Scenes From a Thanksgiving

It’s Thanksgiving! Happy Thanksgiving! Now, I know Thanksgiving can be difficult for a lot of people especially if you’re LGBT. If Great Aunt Gertie doesn’t want to hear about your “lifestyle,” fuck her. After all, you -didn’t want to hear about her bunion surgery or her 1947 hysterectomy that caused her to lose all her hair, but you listen with your rictus smile and glazed over yes nodding politely. Mon doesn’t want your boyfriend at her Thanksgiving table well stay home. Make your own turkey for you and him—it’s not that hard. And while you’re at it why not invite the intern from work who can’t afford to go home for Thanksgiving. And the older divorced woman down the hall who is so pleasant.

Thanksgiving is about family but it doesn’t have to be the family you were born into or which you married into. Family is composed of the people it is not painful to be around. Family is made up of the people who support you. Who love you enough to let you be you.
 

I’m off to brine my turkey but below you will find an excerpt from Unbroken. It is one of my favorite chapters. In it, Lincoln takes Jose home for Thanksgiving for the first time. Feel free to tell me what you think of this chapter, by leaving a comment. Or share a Thanksgiving memory.
 

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving dinner at my mother’s was a ritual, an inescapable obligation. And a torment. My mother made it clear Jose wasn’t welcome, so we used to drive up from Washington together and he’d go to his mother and I’d go to mine. My mother didn’t want him there, mostly, I assumed, because she always invited the hapless daughters of her friends and various cousins’ friends to dinner. These poor girls were clearly invited for my benefit. Often the brighter ones looked unhappy, as if being brought together with me—this slightly effeminate, and wholly uninterested man, clearly an impossible match—was the best anyone thought they could do.
 
This particular Thanksgiving, Jose insisted on accompanying me. Given what had happened at his mother’s, and that we hadn’t been to Sunday dinner since, I wasn’t surprised when he invited himself along. Fed up with my mother’s treatment of him, and determined that if there was no place for him, then I would make a place for him, or give up mine, I agreed. I did not tell my mother I would be bringing Jose to dinner.
 
My father answered the door. He looked surprised to see Jose but simply said hello.
 
“Is that Lincoln?” my mother called from the kitchen. “Come in here. I have a special guest I want you to meet.”
 
“Oh good,” I called heading for the kitchen, Jose in tow. “I have a special guest, too.”
 
I walked into the kitchen. My mother’s expression immediately darkened when she saw Jose.
 
“I brought Jose along,” I said, and kissed her cheek. “I knew you wouldn’t mind.”
 
I glanced at the young woman beside her, who was bent over a bowl, her hands working furiously at some task. Spindly and hesitant, she looked like an exotic, upended bird in purple feathers and pleats, her upswept hair like a great bird’s nest atop her head. Silver bracelets striking, she perched on the edge of a stool. I realized she was shelling peas. My mother introduced us—she was aptly named Alouetta Byrd—then, grudgingly went into the dining room to set a place for Jose.
 
Alouetta looked at me carefully, through beady, mascaraed eyes, as if I were a plump worm washed up from the earth during the first heavy rain of spring after a long dry winter. Jose put his arm around me, his left hand clasping my right shoulder lightly, in a casual gesture that carried with it the possessiveness of long intimacy.
 
“Alouetta,” he said. “Is that French?”
 
She looked at him for the first time. Her eyes strayed back to where his hand lay on my shoulder. “Yes. I’m from Louisiana originally,” she said, shelling peas.
 
Later, on my way to the bathroom, I noticed my mother had produced place cards from…somewhere; her arrangement seated Jose as far away from me as possible. When I returned to the living room I whispered to Jose, “You will not be happy with the seating arrangements.” He immediately excused himself.
 
When he came back, he sat on the sofa beside me and smiled.
 
Alouetta, unnerved by Jose’s barely concealed hostility, and my own indifference, self-consciously wandered around the living room, examining the spines of the books on the shelves and picking up the family photos that dotted every surface like punctuation in a story of a family. She picked up a picture of me at age five.
 
“Oh! Lincoln is that you?”
 
“It is,” I said.
 
“Oh my,” she chirped. “Look at all those curls! You look like a girl!”
 
My mother tensed. My father and brothers, pretending to be engrossed in the football game on TV, acted as if they hadn’t heard her comment. Alouetta, realizing her mistake, put down the picture as if it had burned or bitten her. Turning to my mother she said brightly, “My, Mrs. de Chabert, there are certainly a lot of pictures of you!”
 
“What do you mean?” my mother asked darkly. “There are pictures of other people.”
 
“Yes, but you’re in those as well.”
 
I stifled a laugh. My father and brothers, refusing to get involved, without taking their eyes off the TV screen, talked loudly to each other about whatever had just happened on the football field. Jose looked at a picture of my parents on the end table beside him.
 
