Chapter 12: Thanksgiving

Thursday morning was an exercise in controlled chaos. I had time to do a nice breakfast of scrambled eggs, toast, and bacon, which could be a bit of a luxury. I tried to cook a nice family breakfast on weekends but shift work with the MPD meant I frequently missed weekends. At least three of us ate well. Seamus only ate Froot Loops; he was almost three and was still a knucklehead in the Terrible Twos.

After breakfast Kelly put Riley and me to work cleaning the house. Seamus, on the other hand, decided it was the perfect time to get all his toys out. Kelly gave a quiet scream of frustration and put him in jail, his playpen. “He is staying in jail or his highchair until the guests arrive,” she told me.

I shrugged and smiled. This was her first Thanksgiving dinner for the family, and she was nervous. “Did Mom say when that would be?”

“With all the little ones, we probably want to do something a bit before six. She brought the turkey over yesterday and they are coming over at noon. We’ll get the turkey in the oven and then work on everything else.” Kelly had a bit of a wild-eyed look to her and was glancing around the kitchen nervously.

I went over to her and wrapped my arms around her. “Will you calm down? It’s Thanksgiving with the Reapers, not a state dinner with the royal family! Everybody has been here before and everybody has seen what the kids can get into.”

“Grim!”

“Seriously! You’ve helped Mom and Grandmom before. You’ve got this covered. What’s the worst that could happen? Seamus gets loose and makes a mess? We’ll put him on the pontoon boat and send it out to sea for the day!”

She looked over at our son and then at his sister. “We’ll put them both on the pontoon boat. Throw in Miguel and Diego, too!”

“There you go! Who says we can’t do Thanksgiving dinner here? Don’t worry. When Mom and Dad come over, we can ask them about some dinner disasters of theirs. Trust me, no matter how bad today turns out, somebody in the Reaper family has had a worse one.”

Kelly laughed. “I’m going to hold you to that.”

“The real fun will be when I tell Bobbie Joe and Jack how Dad actually had his heart attack.”

Kelly said, “No, Grim, you can’t!”

“Oh, babe, I have to, for both our sakes. No matter how bad today is, after I tell them about midnight pushups, the house could burn down, and nobody would care!”

Kelly just started laughing at that and put me back to work cleaning. She began prepping for Mom to arrive and help with dinner. After a bit, Riley and I did our own prepping. The weather was supposed to be near perfect for Thanksgiving, dry and in the sixties. We could put the kids in sweaters or sweatshirts and send them outside to run around, and the adults could spread beyond the living room to the deck. I set a couple of coolers out on the deck and filled them with ice I had picked up the day before. Riley and I put some beer and soda in the coolers. If anybody wanted wine or mixed drinks, I would run a bar in the living room.

Mom and Dad showed up a bit before noon, and I was sent out to help. Mom was carrying a cooler, but Dad was empty-handed. “Maureen, I can carry things. I’m not dead yet,” he said.

“You go inside. I don’t want you straining yourself. Grim can carry things,” she replied. I was handed the cooler. “Don’t let him do any lifting,” she ordered.

I raised an eyebrow at my father and followed him inside. “You okay, Dad?”

“I’m fine. Your mother is driving me nuts, is all.” I pointed at a recliner, but he continued into the kitchen, to sit on a barstool at the island. “I’ll be just fine.”

Mom had followed us in, and she said, “Jack, you had a heart attack. You need to take it slow.” Seamus came over and held his arms up for Grandpop to pick him up. Dad lifted him up and set my son on his lap. “Like that! You should have let Grim pick him up. He’s too heavy for you.”

Dad gave Mom a cross look. “The day I can’t pick up and play with my grandchildren, that’s the day you can lower the lid on the coffin, but not until then!”

Mom knew that was a battle that couldn’t be won. She smiled and nodded, and then reached out and ruffled Seamus’ hair. “Okay, fine. Just don’t die on me. I’ve almost got you trained properly. I don’t want to have to start fresh with somebody else.”

“I’ll try to hold off for a bit,” he answered dryly. Mom leaned down and kissed him on the top of his head.

