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Title: Uniforming (Made to Seem) (4/5)
Part three.
Weather didn’t change so much by the coast, that much she’d learned. Sure, there were seasons, but nothing like winter’s first snowfall. Just gradual shifts, like more fog coming in and fewer sunny days, and more rain and less leaves on the trees. She still went out for runs early in the morning, with the lamps staying on later and making the streets look like something out of a children’s book or an art gallery.
She didn’t stop to watch anything change before her eyes, just closed them, and when she opened them again fall was almost gone and winter had pretty much arrived. That, at least, was like home.
When her mother called her up to talk it went pretty much the same way it always did, except this time about halfway through she reminded Cameron it was three weeks to Thanksgiving and if she wanted to make decent arrangements it was almost too late.
Cameron smiled without feeling it, and two and a half weeks later was on a train bound for Chicago. Packing for a ten-day vacation wasn’t the same as packing to move across the country, and she knew that she’d get home and realize she’d forgot to pack something she hadn’t thought she’d need. With any luck, she could borrow something from her dad.
She’d been dozing when she had that thought; as soon as it hit her, she jerked awake as suddenly as if she’d slid on a patch of ice.
Once she got to the city, getting home was easy enough. Her mother had put her foot down she’d pick her up, no need to spend extra money on renting a car or waiting another hour and a half for public transportation, and the old yellow car was waiting in the designated spot. Cameron hefted her bag into the trunk and sat down in the back seat.
“So how are you?”
It took most of her willpower not to laugh at her mother’s question. “Okay, I guess. I’ve got a couple articles coming out soon, so that’s good.”
“Really? Isn’t that something. You’ve been writing a lot of them lately, haven’t you?”
“I guess. I mean, it’s important for me to establish myself now that I’m not in a fellowship anymore.”
“Oh, I can see that.” A light flicked to red, stopping the car for a moment. “So how do you like Seattle?”
“I like it a lot.”
“Is that all?”
She sighed and let herself go on. “They really know how to work with fish out there. And it’s actually pretty affordable.”
“I should hope so. Being out next to the ocean and everything.” She turned onto the exit and the conversation drifted away from them. Her mother kept talking but Cameron didn’t say much of anything in response, letting her fill up the empty space between them.
Home was home, still the same two-story house on a quiet and well-kept street, a building she hadn’t seen for nearly two years. That the tree out front was bigger was the first thing she noticed, followed fast by how much smaller the house itself was. Lugging her suitcase up to her bedroom – cleaned out pretty severely right before she moved away for her internship – gave her a weird feeling of shaking all over on the inside, like everything hadn’t grown the way it was supposed to as she passed pictures on the walls. She opened up the door to a bed too small to fit her comfortably and her father’s sewing supplies scattered over her desk.
“He keeps saying he’ll clean them up,” her mom said from right behind her, carrying a pair of blankets she threw over the bed. “Now that you’re visiting, maybe he will.”
“I don’t mind,” she said. “I wasn’t planning on using it anyway.”
“Well, all right. He’s out right now, but he’ll be back in a couple of hours, and your sister’s bringing her family over for dinner –”
“I’m a grown-up, mom. I think I can keep myself occupied for an afternoon.” She smiled for emphasis, the soft smile she’d learned for this sort of turn of phrase.
It worked: her mother nodded, shrugged, and said, “All right” before going back downstairs.
This was the time having a rental car would’ve been helpful, because asking to borrow her mother’s car to get out of the suburbs to anything resembling non-residential housing took at least a half-hour on foot. Although the chance to be out of the house for at least an hour was one she took gladly and cheerfully, throwing on a coat and calling out she’d be back for dinner and she had her phone, slipping back to parent-child speech patterns she’d learned perfectly by the time she was ten.
Three blocks away she changed her mind, turned around, and headed for the park. It was closer, but took longer to walk through, and she wasn’t up for more social interaction just yet, even dealing with paying for a hot chocolate.
The park was pretty much empty, nobody out on the paths on a bike or in roller-skates or jogging with their dog, no kids climbing on the jungle gyms or throwing balls to each other. It felt weird until she reminded herself it was a school day in a season when most people were inside at this time of day. It wasn’t that cold a year by Chicago standards – more wind than anything else, but no snow yet – but after several years away from it, she’d forgotten most of the details, and buried her hands deep in her pockets and wished she’d brought a hat.
She’d played here with Sam all the time when they were kids, riding their bikes out here and then chasing each other on the long stretches of grass, making up little war games and planning cities to lead and turning the hollows into oceans and the play structures into pirate ships. She tried climbing up on one, and wasn’t all that surprised to find she could pull herself up to the top without much effort. Blame the testicles for the upper-body strength.
It wasn’t that much higher up, but it was enough to see out to the pond, the little bits of grass beyond that, and a little ways over the surrounding neighborhoods. She stood up, balancing as best she could, shaking before she got her gravity settled out, shielding her eyes from the late afternoon sun. There wasn’t a speck of color to be found anywhere, just grays and browns and tans, all with the giant blue sky overhead. Looking up, down, and around – there were geese on the pond, resting before heading down south, and there were some people biking at the edge of the park, bundled up in shocking red, and there were some people trying to stoke a fire in their fireplace a few blocks west with the wind blowing east, and there wasn’t an easy way to get down, but she managed it without having to jump all the way to the ground.
When she got back to the house Sam’s family car was already in the driveway, and her nephew ran to her as soon as she got in the door. “Uncle Allison!”
“Morgan!” She crouched down, reached out, grabbed him in a big hug, almost tempted to hoist him up in the air but didn’t know how he’d feel about her doing something she’d never done before.
“Hey, Allie.” Cameron looked up from her nephew to her sister’s own smile. She stood up and got a hug from her, too.
“Hey, sweetie, could you go see if your grandpa wants some help in the kitchen?” He nodded, and as soon as he was off, Sam went back to her sister. “So how’ve you been?”
“Not that bad, really. Now, don’t lie to me, I’ll know, how are Mom and Dad?”
“Dad’s trying out new hobbies all the time, but I think quilting’s gonna stick. Mom’s got her writer’s group and that keeps her busy, and she still volunteers at the law library downtown a couple of times a week.” She snorted. “She’s been making bad jokes about knowing where everything is because she already used it ten years ago.”
“That’s Mom, all right.”
“They’re thinking about getting a dog.”
“And if that’s not a warning, nothing is.” She sat in a chair while Sam flopped down on the couch. The room was pretty much the same. The books on the shelves were a little different, but they were still shelves of books, and there were more pictures of Morgan on top of the fireplace and more art on the walls: still the same den her parents used to keep company busy until dinner. “So, really, how are you?”
