I ignored that last remark.
“I’ll get it,” I said. “No problem.”
On one wall around the top of the kitchen, where space allowed, were hung a few cabinets that reached the ceiling. That’s where we kept things we used less often – the waffle iron, large vases, a chafing dish, a fondue pot, small appliances we intended to fix and never did, and the dishes we used for the holidays. They were neatly stacked in soft quilted containers that zipped to close. There were carefully placed paper towels in between each plate, soup bowl, and saucer to minimize the possibility of breakage. Unpacking them always brought back ghosts of holidays long gone, like when Fred was a little boy, saving his money all year to buy his grandmother a dessert plate for her birthday or Christmas. The pattern, called Woodland by Spode, was lovingly collected by my mother from the early nineties, one cup and saucer at a time, until she had twelve place settings, some serving bowls and platters, and, the greatest treasure of her collection, the soup tureen and its cover.
I took the stepladder and positioned it below the cabinet.
“Let me help you,” she said. “Just hand them to me. Careful! One container at a time.”
“Of course! You know, if you’d like, I can cut some magnolia leaves for the tureen. It would make a pretty centerpiece with some holly.”
“Wonderful idea! There’s no soup until we pick the bird clean, maybe Sunday night.”
There was no maybe about it. That was how Thanksgiving always went at our house. Roasted turkey on Thanksgiving Thursday with all the trimmings, turkey tetrazzini or something like it on Friday, a break from fowl on Saturday because someone usually had an oyster roast, but on Sunday night? Here came turkey soup. Every single year for as long as I could remember.
When all the containers had been handed down and placed on the table, she began to unpack them. I refilled the containers with everyday dishes, as I did each year. I put them back in the cabinet and my mother became wistful.
“You know, Pop thought it was crazy for a woman as old as I was to start a new collection of china when I did, but I think you should never be too old to have a little dream. These dishes just make me so happy to see them. It’s like greeting old friends.”
I smiled to myself then, placed the last of the quilted sacks up high, flipped the latch on the cabinet door, and climbed down. I slipped the folding stepladder into the sliver of space between the refrigerator and the counter and washed my hands. They smelled like cabbage and onions.
“When we were growing up, Floyd and I used to say our dishes were Chinese – Ding Dynasty. Do you remember that?”
“How could I forget my sassy-mouth children’s opinions? These days I wait for my monthly coupon from Bed Bath & Beyond and I can buy all the white plates I want for just about the cost of a Happy Meal at McDonald’s! And somehow we still have chipped plates.”
“The chipped will always be among us,” I said. “It’s in the Bible.”
“John chapter twelve, verse eight, the poor will always be among you. Don’t blaspheme in my kitchen.”
“Oh, heavens! Now, come on, Miss Virnell, even the Lord himself had a sense of humor.”
“Not that I recall. But if you have any intention whatsoever of seeing me in heaven one day, you’d better not be blasphemous now! And don’t call me that.”
There were a few areas in which Miss Virnell did not play around.
“I’ll be back in a few and then I’ll set the table,” I said, changing the subject. “The brussels sprouts are ready to go in the pot.”
Of course, we had only one oven in the house, so vegetables had to be steamed or boiled or sautéed on the stove top. The dressing would be in two pink Pyrex dishes from the sixties we used for meat loaf, wrapped tightly in foil and squeezed in on either side of the turkey. Maybe someday one of those shows on HGTV would want to do a farmhouse kitchen makeover for free and I’d give them the keys to our house.
I rummaged around the junk drawer where we kept assorted things such as batteries, pens, thumbtacks, tape, and other paraphernalia and slipped the garden clippers into the pocket of my apron. Outside I had my choice of low-hanging magnolia branches to snip, and minutes later I was armed with holly and magnolia aplenty for the task.
Back inside, I took everything off the dining table and added two leaves. Then I covered it with a protective cloth and finally my mother’s white damask cloth that saw the light of day only a few times each year. I spread it out and smoothed it flat with the palms of my hands. Then I went to my mother’s bedroom and took two folding chairs from behind her bedroom door to give us enough seating.
