Uncle Grendel

We’re supposed to call him Uncle Grendel, but my sister will not.

“He is not an uncle. He is a monster who has taken over our house.”

I tell my sister that while I am on her side, that doesn’t change the fact that our mother has fallen for a descendant of Cain, and we should try to support her.

“I mean, we’re all descendants of Cain, aren’t we,” my mother asks me as I’m shoveling dead frogs onto a plate, Grendel’s favorite Thanksgiving meal, “So I really don’t think any of us are in a place to judge. You know, your Dad was related to Ted Bundy. Distantly, but still. And I loved him anyway--until he left. You remember how he left? I didn’t leave. He left. And I think we need to remember that and remember how sad I was before Grendel showed up and changed everything. You remember the rat problem we used to have in the basement? Not anymore. He has eaten every single one of those rats. It’s a miracle. He’s just been such a comfort to me now that you and your sister are off living your lives in the big city. Duluth is only an hour away, you know. Grendel says you two could be visiting a lot more.”

One of the frogs lets out a croak, and my mother hits it hard on the head with a rolling pin. My mother who once nearly fainted because a spider crawled up her arm at a barbecue is expertly beheading an amphibian right in front of me with a smile on her face, while she tries to encourage me to expand my diet.

“I didn’t think I would like raw frog either, but you know, Grendel was right. After you get past the urge to vomit, you find you really do enjoy it.”

My sister isn’t the only one irritated by Uncle Grendel’s position at the head of the table. My grandfather makes a barely discernible comment about how he used to sit there before my father came along, and now that Dad was back on a trawler trying to recapture his youth, my grandfather should get his chair back, but my mother explains to him that Grendel has to sit at the head of the table, because if an Anglo-Saxon warrior bursts in and tries seeking vengeance, Uncle Grendel wants to be facing the door so he can protect all of us.

“And what if we side with the Anglo-Saxon,” my sister asks, stabbing one of the frogs with her fork, but clearly not intending to consume it.

Mother informs my sister that invaders are no laughing matter on days that are devoted to the pilgrims, and my sister says that the pilgrims were invaders, and my mother gets mad and tells my sister to go to her room, but she can’t, because it’s been turned into a skin-shedding module for Grendel, and so my sister takes off in her old Ford F-Series, and my mother takes her plate and asks if anyone would like extra frog.

After dinner, Uncle Grendel asks if any of us would like to cut ourselves open and display our innards for everyone else to gaze at while digesting, and while my mother seems game, I politely suggest that we play Monopoly instead. Grandfather is asleep at this point, so he misses the grand entrance of Uncle Grendel’s mother, who apparently was not invited to Thanksgiving after she and my mother got into it on the phone over who would be throwing Uncle Grendel a surprise birthday party this year.

“That woman thinks she knows everything just because she’s been alive for thousands of years,” my mother complains to me in the kitchen while she wrestles the miniature sea monster Uncle Grendel’s mother brought for dessert onto a platter and cleavers it into submission. The kitchen tile is now covered with green blood and petrified goo from all the brutality that’s taken place in here throughout the day, but when my mother catches me looking around, she gives a brusque laugh and dismissively states, “Cooking is messy, especially when it’s done with love.”

A second later, the sea monster latches onto her face, and it takes all of my strength to get it off her before it lays eggs down her esophagus.

Uncle Grendel’s mother comments on the décor of the house by setting the parts of it she doesn’t like on fire using the dragon she’s brought along with her. Once after-dinner cocktails have been served and the dragon has eaten the Monopoly board, we all put on some home movies. An annual favorite of my mother’s is my third grade birthday party, wherein I went to Chuck E. Cheese and wet my pants in the ball pit.

Both my grandfather and Uncle Grendel’s mother laugh at the sight of me crying while an animatronic band plays behind me, and I find my face turning a shade of red that only appears when I’m home for the holidays. My mother assures me that it’s not as mortifying as I’m making it out to be, but a moment later, the eight-year-old version of myself on screen begins crying so hard that in a few minutes, he’ll end up puking on Fatz Geronimo, the silverback gorilla on keyboard.

Once the movie is over, and I have emotionally regressed back to a childlike state that feels both too vulnerable and numb at the same time, Uncle Grendel suggests that we all go around and say what we’re grateful for--a tradition usually reserved for the moment before eating, but impossible to conduct then as we were all too busy fending off the live squid that Uncle Grendel insisted on massacring in front of us--as is tradition.

My mother listed Uncle Grendel as the main thing she was thankful for this year. A moment passed before she seemed to remember to mention me and my sister. Grandfather said he was grateful that he won’t have many more Thanksgivings left, as he’s never cared for them--both because turkey gives him heinous gas and his daughter is now throwing her life away on a walking curse from God as opposed to just the putz she was with before.

Uncle Grendel listed my mother as the person he was most grateful for this year. He mentioned their fortuitous meeting at a local swamp where she was cleaning up litter as part of a beautification program started by her French Cookbook Book Club. He had contemplated unhinging his jaw and swallowing her whole before he noticed how soft her hands looked, and the next thing he knew, he had slithered out of the water and asked her out for coffee. She was taken by him right away. The sheen on his scales. The way his matted fur curled up around his eyes. The poor duck still trying to wriggle itself free from his back teeth. She had never met anything like him, and upon hearing their meet-cute told by him for the fortieth time, she found herself getting misty-eyed all over again and had to leave the room to go cry at her own good fortune in the skin-shedding module.

When it was my turn, I had a hard time thinking of what to be grateful for, but I settled on the food we had eaten that was sufficiently, if not lovingly, prepared. I said I was thankful for how happy my mother seemed, and how lucky I was to be able to come home for Thanksgiving this year when in years past, I’d had to spend the holiday tending to the murderous cats that I raise in the city where I live. Duluth has been terrorized by the felines for years now, and if you don’t watch them carefully, they’re liable to get themselves caught and lead the authorities back to wherever it is they live, in this case, a studio apartment with a lease in my name.

As I finished my little monologue, I heard grandfather mumble something about genetic deformities in the family line, but I chose not to give it too much credence. Instead, I turned to Uncle Grendel’s mother and indicated that it was her turn to share what it is she’s appreciative of this year.

In response, she let out a belch that covered most of the couch in what appeared to be an acidic blue venom, and her dragon, acting quickly, set the liquid aflame, while we all looked on awkwardly. The couch was my father’s favorite place to sit, and I could see the heat overtake the dent where his posterior had rested so many nights after a long day’s work at the trampoline park.

“I think I’ll pass,” said Uncle Grendel’s mother, seeming to enjoy the lovely crackle of the fire now spreading out steadily in front of her.