More Turkeys Than You Can Shake a Steak At.

I stared at the laptop until the letters in front of me started to blur. I wanted to write her, I wanted to ask her questions… but as I was preparing to open up the letter to reply to it, Rainer stirred. This demanded attention, and by the time he was settled again, Bill and Sam had returned. They were carrying bags of fragrant food and bitching each other out like women. I got off the computer and went to referee.

I couldn’t go to sleep right away, so I lay in the strange bed beside Bill’s familiar bulk, and sorted things out the best way I could.

There was no point in taxing Beth with a lot of stupid questions. Most of them were for curiosity’s sake and the knowledge would have absolutely no affect on anyone’s life. It would be a disservice to know too much. Telling me anything at all was risking further involvement in the soap opera from hell, if nothing else, through Hawk.

Which led me to consider the men involved.

The large specimen sharing the bed with me would doubtless be furious with both of us—Beth for surfacing at all, and me for diligently working to expose her. So I wouldn’t be saying anything to Bill.

Sam… God, I didn’t even want to consider it. Rage, betrayal, grief, jealousy possibly; the only thing I couldn’t predict would be the percentages of each emotion. He would never be able to treat Hawk the same way, and Hawk was the absolute last person responsible for this. I disagreed with Beth on that point; I had a hunch it would have been kinder to tell him so that he could have ended it in his mind, if not his heart.

Heart… Elmore…

I allowed my thoughts to drift back to Elmore. There was a man with a constant heart. He couldn’t know about Beth, it would mess him up. As bad as it was to say it, Elmore had regained an important piece of his life back once Beth had… well… died. He had been able to get on with things. If Beth turned up again, all the progress he’d made would be erased, the budding relationship with Cori would go straight to hell, and Elmore would be back where he’d started, trying to be patient and wait his turn. No, I couldn’t say a word.

Well, I thought, maybe not. Maybe I could say something to Ryan. In Gaerity World, there was nothing at all unusual about dead people turning up elsewhere drawing air and attending the church of their choice. And Ryan could make Bill look like a blabbermouth. That would be the only acceptable place to vent.

I got up early. I wanted to call room service to order orange juice and the petroleum derivative Bill and Sam called coffee. Sam was in the main room, already dressed to go. I was used to Sam in jacket and tie, but today he’d gone whole hog. He was wearing a regulation issue brown suit that looked like it had seen prior service on a drowned rat.

Deb: Oh, man, yuck! Where’d you get that thing, Goodwill?

Sam: It’s a suit. Mama always wanted us to dress nice for holidays and that sorry sack of snake shit in there won’t, so I figured I’d better try.

Deb: Such filial devotion. How touching. I’m sure she’ll appreciate her son dressing like a vagrant in her honor.

Sam shot me an evil look, then tried to adjust his shoulders inside the jacket. It looked like a puppy trying to get out of a burlap sack.

The last person I’d had this discussion with had been Tom. Specifically, I’d been giving ol’ T.L. a ration of shit about a suit he’d been photographed wearing in Venice.

Deb: Come on, man, who sold you that thing, Kermit the Frog? You looked like a big old pickle wandering around there.

TLJ: Alright! So it was greener than I expected it to be, leave me the hell alone!

Deb: Greener than you expected! Man, that thing was toxic! I’m tellin’ ya, they caught you in front of a red tapestry and you looked like the cool side of a McDLT. And a couple of minutes later you had your hand in the air like you were hailing a cab and if somebody’d stuck a can of peas in it, you’d have been the Jolly Green Giant.

Tom was trying not to grin at me.

TLJ: I think that’s enough out of your ass.

Maybe, but I was on a roll.

Deb: I’m serious! Why do you put on a baggy old suit when a pair of khakis, a coat and tie would be just as appropriate? I don’t understand.

TLJ: My mother taught me to dress appropriately for the occasion. What else can I say?

