Glimmering

He smiled, pondering Thanksgivings past. House abrim with cousins, priests smoking cigarettes in his grandfather’s study, Captain Kangaroo in the living room broadcasting live from the Macy’s parade. His brother Dennis sending an arrow through the center of a painting by a member of the Hudson River School, and never being punished for it. Heaps of mashed potatoes and turnips and green beans, turkey the size of a shoat, whiskey glinting in crystal tumblers like chunks of topaz; and, best of all, the knowledge that this was just the beginning, the front door nudging open upon the vast sparkling treasure-house that was the Christmas season, then.

Today there were sausages, on a too-big platter. They were more highly seasoned than Marz would have liked. She did not complain, but she did grimace, like an exotic monkey with her new thick fringe of bright hair, and then proceeded to eat without stopping for a quarter hour. There was whole-wheat rotini from Emma’s hoard, with dried basil, and canned tomatoes, and some nasty canned spinach which Jack had tried to save with garlic salt, which nobody ate. A gruesome-looking apple pudding from Emma’s dried apples, which tasted marvelous, and which everyone did eat. Jack put a two-thirds-full bottle of Glenlivet on the table. He poured a half inch for Keeley, who sipped it slowly throughout the meal, and proceeded to drink most of the rest himself. Afterward, a little wobbly in the head, he helped Mrs. Iverson with the dishes, while Keeley and Marz retired upstairs for late-afternoon naps.

“Not like it used to be,” Mrs. Iverson sighed, wiping greasy water from a plate with a linen rag. “Your grandfather… I think, What would he have thought of all this—”

She lifted her head to gaze out the kitchen window. Beyond the slope of leafless trees the Hudson was marbled black and orange, like the interior of a forge. There was the occasional spatter of rain, the bite of a cold draft making its way through the walls. These—along with the smells of fresh cooking, the growing stack of cleaned dishes, the smell of Scotch—made for one of those rare moments when chronology and atmospheric effects conspired to make everything seem not all that unchanged. It really could be Thanksgiving Day.

“He would have thought it was the end of the world,” said Jack. In fact his grandfather probably wouldn’t have thought that at all. But Jack did. It reminded him of a January afternoon with Leonard, when they were both seventeen. Side by side on the floor of an empty classroom at Saint Bartholomew’s, an hour or so after fucking in a closet; watching a blazing sunset fall through blackened tree limbs to ignite the windows. The sight had filled Jack with exhilaration and dread, confused with sexual fever and its aftermath, the sense of things burning, dangerously, somewhere just out of sight. Since then winter sunsets always moved him thus, a touch of terror amidst the glory. He was surprised, now, to realize he had not felt this way in some time—because there had been no real sunsets, no real winter, for over two years; and because he had grown accustomed to that soft hem of terror brushing against him daily.

“… think I would ever live this long,” Mrs. Iverson was ending with a sigh.

Jack looked up guiltily. “Oh, please don’t say that.”

The housekeeper moved a stack of plates from counter to cupboard. “Doesn’t matter what I say.” She turned and smiled, placed a hand still damp with soapsuds on his. “Oh now, Jackie, don’t you go looking like you just got the bad news about Santa Claus! That was a lovely meal you put together—you saw how Mary Anne ate, and your grandmother, too! You’re a good boy, Jackie. Go on now, I’ll finish up—”

She shooed him out of the kitchen. He went, still feeling guilty—men never seemed to stick around until every last dish was done, no matter how good their intentions—but grateful to have some time alone. Like all Thanksgivings, it had been long. The shadows and sense of repleteness made it feel late, but a consensus of Lazyland’s clocks seemed to agree that it was only around four. He wandered through the dining room, his grandfather’s study, living room, then out into the entry, feeling lost and melancholy. He finally settled into the Stickley chair beneath the grandfather clock, leaned his elbows on the battered table, and stared mournfully at the telephone. He lifted the receiver. The line was dead. He went upstairs.

On the second-floor landing he paused. Loud snoring came from his grandmother’s room and Marz’s. Jack shook his head: so much noise from two such little people. Three, if you counted the baby. From the back steps behind the linen closet he heard Mrs. Iverson exclaiming to herself, her heavy tread as she began to climb. He turned and hurried up the curving stairway to the third floor, taking the steps two at a time and being careful to chuck the moth-eaten caribou under the chin as he went past.