Chapter 30
Of all the holidays on the calendar Thanksgiving was his favorite. It
was the only one that had not been tainted over the years by his changing beliefs. He had lost his feel for Christmas and Easter when he had started to question his Christianity. The Viet Nam war had cost him the 4th of July. He had never really loved Halloween or New Years. As far as Ron was concerned the year began in September anyway. Summer was the conclusion of the year. But Thanksgiving had always remained.
He liked the idea of being thankful. He loved the feast. He loved the football games. He loved the way that Marjorie had always respected the spirit of the holiday by inviting people to their house who had nowhere else to go. Aunt Dotty had taught him that Thanksgiving was a holiday that began in Massachusetts and that it always reminded her that she was actually a New England woman by birth.
That Thursday morning he showered and dressed happily. He wanted to call his father and wish him a good holiday, but that was another casualty of Viet Nam. When he started spouting his radical politics and Ron’s half brother and sister had begun to listen to his thoughts, Ron’s father had told him that he wasn’t welcome there anymore. That was the last real conversation that he and his Dad had. That had been over five years now.
“Happy Thanksgiving, Ronald,” said his mother. They kissed quickly. She had started setting the holiday table which started in the dining room and stretched into their living room. George was galloping around the house setting up a bar. He looked excited but glum. “I don’t know who you think is going to drink all that alcohol,” said Marjorie.
George stopped what he was doing. “It’s a holiday. People are allowed to have a drink on the holiday, Marge.”
“I don’t see why they need to,” said Marjorie. She curled her lips and crinkled her nose and shook her head slightly as if she was throwing off a bad odor.
“Who all is coming?” said Ron.
“Reverend Cooly and his wife and Reverend Pascal and his friend,” said Marjorie happily. “And of course your Aunt Mina. I asked the tenants upstairs, but they have someplace to go.”
“Yeah,” said George. “She wanted to take out an ad in the paper but the town already has a soup kitchen.”
“Maybe you should start drinking now,” said Marjorie. “At least then you’ll be able to talk when the company gets here.”
George shook his head. “What would I say to these people?”
“Of course, if it’s not about cards, or booze, or crime, or the price of vegetables, what would you have to contribute? Why do you think I depend on Ronald so much? At least he knows how to carry on a conversation.”
Ron tried to change the mood. “If they are anything like the nuns in the convent George, they’ll go through quite a few bottles of everything.”
George laughed and returned to his preparations.
Marjorie straightened and put her hand on her hip and gave Ron a look of betrayal. “They aren’t Catholics who live all shut away from everything,” she said. She paused and looked over at George and then back at Ron. “Can we please just have a nice dinner? Is that really too much to ask from the both of you?”
Ron moved into the kitchen. The aromas were outstanding. The roasting turkey filled the house and the oven made everything so warm that George had opened the windows. Ron loved having the windows open in a warm room on a cold day. It was extravagant but the feel of the breeze reminded him of warm weather. Chipper came over and wagged his tail and Ron crouched down to pet him. “I’m gonna take the dog for a walk,” he said.
He leashed Chipper and they went out the back door and through the aluminum gate and down the street. Chipper never got taken for a walk unless Ron was there and the excitement of new smells and freedom gave him a prance to his step. They walked across Bloomfield Avenue and down to the glen, where Ron took the leash off and let Chipper roam. It was their secret that he did this. George would have been horrified that he was going to get into trouble for having a dog off of a leash and Marjorie would have been worried that he was going to run away and get hit by a car again.
Ron talked to the dog as they walked. “It doesn’t seem the same now that Aunt Dottie is gone, does it Chip?”
The dog stopped at the mention of her name. He raised his head and looked around for a few sad seconds and not seeing her, returned to his olfactory cornucopia. Ron smiled and then felt the dried leaves crunch under his feet like the spirits of the dead.
He wondered if there was an afterlife. The resounding no in his brain was painful. It was so much easier to think of his aunt and his grandmother someplace happy and beyond pain. He wondered if that was where the idea of a heaven came from. There had to be some reward for being good. Otherwise, why didn’t people just spend their lives doing what they wanted to do? Wasn’t that the whole purpose of hell, to keep people in line? It wasn’t enough to say that a person would live on in the hearts of others. What kind of real comfort was that if there was nothing about it which a person could actually enjoy? They reached the end of the Glen and Ron leashed Chipper and started back across the street.
Ron held the leash so that it just slacked slightly across the dog’s back, just enough for him to keep his pace and not feel the jerk of confinement. He loved Chipper. It was true that George had announced that it was his dog and then failed to housebreak him and slapped him in the mouth far too many times, so that Chipper had developed that self defensive urge to bite. But the one time that he had bitten Ron, he had with some strange instinct, crouched down on the floor and held his hand up to Chipper’s mouth and said pleadingly, “no.” That formed a strong pact. Chipper never bit him again and Ron never ever slapped the dog. They turned up the asphalt driveway and through the metal gate and the leash was off, Chipper romped for a few seconds and then came wagging up the backstairs and into the house.
Glimpsing down through the lower windows into the basement and flashed on how he had stayed down there with Chipper when George had taken to chaining the dog there because he could not stop him from urinating in the house. Ron would ask each night if Chipper was allowed out of the basement and George would say, “Not tonight.” Ron would nod and take his plate from the table and walk downstairs to share his dinner with the dag and sit by him. This move, of course, had driven Marjorie totally insane and she would peck at George about her son eating in the basement until George would inevitably throw up his hands and say, “Do whatever you want.” They moved passed the pantry and up into the kitchen where Ron saw his father, sitting with Marjorie and George, having a holiday drink.