Deb: In a pickle suit? Geez, Samuel L. Jackson shows up in solid black with a stupid beret and he looks like God, and there you are next to him in that shiny old shit-sack of yours with your evil Pepsi and your popcorn and you looked like you’d stumbled in from the dipshit convention. Why?

TLJ: Strannix oughta paddle your ass.

Deb: I’d like to see him try it. And why do you put on a suit just to go slop up some shit with sauce on it? I swear a woman invented the necktie as a way to keep a bib on a man after he’s outgrown the highchair… I don’t get it…

I heard water running and hustled into the bathroom. Bill was going to indulge Rainer and bathe with the baby instead of showering. Rainer was grunting and bouncing eagerly from his perch in the sink. He knew what was going on. Daddy would motorboat him around in the tub, among other things, and shove toys at him and talk funny and it would be a lot of bonding shit.

Deb: You know what happened last time.

Bill: I know. I’m gonna keep him busy, so he won’t notice.

Deb: Uh-huh.

The last time Rainer had taken a bath with Daddy, he had yelped something that I’d been ready to swear was ‘fis!’ and latched onto a rather sensitive extension of the paternal corpus. Roaring, Bill had ordered me to detach the boy instantly, before he took the affected piece with him.

But this time he seemed to have matters in—or out—of hand, and after a minute or two I was cordially invited to get lost. I backed out of the room and started to dress in an outfit I’d had to buy in Chicago—Sam had advised me of his mother’s preference then, too. Bill had bitched and moaned about paying for everything, but by that point in his day he’d have bitched if they’d hung him with a new rope.

Bill: Punk!… Ow, damnit, Rainer, leggo… Punk, come an’ get this monster!

Sam leaned on the door jamb, grinning evilly at me.

Sam: Why is it a grown man can give him a shot in the nutsack and it doesn’t even slow him down, but a nine month old baby’s got him yellin’ like a damn woman?

Deb: I have no idea, Sammy.

Bill: Punk! Hurry the hell up!

Deb: I’m dressed, Bill! Besides, you said you had it all under control.

Bill: Goddamnit! He’s tryin’ t’bite!

Sam brushed me aside and grabbed a bath towel.

Sam: So who’s the baby here?

I had to pay a premium to have Sam’s suit dried and pressed, and the sleeve sewn back on, by noon. But he was dressed promptly in his dumpster suit and we got underway. Bill was lugging Rainer’s carrier and using it, complete with Rainer, to nudge Sam in the backside.

Bill: Go on, Boy, that’s it… kick ‘im in the ass…

I knew Sam wouldn’t slug Bill, on Rainer’s account. So did Bill. If I offered to take Rainer, he’d refuse. Sam waited until Rainer had been safely installed in the backseat of the Focus, then he booted Bill hard enough so I felt it. Bill brushed off the seat of his black jeans and straightened the black turtleneck—as close as he could come to dressing up for anyone not his Commander in Chief—then he turned around.

Bill: Later.

Sam: Uh-huh.

Sam had stopped in the hotel flower shop to pick up something for his sister. He finally settled on an arrangement of silk flowers in autumnal colors. I helped him pick it out and I would have held it on the ride over, except that I was in the back with Rainer and he tried to improve his fine motor co-ordination by picking the flowers apart whenever he got close to it.

Bill: Oughta paint ‘flammable’ ‘cross this thing’s ass. You sure those flowers weren’t made by underage Haitian handicapped women working for less than subsistence wages and being fed entirely on a diet of pork and dolphin-murdering tuna? She won’t want to be exploiting anything.

Sam was glowering and I couldn’t stifle my giggles. I know about their sister and her causes, though to her credit, she usually took the trouble to find out what she was protesting.

Sam: You’re a damn liberal, what’re you laughing at?

Bill: The Righteous Conservative, at it again.

