I called my father to wish him a happy Veteran's day, but he didn't answer while I was on the train. I left a message and told him I wanted to bring somebody to Thanksgiving dinner, if he'd call me back so we could make arrangements. I didn't hear back from him until that night when I had picked up Lourdes Marie from Alissa and Joel's.
"You've got a new boyfriend, Dani girl?"
"Yeah," I sighed. "He's military."
Daddy groaned. "Please don't say Marine Corps."
"No, he's Army," I replied. "His name is Steve and he's from New York."
"Army, huh? Good. Infantry?"
"Yeah, something like that. Hey, Daddy, do you still have Pop-pop's memory trunk?"
"I'm not sure, but you can check when you get here, it's probably in the attic, last time I checked."
"Alright. It was good talking to you, I've got get ready for work early tomorrow."
"All right, honey. Say hello to Lordy for me. Love you."
"Love you too."
I felt a nervous and giddy: my family knew about Steve. Would I tell them about his true identity and the cryogenesis? No, that was his place to tell them. When the time came.
Steve and I talked everyday by phone, and the letters between us were written fast and furiously. I received a letter from him at least every other day, and I tried to keep up.
After class on Tuesday afternoon, I packed dirty clothes and dropped Lourdes Marie off at Alissa's (who was having a Friendsgiving for everyone not going home over this weekend) and caught a flight to Nashville. Daddy came by himself to pick me up at the airport.
"So this Steven guy, he's flying in tomorrow?"
"If he's not called in," I said. "We've got the Martha Stewart Thanksgiving planner on track?"
"When wouldn't we?" He joked. "What's this Steven's rank?"
"He's a Captain," I said. "I hope you like him."
"I'll give him a fair chance, but it's up to him."
"Ugh, Daddy!" I cried.
At home, I was ambushed by my nephews and nieces since Leighanne (Harland Jr.'s wife) and Lauren were helping Harland with the pre-Thanksgiving cooking.
"I forgot what you wooked wike," Peyton informed me with her drawl.
"Ouch!" I cried.
"I hate that you're going to schoo' so fa' away!" Peyton whined.
"Who's helping Aunt Dani upstairs?" Daddy asked
"Me!" Ruby shouted, bouncing.
"I'm helping, too!" Shawn shouted. They tried to pull my suitcase up the stairs but Daddy had to help them.
Peyton ran off to play, but I found Matthew in the living room, playing the newest Iron Man video game on the PlayStation. "Hey, buddy," I said in my brightest tone. "Didn't you miss your Aunt Dani?"
He looked up at me through his coke-bottle glasses and a grin crossed his face. "I thought you'd forget about me!"
I bent down to hug him as best I could in his wheelchair.
"Never!" I cried. "No way!"
"Did you bring me a present?"
"Huh? A present? Aren't I present enough?"
"Okay, just kidding."
"Matthew," Lauren chided. "Did you really just ask Dani for a present?"
"Well, I should have thought about it more," I admitted.
"Don't you only get one bag from Southwest?" Leighanne asked. Leighanne, my brother Harland Jr.'s wife, looks a lot like Duchess Megan, she's super beautiful. But when she opens her mouth, her Dothan, Alabama accent comes out. She's a teacher here in Brentwood, and teaches history at one of the local middle schools. Where I have a drawl, Leighanne's got a full on accent, and we have to tease her about it.
"Next time," I promised.
"Matthew, I told you one hour of video games and then you can read or play with Shawn, Ruby, and Peyton," Lauren said from the doorway. She was still in her scrubs from the hospital. "Dani, come in the kitchen, I want to hear all about this new boyfriend."
"Aww, Momma, just one more game!" Matthew whined.
"Just let him, the kids are upstairs with Daddy right now," I said, listening to the drumbeat of footsteps overhead following Daddy's.
"Alright, just this once," Lauren said.
In the kitchen, Lauren and Leighanne had some food laid out for cooking, and were chopping vegetables and other things. I got the feeling they were just trying to look busy.
"So how's the cooking going?" I asked.
"Oh please," Leighanne said, eyes rolling. "Start chopping and let's get to the point: you just told us last week the new guy you're dating is pretty serious."
"What is this, a middle school slumber party?" I asked, opening the fridge to get an Orangina. "This conversation is not passing the Bechtel test."
