Bullyville by Francine Prose

Gran’s eyes, or one of the aunts would reach in her purse for a Kleenex, and I’d know that theywere thinking about Dad, maybe thinking that this was the first Thanksgiving, the first holiday, without him. I half wanted to tell them that Dad might not have been here even if he were still alive. He might have been celebrating with Caroline. But I couldn’t see how that would help. It would only make everything more confusing, and worse for Mom and me.
    Even so, it was all good. In fact, I was sort of happy, because after all those days of feeling despised and excluded at Bullywell, it was great to be around people who knew me, who’d known me since I was born. And who liked me—well, actually, they loved me. I concentrated really hard, as if my brain were a video camera that could somehow record everything that my family was saying and doing. Then I could play the tape back to myself during the next bad time at Bullywell, which, I was pretty sure, would begin the minute school started again. I tried not to think about Bullywell, and just to enjoy the moment. And it would have been one hundred percent perfect if Ihadn’t noticed that Mom kept glancing nervously toward the door.
    Great, I thought. She’s waiting for Bern to arrive.
    Every time Mom looked toward the door, everyone else did, too. I could tell they were wondering who this guy, this Bern , was, wondering whether he was the replacement husband, the replacement dad, and wondering whether it wasn’t a little soon after the real dad had been killed to start thinking about a replacement.
    Finally the doorbell rang. I took one look at the guy who walked in, and I thought: Mom must be really desperate or else her taste has gone drastically downhill since Dad. Dad had been confident and good-looking, but Bern looked like the nerds I rode to school with on the day-student bus. He wore glasses, and he was bald but for a little tuft of fluffy hair growing out of the top of his forehead. Not only did he have no chin but he was so chinless that the bottom of his face seemed to be attached directly to his neck.
    When Mom greeted him and introduced him to all the relatives, he looked up only briefly, as if he were afraid that any contact with another human being might interrupt whatever serious communication he was having with his own feet. When Mom introduced him to me, he checked me out for a second or two, not long or carefully enough for me to even imagine that he was looking over a kid who might be a part of his future. So, in a way, I could begin to take it easy. This certainly wasn’t my future dad. It occurred to me that Mom was actually doing what she’d said—being kind to a sad guy who would otherwise have spent Thanksgiving all alone. And I could tell that Gran and the aunts and uncles were coming to the same conclusion at the same time, so everyone could just relax around the whole Bern question.
    Even so, there was something about Bern’s presence—maybe it was the fact of his being a stranger in a house where everyone else was family—that made me nervous. And I had the definitefeeling that Bern had the same effect on everyone, even my youngest cousins. We were all jumping out of our skins. Everyone shook hands awkwardly except for Gran, who threw her arms around Bern and kissed him on both cheeks, and then for some reason everyone laughed and for a few moments the mood lightened.
    In a way, I thought, there was something good about Bern’s having been invited. He was sort of a distraction. Without this creepy stranger here for us to focus on, we might have been even more aware of—even sadder about—Dad’s absence. And maybe Mom had known that, too.
    Still, something about Bern really bothered me, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. He was given the guest-of-honor seat next to Gran. He mumbled please and thank you when the dishes were passed his way. When Uncle Ernie carved the turkey,