The Summer We Said Goodbye [Installment 18]

Thanksgiving

Billy wasn’t entirely wrong, but I wasn’t ditching them. “Ditching” was too harsh a word and implied a level of consent I no longer had.

At least, that’s the way I felt watching him disappear with Nate around the corner.

Under normal circumstances, it would have been the three of us heading off for an afternoon at the movies.

But there was nothing normal about this or any other weekend anymore. And the onslaught of the holidays, with Thanksgiving leading the way, had only forced me to confront it head-on.

Not only was Thanksgiving the first major holiday without my father, but it was also the first not celebrated at our house. And that was no coincidence.

My sister Cindy had spent weeks badgering my mom about hosting the dinner herself, claiming that because it was such a stressful undertaking, it would be too much for her to handle this year.

My mom initially resisted but eventually broke and agreed to pass the baton “this time.”

But when I awoke at 4:00 am on the morning of as I always did and made my way to the kitchen, I had a sinking feeling that “this time” would be no one-off.

No bird was roasting in the oven and there was none of the excitement or aromas signaling something magical afoot.

Because my mom had already dispensed with prepping the dishes my sister had assigned her, she wasn’t even up yet. And the house was lifeless and dark.

So I crawled back into bed and tossed and turned until I heard her puttering around in the kitchen.

Thanksgiving dinner at our house had always been a midday affair. But Cindy hadn’t scheduled hers until the evening. So I had the whole day to myself.

There’s nothing quieter or lonelier than a holiday without plans. And I counted down the interminable minutes until it was time for us to go.

When we finally did arrive at my sister’s, it was to little or no fanfare. The Bears had a fourth and goal to go at the Packers’ five-yard line, and all eyes were glued to my brother-in-law’s new 25-inch Zenith Chromacolor II TV.

Cindy had assembled quite the gathering between her in-laws and neighbors, and the Chablis and Old Styles were flowing liberally.

Dinner was buffet-style with me relegated to a card table in the playroom with my nieces and nephews for a meal that was as chaotic as it was short.

Within no time, we were back on the road headed home with some foil-wrapped turkey as our sole souvenir. Without saying a word, my mom readied herself for bed, leaving me to channel surf on my own in the den.

The emptiness of the house pressed down around me. It was an old, drafty American Foursquare prone to creaks. The wind knocked mercilessly at the windows, and I sought refuge in my dad’s recliner, pulling my mom’s crocheted throw up to my chin to stay warm.

Thanks to a recent growth spurt it was no longer big enough, and I had to curl into a tight ball, too chicken to abandon the safety of the TV’s glow for the trek back to my room for a real blanket.

There I lay frozen in place like a sentry peering into the darkness, distilling every scratch, rattle, and bump for anything that might be of an unnatural or — heaven help me — human origin.

Sometime later, I awoke to the Star-Spangled Banner and an American flag waving on the TV.

I flipped it off and fell back into a fitful sleep as the wind continued to howl outside.

Next thing I knew, it was dead quiet and the room was infused with a red glow. It wasn’t the typical pink of dawn so I got up to investigate.

My dad’s voice echoed in my head as I stood at the window.

Red skies at night, sailor’s delight

Red skies at morn, sailors take warn

He’d been a captain in the Navy during World War II and always uttered those words whenever the sky turned red at sunset or, more rarely, at dawn, as it had this morning.

If not for his words, I would have reveled in the beauty of the crimson sky before me. Instead, they only illuminated — brilliantly if ominously — the truth of the moment.

I had to get out of there.

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You can find an archive of past installments here.