while drumming a backbeat on the steering wheel. But did he care for her? Was a life with Harold possible? And if it was, would Harold even want it?
After months of Saturday night dates and phone calls more weeknights than not, Thanksgiving came. Instead of going home to Detroit, or waiting to see if Jo would invite her to Connecticut, Bethie asked Harold to join her at Blue Hill Farm. There would be friends, and friends of friends, relatives and children and always a few strays, people who had nowhere else to go. “Is there going to be turkey?” Harold asked. “Because turkey is nonnegotiable.” Bethie promised him turkey, and Harold said he would bring macaroni and cheese, and he’d bake his mother’s sweet potato pie.
On the appointed Thursday, he picked her up at her apartment, wearing blue jeans that looked brand-new and a dark blue sweater that lent a richness to his skin and made Bethie think about laying her head on the broad expanse of his chest. Ronnie and Jodi and Danielle had cleared the furniture out of the living room and set up rows of folding tables, covered in slightly mismatched white tablecloths. At four o’clock, twenty-seven people gathered around the table and held hands and thanked the Earth for Her bounty before tucking into the turkey, which Bethie made sure was near their end of the table, and baked stuffed squashes, mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes, corn bread and relish, biscuits and jam, and Harold’s offerings.
When dinner was over, it was still warm enough to light a fire in the firepit out back. Blankets were spread, whiskey was sipped, a few joints were toked. Harold and Bethie sat side by side, and Harold caught her up on his siblings. “My sister Hattie’s been married twice, to two different men named Bernard.”
“Really?”
“Really. My parents call her new husband Bernard the Second.”
“I bet Hattie loves that,” Bethie murmured.
“She’s just glad they’re talking to her. They were not happy when she and the first Bernard broke up. ‘Jeffersons don’t get divorced!’ my father kept saying.” He sipped from the bottle of whiskey, passed it to Bethie, and said, “Last year my sister Ernestine brought a white boy home for Christmas.”
Bethie felt her breath catch in her throat. She peeked at Harold’s face, which was carefully expressionless. “I take it that was not what your parents were hoping to find under the tree?”
Harold gave a brief snort of laughter and shook his head. “So how’d it go?” she asked. The fire was blazing, and people were talking, and someone was playing a banjo, and someone else was blowing into a harmonica, but Bethie couldn’t hear anything but her heart.
Harold said, “Um.”
Bethie’s heart sank.
“It didn’t go well,” Harold finally admitted. “I mean, my folks were polite while he was there. They let Ernie have it after he was gone.”
“What’d they say?”
Harold was frowning. “Probably the same stuff your parents would’ve said to you.”
Bethie winced, imagining that conversation and what her mother would say.
“They said that she was asking for trouble. That people would stare at them, or say things, or worse. That her life would be hard. That if they had kids, their lives would be impossible, because they’d never know who they were or where they belonged.”
“Wow.” Bethie’s heart was beating hard. Was this Harold’s way of letting her down easy, telling her that it could never be? “So what do you think?”
Harold turned to look at her, briefly, before returning his gaze to the fire. “I think you love who you love,” he said. Before Bethie could let herself feel happy or hopeful, he added, “I think it’s easier, for sure, if you love someone who’s like you.”
Bethie stared down at the grass, hearing her mother’s voice. Birds of a feather must flock together. She knew, too, what Sarah had to say about Jews who married gentiles. Her mother had friends who’d refused to attend their own children’s weddings in protest, friends who’d sat shiva when their children had married non-Jews, who’d had grandchildren they’d never even met. Would you do that? she’d asked her mother once, long ago. Would you actually skip my wedding? Sarah had given her a hard look. Don’t try me, her mother had said.
“But for me . . .” Bethie saw Harold’s shoulders hunch, heard him inhale. “Well. Maybe I’m putting the cart before the horse here, but I should tell you . . .”
“Tell me what?”
“That I can’t have kids.” His voice was