Chapter 12: Thanksgiving Dinner Part 1

“We’re home!” yelled Tara, as we came in through the front door.

“Yay!” squealed Angie from the kitchen. She came running out towards us and ran full tilt into Dan so that she could hug him around his legs.

Dad and Nana followed from the kitchen a bit more slowly. I was kind of glad that Dad didn’t come running at us because he had a sharp knife in one hand and half a carrot in the other. He was wearing an apron over his suit which looked a bit weird. On the other hand, Nana was wearing an apron over her nice dress and that didn’t look weird, so maybe I’m being sexist or whatever.

“You’ll never believe what happened at the Y,” announced Tara. “It was totally awesome.”

“You’ll have to tell me about it later,” said Dad. “For various reasons, we haven’t finished moving the furniture and setting up the tables in the living room.”

Dad was glaring at me when he said that. I wondered why he thought it was my fault. He and Dan were supposed to do that before we left for the Y this morning ... oh!

“We need to get moving. People will start arriving in about half an hour. Move it!”

Dan reached down and tickled Angie. That made her squeal and let go of him. Dan reached for her again and she danced back out of reach. Then all three of us started heading towards our rooms, with Angie trotting after Dan.

“Hold it!” called Dad. He pointed the knife at Tara. “Please tell me you haven’t been wearing that shirt all morning.”

“Da-ad,” moaned Tara. “There’s nothing wrong with this shirt. Don’t be such an old geezer.”

“I’m president of the Old Geezers’ Club. I’m required to behave like an old geezer. It’s part of the job. You are fourteen years old. You don’t have to dress like that. Go and change.” Dad pointed the knife at me. “You should change too.”

Dad took a bite from the carrot and then he turned and walked back into the kitchen.

I watched him go, wondering why I was being included in his random clothes rant. When his disappearing back failed to provide any answers, I looked at Nana. She raised an eyebrow at the two of us then turned and followed Dad back into the kitchen. Deprived of answers and possible sources for answers, I was left to stand there and drown in ignorance. It occurred to me that Mum hadn’t even stepped out of the kitchen to greet us. I figured that I was being given the cold shoulder after what happened earlier. So, I knew something. I wasn’t completely ignorant after all. I scowled. It was something I didn’t really want to know. Knowledge isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I shrugged and headed to my room.

I glanced at my mirror as I walked past it and screamed in shock. Okay, it wasn’t a real scream – it was more like an “eek.” I stopped and stared at my reflection. A ghastly horror stared back at me. I’d gotten wet when Liz and I stood out in the rain. Then I’d half-dried in a hurry. I’d been so frantic at the time that I hadn’t thought about how I looked since then. I mean, I don’t usually spend a lot of time thinking about the way I look. I’m not like one of those posers who spend hours preening in front of a mirror. But I do try to stay neat and presentable. Right now I looked like a mess – my hair was mussed, my shirt was out of shape, everything had been wet and not dried properly. I supposed that at least I hadn’t been wearing one of those thin white tops that turn see-through when they get wet. That would have been mortifying.

I “eeked” again and ran out of my room. I burst into Tara’s room and started snarling at her about how she should have told me how bad I looked. Tara was half-way through changing her clothes and she looked startled to have me burst in like that. She also looked confused because apparently I wasn’t being clear about what I was upset about. I think she might also have been a bit pissed at me for coming in like that without knocking first, but that only occurred to me later.

She snapped back at me about something that I didn’t hear too well and frantically pulled her jeans back up before racing past me to push the door shut. Oh, yeah! I forgot to shut the door, too. So then I was going at Tara about stuff and she was going at me about other stuff and I wasn’t really listening to her and she wasn’t really listening to me. We weren’t actually yelling so much as speaking forcefully at each other in low voices. I think we both knew instinctively that screaming at the top of our voices right now would have a bad outcome that neither of us would like very much.

I don’t think that the argument lasted for very long. It stopped kind of abruptly. One moment we were talking over the top of each other and the next moment we were scowling silently at each other. Then I saw the edges of Tara’s mouth lift up as she tried not to smile.

“Are you seriously upset about the way you look?” she asked.

I was puzzled and looked at her, trying to figure out what she was meaning. She kept looking at me with her eyebrows up and those tiny little upturns in the corners of her mouth. In the end I decided that she actually meant what she’d said. I nodded and looked down at the floor. There was silence for a moment and then I shrugged.

