Extract from The Ghost at the Table by Suzanne Berne
Going home for Thanksgiving wasn’t something I had planned on - or I should say, I hadn’t planned on going to Frances’s house in Concord, which over the years I’ve sometimes referred to as "home", simply because it’s back east. But perhaps Frances heard me differently when I said “home,” perhaps she heard more than I meant to suggest. She is my older sister, after all, and there is that responsibility, often mixed with impatience, that older sisters feel toward their younger sisters, especially if those younger sisters have been, in one way or another, less fortunate than themselves. In any case, every year Frances asked me to come for Thanksgiving and Christmas, but every year for one reason or another, I said no. My visits to her usually happened in summer, when we were more likely to leave the house. Though of all the people in the world I probably love Frances best, after a day or so at home with her I found myself becoming lethargic and moody, leaving dishes in the sink, taking long naps in the afternoon. Meanwhile Frances’s normal good nature soon gave way to exasperation and apology. We both understood the effect we had on each other, only made worse by the holidays. Still Frances felt she needed to invite me, just as I needed to refuse. In this way, we absolved each other.
Or that’s how it worked until one October day, over a year ago now, when Frances called to say that our father would be spending Thanksgiving with her, for the first time in a quarter of a century, and she literally begged me to fly to Boston.
“Please, Cynnie,” she said on the phone. “It's the first time in forever that we could all be together.”
All? I almost said. Our mother has been dead since I was thirteen. Soon after I was born she was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, which was later complicated by a heart ailment. Our older sister, Helen, died three years ago of lymphoma. Her funeral in Bennington had been the last time I’d seen my father, or Frances herself, for that matter. My father and his wife, Ilse, drove up to Vermont from the Cape, arriving just as the service began. The church was full of HeIen's patients and friends, several of whom spoke movingly of Helen, of her generosity and intelligence. Dad and Ilse stood at the back of the church wearing khakis and boat shoes, their hands in the pockets of their windbreakers. They refused to sit in the front pew with Frances and me, insisting that their legs felt stiff after the drive; then they skipped the burial and the gathering at Helen’s house afterward.
But in June my father had had a stroke, and now he was also getting divorced, at eighty-two, from Ilse, who was only in her fifties, but claimed that she couldn’t take care of him any longer. Frances had been making arrangements for him to enter a nursing home in a town near Concord. This was why he would be with her for Thanksgiving.
“Please come.” Frances lowered her voice. “It would really mean a lot to him.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” I said.
“Please. Come for my sake, Cynnie. I don’t want any regrets and I’m sure you don’t, either.”
“I don’t have any regrets, at least not about him.”
But Frances wasn’t one to give up easily, especially when it came to finding a way to disguise some awkward angle or unsightly corner, which was perhaps why she’d succeeded so well as an interior decorator.
“Frankly,” she said, switching tactics, “I could use the moral support.”
“Moral support?”
“It might not be very easy with Dad, you know. A nursing home is a big change”
When I didn’t say anything, she went on quietly, “And it’s a holiday. And Sarah will be coming home, her first time home since September, and I want it to be nice for her. So that’s a lot to manage, with Dad here, too."
Sarah was Frances’s older daughter, a college freshman, who in the last couple years had become political. Sarah’s most recent cause, besides campaigning against the current administration, was “Doing Without.” People had too much stuff. Too much stuff was causing all the world’s problems. (Pollution. Nuclear proliferation. Sprawl.) I could tell Frances was afraid that if she didn’t make Sarah's first homecoming a happy family occasion, Sarah might hold it against her somehow. She might believe that home itself was another thing that she could Do Without.
“But it’s only Thanksgiving Day that Dad will be at your house." I pointed out to Frances. “Pick him up right before dinner and take him back right after. I’m sure the girls will help you. They’re old enough now. And Walter will.”
I could hear a distant ringing, like a call coming in on another line. Finally I had to say, “Won’t he?”
“Walter and I have been going through a rough time lately.”
"What kind of a rough time?"
"I can’t explain it on the phone.”
This was crafty. If there’s one universal covenant between sisters, it’s a primal interest in each other’s relationships. Frances and I had spent countless hours discussing the shortcomings of various men in my life, few of whom she’d ever met; yet she understood them perfectly and found complexities in their faults, which made those faults seem pardonable or at least interesting, though she would always assure me that I was “better off" whenever one of them disappeared.
“Are you all right?” I demanded.
“No, I’m fine. I’ll tell you about it when you get here. Will you come, Cynnie? Please?”
“Well,” I said at last, “I have been meaning to visit Hartford.”
"For your book?" she asked, too enthusiastically. "Is it done? I can’t wait to read it. We can drive down together while you’re here. To see Twain’s house, you mean?”
“I’m writing about the daughters, not him. But I was going to come east in July, after I’ve finished a draft.”
“Oh, not July,” Frances almost wailed. “It can’t wait that long.”