth. I think he’s empathizing with me.

Clockwise at the head of table sits Noah. The four chairs across from me, left to right, sit my mom, Dani, Amanda, and Ethan. Josh is at six o’clock. Then our side is my dad, Kate, me, and Tristan.

I’m directly across from Dani. I smile at her and she laughs. It’s probably the first time I’ve smiled at her in years.

There’s a little bit of conversation going on at both ends of the table. My mom seems to be engaging Noah next to her so she doesn’t have to talk to Tristan across from her. She keeps touching Noah’s hand. In a way, it seems like she’s trying to let him know that Tristan isn’t moving in on the boys. Food is getting passed around and everyone is talking either to the person next to them or across from them, except for me. I’m quietly taking it in. Amanda is making conversation with Kate, but it’s piecemeal and uncomfortable for Amanda, I can tell.

“So you live in old town Pasadena?” my sister says to Kate.

Kate is spooning mashed potatoes onto her plate, so it looks like she’s responding to the food. “Yeah, well, kind of. I live in the apartments across from that Jiffy Lube on Colorado. The last time I took my car in there, I think they messed it up somehow and now it’s leaking oil. The manager at my complex has been hassling me about the oil in my parking space for weeks.”

I’m looking at Amanda, who is dumbstruck. Everyone is quiet for a moment. I can tell Amanda doesn’t know how to respond. I don’t know if Kate gets nervous or what, but she does this thing where someone will bring up a topic and she’ll respond with something totally off subject. Then she continues on and on while the other person is left dumbfounded. Kate is not always like this when we’re one-on-one.

“How’s work going, Amanda?” I say to fill the space.

“It’s really good. I’m gonna be taking some time off—”

My mom clinks her glass with a fork. “Everyone have their food?” We say yes or nod. “Great, it’s time! Everybody’s favorite.”

“Oh no,” Amanda grumbles. My mom insists that before we start eating on Thanksgiving, we go around the room and say what we’re thankful for. Everyone dreads it, but if we try to get out of it, she will pout all the way through dinner.

“Noah, why don’t you start,” my mom says .

I can feel Tristan next to me bouncing in his seat. He wants it to be his turn.

“I’m thankful for the Xbox in Gram’s garage—”

“Hey, it’s my garage too,” my dad says teasingly.

Noah continues, “And in Gramp’s garage. And I’m thankful for my family…even Ethan.”

Ethan acts like he’s going to chuck a roll at Noah, but he puts his arm down, smiles, and says, “Thanks, bro.”

“Okay, my turn,” my mom says. “Of course, I’m thankful for having all my children and grandchildren at the table…” Dani looks up and over at her. I wonder in this moment if Dani’s thinking about her mom. “And I’m thankful for the winter garden, even though a certain someone won’t stop talking about it,” my mom says to my dad. “I’m thankful we all have our health.” She holds up her wineglass. “Cheers. I love you all.” After my mom takes a sip, she leans over and kisses Dani on the temple. “Dani, your turn,” she says.

Anything like this is difficult for Dani. It will go one of two ways. She’ll either turn it into a joke or she’ll get sentimental and start crying. I’m on the edge of my seat wondering which Dani we’ll get.

She clears her throat. So far, she’s holding it together, but I notice the hand holding her wineglass is shaking. She sets down the glass. She’s nervous. “Well, of course I’m thankful for my perfectly imperfect boys.” A lot of kids wouldn’t get that statement, but Noah and Ethan understand that Dani means it as a compliment. “All of you,” she says, and glances around the table without making eye contact. “Thankful for the ones I love who are not pictured today, Alicia and Mark, Louie Louie, my mom and dad…Ben.” Somehow, she’s not crying yet. She’s just smiling.

“Sparty,” I say. She looks up at me and laughs .

“My goldfish, Herman, that I had in fourth grade.” Now everyone is laughing lightly. “And…I’m thankful I got the show, and seriously, seriously thankful for that hot male masseuse at Burke Williams.”

“Mom,” Noah whines, but everyone else is laughing. I guess sitting here with my girlfriend gives Dani license to say that. We all know it’s a joke.

“Yes, congratulations again on the show, Dani.” My dad raises his glass.

Amanda starts talking without anyone prompting her. “I’m thankful for my family and Josh, everyone’s health and happiness, and my new backpack from REI. Go, E.”

Ethan sits up in his chair. “I’m thankful for my family and thankful that Noah finally discovered deodorant.”

Everyone laughs except Noah, who rolls his eyes. “Go, Josh,” Amanda says.

“I’m thankful for everyone here, especially you, my love,” he says to Amanda, but she’s not outwardly romantic, so she laughs it off.

My dad chimes in, which feels like an interruption but I don’t think Josh cares. “Well, I’m gonna say it, I don’t care what you all think, I’m thankful for the winter garden I have spent many arduous hours nurturing and cultivating and…well…I guess…I guess I’m thankful for all of you too,” he says. “Especially my best friend over there who has to listen to me go on and on about the stupid garden.”

My mom laughs and then smiles lovingly at him.

We all look at Kate. She hesitates for a moment. “I’m thankful for my son—I love you, Tristan—and my job and…for all of you being so nice, welcoming me and Tristan into the family.”

FUUUUUUUUCKKKKKKK.

Everyone is quiet and still. Dani is nonplussed, but my sister looks like she’s trying to decipher a very complicated flow chart. I can feel Tristan still bouncing beside me. He’s been waiting for so long, so I use it to my advantage. I think I know how to recover while all the eyes are on me.

“I’m gonna let Tristan go, he’s been really patient.”

Noah rolls his eyes at me.

“I’m…I’m,” Tristan is so excited he can barely speak. “I’m thankful for Dani!”

We’re at zero oxygen again. Suffocating quietly. It feels like hours have gone by like this.

Finally, Dani says, “Thanks, Captain, I’m thankful for you too.” She’s oddly unemotional.

My dad clears his throat loudly. “Go ahead, son, your turn.”

I don’t have anything planned, I always go with the basics. “I’m thankful for my family, and for you, Josh, for putting up with that crazy hippie over there. Noah and Ethan, I couldn’t have dreamt up better kids and awesome people. Cheers. Cheers.” We all clink glasses and drink.

I realize I didn’t thank Dani specifically. She was my family before, so I didn’t think of it. I’m hoping she didn’t notice.

This whole day has been botched. Why didn’t I see this coming?

“Let’s eat!” I say loudly, and the hum of conversation finally rises over the unbearable silence.