I saw a glance exchanged between Lauren and Leighanne. "You said that you write letters," Lauren said. "Like actual, snail-mail letters. Did you bring any of them along?"
"No!" I cried. "Did you think I'd let you read them?"
"Well, of course, we're sisters!"
"Do y'all write dirty things in them?" Leighanne asked, eyebrow arching.
"Why does everything have to revolve around being dirty?" I asked. "No, we mostly just tell each other about interesting and funny things going on in our lives, since we live three hours apart. He doesn't trust electronic devices. He can actually write words in full sentences."
"Oh, keeper," Lauren said, rolling her eyes. She wiped her forehead with the back of her wrist, smoothing her hair back. She was the blonde, blue-eyed sister, while I was the dark-haired, green-eyed one. A lot of people believed that we weren't really related we looked so different, but the moment we spoke, we sounded exactly alike. I took after Momma, Lauren looked more like Daddy's side. "Somebody teach Russell how to use a pen and paper."
"He's different," I said. "A real gentleman. He's old-fashioned in a lot of ways."
"Ewww," Lauren and Leighanne chorused.
"Does he let you have friends or does he have to approve them all?" Lauren asked.
"I didn't say he was a Meninist, okay?" I grumbled, rolling my eyes. "Y'all assume a lot."
"We're your sisters, of course we do," Lauren said.
"Now get to work, we're doing the side dishes while Harland Sr.'s doing the turkey," Leighanne said, throwing an apron at me.
After I greeted everyone, and had worked in the kitchen on dinner side dishes, Russell, Lauren's husband (who could be a real piece of work sometimes) came over, and got Matthew off the Iron Man video game. I went into the living room to say hi to him, when he had turned on BBC Sky News to see what was going on in England.
"How's work?" I asked. I personally disliked him because he had cheated on Lauren, but they reconciled. I tried to like him and be cordial, but sometimes, he was just so damn unlikeable and narcissistic, it was hard not to be sarcastic.
"Well, we just sold 10,000 units of Graybar to Santa Monica, didn't I tell you to invest in it?" Russell said. "You really missed out, Dani. You wouldn't have to be working as a waitress in grad school if you had listened."
I fought the urge to roll my eyes. "At least I'm in grad school," I said. "That's all that matters."
"Aww, shit," Russell complained, looking at his phone. "Sokovia's in civil unrest again? I don't know how the international division of Stohlman is going to survive overseas if they don't stop messing up their Parliament. Now, I've always thought Parliaments are ineffective methods of government compared to Republics like ours…"
I tuned Russell out while I watched the news ticker.
Civil Unrest in Sokovia- Civil War at hand?
I almost jumped out of my skin. I ran upstairs, leaving Russell to act like he knew everything already about it, and found my phone. There were a few text messages, one from Steve.
Dani,
I know you wanted me at your family's Thanksgiving, but I'm being mobilized. I can't say why or where, but you can probably figure it out. I'm so sorry. I'll be without a phone for a few days, but I'll contact you when I get back, promise.
Sincerely,
Steve
As much as I tried to enjoy the next twenty-four hours, it broke my heart to admit that Steve had been called into action. This was his first Thanksgiving since he woke up, and he was going to be spending it cold and alone on an Army base or Consulate's office or something, not with a family and relaxing. The US Consulate's office in Sokovia was being evacuated of all non-essential personnel according to the news, the same news that I stayed tuned into at all times. Was he staying in the Consulate's office with the Foreign Service and the Marines stationed there?
I dressed in my best pair of Anne Taylor grey tweed dress slacks from last year and I picked up a black silk blouse, but stopped. I got out a flag pin and pinned it to my bra in some silly idea that it was a good luck charm and Steve wouldn't get hurt if I wore it. I put on my blouse and then, red lipstick. He loved red lipstick on me. I'd wear whenever he went into battle.
I was distracted at church and when we came home to have dinner, I was distracted as I set the table and accidentally set the table wrong and set a place for where Steve would have sat. Lauren came in behind me and fixed it. "What's wrong with you?" She whispered.
I shrugged. "He's not coming.."
"Pull yourself together, girl," she hissed. "Nanny's here! You can't get this upset about a man."
"I think he's been mobilized into Sokovia," I whispered.
There was a suddenly cheer from the living room: most of the family was watching the football games. I looked at Lauren, and she paled. "Oh my God…"
I nodded, swallowing. "He couldn't tell me where he was going, but the news…"
"There was nothing on the news about it."
