crackling capon to the dining-room table around four in the afternoon, his father sharpening his carving knife, his sister, flushed with importance and excitement, a red velvet ribbon in her hair, pouring each of them a glass of good red wine. It was also easy to imagine the good smells, the laughter as they sat down.
Easy to imagine… but probably a mistake.
It was, in fact, the most depressing Thanksgiving of his life. He drifted off into an unaccustomed early afternoon nap (no Physical Therapy because of the holiday) and dreamed an unsettling dream in which several candy-stripers walked through the IC ward and slapped turkey decals onto the life-support machinery and IV drips.
His mother, father, and sister had come over to visit for an hour in the morning, and for the first time he had sensed in Ellie an anxiousness to be gone. They had been invited over to the Callisons” for a light Thanksgiving brunch, and Lou Callison, one of the three Callison boys, was fourteen and “cute”. Her racked-up brother had become boring. They hadn’t discovered a rare and tragic form of cancer breeding in his bones. He wasn’t going to be paralysed for the rest of his life. There was no movie-of-the-week in him.
They had called him from the Callisons” around twelve-thirty and his father sounded a bit drunk—Dennis guessed he was maybe on his second bloody Mary and was maybe getting some disapproving looks from Mom. Dennis himself had just been finishing up his dietician-approved bluecarded Thanksgiving dinner—the only such dinner he had ever been able to finish in fifteen minutes—and he did a good job of sounding cheerful, not wanting to spoil their good time. Ellie came on the wire briefly, sounding giggly and rather screamy. Maybe it was talking to Ellie that had tired him out enough to need a nap.
He had fallen asleep (and had his unsettling dream) around two o’clock. The hospital was unusually quiet today, running on a skeleton staff. The usual babble of TVs and transistor radios from the other rooms was muted. The candy-striper who took his tray smiled brightly and said I she hoped he had enjoyed his “special dinner.” Dennis assured her that he had. After all, it was Thanksgiving for her, too.
And so he dreamed, and the dream broke up and became a darker sleep, and when he woke up it was nearly five o’clock and Arnie Cunningham was sitting in the hard plastic contour chair where his girl had sat only the day before.
Dennis was not at all surprised to see him there; he simply assumed that it was a new dream.
“Hi, Arnie,” he said. “How’s it hanging?”
“Hanging good,” Arnie said, “but you look like you’re still asleep, Dennis. Want some head-noogies? That’ll wake you up.”
There was a brown bag on his lap, and Dennis’s sleepy mind thought: Got his lunch after all. Maybe Repperton didn’t squash it as bad as we thought. He tried to sit up in the bed, hurt his back, and used the control panel to get into what was almost a sitting position. The motor whined. “Jesus, it’s really you!”
“Were you expecting Ghidrah, the Three-Headed Monster?” Arnie asked amiably.
“I was sleeping. I guess I thought I still was.” Dennis rubbed his forehead hard, as if to get rid of the steep behind it. “Happy Thanksgiving, Arnie.”
“You bet,” Arnie said. “Same to you. Did they feed you turkey with all the trimmings?”
Dennis laughed. “I got something that looked like those play-dinners that came with Ellie’s Happy-Time Cafeteria when she was about seven. Remember?”
Arnie put his cupped hands to his mouth and made ralphing noises. “I remember. What a gross-out.”
“I’m really glad you came,” Dennis said, and for a moment he was perilously close to tears. Maybe he hadn’t realized just how depressed he had been, He redoubled his determination to be home by Christmas. If he was here on Christmas Day, he’d probably commit suicide.
“Your folks didn’t come?”
“Sure they did,” Dennis said, “and they’ll be back again tonight—Mom and Dad will be, anyway—but it’s not the same. You know.”
“Yeah. Well, I brought some stuff. Told the lady downstairs I had your bathrobe.” Arnie giggled a little.
“What is that?” Dennis asked, nodding at the bag. It wasn’t just a lunchbag, he saw; it was a shopping bag.
