And suddenly, he knew what he should do with the painting. He looked up the address for JB’s registrar and wrote her a note, thanking her for sending him Jude with Cigarette and telling her that he wanted to donate it to MoMA, and could she help facilitate the transaction?
Later, he would look back on this episode as a sort of fulcrum, the hinge between a relationship that was one thing and then became something else: his friendship with JB, of course, but also his friendship with Willem. There had been periods in his twenties when he would look at his friends and feel such a pure, deep contentment that he would wish the world around them would simply cease, that none of them would have to move from that moment, when everything was in equilibrium and his affection for them was perfect. But, of course, that was never to be: a beat later, and everything shifted, and the moment quietly vanished.
It would have been too melodramatic, too final, to say that after this JB was forever diminished for him. But it was true that for the first time, he was able to comprehend that the people he had grown to trust might someday betray him anyway, and that as disappointing as it might be, it was inevitable as well, and that life would keep propelling him steadily forward, because for everyone who might fail him in some way, there was at least one person who never would.
It was his opinion (shared by Julia) that Harold had a tendency to make Thanksgiving more complicated than it needed to be. Every year since he’d first been invited to Harold and Julia’s for the holiday, Harold promised him—usually in early November, when he was still full of enthusiasm for the project—that this year he was going to blow his mind by upending the lamest of American culinary traditions. Harold always began with big ambitions: their first Thanksgiving together, nine years ago, when he was in his second year of law school, Harold had announced he was going to make duck à l’orange, with kumquats standing in for the oranges.
But when he arrived at Harold’s house with the walnut cake he’d baked the night before, Julia was standing alone in the doorway to greet him. “Don’t mention the duck,” she whispered as she kissed him hello. In the kitchen, a harassed-looking Harold was lifting a large turkey out of the oven.
“Don’t say a word,” Harold warned him.
“What would I say?” he asked.
This year, Harold asked how he felt about trout. “Trout stuffed with other stuff,” he added.
“I like trout,” he’d answered, cautiously. “But you know, Harold, I actually like turkey.” They had a variation on this conversation every year, with Harold proposing various animals and proteins—steamed black-footed Chinese chicken, filet mignon, tofu with wood ear fungus, smoked whitefish salad on homemade rye—as turkey improvements.
“No one likes turkey, Jude,” Harold said, impatiently. “I know what you’re doing. Don’t insult me by pretending you do because you don’t think I’m actually capable of making anything else. We’re having trout, and that’s it. Also, can you make that cake you made last year? I think it’d go well with this wine I got. Just send me a list of what you need me to get.”
The perplexing thing, he always thought, was that in general, Harold wasn’t that interested in food (or wine). In fact, he had terrible taste, and was often taking him to restaurants that were overpriced yet mediocre, where Harold would happily devour dull plates of blackened meat and unimaginative sides of gloppy pasta. He and Julia (who also had little interest in food) discussed Harold’s strange fixation every year: Harold had numerous obsessions, some of them inexplicable, but this one seemed particularly so, and more so for its endurance.
Willem thought that Harold’s Thanksgiving quest had begun partly as shtick, but over the years, it had morphed into something more serious, and now he was truly unable to stop himself, even as he knew he’d never succeed.
“But you know,” Willem said, “it’s really all about you.”
“What do you mean?” he’d asked.
“It’s a performance for you,” Willem had said. “It’s his way of telling you he cares about you enough to try to impress you, without actually saying he cares about you.”
He’d dismissed this right away: “I don’t think so, Willem.” But sometimes, he pretended to himself that Willem might be right, feeling silly and a little pathetic because of how happy the thought made him.
Willem was the only one coming to Thanksgiving this year: by the time he and JB had reconciled, JB had already made plans to go to his aunts’ with Malcolm; when he’d tried to cancel, they had apparently been so irked that he’d decided not to antagonize them further.
“What’s it going to be this year?” asked Willem. They were taking the train up on Wednesday, the night before Thanksgiving. “Elk? Venison? Turtle?”
“Trout,” he said.
“Trout!” Willem replied. “Well, trout’s easy. We may actually end up with trout this year.”
“He said he was going to stuff it with something, though.”
“Oh. I take it back.”
There were eight of them at dinner: Harold and Julia, Laurence and Gillian, Julia’s friend James and his boyfriend Carey, and he and Willem.
“This is dynamite trout, Harold,” Willem said, cutting into his second piece of turkey, and everyone laughed.