The Family Dinner

The table was set for the first time in what seemed like forever. Mrs. Lena Halloway was particularly jovial at the prospect of her family being reunited for the Thanksgiving holiday, imagining their smiling faces seated all around as she laid each plate on the white tablecloth she impulse-purchased the previous day. Her two children, Dean and Abby, had been away at their respective colleges on opposite sides of the country—the former at University of Washington and the latter in her first semester of graduate studies at New York University. She, like most mothers, was unconditionally proud of her kids for seeking post-secondary education and as each fork and knife was placed her mind teemed with what they would contribute to the world one day. Abby was always one to gush over the phone regarding her latest accomplishments, ranging from the outstanding grades on everything she did to the artifacts she would uncover on the latest archaeological dig. Her bedroom, akin to the abandoned Mayan cities she bushwhacked through a month before, was as she had left it last: trophies, certificates, and golden plaques dotted the walls and sat atop her dresser as testaments of her productive and successful childhood. Dean, however, was a different story. His room exhibited a lesser degree of success. A small plastic trophy denoting his acting in high school sat idly and alone on his desk, with various awards for his artwork scattered about and stuffed in folders—undisplayed, unhonored. Lena had them framed and hung up around the room the last two times Dean had returned home, but each time he carefully removed them and returned them to their hiding spots.

The humility Dean expressed with regard to his creative talents struck Lena as odd, but she never questioned her quiet, thoughtful, and youngest child’s motives. She only put the honors back up on the wall hoping to herself that maybe this time would be different. While she loved him dearly, Dean could be at times a frustrating young man. Phone calls home were rare and his voice through the receiver always possessed a certain level of uncertainty and anxiety. She would ask if he was doing alright when she picked up on this timbre, but the answer was always either I’m fine, mom or a semi-garbled no, no, I’m just tired. Although she doubted the credibility of these responses she made no effort to pry into her son’s personal life— prior attempts to do so yielded a torrent of labyrinthine replies. Introverted artists are just like that, she concluded post-conversation.

As she finished with her grand setup, she stepped back a few paces and surveyed the placement of all the glasses and silverware. She paced back and forth a couple times between this spot and the dinner table, making minor adjustments. This year’s dinner will be perfect, she thought to herself, clasping her hands together in pride. The bliss eventually receded and she strolled into the living room searching for her husband, Aaron. It was six o’clock on Tuesday night and the kids weren’t expected until Thanksgiving afternoon that Thursday, so she imagined he’d be watching college basketball or smoking a cigar in his office. He was in neither place. She didn’t remember him saying anything about needing to be anywhere that evening; a worried look grew with weight from the corners of her lips. Lena returned to the kitchen where her cell phone had been charging and checked for any messages. He had left her none.

“Where could he be?” Lena finally said under her breath, snapping her thumb up and down the smooth glass screen searching through messages and call logs. Coming up empty, she decided to call him—it went straight to voicemail. She sighed and set the phone back down, leaving the brightly-lit kitchen for the living room to take advantage of the vacancy of the couch and television. She flipped through a series of channels before landing on a home remodeling reality show and was lulled to sleep by the dulcet tones of interior decorating. Some time passed and the slam of the garage door roused her from her sleep. She craned her neck groggily from her comfortable position and peered at the clock behind her resting on the mantlepiece. Ten o’clock? What could he have been doing? The answer came without her having to ask—the ruffling of plastic bags in the kitchen told her he had been out getting food to prepare for tomorrow. But why so late? There wasn’t the timely chime of a bag of groceries that could answer that for her, too. Lena’s brain gave the order to get off the couch and greet her husband.

“Hey,” she said brightly, rounding the corner and entering the room. Aaron had his back turned putting groceries away, and upon hearing her voice turned around, held her by the sides, and kissed her.

“Where have you been?” was the first thing she asked, even though the evidence was being put in the pantry. She just wanted the reassurance of him saying it.