Actually, Sam wasn’t so very right-wing. In his politics he was a moderate, but he was a moderate, but he believed in the law and the job it could do if it was handled right. As for Bill, he had sworn to uphold and protect his Country, he just wanted it to get the fuck out of his face once in a while.

Deb: I never met a steak I didn’t like.

Bill: That’s right. She’s like me, card carryin’ member of PETA…

Sam: Yeah, yeah, People Eating Tasty Animals, get a new punch line, asshole. No wonder you and Beth…

Uh-oh. The ‘B’ word.

Bill: What? Me and Beth what? We didn’t see eye to eye about everything, but I never tried t’make her do anything she didn’t wanna.

Sam: You sayin’ I did?

Bill: I don’t have to. Even Rainer was quiet.

Deb: Watch where you’re going, Bill. I’d like to get there in one piece.

Bill turned on me, but since I had done it deliberately, I regarded the back of his head placidly.

Bill: You wanna drive, goddamnit?

Deb: If it means you two won’t be pounding the snot out of each other, yes, I would.

Some of the tension went out of Bill’s shoulders. Not much, but some.

Bill: Beth had ‘er own ideas.

Sam: She was like Mama, she wouldn’t take your shit.

Bill: I never gave Ma any shit. She was too busy kickin; your ass around the block.

Sam: You never gave her any shit, Jesus Christ, boy, who do you think you’re talkin’ to here…

Bill: A stupid bastard.

Sam: Wouldn’t be anything to be to beat your ass.

Bill: I’d like to see you try it.

Deb: Last time I watched, he did a pretty good job.

Bill: I’m warnin’ you, girl.

Deb: Oh, pooh.

Sam: You just keep your mouth shut. Jan’s… got a social conscience, I guess. We protect the society she’s trying to change.

:Bill: Social conscience, hell. Jan’s got a hair up her ass. I never saw anybody for finding fault. Better be careful with those flowers. She figures out they’re real silk she’ll probably tell ya you’re exploiting the worms.

I noticed Sam had no response to that.

Bill pulled up in the driveway of an extremely upscale brick fronted monstrosity. I was guessing it went in the three to four-hundred thousand dollar range. It was a beautiful home with a view of Lake Erie, but I liked our funky little farmhouse on steroids better, and I would really like the fucker when it was done…

There I go again. Sorry.

Jan: Sam… did you bring everyone with you?

Sam: They’re out by the car. Here, little girl, Happy Thanksgiving. Hope you like this, it’s from all of us.

Bill: Fuck it is!

Deb: Shut up!

Sam introduced me to Janice. She was tall and well shaped—I would have killed for her figure. She had her brothers’ dark hair and eyes, but her eyes were different—rather than sharp intelligence, they were filled with warmth. That she was intelligent was undisputed.

Jan: Hi, Deb… I’ve heard a lot about you. Not from Eliot, I’m afraid.

Deb: He’s not bound to be very forthcoming that way, no.

Janice led me through to her living room—perfectly decorated in Country English. God, it was annoying.

Bill: Too damn fussy in here.

Sam: Isn’t anybody’s fault your house has to be decorated in early bomb shelter…

Jan: How was the trip?

Deb: Like that. All the way down. The Smothers Brothers from hell.

Jan: I’m not surprised. Mother… here’s Deb and Rainer.

The lady was seated in a place of honor near the fireplace. A single fluffy tabby dozed on her knee. I’d forgotten some people only had one cat. If this had been our house, Woodle would be in her lap, Maggie would be draped across the back of her neck, and Brick would be on the prowl, circling her feet for targets of opportunity, the original floor shark.

She extended her hand and regarded me with mild brown eyes. I took her hand gently in mine, seeing the swollen knuckles that were the hallmarks of arthritis.

Deb: I’m so pleased.

Mrs. Gerard: So am I, dear. I’ve been telling Eliot to bring you both. He never did pay a lot of attention.

Sam caught that.

Sam: See, jackoff! Even Mama says it!

