All the lonely people! Where do they all come from? Graham didn’t know where they came from, but he could have told the Beatles where all the lonely people go: they go to Graham and Audra’s house for Thanksgiving dinner.
And the final name on the list: Elspeth.
Elspeth! Elspeth was on the list, was apparently coming over for Thanksgiving dinner.
“I told you,” Audra had said last night when she showed him the list.
“No, you didn’t.”
“I’m sure I told you,” she said. Then she looked suddenly thoughtful. “Unless maybe I only thought I told you, and I actually told someone else.”
Why would she remember telling Graham? He was only her husband.
“But who else would I have told?” Audra continued. “I mean, it’s not like I would say to some random stranger, ‘Hey, my husband’s ex-wife is coming to our house for Thanksgiving.’?”
It was exactly like Audra would say that to a random stranger. She would delight in saying it to a random stranger.
“I didn’t think Elspeth was even speaking to us,” Graham said.
“Well, she wasn’t,” Audra said, “and then I accidentally included her on this group email about Matthew’s school auction and she emailed back and said, ‘Please don’t bother me with your tacky fund-raiser,’ and I replied and we sort of went back and forth and I invited her.”
Graham was silent.
“Are you angry?” Audra asked.
“No,” he said. “I’m trying to estimate the minimum number of exchanges it would take to get from her reply to your invitation.”
“Oh, well.” Audra shrugged. “Not that many, actually. Fewer than you’d think.”
“And these other people?” he asked. “Why is the pediatrician coming? Why is Mrs. Bellamy from downstairs coming, when I’ve never spoken to her except once when she got a package for us?”
“Because none of those people had plans for Thanksgiving,” Audra said. “It made me sad to think of them all alone.”
Graham hadn’t had the heart to say it made him sadder to think of them coming over. He sighed and began peeling potatoes.
—
Around ten, Audra came into the kitchen in her melon-colored robe, yawning and sighing as though she, and not Graham, had been slaving away in the kitchen all morning. She poured her own cup of coffee and leaned against the counter. “I was thinking”—she interrupted herself with a huge yawn that made her jaws creak—“that maybe we should issue a last-minute invitation to the gay couple down on Five. First of all, they’re here in the building, which means that they could bring some chairs with them, and second, I thought they might have a nice friend they could fix Mr. Vargas up with.”
“Mr. Vargas is gay?” Graham said.
“Oh, yes,” Audra said. “Didn’t you know that?”
No, Graham hadn’t known that, but he did know the couple down on Five whom Audra was talking about and they were tall glamorous-looking men in their thirties who worked in advertising. It seemed unlikely they would have friends interested in a portly fifty-year-old Argentinian piano teacher.
“Anyway,” Audra continued. “When I invited Mr. Vargas to Thanksgiving, I said, ‘Now, if there’s someone you’d like to bring, you’re more than welcome,’ and Mr. Vargas said, ‘I’d love to but I’m unhappily single right now.’ And it turns out that up until about six weeks ago, Mr. Vargas lived with this very nice but very volatile violinist and then one day right in the produce section at Whole Foods, they had a big argument about whether ‘The Blue Danube’ was written in three-four time or six-eight time and the violinist said, ‘I can’t believe I’ve wasted two years of my life on someone who doesn’t know the time signature of “The Blue Danube”!’ And they broke up then and there and the violinist stormed off, leaving Mr. Vargas holding a bunch of kale. And now Mr. Vargas lives alone and he says that sometimes he plays ‘The Blue Danube’ in six-eight time and thinks that it sounds better that way, haunting almost, and I said, ‘Mr. Vargas, that is just beautiful, you should call the violinist up and tell him that,’ and Mr. Vargas said, ‘No, because it turns out he also never cared for my habit of whistling—’?”
Listen to her. She was still Audra. She still watched him with apparent utter absorption when he spoke and then said something like, “Wait, I think I left my blue sweater in the dryer!” which showed she hadn’t been listening at all; she still believed Cub Scouts was a dreadful organization; she still exclaimed, “I didn’t realize how hungry I was!” at the start of every single meal; she still flirted with bartenders; she still drove around with the gas tank nearly empty; she still came up behind him in the kitchen and rested her cheek between his shoulder blades. What phone number? What affair?
“For God’s sake, Audra!” Graham snapped. “No more guests!”
She didn’t seem to notice his tone. “Maybe I could just invite their chairs.”
—
It seemed that Audra’s main contribution to Thanksgiving dinner was getting herself ready, which she took over an hour to do, while Graham whipped the sweet potatoes and mixed the stuffing. Though he had to admit that she looked very pretty when she finally appeared wearing a periwinkle-blue skirt and sweater she’d owned for many years but that were still as richly colored and soft-looking as the day she’d bought them. Her hair was pulled back in a silver clasp at the nape of her neck and she wore silver earrings that made a pleasant clicking sound whenever she turned her head.
To be fair, she also set the table, even producing a paper turkey as a centerpiece, the kind you popped open to reveal the round honeycombed tissue-paper body. Then she made little name cards, and irritated Graham unendurably by calling out to him about the seating plan as he struggled to roll out pastry crust. “Now, do you think Elspeth would enjoy talking to Clayton?” she called. “Do you think Doug and Pearl would have things in common? Do you think Dr. Moley would be interested in discussing Bitsy’s hives?”
Audra was just saying, “I feel like I’m seating a cat next to a dog,” when the buzzer sounded. “Now who could be rude enough to come right on time?” she asked.
The answer was Matthew’s origami club, that’s who. They all arrived together: Clayton, Pearl, Manny, and Alan. Alan was a large man with freckles and fading red hair. Manny resembled Clayton closely enough that they could have passed for brothers. (Was Clayton replicating himself? It was a disturbing thought.)
Graham took their coats and Audra herded them all into the living room, where they clustered around the coffee table with Matthew and pulled origami paper from their backpacks.
“I thought we’d attempt the Roosevelt Elk today,” Clayton told them all, and then the buzzer sounded again and Graham went to answer it.