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all-these-ghosts · 7 years

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after

They eat before the sun goes down. His mom insists on saying grace. Will doesn't know how to pretend to be grateful. Last year he'd counted down the days until Thanksgiving break, five glorious days off in a row. Now Will would do just about anything to go to school again.

This is Thanksgiving in 2017: Will, his parents, and Frohike and Byers and Skinner, weird old friends of his parents' who've always floated around the periphery of his life. No uncles and aunts, no cousins, no Grandma. No Matthew. Maybe none of those people, ever again.

No one actually told him that Grandma died. When his mom and Skinner had come home from town two weeks ago he'd known immediately that something was wrong: his mom didn't say anything, just sort of fell through the front door like a marionette whose strings had been cut. Will's dad had whisked her away and they'd stayed in his office for the rest of the day, while Will stared bewildered at the closed door and Skinner sat at the kitchen table, unspeaking. At some point in the evening Will picked up the papers his mom had dropped on the kitchen floor. He saw his grandmother's name and understood, finally, what had happened.

But no one ever actually told him. It makes Will wonder what else they're hiding from him.

Earlier in the day his mom exhumed a can of cranberry sauce from somewhere way back in the pantry, but that's the only recognizable Thanksgiving food. Everything else is the same stuff they've been eating for months: canned black beans, canned green beans, canned corn. The only difference is usually they don't even bother to heat anything up. For this special occasion they cooked everything over the woodstove, like shitty camping.

Last year the adults had made Matt say grace at Thanksgiving and he'd opted for "Rub-a-dub-dub, thanks for the grub", at which point he'd been banished back to the kids' table. Will had laughed at his cousin's misfortune until he'd realized that eating with the adults was just as boring as eating with Uncle Charlie's three million little kids. Except that with the little kids, there was no obligation to stay seated until everyone was finished. And Aunt Tara was the world's slowest eater.

This year his mom says grace and Will closes his eyes. She says, "And we ask you, Lord, to keep watch over our family and friends who are not with us, until we are together again," and even his dad says amen.

No one says anything else. It's warm in the house for once, with the woodstove on and six people's body heat filling up the air. They've lit candles for decoration instead of necessity. And even though the food isn't good, there's actually enough, for the first time in months.

Will munches on a spoonful of white rice. "Rub-a-dub-dub, thanks for the grub," he says thoughtfully. A grin twitches at his lips. Uncle Bill had been so mad. His entire head had turned violet with rage. Will and his dad had laughed about it later. Crazy Uncle Bill, flying off the handle again.

His dad looks at him now, a matching mischievous smile on his face. "I didn't have any problem with it."

"That's why no one ever asks you to say grace," Will says, and that's definitely true.

His mom clears her throat. "No. No one asks your father to say grace because the one time your grandmother asked, he panicked." She's smiling too, which would have seemed impossible two minutes ago. "He couldn't come up with anything. He was silent for the rest of the meal."

"I did not panic," his dad grumbles.

"You panicked," his mom confirms, and then Frohike starts in on a long, rambling story about how once in college this hot girl invited him home for Thanksgiving and it turned out that she was just trying to convert him to some weird religion, and then Byers recites what sounds like the entire Wikipedia entry for said weird religion, and before long everyone's talking and the sun is still up and the fire is still going. Most of the people who should be here aren't, Will thinks, but we're still here.

And he remembers Grandma praying to Saint Anthony, the patron saint of lost things. When Will was a little boy she taught him. Dear Saint Anthony, look around, something's lost and can't be found. Maybe that prayer works for people, too; maybe everything's not lost.

Look around. Amen.

#then the bomb

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