“Oh—my phone died some time ago. Jerry and Drake at the office wanted to take me out for a few drinks in the city to watch the Wisconsin game…I had completely forgotten I needed to run by the store and pick up a few things for tomorrow.” he confessed. Lena was satisfied with his answer. Aaron’s salt-and-pepper balding crown, weight around the waist, and a general lack of charisma were all a part of an unspoken safety guarantee Lena enjoyed, knowing that no one was about to seduce him anytime soon and vice versa. She stepped by his side and helped put away groceries. Like any marriage, it had its troubles every now and then, but there was no reason to suspect an affair. She asked him about the basketball game.

“Oh, it was great. Wisconsin is always a fun team to watch, especially on their home court. Beat the Billikens 83-65,” he chirped enthusiastically. He went on at length about the various players and how they performed, but Lena hardly understood any of the jargon. Asking for specifics, like what happened at a sporting event, is a great way to draw out a liar. A prevaricator wouldn’t be able to read off the box score from memory. With the last groceries put away, the couple left to get ready for bed. Both of them had the day before Thanksgiving off to make all the necessary preparations—a day filled with cooking of nearly every kind. Although much of her day would go towards this process, she loved every second of it, as it meant spending more time with Aaron making all the food.

The next morning Lena awoke to an empty bed. Aaron must have gotten up early. She rolled over in her bedsheets and forced her heavy eyelids open—silently thanking herself for remembering to turn off the alarm. It wasn’t every day that she got to sleep in until almost eleven o’clock. Arising from the warmth of her down blanket and Egyptian cotton sheets she performed the daily ritual of showering, grooming, and dressing, catching various scents lofting from the kitchen as Aaron labored. He was an excellent cook—the holidays were often an exhibition for his chef-like prowess.

“How do you not have your own restaurant by now?” Lena doted as she stepped into the kitchen, the aroma of the luscious foodstuffs filling the space and gently wafting up her nose. Focusing on his craft, he responded by chuckling. He was stationed at the stove, stirring a pot of something. She approached him from behind and wrapped her arms around his waist. “What are you making?” she whispered, kissing him on the cheek.

“I thought I’d give this new casserole recipe a shot,” Aaron proudly declared.

“What kind?” Lena said, peering over her husband’s shoulder into the vat of spices, meat, and sauce. “You made that green bean casserole last Christmas that was simply fantastic,” she remembered. Aaron beamed.

“I found one for a kind of beef bourguignon. You know, kind of like how Julia Child would make it,” his tone echoed with confidence. He pointed at a bottle of Chianti sitting on the counter perpendicular to the stove just out of his reach. Lena thoughtfully picked up the bottle for him and glanced at the label.

“This is our vintage 1995 riserva, are we sure we want to use that?” she asked, handing him the bottle.

Aaron smiled. “We might as well. It’s a good year and the thing’ll only gather more dust in the rack downstairs.” He uncorked the bottle and felt the stopper for any indication the wine had gone bad before pouring a bit into the pot. He turned his attention to his wife again.

“Say, could you check on the turkey, hon? The fridge has been acting up lately and I’d hate for it to spoil before I can even cook it.” Lena nodded and opened the fridge. The cool air rolled out like fumes. “Looks alright to me. When did you put it in?” she said, prodding it with her finger. “Oh, no more than an hour ago. Should be thawed by tomorrow and cooked by dinnertime.”

Lena opened the freezer out of curiosity. Her hands grazed the butcher’s bags nestled in the narrow, frozen rows. “You sure bought a lot of meat, dear.,” she laughed. “Are we planning on using all of this for tomorrow? It’s just going to be the four of us this year, you know.”