“Work’s been killing me lately. Our bread guy’s been more of a diva than usual, and the manager’s been pressuring me to come up with something with raspberries because they’re the ‘in’ fruit right now even though that’s the pastry chef’s job. We finally got that huge walk-in freezer but now I’ve got to figure out how to get sheep heart on the menu because, now that we’ve got the space for it, we’re buying the animals whole.”
“Do you have a butcher in the kitchen now?”
“Not yet. But if I can get Sasha on my side, we’ve got a shot at getting Annie to open something up.” She twisted around, moving to lie on her left side. “Paul’s been a rock, I swear. Morgan’s fussing in school more but we’re pretty sure it’s just a phase.”
Cameron nodded for her to go on, and Sam practically lit up as she kept talking about her son, how he was doing in maths and reading and making so many friends, and how he was more than happy to be like his mom and help out at a bake sale.
“People hear ‘work in a kitchen’ and they think you can do everything.”
“I’m still not sure if making Laura make something would be cheating or not.”
“If it’s for a good cause it works out in the end.”
“Is that what House told you when you had to break into that guy’s house?”
“Which one?” They both got a good laugh out of that. He must’ve been drawn by the sound because that was when Paul came into the room.
“Hey, Allison.” He paused, drew his face in, “It is still Allison, right?”
“Still Allison.”
“You’re looking good.” His body language was stiff, a bit tense; she got up to hug him, showing him she still considered him close enough for such a public intimate act. When he sat down next to his wife he looked a lot more relaxed.
“I assume Sam’s been talking about her freezer.” She rolled her eyes and slapped him lightly. “And I know you don’t want to repeat yourself over dinner, so – Morgan’s got the rest of the week off from school, and he’d love to have you hang out with us, just the guys.” Cameron nodded, keeping her face calm. “So you free tomorrow?”
“All I’ve got planned is Thanksgiving dinner and going back to Seattle next week.”
“We’ll just pick you up tomorrow, then.”
“Won’t you be coming with us?”
Sam shook her head. “Not tomorrow, but the place can manage without me for two days.” She smiled at Paul. “Even on Thanksgiving.”
“I’d swear it’s a polyandrous marriage but that’s not legal in Illinois.”
Cameron smiled as Sam laughed, and they started to plan out which museums and galleries to visit until it was time for dinner, her dad summoning everyone into the dining room with the nice plates and silverware set out. As usual, Cameron kept her hands to herself when everyone else held theirs to say grace.
“My daughter the chef,” he laughed when Sam commented on his using Californian bay leaves. “A man should take pride in feeding his family, and she just offers critique.”
Morgan was practically bouncing up and down in his seat; his mother smiled, kept to her word, and let him take over and talk about school for himself. Cameron couldn’t stop herself from laughing at Morgan, as much from the anecdotes as the way he kept jumping back and forth to make sure he’d said everything important to his story about the classroom toad’s escape and his final capture by the teacher’s bucket.
“Well, I’m glad he came out of it okay.”
“It was my turn to feed him last week. The teacher let me hold the pinkie mouse out in front of him, and he went right and grabbed it!” Morgan mimed the toad’s capture of the mouse, his left hand staying frozen in the air and his right dashing out to hit it.
“Oh, my,” his grandmother said, “That sounds like a lot of responsibility.”
“We all get a chance. It’s in number order so nobody gets picked instead of someone else.”
“So, Allison,” her dad said, “how’s work been?”
Cameron smiled as best she could. “It’s not as exciting as my fellowship was, but it’s been pretty nice. The hospital’s good, and the cafeteria’s actually really great.” She shrugged. “I think that’s from being so close to the ocean; they can get all the good stuff right away.”
Sam nodded. “I had to fight against importing tomatoes.”
Paul held up a hand. “Don’t get her started. So what’s the weirdest thing you’ve gotten yet?”
That took a moment; ‘weird’ didn’t mean as much as it used to. “Someone came in with systemic sclerosis a few days ago.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s where blood vessels harden and break, basically.” She managed to keep from smiling over their reactions, all the adults drawing back and Morgan staring fascinated. “Autoimmune diseases aren’t pretty.” She did her best to look innocent. After all, she had had that case a few months back, so she wasn’t lying about it. Her ploy worked: nothing else talked about at the table involved her job or personal life, moving over to Sam’s for the time being. Having to wait a couple of hours for her sister and her family to go home, leaving her at the mercy of her parents, was still enough of a respite, and more than enough time to put on the act of being tired from all the travel and let her go to bed early without too much conversation.
She didn’t go to bed right away, or even got ready for it, but waited for her parents to head to bed themselves before slipping out of her room and back downstairs. Being careful not to walk where it’d creak and make as little noise as possible was tricky, and she tried to put as little weight on the floor, walking on tiptoe across bare floor until she got to carpet. She knew she shouldn’t be this nervous, lurking around in her childhood home after dark, but it was a feeling she couldn’t shake. Like she almost should be afraid someone might catch her here – not that she knew what they’d do, just that they’d catch her looking at Morgan’s art hanging on the fridge or out at the lawn through the kitchen windows or just sitting in the den looking around at the dark. A car drove by, lighting everything up, and that finally got her to get up and head to bed.
She was right; she didn’t fit the bed anymore, couldn’t stretch her legs out all the way and keep them under the covers, even if she moved to a diagonal position. Curling up, pulling the blankets in closer, she tried to settle down to get to sleep. She kept thinking of when Sam told her about how she and Paul sat Morgan down to explain why he needed to call his aunt his uncle now, and his face when she called them for the first time after she was done shifting, and where they’d all be going tomorrow. Rolling onto her right side, then her left, then onto her stomach and wriggling her arms under the pillow, she tried to get her mind to stop spinning around and settle down.
When she opened her eyes the next morning it took her a moment to realize where she was, and when she did she curled in on herself under the covers, shivering before throwing them off. She’d packed her electric razor and it whirred to life over the bathroom sink, clearing its way over her face. Shaving her face had, at this point, gotten to be just one more thing to adjust to, like figuring out how to ask a question. At least it was something she didn’t need to do in public. And she did feel better when she was done: a smooth face was something she was used to.
Her dad was already cooking up oatmeal when she came downstairs. “Morning.”
“Good morning.”
“It’ll be ready in a few minutes.”
“Okay.” She sat down at the table, pulling the paper over and scanning over the headlines without reading them.
“So where are you all going today?”
“The Art Institute, I think. They’ll be by to pick me up in a couple of hours.”
He sat down across from her, eyes flicking around before settling on her hands resting on the domestic news section. “I’ll get the sewing stuff out of your room tonight.”
