Turkey Dinner

“No, really, you don’t need to bring anything,” Sallie protested as she tossed the stuffing mix into the cart. (Thomas, sit down!) “I’ve got it all under control. I’m at the store now, picking everything up. Well, of course not the turkey,” (Stop teasing your brother! Get your hand out of his face!) “I got that last week, but everything else. You are going to loooove my Grandma’s pumpkin pie recipe.” She gave the baby his pacifier again and shot another look at her son. “Anyway, I have to go, but you’ll be there at noon, right? Great.”

“Whew!” She closed her cell phone and looked at her sons. Alan gave her a toothless grin. “I can’t believe I invited your grandparents over for Thanksgiving dinner.”

“Grandma!” three year old Thomas yelled out. “I want Grandma.”

“Tomorrow,” she told him. “Here, have some water. What a week this will be. It’s the first time Mommy is making Thanksgiving dinner.”

Thursday morning found her searching. “Hey, Harold, did you pull the turkey out of the freezer yet?” she asked her husband. “That sucker’s gonna take all morning to defrost.”

“You didn’t defrost the turkey?” he yelled back. “You were supposed to pull it out last night!”

Sallie shrugged. “I forgot. I’ll just cook it a little hotter.”

“A ten pound bird? It’s going to take forever.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she muttered. Soon she was pulling everything out of the freezer and setting it on the counter. Thomas ran in.

“I wanna help!” He picked up a bag of frozen vegetables, then dropped it. “Cold!” He kicked it across the kitchen floor, then ran over and kicked it again.

“Stop it!” Sallie yelled, frustrated. “They’re peas, not soccer balls!” She scooped them up, only to have the bag split open. Little frozen peas splayed all over the floor. Thomas laughed in delight. Sallie was not thrilled.

“Go help your father!” she yelled, spotting the bird in the very back. Now she remembered unloading the freezer and stacking everything around it.

Sallie flipped the oven to 550 and started prepping the bird. She tried stuffing it, but couldn’t budge it.

“Stuffing, dressing, whatever,” she muttered, disgusted. “I’ll just throw it in a pot and cook it, it only takes five minutes.” She scooped up what she could of the bread crumbs and tried to stick them back in the box. She checked the oven – still not ready – and ran into the living room.

Harold was sitting in his easy chair, watching the pre-game show, or pre-pre-game show, or whatever. Toys were strewn everywhere, and Alan was happily climbing the entertainment center. Thomas was sitting on the floor, taking apart the centerpiece she had spent three hours making. He held a hand out to her.

“Look, mom, flowers!”

“Harold!”

He looked up. “What?”

“Your parents are going to be here in a few hours! Did you clean the bathroom?”

“Nah, but they don’t care.”

“I care!”

Harold shrugged.

“Well, at least pick up this mess.” She had been up all night cleaning the living room and dining room.

Harold sniffed. “Um, honey, what’s that smell?” They ran in the kitchen. Black smoke was billowing from the oven.

“What do you have in there?” he yelled.

“I don’t know!!!” Sallie’s mind raced. Suddenly she remembered. The last time her in-laws had come over unexpectedly, she had thrown all the dirty Tupperware from the sink into the second - rarely used – oven. The smell of burnt plastic was spreading.

Harold grabbed the fire extinguisher from off the wall. “You open the stove and I’ll spray,” he yelled. As soon as the door came down, the flames billowed higher, fueled by the sudden rush of oxygen. Finally, they were gone. Sallie turned the oven off.

“Thanks,” she sighed.

“No problem.”

The doorbell rang and Harold went to get it. “It’s my folks!” he told her.

“They’re early! Two hours early!” Sallie shut the kitchen door behind them and stared at the turkey. They were supposed to eat at three, and there was no way the turkey would be done by then. Especially if she were down to one oven. She glanced wildly around the room, and her gaze fell on the microwave. I wonder ….she thought.
Two minutes later, the microwave was humming and Sallie was doing mental math. If she could get it mostly defrosted, then cook it on high, then maybe she had a chance.

She went out to meet Eric and Glenda. “Sorry we’re early, dear, but since we were already up, we thought we’d just come by and make a day of it.” Glenda sniffed. “What’s that smell?” Sallie could only stand by as Harold described the flames, gesturing wildly with his hands.

“But Sallie, dear, I don’t understand why your plasticware was in the oven.” Glenda’s plastic was organized by size and shape, each tub and matching lid numbered.

Sallie shrugged. “Thomas must have put it there.”

Glenda gave her a look of outrage. “You let him play with the oven?! That’s terribly unsafe, dear.” As a matter of fact, Sallie didn’t, but she didn’t want to go into that right then. Instead she excused herself.

The microwave dinged two hours later, and the turkey was still rock hard. Sallie tossed it into the main oven (after checking for dirty dishes) and bumped the thermostat up to 600. She needed a miracle. In the meantime, she buzzed about, peeling and chopping potatoes (“We never eat instant mashed potatoes,” Glenda had once snorted) and generally running around in circles. Missing a night’s sleep didn’t help.

