Thanksgiving

I returned home from work to empty the bathroom garbage, vacuum the futon the cats sleep on, wipe down the sinks, and begin cooking a midweek Thanksgiving dinner for a few friends.  Well, it was for a few friends originally, to kind of take the pressure off the whole holiday affair.  While having a dinner party for six people is no small order, it was meant to allow us to keep the holiday in perspective and set the tone for a decent, bearable, okay, survivable holiday season.  Two days after offering this, I realized it was a bit demanding considering it was unnecessary in the first place.  My week went from my husband driving the both of us to two Thanksgiving dinners on Long Island later in the week to a Tuesday night Thanksgiving dinner with various friends, and, out of the blue, my father, followed by my chauffeuring my husband and I to Long Island where I would be the relegated driver because he doesn’t drive stick shift.  The kitchen was getting hot and the impending stress was about to boil over with the water for the mashed potatoes.

“Hey, dude, how are you?” My dad asked, shuffling his way through the door as if he were twenty years older than he is.  And three hours early.  Again.

“I’m good Pops, how about you?” I call from the kitchen. 

Four tablespoons of butter, one teaspoon of salt, five cranks of pepper.

“Okay!  I brought you this wine.  You know, it’s really good even though…”

“I know; it’s not too expensive.”  I finish absent-mindedly.  My hands begin mixing the sausage stuffing, and the flesh and blood reminds me why I don’t eat meat.  Or like to prepare it.

My father ambles into the kitchen, off kilter due to the barrel of wine he brought with him and that is now weighing down his right side.  He is obsessed with one kind of pinot grigio, and insists on bringing a bottle to the house whenever he is over for dinner.  Invariably, he drinks two glasses, leaves the next day, and over one liter of wine is left to waste in my refrigerator until the day before he comes up the next time when I remove it from the fridge, pour out the contents, and the whole cycle starts over from scratch again. 

I meticulously wash my hands, cleaning under each fingernail with an unbreakable intensity.

“Katie, hey, Katelin – do you want a glass of it while you cook, sweetheart?” he asks, reaching for the bottle opener. 

“No, thanks, Pop.  I think I’m good for now.”  I reach behind the utensil bin and sip red wine from my stem less stemware, noting that in the past four years I don’t think my father has even actually seen me consume a glass of white wine willingly.  Not that anyone has been force-feeding me wine.

“Mmmm,” he concludes upon the first taste.  “It’s so good.  You know, I brought over a bottle of this the other night after Kaz and I played tennis.  You know, he beat me again, and it’s like, unbelievable.  I mean, when we first started playing, I like, dominated him and now I can only get a shot in every now and then.”

I finished quickly and efficiently peeling enough potatoes for six people and after slicing them in tetrahedrons, placed them gently into salted boiling water, careful not to cause any splashes.

Chris and Julie knock and walk into the house at the same time, bearing festive flowers and a bottle of red wine; Julie knows better.  Both Fordham graduates, I know that my father and Chris, despite their age difference, enjoy each other’s company.  The knowledge of this allows me to loosen my grip on the knife as I chop up the rest of the onions, tearless but pained.

“Hey, there, Kev,” Chris offers his hand and my father accepts it. 

“Hello, fellow Fordham Alum,” he replies, smirking, “Julie, how are you?”

“I am doing well, Kevin, and it’s good to see you.”

“Yeah, this is really nice,” my dad says as he looks around.  I cannot see him, I am back to preparing food, but I can tell by the way he says this that his head is kind of bobbing up and down as he looks from the left to the right and then back again, surveying the damage I am inflicting upon the kitchen for everyone’s benefit.  Matt almost tumbles down our stairs which seem to be built for a Nascar course. 

“Hey, who invited you?”  he asks my dad, who revels in attention this joke at his expense offers. 

“Ohhh!”  he high-fives Matt in return for his warm gesture.  God help me, I think as I return my attention to the chicken in front of me.  It is time to stuff the chicken. 

I exhale.

It is time to stuff the chicken. 

With two vegetarians present and another on the way, I think that next year we should have a non-meat Thanksgiving just for the sake of balance.

