WE GATHER TOGETHER by Edward L. Woodyard

We Gather Together Chapter Fifty-Six

Scott McCulloch looked over at Maya Noguchi as she put down her cell phone and threw her head back on the passenger seat. She turned to Scott and exhaled, smiling at him. She had been on her cell phone for almost two hours while Scott drove through a snowstorm along I-80 in central Wyoming. The WYDOT snow plows were sanding and salting the roads well, so Scott was able to drive the speed limit and still make good time. Scott put on the defroster to try to dislodge ice forming on the windshield wipers.

"I didn't want the noise of the fan to interfere with your phone calls. Let me know if it gets too hot in here," he said.

Maya had been talking to New York, discussing procurement teams, perceptual mapping, and creating brand identities. She had spent a good fifteen minutes on the kerning of lettering for a new consumer goods product proposed by the client. With the technology available on her cell phone screen, she felt she was almost physically in the office and contributing to the team, helping to ease the pressure she felt to have the client presentation ready by the Monday after Thanksgiving. Maya went into a lengthy dialogue with her new coworkers about resolving negative space and crowd sourcing, they eventually ending the conversation so that everyone could process all the information presented.

Scott then asked, "How's everything with your family back in California?"

After Maya had hung up with New York, she had returned a call from her sister. They had let each other know that everything was fine. Scott had overheard their discussion about Thanksgiving and an aunt who always brought her watercress tofu salad.

"That was my sister who dropped me off on the 101 so I could try to get my flight out of SFO. That's when you rescued this damsel in distress," she laughed. "How's the driving?"

"Pretty good. No problems. I'm from back east so I learned how to drive in all this white stuff. We're coming up on Laramie so then we can start thinking about Nebraska," Scott said. "Sounds like your family's Thanksgiving is coming together."

"For some reason, my family has always called it Gobble Gobble Day. I think it goes back to when me and my sister were little girls. Funny, huh?" Maya said, seeing Scott smile. "It's my parents that always do Thanksgiving. It's always at our house."

"Mine too."

"My Aunt Nora brings her watercress tofu salad. It's always there."

"Reminds me of my Aunt Emma. She's always there too. But without the salad. It's just herself being there. In a big way."

"That sounds like my Aunt Nora. How's the polite way to put it? She's a presence?"

"Don't get me wrong, Maya. I love my Aunt Emma, but she does have a tendency to dominate everyone around her."

Scott then explained to Maya that Aunt Emma was always welcome in their home and they all loved her, even if his father and his siblings tolerated her brashness, bossiness and bravado. He explained that she was highly opinionated and could be curt in her responses, which was probably a reason why she never married and lived by herself.

"She lives in Columbus, Ohio. Every year, she makes 'The Pilgrim's Progress pilgrimage to the party for the Pilgrims' in New York for her requisite visit to the family."

"Not only requisite but alliterative too," commented Maya. "I'm sorry. I interrupted."

"She says she's fulfilling a function of her self-appointed duties as the family matriarch."

"My Aunt Nora could say practically the same thing."

"When Aunt Emma's really excited about something, she gets this look on her face. We all know when it's going to happen because her face gets all contorted. My father calls it 'her face that would stop a clock.' He first said it to the three of us – me, my sister and brother – before my littlest brother was born."

Scott told Maya how his father's quip about Aunt Emma's face stopping a clock had become a confidence among his father, Scott and his three siblings, a remark that they all kept from their mother. Neither his mother or his aunt had ever caught on when everyone was sitting around the Thanksgiving table, and the kids would giggle at Aunt Emma as she pontificated about a current political situation, which would cause her face to get contorted and scrunched up. At that point, Scott and his siblings would stare at their wristwatches or at a banjo clock on the dining room wall, then look over at their father who would acknowledge the secret among them.

"It only made us kids giggle louder. Aunt Emma would usually catch us. 'Is it something I said?' she would usually ask and Dad would cover for his rambunctious brood by saying that we children were anxious for dessert. At which point, everyone would adjourn to the living room for the annual family portrait and then go back to the table for dessert, coffee and a small brandy for Aunt Emma so that her tongue could be recharged while the rest of us at the table scarfed down slices of my mother's homemade apple, pumpkin, and pecan pies."

"You take an annual family portrait?"

"Every year. Whoever is there. We have a family rule: no one should ever be alone at Thanksgiving or on Christmas Eve. So, we always take in the 'orphans,' as Dad calls them."

"Aunt Emma is an orphan?"

"Not exactly. But she's in every picture. She makes sure everyone is 'posed for posterity,' as she calls it.

"More alliteration. She does like the letter 'p.'"

"As in photograph?"

"Not funny. You were saying about posing for the photograph. With a 'p?'"

"'Shoulders back. Backs straight. Straight faces. Faces forward,'" Scott said in a serious tone, quoting and imitating her. "Dad sets up the camera. People get around the couch in the living room. He takes the picture with a timer. My mother puts that year's picture in a frame on her desk."

"Every year?"

Scott nodded his head to her, then corrected himself, "Not every year, but almost."

He then remembered the last time he was home for Thanksgiving. He didn't want to tell Maya about what happened eight years ago, the only year that the family portrait wasn't taken. Instead he stared straight at the snow accumulating on the windshield wipers.

Maya sensed Scott getting quiet and silent. She noticed that the windshield wipers were beginning to ice up. "The storm seems to be getting worse," she said.

"It comes in waves. I should concentrate on driving right now."