Jay had hoped for a full reconciliation, but by late morning on Thanksgiving Day, he knew that Ellen wouldn’t let that happen. Mitch was able to repair the television set, so everyone crowded into the family room to watch snatches of parades and football games.
To an outsider, it might have seemed like a perfectly normal family gathering, but Jay knew better. He felt an undercurrent of hostility that bothered him. He couldn’t quite place it. Ellen talked and laughed and joked enough; she didn’t seem to be any angrier than usual. And Thad, though he studiously avoided even approaching either Elizabeth or Anna, was soon immersed in the intricacies of football, his newly discovered basso rumbling over the rest of the hubbub of noise. Neither seemed particularly upset over the morning’s debacle. Mitch ignored Jay. That was all right by Jay. Dad seemed better as well. His eyes were not as staring, not as wild. And the moments of vagueness that had worried Jay earlier that day had disappeared. Abe sounded normal, his mind clear, his words appropriate and understandable. Maybe it was just waking up that made him sound so…distant, Jay decided.
No, everyone seemed normal.
But still there was a persistent feeling, a heaviness in his mind like a headache about to descend and ravage him, that made it impossible for him to enjoy the day.
Thanksgiving dinner passed without any incidents. The combined families took up three tables in a Baker’s Square seven miles down the freeway. The food was hot and good, the service excellent, the wait for available tables marginal (thanks to Linda’s foresight in making reservations). Abe presided over one table, quietly and rather distractedly, to Jay’s way of thinking. The kids sat at the other one, and for once Jay heard no squabbling at all from them. Once or twice, in fact, Thad or Josh said something and both of his girls would hide their faces in their hands and giggle. They were having fun together. Every element of the day was as it should have been, more subdued than usual perhaps, but nothing to suggest that anything was wrong.
Still, as Jay dressed for bed that night beneath the watchful eyes of the stuffed specimens on the walls, he felt oddly tense. His head swam, his heart raced, and for a time he was so short of breath that he had to sit on the mattress and force himself to relax. Linda came in a few moments later and rubbed his shoulders. Even that helped only marginally. His sleep that night was even more ragged, more disrupted than before.