“None. I was given very specific instructions.”
“How about now?” I fish into my wallet and produce a fifty.
“I can’t take a bribe.”
“Consider it a tip.”
He gives me a pained smile. “No, but thank you all the same, Mr. Prince. Enjoy your stay.”
Maxim’s refusal, compounded with Sarah’s email and Bentley’s bad advice, ticks my fuck-off-o-meter to full blow. If I were half the bitch the tabloids make me out to be, I’d text Dad and have Maxim on the next bus to Unemployment Town just for the hell of it, just tofeel something, but I let it go due to the sheer fact that my hands are already too frostbitten to take out my phone. Not that it’s of any use to me without service.
I stand there in the middle of the muddy driveway, alone and optionless. I curse whatever higher power is orchestrating this hopeless practical joke.
As if in response, that higher power sends slush flying up from Maxim’s back tires. An icy waterfall cascades down my side. I’m soaked and shivering in seconds flat.
Why me?I ask the universe as I lug my two overweight suitcases up the steps of the front porch. The cold wind and the wetness seep through my layers, kiss my skin, and cause my anxiety to rush right back to the surface.
I Should Be Home for the Holidays Hoedown, I remind myself.
Chaps. Square dancing. Bourbon. Breathe.Breathe, dammit.Gingham tablecloths. Sliding barn doors. Horse-drawn carriage rides.Exhale, exhale, exhale…
When the campy scene colors itself all the way to the edges, I reopen my eyes, but don’t find relief.Fuck.
Summoning my last nerve, I ring the high-pitched bell and prepare myself for what lies beyond the threshold.
Chapter 2
There’s an old-school camcorder in my face the moment the door swings open. Grandma hangs behind it like she’s Steven Spielberg.
“Matthew!” she shouts. “Wave to the camera!”
Old habits die hard with her. Each Thanksgiving she insists on filming every single relative’s entrance into the house. She says one day she’ll super-cut them all together, so everyone can see how they’ve changed over the years. That is if she ever figures out how to work iMovie.
“Did you go for a swim before you got here?” She tugs on my damp sleeve. I suppress a groan. No dry cleaner in this town is going to know how to properly care for an off-the-runway overcoat.
Her face lights up brighter than her ornate wreaths as she sets down the camera on a nearby end table. I had hoped we’d outgrown the cheek-pinching phase, but that’s obviously not the case. She grabs fingerfuls of face flesh. Iouch, ouch, ouch, yet she doesn’t take the hint.
“Let me get a good look at you.” Her long, thin gray hair is spooled into a bun atop her head. She’s got the same high cheekbones Mom does, but rounder cheeks, a dimpled chin, and a paler, whiter complexion from less sun and no bronzer. “You’re so tall. What’s it been? Two years?”
It has, in fact, been two years. I skipped last Thanksgiving to jet around Morocco with the heir to a breakfast-sandwich fortune and his musician husband in an ill-advised polyamorous throuple. If you ever want to feel like a third wheel, date a happily married couple and try planning a couple’s massage. They don’t even put out a third bed; they just make you rotate every fifteen minutes.
Grandma thinks hard on when she saw me last in the flesh and not on a screen. “Yes, it must’ve been two years ago because you were in London that one Thanksgiving visiting the British boy with the butterfly tattoo.” She pauses. “Wait, no. I think that’s a book title.”
“No, you’re thinking ofThe Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” I say. For someone who runs a used bookstore, she has a terrible time remembering book titles, yet she can recall every single guy I’ve ever been photographed with.
The Thanksgiving she’s referencing was one where I ditched with my girlfriends to see a certain former boy-band front man perform a concert. What he and I did or did not do after his show is, quite frankly, none of anyone’s business. Even though certain gossip sites seemed to think it was. And my own grandma, for that matter.
Recently, the closest I’d come to Grandma and Gramps was one spotty video call a week or so ago. I sent them my well wishes and then snuck off with Bentley to take tequila shots out of the navel of a consenting and well-paid underwear model, which, if you can believe it, wasn’t even the highlight of our night. It was the perfect way to ignore my blown-out-of-proportion financial faux pas.
As I stand here, I take stock of what’s changed since last time. The house smells of cinnamon, clove, and something cooking in the oven. Christmas has thrown up all over every windowsill and doorknob—from stuffed snowmen figurines with false smiles to a reindeer wall clock whose nose lights up on the hour. It’s overkill, and it’s killing me already.
Ever since tradition ceased to exist with my parents, the holidays are nothing more than an inconvenient hurdle on the sprint to New Year’s Eve.
The foyer leads into the kitchen, which is still retro and not in a fashionable way. There are pea greens and muted yellows sprawled across the backsplash as if my grandparents had watchedThe Exorcistonce and then asked the designer to color match Regan’s projectile puke. Not appetizing to say the least.
The oval light-wood table where many Thanksgiving meals have been shared sits up against the far wall. The windows beside it look upon the perilous slope with its path down to the river, which is entirely iced over this time of year, a perfect slate for Joni Mitchell to skate away on.
I never could picture Mom growing up here. All my images of her are superimposed against sleek stainless-steel appliances and balconies backed by impressive skylines. She has a Midas touch, and this just doesn’t compare to some of the gilded places we’ve been over the years.