“I’m sorry about coming into your room like that. I should’ve knocked.”

I stopped talking and kept looking at the floor. Tara stood there and watched me with her hands on her hips.

I looked up at Tara.

“Yes, I am upset about the way I look – seriously upset. I look ghastly. I look like a train wreck. I look like some survivor from one of those disaster films. I look like an undead walking zombie ghoul. You should’ve told me.”

Tara rolled her eyes and shook her head at me.

“Bec, you can be so stupid sometimes. It’s a miracle that you can feed yourself.”

I glared at her. If I’d been a cat, I would have growled at her – snarled at her – raised the fur around my neck and bared my teeth at her. I would have unsheathed my claws and threatened to rake them down the side of her face.

Tara looked at me and sighed.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

She sighed again.

“Look! Close your eyes for a minute. Trust me.”

Trust? I couldn’t imagine anything further from my mind.

Tara’s face softened and she lifted my head up by the chin until I was looking into her eyes. She gently moved a strand of hair away from my eyes and tucked it back around my ear.

“I’m not going to do anything to you. I just want you to see something. Please trust me.”

Looking straight into her eyes like that, I realized that she really was being sincere. I gave her the tiniest nod and closed my eyes.

I listened to the sounds of her shifting on her feet in front of me. I heard the softest whisper as she rubbed a hand on her arm. I was expecting her to come up to me – touch me, move me around, something. But she didn’t. She just stood there. Maybe she was trying to think of what to say.

“You and Mum, you’re so much alike,” said Tara.

My eyes popped open and I stared at her in puzzlement. “Huh?”

“Don’t look at me. Close your eyes.”

“Sorry.” I closed my eyes again.

“Well, anyway, like I was saying, you and Mum, you’re so much like each other.”

“Okay.”

“You both do this thing where you look at something and you see art. It might be something ordinary. It might be something most people wouldn’t look twice at. It might be something most people would find a bit weird or a bit strange. But Mum can look at a stain on a wall and see a painting. You can look at a shelf of CDs and see a rainbow. I need you to look at something with those artist’s eyes now. Can you do that for me?”

Artist’s eyes? I guess I got what she was talking about. Inside my skull, a little version of me reached out and popped an eyeball out from its place behind my closed eyelids. I gave it a little polish and looked at it closely. Was this an artist’s eye? Maybe. Or maybe it was more like a general purpose eye that I used for everyday seeing. I threw open a storage chest in the back of my head and rummaged around in it for those artist’s eyes of mine.

I found a set of eyes in a ragged little case decorated with smudges of pencil lead and paint. I took them out of their case and gave them a quick polish before clicking them into place. This was kind of fun. It was a bit like I was assembling Lego Bec. I wondered if any other bits of me were interchangeable. Wouldn’t it be good if I could just snap a new chest into place. My life would be so much better if I could do that.

Then I opened my eyes and looked at Tara. I had to blink a couple of times, because at first she was all fuzzy, but then she came into focus and stood in front of me, nicely framed by the window. Her hair mostly hung straight except for a few strands that were caught on her shoulder and curved away from the side of her head in a most interesting way. Since her back was to the window, Tara’s face was slightly shadowed, but the shadows were softened by light reflecting from the walls and the furniture. The shadows made her eyes seem deeper, with sparkles glistening in their depths as she watched me.

“Artist’s eyes?” she asked. I shrugged and nodded in reply.

Tara frowned, which sent creases rippling across her forehead and sank her eyes further into shadows.

“Something’s still not right,” she said with a frustrated edge to her voice. “Close your eyes again.”

I closed my eyes, wondering if maybe I’d put them in backwards or something.

“You’re all slumped and hunched over, like you’re all upset,” she complained.

“I am all upset,” I explained in a whisper.

“Well don’t be,” said Tara. “Stand up straight. Be all happy and bouncy like you were this morning at the Y.”

I screwed up my face as I thought about how ridiculous it was to tell someone who was upset, to be all happy and bouncy. Then I remembered that I’d spent half the time at the Y pretending to be Tara. Maybe I could do that again. I withdrew into the back of my skull and let the Bec version of Tara take over. She took a big breath and stood up straight. She tossed my head around to flip my hair back and lifted my chin up. I could feel the muscles in my face move and relax as Tara’s face pasted itself into place over the top of my own.

