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2025-05-11
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Until Next Sunday Dinner

Summary:

Jackie didn’t like being wrong about things, but at certain point, she had to admit that Walt had the situation with John Carter figured out long before she ever did.

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Jackie didn’t like being wrong about things, but at certain point, she had to admit that Walt had the situation with John Carter figured out long before she ever did.

Neither of them quite knew what to think when Peter brought the gangly… young… white med student home for Thanksgiving dinner. But Peter had insisted that their mother had invited him - something that their mother confirmed once or twice, though her word in those days could never truly be taken at face value - and the kid had the look on him like someone had just kicked his puppy, so Jackie had served him a plate and tried not to ignore how … close he clung to everything Peter said or did.

“He doesn’t know any of you, and he had a rough day,” Peter told her in the kitchen. “Give him more of grandma’s mac and cheese that you perfected, and he’ll warm up to you.”

Men always complimented you when they’re up to something, Grandma had said once.

“That’s true,” Walt agreed. “White people do love their cheese.”

And to his credit, John Carter did look up at her with those sad little puppy eyes and tell her how he’d never had anything this delicious in his life, and thank her for her hospitality, and well… it was easy to see why her brother and her mother had been so easily charmed.

Her brother would deny being charmed, but Jackie had known her brother all his life, thank you very much, and if anyone else had looked at him and said “I’ve never had sweet potato pie,” he would have called them a tasteless heathen. Instead, Peter gave the boy two slices and told him not to insult anyone by telling them pumpkin was better.

“Pumpkin is a little heavier on the spice,” John Carter had commented. “The sweet potato is lighter and sweeter. Some people might prefer the spice.”

Walt had elbowed her in the ribs then, and she had told him to be quiet. “It’s a metaphor, Jackie. We should tell Peter that he’s just been compared to a pumpkin pie, so he can be furious that he got to be the inferior pie,” he whispered, because Walt never listened to her good advice.

Later when John Carter listened to each of her children in turn talk their various levels of nonsense - despite the heavy lids that the carb coma and turkey were giving him - Jackie sat between her mother and Walt and listened to Peter cleaning up the dishes in the kitchen. Her mother patted her hand and said, “Peter has nice friends, don’t you think, Jackie?”

Walt had chuckled, and Jackie had elbowed him and told him to be quiet again. “Yes, Mama,” she’d said.

“Ate all his pie,” her mother had said. “Cleaned his whole plate. You know, you and Petey were both fussy eaters. Gave me and your father such fits.”

“Well, family takes all types,” Walt said, and Jackie elbowed the man again, because he didn’t know how to be quiet at all.

Later, after company had gone and Mama had gone to bed, Walt declared, “That man is gonna be coming to Sunday dinners before all is said and done, mark my words.”

“You talk too much, Walt,” she said. “And that’ll never happen. Peter’s never even dated a white woman, and you have him out here dating a white man. And a student at that. That boy can’t be much more than what? 23?”

“He won’t always be his student,” Walt answered. “And it’s the 90s, Jackie. Your brother works with white people in a white hospital all day long… to borrow John Carter’s metaphor, maybe he might decide he wants to try a different flavor of pie.”

“If you use that metaphor again, you’re sleeping on the couch until next Sunday dinner,” Jackie grumbled.

Walt had laughed, and they had dropped it.

~*~

Time passed, of course, and Peter decided to make all sorts of terrible choices in his dating life. First, he decided to date a married woman. Oh, Walt loved to talk about that. (“You suppose that little white boy was married?”) Then there was Carla, and oh, Lord, she was even worse. That was a fact. Now, Jackie will always love her nephew, but his mother was an entire mess and a half. Walt loved to talk about that, too. (“John Carter never insulted your cornbread.”)

And after that, Peter apparently decided to dance on their father’s grave and date a white woman, after all.

On the day they found that out, Walt did have to sleep on the couch, he was so insufferable.

~*~

More time passed, of course, and eventually, little brothers left to their own devices will almost stumble into making the right choices. Peter even started to date a stable, sane Black woman for a while - a fellow doctor and pediatrician.

“She seems nice,” Jackie told him, during a Sunday dinner in which they were actually graced with his presence for a change. “Couldn’t she get the day off?”

Peter shrugged. “It seemed a little early to be inviting her to Sunday dinner, don’t you think?”

Walt laughed, and as they were doing the dishes, Walt told her firmly, “That man is never inviting that woman to this house for Sunday dinner.”

“Oh, he will too.”

“If she ever shows up, I’m gonna ask her if she’s ever met John Carter.”

“You will not.”

~*~

There were only a few times that Jackie remembered hearing her little brother’s voice break, and those are moments Jackie didn’t like to think about at all. So when the phone call in the middle of the night woke her, asking if she could keep an eye on Reese for the night, because “something has happened,” she knew it had to be bad.

She knew, because her little brother’s voice broke in the middle of his request; he cleared his throat twice trying to regain composure.

She gave him the dignity he was trying to get back. “Sure, Peter. It’s not a problem.”

Later, when he came to pick Reese up, he would tell her that John Carter was injured, but he wouldn’t tell her how. He will tell her that John Carter’s useless parents had stayed in Tokyo.

Now, Jackie couldn’t imagine either going to Tokyo or staying there if one of her children needed her. If one of her children were hurt, she would sooner try to swim the ocean herself than stay away from them.

She hadn’t seen John Carter in years, but did remember that sweet boy who had been kind to her mother, to her children, and to her, and she knew he didn’t deserve any hurt. She also watched the way her brother’s fists shook with unleashed hurt, fury, or a combination of the two as he clenched them during his retelling of the failures of these sorry ass parents that John Carter had been given.

“When he gets out of the hospital, stop by, and I’ll fix him a plate,” Jackie told him. “Nobody should have to go home to take-out.”

The hug Peter gave her on the way out was as tight as the one he gave her at Mama’s funeral.

Walt haunted the doorway while Peter poured out his heart. After Peter left, Walt didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to.

~*~

It was two years and two deaths after that fateful night that John Carter did in fact show up for Sunday dinner.

Now, Jackie didn’t like being wrong, but a lot of years had passed since that Thanksgiving evening. John Carter was still very gangly and very … white and very … male, but he was no longer very young. And their family had shrunk enough by that point that Jackie could not see the point in shrinking it even further.

Then, of course, there was Peter.

Peter, who looked so damn happy with John Carter by his side that Jackie could almost forgive the fact that her little brother had fallen in love with a man who had never had collard greens in his life.

Their father would be scandalized.

But daddy wasn’t here, and little Reese was. Little Reese who was no longer as little as he once was. Little Reese, who sat next to John Carter after dinner and signed excitedly to him, the same level of nonsense that Jackie’s own children had, years before - including the one who will never attend another Sunday dinner again.

“What did I tell you?” Walt said, triumphantly, after the three of them had departed for the day. “Sunday dinners, Jackie. I called it. Years ago, I called it.”

“Yes, you did,” Jackie agreed. “Looks like you were right.”

“You aren’t gonna argue with me about it?” Walt asked in surprise.

“No,” Jackie answered.

She was not, because while Jackie didn’t usually like being wrong… every now and then… there were exceptions.