The man didn’t look any more enlightened as to George’s identity. George went on, “She, um, Lizzie invited me for Thanksgiving dinner.” He looked around. Why wasn’t Lizzie coming to his rescue, either by assuring her father that George was who he said he was or by unburdening him of Elaine’s gifts and the wine, which together were growing increasingly heavy?
Ah, there she was, dashing down the stairs. “Mendel, this is George,” she said. “George, Mendel.” Mendel finally nodded, and George nodded back, feeling ridiculous. Lizzie took him into the kitchen and lined up everything he’d brought on a counter.
“Wow, this is all from you?”
“Well, my mom sent it for you and your parents.”
Lizzie shook her head. “Totally unnecessary. But awfully nice of your mom.”
She poured them each a glass of wine. “Listen,” she began. “About the food . . .” but he didn’t hear what she said next because—at no signal that George detected—everyone around them suddenly rushed into the dining room, took a plate, and lined up at the buffet tables, which were crowded with an array of food. George was swept along with the crowd. He lost sight of Lizzie momentarily.
It was hard to know what to choose. He wished he knew what Lizzie was going to say. What was it about the food that she wanted to tell him? He wished he’d grabbed hold of Lizzie’s hand and held on tight. She was still nowhere to be seen. George sighed. He took a piece of turkey and ladled some stuffing on top of it, then poured gravy over it all. His plate still looked pretty barren. He added some mashed potatoes and then couldn’t resist taking a square of lasagna as well. The lemon-yellow Jell-O salad filled with miniature marshmallows and canned fruit cocktail precipitated a wave of nostalgia for his childhood. When he visited his grandparents in Stillwater the dinners would always include Jell-O salad of one flavor or another. But whatever the flavor, the Jell-O would be filled with miniature marshmallows and canned fruit cocktail. He hadn’t had it for years. He took a large helping.
While he was scoping out the dessert table, there, finally, was Lizzie, making her way toward him, carrying a plate that was empty except for a few carrot sticks and pieces of celery.
“Is that all you’re eating?”
“Didn’t you hear what I said about the food?”
“No, I was dragged away by the screaming starving hordes of your parents’ friends.”
“What I said was that the food’s basically inedible, no matter who made it or what it is.”
“All of it? Really?” He indicated the Jell-O, which he was dying to sample. “And what about the desserts?”
“All of it,” she said firmly, “except maybe the desserts.”
“Okay, can we go check out the desserts? And can I just taste the Jell-O? I’m pretty sure nobody could possibly ruin that.”
“With this crowd you can never be sure of anything. You should hear some of my Bultmann family Thanksgiving food stories. The trips to the emergency room at St. Joseph’s, the failed Heimlich maneuvers to dislodge an errant turkey bone. The fight to the death over the last chocolate brownie on the tray.”
“You’re very funny, Lizzie,” George said.
“I am, it’s true. Not many people know that about me, though.”
“Despite your warnings, I’m going to try some of the desserts.”
“I suppose lots of people have remarked on what a good eater you are,” Lizzie surmised.
“My Montreal grandmother loved it when we visited because between me and Todd she didn’t have leftovers. The human garbage disposals, she called us.” George laughed.
Rather than share a table with other people, they ended up sitting on the stairs. Lizzie crunched on her carrots moodily, and George carefully tried little bits of everything he’d taken. The Jell-O was disappointingly, cloyingly sweet. And the fruit cocktail didn’t really taste like fruit. It didn’t taste like anything at all. How disillusioning. Was this what becoming an adult meant? That you pulled aside a curtain and saw a sad truth you hadn’t understood before? He was grateful that the brownie was delicious, though. He moved up a stair to sit next to Lizzie and put his arm around her.
They left right after dinner. George wanted to say good-bye to the Bultmanns but they seemed to have disappeared. “Don’t worry about it, George,” Lizzie said. “Let’s just go. They wouldn’t care either way.”
George was unconvinced but tried not to worry about it.
“Awful, wasn’t it,” Lizzie said, not as a question.
“Yeah, it was a little odd, I guess. Just like James said.”
“You’re too nice, George, do you know that?”
“My brother once accused me of the same thing, actually. But I didn’t agree with him. I like being nice. So, no, it wasn’t awful, it was just . . . weird.”
Lizzie sighed. “They’re just not normal, you know. All they care about is their work. I don’t know why they put on this charade of celebration. Did you notice how all the hot food was actually cold?”
“Well, I guess that if it’s a buffet and you get your food and then sit down, things are often cold by the time you’re ready to eat it.”
“Marla’s mother has warming trays.”
“So does mine, actually,” George reluctantly admitted. “The desserts were good. But the turkey looked really undercooked.”
“Yeah, it was raw. It always is. I tried to warn you. I always pretend I’m a vegetarian at Thanksgiving. I wonder who brought the macaroni and cheese this year. It looked okay. God, I’m starving now. Are you hungry? I rescued the popcorn, the chocolates, a bottle of wine, and the cranberry bread. We can have a feast tonight.”
George laughed. “Do you think your father would even recognize me if he saw me again? And I never even met your mother. Damn, I really wanted to make a good impression on them. Aren’t they interested in who you’re dating?”
“Nope, never have been and never will. Sometimes that’s good and sometimes that’s bad.”
“My folks are so different,” George said. “If I brought a girl home for Thanksgiving, my mother would be all over her, grilling her, asking her what her parents did, what’s she studying, if she has brothers and sisters, her favorite books and movies—”
Lizzie interrupted him. “Your mother and I would have at least one thing in common: that we both love the movie Shag.”
“My mother would love you, Lizzie.”
“Really? Are you sure? Nobody’s mother loves me.”
George took her hand. “Elaine would be the exception that proves that rule.”
*?An Invitation?*
George was on call on Saturday after Thanksgiving, but he and Lizzie decided to take a chance and go see the Coen brothers’ new film, Barton Fink. As they walked back to George’s apartment, Lizzie congratulated him on not having to leave the theater and attend to someone’s emergency tooth issue.
“I would have thought that Thanksgiving was a prime time for disaster, especially with food like pecan pie.”