Prototype (27 page)

The next day was Thanksgiving, bringing a fine snow that fell for hours in a lazy windless drift. The invitation came from Nina the night before. They usually convened for the major holidays, she told Sarah, because with families elsewhere or estranged or both, they were all the family any of them had.

"Do you want to go?" Sarah asked Adrienne.

"You do, don't you?"

"Well … I guess," trying not to sound too eager, and it hit Adrienne just right, and she began to laugh at such poorly feigned nonchalance, the first real laugh she'd turned loose in a week. Sarah smiled broadly, the inadvertent savior.

"Sure, why not," Adrienne said. "I can't think of anything more depressing than sitting around here and trying to pretend it's just another day."

"That's the Pilgrim spirit."

Nina and Twitch lived in a third-floor walk-up on the fringes of Capitol Hill, above a twenty-four-hour copy shop. They gathered at half past noon, and Sarah quickly sized up that tradition played little role in their celebration, if it could be called that at all — pretty much as she had anticipated. They gave no thanks, offering no prayers because, she surmised, none had much faith that prayers were heard. The menu was piecemeal, each contributing some culinary specialty or two: Uncle Twitch's chili of flaming torments, Nina's baked Jamaican salt-fish and a vegetable stir-fry, couscous and baklava for dessert from Erin. Graham not only brought a Greek salad, but furnished the centerpiece as well, a papier-mâché turkey nailed to a cutting board and opened as if dissected, body cavity stuffed with Monopoly money.

"He makes a different one every year," explained Erin as she circled it with her video camera.

"I'm glad to see he's back in form," said Twitch. "Last year was a disappointment. An Indian drowning in a pumpkin pie, what the hell was
that
all about?" He waved his arms in spastic confusion.

Graham stood smoking by the window, staring down three floors to a deserted street. "How many times do I have to explain this to you, Twitch? It wasn't pumpkin, it was
shit
. Who ever heard of putting corn in pumpkin pie?"

"Shit, my ass," said Twitch. "It came out of a can with a label, said Libby's, right on it."

"That's why I put the corn in, idiot, so you could tell the difference." Graham fumed with smoke and friendly disgust. "Give you a simple historical metaphor and it's like you're
still
lost in a forest."

Erin turned her camera on Uncle Twitch, telling Sarah and Adrienne, "He's just still pissed 'cause he cut a piece and tried to eat it."

Twitch frowned, grumbling. "Well, the least he could've done was baked the thing."

"That's when we took a vote," said Nina, touching Adrienne on the wrist. "No more organic centerpieces."

Conspicuous by his absence was Clay, and at least this group was traditional in one respect: They spent much time talking of the one who had failed to make it to the table this year. No one knew what he was doing with his day, and Sarah noticed that the longer they dwelt on him, the less Erin ate, picking at her food, rearranging it with a fork.

"When he called he told me you saw him yesterday," Nina said to Sarah. "How was he?"

"He seemed okay, we must've talked forty or fifty minutes." She slipped a hand beneath the table to Adrienne's leg, and their eyes met. Thinking,
Please don't hold it against me that he opened up to me this time, and I'm not even the authority here, but she did ask.
Saying it all in a glance. Questioning, too:
How far can I go here?

"It's all right," Adrienne said, mostly sincere, but wasn't it pierced with a sliver of resentment? How could that be helped? "Go ahead."

Sarah squeezed her knee. Maybe Adrienne would see it was fortuitous that Clay had shared with her instead, at this point: Constrained by no oath of confidentiality, Sarah could freely tell these others who had known him for years, people who might help him because he was part of their daily lives.

"On the one hand, it was good to see him stronger than he must've been feeling recently," she said. "But then again there was something painful to watch about it. There was this … I don't know … nihilistic acceptance, I guess, of his condition. Like most of him had just given up to the worst he could believe about it."

"So what's wrong with nihilistic acceptance?" Graham asked. "If you ask me, that sounds like the most honest way to deal with it."

Nina threw her fork down upon her plate. "Because it means he's writing himself off for good, Graham! That's what's wrong with it!"

He arched his eyebrows in a half smirk. "The truth hurts, doesn't it?"

Uncle Twitch paused while dishing out his third helping of couscous. "I looked into nihilism once," he mused, "but there was nothing to it."

Nina paid no attention, leaning over her end of the table. "I really can't believe you sometimes, Graham. I should know better by now, but it always manages to surprise me, just how insensitive you can be. Are you really that nasty inside, or is just some act you think gives you credibility as an artist?"

He clasped his hands in mock admiration. "Very good,
most
impressive, very insightful. Especially for a junior college dropout." Graham turned to Adrienne. "You're the professional, how did she score?"

Sarah watched Adrienne draw a thin breath. "Not that I'm diagnosing, you understand, but actually," speaking with cool surgical precision, "she may have a point."

Graham had not expected this, clearly, and Sarah watched the minute narrowing of one eye. Aching with him in some small touch of empathy, even though he had invited it on himself.
Yes, I know what it's like to hope for an ally who refuses the job. Ask me and I'll tell you about a big brother who denies he has a sister just because she likes women.

Graham chose to ignore it, like a wounded animal that might grow only more vicious. "It has nothing to do with being twisted or insensitive, it's being honest enough to admit that if you know you have nothing better to look forward to, why not at least embrace that much? We're each alone enough as it is, and for sure we die that way. Is it that threatening to you to admit it?"

Adrienne rested her chin on clenched fingers. "And Buddha said, 'I am awake.'"

"You're not alone, Graham," said Erin. "You do have me."