“Mom? Are we using cloth napkins?” I knew the answer before I heard it. I was back in the kitchen to fill the tureen with an inch or two of water.
“I ironed them last week. They’re laid out flat on Fred’s bed.”
Men, at least the ones in my life, didn’t understand the amount of work and planning that went into holiday productions. There were so many things that had to be done ahead of the day itself, like ironing linens and polishing the silver. Earlier in the week I’d made a double recipe of cranberry sauce and turkey stock to make gravy. Cubes of bread for the dressing were spread over cookie sheets, and turned over and over to make them evenly stale. Piecrust was made and frozen, as were biscuits and a special breakfast casserole we always had the morning after. Advance preparation made the day itself tolerable instead of a nearly impossible task.
I placed the tureen in the middle of the table and stood back. I’d cut the magnolia branches short so that they made kind of a collar around the lip of it. Then I took two longer pieces of holly and stood them in the center. They were airy and the red berries were pretty, but my thought was that we should be able to see each other across the table. I put the plates in place, folded the napkins in triangles and placed them in the center of the plates. The table looked beautiful. Each of us would discover, as we did each year when we lifted our napkins, whether or not we had the turkey, the pheasant, or the hunting dog plate. Fred always wanted the dog plate. I wondered then if he would ever want to have these dishes, then remembered that Shelby had chosen a French pattern from Limoges. Our Spode would probably not impress her. Or her mother. Oh, who cared?
My mother’s flatware had belonged to her grandmother of many generations ago, having escaped the Civil War by being buried in a barrel behind the barn. Every southern family I had ever known had a story like that. It was just as likely that years ago someone bought it at an estate sale. But beside the land we farmed, her silver was still our most valuable possession, although at this point it was showing signs of wear. The edges of the spoons were worn thin from use and some of the knives were a little loose in their handles. But I loved it anyway, maybe more because of its age. Placing the forks and knives around the table always gave me a moment of pause. This was the thing about family heirlooms: humble or grand, they made the past alive again. Whether it was a spoon or a locket, a shoehorn or an old Bible, when I held these objects in my hands, I could imagine my great-great-grandparents or someone’s ancestors going about their day. And I loved the thought of them setting the table for Thanksgiving, just as I was now.
Somewhere in the house there were some photographs of my grandparents on a picnic. And we had a framed photograph of them taken on the day of their wedding. Her youthful face and tiny size always surprised me. She had lived well into her nineties, and of course I had hopes that my mother would as well. It may help to watch your diet and to get plenty of exercise, but if you ask me, longevity is in the genes.
At last all the guests had assembled in the living room, cheering on the team of their choice. The table was set, the turkey was resting, and the pies were in the oven. This year we had apple and pumpkin. We’d had a bumper crop of pecans this year, and we’d sold as many pecan pies on the farm stand as we had the time to bake. Miss Virnell and I agreed that we couldn’t look at another pecan for a while. So apple and pumpkin it was. And if the roasting turkey
had smelled divine, it was completely eclipsed by baking apples, pumpkin, and sugar. We were going to have a feast!
I was on my way to tell Pop, Floyd, and the ladies to come to the table at last. As I reached the living room I saw my father falling to the floor. He had been holding his head.
“No!” I screamed so loudly that I scared everyone.
“Call 911!” Floyd said. “He’s not breathing!”
BJ dialed 911 on her cell phone and gave the operator our address, begging them to hurry. Then she ran outside with her friends to flag down the ambulance.
My mother flew by me and dropped to the floor beside Pop. She began to shake as it dawned on her that he might be dead. Floyd had his hand, checking for a pulse.
“There’s a pulse, but it’s very faint,” he said.
My mother leaned over my father and whispered something to him that I couldn’t hear.
“Come on, Momma, let’s get up now,” Floyd said.
“No,” she said quietly but firmly, “I’m not leaving him and he’s not leaving me.”
