A. Homes: May We Be Forgiven

“Very nice,” Cy says. “Was that Whitman? Longfellow?”

“Anne Frank,” Ashley says.

Cy waits a moment before raising his glass. “Well, I want to thank you, all of you. It has been a very good year for Madeline and me, moving back into our home. I don’t know why we ever left. La-hoolum!”

Madeline leans over and whispers loudly to Cy, “Thanksgiving is an American holiday, not a Jewish holiday.”

Lillian leans over and, while pointing towards Madeline and Cy, asks Jason, “Whose people are those?”

Jason shrugs. “Dunno.”

“I didn’t know Claire’s parents were Caucasian,” Lillian says.

“Maybe Claire was adopted,” Jason suggests.

“And where is Claire anyway?” Lillian asks. “I thought they killed Jane, did they kill Claire too?”

We eat, we gorge, we stuff ourselves, greedily devouring everything. Plates are passed for seconds and thirds. Aunt Christina’s ambrosia is oddly addictive; after my third helping, she tells me that the secret ingredient is heavy mayonnaise. I skip a fourth serving and load up on turkey. We eat until we are sated and still we keep going, eating until we are in pain, until we are suffering, because that is the new American tradition.

“I don’t even like sweet potatoes and I had two helpings,” Ashley says, pushing herself away from the table.

“The bird was perfect,” Madeline says.

We take a break before dessert; the children work as a team and clear the table.

Mrs. Gao and Ching Lan and her mother insist on helping to clean up. Mrs. Gao brought Tupperware containers—“my gift to you,” she says. “I love these things; they burp when you close them.”

I am so overstuffed that I can literally go no farther than the living-room sofa. I lie there thinking of George eating pressed turkey breast, jellied cranberry slices still bearing the ringlike indentations from the can, lumpy gravy, and glutinous white-bread stuffing, and I wonder: Is there pumpkin pie in prison? If there is, does it have any flavor at all?

The children are outside, playing football on the front lawn with Ricardo’s uncle and Cy; there are joyous shouts as the pigskin passes from hand to hand.

There is talk of an early snow, freezing rain.

It is three hundred sixty-five days since the warning, three hundred and sixty-five days since Jane pressed against me in the kitchen: me with my fingers deep in the bird; our wet, greasy kiss.

It has been a year in full, and still the thought of Jane fills me with heat. I feel myself rise to the occasion.

May we be forgiven; it is a prayer, an incantation.

May We Be Forgiven.

With great thanks for their support, friendship, and editing skills: Marie Sanford, Amy Hempel, Katherine Greenberg, Amy Gross, Elliott Holt, Lisa Randall, Laurie Simmons, and Syd Sidner, who sat next to me for days and weeks, bringing me way too much coffee, and Claudia Slacik, who quite literally gave me a place to write.

Zadie Smith, who asked the question that got the whole thing going; William Boyd, who picked the first chapter for Granta ’s 100th issue; Salman Rushdie, who later selected the piece for The Best American Short Stories 2008; and Heidi Pilator at Best American Short Stories.

Agents Andrew Wylie, Sarah Chalfant, Charles Buchan, Jin Auh, and Peter Benedek on the West Coast. And lawyers Marc H. Glick and Stephen F. Breimer.

Paul Slovak, my editor at Viking, who met me for lunch many times along the way, and Sara Holloway at Granta, UK, who has been a wonderful friend and editor for the last ten years.

Françoise Nyssen and Marie-Catherine Vacher in France; Carlo Feltrinelli, Fabio Muzi Falconi, and Maria Baiocchi in Italy; Robert Ammerlaan in the Netherlands; and Helge Malchow and Kerstin Gleba in Germany.

Elaina Richardson, Candace Wait, and the staff of Yaddo, without whom I would never write anything. Special thanks to Catherine Clarke, who retired in 2011 after spending twenty-five years at the front desk saying, “Good afternoon, this is Yaddo,” in her wonderfully calm voice to anyone who called.

Andre Balaz, Philip Pavel, and the staff of the Chateau Marmont — my West Coast Yaddo.

My colleagues at the Pen American Center, Poets and Writers, and The Writer’s Room in New York City.

And my brother and parents — what a long strange trip it’s been.