“No, not all of it,” he responded with a grin, shaking his head but maintaining his focus on his concoction. “There was a huge sale at the market. Figured I may as well stock up. After all, Christmas is around the corner.” Lena thought it was odd the grocery store would have such a sale two days before Thanksgiving, but as always, she never questioned her husband’s honesty. “Had to fight an old man off with a stick for that beef clod in the back,” he added with a chuckle. Lena returned the laugh and strolled through the kitchen’s aisle between the island and pantry. “Is there anything I can do to help? Seems like you’ve already taken care of most of the hard work…” she said with a tinge of disappointment. Aaron picked up on the tone and his face mirrored hers, but he began to smile. “No, sorry. I think the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving special is on if you want to turn that on, I’m just about finished here with the Burgundy.” He planted a kiss on her forehead and sent her on her way to the living room. She was sad that she didn’t get the day full of hustle-and-bustle in the kitchen like wanted, but on the other hand she hadn’t experienced what she considered a lazy day in ages. The television flickered on and the familiar sight of the Peanuts characters appeared on the screen. In about an hour she and Aaron were laying on the couch together, nothing left but to mindlessly cuddle, watch whatever was on, and wait for their children to arrive the next day.

It was a quarter until noon on Thanksgiving Day when the front door swung open to the battering ram of a pink suitcase. Abby’s greeting holler reverberated around the house and summoned her parents toward her with bear hugs and kisses. Cute, quick exchanges of how much they missed one another were had and all the excitement was evident on each others’ faces, the wrinkles beside their six collective eyes indicative of genuine happiness. They coaxed Abby into going upstairs to put her things away and get all settled in. With Abby upstairs in her room, the couple waited eagerly for the last piece of the puzzle to come through the door.

Two hours passed before the black bags quietly forced the front door open, and the puppy-dog-eyed Dean wandered in without a sound. The lack of fanfare upon his arrival didn’t exactly stir his parents from their locations, but once his mother noticed him standing awkwardly in the front hallway she greeted him with a tight embrace. Aaron was less enthusiastic of his arrival with the strange side-arm patting grown men tend to give one another. Dean required less pampering at the front door and immediately proceeded up the staircase and into his bedroom. Lena could hear the sounds of the frames coming down almost immediately. She let forth a sigh.

After giving the kids a couple hours to nap and drain the jet-lag out of their bodies, Lena called up the stairs to announce that dinner was ready. Abby descended as soon as she heard her mother’s voice. Glancing at her and then back up the staircase, Lena yelled up the stairs at Dean, who likely had his headphones in. She groaned and went up the staircase, hung a right at the hallway, and knocked on the door.

“Dean,” she said calmly. “Dean, it’s time for dinner! We’ve got a lot of great food this year, your father—ʺ she paused. On the other side of the door the sounds of scrambling and clinking glass could be heard. Rolling her eyes, she grasped the doorknob and opened it. Dean still had the bong in his hands trying to disassemble the various fragile percolators attached to the base to stash them. Caught red-handed and red-eyed, he stared at his mother like a deer in headlights.

“Well, shit,” he quietly said, defeated. He set the water pipe down, his hands shaking as they cradled his head. His brown hair sat mottled and wet over his bony fingers. The pungent stench of marijuana began to leak out of his bathroom. His eyes darted towards the bathroom, then back at her. He tried to crack a grin. “Here? Really?” Lena said with her hands pressed against her hips. She didn’t quite have the fury Dean was expecting out of a parent who walked in on him taking what the hip, young, pot-smoking kids called a Jamaican shower. Fortunately for Lena, Dean at least threw some pants on.

“Listen,” she began. “I know weed is legal in Washington state and I don’t care that you partake in it, but it isn’t here in Kansas. This is my house. You will not smoke here. You will have to find somewhere else.” Dean nodded shamefully. “I just needed some to be able to talk to dad,” he whimpered.

“Whatever do you mean? Your father loves you,” she countered, confused by her son’s admission.

“Right,” Dean snarked. “If he loved me, then he would say it. I can’t even look him in the eye without knowing he’s disappointed in me. He can’t accept that I won’t follow in his footsteps and be a banker or a CFO of some bat-shit corporation stuck behind a desk until the day I drop dead.”

Lena sighed. “Please trust me, he doesn’t think about you that way at all, Dean. He’s very proud of you. He loves your artwork. Your poetry. Your writing. He even talks about you at the office.” Dean had inherited his mother’s gift of drawing out a liar. “What does he say about me? To people?” he asked, his words a series of strikingly deep bass notes. But Lena wasn’t lying. Aaron did talk about Dean. But she didn’t know what. She searched her thoughts for the answer but came up empty. She looked at Dean again. She attempted to change the subject. “I won’t tell your father about this because I know he’ll have a conniption.”