“It’s okay. I’m only here for a few days anyway.”
“All right, then. Listen, I’m going grocery shopping for the dinner today, so if there’s anything you’d like –”
“It’s fine.”
“Well, I could get something for tonight.”
“Sam’s going to want me over for dinner.”
“Of course she is.” He sighed. His expression was tiny, just his eyes flicking and his mouth thinning, but years of watching patients lie to her to hide what was wrong with them let her see it before it left fast. “I was just thinking, I know we weren’t around much when you were growing up and it’s so rare for you to be home now, and since the last time you were here – I was just hoping –”
“Dad, if you want to do something with me,” she measured out her words deliberately, carefully, “you could pick someplace to go tomorrow, some other museum, and we could go do something together.”
“A day out just us guys?”
She felt her teeth clench. “If that’s what you want to do, we can do that.”
-
The Institute was as fantastic as it always was. Morgan played tour guide to Cameron, making up stuff as he went along; Paul and Sam took them to the temporary exhibit on European tapestries and their old favorites from when they’d all come here as kids native to the city or young adults relocating their lives. At the park afterwards, there was a rough-and-tumble game of tag, and Cameron got swept up in the moment and hoisted Morgan off his feet into the air, and did it again to hear him make that laugh and because she realized it didn’t really take any effort at all. Sam did have to run back to the restaurant for what turned out to be a not-uncommon soup emergency, leading to more than a little grousing over how difficult it was to get someone who knew how to work with carrots.
Two days before Thanksgiving meant there were still a lot of places open, more than enough to give her dad plenty of options. He settled on the MSI, which was good, because if they were looking over exhibits together they wouldn’t be talking too much. She was glad to be out with her father for a few hours – really glad, he was right she didn’t get home too much anymore and flat-out liked being with her dad – but at the same time, the idea of getting the energy to have a long, thoughtful conversation with him wasn’t something she felt she could do. Even if the conversation was about pendulums or hometown nostalgia and not her personal life, which he didn’t touch on after lunch. She’d just shrugged, said she’d dated a woman for a few weeks a couple of months ago, and that was that.
He waited to bring it up at dinner.
“Really.” Her mother leaned in. “What’s her name?”
“Rita.”
“Why aren’t you still dating?”
In this sort of situation, just like learning a girl thought she’d fucked her boyfriend into the hospital, the best thing to do was be totally honest. “Well, I didn’t come out to her until after we’d started dating, and she didn’t want to stay together after that.”
“That’s such a shame.” She shook her head. “People should be more forward-thinking these days.”
“It was her choice, Mom. If I made her uncomfortable…”
“Then shouldn’t it be her fault?”
It really wasn’t, but, “If I made her uncomfortable, why would I want to keep dating her?” She left the words hanging as she went back to her lasagna.
The day before Thanksgiving had her dad running around doing all the prep work he possibly could, her mom helping on one of the few days a year she went into a kitchen, Sam busy in the restaurant, and Paul and Morgan taking her out for lunch just to get out of the house for a while.
She’d forgotten how much fun food like this could be, and wiped some sauce off her face. Paul smiled. “Beats clams, doesn’t it?”
“Seattle –” she gulped down some water. “Seattle knows its teriyaki, but it just cannot do decent sandwiches.”
“Finger foods are so American, aren’t they.”
“God, this is good.” She took another bite. “I mean, I grew up on this stuff. They’re probably still using the same sauce.”
“If this place has been here since the sixties, probably.”
All too soon, the sandwich was gone. She almost wanted to order another one, but Morgan insisted they go do something else, so they went back to the park near her house after a brief stop at Sam’s house to get some old bread.
“Don’t get too close, they bite,” Paul warned as he ripped up slices.
“I won’t,” Morgan promised, and ran off to the pond.
“Warm year,” Cameron said.
“Not really. Just dryer than usual.” He turned his collar up and hunched his shoulders in.
She’d always liked him. He was good for Sam, good to Sam, always ready to be a good husband and put himself second for his wife and child. “Will he ever get a brother or sister?”
He shrugged. “I’d like him to get one of each, really. Sam’s a little harder to convince – I mean, she’s the one who’s got to have them.”
“You’d make some great kids.”
“I know.” Morgan was keeping his word, throwing pieces of bread at the geese from a good distance away. “I talk to her about learning to take turns and share, but, well, she’s always busy, and even me as a stay-at-home dad it’d still be a long time away from work.”
“Just a few months.”
“I keep telling her that.” He glanced over at her. “Do you want kids?”
She watched him run at the geese, scattering them honking into the air. “A long time ago.”
This year’s Thanksgiving Day was a much lower-key affair than other years, just close family, a total of fourteen people with Dad’s sister and her family from Decatur plus Mom’s cousins from across the city. By eleven everyone had their usual places in the house: the women in the living room watching television, the men in the kitchen under Dad’s administration.
Cameron hung around, flitting back and forth. Her mother invited her to watch the game, but she declined. “I’m not in the mood for lacrosse.”
“Come on, it’s lacrosse! It’s the national sport!”
“I just don’t want to watch it.”
Sam cut in, “We could grab our old sticks, throw the ball around the backyard – Mom, do we still have them?”
“It’s okay,” Cameron insisted. “I’ll help Dad in the kitchen.”
That didn’t work, either: everyone was already bustling around, chopping sausages and stirring broth and mixing sauce and tasting the parsnips for just enough white pepper.
Morgan, Alex, and Andy were running back and forth from the front yard to the back yard, all of them chasing each other at the same time, and Cameron knew anyone tall wouldn’t be allowed to join. She watched them from the front room for a while, back in the chair, until Sam came in. “Hi.”
She didn’t sit down. “Why aren’t you doing something?”
She didn’t look over at her. “There’s really not much to do.”
“You could just sit and watch the game with us.”
“I’m fine.”
“Bullshit.”
That got her attention, whipping her head around. “What?”
“Bullshit you’re fine. What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“Bullshit. I asked, what’s wrong with you? What’s going on? You’ve been upset and angry at everyone and you keep sulking and snapping at us – jeez, what’s wrong?” She was standing back, holding her ground, using her voice as a lash.
“What’s wrong.”
“Yes.”
“You really want to know what’s wrong.”
“Yes!”
“Okay,” She stood up, walked over, staring down at her sister, glaring as hard as she could, “But first I’d like to know why you think you need to ask.”
“Come on –”
“No, you, you don’t get it, you think this can just happen to someone and it’s easy and fun and there’s no trouble adjusting but it’s fucking hard and I hate it and I have no idea how to talk to anyone and you think you can ask me what’s wrong now and if you do then you don’t get it.”
