Lily and the Octopus(29)
“Why do you think of that poem in particular?”
“ ‘Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone; Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone; Silence the pianos and with muffled drum; Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.’ ” I learned the poem in college and it stuck.
Jenny savors these words like she’s testing a bottle of wine before saying, “Not inappropriate.”
And this is where Old Jenny returns. This is where her observations are all wrong; this is where she’s a nightmare as a therapist. It is inappropriate. It does not fit the situation or merit consideration in the context of our discussion, mostly for one glaring reason: Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone.
I can feel another tantrum rising inside me.
“It’s inappropriate if it’s the dog you are mourning!”
Sunday
The frozen turkey lands with a thud in the sink and it startles Lily awake. “Keep it down! Jeez.” Lily hates to be interrupted from a good nap.
I hadn’t intended to buy a frozen turkey, or a turkey at all, for that matter, but it’s hard to find a fresh turkey in June and I was desperate to prove I’m not grieving. What better way to demonstrate I’m not suffering a pathological condition than to throw a celebration, in particular a celebration for everything we have to be thankful for? And nothing accompanies the giving of thanks better than turkey. And stuffing. And gravy. And mashed potatoes. And squash. It wasn’t until checking out at the grocery store and the looks I got from the cashier that I realized that cooking a full Thanksgiving dinner in June was in fact its own form of derangement.
“Is that Tofurky?” Lily has risen from her bed and sits at my feet by the sink.
“Yes, it is. We’re having Tofurky.” Years ago I flirted with vegetarianism, and one year went so far as to make a Thanksgiving Tofurky. When Lily asked for turkey, I told her we didn’t have any turkey but that we had Tofurky, and when I gave it to her she gobbled it up just the same. The gravy wasn’t quite vegetarian, and her feelings pretty much fell in line with mine: smother anything in enough stuffing, potato, butter, and gravy and it’s pretty damned good. Since then she’s called all turkey Tofurky, and the way she says it is so unbearably cute I haven’t had the heart to correct her.
“Tonight we are going to feast.”
OH! BOY! TOFURKY! IS! MY! ABSOLUTE! FAVORITE! I! COULD! EAT! ALL! OF! THE! TOFURKYS! JUST! GOBBLE! THEM! UP!
Lily is now fully awake. She places a paw on my foot.
“If I can only figure out how to defrost this motherf*cker.” The turkey just about fills the sink.
Lily gives the microwave a sideways glance and I get as far as trying to shove the damned thing in before realizing there’s no way an eighteen-pound turkey is going to fit in a standard convection microwave.
OR! WE! CAN! EAT! IT! FROZEN! LIKE! ICE CREAM!
“Tofurky is not good frozen like ice cream.” I look down at Lily, who looks up at me. She’s anxious for me to fix this. “Warm water bath it is!” Lily starts to retreat. “For the Tofurky,” I tell her. “Not for you.”
She immediately comes back. YES! DO! IT!
I slide the drain cover under the turkey and fill the sink with warm water. I have a Cook’s Illustrated magazine with an article entitled “Roasting the Big One” and I find it among a stack of never-read cookbooks. I don’t know why I have saved this, but the title has been responsible for several fits of adolescent giggles.
While the turkey defrosts, Lily and I set the table. As a kid I was always enchanted by the holiday tables my mother would set. How she had special tablecloths for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and how there was white china rimmed with gold that would magically appear in November. The budding homosexual in me would study the plates, turning them over and drinking in words like Wedgwood and bone and England. One year my mother even provided glass finger bowls on their own saucers, and Meredith and I dipped our fingers in them after the meal and before the dessert course. It all seemed so elegant to me, I wondered if we didn’t secretly descend from royalty on my mother’s side. I tried to coax her with my eyes to share with me our closet lineage (I could be trusted to keep the secret safe if we were in fact in hiding from some evil czar or queen!), but she never did. I remember thinking this is how I was going to eat every night when I was grown up. Of course, even though I inherited my aunt’s set of china after she passed away, this is rarely how I eat.
Our Thanksgivings usually consist of Lily sitting by my seat at the head of the table, anxiously licking her chops. Only when the humans have gorged themselves on seconds, and sometimes thirds, is she allowed her holiday meal, served in her supper dish on the kitchen floor. I always crouch beside her, holding her ears back and out of the way like a supportive college boyfriend holding back the hair of his vomiting sorority girl. It’s my favorite part of the holidays, if not the entire year. It’s almost like I can absorb the pure joy she radiates. This time, I pick her supper dish off the floor and set her a place at the table. The silverware and cloth napkin at her place setting will go untouched, but they bring symmetry to our table.
“Do you remember our first Thanksgiving together?” I ask Lily.
“Did we have Tofurky?” Lily asks.
“You, in fact, had a lot of Tofurky.”
That year after dinner, while others did the dishes and after most of the leftover meat had been carved off the carcass, I double-bagged what was left of the turkey, placed it with the other trash by the back door, and reset the table for dessert. Later that night, I found both bags chewed through and the carcass picked clean. It only took following a short trail of greasy paw prints to find Lily under the kitchen table, engorged to nearly twice her normal size. She looked up at me, still licking her oily face. PUNISH! ME! IF! YOU! MUST! BUT! IT! WAS! WORTH! IT!