Mrs. Gerard: They’re at it again. Do they ever stop?

Deb: Only when they’re asleep.

Mrs. Gerard: Janice, will you take this animal so I can see my grandson?

Jan: Come on, kitty…

The cat stiffened up and growled low in its throat, laying its ears back. It was near a fire, and it wasn’t going anywhere.

Jan: Those two make her so nervous.

Mrs. Gerard: Face it, dear, this cat is a bad-tempered piece of work.

I handed Rainer to Janice, who waited to pass him along.

Deb: Here, let me… c’mere, you rotten bugger.

I scooped the cat up and had it out of Mrs. Gerard’s lap before it could claw up her slacks. She hissed in my face, a blast of foul smelling air. I hissed back. The cat’s eyes widened, she licked her nose and forgot to bring the tip of her tongue back between her teeth.

Jan: How did you do that?

Deb: Lots of practice.

Bill and Sam were still up in each other’s faces and the display was beginning to have all of the merit of white noise. A young girl emerged from somewhere in the back of the house. She slipped into a place strategically between her mother and grandmother.

Jan: This is my youngest daughter, Jael. Jael, this is your Uncle Eliot’s girlfriend, Deb.

Girlfriend? What the hell was up with that? Girlfriend?? I’m… well… too old to be a girlfriend, anyway.

Jael: Hi. Is that Rainer?

She pointed at the baby. Rainer leaned toward her finger. I recognized the move and reached to quickly pull her hand away. Jael looked hurt.

Deb: His father usually thinks its funny when he bites, and he’s got a bite like a horse.

Jael gave Rainer a look, then turned her attention back to me.

Jael: How come Uncle Sam an’ Uncle Eliot are hollerin’ at each other?

I wasn’t sure if I should attempt to answer. Just about the time a lame excuse started to formulate itself in my head, Mrs. Gerard spoke.

Mrs. Gerard: Why are you and Jillian always hollering at each other?

Jael: Jillian’s a freak and I wanna shoot her in the face.

No wonder Bill had a soft spot for this one.

Jan: Jael! For shame!

Mrs. Gerard: Janice, Jillian’s an ass.

Jan: They’re sisters, Mother.

Mrs. Gerard: I seem to remember somebody who always wanted to smash her older brother over the head with a chair.

Mrs. Gerard’s expression was one of gentle reminiscence. Jael was fascinated.

Jael: Mama?

Jan: Grandmother’s just trying to be funny, Jael.

Mrs. Gerard: As I recall, you went through a phase when you were an ass most of the time, dear.

Jael: Mama?

Janice: Little pitchers!

If Jael hadn’t known before, she did then. She began to giggle. A sharp look from her grandmother silenced her.

Deb: Uncle Sam thinks Uncle Bill… er… Eliot is a freak, and Uncle Eliot would like to shoot Uncle Sam in the face.

Bill: Fuck you, man! Just fuck you!

Jan: Eliot, not in front of the child! Or Mama!

Mrs. Gerard: You think she’s never heard it before? I sure have.

Deb: Sam’s got this one on points. But Bill… I mean… Eliot only does that when Sam backs him into a corner.

Finally, we were seated around the table. Jan’s husband, Phil, was a pleasant man of compact build and sandy hair. He was the easygoing sort so often found married to a coiled spring. Her second daughter, Jada, was easing into her teen years. She had been blessed with her father’s disposition, which made her a favorite with everyone, and she seemed to regard her noisy little sister as a source of amusement. Jael clearly liked Jada.

Jillian was a different story altogether.

Phil: Decide to join us, Jilly?

I heard an edge in Phil’s voice.

Jillian: Daddy, I’ve asked you not to call me that anymore!

Sam looked sharply from parent to daughter. Bill’s movements slowed—he was listening.

Jan: Don’t start, Jillian, please.

This was an old battle. Apparently, the mother who’d wanted to leave society better than she’d found it had spawned a child who saw society as an end in itself—no improvement was needed. It was classic.