Chapter 12
Chicago Thanksgiving—Shelby
“I wish I had a normal family,” Shelby said.
“Normal is pretty boring,” Fred replied.
My parents made a special point to say Frederick was invited to join us for Thanksgiving dinner at the Union League Club. Duh. He was my fiancé. We were almost married. What was the alternative? My mother’s cooking? We’re all gonna die! Quinoa and tofu? For real. She only liked fad food. My poor father has endured a paleo kick, an only-organic-from-within-a-fifty-mile-radius stint, a raw-only stage, raw juicing, cold-pressed juices, Mediterranean only, fish and veggies only, eating within twelve hours, and the Dalai Lama’s diet. All delivered. I rest my case. How she found out what the Dalai Lama eats is anyone’s guess. She probably called him up. She probably had his cell phone number. I mean, I love her to death, but . . .
“Isn’t this a gorgeous buffet?” Mother said to me and asked the waiter for a small slice of white meat turkey. “No gravy. And no dressing.” The waiter put it on her plate. “Thank you and Happy Thanksgiving to you!”
“Yep. It’s great,” I said, and I was pretty sure she didn’t hear me. I let the same waiter load up my plate with turkey, a mound of dressing, and a pool of gravy.
“And Frederick, we’re so, so delighted you could join us!”
“Thank you, Mrs. Cambria,” he said. “Um, I’d like a drumstick and all this other stuff too. Thanks. Thanks a lot. Gravy? Oh, sure, yes. Thank you.”
“I like a man who knows what he wants,” Dad said. He asked for a drumstick too.
We passed down the line helping ourselves to vegetables and other side dishes, then went to our table.
One of these years I’d learn to cook a Thanksgiving meal, but this wasn’t the year. With the wedding snowballing into complete lunacy thanks to my mother’s nearly psychotic need to outdo all the weddings given by her friends? Let me bring you up-to-date. She was turning Frederick and me into wrecks. And she was being very prissy with Frederick’s mother, which I didn’t like. And this butterfly thing she was so intent on doing? It was just wrong. Butterflies were endangered, and throwing twenty thousand of them to the wind was just not going to be okay.
Also, I didn’t really need or want a Vera Wang wedding dress, and she didn’t need Karl Lagerfeld to whip up a custom gown for her. Last week, I told her my bridesmaids’ dresses were coming from J.Crew and she hyperventilated. I had to make her to breathe in a brown paper bag while I found her Ativan. She’s such a label snob. But I won that battle because the J.Crew dresses were super cute. They just happened to be a bargain. We had chosen a beautiful shade of apple green. The dresses had three different necklines and they were a short length. I didn’t tell anyone that stupid lie that they could wear them again. I told them that I bought one, and the next time we got together we’d all wear them and drink champagne and watch sappy movies or something. Or maybe we’d wear them to one another’s children’s baptisms, if we ever stopped obsessing about work long enough to have kids at all. Or maybe we’d have a bonfire. Nearly all of my friends were getting married. Anyway, I think it was the only battle I’d won so far. On a side note, when she saw the tattoos that were going to show on two of my bridesmaids, she was going to shriek. I’d thought about steering those two, who were roommates at Northwestern, into the styles that covered their ink, and then I said to heck with that. I loved them for who they were, not for how they might fit into my mother’s vision of a reenactment of Kate Middleton’s wedding.
Anyway, something had to be said to stop her. She was out of control. We sat and began our meal with a toast.
Dad said, “Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Happy Thanksgiving!”
“Mom? Can we talk about the wedding for a moment?”
“For a change?” Frederick said.
It was true. We talked about the wedding so much that I wondered what we’d talk about when it was over. Dad laughed and pointed his finger at Frederick, indicating his agreement. I kicked Frederick under the table.
“Of course!” Mother said. “What’s on your mind, sweetie?”
“Well, I looked up the butterfly source on the Internet. Do you realize you’re spending forty thousand dollars on butterflies and that doesn’t include shipping? And do you know that their numbers are endangered? This is just wrong.”
