Title: Seasonal Affective
Rating: R
Summary: Post-RENT. Sometimes, we all need to be home for the holidays.
Disclaimer: Characters are the property of the Jonathan Larson estate. "Bon Apetit" is a real magazine, which I do not own. I don't believe "tofurkey" is a registered trademark, but I didn't invent that, either.
Seasonal Affective
The thing about Maureen is that she has a weird sensitivity to tension in a room. Unless, of course, she's causing it, I guess. But a lot of her manic reactions are simply her way of snapping the tautness in the air that, when you're part of our family, isn't that uncommon. Or, at least, wasn't. I think, in retrospect, that that's why she's such a loud and fast fighter, flinging her hands and her hair everywhere, gesticulating madly. She's trying madly to break the tension. In any event, November was pure torture for Maureen, I think.
Halloween had been bad enough. We all went out to the cemetery and...paid our respects, if that's what you call it, and nobody really spoke the whole ride back, me and Mimi and Maureen squeezed in back while Joanne drove and Roger screwed around with the radio. Collins, dry-eyed and calm, had told us he would take the bus and see us later that day. Roger was supposed to go to a party that an old bandmate was having that night, and Mimi was going to go with him but she moped all afternoon, and they bickered. Joanne and Maureen both called me to ask me to go out with them that night, claiming that the other was acting, and I quote, "like the crazy-slash-annoying woman she really is". Collins didn't get back until almost four o'clock, and I paced the loft, edgy and anxious, until he walked in the door and looked at me with his eyebrows raised, as though he were surprised to see me.
"I just thought I'd come up and say hello," he said softly. I'm glad he moved into Mimi's old apartment, now that she's up here to stay. If it were bigger I'd move down there with him. I smiled at him and set up a small pot with water. He sat on the couch and leaned back, resting his head on the worn material. "Good idea, Mark," he mentioned quietly, as the kettle began to boil and I lay out to mugs.
"Yeah," I said, not knowing what I was saying. "I think tea helps." He laughed a little at that, a small, tired laugh. God. Was this how we would spend the day? Was this all we had to remember Angel? It wasn't right. I poured our tea and turned abruptly away, knocking on Roger's door before I even had a plan fully formed. Fuck it.
"We're having a party here tonight," was the first thing out of my mouth, so I guessed it must be true.
"A party?" asks Roger, whose face, clouded with whatever was making Mimi cross her arms so tightly behind him, her face creased and watching us so closely, softened as he heard Collins in the act of locating sugar. Roger leaned against the doorframe. "What kind of party?"
"A—a family affair," I stuttered, hoping it doesn't sound as stupidly and shittily sentimental to everyone else as it does to me. Roger's jaw stayed soft, but he looked hesitant. He wanted to forget, a little, tonight. It's not the heroin-response—Mimi had a whole talk with me once about not confusing Roger's enjoyment of partying with a desire for drugs—but it's pretty normal in most adults. He wanted to have some fun. He thought I was suggesting one of our nice, quiet, peaceful nights in. Well, fuck that, too. Before I knew what I was doing, I was in his room, striding back and forth, counting on my fingers.
"How much money do you have?" I demanded. "Because we'll need triple sec and cranberry juice and limes—maybe we still have that vodka—and—" I stopped when I see Roger wasn't following me.
"Cosmos," Mimi said softly from behind me. I looked at her and then away as she explained to Roger, "Angel's favorite." I nodded too hard, giving the emotion away. "And lots of candy." And at that Roger laughed and Mimi smiled and then they smiled at each other. Roger pulled out his wallet and started rifling through, and Mimi touched my shoulder and went out to ask Collins something, and I picked up the phone to tell Maureen to stay civil with Joanne long enough to get the both of them to our home.
Joanne was raised with good taste and between the wine she brought and Mimi's cosmopolitans, we were all pretty drunk before too long. I had managed to find a last minute sale on candy at the Duane Reade on Third, adamant in my position that small children do not deserve to have their Halloween spoils "liberated" by a sketchy man with a camera. We indulged in sweets and drinks because it was better that way, because not everyone we loved could be there to do it with us. We even broke out some of my old movies from the year before—and then the years before that, and that's how we discovered Roger had never told Mimi about his only experiment with non-blonde hair dye. She laughed hard enough to fall off of the couch, which made us all giggle, and then from across the room Maureen gave me that shy little smile she almost never shows but that I remember quite well, and I knew it was because I had broken the tension we had all been feeling, and I did it without yelling or running away. And that's how we ushered in November, drunk and mostly on the floor, surrounded by empty candy wrappers and laughing.
