15. Thanksgiving
The year before, Davi went to Wisconsin with Cinnamon.
That Wednesday night they went to a fish fry at a place called the Moose Club, which ended with Cinnamon’s father and his cronies, some of whom wore trucker hats, hoisting their draft beers in plastic cups while singing along to “Pink Houses.” Davi took a video and posted it to TikTok.
Thursday at Cinnamon’s parents’ farmhouse was a three-ring circus: grandparents and little cousins and a twenty-eight-pound turkey with two kinds of stuffing, mashed potatoes, candied yams, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce with indentations from the can, four kinds of pie, and American football games on all day in the den where the uncles drank Leinenkugel’s and ate cheese curds.
One of the uncles asked Davi where she was “from,” and when she said London and he said, “No, really from, before that,” Cinnamon stepped in and said, “Your fly is down, Scottie,” then she pulled Davi outside where they walked down a dark country road and smoked a joint that Cinnamon had stolen from Scottie’s jacket pocket, which was good enough revenge for Davi.
“Isn’t this fierce ?” Olivia H-T says. “I’m not even allowed in here.”
Davi imagines posting from Mr. H-T’s secret inner sanctum—he’s a top executive with Fidelity—but she fears she’ll be asked to leave before the turkey is carved.
She can’t help feeling that Olivia H-T has brought her to Boston because Olivia wants to be Davi’s content.
Davi’s mind revisits the In and Out list that Charley Hicks published in the ’Bred Bulletin .
“Chasing” is Out—and yet this is exactly what Olivia is doing.
Olivia leads Davi to the kitchen, which is in the basement.
It has brick walls, wooden beams, and a fireplace with an iron pot hanging from a hook.
This is where they find Mrs. H-T, whose body type can most accurately be described as a bowling ball on toothpicks.
Mrs. H-T has had a lot of work done on her face; her upper lip juts out like a shelf.
“I made you girls dinner,” she says. “You should eat something before you go out.” She presents a platter—clearly prepared elsewhere—of veggies with a doll-size dish of hummus.
“Thank you,” Davi says. She’s starving. On the drive, she asked Olivia if they could stop for lunch and Olivia said, I’m not hungry, are you? in a way that sounded truculent (“aggressive or hostile”).
Davi snatches up a celery stick and drags it through the hummus while Mrs. H-T brings them two glasses of ice water with nearly translucent slices of lemon.
“Enjoy!” Mrs. H-T says before she disappears, and Davi gets the feeling that this is it—the vegetables and the dollop of hummus are dinner.
She gazes around the kitchen—the pot in the fireplace is a design element, a prop, a nod to the days when the only people in this kitchen were servants—and finds no evidence of any other actual food.
A bowl on the counter holds wooden apples. The bread box is empty.
“We’re going out?” Davi says. She hopes for one of the sports bars near Fenway; she would kill for some loaded potato skins.
“Yes, Klatsch in the South End is all over TikTok.” Olivia eats a plain sliver of red pepper. “We should finish up here and get ready.”
Finish up ? Davi attacks the veggie platter—cauliflower, broccoli, carrots. She uses a coin of cucumber to swipe up the last of the hummus. “Does your mom cook on Thanksgiving?” she asks Olivia.
“God, no,” Olivia says, and Davi, who is British and therefore shouldn’t care about Thanksgiving, feels duped. “Come on, let’s go.”
At Klatsch, the line snakes down the block. Davi wants to suggest they go elsewhere but Olivia is locked in. “Do you have your fake? My fake is really good.”
Davi has her fake, though she doesn’t like to use it. She has 1.3 million Instagram followers, she’s basically a public figure; there’s always the chance the bouncer will recognize her and know she’s sixteen.
Davi therefore finds it hard to match Olivia H-T’s enthusiasm about seeing the inside of Klatsch.
She’s freezing: She went with a Guizio mini, boots, a cropped sweater, and a leather jacket, which are no match for the icy hatchet of wind blowing down Tremont Street.
