Roommates

Taste the Pain

Tris
Thanksgiving Day

Throughout my childhood, my parents worked hard to instill humility and gratitude in Caleb and me. Thanksgiving was always one of our "biggest" family holidays. Mom would cook a huge meal, and in our home, we would serve a large variety of people from our town. Most of them had one thing in common: either they had no family to spend the holiday with, or they were unable to travel to see the family they did have.

On "Black Friday," instead of hitting the stores, we would make sandwiches with the extra turkey Mom would have roasted on Wednesday especially for this purpose. Then we would take them-- along with portions of whatever else was leftover from Thursday's big dinner-- into Chicago and wander the streets, handing them out to those in need. The thing I liked best about those times with my mom was the way she would talk to the people we were serving. She didn't treat the transients she was meeting as a charity case, she didn't look at them with pity. She had real conversations, as their equal, and she treated them with the same respect she would give a fellow member of our church or my school principal.

I spent the past two Thanksgiving holidays with Eric's family. Though uncomfortable, I wasn't alone, at least. But this year, I am completely, totally alone. All of my friends had family commitments-- most of them in other states. Tori-- along with her brother, George, and Amar-- flew to Florida to spend the holiday with her parents. I dropped her off at the airport last night and will pick her up on Saturday. She is kindly lending me her car while she is away. Meanwhile, I am in charge of the cafe. I offered to open it today, but Tori said that there is little business on Thanksgiving, and she doesn't want me working all alone like that anyway-- nor does she want to take any of her other employees away from their families today.

I sigh at the irony. My parents always warmly welcomed those with no family to our home for dinner on this day, and now that I am the one without a family, wishing for someone to spend the holiday with, my parents are dead and gone, and there is nowhere for me to go. Even with this being my third holiday season without them, it catches me off guard how painful and lonely it is. I don't even want to imagine how Christmas might feel this year.

Unable to stand the silence in the apartment any longer, I decide that I will have my dinner with my parents, anyway. I drive Tori's car back to my hometown, stopping at McDonald's-- one of the few places open today-- and sit for hours between my parents' graves, eating stale cheeseburgers. Most of the time I am silent, but here and there I reminisce aloud about Thanksgivings past.

I wish I could hear my father answer me, I wish I could hear my mother's laugh. I miss them.

Sometimes I feel a little crazy, talking to corpses buried six feet underground, but I do it anyway. I smile when I think of how I introduced them to Four, and he talked to them as if they were here, too. I wish they could have met him, even if he refuses to speak to me now. I try to push him from my mind, but he creeps back in, again and again. I wonder what holidays are like for him with Marcus, and I hope that he hasn't lost that spark of courage he felt when we were on the rooftop. He may not want me in his life, but I want good things for him.

It starts to snow, but I don't get up. I stay until the grass is blanketed in white and my teeth are chattering uncontrollably. I make a snow angel on each of their graves-- something Mom always liked to do with Caleb and me-- and walk slowly back to Tori's car, to return to the lonely silence of Tori's apartment.

Tobias

Thanksgiving Day

The silence is tense, but not in the usual way that silence can be unnerving. Really, it's simply because I always feel tense when I am around Marcus. One simple misstep could unleash the monster at any moment. I look only at my plate.