A. Homes: May We Be Forgiven

“How are you?” I ask.

“How could I be?”

“It was an accident,” I say.

“I am not asking for your opinion,” George says.

“You look horrible. Walter mentioned that you’d been in the hospital.”

“I had proctitis and gonorrhea.”

“What is going on in there?”

“I’ve had to make my own way,” he says, shaking his head bitterly. “There’s nothing good about this place. My teeth are rotting. I used to get them cleaned four times a year, now my breath smells like shit all day. You sold me out. You gave me up, and for what — Lillian’s chocolate-chip cookie recipe?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You took advantage of my sweet tooth; you used the cookies to fuck me over.”

“They already had you, George,” I say. “I’m the one they used, like a human shield. I gave of myself to protect you. I had no option to turn them down,” I say. “They had me by the balls.”

“You have no balls,” George says.

“Nice, George.”

The inmate in the visiting booth next to ours falls to the floor and has a seizure.

“How are my roses?” George asks as the guards move to clear the room so they can attend to the sick prisoner.

“They have black spot. I’ll spray again tonight if it doesn’t rain,” I say as I’m exiting.

On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, Nate comes home from school with a friend named Josh. The next day, we borrow the Gaos’ minivan and drive into New York City. Cy, Ricardo, Nate, Josh, and I head for the Lionel Store while Ashley and Madeline have a plan to get their hair done and go for lunch. The city is crazy with people, I feel like a tourist — jostled by everything.

At the Lionel Store, it takes a while before the sales guy realizes exactly who the train is for, but once he does, he gets into it, and seven hundred dollars and lots of accessories later, we leave the store — each of the boys carrying a heavy bag. I take the boys out for ice cream. It turns out Nate has never had a banana split. I order two for the table, and Cy scowls at me. “It’s my big day,” he says. “Let us each have our own.”

And we do.

When we are done, we rendezvous with Ashley and Madeline, who have had not only their hair done but their toes and nails as well.

“One more stop,” Cy says, as we cram back into the minivan. He directs me to the Eighty-first Street side of the Museum of Natural History.

“I’m not sure how close I can get — they close a lot of the streets ahead of the parade.”

“Your best is all I ask,” Cy says.

I park in a lot a couple of blocks from the museum and, like a line of ducks, we follow Cy, bumping into people as we go, echoing a chorus of “Sorry, sorry, sorry.” At the barricade on the corner of Eighty-first and Central Park West, Cy whispers something to the cop and pulls his old driver’s license from his wallet. I glance at Madeline, who seems to know exactly what Cy is doing. She smiles.

“Of course,” the cop says, opening the barricade and ushering us all through.

Cy smiles, pleased with himself. We are now among the select few pedestrians on the block where the Macy’s parade floats have been laid out in the middle of the street and are being inflated. “There’s a hose going right up Betty Boop’s ass,” Cy points out.

“Betty Poop,” Ricardo exclaims.

“How did we get here?” Nate asks.

“I’ve still got a card or two up my sleeve,” Cy says.

“We used to live right here on this block,” Madeline says. “For many, many years. Our girls grew up playing in Central Park if it was sunny, or among the dioramas in the Natural History Museum if it was cold or raining.”

“Cool,” Nate says.

“This parade is the stuff of my childhood,” Cy says. “I was here when Mickey Mouse first flew, and when Ethel Merman sang.”

“I had no idea,” I say as we walk up and down. The children are in awe of the giant floats, Betty Boop, Kermit the Frog, Shrek, Superman all swelling to life. Under bright, nearly forensic white lights tended to by workers in Tyvek suits, the giant balloons are held down by netting, sandbags, and ropes. I can’t help but notice that on the other side of the museum there are also floats — and an enormously long line that snakes for blocks — public viewing.

“This is the coolest thing ever,” Ricardo says. “Thank you.”

It is magical, almost fantastical, and what I’d call the good kind of melancholy — as sweet as it is, it’s also sad. We linger until it is dark and cold and our bones have begun to ache.

As we are driving home, they all fall asleep in the car. I am alone and awake. Driving up the Henry Hudson Parkway to the Saw Mill, I see the glowing eyes of a raccoon staring me down at the edge of the road. It begins to snow — first small white flakes, and then fat ones, the size of the doilies under the lamps in Aunt Lillian’s house. I open the window; the snow blows into the car, dusting everyone as if with a kind of magical powder.

Thanksgiving. It has been a year — and a lifetime. The table has been set. Ashley and Madeline have handcrafted a cornucopia centerpiece that spills autumnal bounty across the freshly pressed tablecloth: gourds, squash, pumpkins, and, if you look carefully, the silver-buckled Pilgrim shoes Ashley and I bought in Williamsburg overflowing with plump red and green grapes.

Thanksgiving morning, I am up early, laying piecrust in tins. Glancing out the kitchen window — past the stump from the maple tree, which has been chopped, chipped, spit out as mulch, and sprinkled around everything in the garden, like funeral ashes scattered in remembrance — I spot four deer soundlessly tiptoeing through the yard, a father followed by two fawns and the mother. Their tails twitch as they bend to taste the garden. I have to smile. The only deer I’ve seen near here have been bloody carcasses on the side of the road. Madeline shuffles in, sees that I’m staring at something, and comes to look. She leans over the sink and raps heavily on the glass. “This isn’t a grocery store,” she yells. The father deer’s ears twitch, his tail goes up, and they take off, having gotten word that they are no longer welcome.

Madeline asks if I’ve noticed Cy sitting on the floor of the living room, in his pajamas, hooking up his train set.

“He looks happy,” I say.

“He is,” Madeline says, confessing that she’s glad he got the train now — she doesn’t think he’s going to make it until Christmas.

“The doctor said he was doing well,” I say.

“He’s going,” she says, “bits and pieces are flaking off. But he’s not suffering. We should all be so lucky.”

The children are in their pajamas, watching the parade on TV and helping Cy set up the train. Nate’s friend Josh is dyslexic. He calls Nate “Ante.” Nate explains that whenever Josh texts, he types “Ante” instead of “Nate” and the nickname stuck. My suspicion that they are more than friends is quashed when Nate comes in for breakfast and tells me that Josh is not the average academy student: next year, after Josh becomes Jenny, he’ll transfer to a coed school so that the academy doesn’t have to address the gender-bender issue.

“How did you become friends?” I ask.

“We’re both knitters,” Nate says. And then Nate helps me slide the twenty-eight-pound trussed, stuffed bird into the oven. “I wrote to my father,” Nate says. “Well, I started to write a letter, but it got really long — eighty pages. I gave it to my adviser, who said it’s not a letter, it’s a memoir, and he wants me to keep going. Am I too young to write a memoir?” he asks.