Jillian ignored her mother’s plea.

Jillian: My name is ‘Zhillianne’, Mother.

I noticed Mrs. Gerard drop her chin suddenly. She busied herself with encouraging Rainer to eat, and with trowelling him off when he preferred to splatter his food. I had the distinct feeling she was trying not to laugh.

Jan: Teenaged girls go through a phase when they experiment with their names.

Deb: I dunno. I never did.

Bill tipped me a fleeting grin.

Bill: Y’wanna tell us about it, Janeese?

Deb: Knock it off, Bill.

Jillian shot her mother, currently the fossil in her young life, a triumphant grin. Jan looked impotent and furious. Bill whanged me on the side of the leg and shifted gears in that scary way he had, to put the hammer down on the girl.

Bill: Except there’s no point, Jillian. None of it ever stuck, Jillian. Your mother wised up, Jillian.

With each sentence, he put brutal emphasis on the girl’s perfectly respectable name.

Bill: I don’t take that shit at home. I’ll be damned if I’ll watch your folks take it, considering I know how your mother was raised.

Jan turned a startled and grateful glance on Bill. She must not have been expecting a defense from that quarter. But I knew what he meant. Number Two, the Illustrated Man, had attempted to defy Bill more than once. Bill had let him off easily right up until the Thuglet came after him with a baseball bat. He hadn’t done it twice. Number One had lost the keys to his truck on account of something he’d said to me, and when I would have driven the boy to his father’s myself, Bill had taken all of my keys as well. Number One had been given a choice—hike the six miles home or find a warm corner of the barn until he could act something like the man he claimed he was. One had slept with the llamas. Number Three didn’t even try.

I noticed a number of things, since I was doing what I usually did in situations with new people—observing. Jan looked surprised. I got the feeling she and Bill had never been on particularly good terms, she didn’t know how to react. Sam was oblivious. He was accustomed to Contradiction Man. Jillian was putting on a big-ass sulk, obviously she was cutting Uncle Eliot out of the sunshine of her regard. Uncle Eliot didn’t give a tin shit. He was more comfortable in the dark, anyway.

Jan decided to change the subject. I had finally finished dissecting Rainer’s turkey—it wasn’t a terrible chore, since all I had to reduce it to individual muscle fibers—and I’d passed the plate to Grandma Gerard. Rainer had eaten all the green peas he was going to, and had flung the rest at Jael, now he could go to work on the potatoes and meat. Janice chose this as her entrance.

Jan: How old is he now? Nine months? I’m surprised you’re letting him eat table food. My babies were breastfed for the first year.

I figured as much. Another member of the Order of the Leaking Mammary.

Deb: He’s pretty limited as to what he can eat, not having more than two teeth yet. But if we dice it down enough, he can manage a few things.

Did this goofy woman think Rainer was my only child? I didn’t doubt she did, damn Bill wouldn’t mention anything unless he was being threatened and maybe not then, either.

Deb: He watches his older brother a lot.

Jan: You have another child? I had no idea.

Bill shoveled up a forkful of dressing, stopped it short of his mouth.

Bill: She’s got three. Oldest’ll be nineteen in a few more days, if he lives that long.

Jan: Oh, no! Is he ill or something?

Leave it to a yuppie—she was a yuppie, despite her best intentions.

Bill: Nope, but I’m gonna kill his ass if he doesn’t grow some respect.

Phil grinned broadly at Bill. Somebody had spoken for somebody else.

Sam: Damn, that’s an odd word coming out of your mouth, boy.

Bill speared a hunk of turkey. His jaw muscles were rigid.

Deb: Come on, Sammy, back off a little. Please?

Sam regarded me levelly for a moment. There was an imperceptible softening of his eyes, and he smiled, fleeting.

Sam: Okay, girl. Okay.

I patted Bill’s leg gently and then turned to the issue of serving myself.

