Free The Cousins by Rona Jaffe

Taylor at any of their family Thanksgiving dinners, even though their grandmother lived in New York, but she had simply thought it was because they lived so far away and had lives of their own.
    “How do you think this whole thing makes
me
feel?” she said, to cheer him up. “Now they have someone to report to them what I do in my will. No secrets anymore. Complete control even beyond the grave.”
    Grady smiled.
    The following Thanksgivings she had gone again to Uncle Seymour’s, where there were so many people that they took up the entire dining room and spilled out into the gallery, and Aunt Iris thoughtfully placed Hedy and Olivia in separate rooms so they never had to say anything to each other besides hello. Then she met Roger, and the first year they were together they went to the family to prove they were a couple, to be welcomed, and so she could show him off. After that they bought the house, and he had wanted them to have their own Thanksgiving in it, with their friends. The first time Olivia felt guilty and nervous, as if she and Roger were being unfriendly, but her mother, without even being told she wasn’t invited, rejected her first by saying “Of course you know I have to go to the family”—as if
she
weren’t family. It was actually a great relief.
    The year her mother died, Olivia brought her father to her Thanksgiving dinner, and the year after that he was remarried and traveling around the world with Grace. Olivia’s Thanksgivings with Roger eventually became established as a tradition, albeit a strange one, and Aunt Iris didn’t bother asking her anymore, although Olivia knew the door was always open.
    * * *
    Thanksgiving Day was bright and clear. Roger had bought dried corn, and Olivia put it with the flowers on the dining room table, giving the centerpiece a wild but comfortable look. She was wearing a black bodysuit under one of her little boutique finds: a crocheted dress in autumn colors—thin and see-through and sexy—ballet slippers, and big crazy earrings. The kitchen smelled wonderful. Roger was pouring champagne. They had twenty people this year, some of whom they saw only every few months because everyone was so busy. Their friends were all getting along with each other, and everyone was saying how starved they were, how they hadn’t eaten all day, how they had been saving themselves for this feast. Because of the conversation and laughter you could hardly hear the CDs she and Roger had so carefully selected and put on the changer, but they were a cheerful background anyway.
    Her friend Alys—the spelling her own—whom Olivia had known since high school, which was probably why she put up with her, was there alone, having recently broken up with her latest bad choice, and she was already slightly drunk. It was a shame, Olivia thought, that she didn’t know any nice available man to fix her up with. She looked around the room fondly at her friends. Alys came to stand beside her.
    “What a politically correct party,” Alys said. “The homosexual couple; the turkey-baster single mother; the black couple; the black homosexual—that’s even better; the man whose pregnant wife could pass for his daughter; the woman whose boy toy could pass for her son; the psychic; four people in AA drinking San Pellegrino; one stray Oriental; assorted children—where are the lesbians?”
    “She is not a turkey-baster single mother,” Olivia said. “Her child’s adopted.”
    “Where did you get these people anyway, Central Casting?”
    “Only you,” Olivia said.
    “What are they, patients?”
    “Clients,” Olivia corrected her. “The patients are animals.”
    “Sounds like the men I meet.”
    “Some are clients and others are people Roger and I have met through the years.”
    “Did you ever dream back in high school that you would know so many different kinds of people? Is this New York in the nineties or what?”
    “I never really thought about it,” Olivia said