Sam just stood there, still looking up to keep eye contact. “What don’t I get?”
“You think you can just ask what’s wrong with me. It doesn’t work that way.”
“Jesus,” She whispered. “Allison, it’s supposed to work that way, but you’ve never, ever asked anyone for help even once, even when you’re supposed to –”
“‘Supposed to?’ What is this, Napoleon’s Germany? There aren’t rules for this anymore, and if I wanted to go through it on my own that’s my own choice.”
“You always do this. You always do it on your own and you never ask anyone for help.”
“It’s kind of hard to help when you’re growing a penis.” Sam took a step back, actually took a step back. “I could piss just fine because my urinary track still had an opening, but for about a week I didn’t have anything but this little lump.”
“Allison –”
Cameron matched her, taking a step forward. “I couldn’t chew for two weeks because my jaw was growing bigger and a new set of teeth was coming in. I could feel my heart getting bigger, my uterus sort of dissolved, my –”
“That’s enough!”
“It’s what happens when you shift so late! Why do you think I didn’t talk to you while it was happening? I waited for it to be over so it’d be okay to talk to you.”
Crossing her arms over her chest, she looked away and back. “Why wouldn’t it have been okay to talk to me? I’m your fucking sister.”
“Because it wasn’t the right thing to do. You didn’t need to see any of it.”
“Fuck that! I did!”
“You what?” It was her turn to take a step back.
Sam didn’t move forward. “I needed to see it! You’re always there for me and when you need it you never let me be there for you, you fucking know that.”
“What is this?” She pointed back to the living room, fuck it and let them listen, “I come home for Thanksgiving and suddenly everyone’s taking the time to reach out to me? You, Dad, are you all in cahoots with each other? Is Mom going to ask me to go dancing with her or something?”
“You come home for the first time in years after you, yeah, after you grew a fucking penis and call us once every six months, yeah, we’re worried you’re okay.”
“So why not call me?” She was too angry to yell. “Why not call me?”
“You wouldn’t have said anything.”
“I –” She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “I’m going to my room.”
She stomped up the stairs, not noticing if anyone was watching or looking, took them two at a time, slammed the door behind her, curled up by her bed and folded her arms and started to cry. She didn’t want – she didn’t know what she wanted now, but she didn’t want this feeling, practically anything but this one.
Cameron kept crying, wiping her face off and trying to stay quiet and not sob too much. She didn’t know if this was a male thing to do or a female thing to do – men could let themselves cry, but every woman knew privacy let her get away with this sort of thing.
Her hands were shaking from all the adrenalin; she watched them in a way she usually didn’t, watched them shake, trying to figure out how they were a part of her body when they didn’t look like her hands, her real hands. She clenched them into fists, ran them over her legs up and down up and down and kept crying.
When there was a knock on the door she didn’t get up or call out; when there was another she stayed quiet. After the third, someone opened her door, came over and sat next to her, and it turned out to be Sam.
“What is it?”
“I’m sorry.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry.” She fidgeted for a moment, not looking Cameron in the face. “I shouldn’t…I should have thought how hard it is for you, with all this, but I want to be there for you, and you never let me.”
“Sam, if I – it doesn’t work that way for me anymore. I’m not allowed, the way it works is that I can’t ask, because if I do, even if nobody knows about it, then I’ll know I haven’t managed to succeed on my own.” She looked her sister in the eye. “And that’s even more important now. It’s, there’s all these expectations that I know I need to reach, and I can’t get help because that’s now how it works.”
“Oh.”
“If you want to help – you remember the sunlamps?”
“Yeah. I sent them as soon as I got your address.”
“Those helped, and they were help you knew I needed, but I didn’t ask for them.”
“What’s that mean?”
“If you know I need help, don’t paddle around, just come and help.”
“Allie,” she reached out, put her hand on her knee, “I won’t tell anyone if you ask.”
“I’ve never asked.”
“I know.”
“And you think I’m going to start now because I’m a boy?”
“I think you’re going to start because that’s what I need you to do.” She rubbed Cameron’s knee, slapped it, and left her hand there – letting Cameron cover it with her own and hold it there, just for a while – before slipping off and jumping up. “Hold on.” She was back a couple of minutes later with an envelope in her hand. “I wanted to give this to you.”
It wasn’t too big, and Cameron unfolded it easily. It was a photograph, and when she turned it over she gasped. She looked up at Sam standing over her, “Where did you get this?”
Sam shrugged. “Cleaned out my desk a few weeks ago. Thought you’d like it.”
She looked back at the picture. In it, she was sitting on the steps of a back porch, holding one arm and sort of smiling, hair up in a ponytail. It must be from her last summer vacation right after senior year of high school – god, she looked so young.
“Remember when I took that?” Sam sat back down. “You had Nick and Leah over and didn’t want your skuzzy kid sister hanging around.”
“I remember.” She shook her head, traced her thumb over the hair blowing in the breeze. “And we let you hang around anyway.”
“And you didn’t even yell at me when I kept taking pictures.”
“You were convinced you’d grow up to be the next Dorothea Lange.”
“You were convinced you’d grow up and get something named after you.”
“Hey, I still might get there. You’re too busy with your restaurant.”
“The Dorothea Lange of food photography.” Sam swept her hands through the air like she was tracking a marquee. It was such an absurd image, and she said it so seriously, that all she could do in response was let out a laugh. Just a small one, but a laugh. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to take a good picture of food? Don’t even get me started on drinks.”
“What about drinks?”
“You cheat!” Sam pushed her light on the shoulder, and Cameron rocked back, laughing a little bit more. Sam went downstairs first, and when Cameron finally followed her, there were still a few minutes to the game. Sam was in her old seat, most of the men had wandered in, and Cameron made her way out to the back. The kids were playing in the front yard so she had the porch to herself, everyone leaving her alone to watch the clouds move slowly and try to think and ponder without doing it deliberately. She broke out smiling when she realized how useful it’d be to get some sort of juggling balls to give herself something to do.
The dinner was a smashing success, everyone chatting, joking, eating, passing around more food than they could possibly eat in one night. Cameron stayed quiet, eating carefully so she wouldn’t spill anything, keeping out of the conversation and just watching everyone. It really wasn’t a bad way to spend Thanksgiving. She stayed quiet through dessert, as she helped clear the table, and all the way to bedtime, only saying enough to say good night as she needed to.
She had more to say the next day, when Mom and Dad took her out to the movies, and the day after that, when they took her to Sam’s restaurant for dinner. By now, she knew the difference between feeling better and being better – years of medical education and personal experience – but she also knew how important they were to each other, and if one came, the other was a pretty safe bet it’d follow.
