“For you and Mr. Wentz.” She set the box in my hand. “Surprise! It’s pumpkin.”
“That’s the pie we were going to bring to Auntie’s!” Cami said.
“You said our job was to bring the dessert,” Lily added.
I started to hand the box back. “I can’t take this.”
Maryann stopped me. “Yes, you can. I’m trying to imagine the feast two bachelors may have cooked up.” She smiled softly, though her forehead was creased in worry. “Please.”
“What about Auntie Colleen?” Lily asked.
Cami nodded. “She’s going to be pissed.”
I shot Maryann a look. “Yeah, what about Auntie Colleen? She’s going to be pissed.”
The girls busted up, giggling.
Maryann smirked and rolled her eyes. “We’ll stop at the store and pick up something else,” she told her daughters. “Tell Ronan bye-bye.”
Again, I was surrounded, two pairs of little arms hugging me around the waist. I don’t know what it was with those girls and hugging.
“Bye, Ronan!”
“Byeeee!”
“Thanks for the turkeys,” I said, then to Maryann, “and the pie.”
She smiled. “Happy Thanksgiving, Ronan.”
They left and, as usual, my place felt a little darker and emptier. At quarter to two, I grabbed the invoices and the pie and waited for the bus. The complex Nelson managed—the Bluffs—was at the very edge of my walking range and in an even worse neighborhood than where Miller and I lived.
The iron railings were rusted, and cages covered every lower window. The entire complex was painted a dark green not long ago. Nelson said it cost him a “pretty penny,” but why spend the money fixing the cracks when you could cover them with paint?
My uncle’s place was on the lower level, corner unit. I knocked and waited. A kid on a tricycle pedaled in circles in the cracked and pitted parking lot, watching me.
“Yeah?” Nelson called from inside.
“It’s me.”
“Come in.”
His apartment was larger than mine but seemed smaller. Stacks of newspapers, garbage bags filled with God-knew-what, and piles of old clothes were heaped all over. Not quite ready for Hoarders but getting there.
My uncle was watching football from a dark green upholstered chair that matched the building’s exterior. Slashes of yellow stuffing puffed out where the old fake leather had dried up and split. A TV tray table sat beside him with three empty beer bottles and an ashtray overflowing with pistachio shells. He had the footrest on the chair kicked up; the carpet beneath—a ruddy orange shag—was littered with more shells, more newspapers, and empty soda bottles. The entire place reeked of solitude. The kind that has settled so deep, you don’t care anymore who sees your place, even when it looks like shit.
“Here are the invoices,” I said. “And pie.”
“Toss’em on the table.”
The kitchen table was just as bad, covered in fast food wrappers, a month’s worth of junk mail, and coupons cut out of mailers. I cleared a space and set the pie and invoices down, wondering if they’d get lost in the sea of crap and not get paid.
“Have a seat,” Nelson said.
The only other chair in the living space was an old throwaway he’d salvaged from the curb. It had once been white. I sat on the very edge, resting my elbows on my thighs.
“Our team’s playing,” Nelson said. “Green Bay versus Dallas. Packers up by ten.”
“Sweet.”
We watched the game for a few minutes. The place smelled of sour sweat and old beer. I wanted to get the fuck out of there and yet couldn’t stand the thought of leaving him alone.
“You’re doing a good job with the building,” he said after a minute.
“Thanks.”
“The tenants like you.”
I nodded.
“That’s fine so long as they don’t walk all over you.”
“They don’t,” I said, thinking of Maryann’s twins. They climb all over me.
“Good. See that they don’t.”
“The Cliffside building needs a new roof,” I said slowly.
Nelson let out a shout. “There it is! First down, hot damn.”
“Nelson…”
“I heard you. I’ll think about it.”
I left it alone. That was more than I expected.
The game went to commercial and Nelson looked at me for the first time. “Did you say you brought pie?”
“Yeah. A gift from one of the tenants. Maryann Greer.”
“For me?”
I nodded.
His lips pursed and hmmphed. “Go figure. Well, I got two turkey dinners. You may as well stay. Since you’re here.”
I nodded, stunned. “Two dinners?”
“They’re in the freezer,” he said, his eyes on the TV. “Beer’s in the fridge.”
The freezer was frosted over, but I pried two dinners from the white cave. Sliced turkey, peas, mashed potatoes and gravy, and a square of some kind of dessert that looked like it might’ve been an apple tart.
Each one took eight minutes to cook. While Nelson’s was rotating in the microwave, I cleaned up a little. I found cheap plastic plates in a cabinet and put the meals on them—minus the apple shit—so they wouldn’t look like TV dinners but more like real food. I grabbed silverware and two beers from the fridge. Nelson had cleaned off his TV tray and showed me where a second one lay folded against the wall.
We sat with our food in front of us and watched the game. Neither saying much, except to talk stats and Green Bay’s prospects for the rest of the season.
“I may live in Cali, but Wisconsin’s in my blood,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said, thinking of my dad. Mine too.
After we ate, I cleared our plates and cleaned up until the counters and kitchen table looked a little better. A little more normal. I served up the bakery-fresh pumpkin pie.
“This is good stuff,” Nelson said, forking a bite. “Not bad, right?”
I thought about Miller and Holden, my friends I was going to meet later tonight at the Shack.
I thought about how things were okay in my classes. Not failing any, at least. Frankie Dowd still gave me the stink eye, but it seemed like the score had been settled.
I thought about Shiloh Barrera.
We’d only spoken a handful of words since I’d asked her to come to the Shack. As close as I’d get to asking her out. Another moment of weakness. I’d had a hundred around her, always saying yes—to barbecue or help on a paper—when I should’ve been saying no.
Shiloh said no.
The right answer. You shouldn’t have fucking asked at all.
Now we only saw each other coming or going in History. She’d whisper with Violet, glancing at me sometimes as if I were vaguely familiar. Someone she used to know.
The nameless hunger in me grew sharp teeth then, but it was still my favorite part of the day.
And I thought about Shiloh with her grandmother, probably sitting down to their own Thanksgiving dinner at that moment. Safe. Happy.
“No,” I said to my uncle. “Not bad at all.”
That night, after hanging with Holden and Miller at the Shack, I had a small hope that the nightmares wouldn’t come. Because being with my friends was always good and dinner with Nelson hadn’t been half bad.