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“Okay. Bastard Ted.”
“Holly.”
“Heisa bastard. He left you, left us—”
“He didn’t leave you kids—”
“Bullshit.” I attack the pumpkin mixture with the wooden spoon. “He did. He left us, all of us—you, Jamie, me, Ashlee. He’s a rat bastard, and Jean-Marc is a rat bastard, and I won’t forgive either of them.”
Mom looks at me reproachfully. “That’s not very nice.”
“Maybe I’m not nice.” I set the bowl down, but I set it down hard, and little globlets of pureed pumpkin splash up and out. “Maybe I’ve never been nice.”
Mom’s lips purse. “That’s not like you, Holly.”
“Why isn’t it like me? Why do I have to be nice? You never cared if Jamie was nice—”
“He’s your brother.”
“A man, right,” I say in disgust. “And it’s okay for men to be competitive, territorial, insensitive, but women have to be good. Sweet.Nurturers.”
“Holly, I don’t want to fight.”
“And I don’t want to be stepped on.” I take a quick breath. “Being nice is overrated. Being nice gets you ignored. Forgotten. Being nice means you wait and wait and never get a turn.”
She looks at me for a long moment, her flour-dusted hand resting on the yellow Formica counter, and I see she’s had her nails done for Thanksgiving. Burgundy polish with squared tips. “Are you mad at me?”
“No.” I reach for the pumpkin puree bowl. “I don’t know. I just wish you hadn’t read me all those, fairy tales growing up.”
“You loved fairy tales.”
“They’re not true.”
“That’s right. They’re stories.”
Stories. Good guys. Bad guys. Towers. Dungeons. Heroic men and imperiled women. “They all ended happily.” I give the pumpkin a halfhearted stir. “But life’s not like that.”
“You don’t know that. You’re still young.”
“And what about you? Are you still young?”
Mom pulls back as if I’ve struck her. “Yes. Well.” Her voice is soft, bruised, and she’s reaching for a dish towel, briskly wiping the flour off her hands. “I’m not complaining.”
“Maybe you should.”
She just shakes her head and swiftly, expertly crimps the edges of the crust and doesn’t look at me.
“Maybe we could go slay dragons together, Mom.” I’m trying to make a joke, get her to smile. “We could be the first mother-daughter dragon-slayer team out there.”
“Sure, Holly. If that would make you happy.” But she’s dismissive, and it’s gentler than Olivia’s dismissals but it’s still a dismissal, and our mother-daughter time is over for the night.
*
Saturday night Ivow never to eat turkey again in my life, since I’ve now had it in all its glorious forms: hot turkey, cold turkey sandwiches, turkey tetrazzini, turkey stew, turkey soup.
Bleck.
I pack my bag after the dinner dishes are done, since I plan on leaving early in the morning. Once my bag is packed, I head out, climbing into my car for a drive downtown.
