Yet one more reason why I’m happy to be a vegetarian. My brother-in-law’s sister lives in the South, and one time she raved about fried turkey. So excited was my brother-in-law about fried turkey that my mother agreed to try it—ick
“Can I get you something to drink?” I said to the Brunts. Unfortunately there’s no booze in the house, my parents having converted to teetotaling Christianity in my youth. I certainly needed a drink right about then. “We have some punch, or I could get you some eggnog.”
They wanted punch, so I served it up. How in hell did I get stuck being the entertainment committee? Meanwhile the woman kept talking a blue streak, mostly about the dog. “Nugget has a healing ministry with the elderly.” A what???? The husband seemed to be fine with this talk, so I just said, “Oh?” and she went on to describe how Nugget was nice to old people. Nugget, meanwhile, was yapping away in his playpen, and I couldn’t see how he could minister to anyone but his rodent self. “Yes, he goes to them, and he sits with them, and plays with them, and the old people are so blessed.” She went on and on about how wonderful the dog was, and she got him out of his playpen so that I could get up close and personal with the rat. I smiled wanly and petted Nugget.
My mother and sister finally came out of the kitchen, and my dad and brother-in-law came in too. Donna regaled the rest of the family with the Nugget photo album and stories of his miraculous healing powers. Meanwhile the man said not a word. I don’t even think he said hello. He just sat on the couch and drank his punch and ate The Stuff. He was, however, kind of glaring at me. Perhaps he sensed my disbelief in the healing powers of Nugget. I wasn’t the only one, though. Dad and Brother-in-Law looked shell shocked by Donna’s chatter, and my sister was trying very hard not to laugh.
A bell dinged and my mother got up to go back into the kitchen. Donna followed, so I stayed in the living room. Daisy, our dog, somehow got out of the family room and ran into the living room to see what had taken over her turf. It was then that we learned that Nugget was not neutered.
Now Daisy is a small dog, a Jack Russell terrier. Normally she is out-sized by just about every dog on the planet. Not Nugget, but he didn’t let that stop him. He tried to mount Daisy, and Daisy then tried to kill Nugget. She turned on him and growled. Nugget tried again. I grabbed Daisy just before she went for the dog’s jugular (damn!) and put her back in the family room. I stayed with her a long time.
This is Daisy. She's cuter than Nugget
I could hear Donna babbling on in the kitchen, so I got my coat and went out to the back yard to join Dad and Brother-in-Law. “Holy crap,” I said. “Who are these people?” The oil was nearly hot enough to start on the bird.
“Perhaps we could deep fry Nugget,” my father suggested. We laughed nervously. How were we going to get through this dinner? Was she ever going to shut up?
I went back inside and helped bring things out to the table. When everything was ready, we sat down and my father said grace. Donna’s husband finally spoke. He told us the long, sad story of how his first wife died of diabetes some twenty years before. He was officiating someone else’s funeral when she died, and so he wasn’t with her. “I still feel bad about that,” he kept saying. My family expressed some condolences, and he continued with further details about her death over the mashed potatoes. “Yip yip yip” went Nugget, in an attempt to heal the situation.
I hadn’t said anything and was focusing on my dinner, but my Thanksgiving luck was still holding. This guy had it in for me. “Light cannot fellowship with darkness,” he decreed at the end of his story, staring pointedly at me. He was preparing a sermon; I could see it in his eyes. Here we go again. Why me? Is it so wrong to not have faith in dog healing?
So not only was this the most depressing Thanksgiving dinner ever, but I was also about to be yelled at again. The thing is, most people really like me. I’m warm, friendly, and I’m really good at masking what I really think. So I really cannot understand why every Thanksgiving guest we’d ever had wound up lecturing me or yelling at me. Is it because I’m a vegetarian? I thought, desperate for a theory. So I don’t eat turkey! I don’t make a big deal out of it—I’ve never once gone on about American meat-consumption habits or the treatment of animals. No one likes self-righteousness, and I really don’t care what other people eat. No matter, it still doesn’t meant that I’m going to hell. I’m not the one talking about my long-dead spouse to strangers on Thanksgiving. I steeled myself for the inevitable lecture, resolved to take it politely and not yell back at the guest.
But I was saved by Donna. With Mr. Brunt’s first wife now safely dead, she didn’t miss a beat. She carried on with the death theme, telling us all about her first husband, forty years her senior. “I met him when I was sixteen and working at the diner. He was fifty-six. He had a glass eye when he was younger, because he had played with knives. He learned not to do that.”
She married him a year after she met him, chattering on like it was the most normal thing in the world to do to marry someone nearly old enough to be your grandfather when you are seventeen. Because he thought that women should cover their hair, she started wearing the Amish thing after they were married. “He died of cancer. When he died, I had to get him a suit to burry him in. He’d never had one while he was alive.” Blah, blah, blah, blah... more about wife’s long-dead first spouse… blather, blather, blather.
By this point, my family and I were all staring at each other in something approaching awe. What, exactly, had happened? Here we were having Thanksgiving dinner, and our guests were talking about their long-dead spouses—in great detail. We even knew what kind of clothes they were buried in. Their Chihuahua was in a playpen in our living room, yipping away. Clearly this wasn’t normal.
Donna was still chattering away about old-man hubby, and no one else had said much of anything. Somehow, all this morbid talk began to strike me as very funny. My sister and brother-in-law were on the same wavelength, because I looked over at them, and they were both smirking and staring down at their mashed potatoes. Dad was eating very intently, and my mother had a nervous look on her face, like something was about to happen.
Donna meanwhile was going on and on about some story or other about the one-eyed husband, when she all of the sudden exclaimed, “Oh yes. That’s when the quadriplegic dwarf moved in with me after his wife left him for another man. He lived with us for four years.”
Come again? Dead spouses and cuckolded quadriplegic dwarves? I feel horrible saying this, but that did it. The bizarre scales had tipped. I started coughing and laughing into my napkin. I shot up from the table, and nearly knocking my dad over, I ran into the family room and shut the door. I was doubled-over convulsing with laughter. My sister was right behind me. We were both shaking our heads, tears streaming down our faces. “Dead people?” we gasped. “Nugget! Haa haa haa haa! Why did she mention the dwarf? What’s happening? I’m scared! Ha hahahahaha!”
My father soon joined us, looking stern. “Girls,” he said in his “I mean it” voice to his adult daughers. But his face cracked and he laughed too for a couple of seconds, doing this really funny little hee hee dance, kind of like the Twist. “OK,” he finally whispered. “Get it together.”
Deep centering breaths all around. Pursed lips. Don’t laugh. I went back in first, followed by my sister and Dad. “Sorry about that. I just needed to blow my nose.”
“Me too,” my sister said. My brother-in-law had his face in his hands, and he wouldn’t look up. My mother had a twinkle in her eye and mouthed the words “quadriplegic dwarf.” I looked at her imploringly, and she made her face stern. Donna’s husband looked a bit perturbed, but Donna didn’t seem to notice that anything had happened. She was still talking away.
After dinner, we cleared away the dishes, and I made coffee. My mom served the pies. Donna was still talking about the one-eyed dead husband. She was blathering on and on and then burst out with, “Oh! That’s right! I wanted to show you all something!”
She ran into the living room and came back with her purse. “Where is it?” she muttered, digging through her bag. “Oh here it is!”
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