“Generally orange or lime, Jell-o is the one item, besides tension, that’s always plentiful at the Thanksgiving table.” A profoundly relatable short story to those whose holiday feasts are served with a side of judgement and contention…
by: Michael Propsom
11/27/69
Aunt Ruth sashays into the dining room, bearing a platter of baked chicken. It’s a pathetic discount bird — incomplete by a wing and a drum. The little double amputee is so scrawny I suspect it succumbed not to the butcher’s axe but rather malnutrition. Still, Ruth parades it around with all the ceremony befitting a fatted calf. She sets the platter on the dining table, further disfigures the deficient cadaver with a carving knife of dubious sharpness, and then sets to her annual serving ritual.
“Oh, Ruth,” my mother coos when her sister rations out a few forkfuls of breast meat to her. “You shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble.”
“Seeing everyone enjoy the fruits of my labors makes all the effort worthwhile.” Ruth moves alongside my chair and tilts the platter. The lone drumstick rolls onto my plate.
Mother gives me a look. “Beth, what do you say?”
“Thanks.”
Ruth subjects me to that smile of hers. “Don’t mention it, dear.”
Without Mother’s prompting, I wouldn’t have. I’m Ruth’s only niece; she’s my only aunt. I suspect we both feel short-changed on that front, especially during the holidays.
Aunt Ruth had returned to Milwaukee from St. Paul in 1966, the middle of my junior year at Casimir Pulaski High. Claiming a “deep and abiding” need for family support after her failed engagement, she moved in with us and promptly appropriated my room. “It’s only temporary,” Mother had promised. “Ruth will move out as soon as she recovers from the trauma.”
She appeared sufficiently recovered within a month. Yet, the night before I left for college, the living room still served as my bedroom.
“You know, it just dawned on me,” Ruth says. “This is the same last dinner I fixed for that scum ex-fiancé of mine.”
Although she professes to be over Porter Sim, Ruth displays an uncanny talent for inserting him into conversations. And, while she always prefaces his name with “low-life pig,” “that trash,” or a similar term of endearment, she insisted on an extension phone in my former bedroom in case he calls.
Rather than wait to be served, Dad spears a mutilated thigh and transfers it to his plate. She taps the platter with her serving fork. “Well?”
My father appears to feign ignorance. “Well, what?”
She looks at my mother. “His manners don’t improve during the holidays.”
Mother clears her throat. “What do you say, Al?”
“I say it looks like it could snow tonight.”
Mother glares at him until he relents. “Mooch ass grassy ass.”
Ruth makes a four-star production of putting on Thanksgiving dinner. For the rest of the year, she bellies up to the trough without contributing as much as a foot of dental floss.
My aunt takes her place at one end of the table before and initiates the traditional clockwise passing of side dishes: mashed potatoes, short on milk, long on lumps — gravy, a greasy sludge made from unskimmed pan drippings — desiccated stuffing that’s more of a celery, giblet jerky/crouton salad — the ubiquitous cranberry sauce — and lastly a few ounces of fruit cocktail entombed in the Jell-o du jour. Generally orange or lime, Jell-o is the one item, besides tension, that’s always plentiful at the Thanksgiving table.
Ruth dollops a tablespoon of cranberry sauce onto her plate and cautions, “Don’t eat too much now. Leave room for dessert.”
Dessert. Ruth’s annual lemon spice cake — a confection whose sweetness is inversely proportional to the current price of sugar. Over time, she’s developed an elaborate ritual for preparing her creation, lining up the ingredients on the kitchen counter, theatrically measuring and remeasuring them while giving a running commentary. Then, from the moment she slides the batter into the oven until the finished product hits the cooling rack, she insists we all tip-toe around as though the Christ child Himself was napping on the kitchen counter.
Ruth picks up an empty bowl and starts for the kitchen. “After Grace, I’ll tell you what Mr. Lindquist discovered.”
Ruth is close-fisted with everything except for the ongoing study of her ancestors. I wonder if every clan has an Aunt Ruth or Miss Havisham in their family tree. I envision that particular branch as withered, twisted, and capable of bearing no fruit but a bumper crop of nuts.
Mr. Lindquist, her genealogist, is a person of debatable integrity. Every time she writes him a check, the family tree sprouts another lofty limb. Last summer, she announced, “My genealogist has traced my lineage way back to King Richard.” Then she donned her reading specs and began reciting a pedigree that included earls, dukes, viscounts, and sundry nobility that Lindquist had figuratively exhumed.
The recitation unceremoniously ended when Dad interrupted with, “No surprise that there’s a king in your background. You being such a royal pain in the ass.”
When Ruth returns and takes her place at the head of the table, Mother says, “Ruth, would you lead us in grace since you’ve put on this feast?”
Feast? It looks more like the Cratchit dinner table before Scrooge’s epiphany.