-
Part five.
Weather didn’t change so much by the coast, that much she’d learned. Sure, there were seasons, but nothing like winter’s first snowfall. Just gradual shifts, like more fog coming in and fewer sunny days, and more rain and less leaves on the trees. She still went out for runs early in the morning, with the lamps staying on later and making the streets look like something out of a children’s book or an art gallery.
She didn’t stop to watch anything change before her eyes, just closed them, and when she opened them again fall was almost gone and winter had pretty much arrived. That, at least, was like home.
When her mother called her up to talk it went pretty much the same way it always did, except this time about halfway through she reminded Cameron it was three weeks to Thanksgiving and if she wanted to make decent arrangements it was almost too late.
Cameron smiled without feeling it, and two and a half weeks later was on a train bound for Chicago. Packing for a ten-day vacation wasn’t the same as packing to move across the country, and she knew that she’d get home and realize she’d forgot to pack something she hadn’t thought she’d need. With any luck, she could borrow something from her dad.
She’d been dozing when she had that thought; as soon as it hit her, she jerked awake as suddenly as if she’d slid on a patch of ice.
Once she got to the city, getting home was easy enough. Her mother had put her foot down she’d pick her up, no need to spend extra money on renting a car or waiting another hour and a half for public transportation, and the old yellow car was waiting in the designated spot. Cameron hefted her bag into the trunk and sat down in the back seat.
“So how are you?”
It took most of her willpower not to laugh at her mother’s question. “Okay, I guess. I’ve got a couple articles coming out soon, so that’s good.”
“Really? Isn’t that something. You’ve been writing a lot of them lately, haven’t you?”
“I guess. I mean, it’s important for me to establish myself now that I’m not in a fellowship anymore.”
“Oh, I can see that.” A light flicked to red, stopping the car for a moment. “So how do you like Seattle?”
“I like it a lot.”
“Is that all?”
She sighed and let herself go on. “They really know how to work with fish out there. And it’s actually pretty affordable.”
“I should hope so. Being out next to the ocean and everything.” She turned onto the exit and the conversation drifted away from them. Her mother kept talking but Cameron didn’t say much of anything in response, letting her fill up the empty space between them.
Home was home, still the same two-story house on a quiet and well-kept street, a building she hadn’t seen for nearly two years. That the tree out front was bigger was the first thing she noticed, followed fast by how much smaller the house itself was. Lugging her suitcase up to her bedroom – cleaned out pretty severely right before she moved away for her internship – gave her a weird feeling of shaking all over on the inside, like everything hadn’t grown the way it was supposed to as she passed pictures on the walls. She opened up the door to a bed too small to fit her comfortably and her father’s sewing supplies scattered over her desk.
“He keeps saying he’ll clean them up,” her mom said from right behind her, carrying a pair of blankets she threw over the bed. “Now that you’re visiting, maybe he will.”
“I don’t mind,” she said. “I wasn’t planning on using it anyway.”
“Well, all right. He’s out right now, but he’ll be back in a couple of hours, and your sister’s bringing her family over for dinner –”
“I’m a grown-up, mom. I think I can keep myself occupied for an afternoon.” She smiled for emphasis, the soft smile she’d learned for this sort of turn of phrase.
It worked: her mother nodded, shrugged, and said, “All right” before going back downstairs.
This was the time having a rental car would’ve been helpful, because asking to borrow her mother’s car to get out of the suburbs to anything resembling non-residential housing took at least a half-hour on foot. Although the chance to be out of the house for at least an hour was one she took gladly and cheerfully, throwing on a coat and calling out she’d be back for dinner and she had her phone, slipping back to parent-child speech patterns she’d learned perfectly by the time she was ten.
Three blocks away she changed her mind, turned around, and headed for the park. It was closer, but took longer to walk through, and she wasn’t up for more social interaction just yet, even dealing with paying for a hot chocolate.
The park was pretty much empty, nobody out on the paths on a bike or in roller-skates or jogging with their dog, no kids climbing on the jungle gyms or throwing balls to each other. It felt weird until she reminded herself it was a school day in a season when most people were inside at this time of day. It wasn’t that cold a year by Chicago standards – more wind than anything else, but no snow yet – but after several years away from it, she’d forgotten most of the details, and buried her hands deep in her pockets and wished she’d brought a hat.
She’d played here with Sam all the time when they were kids, riding their bikes out here and then chasing each other on the long stretches of grass, making up little war games and planning cities to lead and turning the hollows into oceans and the play structures into pirate ships. She tried climbing up on one, and wasn’t all that surprised to find she could pull herself up to the top without much effort. Blame the testicles for the upper-body strength.
It wasn’t that much higher up, but it was enough to see out to the pond, the little bits of grass beyond that, and a little ways over the surrounding neighborhoods. She stood up, balancing as best she could, shaking before she got her gravity settled out, shielding her eyes from the late afternoon sun. There wasn’t a speck of color to be found anywhere, just grays and browns and tans, all with the giant blue sky overhead. Looking up, down, and around – there were geese on the pond, resting before heading down south, and there were some people biking at the edge of the park, bundled up in shocking red, and there were some people trying to stoke a fire in their fireplace a few blocks west with the wind blowing east, and there wasn’t an easy way to get down, but she managed it without having to jump all the way to the ground.
When she got back to the house Sam’s family car was already in the driveway, and her nephew ran to her as soon as she got in the door. “Uncle Allison!”
“Morgan!” She crouched down, reached out, grabbed him in a big hug, almost tempted to hoist him up in the air but didn’t know how he’d feel about her doing something she’d never done before.
“Hey, Allie.” Cameron looked up from her nephew to her sister’s own smile. She stood up and got a hug from her, too.
“Hey, sweetie, could you go see if your grandpa wants some help in the kitchen?” He nodded, and as soon as he was off, Sam went back to her sister. “So how’ve you been?”
“Not that bad, really. Now, don’t lie to me, I’ll know, how are Mom and Dad?”
“Dad’s trying out new hobbies all the time, but I think quilting’s gonna stick. Mom’s got her writer’s group and that keeps her busy, and she still volunteers at the law library downtown a couple of times a week.” She snorted. “She’s been making bad jokes about knowing where everything is because she already used it ten years ago.”
“That’s Mom, all right.”
“They’re thinking about getting a dog.”
“And if that’s not a warning, nothing is.” She sat in a chair while Sam flopped down on the couch. The room was pretty much the same. The books on the shelves were a little different, but they were still shelves of books, and there were more pictures of Morgan on top of the fireplace and more art on the walls: still the same den her parents used to keep company busy until dinner. “So, really, how are you?”