“Hey,” he whispered to me, “your parents look alike. Do you think we’ll begin to look alike?”
 
“No,” I whispered back. “They’ve always looked alike. They’re actually related somehow—though no one is quite sure how.”
 
“I can’t imagine marrying someone who looked like me,” Jose said. “What would be the point of that?”
 
Given my mother’s narcissism, I didn’t find it surprising she had fallen in love with a man who looked like her.
 
“I used to wish I looked like you,” I said.
 
“Me? Why?”
 
“Because I used to think you were the handsomest boy in the world.”
 
“And now?”
 
“Now I think you’re the handsomest man in the world.” I glanced around then leaned in and kissed him quickly. My mother caught the movement and turned her attention on us.
 
“Hey,” she said loudly, “What are you two plotting over there?”
 
Everyone turned to look at us.
 
“Jose, move over so Alouetta can sit down,” my mother commanded, then excused herself to return to the kitchen. Jose scooted closer to me, forcing Alouetta to sit next to him rather than me as my mother had intended. She perched on the edge of the sofa and leaned around him to speak to me. Jose sat back stiffly and, ignoring us both, stared at the TV. Suddenly he turned to her.
 
“Alouetta—such a pretty name,” he said. “It’s from that children’s song isn’t it?” He started to sing: “Alouette, gentille alouette, je te plumerai…”
 
Alouetta stiffened. “That song,” she said, “is horrible. It’s about a lark that has her feathers, eyes and beak plucked because she woke someone with her singing!”
 
Jose, leaned toward me. “Oops,” he whispered cheerfully in my ear.
 
“Dinner’s ready,” my mother trilled.
 
“It’s show time,” Jose said, rising and tugging me to my feet.
 
I was startled when he sat next to me. I looked at him questioningly and he turned the place card so I could see his name. Seated directly opposite me, Alouetta looked distinctly displeased.
 
My mother came in with the turkey and stopped short when she saw Jose sitting next to me.
 
“Oh dear,” she exclaimed. “My place cards must have gotten mixed up. Jose, you’re supposed to be at the other end of the table.”
 
“Oh, Mrs. De Chabert, everyone is already seated and comfortable. Let’s not make everyone move.”
 
Their mutual dislike was palpable. My mother, who does not like to be challenged, conceded victory and sat at her usual place opposite my father. My father glared at us as he carved the turkey.
 
“We should say grace,” Jose said suddenly as everyone started to pass food. He took my hand, and then grasped the hand of my brother who sat on his left, forcing everyone to stop passing and receiving food so they could take the hand of the person next to them. His mumbled prayer went on and on; went on so long, in fact, that I kicked him under the table. He mumbled, “Amen” and everyone unclasped hands and picked up their forks. He continued to hold my hand though, until I tugged it away as discreetly as I could.
 
Across the table from me, Alouetta continued to stare at the spot where our hands had been. Looking at Jose, she asked, “How do you two know each other?”
 
“They were roommates in college,” my mother quickly answered.
 
Jose cut a piece of turkey with slow deliberation, and brought it to his mouth.
 
“Yes, he said. “Also we’re lovers.” He began to chew savagely.
 
My father dropped his fork and my brother started to laugh, but caught sight of my mother’s face and quickly stifled his mirth.
 
We left before dessert. On the way home in the car, I said, “Well that could have gone better!”
 
“I don’t think your brother likes me.”
 
“Which one?” I asked
 
“I don’t know. I can’t tell them apart. Rosencrantz, I think.”
 
I wouldn’t have been able to tell them apart either, except one was vaguely hostile, while the other—the younger one—vacillated between indifference and aggressive neutrality. I thought of him as Little Mister Switzerland. Jose, however, always referred to them interchangeably as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
 
“I think you mean Guildenstern,” I said, “but, it doesn’t matter. I like you.”
 
He flashed me a smile in the dark and reached for my hand, then brought it to his lips. “I love you, Spaceman.”
 
“Me, too.”
 
“I can’t believe your mother had the balls to try and set you up with that pathetic bitch right in front of me!”
 
“Hey look!” I pointed, hoping to distract him, “The Dairy Queen is open. Come on, I’ll buy you an ice cream.”
 
We parked and I got him a cone, refusing one for myself.
 
“I’ll just have a taste of yours,” I said on the way back to the car.
 
When he brought it to his mouth, I leaned in and licked it from the other side. His eyes danced in the dashboard light and we each licked the ice cream until our tongues met in a cold sticky kiss.
 
“Hah! I’d like to send your mother a picture of this,” he said.
***
 
 
In the mood for more holiday stories? Then check out the short story collection Boughs of Evergreen, which includes holiday stories from 23 authors including me. My contribution is a Christmas story, “The Christmas Present.”
 
Best of all the proceeds from the sale of Boughs of Evergreen goes to The TrevorProject, the leading U.S. organization providing crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) young people ages 13-24.

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