“Aw, I raided the fridge after we et the bird,” Arnie said. “My mom and dad went around visiting their friends from the University—they do that every year on Thanksgiving afternoon. They won’t even be back until around eight.”
As he talked, he took things out of the bag. Dennis watched, amazed. Two pewter candle-holders. Two candles. Arnie slammed the candles into the holders, lit them with a matchbook advertising Darnell’s Garage, and turned off the overhead light. Then four sandwiches, clumsily wrapped in waxed paper.
“The way I recall it,” Arnie said, “you always said that scarfing up a couple of turkey sandwiches around eleven-thirty Thursday night was better than Thanksgiving dinner, anyway. Because the pressure was off.”
“Yeah,” Dennis said. “Sandwiches in front of the TV, Carson or some old movie. But, honest to God, Arnie, you didn’t have to—”
“Ali, shit, I haven’t even been around to see you in almost three weeks. Good thing for me you were sleeping when I came in or you probably would have shot me.” He tapped Dennis’s two sandwiches. “Your favourite, I think. White meat and mayo on Wonder Bread.”
Dennis got giggling at that, then laughing, then roaring. Arnie could see it hurt his back, but he couldn’t stop. Wonder Bread had been one of Arnie and Dennis’s great common secrets as children. Both of their mothers had been very serious about the subject of bread; Regina bought Diet-Thin loaves, with an occasional side-trip into the Land of Stone-Ground Rye. Dennis’s mother favoured Roman Meal and pumpernickel loaves. Arnie and Dennis ate what was given them—but both were secret Wonder Bread freaks, and more than one occasion they had pooled their money and instead of buying sweets they had gotten a loaf of Wonder and a jar of French’s Mustard. They would then slink out into Arnie’s garage (or Dennis’s tree-house, sadly demolished in a windstorm almost nine years before) and gobble mustard sandwiches and read Richie Rich comic books until the whole loaf was gone.
Arnie joined him in his laughter, and for Dennis that was the best part of Thanksgiving.
Dennis had been between room-mates for almost ten days, and so had the semi-private room to himself. Arnie closed the door and produced a six-pack of Busch beer from the brown bag.
“Wonders will never cease,” Dennis said, and had to laugh again at the unintentional pun,
“No,” Arnie said, “I don’t think they ever will.” He toasted
Dennis over the candles with a bottle of beer. “Prosit.”
“Live for ever,” Dennis responded. They drank.
After they had finished the thick turkey sandwiches, Arnie produced two plastic Tupperware pie-wedges from his apparently bottomless bag and prised off the lids. Two pieces of home-made apple pie rested within.
“No, man, I can’t,” Dennis said. “I’ll bust.”
“Eat,” Arnie commanded.
“I really can’t,” Dennis said, taking the Tupperware container and a fresh plastic fork. He finished the slice of pie in four huge bites and then belched. He upended the remainder of his second beer and belched again. “In Portugal, that’s a compliment to the cook,” he said. His head was buzzing pleasantly from the beer.
“Whatever you say,” Arnie responded with a grin. He got up, turned on the overhead fluorescent, and snuffed the candles. Outside a steady rain had begun to beat against the windows; it looked and sounded cold. And for Dennis, some of the warm spirit of friendship and real Thanksgiving seemed to go out with the candles.
“I’m gonna hate you tomorrow,” Dennis said. “I’ll probably have to sit on that john in there for an hour. And it hurts my back.”
“You remember the time Elaine got the farts?” Arnie asked, and they both laughed. “We teased her until your mother gave us holy old hell.”
“They didn’t smell, but they sure were loud,” Dennis said, smiling.
“Like gunshots,” Arnie agreed, and they both laughed a little—but it was a sad sort of laughter, if there is such a thing. A lot of water under the bridge. The thought that Ellie’s attack of the farts had happened seven years ago was somehow more unsettling than it was amusing. There was a breath of mortality in the realization that seven years could steal past with such smooth and unobtrusive ease.