“Work’s been killing me lately. Our bread guy’s been more of a diva than usual, and the manager’s been pressuring me to come up with something with raspberries because they’re the ‘in’ fruit right now even though that’s the pastry chef’s job. We finally got that huge walk-in freezer but now I’ve got to figure out how to get sheep heart on the menu because, now that we’ve got the space for it, we’re buying the animals whole.”
“Do you have a butcher in the kitchen now?”
“Not yet. But if I can get Sasha on my side, we’ve got a shot at getting Annie to open something up.” She twisted around, moving to lie on her left side. “Paul’s been a rock, I swear. Morgan’s fussing in school more but we’re pretty sure it’s just a phase.”
Cameron nodded for her to go on, and Sam practically lit up as she kept talking about her son, how he was doing in maths and reading and making so many friends, and how he was more than happy to be like his mom and help out at a bake sale.
“People hear ‘work in a kitchen’ and they think you can do everything.”
“I’m still not sure if making Laura make something would be cheating or not.”
“If it’s for a good cause it works out in the end.”
“Is that what House told you when you had to break into that guy’s house?”
“Which one?” They both got a good laugh out of that. He must’ve been drawn by the sound because that was when Paul came into the room.
“Hey, Allison.” He paused, drew his face in, “It is still Allison, right?”
“Still Allison.”
“You’re looking good.” His body language was stiff, a bit tense; she got up to hug him, showing him she still considered him close enough for such a public intimate act. When he sat down next to his wife he looked a lot more relaxed.
“I assume Sam’s been talking about her freezer.” She rolled her eyes and slapped him lightly. “And I know you don’t want to repeat yourself over dinner, so – Morgan’s got the rest of the week off from school, and he’d love to have you hang out with us, just the guys.” Cameron nodded, keeping her face calm. “So you free tomorrow?”
“All I’ve got planned is Thanksgiving dinner and going back to Seattle next week.”
“We’ll just pick you up tomorrow, then.”
“Won’t you be coming with us?”
Sam shook her head. “Not tomorrow, but the place can manage without me for two days.” She smiled at Paul. “Even on Thanksgiving.”
“I’d swear it’s a polyandrous marriage but that’s not legal in Illinois.”
Cameron smiled as Sam laughed, and they started to plan out which museums and galleries to visit until it was time for dinner, her dad summoning everyone into the dining room with the nice plates and silverware set out. As usual, Cameron kept her hands to herself when everyone else held theirs to say grace.
“My daughter the chef,” he laughed when Sam commented on his using Californian bay leaves. “A man should take pride in feeding his family, and she just offers critique.”
Morgan was practically bouncing up and down in his seat; his mother smiled, kept to her word, and let him take over and talk about school for himself. Cameron couldn’t stop herself from laughing at Morgan, as much from the anecdotes as the way he kept jumping back and forth to make sure he’d said everything important to his story about the classroom toad’s escape and his final capture by the teacher’s bucket.
“Well, I’m glad he came out of it okay.”
“It was my turn to feed him last week. The teacher let me hold the pinkie mouse out in front of him, and he went right and grabbed it!” Morgan mimed the toad’s capture of the mouse, his left hand staying frozen in the air and his right dashing out to hit it.
“Oh, my,” his grandmother said, “That sounds like a lot of responsibility.”
“We all get a chance. It’s in number order so nobody gets picked instead of someone else.”
“So, Allison,” her dad said, “how’s work been?”
Cameron smiled as best she could. “It’s not as exciting as my fellowship was, but it’s been pretty nice. The hospital’s good, and the cafeteria’s actually really great.” She shrugged. “I think that’s from being so close to the ocean; they can get all the good stuff right away.”
Sam nodded. “I had to fight against importing tomatoes.”
Paul held up a hand. “Don’t get her started. So what’s the weirdest thing you’ve gotten yet?”
That took a moment; ‘weird’ didn’t mean as much as it used to. “Someone came in with systemic sclerosis a few days ago.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s where blood vessels harden and break, basically.” She managed to keep from smiling over their reactions, all the adults drawing back and Morgan staring fascinated. “Autoimmune diseases aren’t pretty.” She did her best to look innocent. After all, she had had that case a few months back, so she wasn’t lying about it. Her ploy worked: nothing else talked about at the table involved her job or personal life, moving over to Sam’s for the time being. Having to wait a couple of hours for her sister and her family to go home, leaving her at the mercy of her parents, was still enough of a respite, and more than enough time to put on the act of being tired from all the travel and let her go to bed early without too much conversation.
She didn’t go to bed right away, or even got ready for it, but waited for her parents to head to bed themselves before slipping out of her room and back downstairs. Being careful not to walk where it’d creak and make as little noise as possible was tricky, and she tried to put as little weight on the floor, walking on tiptoe across bare floor until she got to carpet. She knew she shouldn’t be this nervous, lurking around in her childhood home after dark, but it was a feeling she couldn’t shake. Like she almost should be afraid someone might catch her here – not that she knew what they’d do, just that they’d catch her looking at Morgan’s art hanging on the fridge or out at the lawn through the kitchen windows or just sitting in the den looking around at the dark. A car drove by, lighting everything up, and that finally got her to get up and head to bed.
She was right; she didn’t fit the bed anymore, couldn’t stretch her legs out all the way and keep them under the covers, even if she moved to a diagonal position. Curling up, pulling the blankets in closer, she tried to settle down to get to sleep. She kept thinking of when Sam told her about how she and Paul sat Morgan down to explain why he needed to call his aunt his uncle now, and his face when she called them for the first time after she was done shifting, and where they’d all be going tomorrow. Rolling onto her right side, then her left, then onto her stomach and wriggling her arms under the pillow, she tried to get her mind to stop spinning around and settle down.
When she opened her eyes the next morning it took her a moment to realize where she was, and when she did she curled in on herself under the covers, shivering before throwing them off. She’d packed her electric razor and it whirred to life over the bathroom sink, clearing its way over her face. Shaving her face had, at this point, gotten to be just one more thing to adjust to, like figuring out how to ask a question. At least it was something she didn’t need to do in public. And she did feel better when she was done: a smooth face was something she was used to.
Her dad was already cooking up oatmeal when she came downstairs. “Morning.”
“Good morning.”
“It’ll be ready in a few minutes.”
“Okay.” She sat down at the table, pulling the paper over and scanning over the headlines without reading them.
“So where are you all going today?”
“The Art Institute, I think. They’ll be by to pick me up in a couple of hours.”
He sat down across from her, eyes flicking around before settling on her hands resting on the domestic news section. “I’ll get the sewing stuff out of your room tonight.”