“Come on, Dad, let’s finish setting up the deck.” I grabbed Seamus and set him down, and the three of us went out through the sliding doors to the deck. Dad sat down in a lounge chair in the sunlight, and I moved some of the other chairs around. I also dug out a couple of propane space heaters in case it got chilly. After a few minutes, Seamus went back inside, and I grabbed a couple of beers from the cooler and sat down next to my father. “Is this safe for you?” I asked, handing him one.

Dad rolled his eyes. “Don’t you start on me, too.”

“Just asking, Dad. You die on us today and Mom will spend the rest of her life blaming me. Let me know when you plan to die so I can ship you over to Jack’s or Bobbie Joe’s.”

My father flipped me off and opened his beer. “Smartass.”

“Seriously, how are you feeling?”

He made a wry face but said, “Probably better than I should be. They said I had seventy percent blockage in the two arteries, and forty percent in another couple. I could have lived maybe another five or ten years before it killed me, but I’d have been getting weaker all the time. Now, I’m good for the original factory warranty.” He described exactly what they had done, including how they had fed a microscopic catheter into an artery in his right wrist and from there up to his heart. “It’s really amazing what they can do!”

“I can’t argue with you. God knows I’ve had enough tubes put into me over the years. You feel good?”

He lowered his voice and glanced at the house. “Don’t tell your mother, but I get tired pretty easily. That’s supposed to improve. I am seeing a cardiologist next week to start my follow-up. I have to do cardio rehab at the Wellness Center three days a week and lose some weight.”

“And the midnight exercise?”

He flipped me off and didn’t answer. I just laughed.

Next to arrive was Bobbie Joe and his new wife, Joanne. I saw a car pull into the driveway; Jack kept a minivan at their property. Since only two people were in the car, it wasn’t rocket science to figure out who it was. “I think the Yankees have arrived. Should we welcome the carpetbaggers in, or send them away?” I asked Dad.

“Now, behave. Bobbie Joe is still a Georgia boy. He’s only a Yankee by marriage.”

“Think she’ll make us give up our slaves? Beyoncé is pretty cute. I was thinking of putting in a bid!”

He pointed me towards the house. “You want me to tell Kelly that? Go welcome your family.”

I laughed and headed inside. I got to the door just as Bobbie Joe knocked. “Hey, Grim, how you doing?” he asked.

“Good, good, glad you could come down. Joanne, come on in, welcome!” I ushered my brother and sister-in-law inside.

Bobbie Joe had gone to Duke for a degree in history, and then had gone to Yale for a law degree. While at Yale he had met a fellow lawyer-in-training from Boston and by their second year they were sharing an apartment. Joanne Masterson was about five-eight, slim and classy, and a brunette with hazel eyes. After graduation they received offers from the same firm in Philadelphia and became ‘Philadelphia lawyers’. They also bought an apartment together and a year ago got married. We had all gone to Boston for the wedding, but this was probably only the third time Kelly and I had seen her. The last time they had visited Matucket, Kelly and I were away on vacation.

Mom got to them before anybody else. She gave my brother a big hug, and then gave one to Joanne. That made her eyes pop open. “What in the world?”

Joanne and Bobbie Joe were grinning wildly as they took off their jackets. Bobbie Joe was still the skinny little guy he always had been (at least compared to Jack and me; he was about five-eleven and 175 pounds) but Joanne had changed. She was sporting a prominent baby bump. “We wanted to surprise you,” Joanne said.

“Oh my God!” exclaimed Kelly, looking at us from the kitchen. “Congratulations! How far along are you?”

“A little over four months,” answered Joanne.

“And?”

Joanne looked at Bobbie Joe and they grinned at each other. “It’s a boy!”

The three women all began yammering to each other. I looked at my brother and asked, “I assume you had something to do with this?”

“So, I’m told. I’m not quite sure how, though. If you add up our billable hours, we are both in our seventies by now, so this is a miracle!” Then he gave a sly smile to my father and turned back to me. “You know, Grandpa only had sons, and Dad and Uncle Dave only had sons, and Jack only has sons, and now I’m going to have a son. How’d you screw up the system? You need Jack or me to give you lessons?”