“Okay, Dad. Let’s go in here,” I say to Kate.
I lead Kate and Tristan into the kitchen. My mom has one of those swinging doors, so it’s like as soon as you push on it, you’re transported to another dimension, where everything is in motion. My mom is pulling something out of the oven, my sister is chopping celery at the center island, and Dani is standing at the sink with her back to us.
The kitchen is bright and full of life. It has butcher block countertops, white subway tiles, and a large, porcelain farmhouse sink. Every brushstroke on the light-yellow shaker cabinets was painted by my father, who also installed the countertops and refinished the old wood floors. There are always thriving plants on the windowsill, homemade bread in a bread box, and even though there are a ton of Thanksgiving dishes in the making scattered about, my mother still has a perfectly arranged bowl of fruit in an old yellow Pyrex bowl in the middle of the center island. There are oranges, apples, lemons, limes, and one magnificent yellow banana, without a hint of brown on it, lying over the top. It’s like a still life I have seen a million times. I don’t know how she does it. There’s music playing from a speaker in the corner. It’s some sort of hipster folk song that I know my mother didn’t put on. It was either Dani or Amanda—who, by the way, are like sisters.
Since Amanda’s so much younger, she met Dani when she was still in her early teens. Over the years she’s often turned toDani for advice, and in many ways, they’re closer to each other than Amanda and I are.
Dani doesn’t love how, on holidays, only the women end up in the kitchen, so I’m usually in there with them instead of her, but today it looks like she had no choice.
“Hello!” I announce. They all stop what they’re doing and look up at us.
“Alex, come here and close this oven as soon as I take the casserole out,” my mother says. It would be a completely normal thing for my mother to say if Kate and Tristan weren’t standing right next to me. I hope she doesn’t ignore them all day.
As I walk over to the oven on the left, Amanda approaches Kate on the right. “Hi, you must be Kate? I’m Amanda, the little sister.” Amanda is pretty in a natural, no makeup kind of way. All she and Josh do for fun is tent camp, hike, and hug trees. They’re easy to be around and nonjudgmental, so that makes this part a little easier.
“Nice to meet you,” Kate says. “This is my son, Tristan.”
“Hello, Tristan.” Amanda bends and shakes his hand. He politely smiles, but he’s still quiet.
My mom walks over and puts her hand out to Kate, “I’m Brenda. Nice to meet you, happy Thanksgiving, and welcome,” she says like she’s rehearsed it a hundred times.
Kate smiles and says, “You as well, thank you for having me. You have a beautiful home and I’m grateful to be able to be here and spend this holiday with you.”
My mom smiles, but I notice that she doesn’t really acknowledge Tristan except for ruffling his hair a little. “Well, that’s what it’s all about today,” my mom says.
I’m watching the exchange and so is Dani from the other side of the island, where she’s now leaning her back against the sink. Dani smiles and throws up a motionless wave, “Hi, Kate.”
“Hi, Danielle.” No one except for me calls her Danielle and it’s only when I’m mad. I know Kate said it because it’s how I’ve referred to Dani now and then. She doesn’t realize how it sounds to everyone else. My mother and Amanda are standing still and silent. Dani is actually the one who breaks the silence.
“Hey, Tristan, I’m Dani. You want to come here and check out some mollusks?” I laugh quietly to myself. Dani can do and say the most bizarre things, but usually it always ends up working, and sometimes it feels like fresh air. She successfully diffused the tension. I mean, who eats oysters on the half shell at Thanksgiving? But why not? Kate pushes Tristan’s back, encouraging him to approach Dani. He walks over to the sink while Dani grabs a step stool and puts it next to her. “Hop up here, Captain.”
Tristan giggles and stands on the stool.
I approach the sink on Dani’s left side. “Are you shucking oysters?”
She looks up at me and whispers, “This holiday is stupid.”
Dani always had an issue with Thanksgiving, but she still goes along with it to make the parents happy. I know the oysters are her way of trying to update the tradition.
She’s shucking while we’re talking. “Yeah, well, oysters will be a welcome change,” I tell her.
“I think so,” she says. “All right, Captain T, I have to do this part with the knife to open them up, then you set them on the plate.”
“Gross. Are we gonna eat those?” Tristan says.
My mom chimes in from the other side of the kitchen. “I think oysters for a Thanksgiving appetizer is a great idea!” Dani can do no wrong in my mother’s eyes…or my father’s. Dani looks at me and winks. She’s rubbing it in.
Tristan is holding a shucked, raw oyster in a half shell in his hand and staring like he’s just discovered an alien life form.
“You debating?” Dani says to him. She always talked to our kids like adults too. She’s a warm and loving mother, but she has this way of making kids feel like individuals, which they should.
“Should I try it?” Tristan says.
Dani shrugs, her face inscrutable. “It’s sort of an acquired taste. Do you want me to give you a pointer?”
I turn around and notice Kate has stopped chopping celery with Amanda. She’s watching the exchange between Dani and Tristan.
“Yes, please,” he says. “I’ll take all the help I can get.” Now he’s talking back to her like an adult. People used to marvel at Noah and Ethan’s vocabularies. It’s because Dani never dumbed anything down for them. She didn’t baby them, and she gave them choices.
