That Thanksgiving, though, he shook a different rattling rock out of his head: he didn’t go down to LA with his mom.

It stemmed from the year before, when Connie had picked him up at five a.m. as the neighbourhood luxuriated in darkness. David ambled out in a pea coat, and they chatted down I-5 and stopped at the IHOP in Springfield for breakfast. Waiting for their food, David had stared outside, where teenagers in a blue Chevrolet Celebrity were trying to park in a tight spot. They were screaming, like they’d been awake all night. A short girl with fire-red hair was yelling at the boy driving. But David could tell, it wasn’t in anger.

“For tomorrow, at Grandma’s …” David began.

“Yes?”

Be present and look her in the eye! “Do you think it would be okay if I wore a dress?”

Connie’s expression was inscrutable, and she said nothing. Then her head slowly swivelled from side to side. It was rare for her to say nothing—she’d grown to be a chatterbox with her kid, and besides that, she believed in talking stuff out. She’d gone through a parenting book period in med school. One was called Kids Are Worth It! Giving Your Child the Gift of Inner Discipline.

But now, Connie said nothing but the head swivel. At least the first time David had come out to her, back when he was eighteen, she’d talked. She’d said, “So that’s pretty disappointing. Just as a mother, that’s a disappointing thing to hear. That stuff’s the fringe of society. You know that, right?”

Like, sure, that conversation hadn’t gone quite as David hoped. But at least she’d talked.

Connie changed the subject, their pancakes arrived, and the dress in David’s bag stayed there. He had not brought up gender stuff in the year since. He was in no rush to do so again, really—but he didn’t want to go to Thanksgiving this year.

“I have to study,” he told Connie blankly.

“Well, okay,” she replied, in an uncharacteristically dead voice. “Okay. So. I’ll miss you.”

You shithead needy dude, he thought as he closed his phone. It’s not like you had to wear a suit or anything!

And Iris kissed him and said, “I’m proud of you.”

David was quiet.

“And some day,” Iris continued, very quietly, very seriously, “we will go down there together, and you will wear whatever you want, and they will love you like I love you.”

David stayed quiet.

Finally, he said, “Can we bake pies or something faggy like that?”

“Language! And heck yeah we can.”

Although because Iris was the one actually buried under her studies, the day before Thanksgiving found David pie-making solo. He got up and made coffee, he and Iris showered, and then Iris took off for the library and Ray for his fam. “You should call your mom tomorrow,” Ray said on his way out the door. “I think she’d like that.” And then he left, leaving David in his robe alone.