But after that night, that really good night, the tension started slowly building again, and I just didn't know what to do about it now. So when Maureen arrived at our door in the middle of the second week in November, I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was. I had been slowly sinking back into myself, the fall catching up to me as I immersed myself in work. Fall's not my favorite season, but I'd shot some amazing stuff in October and planned to spend the next few weeks editing. Anyway, it was pretty obvious that Maureen was not pleased. She huffed when I opened the door, strode in and threw her bag on the couch, next to Mimi's curled, reading form, before she exclaimed, "Well, now you'll just have to have it."
"Um...hi. Have what? Want something to drink?"
"Thanksgiving," she said, looking me directly in the eye because we both knew she was making a loaded statement. "You'll have to have it here." For a quarter of a second the room went silent, and I could just feel Mimi stiffen and freeze on the couch. "Joanne's parents just called, and they want us to come to them again, and I swear that I will not survive another holiday with those people, Mark, so if you value my presence here on earth, I suggest you whip out the turkey baster and the cranberry sauce and all that other shit, because there in no fucking way it's happening anywhere else." With that, she flopped down next to Mimi, whose knuckles were white around the edges of her book. There was a moment of lull, during which I noticed a new rip in my Converse, before Maureen spoke again.
"Don't make me schedule some sort of inane protest about, I don't know, 'the imperialist implications of celebrating what would become the devastating force of colonization and the crimes perpetrated against the native peoples of this land', which means very little for a city where everybody and their mom is an immigrant anyway." Maureen's no idiot, but that was a mouthful for anyone to just whip out. I raised an eyebrow, and she shrugged. "What? I'm quoting Collins." It was a tired attempt at a joke, but it was a joke, and I smiled. I think the subject was so particularly sore for us all because our little family never had a Thanksgiving all together. We had buried Angel weeks before. Roger's last postcard had come a few days back, although he later told me that that was the day he started the long drive back to New York, which ended up taking him nearly a week. Nobody had ever asked Mimi where she had been, specifically, at least to my knowledge, and my only guess was that, judging by her death grip on Virginia Woolf, it wasn't anywhere good. Joanne had dragged Maureen to her parents' house in Nantucket, from which I received a frantic phone call from Mo, telling me that the monogrammed bathroom towels were creeping her out. Collins and I ended up watching the parade on television and getting Chinese food. We didn't even have the heart to get really drunk.
It would be weird, and desperately sad, in a way, to have a holiday like that. But we'd all been avoiding our own discomfort with the situation, when it was obvious—now that Maureen had forced me to think about it—that we'd just have to get through it the way we got through Halloween. One day at a time, I guess. So I finally looked up from my feet, and looked at Mimi, who was pretending she hadn't been staring at me, and shifted my gaze to Maureen, who made no attempt to hide it. I could feel myself sigh.
"Okay," I said simply, and Mimi jerked her gaze to my face and Maureen gave a tired smiled and closed her eyes as she leaned back. "But I'm not planning this shit all by myself. There's no reason for—"
"Okay, Mark," says Maureen with quiet force, and then she smiled again. "There's no need to become my mother." And even Mimi smiled at that. She put her book down in her lap.
"I'll help you plan, Mark," she said, looking at her hands. "I'm much better in the kitchen, anyway."
"Hey!" I exclaimed, mock-hurt, and Maureen laughed and nodded and the room seemed brighter than it had a moment ago.