My aunt bows her head and intones, “Our Heavenly Father—”
“Wait a minute,” Dad says. “There’s no yams. Where’s the goddamn yams?”
Ruth glares over her folded hands. “I didn’t buy any.”
“What the hell is Thanksgiving without goddamn yams?”
“They didn’t look good this year, did they, Genevieve?” Ruth looks at my mother, her eyes relaying a shrouded threat. Ruth is her senior by barely one year, but she’s always treated Mother like a child rather than a sibling.
“Genevieve?”
“Ruth—Ruth is right,” my mother stammers. “They didn’t look good.”
“Not at a whole 15 cents a pound,” I mumble.
“What was that, young lady?” Ruth snaps.
“I said, ‘Here, Dad, take my carrots.'” I pass my plate to Dad. “They sort of yam-like. And with enough butter, who could tell the difference?” Dad hesitates, but I shove the plate closer. “Take them. It’s no sacrifice. Really.”
Dad shrugs and transfers them onto his plate. “No sense letting them go to waste.”
I’m grateful he accepted them. Ruth cooks the soul and substance out of carrots until they nearly ooze between the tines of the fork.
Ruth clicks her tongue as Dad returns my plate. “Beth, it wouldn’t take much effort for you to make those nails look decent.”
My shame passes in a heartbeat, but my rage smolders. Ruth is an artesian wellspring of unsolicited opinions, many of which call attention to my physical or personality shortcomings. And she has no leeway to judge. Her hair is still done up in the same pin curls she sported for her senior yearbook photo in ’44. The only difference is the white roots that appear between salon visits. And I’ve always wondered where in 1970 she finds those dresses. Nobody’s worn shoulder pads that huge since the Andrews Sisters developed a fashion sense.
Our yam crisis averted, Ruth recites our traditional family grace in a mechanical monotone. After we close with a nearly-unison “Amen,” I lift my fork and set to the ordeal of eating.
Ruth passes a bite of chicken beneath her nose and inhales so deeply I expect it to off the fork and lodge in a nostril. “This smells exquisite if I do say so myself.”
Mother swallows quickly, adding, “And it tastes exquisite.”
“I’ve always preferred chicken,” Ruth continues. “Turkeys always get so dry and tough.”
And expensive.
We eat in near silence for a few minutes, the only sound being the dull clunk of forks against the Melmac dinnerware and Mother’s occasional nugget of praise.
Ruth sets down her fork. “I played along with Concentration on TV this morning.” She picks up her napkin and dabs at the corners of her mouth with a practiced flair. “I won over two thousand dollars in merchandise, including a dishwasher and a trip to Hawaii.”
“You should’ve traded the dishwasher for some goddamned yams,” Dad grumbles.
The bad blood between these two flows hot and deep. Ruth set the tone for their relationship on my parents’ wedding day when she told my mother, conveniently within earshot of Dad, “I can’t believe you’re mixing our pure English blood with that of a coarse Polack. And a mechanic, at that.”
“Everything is so good,” Mother says. “But I think the chicken is the best. Al, what do you like best?”
“I think the old gal did a good job on the cranberry sauce,” he replies. “You can really screw it up if you open the wrong end of the can.”
I chuckle and volunteer, “I like the carrots the best.”
“Beth, I’d like to hear about school.” Good old Mom, always trying to avert conflict. “Are you enjoying your classes, honey?”
“Social work doesn’t seem a good fit for me. I might transfer to nursing.”
“Nursing?” Aunt Ruth rolls her eyes like a silent-screen starlet. “What kind of man are you going to find in nursing school? Some limp-wristed fairy with more interest in men than women, that’s what kind.”
“Maybe she’ll meet a nice doctor,” my mother says
Ruth shakes her head. I brace for the inevitable. “Genevieve, look at her,” she says as though I’m not present. “It’s not that she isn’t pretty, in her own way—.“ Ruth habitually cloaks her open-ended criticisms beneath a veil of double negatives.
“Dad says I get my looks from you, Auntie.”
The muscles tighten along Ruth’s throat. I feel a renewed gratitude for my scalpel-tongued dormmate, Sarah Freeman, who has tutored me in the art of the comeback.
“No offense, Beth,” Ruth says. “You aren’t pretty enough to get a real professional, like a doctor or a lawyer.” She turns to my mother. “Of course, she’d have to do something about her posture and that hair.”
“Maybe I can snatch a CPA who comes in for an appendectomy,” I say. Dad laughs. Ruth turns red. “Anyway, I’m seeing someone.”
My mother leans toward me. “Really? What’s his name?”
“What does he do?” Dad asks.
“I’ll bet he isn’t a doctor,” Aunt Ruth says.
My father’s eyes narrow. “It isn’t that horse’s ass, Kirby Johnson, is it?”
“It’s someone you already know. That’s all I’m saying.”
My aunt stabs a piece of chicken. “I’m not playing childish guessing games while the food gets cold.”