“Hello, Ronald,” said his father with slick gentleness that did not withhold a hint of judgment.
Ron looked up and saw at once that his mother looked younger and sat with a fresh glass of cider in front of her and seems to be glowing. George was sitting back. Ron was not sure what George was seeing.”Hello Dad.”
Ron felt like he was instantly transported back to the age of fourteen or even younger, back to that time in his life when he worshipped his father and everything that his father did. His dad was now sitting in front of a cut crystal glass into which George had poured two fingers of Scotch over two ice cubes. He had also made himself one.
“Come and sit at the table, Ronald,” said Marjorie. Ron felt himself moving and sitting. Chipper followed and sat by his side with a look of moral support. “Now, it’s time for the two of you to stop your foolishness and just make up,” said Marjorie.
Now the heat in the room was making Ron sweat, but he resented the way that his mother had put him on the spot and with of all people, his father. “What would you like us to make up, Mom?”
“There’s no reason to be shitty,” said Marjorie.
Ron met his father’s blue eyes with a steady look from his own hazel eyes. He felt the fluttering inside that he always felt when he looked at his father. “It’s good to see you Dad. I hope everything is going well.”
“I hear that you have a job teaching,” said Harry. And then unable to help himself, added “So I guess that you finally finished school.”
Ron eyes flashed a look of defiance. “I may go back. You can never learn enough, you know.”
Harry turned to Marjorie, “Twenty-five years old and still in school.”
And then his eyes panned back to Ron. “You can’t learn everything from books, Ronald.”
“Thanks Dad.”
“Now the two of you just stop it right now.” Marjorie could see her plan swirling around the toilet bowl and just about ready to be flushed.
“How are Carol and Tim?” said Ron, referencing the two children that his father had from his second marriage, the two children that Ron had been told to stay away from.
“They are great. Timmy is playing basketball at Bloomfield High School and Carol graduated from East Orange Catholic last year and is learning to be a lab technician.”
Ron smiled. “That’s great Dad. Tell them that I said, hello.” Ron stopped himself before he added something about unless you think it’s too dangerous for them to hear my name mentioned.
“Why don’t you tell then yourself?” said Harry.
“And just how am I supposed to do that, Dad?”
“You’re welcome at the house anytime.”
“Since when?” said Ron.
“I never said that you couldn’t come there, Ron. I said that I didn’t want you filling their heads with your crazy ideas.” Ron knew that was a lie but it didn’t matter to him.
“Yeah, I know. Thinking that the war was a tragedy and that Nixon was a monster were really crazy ideas. Almost as crazy as thinking that black people were people, huh Dad?”
“Do the two of you always have to be like this?” said Marjorie with desperation in her voice. She looked at Ron and pleaded with her eyes, tried to reach that place where he knew how important this was to her. Bur Ron was unreachable now. He and his father were locked into each other with a gaze that was unbreakable.
“If you had seen the things that I have seen, Ronald, you would understand why I feel the way that I do.”
Ron knew that his father was in and out of some of the seediest bars in Newark New Jersey, a city whose very name struck fear into the minds of some suburban people. He had to admit, he had not seen the things that his father had seen. “Poverty and discrimination make people do very strange things Dad. It’s not like everything became great when the Civil War was over, you know?”
“I’m not one of your students, Ron.” said his father with a steely timbre in his voice.
“No Dad, my students are mostly Black and Hispanic.”
“Bunch of animals,” said George, trying to show solidarity with Harry.
Anger flashed across Ron’s face. “You know what I have found George? The Hispanic families are very much like the Italian ones. They love their culture. They take care of their kids. They resent anyone who is not the same as they are and they like loud meals. And to top it all off they are Catholic.”
George reddened. To his way of thinking he had just been called a spic. Harry could see this wasn’t going the way that Marjorie had said that it would. “Well I guess that I better get going. Ronald, you are welcome to come over whenever you want. Carol and Tim would love to see you.”
“Really?” said Ron. “Where do they think I’ve been?’
Harry didn’t answer but stood and put on his coat. Marjorie automatically stood up to. So did George. Ron sat there. He really didn’t want his father to go, but what could he do about it now?
Marjorie walked Harry to the door and when she came back her face was set into a hard mask. She walked into the kitchen where Ron was petting Chipper and waiting for what he knew was coming. “Why are you such a bastard?”
Ron didn’t answer.
“Your father is a proud man. Do you think that it was easy for him to come here and apologize to you?”
“Did I miss the apology?”
“Him coming here was an apology. He knows that he’s made some mistakes. But he is a good man and he is your father!”
“Makes you wonder about nature and nurture doesn’t it?”
“I’m not as smart as you are, you little bastard, so I guess I’m going to have to ask you to explain that to me.”
“What it means is, Mom, can you imagine what it would have been like if he had stuck around to raise me?”
Marjorie was taken aback. That was not what she had expected him to say. Harry would have been very hard on Ron and she knew how free he was with his hands. She regretted a lot of things about her failed marriage with Harry, but seeing Ron and then trying to imagine how he would have turned out with even more of Harry’s influence on him was not one of them, even if he did need a good clout in the head once in a while. She knew that Harry would have been jealous of his brain.