In the end it wasn't too difficult to orchestrate. When we got together for Sunday dinner that week, Joanne brought over a stack of old Bon Apetits, some sort of gourmet magazine with recipes and stuff, which she swore her mother had left at her apartment. Maureen snorted and rolled her eyes. Mimi was quietly flipping through them as Roger changed positions on the couch, reading over her shoulder. Suddenly he got up and walked into his room. Conversation ceased, and I could hear my own sigh as I considered getting up to go after him. There were sounds of movement which were not "pick up my guitar and strum angrily because I'm upset" noises, and believe me, I can tell the difference. No, he emerged a minute later, guitar in tow, holding a crumpled piece of paper, which he sort of placed in Mimi's lap, then sat down next to her to tune.
"Santa Fe Potato Salad," she read, turning the paper over, "on the back of a salsa label. Um...thanks, babe. We can make this no problem. You know, if you want."
Roger nodded. "I figured since last year I had chips and salsa in the back of a car for Thanksgiving dinner...you know. Why not sort of make it part of the tradition?"
"I have a feeling this isn't going to be anything like your mother's Thanksgiving, Pookie," grinned Maureen, nudging Joanne with her foot. "And thank goodness!" Joanne raised her eyes skyward with an expression common among the long-suffering.
"Well," she said, pulling herself to her feet, "at least we know what one of us is thankful for."
Actually, it was sort of nice, having a project to work on that wasn't on film. I remember my mom being really stressed out about holidays like this, but when there are six of you and nobody's expecting anything too spectacular, a lot of the performance anxiety is eased. There were the predictable fights about tofurkey versus turkey, which Mimi solved by taking five dollars out of my hand and deciding to make both. I was sent back to the supermarket twice for buying the wrong kind of potatoes. Who knew potatoes had kinds that were so important? By the day before, we were all excited, even if we were trying to keep some sort of decorum about it. Mimi had made all sorts of complicated lists with timetables about what went into what heat and when that she was attempting to explain to me and Roger when Collins came in, smiling that strange, anarchist smile of his. I mean it, he has this crafty look that means he's either hatching a scheme, or it's already hatched. Every time I see it I have the urge to hide in my bed.
"Mimi, darling," he said, drawling a little, which I have come to assume means he wants something, "would you say, hypothetically, that the lovely meal you've been working so hard on would feed seven as well as it would six?"
"Do you want to bring a date?!" Mimi asked, her voice rising higher and higher in pitch. Collins immediately changed tactics.
"No, no, sweetheart, nothing like that. But I finally tracked down an old friend, whom I haven't seen as much of as I'd like, and I wanted to know if I could bring him here for the holiday. I always got the sense that his in-laws never really liked him, and he was a little hesitant to crash this scene, but if I could tell him that the lady of the house extends her invitation...?" Mimi looked a little confused, but she shrugged.
"Um, yeah, right?" she asked, looking at Roger and then at me. We both nodded. "Any friend of your is a friend of ours."
If we had known who he was speaking of, if we had remember that he had come in with that crazy gleam in his eye, we would have said no. But we didn't, and that's why we were caught by surprise the next afternoon. We had agreed to all be at the loft by three, just to help out and get things together. Roger and I were on the couch, snapping the ends off of green beans as we watched the giant Snoopy balloon on TV, Maureen carefully poking the stuffing, Joanne checking the turkey while Mimi, who was cutting fruit for a fruit salad, teased her about her high proficiency with the baster. When finally the door opened, we all looked up to greet Collins, only to be nearly silenced by the presence of Benny, who was smiling nervously. Collins came in after him, grinning like a madman. Shit, I should have known.
It was quiet for a minute, just the hiss of garlic sautéing on the stove, and Al Roker saying something about the Southern Junction Marching Band, all the way from...And then Benny stepped forward, smiled at me and turned to Mimi, towards whom both Maureen and Joanne shifted, as if unconsciously protecting her.
"I, um, I was always told that you give what you bring to the lady of the house, so..." And then he handed her one of those big brown shopping bags, which she took tentatively and placed on the counter. "There's, uh, some wine, that I thought was nice, and some flowers, and...and this chocolate cake, um, that my mom always made...it was sort of a tradition..."