"Half-alone, then."

Nina was looking at Uncle Twitch, throwing her hands in the air. "Why do I invite him? Why do I keep inviting him? He's like a solar eclipse!"

Twitch frowned. "Well, would you rather talk about your mom's hysterectomy?"

Nina turned back toward Graham. "Not everybody shares your conviction that nothing out there in the universe loves us."

He began to laugh. "I didn't notice you bowing
your
head when we sat around the table."

"It doesn't mean I don't believe in something." And Nina began to slip down into her chair, her ideological footing clearly less sure here. Sarah thinking,
No, don't back off now, you were doing so well.
Nina bit her lip. "I mean … I'm not all that comfortable calling it God, like that, but … something's there."

"Oh, there's a God, all right," said Erin, staring glumly at her plate. She speared a lettuce leaf. "The bad news is, She's got PMS."

It continued like that throughout the rest of the meal, then dessert. Discussion that often grew heated, but never quite savage enough to draw blood, and Sarah wondered if it were not, simply enough, their way. That if in their world, their lives, given their backgrounds, this was the manner in which they assured one another they mattered and that the ultimate expression of dislike came not in barbed words, but indifference. Prickly though it may have been at times, she saw something cohesive about their little unit.

Graham grew increasingly quiet, smoking by the window and staring through the veil of snow to the street, watching the occasional car that slowed. Twitch went clicking up and down the television channels, despairing of football, and above it they could barely hear Erin, vomiting in the bathroom. Adrienne asked if she did that often, and Twitch shrugged, saying, "Well, it
is
a holiday."

They soon fought, Erin and Graham — over what, Sarah could not tell, but she wondered if it might not have something to do with Clay. Probably it would have been better had he been here. Somehow it could be so much less threatening to compete with flesh and blood, than a phantom present only in conversation.

Sarah's eyes met Graham's once, as Erin grabbed her video camera and cradled it as tenderly as a child, as she threatened to leave, and before he could turn away, Sarah noticed the shimmer of tears in his eyes. Soon they retired to the privacy of Twitch and Nina's bedroom, and she heard one low sob as someone cried, not sure who it was, and then for a long while could hear nothing at all. She supposed that was good, hoping it meant they were just quiet lovers, more vocal in their depression than in their ardor.

The four of them left to carry on with Thanksgiving drank wine, Uncle Twitch proving to have an unexpected gift for spices and flame, as he first mulled it with cloves and cardamom seeds and cinnamon sticks. They sat about the living room and ignored the TV, pleasantly lethargic now that the worst of the psychodrama appeared to have been played out.

Nina moved across the room to sit on the couch as Sarah took the floor, so Nina could weave her hair into a curtain of long thin braids. Nina's fingers were soft, warm, deft, the gentle tug and pull soothing. She could sleep like this, some echo of childhood surrender into the total security of two hands. Hoping only that Adrienne would not take it wrong; it was not
that
kind of surrender. She would store this tactile arousal until they got home, could get a fire lit — a fire would be divine — and she would make love with Adrienne for hours. Flushed and firm, their bodies would glow, and they would be flawless. Firelight smoothed over every blemish. Perhaps it was this magic luster, above even heat and light, that made fire such an object of primordial veneration.

Eyes too heavy to open, she groped to find Adrienne's hand, held it while the sun died beyond the windows and the snow whispered cold promises.

"I wish he'd been here today," said Uncle Twitch, with a reflectiveness born of wine. "He should've been here."

Adrienne stirred. "Clay?"

"Who else."

And she smiled, a wistful little smile that Sarah saw upon opening her eyes.

"I've been sitting here turning it over and over, what bothers me about everyone being so willing to concede defeat, Clay most of all, over that goddamned chromosome. You know what it is? It's the superstition." Adrienne drew knees toward chin, wrapped both arms around them. "We've haven't really gotten over spilled salt and broken mirrors, just replaced them with stranger things we can't explain. So we're afraid of them. As long as the technology holds up, we'll always have that shadow just on the other side of understanding."

"And poor Clay had to find a big one inside himself," Nina said.

"He'll deal with it," said Twitch. "I don't think we give him enough credit sometimes." He held arms open wide as Nina, finished with Sarah's hair, sank into his lap, and they held each other. "He deals with some of the most god-awful stuff but always comes out of it. I think we need him more than he needs us. I look at him sometimes, and think, well, if he can get through, I guess I can too."

Nina nodded into his chest. "Graham needs him most."

Sarah roused from her dreamy languor. "So the rest of you find him inspiring?"

"He's still alive, isn't he?"

Twitch nodded. "He reduces a lot of his life to fundamentals and doesn't miss the frills. I envy the hell out of him for that." His eyes seemed to pinch as he nuzzled distractedly into Nina's hair, something eating at him: all the things he wanted for Nina and himself, perhaps, wanted and might never admit; all the things he wanted to give her and could never afford. "For a long time I had this romantic notion about poverty. For everything out there I looked at and knew I didn't want any part of, it seemed that trying to live the impoverished artist's life was the most honest thing I could do. That's okay when you're twenty-two, you can get away with it then. But thirty-one…?" Clinging to Nina. "It was just one more hollow icon, wasn't it?"

Nina was stroking his beard, his ponytail. "You'll find what you want to do, you'll find it." Trying to smile. She could be so brave, if only she had a cause. "We'll find what we're good at."

Sarah hated herself for her first thought.
No, no, you probably won't, but I don't think it's your fault, it's just that no one bothered teaching you how to recognize it when you see it.