Page 62 of Karma Kitty Christmas
The tea set is lovely. I can’t lie. I’m a little jealous I won’t be able to get him one of those. You couldn’t have sat down with Nonna once in a while? She barely remembers you.
How could you have not gotten excited over that vest? The Halloween one? I love that thing. I want him to make one for Christmas and Valentines Day and Pride. What were you doing in your life that you couldn’t have celebrated something he did so well?
And finally,I wish you’d had more time so you could have known the Isaac you were missing. He’s practically luminous right now. Did you know what you had? Who you loved? Or did you just want a stabilizer, somebody in your home to balance out the beige deadweight of your own damage?
That last one was uncharitable, and Luca tried to regret it, but he thought of the wonder Isaac had shown in the last six months, the blossoming of his heart, of his personal confidence. It had been so easy to nurture that bloom. Coffee and a bagel in the morning, earnest conversation at night. Laughing at jokes. Cuddling during movies. Bantering with Allegra and holding her hand when she was worried or scared. Liking Isaac’s friends.Being interested in his students. Every day, Luca wondered how anyone could have somebody as amazing as Isaac in their life and not celebrate it.
Celebrate being the keyword, he thought, particularly when Isaac had tentatively suggested Thanksgiving at their place (theirplace—he’d saidtheirplace) while inviting Nonna and Pop Pop.
It was going to be small—Roxy and her family were going to Roxy’s in-laws’ house, but Jimmy Bob and his niece were on their own, since most of their family lived in Bakersfield, so they were coming over around three and bringing a pie to go with the other three on the counter.
Seven people—a large turkey for leftovers (Isaac had planned), along with the basics: mashed potatoes, green beans, stuffing, salad, homemade bread, sweet potato casserole, and balsamic fried brussels sprouts.
The sheer length of the list had made Luca and Allegra gasp and then try to talk Isaac down a little. Nonna could bring green beans, Allegra had said. Who the hell ate brussels sprouts for Thanksgiving? Luca said.
But Isaac had insisted that most of it could be made the day before and then heated up on Thanksgiving.
Luca said one man could not possibly do that, and since his sister was about to pop and needed to sit and knit and look glowy (and exhausted and weepy, but he wasn’t going to say that while she was in the kitchen during this discussion), Isaac absolutelyhadto let Luca help him.
Isaac had stared at him, a little bewildered. “Help?” he asked. “You’re raising this ruckus because you want tohelp?”
Luca stared back. “Well, it’s not because I’m going to watch football on TV and listen to you cook, Isaac. That was a helluva lot of work you outlined there. You can either cook all that and let me help, or cook less of it and let me help less, but one wayor another, I’m not sending you into the kitchen like that’s what you do!”
Isaac’s smile had gotten a little wobbly. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. I forgot, you know, I’d have help. Todd had—we both had—a lot of expectations for Thanksgiving, you know. There was always a list. He’d clean the day before. I’d cook for two days, just for the two of us, but I’d cook enough for leftovers and give them to Roxy and her family, and he’d yell…. But this is for lots of us. It’ll be fine.” He nodded.
Luca swallowed, and glanced helplessly at Allegra, who was swallowing too, her eyes shiny and bright, and he opened his mouth to say, “Of course I’ll help, Isaac,” but what came out was… less than optimal.
“Oh my God, Isaac.Fuckthat guy. Fuck him. I hate him. I—Jesus Christ, baby—you’re so much more than unpaid labor!”
And then he realized he’d said it. He’d said what he’d been thinking. Six months of trying so hard not to badmouth Isaac’s late husband, and he’d just told the dead to fuck off.
Isaac and Allegra were both staring at him, and Isaac’s eyes were watery, and Luca had made his boyfriend cry five days before Thanksgiving, when even he could see they needed to go shopping so they could get this circus on the hay.
“Oh hell,” he said, the shocked silence in the room more than he could bear. “I’m going to go mow the lawn.”
Isaac’s backyard was as large as the front, and though Isaac had a garden service in place to keep the lawn green and the shrubs watered, Luca had taken over some of those duties. Isaac had protested at first, but since moving out of Nonna and Pop Pop’s, Luca had been in one crappy apartment after another. He’d always dreamed of having a nice landscaped yard of his own to take care of, and while the yard service did a nice job keeping all the plants pretty and healthy and weeded, mowing the lawn once a week justfeltright.
And it saved Isaac twenty bucks a week for yarn, which had sort of been the selling point for Isaac letting him do it.
The mower was electric, and not as loud and obnoxious as some. By the time Luca was done—and it took a good hour to do, because the backyard was pretty big—Isaac was outside on the little concrete apron, sitting on a painted wicker patio chair, wrapped in a blanket, and knitting. The patio chair had been dragged out into the sun, because after October, they’d pulled everything back under a protective overhang to shield the patio set from all but the fiercest rain.
Luca killed the lawnmower and walked up to the table, taking the full glass of iced tea and gulping it down. It was only around sixty-five degrees, but he was thirsty and grateful for the care.
He set the glass down with an unintentional clatter and sighed.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Don’t be,” Isaac said, keeping his eyes on his knitting. It was something… complicated, a hat with a motif on it of some sort. The hat itself was a deep blue, but there were other colors—yellow, red, brown—that went into the making of the thing. Pretty. Isaac always made pretty.
“I shouldn’t say that,” Luca continued doggedly. “I… it’s not my business—”
“Of course it’s your business,” Isaac said, finally setting the yarn in his lap and glancing up. “You’ve been cleaning up his mess for the last six months, Luca—you think you don’t have a right to be mad when something he did years ago suddenly trips you up like a spoke in a bike wheel?”
Luca stared up at that perfectly blue sky—Isaac blue, he would think of it forever ever after.
“Yeah, but it’s not fair I should yell atyouabout it. That’s like making you suffertwice. Once through it and once through me. It was dumb. I’m sorry.”
Isaac gave him a rather gamine smile. Under the blanket, there was a… disquieting movement, and the cat stuck his head over the edge of Isaac’s lap and meowed loudly before burrowing back in.