“Susan!” Dad choked, and Frederick gave him his glass of water. Then Mom gave Dad some massive eyeball and he cowered. Sort of. “It just seems like a lot to me. Isn’t that a lot to spend on something that’s gone in an instant?”
“I could do doves,” my mother said.
“Yes, but then they’ll drop poop on all the guests,” Dad said.
“I hadn’t thought about that. That would be terrible,” she said. “Frederick? What do you think?”
“Well, Mrs. Cambria, where I come from, we eat doves.”
“Dear God,” she said, thoroughly horrified. I imagined she envisioned every southern guest pulling out a shotgun and firing. I could read her like a book.
“They make a good stew,” Frederick said.
Frederick’s phone was flashing light and vibrating like mad.
“You can’t answer it, Frederick,” I said. “Strictly against club rules.”
“It’s my uncle Floyd. He never calls. I should take this.”
“Just step out onto the terrace,” Dad said, turning to show Frederick where the door was.
“Give him my—I mean, our best,” my mother said.
I knew what she meant. She was still crushing on Uncle Floyd. God, she was so annoying.
“I’ll be right back,” he said.
For the few minutes Frederick was gone, my mother rattled on and on about who was doing the flowers and how many musicians from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra were playing during the ceremony. I felt my chest constricting. I couldn’t swallow. Meanwhile, Dad was savoring every bite of his dinner. Clearly, he had fine-tuned the ability to put his mind elsewhere. In his head he was probably walking the beaches in Saint-Tropez staring at topless young girls from behind his Oliver Peoples sunglasses. Oh, Dad. I’m so onto you.
A few minutes later, Frederick returned. Every bit of color had drained from his face.
“Babe? What’s the matter?”
“It’s my grandfather. He’s dead.”
Chapter 13
Burying Pop
“‘He’s in a better place.’ They can kiss my better place!” Virnell said.
“They mean well,” Diane said.
We were in a fog of grief. My mother was so stunned by Pop’s sudden death, she had to go to bed. I had never seen her do that in my entire life. How could this be? She was the unflappable Virnell, reliable in a foxhole, victorious on the battlefield. Always. Any form of Collapsing Camille was not in her vocabulary. Nonetheless, the ambulance that took Pop’s body away was hardly out of the driveway before my poor mother slipped off her sensible shoes and
went to bed in her Thanksgiving dress with her apron still tied around her neck and waist. She did not weep or even shed one single tear.
Floyd, BJ, and her friends cleaned up our uneaten Thanksgiving meal and I covered my mother up with the quilt she kept folded on the foot of her bed.
“Sit with me a little while,” she said.
“Are you okay? Can I get you anything? Water?”
“No. I’m okay for right now. I just feel, I don’t know, like someone pulled the plug on me.”
“That’s understandable. I’m reeling myself. What a terrible shock.”
“Yes. It was. Poor thing. I should’ve made him that sandwich.”
I took her hand in mine and held it.
“No guilt-tripping allowed. You waited on him hand and foot for decades,” I said. “He was a wonderful man and a wonderful father.”
Suddenly I felt I was mothering my mother instead of my mother mothering me. After all, I’d just lost my father.
“And husband. He’s the only man I ever loved. My goodness, we were married longer than you’ve been alive.”
“Well, that’s good to know, you know, for the sake of propriety and all that.”
She smiled a little. Gus the cat padded in quietly and hopped up on the bed, curling up into a ball. She scratched him behind the ears with her free hand. We were quiet for a few minutes. I could see her mind time-traveling and I imagined she was remembering special times with him, probably when they were young. And then her brow wrinkled and I was pretty sure she was reliving his last moments.
“You know,” she said, “I knew he would go before me because of his heart. I just didn’t think it would be today.”
“Me too.” I stood up and pulled down her shades. Maybe a darkened room would help her rest. The room was cool but comfortably so. “People say when someone dies suddenly it’s terrible for the survivors. And they say a long illness is easier for the family.”