But tonight, now, it is time to stuff the chicken.  It seems the cast of my Thanksgiving show has absconded to the living room – even the meat eaters.  Nobody wants this job.  Messy is fine – I am okay with messy.  This, on the other hand, makes me feel as if I am violating the chicken and myself at the same time.  Ughhh.  Go to a good place.

I begin grabbing handfuls of chopped apple mixed with sausage, a God awful combination, and shoving into the carcass of the flightless bird.  I’m sorry, I think with each rhythmic motion.  Grab, squish, stuff, squish.  Grab, squish, stuff, squish.  Grab, squish, stuff, squish.  Done.

“Hey, Katie, do you need any help?”  my dad calls from the living room, sounding Thanksgiving warm and holiday jovial, a veritable Santa Claus in the next room over. 

“No, thanks,”  I yell back, I have already compromised the majority of my ethics for the sake of half the people here, and the meat-eater offers help at the point of absolutely no consequence.  I steam.

In the meantime, Mark arrived alone, strengthening the vegetarians in numbers.  After discussing, or arguing, the benefits of vegetarianism with my father, Mark gave up like I did two years ago, and two hours later, the Fordham Rams can’t even sustain my father and he turns back to me.

“Katie, can I say a few things before dinner?” he inquires earnestly.

Now, my family was never really religious.  My dad put aside the great devotion he had to the church when he left Seminary school – yes, the school that makes priests – when he met my mom.  My mom, one of nine, was the black sheep of her nuclear family.  She spread those genes onto the next family members: my brother and me.  Out of twenty-five grandchildren, (and more on the way, I am sure – I just memorized all of their names again and someone is going to mess it up by having another one) we are the only two who have only been cleansed of original sin and THAT’S IT.  I mean it.  According to our family members, we are teeming with sin like hospitals teem with bacterial infection.  Despite this, my brother and I are always the featured speakers at family wedding and funerals, and with our numbers we average at least one of each every other month. 

Anyway, when my father asked me this, I became worried that this secular feast was going to turn into a vehicle for my father to try to convert, convince, or confuse me into what made my brother and I so special for years.  Well, maybe the term special is not quite as appropriate as the phrase “stick out like a sore thumb,” which is how my grandmother describes how my brother and I look when we are the only two people in the sea of the Irish Brady mass who do not receive communion.  So yes, I was a bit apprehensive to answer my father’s question and it gave me pause.  Sometimes I stick out my tongue during these moments of pensive pause.

“Are you going to answer me or just stick your tongue out at me for the rest of the night?” my dad demanded.

“Oh, sorry,” I said, rolling my tongue back into my mouth.  After this, I knew I had to say yes or I would appear foolish.  Okay, I already appeared foolish; I didn’t want to look like an ungrateful daughter too.

“Of course, Pops.  That would be great,” I lied.  “In fact, I think we are about ready to eat.”  I made a beeline to the kitchen, downed the last of the wine in my glass, and carved the sitting chicken after reversing the stuffing process I described earlier, only with a spoon. 

The table really did look great.  Food poured out from every corner, appealing to the heartiest meat eaters and stingiest vegetarians.  Vegans would have had a problem but I try not to befriend vegans for just this reason. 

“This look great, Kate,” Matt smiled, and Chris seconded.

“Thanks, guys.  I’m half-starved and my dad wants to say a few words, so…” I trailed off, sitting, waiting for the only thing that made me grimace more than my father telling the “Everyone’s dying to get in there” graveyard joke – my dad invoking his pre-mom life through Latin prayer. 

He inhaled deeply.  “It’s been fifteen years since Annie and I got divorced,” he started.  Oh shit.  I closed my eyes.  This is the only thing worse than Latin prayer.  “I just wanted to say that despite the fact that I have spent a lot of time as a brother and son these past ten Thanksgivings as I went to my sister’s house, it has truly been a pleasure to be a father once again, even if it isn’t actually Thanksgiving Day.  Thank you all for having me.  I know this is my daughter and son-in-law’s house, but you all make it a home, and you have made me feel warm, welcome, and like a member of the family.”

I smiled, suppressing the tears that crept up with a cough.  Everyone fell silent, and my dad’s eyes revealed honesty and love over the dripping candles as we gathered at this new table.  Julie patted him on the shoulder gently, and Chris bobbed his head in a way my father often does. 