Dean nodded solemnly, but a smile stretched forth across his face regardless.

“Yeah,” he eventually gathered, beginning to walk out of the room. He produced a shirt out from his bag and quickly pulled it over his head as he moved toward the door.

“Dad gets to smoke cigars in his office and stink up the back half of the house, but fuck me for smoking something that can’t even harm me, right?” Lena pursed her lips and whirled around, catching Dean by the shoulder and flipped him to face her. His glassed-over eyes had the fear of God in them. “Your father pays for this house. He pays for you to be an artist five states away. Tobacco is legal. Marijuana isn’t. You are lucky I’m tolerant of the issue. If your father walked in here and not me you would be sitting in the back of a police car.” “Because he loves me, right?” Dean said coolly. His eyelids narrowed, the fear subsiding into defiance. Lena released him. There was no point in dragging this out. She followed him out of the room and the two made their way to the dining room where Aaron and Abby sat discussing politics. The latecomers took their seats and Aaron, Lena, and Abby bowed their heads in prayer. Dean, the lone atheist at the table, stared at his plate.

“Lord, we thank You for this bountiful feast that we are to eat tonight,” Aaron began. “We thank You for bringing our family together safe and sound for this holiday tradition, and we ask You to watch over our family in other parts of the country that could not be here today. We thank You for the gracious creatures You made and the fruits You grew that now sit upon our table. Lastly we thank You for leading our Kansas Jayhawks to a crushing victory over the Wake Forest Demon Deacons earlier today. May You guide Bill Self and his team of talented individuals to a national championship this year. Amen.” “Amen,” the other two Christians echoed.

Dean snorted. With all three pairs of hands still held palms together below their chins, their eyes shifted toward him. “What—“ he interjected. “You’re not even going to thank the migrant worker in California for picking the grapes? Or the farmer who had to wade through knee-deep developmentally abominable poultry? What about the families who aren’t eating this much food? Does Jesus hate them?”

“That’s enough, Dean,” Lena interrupted. Her son was beginning to get on her nerves and she had no intention of letting him continue to deteriorate her perfect vision of this dinner.

“I’m sorry,” he said politely enough. “It’s just—credit where credit is due, y’know? It’s just a little fucked up you’d thank God for food that people toiled over to mass-produce.” If he continued any further Aaron would have done something about it and there would be little chance Lena could defend her young skeptic. Thankfully for everyone present that was the last mention of religion at the table.

The dinner after that point went much more smoothly. Laughs were had, and stories were shared. Abby talked endlessly about her first time leading field work in Mexico, the hidden city she helped uncover in the jungle with local volunteers, and her team that she got to pick all by herself. She produced a volume of photos that she shared with the family of her exploits.

“That’s fantastic, honey! We’re so proud of you,” Aaron declared. His attention turned to Dean. “What have you been up to at school, sport? Any new…art?” Dean chewed his turkey a little slower, half ignoring the question and half being too stoned to notice. It wasn’t until his name was called that he jolted to attention.

“Oh, nothing much. To tell you the truth, I’ve been thinking about dropping out and joining a couple business major friends in their ventures,” he said nonchalantly. He was either brave or stupid.

The sound of silverware clanged on the plates. The family was aghast, and then appalled. Salvos of “are you fucking KIDDING me?” rang out from each member opposed to the idea. “What are your ‘friends’ even trying to do? What could you possibly accomplish in business without a degree?” Aaron demanded. Dean responded with an indifferent shrug. “I dunno, dad. We’ve been talking about getting together to buy land and start a pot farm. We have a ton of ideas and I have designs for devices and accessories that I could build with a 3-D printer that will change the face of the weed industry forever,” he proudly retorted. This was also the first discussion of cannabis the family had altogether. With the exception of Lena’s tolerance to the activity the others were staunchly opposed to the illicit plant. Particularly Aaron.