At 5, Harold stuck his head in. “Um, about dinner…” he started, then trailed off when she glared at him. “The, uh, boys are hungry; where’s the baby food?”

She tossed him a jar for Alan and some cookies for Thomas. Outside, she heard Glenda snort “Cookies! Before dinner!”, and she gritted her teeth and continued putting together the pie. At least that would win Glenda’s approval, she hoped. A family recipe, passed down through the generations, even the crust was homemade. Of course, Glenda would probably complain that she hadn’t grown the pumpkins herself. Still, the pie was a work of art, and one that always won compliments.

At seven, Sallie pulled the turkey out. The skin was dark brown, almost black. She picked up the carving knife and sawed into it. Thank goodness, the middle was fully cooked. She called Harold in to start carving while she put the rest of the food on the table, kicking stray peas out of the way in the process. Wisely, Harold said nothing about the bird’s appearance.

“Well, finally,” Glenda exclaimed, leading the kids into the dining room. She surveyed the table. “Where’s the stuffing?”

“Oops!” Sallie ran back into the kitchen and snatched up the box. Boil water, add stuffing, let sit for five minutes with lid on. Easy enough. She started the water boiling, then filled the pitcher with ice water and carried it to the table. “It’s warming,” she told Glenda.

Her mother-in-law sniffed. “Well, I hope you’re not using a mix. Thanksgiving just isn’t the same if you don’t have homemade stuffing.”

Sallie gave her a strained smile, then went back into the kitchen. She grabbed some flour from her pretty, daisy-covered canisters and added them to the drippings. She had waited until the end to make gravy because she wanted it to be nice and hot. She stirred it, then added the stuffing mix to its pot and closed the lid.

In the meantime, the gravy wasn’t thickening. She scowled, then added more flour. Some of it stuck to her fingers, and she licked them. It tasted just like sugar.

She checked the canister. Sure enough, she had grabbed from the wrong container. “Whatever,” she muttered, and scooped some flour out of the other canister.

“Turkey’s almost finished,” Harold told her. “I’ll put this platter on the table.”
Sallie pulled the stuffing off the burner and dumped it into its bowl. The bottom was black and crusty. She had forgotten to turn off the burner!

At this point, she was near tears. She carried the stuffing over to the garbage disposal and scraped the worst of it off. When she finished, only half the stuffing was left, and there were still black spots. Another muttered “whatever” and she stirred vigorously. “Take this,” she ordered Harold and thrust it into his hands.

In the dining room, Thomas had started pounding on the table. “Want food. Want food,” followed by another sniff and a “my children never behaved that way.” Sallie put her hands over her ears, then spied the furiously bubbling gravy. She ran over and dumped it into the gravy boat, splattering some on her hand. “Aaahhh!” she yelled, almost dropping the frying pan. She set it on the stove, turned the burner off, and ran to the sink to douse her hand. Then, cradling it to her, she carried the gravy in and set it on the table. “Let’s eat.”

“Dad, do you want to say grace?” Harold asked Eric. The older man bowed his head and began to pray. He prayed and prayed and prayed. Sallie, exhausted from a night of no sleep and her recent culinary exertions, found herself nodding off.

She opened her eyes when she heard Thomas giggling. “Mommy was snoring,” he laughed.

The rest of the meal was filled with spectacular advice – “you should add more milk to your potatoes, dear,”, “a little heavy with the mustard in these eggs weren’t you?”, “what he really needs is a good spanking,”, “oh, is mommy mean to you dear? Come to grandma,”. Sallie thought it would never end, but reminded herself that the pie, at least, would be good. She clung to the thought like a drowning woman. Pie. Pie. Pie.

Dinner finally ended, and everyone pushed back from the table. “I saved just enough room for a little dessert,” Eric told her, smiling.

Sallie stood up and went to the kitchen. For a panicky moment, she couldn’t find the pie, but then her vision cleared and she saw it. She took off the plastic wrap she had used to keep it fresh and started toward the dining room.

She gave a huge yawn just as her foot came down on what had to be the last three remaining peas, somehow still hard. She slipped, and up went the pie. Just like a slapstick movie, she watched it fall in slow motion, smack, through the doorway and onto the middle of the table. Pieces of it fell from the pie plate into the turkey, potatoes, and beets, and one chunk landed unobtrusively in Glenda’s hair. Her mother-in-law was staring at her, absolutely shocked, so Sallie decided not to mention it. She just lay on the floor and contemplated sleep.

“Well, thank you for dinner,” Eric said later as they walked to the front door.

“Yes. It was an…experience,” Glenda stated flatly. “Let’s have it at our house next year, shall we?” Then, in a mutter, “and the next year, and the next, and the next….”

Well, Sallie thought, I know what I’ll be giving thanks for next year.