Lydia Cooper - My Second Death

Thanksgiving dinner is a cacophony. Glass casserole dishes full of green beans floating in mushroom soup mix. Scalloped potatoes with steam rising from brown-specked cheese crusts. The electric knife dipping into the turkey breast, slitting the crisp skin so that clear liquid dribbles down its sides. Laughter, arguing, and a self-righteous ESPN announcer in the background analyzing a touchdown.

I sit on the end of the many-leafed table near Stephen. His left elbow is propped on the table between us and he turns away from me to talk to a cousin who wears braces and has zits the size of gumballs. They talk about SAT prep courses, a Kings of Leon concert, and Super Mario.

If I even wanted to talk to one of my many relatives, what topics of conversation would I offer? Somehow I doubt any of them would have many opinions to offer on medieval play cycles, or power-to-weight ratios in pre-1970s muscle cars.

My father is across the table and a few seats to my right. He eats silently. Knife and fork slicing turkey into small, bite-sized pieces. Arranging each forkful, bite of turkey, dab of mashed potato, single green bean. In between each bite he takes a sip of red wine. He and my mother are the only wine drinkers. Uncle Randy is on his fourth Coors.

My mother sits at the other end of the table. She gesticulates, her jaw moving, her eyes wide, laughing and chattering like a marionette with a hyperactive puppet master. She touches the arms and shoulders of her sisters-in-law, her mother, her father. They touch her in return. They lean toward each other. Their stories veer towards the hagiographic. Remember that time Joe drove dad’s car into a ditch, oh my God, and Randy had to give him rides everywhere, and they ended up having such a good time, all that riding around town together, when Randy’s pickup broke down they went and bought that Chevy together ? And remember that time you opened that lemonade stand and I said to Harry, I said, she’s going to be an entrepreneur !

My father gets up and comes back to the table with the bottle of wine. He sees me watching him and raises his eyebrows, tipping the bottle in my direction.

I shake my head and take another bite of turkey.

Stephen smiles at something his pink-and-white skinned cousin says and shifts in his seat, brushing hair out of his eyes. He lays his arm back down on the table. His elbow touches my hand. He doesn’t notice. I bite hard on my tongue and put my hand in my lap and don’t say fuck .

Uncle Randy gives a great bellow of laughter.

We all jump a little and look over at him.

My cousin Jeff is protesting. Laughing, but protesting. No way, he is saying. That pot he smoked in high school was the only pot he’s ever smoked. Swear to God. Where’s Aunt Cynthia? She can vouch for him, Christ.

My mother flushes like a hothouse flower unfurling after too long in the cold. She laughs. “We see through you, big guy. We see right through you.”

“No way! I’ve always been a straight arrow. A goddamn straight arrow.”

“Oh, please.”

“Come on , Aunt Cynthia! I’m telling the truth. You’d think you’d believe me!”

A sudden silence.

The cousin next to Stephen turns from watching Jeff’s protestations of innocence to stare at Stephen.

Jeff looks at my mom and blushes. Uncle Randy looks at my mom, then at my dad.

I look across at my father.

He is looking at his wine glass. He does not look up.

Beside me, Stephen bites his lower lip and looks down at his plate. The rims of his ears are dark red.

I clear my throat. “Of course she believes you.”

Eyes swivel to my face, confusion printed on their foreheads. I feel my father lift his gaze from his glass.

I say, “As you so aptly point out, she would recognize symptoms of pretty much any serious drug use. Between my anti-psych meds and my older brother’s recreational experimentation, I doubt my brother and I have left a single mind-altering substance untested.” I give Jeff a cheek-aching grin. “Although before you base your entire defense on my mother’s familiarity with crazies and drug addicts, you might want to remember that she’s also more familiar with brilliant academics and artists than with total fucking bores .”

I toss my napkin on top of my half-eaten turkey and push back my chair.

“Lovely meal,” I say. “Lovelier conversation. A delight, as always.”

I walk out of the dining room, out of the house.

An overcast snowy night. My socks leave dark patches in the snow. The cold aches in my bones. I go out onto the empty street. Tire ruts carved into gray snow. Salt grit piled by the sidewalks. A few chimneys breathe thin pale streams of smoke into the ironclad sky. I walk up the empty road. Icy snow packs in my socks. I take off my socks and leave them lying in the street. My jeans cuffs drag heavy against my ankles.

Time passes.

Later the sky darkens to pewter and shadows stretch dark over the silent suburb. Streetlights glow greenish and alien. I walk back to my grandparents’ house. When I get close I notice one of the cars in the driveway is idling, brake lights red in the darkness. The car is a minivan. My mother’s car.

Frozen trees creak in the dark and unseen telephone wires cry plainsongs with inhuman voices. I wade through ankle-high wet snow up the driveway and put my hand on the front passenger’s side door. The windowpane is tinted and I can’t see inside in the dark. I open the door.

My father, sitting in the driver’s seat with his hands resting on the steering wheel, jerks his head up from the headrest.

“Jesus Christ.”

“Nope. It’s just me.”

I climb inside and pull the door shut. The car radio is playing soft classical music, one of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. The car smells like sour fruit and burnt rubber, the wine on my father’s breath and the old heating unit in the car.

I put my hands under my thighs and stretch out my feet toward the vent near the footrest. My toes are the color of raw salmon. The bones feel like they will burn through the skin.

“Are you still doing that?”

I look over at him.

He lifts his hand from the steering wheel and points. My feet.

“The masochism.”

When Dave took me diving into the basement of an unconstructed house, he told our parents it was my idea, that I had jumped into the icy sludge and he had rescued me. It was maybe, technically, a lie but not a consequential one. I never noticed heat or cold like ordinary people and would often go outside forgetting a coat or shoes in the winter. Dave’s lie didn’t upset me, but ever since then my parents have labored under the misapprehension that I have masochistic tendencies. I hate inaccuracy. But I also hate repeating myself. People are morons.

I roll my eyes but don’t answer him.

My father scratches his chin. His thumbnail rasps against a silvery haze across his jaw.

“What are you doing out here?”

He doesn’t say anything for a long time and I think that he won’t answer at all but then he says, “Not being there.”

“Are you going to get divorced?”

He lifts his head from the seat again and turns to look at me. Our reflections in the front windshield waver, merge.

“It disgusts me,” he says. “Your masochism. And also your ‘insightful’ comments that are really just puerile jibes intended to rile rather than communicate.”

I look away from our reflections and at his face. The faint glow from the headlights turns his glasses lenses white.

“You wear those juvenile T-shirts, you run like a maniac. Every time I see you I see pain. And every other word out of your mouth is fuck. Nothing about you is beautiful or gracious. You are hard, judgmental, uncompromising, needlessly cruel. You are verbally sadistic to your mother who has done nothing but love you. You ignore the only family member who truly dotes on you — and I thank God for it. I would hide Stephen from you if you didn’t do such a comprehensive job avoiding him. You’re like a human cancer in my family.”