“Hey, turd,” Matt cut in, “You are a part of the family.  Now pass the potatoes and shut the hell up!”  We broke into laughter and passed the endless plates.  My dad went into the kitchen and returned with the pinot grigio. 

“Who wants some?” he asked.  We all lifted our glasses for the wine, and for him, as we redefined a holiday tradition and ourselves.

Number Three: For Anyone

If you see trash pick it up and throw it away.  How do people just walk by?

I had that dream again last night.

I woke up with what felt like a boulder in my chest because I really thought I did it this time. I went into the bathroom and turned the light on hoping it would blind me into reality, but it only assaulted me into further confusion. After splashing water on my face and neck, I sat on the floor, grimy from laziness and ambivalence.

What kind of person has recurring dreams about killing all of his friends? The slumberous massacre I committ each night was beyond what I have read about or seen in slasher movies. These images are coming from somewhere else. They are coming from me. I am creating these deaths.

If I can get out of bed in the morning (I am averaging two or three hours of sleep at this point), I stop for breakfast before coming in late to work. For the past three months I have wanted to ask the girl who makes my coffee every morning on a date. I think I have the balls to do it today, but as soon as I open my mouth, I imagine what it would be like if she was at the end of a stainless steel long-reach machete. “Thank you,” I mutter as I leave, embarrassed and unsettled. It’s pathetic. And I am sure that after this interaction, I will have a sleepless night again.

Secrets

I love having good secrets. The ones that make my stomach flip every time I think about them because I know I am not supposed to talk about them. It’s a nice contrast to the nauseating “your father will disown you if he finds out” secret.

Number Two: For Self-Proclaimed World-Class Chefs

I know that during the winter soups are fun to make.  I usually end up making a vat of it.  Contact a local church group or non-denominational organization, buy some cups to store the extra soup in, and drop it off so they can freeze it and have a stock of ready-made single-serve portions for people who come in hungry when they aren’t doing large community meals.

Molly

The heat showed its work on her mother’s nose. Mrs. James Beaufort reached into her purse and her manicured fingertips extracted a compact. She powdered her face quickly and discreetly before returning it to the purse where she felt for her bulging wallet. Three thousand cash. She was riding a bus with three thousand dollars burning a hole through her purse, knees and feet. She applied white gloves to minimize the shaking in her hands and concentrating on the red stitching encircling her wrists.

Molly looked at her mother’s visage, already beading with sweat despite the defensive powdering, and wondered how the two could possibly be related. She fingered the scab on her left knee, then caressed the bruise below, swelling her shin. Several barrettes restrained her scraggily hair while adjacent to her, her mother’s bold hat complimented her shiny, abiding locks.

Mrs. Beaufort slid forward and lifted her gloved hand to the stop line. As the bus slowed, she stood, taking her daughter and purse in hand. They descended the stairs at the back of the bus. Molly stood on the curb, scratching her elbow as her mother smoothed the front of her tailored navy blazer and matching skirt. Abruptly, she took Molly’s hand and walked north on Lincoln, her eyes fixed straight ahead, her other hand clutching her purse.

“Mom,” Molly began, “Why are we walking so fast?” Her mother’s heels clipped in rhythm to her heart. She glanced down at her daughter, who had bloodied her arm while attacking the mosquito bite.

“For the love of-honestly, Molly. Can’t you maintain yourself for five whole minutes?” Molly looked at her sneakers as her mother bent down, tissue in hand, to wipe away the blood. She couldn’t help it that the bugs liked the way she tasted! Her eyes met her mother’s during the rough wipe down, and she in them saw a mixture of determination and fear. “Let’s keep moving, now.”

Number One: For Anyone

Go through your clothing and donate whatever you haven’t worn in the past year. Forget about how much you want to weigh, whether or not the trend might come back in two years, or the fact that Aunt Sally bought it and you don’t want to hurt her feelings. Give away what you do not need.

January Cleansing, Faulty Recommitment and the End of the World

I love January. Especially this year. Five days in and I violated rules I keep for myself year round, and I get to wallow in it knowing the world will end. It is 69 degrees outside, and all of my windows are open. I guess I should’ve just bought a damn Hummer to speed up the process instead of prolonging the end with my granola hybrid.