Page 74 of Still Me
But no trick-or-treaters in our building. We’re not really in the kind of neighborhood where people knock on each other’s doors. Maybe they’d call out to each other’s drivers. Also they’d have to get past the night man and he can be kind of scary in himself.
It’s Thanksgiving next. They’d barely cleared away the ghost silhouettes before the adverts for turkey started. I’m not entirely sure even what Thanksgiving’s about—mostly eating, I think. Most holidays here seem to be.
I’m fine. I’m sorry I haven’t called much. Give my love to Dad and Granddad.
I miss you.
Lou x
Mr. Gopnik, newly sentimental about family gatherings in the way that recently divorced men often are, had decreed that he wanted a Thanksgiving dinner at the apartment with his closest family present, capitalizing on the fact that the former Mrs. Gopnik was headed to Vermont with her sister. The prospect of this happy event—along with the fact that he was still working eighteen-hour days—was enough to send Agnes into a persistent funk.
Sam sent me a text message on his return—twenty-four hours after his return, actually—to say he was tired and this was harder than he’d thought. I answered with a simpleyesbecause in truth I was tired too.
I ran with Agnes and George early in the morning. When I didn’t run I woke in the little room with the sounds of the city in my ears and a picture of Sam, standing in my bathroom doorway, in my head. I would lie there, shifting and turning, until I was tangled in the sheets, my mood blackened. The whole day would be tarnished before it had even started. When I had to get up and out in my running shoes, I woke up already on the move, forced to contemplate other people’s lives, the pull in my thighs, the cold air in my chest, the sound of my breathing in my ears. I felt taut, strong, braced to bat away whatever crap the day was likely to greet me with.
And that week there was significant crap. Garry’s daughter dropped out of college, putting him in a foul mood, so that every time Agnes left the car he would rail about ungrateful children who didn’t understand sacrifice or the value of a working man’s dollar. Ilaria was reduced to constant mute fury by Agnes’s more bizarre habits, such as ordering food she subsequently decided she didn’t want to eat, or locking her dressing room when she wasn’t in it, so that Ilaria couldn’t put her clothes away. “She wants me to put her underwear in the hallway? She wants her sexytime outfits on full display to the grocery man? What is she hiding in there anyway?”
Michael flitted through the apartment like a ghost, wearing the exhausted, harried expression of a man doing two jobs—and even Nathan lost some of his equanimity and snapped at the Japanese cat lady when she suggested that the unexpected deposit in Nathan’s shoe was the resultof his “bad energy.” “I’ll give her bad ruddy energy,” he grumbled, as he dropped his running shoes into a bin. Mrs. De Witt knocked on our door twice in a week to complain about the piano, and in retaliation Agnes put on a recording of a piece called “The Devil’s Staircase,” and turned it up loud just before we went out. “Ligeti,” she sniffed, checking her makeup in her compact as we headed down in the lift, the hammering, atonal notes climbing and receding above us. I quietly texted Ilaria in private and asked her to turn it off once we had gone.
The temperature dropped, the sidewalks became even more congested, and the Christmas displays began to creep into the shopfronts, like a gaudy, glittering rash. I booked my flights home with little anticipation, no longer knowing what kind of welcome I’d be returning to. I called my sister, hoping she wouldn’t ask too many questions. I needn’t have worried. She was as talkative as I had ever known her, chatting about Thom’s school projects, his new friends from the estate, his football prowess. I asked her about her boyfriend and she grew uncharacteristically quiet.
“Are you going to tell usanythingabout him? You know it’s driving Mum nuts.”
“Are you still coming home at Christmas?”
“Yup.”
“Then I might introduce you. If you can manage not to be a complete eejit for a couple of hours.”
“Has he met Thom?”
“This weekend,” she said, her voice suddenly a little less confident. “I’ve kept them separate till now. What if it doesn’t work? I mean, Eddie loves kids but what if they don’t—”
“Eddie!”
She sighed. “Yes. Eddie.”
“Eddie. Eddie and Treena. Eddie and Treena sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G.”
“You are such a child.”
It was the first time I had laughed all week. “They’ll be fine,” I said. “And once you’ve done that you can take him to meet Mum and Dad. Then you’ll be the one she keeps asking about wedding bells and I can take a Maternal Guilt Trip Vacation.”
“It’s ‘holiday.’ You’re not American. And like that’s ever going to happen. You know she’s worried you’ll be too grand to talk to them at Christmas? She thinks you won’t want to get in Daddy’s van from the airport because you’ve got used to riding in limousines.”
“It’s true. I have.”
“Seriously, what’s going on? You’ve said nothing about what’s happening with you.”
“Loving New York,” I said, smooth as a mantra. “Working hard.”
“Oh, crap. I’ve got to go. Thom’s woken up.”
“Let me know how it goes.”
“I will. Unless it goes badly, in which case I’ll be emigrating without saying a word to anyone ever for the rest of my life.”
“That’s our family. Always a proportionate response.”
