I have decided not to pay for heating this winter in order to save up for some good headshots. Which basically means I am not paying my gas bill, and since the stove is electric I do not think I will be losing a whole lot. I can just cover myself in a lot of blankets and wear layers to bed.
It is the next day and I am regretting my previous decision. My teeth are chattering involuntarily and all the blankets in the world, layered overtop my flannel pajama pants and fleece-lined pajama shirt and Polo turtleneck sweater and wool socks and satin smoking robe could not keep me warm enough at night to sleep. I also did not realize that turning off the gas would mean I would lose hot water, so I cannot even take a shower. The floor feels like ice and I have permanent goosebumps, and I am shivering the way I used to on those freezing cold days at water polo, full body convulsions you cannot control. My nose is running and I have not even done coke. I have not touched Bolivian marching powder in six months. One of the neighbors sees me in the lobby, still recovering from the cold, and asks what is wrong with me. I murder him or her – it is so hard to tell – with my eyes and go back to the tundra that is my apartment. I pay my gas bill and in a little while the heat turns back on. I may not be able to afford the best photographer in the business but I will have to do with what I have got.
There’s a light snowfall outside, powdering the streets in what someone I remember called “God’s dandruff.” Snow excited me, fascinated me, when I first moved to the Northeast for college. Now it’s just like dirt, only white, and does nothing to ease the heaviness of my fatigue and the inevitability of my being alone this Thanksgiving.
My father calls. My father. I can picture him, weathered face, crinkling blue eyes that match mine, blond-gray hair, smoking a cigar maybe, padding around his dark wood-paneled office filled with nearly a library collection of books, big television for watching games. “Richard,” says he.
“Hi, Dad,” say I, still shivering a little, seated on top of the radiator. Hearing my father speak always make me tremble some.
“Can I take it you’re not going to be spending Thanksgiving dinner with us this year?” is that condescension? Or frustration? I hold my head in my hands and rub my temples.
“Ah, no, Dad. I can’t...I can’t really be flying out right now. I’m, um, really sorry.”
My Dad pauses for a long time, and it’s like I am seventeen years old and brown as a berry tanned from the Pacific Palisades sun, and my entire body has been doused in chlorinated water, and I’ve messed up somehow at practice and he’s just there, he’s just staring at me down. Oh hey, old man. Or how I learned when I was nine: is that a paddle in your hand or are you just happy to see me?
He breaks the silence, finally, thank God. With the paddle? “So what you’re saying is that for Thanksgiving, it’ll just be me, Thaddeus, Vanessa, whoever the hell her new boyfriend is, and the goddamn Macy’s parade on the TV.”
That is, I suppose, how Thanksgiving dinner has been for the past three or so years. Only this time, I want to be there. I want to see Anita doing laundry and watering house plants and trace the edges of the Valerie Hartman pin-up and Eagles posters in my old bedroom and feel my mother’s embrace (impossible even if I returned) and dip my feet in the backyard pool. “I honestly am sorry, Dad.”
Another pause. I’m dripping water, reek of chemicals. How did I miss the ball? How’d I let that guy dunk me for so long?
“Please,” I say, unsure of what it means.
“Have fun wherever you are, Richard,” Dad says, sounding almost like a threat, hangs up on his second-born son, third-born child.
Thursday. Everything seems to be still, quiet, not moving. The CVS is open anyway. I buy a lunch meat-style pre-packaged bag of turkey slices. Make myself a sandwich. Out from underneath the kitchen cabinets comes crawling a mouse, sniffing around. Drop it some sandwich. Its ears perk up, eats with me.
