Thanksgiving at Great Aunt Kathleen's

[Trigger warning: miscarriage, abortion, cheater]

I felt the grating of the corner of my front bumper against the curb as I pulled up to my Great Aunt Kathleen’s at 5:24pm. My dead father’s disapproval hung over me as I assessed the fresh scab on my car body and I marinated in the familiar, ever-present feeling of guilt, this time heightened by my late arrival. I heard him say from the grave, “unless you’re 10 minutes early, you’re late”. Even though I knew set up would still be happening now as several crockpots had yet to find plugs and there would be ongoing arguments if the desserts should be set up on Grandma Evan’s sideboard (“Put a trivet under that pecan pie …. Ok put a potholder under it then if there aren’t any left. Ew … it’s sticky on the bottom. Why didn’t you wash that off with a wet towel before bringing it? Didn’t that get on your car seat too?”) or if the desserts should be out back on the peeling table in the screened porch since it was a brisk 44* outside and “there isn’t enough room in that fridge”. 

I didn’t knock but I had forgotten the trick I had mastered last Thanksgiving to opening her almost miniature, antique front door handle, and my struggle with it gave me away. Of course, awkward uncle Billy was lurking near the front door. He slammed the door open, if that’s possible, into the plastic disc wall protector, and tripped back into an overflowing coat tree, knocking several coats and scarves to the floor and the umbrellas and a cane in the bottom compartment into the staircase wall — creating a huge divot and a black smudge or two in the light yellow paint. There was a coat closet directly across from the stairwell on the other side of the home’s entrance but Great Aunt Kathleen kept her vacuum cleaner, an inordinate amount of puzzles and a bunch of her deceased husband’s clothes in big black trash bags in there.

“Is Josh still in the car?”

“We broke up about 8 months ago.” 

“Oh.”

I brushed past him into the living room. Immediately I was hit by the chaos of some children who I didn’t even recognize chasing each other down sloping green shag steps into the artificially lit rec room with its dark brown faux paneling, and two small windows darkened by the overgrown bushes next to the front stoop. The rec room had a half bathroom off of it that had one exposed cinderblock wall with white efflorescence and always had a tiny whiff of backed up sewage.

I pivoted to enter the L-shaped kitchen, saying “sorry” when a cousin once removed? or step-aunt? with a vaguely familiar face opened the pantry door directly into me and plugged up that side of the flow of traffic through the kitchen. I backed up into the living room again and hugged the wall to try the other kitchen entrance around the corner, off the dining room. Tables of multiple heights had been pushed together throughout the living and dining rooms, draped with mismatched but autumnally festive clothes. A couple of the older relatives had already been seated in the most stable chairs at the least jerry-rigged tables, but most folks were milling around and looking busy, or backed into corners drinking cheap red wine out of beautiful (but probably lead-filled) crystalware. As I suspected and hoped, the gathering was just ramping up and I could slip into the mess unnoticed. 

I heard some polite intellectual blather in the front corner of the living room as I passed through but didn’t look over to see who was talking. There are several professors and authors and eternal students in my extended family so …. 

The kitchen was much livelier and less stuffy despite the overwhelming heat. I needed to present the bag of Hawaiian rolls I had brought even though some fragrant, butter-kissed yeast rolls were being pulled out of the oven right then by my sweaty Great Aunt. 

“Thank you Melissa for bringing those. Are they hamburger buns? … Can you hold that basket with the tea towel right here please? Pull that corner out honey. It needs to be draped over these rolls so they don’t go cold before we eat.” 

She scooped out a layer of those mouth-watering buns into the basket and flipped the tea towel over them. She set the pan with the others on the corner of the stove top and went searching for another bread basket and clean tea towel. 

Another uncle? Second cousin? Brushed past me in the kitchen and hiss-whispered to his wife who was industriously daisy-chaining a couple ungrounded extension cords into an unconverted outlet in the kitchen nook and plugging in a few of the aforementioned crockpots and warmer dishes. 

“When are we starting? Your mom is getting belligerent and she’s on her third glass.” 

“Soon I think.” 

Raising her voice, even though the size of the kitchen made it where no one’s conversation was fully private, “Aunt Mary Jane — how long ago did Rob get the turkey out of the oven out back?” (This was a special-occasion-only old stove that was tarped and left by the side of the house, semi under eave protection, and connected to power by the outlet one of my electrician cousins had run outside specifically for it. He had also converted most of the outlets in Great Aunt Kathleen’s house from the two prong to grounded type except for the one the crockpots are connected to now and one in the guest bedroom with no overhead light and Grandma Evan’s Tiffany floor lamp.  