Thanksgiving dinner had always been one of my favorite meals. Not because it represented family togetherness or any of that, but because I generally just liked the food. The year didn’t go by that I didn’t do something to make myself hugely uncomfortable.

First, I loaded up on mashed potatoes. I held the opinion that a person had to try to screw up potatoes.

I should reiterate here… food is not something I want surprising me. Mashed potatoes should be untainted by garlic, fruit has no business being anywhere near meat, ditto for sugar or syrup. I realized long ago that I was a persnickety eater, and it was this near inability to experiment with new dishes that exasperated some people and amused others.

Bill was forking huge mouthfuls of food into his face. Unless he had a particular attachment so something, it was all fuel to him.

Sam: Wonderful meal, kiddo.

Did he mean it? Who knew? He’d told me he wasn’t particularly close to Janice. Was it a show for Bill’s benefit?

Jael: Uncle Eliot?

Bill engulfed a dinner roll. I nudged him, hard. He jerked in his seat.

Bill: Hm?

Jael: What kind of job do you have?

Bill cast a calculating glance at his sister before he spoke.

Bill: Y’might call me… a policeman.

I had never personally observed apoplexy, but now I was very close to it. Sam was purple with rage and an inability to vent it around a mouthful of yams.

Jael: Like Uncle Sammy?

Bill: Nope. Sammy just farts around in my backyard.

Jan: Eliot! Language, please!

Phil: Shut the hell up, Janice.

Jan swallowed abruptly and changed tack.

Jan: Yes, Eliot, why don’t you tell us what you’ve been up to the last thirty years.

I bent hurriedly to my plate. The stuffing was making me vaguely uneasy. It tasted of apples. I had bit into a nut of some sort at one point, as well as a mushroom’s unnatural softness. And there were weird squishy things lurking amidst the breadcrumbs, squishy things I thought better to leave unidentified. I’d heard of people doing evil things to their stuffing, things like adding fruit and nuts and fungus and…mollusks.

Bill: Oh… call me… a freedom fighter.

Janice reared up like a racehorse. Bill had done it deliberately.

Jael: But I thought you said…

Bill: Depends on what I’m tryin’ to do at the time, girly-girl. Sometimes I start fights, sometimes I break em up.

Jael: What kind of fights?

Jan: Eliot!

Bill: Ugly ones, midget. You don’t wanna know. But a lot of what your mother yells about’d be lots worse if it weren’t for me an’ my friends.

Jan: Really.

Baby sister appeared to be utterly incensed.

Bill: Really. Sure as shit. And the name’s Bill, okay…? I haven’t been Eliot in so long I think I forgot who he was.

The sentence ended on a low and vaguely bitter note. I gave up on the food and touched his leg briefly.

Jan: Were you a freedom fighter in Vietnam, Bill?

Mrs. Gerard: Janice, that’s enough, please.

Not even Mom could head this one off. There had been a conflict of interests between these two for as long as anyone could remember, and Janice had slugged a button.

Phil: Shut up, let’s have a nice day, Jan.

Over in the Minnesota section there was dead silence. It seemed breathing had become optional. Bill was white, his eyes lasering into those of his sister. His entire body was rigid with the attempt to control himself. Even Sam had stopped eating and bullshitting with his brother-in-law to apply the full force of his stare to his sister. I laid a hand on Bill’s arm.

Deb: Billy, no. Not here.

He shook me off with no more regard than he would have shown a bug.

Bill: I was a member of the United States Armed Forces stationed in Vietnam. I was told we were fighting for the freedom of the indigenous population. I never stopped to decide just what I was, beyond a paid spear carrier. I know, you have a problem with that.

Jan: So you’re falling back on the same excuses as all the rest of the baby killers…

Bill cut a quick glance at Rainer. If I’d ever doubted his devotion to the child, those doubts would have been laid to rest right then and there. Rainer represented a lot of things to Bill… including the child that had been taken from him.

