Chapter 16: Merci, Cousin

My mother's house in Thomaston held fourteen people on Thanksgiving, nine of them in the dining room and five at a card table in the hall.

All of them were Cyrs or married to one.

Half of them spoke French at the table, because half of them always did.

The turkey was on the sideboard and the tourtière in the middle of the cloth, and the whole house smelled of cloves.

Eben sat between Linwood and my cousin, who was a Bruins fan and the loudest person in Knox County.

He had worn a clean shirt.

Nobody had said a word about the Board.

They were too polite, in the way families are before the pie.

Linwood had been out of the hospital two weeks and was eating mashed potatoes with great pleasure while my mother watched his plate.

"Not the gravy," she said.

"A little gravy."

"The cardiologist said," my mother said.

"The cardiologist isn't here."

"I am," said my mother, and took the gravy boat away.

Eben watched them with a look on his face that I didn't see on him often.

It was ease.

For about an hour, I let myself believe in it.

We had slept in my bed twice since the motel, and neither of us had mentioned the folder.

I still had not heard from the college.

I told myself that was fine.

Then my aunt put her fork down and said, in her ringing, cheerful French, "Alors, Eben. Quand est-ce que tu l'épouses?"

The table went quiet.

"She wants to know when you're marrying me," my cousin translated at once, with enormous relish, through a mouthful of turkey.

"I heard," Eben said.

"You understood the French?"

"I understood my name and the word épouse."

"Pas mal," said my aunt.

"Please," I said to my aunt.

"Ma chérie, tout le monde en parle. The microphone!"

She said the last word in English.

My cousin laughed so hard that he got a pea up his nose.

Eben set down his knife.

"She said no," he said, politely. "I took it."

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