“That’s better,” said Tara. “Now take two little steps back.”

I felt Tara holding me by the arms and guiding me backwards. Then she gently steered my head around to the side.

“Now, open your eyes and look.”

I opened my eyes and, sure enough, framed squarely in the mirror, I could see that other version of Bec. It was that strong and vibrant Bec who seems to be perpetually trapped in mirrors. At least she was wearing clothes this time. She stared back at me with calm eyes, her hair falling in a rippling curtain of waves and curls. She stood there dressed simply in jeans and a t-shirt, but the shirt was bunched and shaped so that it hinted at half-hidden curves and shapes that the sane part of Bec, hiding in the back of my head, knew didn’t actually exist. She looked older, prettier, more – I don’t know – more.

That girl, trapped in the mirror, seemed more ready to be a part of the world than I could ever be. She seemed more open to seeing new things, meeting new people than I could ever manage. There was only one problem. She wasn’t real. She was a mask that I was hiding behind. She was something that I’d created, just like a picture. She was a piece of my art, with no more substance than the mirror world she lived in.

The most amazing thing was that I could feel myself slumping on the inside – drawing back inside of myself, but the girl in the mirror remained standing tall and proud. I half-expected her to wink at me at any second, or perhaps blow me a kiss, or do some other outrageously flirty thing that was the complete opposite of anything I would ever do.

I watched through the glass as she turned and brushed her lips over her sister’s cheek in silent apology. Then she stalked silently from the room like a cat prowling through its territory and waving its tail high in the air with just the tip flipping back and forth.

I went back to my room to change my clothes. I went for my full length mauve skirt and a high-necked, long-sleeved shirt. I decided to leave my hair the way it was. It had never been like that before and I wasn’t used to it. I guess that’s why my initial reaction had been to think it was a mess. But apparently I’d done something to it by accident that some women spend hours with very expensive stylists trying to achieve.

Nana was alone in the kitchen, stirring a pot on the stove-top. I walked up and hugged her from behind. I kissed her cheek and then I leaned over to inhale the delightful smells rising from the pot. She smiled at me and then chased me away with a flip of her hand.

In the living room, I found Dad and Dan lifting the couch and carrying it into the hallway. Angie was seated firmly on the couch and was giggling madly as Dan and Dad pretended they couldn’t see her and then complained loudly about how the couch was so much heavier than they thought it would be.

“Where’s Mum?”

“In our room.” Dad pointed with his head towards their bedroom.

“She wanted to be alone for a while. I think Angie’s around here somewhere. Could you please find her and get her dressed in her good clothes,” said Dad. But he said it to my back and I ignored him because I was heading towards The Parents’ room. I think Dad called out something, but I didn’t hear what it was.

I found Mum seated on the floor next to her bed, with a sketchpad propped up on her knees. She was drawing furiously, which was impressive because I didn’t think she’d be able to see with her hair dangling down over her face the way it was. There were several loose pages lying on the floor around her.

I kneeled down in front of her and picked up one of the loose pages. It was a hurried sketch in Mum’s distinctive style. It showed her kneeling before a closet. The closet door was slightly ajar and a single eye peered out of the dark interior. Mum had drawn herself kneeling before the closet with her hands out, pleading. Not many layers in that picture.

I smoothed out a few creases on the page where Mum had torn it from the pad. I laid the sketch carefully on the floor beside me and picked up another of the discarded drawings. Mum had drawn herself again in almost exactly the same pose, only this time she was kneeling before an oversized cat. The cat was sitting with its back to her. It was sitting upright in that strange vertical way that cats sometimes do with its tail tightly curled around its legs. All you could see was its back, but it was clear the cat was completely ignoring the pleas from my distraught mother. Once again, I carefully smoothed out the creases and laid the sketch down on top of the other one before reaching for another.

I was interrupted by a sharp tearing sound and then Mum shoved the new drawing directly at me. I looked up and saw that beneath the curtain of hair, Mum’s face was a mess. She’d been crying and her eyes were puffy and her nose was red. She looked down at the picture in her hand and then up again as she shoved the page at me again.