“It’s okay. I’m only here for a few days anyway.”
“All right, then. Listen, I’m going grocery shopping for the dinner today, so if there’s anything you’d like –”
“It’s fine.”
“Well, I could get something for tonight.”
“Sam’s going to want me over for dinner.”
“Of course she is.” He sighed. His expression was tiny, just his eyes flicking and his mouth thinning, but years of watching patients lie to her to hide what was wrong with them let her see it before it left fast. “I was just thinking, I know we weren’t around much when you were growing up and it’s so rare for you to be home now, and since the last time you were here – I was just hoping –”
“Dad, if you want to do something with me,” she measured out her words deliberately, carefully, “you could pick someplace to go tomorrow, some other museum, and we could go do something together.”
“A day out just us guys?”
She felt her teeth clench. “If that’s what you want to do, we can do that.”
-
The Institute was as fantastic as it always was. Morgan played tour guide to Cameron, making up stuff as he went along; Paul and Sam took them to the temporary exhibit on European tapestries and their old favorites from when they’d all come here as kids native to the city or young adults relocating their lives. At the park afterwards, there was a rough-and-tumble game of tag, and Cameron got swept up in the moment and hoisted Morgan off his feet into the air, and did it again to hear him make that laugh and because she realized it didn’t really take any effort at all. Sam did have to run back to the restaurant for what turned out to be a not-uncommon soup emergency, leading to more than a little grousing over how difficult it was to get someone who knew how to work with carrots.
Two days before Thanksgiving meant there were still a lot of places open, more than enough to give her dad plenty of options. He settled on the MSI, which was good, because if they were looking over exhibits together they wouldn’t be talking too much. She was glad to be out with her father for a few hours – really glad, he was right she didn’t get home too much anymore and flat-out liked being with her dad – but at the same time, the idea of getting the energy to have a long, thoughtful conversation with him wasn’t something she felt she could do. Even if the conversation was about pendulums or hometown nostalgia and not her personal life, which he didn’t touch on after lunch. She’d just shrugged, said she’d dated a woman for a few weeks a couple of months ago, and that was that.
He waited to bring it up at dinner.
“Really.” Her mother leaned in. “What’s her name?”
“Rita.”
“Why aren’t you still dating?”
In this sort of situation, just like learning a girl thought she’d fucked her boyfriend into the hospital, the best thing to do was be totally honest. “Well, I didn’t come out to her until after we’d started dating, and she didn’t want to stay together after that.”
“That’s such a shame.” She shook her head. “People should be more forward-thinking these days.”
“It was her choice, Mom. If I made her uncomfortable…”
“Then shouldn’t it be her fault?”
It really wasn’t, but, “If I made her uncomfortable, why would I want to keep dating her?” She left the words hanging as she went back to her lasagna.
The day before Thanksgiving had her dad running around doing all the prep work he possibly could, her mom helping on one of the few days a year she went into a kitchen, Sam busy in the restaurant, and Paul and Morgan taking her out for lunch just to get out of the house for a while.
She’d forgotten how much fun food like this could be, and wiped some sauce off her face. Paul smiled. “Beats clams, doesn’t it?”
“Seattle –” she gulped down some water. “Seattle knows its teriyaki, but it just cannot do decent sandwiches.”
“Finger foods are so American, aren’t they.”
“God, this is good.” She took another bite. “I mean, I grew up on this stuff. They’re probably still using the same sauce.”
“If this place has been here since the sixties, probably.”
All too soon, the sandwich was gone. She almost wanted to order another one, but Morgan insisted they go do something else, so they went back to the park near her house after a brief stop at Sam’s house to get some old bread.
“Don’t get too close, they bite,” Paul warned as he ripped up slices.
“I won’t,” Morgan promised, and ran off to the pond.
“Warm year,” Cameron said.
“Not really. Just dryer than usual.” He turned his collar up and hunched his shoulders in.
She’d always liked him. He was good for Sam, good to Sam, always ready to be a good husband and put himself second for his wife and child. “Will he ever get a brother or sister?”
He shrugged. “I’d like him to get one of each, really. Sam’s a little harder to convince – I mean, she’s the one who’s got to have them.”
“You’d make some great kids.”
“I know.” Morgan was keeping his word, throwing pieces of bread at the geese from a good distance away. “I talk to her about learning to take turns and share, but, well, she’s always busy, and even me as a stay-at-home dad it’d still be a long time away from work.”
“Just a few months.”
“I keep telling her that.” He glanced over at her. “Do you want kids?”
She watched him run at the geese, scattering them honking into the air. “A long time ago.”
This year’s Thanksgiving Day was a much lower-key affair than other years, just close family, a total of fourteen people with Dad’s sister and her family from Decatur plus Mom’s cousins from across the city. By eleven everyone had their usual places in the house: the women in the living room watching television, the men in the kitchen under Dad’s administration.
Cameron hung around, flitting back and forth. Her mother invited her to watch the game, but she declined. “I’m not in the mood for lacrosse.”
“Come on, it’s lacrosse! It’s the national sport!”
“I just don’t want to watch it.”
Sam cut in, “We could grab our old sticks, throw the ball around the backyard – Mom, do we still have them?”
“It’s okay,” Cameron insisted. “I’ll help Dad in the kitchen.”
That didn’t work, either: everyone was already bustling around, chopping sausages and stirring broth and mixing sauce and tasting the parsnips for just enough white pepper.
Morgan, Alex, and Andy were running back and forth from the front yard to the back yard, all of them chasing each other at the same time, and Cameron knew anyone tall wouldn’t be allowed to join. She watched them from the front room for a while, back in the chair, until Sam came in. “Hi.”
She didn’t sit down. “Why aren’t you doing something?”
She didn’t look over at her. “There’s really not much to do.”
“You could just sit and watch the game with us.”
“I’m fine.”
“Bullshit.”
That got her attention, whipping her head around. “What?”
“Bullshit you’re fine. What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“Bullshit. I asked, what’s wrong with you? What’s going on? You’ve been upset and angry at everyone and you keep sulking and snapping at us – jeez, what’s wrong?” She was standing back, holding her ground, using her voice as a lash.
“What’s wrong.”
“Yes.”
“You really want to know what’s wrong.”
“Yes!”
“Okay,” She stood up, walked over, staring down at her sister, glaring as hard as she could, “But first I’d like to know why you think you need to ask.”
“Come on –”
“No, you, you don’t get it, you think this can just happen to someone and it’s easy and fun and there’s no trouble adjusting but it’s fucking hard and I hate it and I have no idea how to talk to anyone and you think you can ask me what’s wrong now and if you do then you don’t get it.”