“So you want to throw away my money and your life to be a pothead out in some forest outside Seattle with all the other worthless hippies? Have you lost your damned mind?” Aaron howled. “That would make me happy, yes. Thank you for the support.” Dean said, without missing a beat. Lena sat frozen in place, her gaze fixed on the remainder of her beef bourguignon. Everything had begun to fall apart and there wasn’t a single thing she could do about it. As Abby spewed her credentials at Dean in a bizarre effort to convince him to stay at college, Aaron, red-faced, balled his fist and raised it to his mouth, shaking his head vigorously. Dean remained calm, collected, and adamant, never raising his voice once to meet his family’s objections. After making her case and surrendering, Abby clicked her tongue, rested her head on one hand, and let forth a deep sigh as she began to pick at her food. That argument may have been the first she had ever lost.

Aaron could no longer take being at the table and excused himself, huffing and puffing out of the dining room and threw himself down on the couch in the neighboring living room. The sound of the television could be heard where the rest of the family was sitting. As the scuffle of basketball shoes filled the vacuum of silence in the room, Dean looked at his mother and sister. Lena had been silently shedding tears into her fancy beef dish. His eyes began to well up too, staring at his lap.

“This is all my fault,” he admitted quietly. “I should never have said anything.”

No one said a word.

The roar of the crowd emanating from the other room was suddenly cut off.

“We interrupt tonight’s exciting matchup between UCLA and Nevada to bring you this breaking news,” a woman’s voice announced from the television. “Police are searching for a local man who has been reported missing over the last few days. The family of 71-year-old Howard Fulton says he has been missing perhaps as early as Monday and was not found in his home with no details of where he could have gone. Police have not issued a statement if they suspect foul play has been involved. We will bring you more coverage of this story as it unfolds. And now back to your Thanksgiving night basketball.”

Lena looked up and brushed away her tears. Abby was still working on her plate and Dean appeared to have little interest in continuing to eat.

“There’s pumpkin pie in the fridge and some ice cream if anyone would like some,” she said softly. She excused herself from the table and went to the kitchen to fetch the desserts that she knew would at least make her feel a little better. Cutting herself an impressive slice of pie, she moved toward the freezer to grab the tub of ice cream. Two of the butcher’s bags of Aaron’s binge-purchased discounted meat spilled ou7t and landed with a ktch-unk on the floor. Lena sighed and picked up the packages. Of course, the paper tore and the contents spilled out onto the floor. Laying before her was a pile of assorted chunks of bloody meat.

She sighed and grabbed a dustpan to gather and throw away the mess. As she scooped up the spill, a top row of ice-cold dentures fell out and broke into several pieces on the floor. One hand hovered trembling over the assorted broken false teeth that now laid scattered on the floor, the other covering her open mouth. She hesitantly approached the freezer containing the several other bags. She pulled one out and opened it. A half-pulverized eyeball gazed up at her. It is common knowledge that cows do not have blue human-like eyes.

Lena began to panic, but somehow managed to suppress her screaming. It all added up. The mysterious errands on Tuesday. The “sale” at the grocery store. Howard Fulton’s disappearance. Had to fight an old man off with a stick for that beef clod in the back, she remembered her husband saying…and laughing about. Abby and Dean came into the kitchen with their plates, their faces broadcasting a serious need for pie and ice cream. What they discovered, however, was their mother holding a bag with a murdered old man’s eyeball perched on the top with teeth littering the floor. The horrified children flocked to their shocked mother. They realized at the same time this meat was used in the beef bourguignon they had all eaten just hours before. Abby became violently ill and vomited in the sink. Dean did too, except he hadn’t the luxury of a proper place to puke.

With the initial shock of cannibalism beginning to wear off amongst the three horrified members of the Halloway family, the silhouette of Aaron stepped into the kitchen doorway with a plate in his hand, his face too demanding pie. Lena shielded the terrified Dean and Abby. Vomit and the entrails of the elderly coated the back of the tiled kitchen floor. Thinking intuitively, she pulled the longest knife off of the magnetic strip on the wall and pointed it at Aaron, the cold steel wiggling in her quivering hand.

“I would not do that if I were you,” said Aaron darkly.