Jenny smiles as if to soften her insult. “Grief is a pathological condition. It’s just that so many of us go through it in life that we never think to treat it as such. We just expect people to go through it, endure it, and come out the other side.”
The sun pours through the window and lands in a puddle just beyond Jenny’s feet. She kicks off her shoes and stretches her naked toes into the sunlight. It reminds me of Lily, who makes a catlike effort to find whatever sun she can to nap in. It’s not uncommon for me to find her with just her hind legs resting in her bed, the rest of her body stretched across the sun-warmed linoleum.
I think of the Valium and Vicodin that have sometimes been my sunshine; my desire to crawl into their warming rays. “Fine. I’m grieving. Maybe you can write me a prescription.”
Unfortunately, Jenny knows my fears about addiction (we’ve covered that topic exhaustively) and doesn’t bite. “We’ll see.”
Maybe I, too, am suffering impairment from the presence of the octopus, seizures in reason. My thoughts of late have resembled those of a small child more than the thinking of a grown man: the magical rationalization of needing to be gone so the octopus can leave; my desire to be intimidating, bigger than I am, to have the hurricane in me; the need to express everything in a tantrum.
“What do you think of when you think of mourning?” Jenny asks. The question snaps me back to attention.
I answer without really thinking. “I guess ‘Funeral Blues’ by W. H. Auden. I think it was Auden. I suppose that’s not very original.”
“I don’t know it.”
“It’s a poem.”
“I gathered.”
“I’m just clarifying. It’s not a blues album.”
Jenny ignores my swipe at her intelligence. “Does your response need to be original? Isn’t that what poetry is for? For the poet to express something so personal that it ultimately is universal?”
I shrug. Who is Jenny, even New Jenny, to say what poetry is for? Who am I, for that matter?
“Why do you think of that poem in particular?”
“ ‘Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone; Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone; Silence the pianos and with muffled drum; Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.’ ” I learned the poem in college and it stuck.
Jenny savors these words like she’s testing a bottle of wine before saying, “Not inappropriate.”
And this is where Old Jenny returns. This is where her observations are all wrong; this is where she’s a nightmare as a therapist. It is inappropriate. It does not fit the situation or merit consideration in the context of our discussion, mostly for one glaring reason: Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone.
I can feel another tantrum rising inside me.
“It’s inappropriate if it’s the dog you are mourning!”
Sunday
The frozen turkey lands with a thud in the sink and it startles Lily awake. “Keep it down! Jeez.” Lily hates to be interrupted from a good nap.
I hadn’t intended to buy a frozen turkey, or a turkey at all, for that matter, but it’s hard to find a fresh turkey in June and I was desperate to prove I’m not grieving. What better way to demonstrate I’m not suffering a pathological condition than to throw a celebration, in particular a celebration for everything we have to be thankful for? And nothing accompanies the giving of thanks better than turkey. And stuffing. And gravy. And mashed potatoes. And squash. It wasn’t until checking out at the grocery store and the looks I got from the cashier that I realized that cooking a full Thanksgiving dinner in June was in fact its own form of derangement.
“Is that Tofurky?” Lily has risen from her bed and sits at my feet by the sink.
“Yes, it is. We’re having Tofurky.” Years ago I flirted with vegetarianism, and one year went so far as to make a Thanksgiving Tofurky. When Lily asked for turkey, I told her we didn’t have any turkey but that we had Tofurky, and when I gave it to her she gobbled it up just the same. The gravy wasn’t quite vegetarian, and her feelings pretty much fell in line with mine: smother anything in enough stuffing, potato, butter, and gravy and it’s pretty damned good. Since then she’s called all turkey Tofurky, and the way she says it is so unbearably cute I haven’t had the heart to correct her.
“Tonight we are going to feast.”
OH! BOY! TOFURKY! IS! MY! ABSOLUTE! FAVORITE! I! COULD! EAT! ALL! OF! THE! TOFURKYS! JUST! GOBBLE! THEM! UP!
Lily is now fully awake. She places a paw on my foot.
“If I can only figure out how to defrost this motherfucker.” The turkey just about fills the sink.
Lily gives the microwave a sideways glance and I get as far as trying to shove the damned thing in before realizing there’s no way an eighteen-pound turkey is going to fit in a standard convection microwave.
OR! WE! CAN! EAT! IT! FROZEN! LIKE! ICE CREAM!
“Tofurky is not good frozen like ice cream.” I look down at Lily, who looks up at me. She’s anxious for me to fix this. “Warm water bath it is!” Lily starts to retreat. “For the Tofurky,” I tell her. “Not for you.”