The Thanksgiving I Did Not Cook

Garth came back at twelve-thirty with seven rotisserie chickens, a tub of mashed potatoes, and a gas station pie. They laid the chickens out on Mavis’s good china. Mavis said nobody was to say a word. Opal had been called away, a family matter, and they would keep the guests happy with wine.

“We have wine,” Garth said hopefully, and then remembered that he had never opened it.

At one o’clock sharp, the doorbell rang.

They came in a wave. Judd told me it was like watching the Chamber of Commerce roll in off a bus. The Rotary treasurer, with a wife who carried a covered dish nobody had asked for. The church council, in their good coats. Two couples from the country club in Macon. The man who ran the county fair. Ivan Upton, fifty, big and gray at the temples, in a camel sport coat, holding his wife’s elbow. Roxanne Upton, tall, in a green wool dress, with the kind of calm that makes other people nervous. Thirty guests in all, plus the Thorpes. Thirty-two people, in a dining room with thirty-two gold-rimmed plates.

And a kitchen that smelled like nothing.

“Mavis,” said Roxanne Upton, taking off her gloves. “Where is Opal? I want to tell her the casserole last year was the best thing I put in my mouth all season.”

“She’s been called away,” Mavis said, brightly. “A little family matter. Garth, the wine.”

Garth went for the corkscrew, which was where I had left it, beside the frozen turkey. A few guests, drifting toward the kitchen with drinks, saw the platter. They saw the electric carving knife. They saw the black marker on the back of the page.

Roxanne was the first to read it.

Judd said she did not read it out loud. She read it with her lips pressed together, and then she turned it over, and looked at the front, at the typed list with thirty names and an entire dinner assigned, and she read that too. And then she turned and looked down the length of the table at the empty plates.

“Garth,” she said. Her voice was perfectly mild. “Explain.”

“It’s nothing,” Garth said. “She’s been under some stress. Women get a little, you know. She’s overreacting.”

“To what?”

“To a dinner. Mama just asked her to host, and she’s, she is a very capable person, and she gets in her head.”

“A dinner for thirty-two,” said Roxanne.

“Yes.”

“By herself.”

Garth looked at his mother. His mother looked at the ceiling.

“Well,” Garth said. “I was going to carve.”

The Rotary treasurer, a large, kind man with a drooping mustache, set down his wine glass. Nobody laughed. Judd said he could hear the old clock in the front hall.

Ivan Upton had said nothing yet. He was standing by the sideboard with his hands in his coat pockets, and Judd said that he was looking at his sales manager, the way a man looks at an engine that is making a noise he doesn’t like. Finally he said, “Garth. How many Thanksgivings has your wife cooked in this house?”

“Five.”

“For how many people?”

“It varies.”

“Who did the dishes?”

“She, ah.” Garth cleared his throat. “She likes to, she likes things a certain way.”

“I asked a simple question.”

“She did,” Garth said.

“Who carved the turkey?”