Mother gives my arm a gentle squeeze. “I’m happy for you.”
“So am I, honey,” Dad says. “We don’t need another old maid around here.”
Ruth stops in mid-chew. “Just what do you mean by that?”
I take up Dad’s cue. “He means it’s sad for someone to spend her twilight years bitter and alone. No offense.”
She wags a finger at me. “Don’t get smart with your elders.”
“Especially somebody as elder as her,” Dad chimes in.
Ruth glares at him. “Well, I never.”
Father snorts. “Maybe that’s why Porter left you.”
Ruth throws her napkin. “You’re both horrible!” She brings a hand to her mouth and runs sobbing into the kitchen.
Mother rises slowly. “Really, Al?” She sounds tired. “On Thanksgiving?” She heads toward the kitchen.
I put a hand to my forehead and whisper in my best Blanche DuBois. “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.”
Dad chuckles. “And the money of relatives.”
During my high school years, his crude jokes embarrassed me. On the rare occasions we dined out as a family, I could barely eat for fear a classmate would see me with him. But over the past two years, he’s become an unexpected and reliable ally.
The kitchen phone rings, and my aunt stops sobbing. I hear Mother say, “And happy Thanksgiving to you, Ann. Yes, I’ll get her. Beth,” she calls. “It’s your friend, Ann Novotny.”
“That little bitch doesn’t deserve to talk to anyone,” Ruth croaks, and she resumes wailing with renewed enthusiasm.
I bound upstairs, two steps at a time to take the call. For the first time, I’m grateful that my aunt had an extension phone installed. I jump onto Ruth’s frilly canopy bed, rub my shoes on the bedspread, and grab the phone. Before I can say hello, Mother cautions me, “Don’t talk too long, dear. Ruth is expecting a call.”
I wait for the reassuring click of the downstairs phone, then lift the handset. “Ann?”
“Hey, hon.” Hearing her voice is like slipping into a warm tub. “How’s the wicked bitch of the Midwest.?”
“A dozen flying monkeys short of a squadron. But evil as ever.”
“That bad?”
I issue a melodramatic sigh. “Auntie dearest is on a crying jag at the moment.”
“Your old man punch her out?”
I laugh. “No such luck.”
We gab on, the content of our conversation unimportant compared with my reaction to the little endearments she interjects. It’s that same low-voltage shudder I felt the night our first kiss validated my attraction to a woman.
“Beth,” she whispers, “I’m lying beside you.”
I feel a hitch in my breath. “And?”
“I’m kissing your throat.”
I pop the snap on my jeans.
“My right hand slides down to your waist.”
The risk of a phone fantasy with my family just downstairs feels strangely exciting. And the prospect of deflowering my aunt’s virgin, four-poster bed ups the erotic ante.
“Beth.” My mother’s voice carries an urgency that I can’t ignore. “Come down for dessert.”
Damn! “Time to partake of Auntie Ruth’s infamous citrus pucker cake.”
Her parting words, “I miss you,” wrap around me like an embrace.
Before rejoining the family, I scan the contents of my former bedroom. Ruth’s appropriation is complete. The canopy bed with its pink chenille bedspread and too many pillows is just the beginning. Her vanity, nearly spilling over with makeup and movie magazines, matches the Pepto-pink bedspread, as do the curtains. It’s as though a menopausal Barbie decorated the place.
Mother is waiting on the bottom landing. “Beth, you were very rude to your aunt. I think you should apologize before eating dessert.”
I nearly blurt, “I’ll apologize if I don’t have to eat dessert.” But still warm in the afterglow of my phone call, I agree.
Ruth slouches in her chair, eyes downcast. Her tightly-drawn lips curl downward at the edges. She appears tired and shrunken — a target too insignificant at which to aim either anger or compassion.
“Ruth,” Mother says, “Beth is sorry she was so rude.”
My aunt continues to stare at the table. “I want her to say it.”
“Aunt Ruth, I’m sorry that I was so rude.”
“You should be. You hurt me very badly.”
I sit down across from her. “I won’t do it again, dear.”
She scrutinizes me with red, puffy eyes. Her cheeks brighten with the flush of mistaken victory. She gives a barely perceptible nod. “Very well. You may have dessert.”
A mercifully small wedge of cake already lies on my plate. Lemon spice with vanilla icing is the only dessert Aunt Ruth ever makes. I can’t say whether lack of imagination or fear of failure prevents her from attempting a pie, torte — at least a different frosting.
At first bite, my mouth nearly implodes. Apparently, sugar is even more expensive than yams this season. I shoot my aunt a saccharine smile. “Mmm. You’ve really outdone yourself this time.” My eyes lock with Dad’s, and we exchange conspiratorial smiles.
Michael Propsom’s work has appeared in various publications including The Saturday Evening Post online, Berkeley Fiction Review, Isele Magazine, and Tampa Review.