And before I could control myself, I snorted out a laugh, because I remembered that fucking cake too well. Thanksgiving, what, five years ago, already? Maureen and I had started dating, but she hadn't moved in yet, so it was the guys for Thanksgiving, but Benny planned on visiting his family for most of the day. Collins had given up insisting that we cook right about the time Roger accidentally lit a dishrag on fire, so I offered all the food Cindy had dropped off from my mother the week before—"You really should come home, Mark; she thinks you're going to starve!"—and we just dug in. By seven o'clock we were fairly full, and passing one of Collins' joints around. Or, perhaps, several of his joints. When Benny came in, loaded down with leftovers, including some mind-blowingly good cake his mother had made, we handed him the weed and went to fucking town. To this day, that cake is the best food I have ever eaten. All this occurred to me in an instant, and Benny saw my smile before I could decide whether I wanted him to or not. He grinned tentatively at me, and I remembered, quite without meaning to, how coolly kind to me he was when we first met, this successful, wealthy man who's clearly hoping for a crumb of hospitality from a bunch of fuck-ups like us. I got up and hold out my hand.
"Long time, no see, Benny," I said. "Did your mom make that cake?" He laughed and pulled me into a hug. Over his shoulder I could see Maureen shift from one foot to the other, clearly unsure what to do, glancing at Collins, who nodded a little, and it was déjà vu all over again, thrown back into that crazy time in our lives...until Joanne stepped forward and laced her fingers with Maureen's, reminding me that we were in a new crazy time, that nothing ever plays out the same twice. I stepped away and turned quickly to Roger, who was looking intently at his lap. I saw him take a deep, deep breath, like he was about to go underwater for a long time. Or like he was just coming up. He looked up, and I knew in an instant that he wasn't going to blow up. I could feel myself relax a little.
"Hey, man," Roger said, and then looked behind the couch to Mimi. For one terrible moment I wasn't not sure whether she was about to burst into tears or laughter or throw something scalding at all of us. Finally, she shrugged. "Fuck it—no regrets, right? Let's see how nice this wine is that you brought us, Mr. Big Shot." Roger got to his feet and shook Benny's hand, and Benny was smart enough to know that while I would accept his hugs, they were not welcome everywhere—they may never be. He didn't seem to mind. On the contrary, he looked insanely elated, and I wasn't surprised, because that's Benny: never wants anyone mad at him. That's why he never had the balls to throw us out for more than ten days. He rushed over to Maureen and gave her a kiss on the cheek, which earned him a scowl from Joanne until she got one, too. He didn't go within a foot of Mimi, but stood politely by her as she resumed her chopping, asking about her parents and their health.
I sidled over to Collins, who had decided to pick up his usual job of setting our crappy table. "You took a big risk," I said, fiddling with the bouquet of fall foliage sitting in the middle, which Maureen insisted looked "festive", no matter how much I tried to explain that dogs in Central Park pee on these things, for God's sake. He just smiled, handing me paper napkins to fold.
"No, not really," he told me, counting forks. "I...well, let's just say I had a hunch." I could have smacked him for that deep, philosophical bullshit, but he smirked at me and added, "But I didn't make him put more than half an hour on the meter downstairs, just in case. In fact, let me remind him of that before the owner of this building gets his fancy-ass car towed away from in front of it." And he moved off to interrupt Mimi's proud explanation of the meal to do just that. I laughed, watching Roger call Joanne over to see the Charlie Brown balloon bang into some important midtown building, the two of them high-fiving as she explained that someone she really didn't like worked there. She picked up the beans I had put down, and Roger disappeared into my bedroom, and returned holding my camera, which he placed into my hands with a lopsided grin.
"Don't even fucking say that you're proud of me, or some bullshit like that, Mark, because I swear I'll punch you in the head." And with that he resumed his seat next to Joanne, Mimi leaning over the back of the couch to give him a kiss. Collins poured wine carefully and Benny poked expertly at the simmering garlic. I continued folding napkins, until Maureen came up from behind me and put her head on my shoulder in a much-familiar move, sighing softly.
"Just like old times, huh?" she murmured. I thought about that for a minute, and then turned my camera on, pointing it the two of us, and turning it slowly, steadily with a hand that by now knows how not to waver, in a long, lovely pan that caught the whole room.
"Nah. Just like new times." After a moment, I could feel Maureen nodding slowly against my shoulder. She picked up the napkin I had put down, and I didn't have to point the camera at her to know that she was smiling.