A quick check of her phone reveals a cluster of restaurants nearby: dumplings, oysters, a French bistro.
“I’ll pay for all the drinks,” Olivia says. “And we should come up with a code word if we want to get with a guy.”
Davi presses her tongue against her teeth to keep from being mean: No one is going to want to get with you, Olivia.
Although, who knows? Olivia’s mother managed to snag Mr. H-T, who has done very well for himself.
The other people in line at Klatsch are in their twenties and thirties; the guy in front of them is giving MIT super nerd—maybe he’d be into an awkward, insecure teenager.
“Code word ‘Amsterdam,’” Davi says. This is the word she uses with her friends in London and Ibiza when she’s peeling off for the night.
Olivia beams. “Amsterdam!” Her breath forms a silvery cloud in the cold.
In London and Ibiza, Davi doesn’t wait in line; she’s whisked in because someone always has a connect. What, Davi wonders, is she doing here? She’d far preferred the Moose Club, and Uncle Scottie with his basic racism.
Finally, it’s their turn. Olivia H-T turns her ID over to the bouncer, who Davi is surprised to find is a woman. She’s over six feet tall with sharp Slavic cheekbones and eyes the color of stainless steel.
A woman, Davi thinks, is bad news.
She looks Olivia up and down and, without even glancing at her ID, says, “No.”
“But…?” Olivia says.
The bouncer eyes Davi. “You.” She nods toward the door.
“Oh,” Davi says, “I can’t leave my friend.”
“Just go,” Olivia says. “I’ll meet you at home. You have the address, right? Go have fun, I’m sure you’ll know people.” Her eyes are glassy with tears; she has lipstick on her teeth.
Davi hears a remix of “Rich Baby Daddy” coming from inside; she feels a blast of seductive warm air, sees a sexy red glow, smells expensive perfume. She could go in; the idea of an MIT genius is sort of appealing. Surely Olivia considered this might happen?
“Please,” Olivia says. She must want to serve a good time even if she can’t be part of it. She wants Davi to tell everyone back at Tiffin how much fun she had in Boston.
Across the street, Davi sees a restaurant called Picco; a couple step out holding a large, flat box. She grabs Olivia’s hand. “Forget the club,” she says. “We’re getting pizza.”
Although the H-T home is pleasant the next morning—there’s classical music playing and sunlight streaming through the big bay windows—there are no trappings of what Davi has come to expect at Thanksgiving: no preparations to run a Turkey Trot, no Macy’s parade on TV, no shift at the local soup kitchen to serve those less fortunate, no football, no relatives.
(Davi had secretly hoped for a meet-up with Olivia’s cousin who played at Tiffinpalooza the year before.) There are also no cooking smells.
Breakfast is black coffee and a banana—half a banana for Olivia.
Davi is worried they won’t have a meal at all until Mrs. H-T pokes her head into the library where Davi and Olivia are lounging on their phones in front of the fire and says, “We’re leaving for dinner in an hour, girls. ”
When Davi enters the Bristol Lounge at the Four Seasons, she perks up.
She’s back in her element: servers in crisp uniforms pulling out her chair, asking the table if they’d prefer still or sparkling water.
Beyond the other tables of well-heeled patrons, Davi sees bronze light over a carving station. She exhales: There’s a buffet.
Davi met Mr. H-T five minutes before they left the house.
He shook her hand and asked her name; he seemed unaware Davi was staying with them.
During the drive, Mrs. H-T told her husband that Davi was Olivia’s “best friend” from school, that she lived in London, that her parents owned the fashion label Out of Office (“Do you remember the pink knit jacket I wore to the Friends of the Public Garden benefit?”).
She then turned around to Davi in the back seat and said apologetically, “Thomas isn’t on social media. ”
The H-Ts order a bottle of red wine and the server tells them to help themselves to the buffet when they’re ready.
Davi wants to race to the front of the line but instead she waits for the bit of theater surrounding the opening and tasting of the cabernet.
