She immediately comes back. YES! DO! IT!
I slide the drain cover under the turkey and fill the sink with warm water. I have a Cook’s Illustrated magazine with an article entitled “Roasting the Big One” and I find it among a stack of never-read cookbooks. I don’t know why I have saved this, but the title has been responsible for several fits of adolescent giggles.
While the turkey defrosts, Lily and I set the table. As a kid I was always enchanted by the holiday tables my mother would set. How she had special tablecloths for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and how there was white china rimmed with gold that would magically appear in November. The budding homosexual in me would study the plates, turning them over and drinking in words like Wedgwood and bone and England. One year my mother even provided glass finger bowls on their own saucers, and Meredith and I dipped our fingers in them after the meal and before the dessert course. It all seemed so elegant to me, I wondered if we didn’t secretly descend from royalty on my mother’s side. I tried to coax her with my eyes to share with me our closet lineage (I could be trusted to keep the secret safe if we were in fact in hiding from some evil czar or queen!), but she never did. I remember thinking this is how I was going to eat every night when I was grown up. Of course, even though I inherited my aunt’s set of china after she passed away, this is rarely how I eat.
Our Thanksgivings usually consist of Lily sitting by my seat at the head of the table, anxiously licking her chops. Only when the humans have gorged themselves on seconds, and sometimes thirds, is she allowed her holiday meal, served in her supper dish on the kitchen floor. I always crouch beside her, holding her ears back and out of the way like a supportive college boyfriend holding back the hair of his vomiting sorority girl. It’s my favorite part of the holidays, if not the entire year. It’s almost like I can absorb the pure joy she radiates. This time, I pick her supper dish off the floor and set her a place at the table. The silverware and cloth napkin at her place setting will go untouched, but they bring symmetry to our table.
“Do you remember our first Thanksgiving together?” I ask Lily.
“Did we have Tofurky?” Lily asks.
“You, in fact, had a lot of Tofurky.”
That year after dinner, while others did the dishes and after most of the leftover meat had been carved off the carcass, I double-bagged what was left of the turkey, placed it with the other trash by the back door, and reset the table for dessert. Later that night, I found both bags chewed through and the carcass picked clean. It only took following a short trail of greasy paw prints to find Lily under the kitchen table, engorged to nearly twice her normal size. She looked up at me, still licking her oily face. PUNISH! ME! IF! YOU! MUST! BUT! IT! WAS! WORTH! IT!
When I finish telling this story to Lily she laughs and says, “That was my favorite Thanksgiving.”
“It was not your favorite day-after-Thanksgiving.”
Lily thinks about this and delivers a flat, “Oh, yeah.” Ever since then I’ve boiled the carcass for soup.
“Roasting the Big One” suggests cooking the bird breast side down for one hour at 425 degrees to crisp the skin and seal in the juices before lowering the temperature to 325 degrees and flipping the bird breast side up until the turkey registers 165 on a meat thermometer. Overall, this should make the cooking time between four and five hours.
The oven radiates a lot of heat on this already warm summer day, and Lily and I nap between bastings to escape from it. We don’t have a lot of other Thanksgiving activities, so I play my DVD of Home for the Holidays starring Holly Hunter. Halfway through the movie, I have to start peeling vegetables. I let the movie run for Lily while I get on with preparing the meal.
Trent arrives around five.
“Wow. It smells great in here. Did you make pumpkin bread?”
“No,” I reply, annoyed. What with the turkey, the stuffing, the potatoes, the squash, the gravy, and the green beans, I didn’t have time to make pumpkin bread.
“It’s not really Thanksgiving without pumpkin bread.” Trent pouts.
“It’s not really Thanksgiving at all.”
Trent uncovers the pot containing the mashed potatoes and sticks his finger in. He scoops up a mouthful with his index finger and tells me they need more butter. “What else am I tasting?”
“In the potatoes?”
He nods.
“Nutmeg.” It’s my secret ingredient.
Trent goes to the fridge and grabs himself a beer. “Can I see the octopus?”
“Lily’s in the living room. But, hey”—I grab Trent by the elbow—“let’s not mention him again tonight.”