“I don’t want any potatoes,” I said, and Aaron said, “He just killed a fly,” and my mother said, “Shut up, Aaron,” and then, to me, “Why not?” and I said, “They’re icky,” and Annie said, “You should’ve seen it, Mom!” and my mother said, “Shut up, Annie,” and to me, “Icky? Icky?” and Aaron said, “Can we start eating, Mom?” and my mother said, “Shut up, Aaron!” and picked up the bowl of potatoes in both hands and dumped it onto my head. Just turned the bowl over on my head like a helmet.
The potatoes were every bit as creamy and as smooth as my mother might have hoped. They streamed over my forehead and into my eyes and down my cheeks and mouth and dripped from my chin. I began crying again, the way I had after my father left. “And I’ve had enough of that goddamn crying!” my mother shouted. “Go to your room!” My sister started crying, too. “And you, too, you little pisspants!” my mother shouted.
I went first to the bathroom where I wiped off my face with toilet paper and then washed it and dried it with a towel, and then went into my room where I discovered there was mashed potato all over my pants, too. I wiped that off with my handkerchief before I got undressed. Then I crawled into bed, and cried myself to sleep. Next door, I could hear Annie crying, too.
Aaron and my mother ate dinner alone that night.
The next morning, I was afraid to talk to her.
When Annie, Aaron, and I were kids, we used to hide under the dining room table, eavesdropping on the conversation of the grownups. Once we heard Grandma Kate use the word “shit,” and we burst out laughing, and Mama sent all of us to our rooms — but she was laughing, too. This was before my father abandoned us. The moment he was gone, my mother changed a lot. It was like night and day. Two different people. Aaron told us she was grieving. Neither Annie nor I knew what grieving meant.
She never took us to see Grandma Kate anymore.
She told us that when Daddy abandoned us, it was the same thing as Grandma Kate abandoning us. It was the whole Gulliver family that had abandoned us. Annie told her she loved Grandma Kate and Aunt Tess and Uncle Mike, and she didn’t know why she couldn’t see them anymore. My mother told her to shut up, we can’t see them anymore, and that’s that!
“What do you mean, we can’t see them?” Annie asked. “Did they disappear? Like Merlin?”
“Just be quiet,” my mother said.
“Regular people can’t disappear, can they?” Annie asked me.
“I don’t think so.”
“Regular people can’t disappear,” Annie told my mother.
“That’s right, they can’t,” Aaron said. “So shut up.”
“Did Daddy disappear?”
“Daddy abandoned us,” my mother said.
“What’s abandon?”
“It means he went away forever,” Aaron said.
“He did not,” Annie said.
“Yes, he did,” my mother said, and I burst into tears.
On Thanksgiving Day that year...
There was some kind of mixup on Thanksgiving Day.
I can remember playing jacks with Annie in her room (she always cheated, making up rules and then changing them five minutes later) and hearing my mother shouting to all us kids to come have breakfast. Aaron was practicing piano in the living room; he was ten years old and wanted to be Arthur Rubinstein, but he had no talent. We all went into the kitchen in our pajamas and robes. My mother cautioned us not to eat too much cereal because this was Thanksgiving Day and there’d be turkey and all the trimmings at Grandma Rozalia’s.
“Which reminds me,” she said, and picked up the phone. We were still living on Columbus Avenue, and there was a phone hanging over the kitchen counter. My mother stood at the counter in her apron, dialing Grandma Rozalia’s number.
I could hear only my mother’s end of the conversation. From what I could gather, Grandma was telling her there’d been some sort of mistake. She’d thought we were going to Grandma Kate’s for Thanksgiving. My mother said, “Mama, how can we be going to Kate’s? Terry abandoned us, we don’t go to Kate’s anymore, are you getting senile?” My mother listened. So did all us kids. “No, Mama,” she said, “we made these plans a long time ago, don’t you remember? Anyway, it’s academic, isn’t it? Academic. Well, I’m sorry you don’t know what that means, Mama, but it’s a word. ‘Academic.’ It means Terry and I are separated, Terry and I are getting a divorce, we can’t go to his mother’s on Thanksgiving Day.” She listened a moment and then said, “Mama, I know we usually come to you on Passover, but things are different now, and besides, Mama, you invited us!” She listened again, and then said, “I don’t know when.” Pause. “September.” Another pause. “October maybe, I know you invited us. Things have been so crazy around here...” She listened again. “So what are you saying? We’re not invited there today? Is that what you’re saying?” And listened again. “Let me get this straight, Mama. There’s no room at the table? Is that what you’re saying? Who?” She listened and said, “They’re not even family. There’s room at your Thanksgiving Day table for strangers, but there’s no room for your daughter and your three grandchildren, is that what you’re saying?” She listened and said, “Then what are you saying, Mama?” And listened. And said, “I see. Uh-huh.” And listened again. “The big table seats ten, uh-huh, and you’ve already got twelve at it, and you’re putting the kids at the smaller round table off the foyer, I see. So it looks like all your other children will be there having turkey with you and some strangers because you haven’t got room for us!” And listened for just an instant, and then said, “No, you listen to me, Mama!” and stopped listening altogether. “If there’s no room for us, then we’re not coming, we wouldn’t dream of inconveniencing you. But let me tell you, Mama, you’re not going to see us in that house ever again. So give all our love, don’t interrupt me, Mama, to all your fortunate children who’ll be there with you today, but don’t hold your breath till you see us again!” and slammed down the phone.
“What’d you do?” Aaron asked.
“What’d I do? What’d your grandmother do, no room at the table!”
“If there’s no room, there’s no room, Mom. What do you want her to do, build a bigger house?”
“Why’d she invite strangers?”
“Because she didn’t know we were coming.”
“I can understand family, but strangers? And then there’s no room at the table? I’ll never go there again, Aaron.”
“Mom, don’t be...”
“And you’re never going there again, either,” she told all of us. “We were invited a month ago! Two months ago! You know what she accomplished today? She kissed this family goodbye, is what she accomplished. Her own daughter, her grandchildren, she kissed us all goodbye.”
“Is everybody disappearing?” Annie asked.
In January, Grandma came over in the middle of the night to tell my mother she had cancer.