Sam: You don’t have any idea where he was or what he was up to, Janice. Any more than you know what I was doing.

Sam, coming to Bill’s defense… would wonders never cease. Or was this just a pale shadow of what a couple of youngsters had been to one another in the late fifties and early sixties.

Jan: Isn’t any wonder…

Bill: You and your goddamn ignorant liberal bullshit. Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today. What the fuck do you pretend to know about it, Janice?

It would do me no good to remind him that I was, essentially, a liberal.

Jan: I know that we didn’t belong there, that we interfered where we weren’t wanted, that we slaughtered innocent civilians. Anybody with a conscience—

Sam: Janice, you’re just showing everybody how little you know about anything. Soldiers and sailors go where and do what they’re told, whether they agree with it or not.

Jan: And that absolves you from responsibility? It’s ‘the price of freedom’?

Annapolis burst out, with a voice like a lash.

Bill: It’s the price of your freedom, yes. While you and your chicken-shit little undergraduate fuck-buddies sat on your cans and smoked dope and second-guessed the government and figured out just what was wrong with the world according to how high you were and how badly your underpants were bunched up in the crack of your ass, guys like Sam and me were off in the middle of no place making sure you had the opportunity to keep doing it.

Sam: Calm your ass down, Strannix.

Deb: Bill… maybe we’d better go.

Rainer whimpered, and when I turned to him I saw his grandmother leaning over, gently touching her cheek to the little eaglet’s dark hair, comforting him.

Bill: I leave, I’m not comin’ back. Mama, you and the girls and Phil are welcome at our place, but she stays the hell away from me.

Mrs. Gerard: El… I’m sorry, son… Bill, that’s your sister. You can’t mean that.

Bill: Why not? Punk, here, goes out of her way t’chap my ass, but not that way. She did, I’d be gone.

Phil: You have to try and excuse her, Bill…

Bill: I sure as shit don’t, boy. No chance in hell.

Deb: For your mom, Bill…

Bill: Back out, Punk. I mean it.

Sam: Change from within is usually the best kind, but it needs to have a secure place to happen. It needs order and some kind of protection form its own worse aspects as well as from people who’d take advantage of it for their own ends.

Phil: I know. Jan never made the connection. I was over there in ’71… I didn’t like a lot of what I was told to do. I was scared all of the time…

Sam: But you did it. Military personnel aren’t always even told what the big picture is. Go here, take this hill, stay there.

Jan: It doesn’t excuse the fact…

Sam: There’s nothing to excuse, Jan. It’s done.

Bill: Was it better when ya thought I was dead? Make it easier t’stomach if the poor little Charlies managed t’scrag your brother?

Bill rose and stalked away from the table, and out the door.

Sam: Haven’t heard him run his mouth like that in a while.

Deb: I’m sure it surprised him, too.

Mrs. Gerard: I’ll watch the baby, Deb, if you want to go to him.

Deb: No, he’ll just chase me off. He’s not hurt, he’s angry, and he’ll get over his mad faster if I leave him alone.

Jan: He should be ashamed.

Phil: He’s got nothing to be ashamed of, Janice. He had a job, and he did it, and he walked away alive. Wasn’t the kind of job dating Raquel Welch would’ve been, but it was his. Haven’t you got enough phony causes to support without beating that dead horse?

Jan: Phony causes?!?

Phil: What else would you call ‘Nuke the Baby Harp Seals’ and ‘People for the Ethical Treatment of Kathie Lee Gifford’ and ‘All Men are Evil Bastards (except for a few)’?

Jan: I don’t like it when you belittle the causes I support.

Phil: And I don’t like it when you make our guests uncomfortable.

Mrs. Gerard turned to her daughter. I felt sort of sorry for Jan, actually. Her husband and both brothers had reamed her, and now her mother was spooling up. It was a holiday, and nobody deserved to be triple-teamed on a holiday. But she’d started it.