Everyone was rounded up and seated. 

The slightly older kids had a table in the rec room but the younger kids were still in eyeshot and had their plates made up and brought to them by their parents. They were seated at a coffee table that had been dragged near the home’s entrance and a big flat sheet with ugly orange flowers placed under it. Some of the kids started eating immediately. Aunt Mary Jane eyed their parents with disapproval and said, “Let’s hold hands everyone. Who wants to say the blessing?”

“How about we go around the table and say one thing we’re thankful for instead?”, one of the brainy secular uncles suggested.

“My mashed potatoes are cold already!” His daughter, Emily, wailed from the foyer coffee table.

I was ready to get my plate to go. I hadn’t acted quickly enough to secure a safe place at the tables (between a couple of the professors that enjoyed hearing themselves talk more than asking questions or others) and the only seat left I could squeeze into was between Uncle Billy and my nephew, Jack, with his cystic acne and some sort of undiagnosed personality disorder. At 19, it was his first time sitting with the adults and not at one of the kids’ tables. His bread and butter is taking the opposing view on anything and everything and he lives for a good verbal altercation. His mom, my sister Eloise, is very sweet but doesn’t exert much influence over her son, and she and her husband, Jim, were at the end of the dining table closest to the screen porch door, not my end which was very close to the nubby brown plaid couch. Across from me was my Inquisitor Aunt Bev. 

How did I end up on this end of the table??

“Where’s Josh?”, Bev started off with after a compromising thankful list/prayer had been settled on and executed by a different brainy, more religiously inclined, uncle. 

“We broke up. But it’s actually been quite a good thing for me in the end. I’ve been working on myself and learning things about myself and I’m very happy ….” I’m not happy actually. I had thought, finally, I’ve found someone who wasn’t completely self-centered and had some emotional intelligence. More like a very manipulative, covert narcissist. I was disgusted and heartbroken by our break up. He had (officially) started dating my “best friend” a week later (at this point I was sure their dating had started before that). I was snapped out of my thoughts on the variation of the truth I had just told.

“I’m not surprised. You always seem to date boys with no direction in life and lots of tattoos.” Bev said as though that was a clear and concise way to sum it up.

“Josh is 36 Aunt Bev.” He’s a man with no direction in life and only 17 tattoos. I think Ariana Grande has 61 or so.

“And he supports the reversal of Roe v. Wade. Aren’t women’s bodies their own choice?” Jack piped up, hoping to start a nice little fire at the table.

I’m not sure how Jack heard about it — probably through one of my conversations with Eloise — I hate how she always puts me on speaker and then does housework when we talk on the phone. Even in very serious or emotional conversations. My boyfriend Josh had wanted me to keep our accident. We’d been together 4 years at that point but I had an uneasiness about bringing a kid into the world with him. Wrong Jack. But no way in hell I’ll open my mouth to speak on that comment dude. Josh wasn’t quite in support of that judgement — he understood the implications. And I wasn’t exactly a baby killer — my miscarriage had been devastating at the time, albeit a slight relief, but Josh never quite believed it had been natural since we’d had a detailed discussion about what we should do when I first discovered I was pregnant and the a-word had been on my list as an option.

“Uncle Billy can you pass the yeast rolls please?” I dug into the table butter and slapped a big blob on my bread plate.

I managed to excuse myself to “help serve” and “go to the ladies’” just enough to evade too many more questions and conversations. finally escaping for a walk outside before dessert was served (from Grandma Evan’s sideboard). 

“Whoa!! Dammit ….” A huge, fluffy golden retriever came bounding from a copse of trees, almost bowled me over and left a muddy print on my favorite cream coat. I love dogs but was ready to chew out this irresponsible owner who let his unruly pup ruin my favorite coat. I looked up as the friendly dog was coming in for a second swoop of violent affection.

“Bradley NO. OFF. LEAVE IT. SIT.” 

This moron obviously doesn’t have any control of his crazy animal and is blindly trying commands to see if one might be obeyed.

But Bradley sat. And I turned around to look up into some amazingly green eyes.

“I’m so sorry about him. He’s 7 months old. A big goof. I’m still working on getting him trained …. Hi. I’m Andrew.”