May We Be Forgiven

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.

    T hanksgiving. 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.

    T hanksgiving 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.

    M adeline 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.”

    T he 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.
    There is no right answer.
    Between making “holiday punch” and looking for a platter big enough for the bird, I’m texting back and forth with Cheryl—I invited her and her family, but Thanksgiving is big in Ed’s world. His sister cooks, and Cheryl and Ed double up on their Plavix and Lipitor the week before. “Be sure to shove a lemon into the bird’s hole before you put it into the oven,” Cheryl texts.
    “Too late.”
    “Never too late,” she writes. “And before it starts to get brown make an aluminum foil tent—save the browning for the last 30 min—helps the skin stay