Mrs. Gerard: I don’t know what possesses you sometimes, Janice…

Jan: Oh, Mother, not you too.

Mrs. Gerard: You don’t allow your daughters to interrupt you. Why do you interrupt me?

Jan dropped her chin briefly. Message received and understood.

Mrs. Gerard: I have no idea why you took such a dislike to your brothers…

Jan: But I don’t—

Phil: You’re interrupting again.

Jan: But, Mother, I don’t dislike Sam. I don’t even dislike Eliot. I just don’t understand them.

Mrs. Gerard: You don’t have to. You don’t even have to like them. You do have to accept them.

Jan turned a woebegone expression on her mother.

Mrs. Gerard: I know, I know. You’re not used to accepting things. You either change them or criticize them. Your way or the highway.

I stole a glance at Sam, but he gave his head an infinitesimal shake. Jan thought she’d been warned about interrupting.

Mrs. Gerard continued, more gently.

Mrs. Gerard: Even so, you’re a mother. You’ve accepted your children as they came to you, even that one—she’s nothing like you, hates causes, sets her father’s teeth on edge. I’d like to slap her stupid sometimes. Her youngest sister wants to murder her.

Jan: She’s my daughter. They all are.

Mrs. Gerard’s eyes sharpened, glittered behind her eyeglasses.

Mrs. Gerard: Bill is my son. I thought I’d lost him, but I was wrong. I got my boy back. I have a beautiful grandson. And I won’t stand for one of my children making it impossible for me to be with all of my children. Don’t make me say things you won’t like hearing.

Phil had a ‘this was a long time coming’ expression on his face, and Sam was busy with what remained of his food. Mrs. Gerard was coaxing cranberries down Rainer’s open moth. To look at the gathering, it was as though nothing had been said. I rose slowly to my feet.

Deb: Could I take you up on your offer, Mrs. Gerard?

Mrs. Gerard: To watch this young man? Of course.

Deb: If you’ll excuse me, then… I think I’ll go see if I can find Bill

Jael shoved her plate away from herself.

Jael: Can I come?

I hesitated a moment. Jael might not want to hear Bill if he got to badmouthing her mother. But she looked determined to go with me, so I decided to let her. Bill could just watch his mouth.

Deb: Ask your mother.

Sam nudged my leg and I reached to give his shoulder a squeeze. Jan nodded at Jael and the child hurried to join me. She was quiet until we’d got ourselves outside.

Jael: Should I call him Uncle Bill instead of Uncle Eliot?

Deb: Wouldn’t be a bad idea. He’s Bill Strannix, in his head, not Eliot Gerard.

Jael: Does he like kids?

Deb: Why don’t you ask him?

Jael: He looks grouchy.

I laughed for a minute.

Deb: Not surprising, Jael. A lot of the time, he’s grouchier than an old bear. But he seems to do okay with kids. We have three of them living at our house besides Rainer, and when he gets bored he takes my next oldest out and knocks him around the backyard.

Jael: How many kids do you have?

I explained the degrees of relation to the child while we headed for Bill’s tall figure. I went on to explain the complicated make-up of our family. She remained unimpressed until I told her we would have a year-round swimming pool by Christmas. Then she wanted to visit. By that point, we had caught up with Bill.

Jael: Aunt Deb said I could have a llama, Uncle Bill.

Bill: You can have every last one of the damn-blasted things, for all I care, girl.

Deb: He always says that. He doesn’t mean a word of it.

Bill: Hell, I don’t.

Jael: Are you two gonna have any more babies?

Bill: Next baby we have is gonna be a grandbaby.

Deb: Shut up, you goblin!

Bill: Truth hurts.

Deb: I’m not old enough!

Bill: Oh, yes you are.

I slugged him and only succeeded in hurting my hand. Jael was dancing from one side to the other, laughing at both of us, and in this way we ended up back at the house.

TO BE CONTINUED…