Sam just stood there, still looking up to keep eye contact. “What don’t I get?”
“You think you can just ask what’s wrong with me. It doesn’t work that way.”
“Jesus,” She whispered. “Allison, it’s supposed to work that way, but you’ve never, ever asked anyone for help even once, even when you’re supposed to –”
“‘Supposed to?’ What is this, Napoleon’s Germany? There aren’t rules for this anymore, and if I wanted to go through it on my own that’s my own choice.”
“You always do this. You always do it on your own and you never ask anyone for help.”
“It’s kind of hard to help when you’re growing a penis.” Sam took a step back, actually took a step back. “I could piss just fine because my urinary track still had an opening, but for about a week I didn’t have anything but this little lump.”
“Allison –”
Cameron matched her, taking a step forward. “I couldn’t chew for two weeks because my jaw was growing bigger and a new set of teeth was coming in. I could feel my heart getting bigger, my uterus sort of dissolved, my –”
“That’s enough!”
“It’s what happens when you shift so late! Why do you think I didn’t talk to you while it was happening? I waited for it to be over so it’d be okay to talk to you.”
Crossing her arms over her chest, she looked away and back. “Why wouldn’t it have been okay to talk to me? I’m your fucking sister.”
“Because it wasn’t the right thing to do. You didn’t need to see any of it.”
“Fuck that! I did!”
“You what?” It was her turn to take a step back.
Sam didn’t move forward. “I needed to see it! You’re always there for me and when you need it you never let me be there for you, you fucking know that.”
“What is this?” She pointed back to the living room, fuck it and let them listen, “I come home for Thanksgiving and suddenly everyone’s taking the time to reach out to me? You, Dad, are you all in cahoots with each other? Is Mom going to ask me to go dancing with her or something?”
“You come home for the first time in years after you, yeah, after you grew a fucking penis and call us once every six months, yeah, we’re worried you’re okay.”
“So why not call me?” She was too angry to yell. “Why not call me?”
“You wouldn’t have said anything.”
“I –” She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “I’m going to my room.”
She stomped up the stairs, not noticing if anyone was watching or looking, took them two at a time, slammed the door behind her, curled up by her bed and folded her arms and started to cry. She didn’t want – she didn’t know what she wanted now, but she didn’t want this feeling, practically anything but this one.
Cameron kept crying, wiping her face off and trying to stay quiet and not sob too much. She didn’t know if this was a male thing to do or a female thing to do – men could let themselves cry, but every woman knew privacy let her get away with this sort of thing.
Her hands were shaking from all the adrenalin; she watched them in a way she usually didn’t, watched them shake, trying to figure out how they were a part of her body when they didn’t look like her hands, her real hands. She clenched them into fists, ran them over her legs up and down up and down and kept crying.
When there was a knock on the door she didn’t get up or call out; when there was another she stayed quiet. After the third, someone opened her door, came over and sat next to her, and it turned out to be Sam.
“What is it?”
“I’m sorry.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry.” She fidgeted for a moment, not looking Cameron in the face. “I shouldn’t…I should have thought how hard it is for you, with all this, but I want to be there for you, and you never let me.”
“Sam, if I – it doesn’t work that way for me anymore. I’m not allowed, the way it works is that I can’t ask, because if I do, even if nobody knows about it, then I’ll know I haven’t managed to succeed on my own.” She looked her sister in the eye. “And that’s even more important now. It’s, there’s all these expectations that I know I need to reach, and I can’t get help because that’s now how it works.”
“Oh.”
“If you want to help – you remember the sunlamps?”
“Yeah. I sent them as soon as I got your address.”
“Those helped, and they were help you knew I needed, but I didn’t ask for them.”
“What’s that mean?”
“If you know I need help, don’t paddle around, just come and help.”
“Allie,” she reached out, put her hand on her knee, “I won’t tell anyone if you ask.”
“I’ve never asked.”
“I know.”
“And you think I’m going to start now because I’m a boy?”
“I think you’re going to start because that’s what I need you to do.” She rubbed Cameron’s knee, slapped it, and left her hand there – letting Cameron cover it with her own and hold it there, just for a while – before slipping off and jumping up. “Hold on.” She was back a couple of minutes later with an envelope in her hand. “I wanted to give this to you.”
It wasn’t too big, and Cameron unfolded it easily. It was a photograph, and when she turned it over she gasped. She looked up at Sam standing over her, “Where did you get this?”
Sam shrugged. “Cleaned out my desk a few weeks ago. Thought you’d like it.”
She looked back at the picture. In it, she was sitting on the steps of a back porch, holding one arm and sort of smiling, hair up in a ponytail. It must be from her last summer vacation right after senior year of high school – god, she looked so young.
“Remember when I took that?” Sam sat back down. “You had Nick and Leah over and didn’t want your skuzzy kid sister hanging around.”
“I remember.” She shook her head, traced her thumb over the hair blowing in the breeze. “And we let you hang around anyway.”
“And you didn’t even yell at me when I kept taking pictures.”
“You were convinced you’d grow up to be the next Dorothea Lange.”
“You were convinced you’d grow up and get something named after you.”
“Hey, I still might get there. You’re too busy with your restaurant.”
“The Dorothea Lange of food photography.” Sam swept her hands through the air like she was tracking a marquee. It was such an absurd image, and she said it so seriously, that all she could do in response was let out a laugh. Just a small one, but a laugh. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to take a good picture of food? Don’t even get me started on drinks.”
“What about drinks?”
“You cheat!” Sam pushed her light on the shoulder, and Cameron rocked back, laughing a little bit more. Sam went downstairs first, and when Cameron finally followed her, there were still a few minutes to the game. Sam was in her old seat, most of the men had wandered in, and Cameron made her way out to the back. The kids were playing in the front yard so she had the porch to herself, everyone leaving her alone to watch the clouds move slowly and try to think and ponder without doing it deliberately. She broke out smiling when she realized how useful it’d be to get some sort of juggling balls to give herself something to do.
The dinner was a smashing success, everyone chatting, joking, eating, passing around more food than they could possibly eat in one night. Cameron stayed quiet, eating carefully so she wouldn’t spill anything, keeping out of the conversation and just watching everyone. It really wasn’t a bad way to spend Thanksgiving. She stayed quiet through dessert, as she helped clear the table, and all the way to bedtime, only saying enough to say good night as she needed to.
She had more to say the next day, when Mom and Dad took her out to the movies, and the day after that, when they took her to Sam’s restaurant for dinner. By now, she knew the difference between feeling better and being better – years of medical education and personal experience – but she also knew how important they were to each other, and if one came, the other was a pretty safe bet it’d follow.
-
Part five.