Then a toast: “Happy Thanksgiving.” At Cinnamon’s house, Mr. Peters gave the blessing, then they went around the table and said one thing they were grateful for.
Finally Mrs. H-T scoots back her chair. “I guess we should…”
Davi loads her plate like a person who might not eat the rest of the weekend.
She starts at the bread station, selecting a warm sourdough roll and a slice of moist pumpkin bread along with five pats of butter.
Then it’s on to a bowl of butternut squash bisque.
She delivers these back to the table and returns to the line for turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes with gravy, brussels sprouts, and a cranberry compote.
There’s a cheese station—Davi is tempted but decides to save the cheese to have with her dessert.
By comparison, Olivia is abstemious (“not self-indulgent”). She has taken two slices of turkey with no gravy, some brussels sprouts, and green salad with no dressing. Mrs. H-T’s plate looks much the same, though she added cranberry sauce.
Mr. H-T, thankfully, eats like a normal human being, and when he sees Davi’s plate, he smiles. “It’s nice to see a young lady with an appetite!”
Davi butters the pumpkin bread and tries not to shove it in her mouth as she wonders how long it will take for…
… Mrs. H-T to say, “I don’t know how you do it, Davi. Eating so robustly and staying so thin.”
“Metabolism,” Olivia says morosely.
When they get back to the house, Davi is pleasantly full but not stuffed.
She slowed down once she realized she could bring home a to-go container.
For the first time in a long time, it feels good to have food in her stomach.
She hasn’t purged once since she’s been here; there’s been so little sustenance, there’s been no reason.
Olivia wants to watch The Holiday —the H-Ts have a home theater on the fourth floor—and Davi remembers how, the instant Thanksgiving is over, Americans jump with both feet into Christmas. All across the country, people are driving to Best Buy.
“Do you want to call your parents before we start the movie?” Olivia asks. “You haven’t talked to them yet today.”
Davi hates how Olivia monitors her every move—she’s such a stalker—though she understands it must seem odd that Davi hasn’t phoned her parents on the holiest of family holidays.
She nearly explains that, to Davi’s parents, it’s just another Thursday.
However, this is a chance for some much-needed alone time, so Davi says, “Let me call them and dress down and I’ll meet you in the theater. ”
Olivia pats her midsection and groans. “I have such a food baby.”
As Davi changes into sweatpants and a Tiffin T-shirt, clocks throughout the house chime.
It’s only six o’clock, still so early. Davi sits on her bed and scrolls through other people’s Thanksgiving TikToks, which evoke an unexpected longing for her own parents.
Should she call? She has communicated with them only by text since Family Weekend; she hasn’t yet acknowledged her father’s email about her travel plans home at Christmas.
Davi checks her Snap Maps to see where her parents even are; they like Paris in November.
Vikram’s avatar (brown skin, graying hair, all-black outfit) turns up in the 8th arrondissement at the Plaza Athénée.
But Davi’s mother isn’t with him. Ruby isn’t in Paris; she isn’t in London.
Davi zooms out, checking her mother’s other haunts—she’s not in Tuscany, not in Morocco.
When she clicks on Ruby’s avatar, the map reorients.
Ruby is in the US. She’s in… Kentucky?
Davi burps. Her mother is in some town called Covington, Kentucky. But this can’t be right.
Davi dials her mother, gets her voicemail, calls back. After four rings, Ruby picks up; it sounds like she’s eating. “Darling?” Ruby says. Davi hears her swallow. “Is everything all right?”
“Where are you?” Davi says.
“I’m at Saylem’s family’s house, darling,” Ruby says. “In Covington. I had no idea Kentucky was so close to Cincinnati, did you? We’re just in the middle of a gorgeous dinner. I tried sweet potato with marshmallow topping. I thought it sounded dreadful but it’s actually…”
Ruby is with Saylem’s family for Thanksgiving.
Davi feels her stomach lurch. She claps a hand over her mouth and dashes for the bathroom.