"It was on BBC Sky News," I said. They rarely devoted much time to international news on American news stations.
"I'm turning on my Sky News alerts on my phone, okay? I'll turn them on on yours, too. Captain Steve Rogers?"
"Yeah," I muttered. "That's his name."
"I'll put up some alerts on that name. Try to go have fun and watch the game."
I tried to sit in the living room with the rest of the family while the kids were playing Slap Jack, which was mostly them making a lot of noise by slamming their hands on the table. It made me jump each time. Nanny motioned for me to come sit by her on the couch.
My Nanny, despite her age and aches and pains and broken hip, was bright. I couldn't hide much from her. "Why don't you sit down and tell your nanny why you're so jumpy, Dani-girl?" She said.
"I'm following a news story overseas," I said.
"They don't show the news like they oughta," Nanny agreed. "But you're home, you're with me. Talk to me."
"Nanny, did you date soldiers when you were a girl?"
She shook her head. "Too tricky, even though it was peacetime. I didn't want to be an officer's wife and travel all the time. I wanted to stay in Meridan by my family. Why you askin'?"
"I'm dating a soldier."
"It can't be that serious, yet?"
"It's getting there," I admitted.
"Then bring him home, I don't have a lot time left!" she cried, slapping my knee.
"Don't talk like that!"
"Sooner is better than never," she reminded me.
The Titans lost, of course, which was predictable, but most of my family wasn't phased by it. After the game, we sat down to dinner, and each time I felt my phone buzz in my lap, I checked it.
"Aunt Dani, no phones at da table!" Peyton shouted.
"Sorry, Pey-day," I said.
Nobody else bugged me about it.
What I had put together was Sokovis was so economically depressed, there were riots outside Parliament. The hot-headed Prime Minister had said he'd never listen to a bunch of spoiled brats complain about not getting free stuff, and the protest started getting more and more verbally violent. The demands were being ignored, and the country's military had been deployed to keep the people from rushing into the building and attacking the elected officials.
The aerial views of the Parliament Square were terrifying: it was filled, standing-room-only with disgruntled citizens, holding signs in a foreign language with a cyrillic-like alphabet, shouting angrily and waving their fists. There were even children there, too. The buildings had been boarded up and shut down so that the protestors didn't break in if a riot broke out. All I could think was, what if Steve was in that crowd undercover, just in case violence did break out? The politicians had been locked inside the Prime Ministry Hall for three days because all exits were covered by protestors and hit Prime Minister had done nothing but make it worse with his statement condemning them.
I could hardly follow the conversations my family as having, the elephant in the room was the Sokovia government stand off, and nobody talked about it, but I knew they all wanted to.
After dinner, we let Daddy, Harland Jr., and Russell (the only two adults who hadn't done anything pertaining to the meal) deal with the dirty dishes, while the rest of us relaxed with the kids. Peyton and Ruby wanted to play in my make-up, so I took them upstairs to the bathroom and drew kitty-cat whiskers on their faces with my black eyeliner. I changed into jeans and found my old Fourth of July t-shirt from last summer. Hey, it was red-white-and-blue for Steve, as if my choice of clothing could magically protect him. I reapplied my own lipstick and took the girls downstairs.
"Look at the kitty-cats!" Leighanne cried as we came into the room.
"I thought Halloween was last month," Harland said. "What are y'all doing?"
"Don't they look cute?" I asked.
"Come on, sit down," Leighanne said to me.
I took a seat beside her.
"I'd have let you draw a cat face on me," Matthew sighed.
"It's not too late," I said, and Ruby and Peyton were sitting in a corner, giggling with their American Girl dolls while Nanny finished knitting new sweaters for them.
"No, it is," Matthew sighed. "Aunt Dani, is something wrong?"
"I'm just nervous about something," I said.
"It can't be that bad," Matthew said.
"It's bad, sweetie," Leighanne said.
"I'm sorry," Mathew said.
"Thank you, baby," I replied.
I felt my phone buzz in my pocket. I pulled it out to see that the Sokovian government had come to an agreement with the terms of the protestors as the sun rose at dawn. The protest was dispersing and Parliament had been opened, the politicians were finally getting to leave. I breathed a sigh of relief, and showed Leighanne.
She squeezed my arm. "I knew it was going to be okay."