I took it from her and smoothed it out on my lap. I could feel Mum’s eyes watching me carefully as I looked down at her latest picture. This time, instead of drawing herself from the side, or the rear, she had drawn herself from the front. She was more or less in the same pose, begging for forgiveness, but this time her form was blurred. She was melting in despair – dissolving into the floor. In the foreground, with her back to the viewer, was a young girl with her hair in pigtails tied off with little ribbons. It could almost have been Angie, but something about the tilt of the head, the slope of the shoulders told me that it was me.

I looked back up at Mum and saw that she was looking down at her blank sketchpad – waiting silently for some reaction from me. I wanted to say something but there was a lump the size of a baseball in my throat and no words could make their way past it. I had to get Mum out of her slump and I had to do it fast. I looked back at Mum and knew what I was going to do.

Carefully, I reached out and took the sketchpad from her and then I plucked the pencil from her fingers. I laid the pad on my lap and looked at Mum for a moment while I composed my thoughts into some sort of structure. Then I started drawing. I drew as quickly as I could – making the pencil race across the page. I didn’t think Mum could wait much longer before getting a response from me. I was worried that she would melt down completely if I took too long.

I wanted to copy Mum’s style but that would have slowed me down by quite a bit. Instead I opted for simple outlines – no shading, no color, no depth – just outlines. I drew Mum kneeling, with her arms around the young, pigtailed version of me. Pigtailed Bec was hugging Mum and resting her head on Mum’s chest. I cheated a bit by hiding the hands – they would have taken too long to draw well enough to get them looking okay. I did take the time to put some extra detail around Pigtailed Bec’s eyes. I did everything I could to emphasize the love and trust in those eyes as they gazed up at Mum.

Finally, it was done. I tore out the page and handed it across to Mum. She had sat silently watching me for the entire time I was drawing. Now she stared down at my picture, blinking slowly as she absorbed its meaning. Then she held both hands out towards the things in my lap. I picked up the pad and pencil and handed them to her.

Now it was my turn to sit and watch in silence as Mum drew. She was still upset – no, that’s too soft a word – she was still devastated. I was assuming that she was freaked because she’d lost her cool and fought with me. The last time Mum had decided she’d done the wrong thing as far as being a parent goes, she’d spent an afternoon in a funk and then slipped into a full-blown episode. This was Thanksgiving. In about half an hour, or less, the entire extended family was going to start arriving and expect to be fed and entertained. This was bad timing and it was my fault. I should never have got into a fight with her. I should have known better. I should have controlled my temper.

I made fists and clenched them so tightly that my nails dug fiercely into my palms – enough to make my eyes water. Weirdly, the pain in my hands was enough to stop me from bursting into tears.

I realized that Mum was taking a relatively long time to do her sketch so I shifted myself around and slid in to lean against the wall next to her. Then I laid my head on her shoulder and looked down over her arm at the half-finished sketch.

The most noticeable thing was a child-like drawing of a house in the middle of the page. Standing in the doorway, holding on to each side of the doorway, was that young-looking, pigtailed version of me. Except this time I was dressed in an old-fashioned gingham dress and long stockings. There were some strange lines around the house that I couldn’t immediately interpret, so I kept watching as more of the picture emerged.

As I watched, Mum actually started a new picture at the bottom of the page. I watched as her own features emerged from the quick sure strokes of her pencil. A moment later I started giggling as Mum put herself into the most outrageous dress I’ve ever seen, along with horizontally striped stockings. Then she reached up to the drawer of her bedside table and pulled out her tin of colored pencils. A few rattles later and she was giving herself bright red slippers. Given the rest of the sketch was done in greylead, the red shoes stood out like a beacon. In a single moment of twisting reality, the meaning of Mum’s picture become obvious – the house wasn’t a separate picture, it was part of the same one. And the lines around the house were movement lines. The house was falling. Mum had cast herself as the Wicked Witch of the West – about to be crushed under the falling house.

I kept on giggling at the picture but at the same time I shook my head at Mum. She had it all wrong. I wanted to take the pad from her and have my turn, but apparently Mum wasn’t ready to let go so we had a brief tug of war with the pad before I surrendered it back to her. I picked up a loose page that had a rejected half-drawn closet on it and pulled a book from the shelf near where I was sitting. I turned the loose page over and rested it on the book, then I fished in Mum’s tin for a second greylead.