“What?”
cried Aunt Sally.
I decided to quit before things got any worse. “Thanks for your help,” I told her. “I really have to go. I’ll let you know how the turkey comes out.”
Another thing that helped was my job as one of the roving reporters for the school newspaper. My piece about the mystery meat in the school
cafeteria turned out well. Everyone was laughing about it, and the result was that the cafeteria stopped serving it. They substituted turkey franks, which tasted a lot better, and I realized I had not only entertained, I had made a difference.
“Good job, Al!” Nick O’Connell said to me at our next meeting. He wasn’t so pleased with the photos I’d taken, though, so on my next assignment, he sent Sam with me. We were to ask six different students what they would give our school as a Christmas present if they could give anything they wanted.
I liked being paired with Sam Mayer. He and Jennifer Sadler were going together, so it wasn’t as though we were a couple or anything, but Sam had liked me in junior high school and we were still good friends.
“You always want to catch a person alone,” Nick had told us. “If you ask somebody in front of his friends, he’s more likely to give you a flip answer. Get him alone and he’s more thoughtful. Makes better copy.”
Sam and I decided to meet before school on Friday and just roam the halls, catching kids at their lockers, or at the juice and bagel bar in the cafeteria. I had to ask Lester to drive me there early, and he was grumpy.
“Lester,” I said, balancing my book bag on my
knees, “if you were in a position to give the university a Christmas present—anything you wanted—what would it be?”
“Al, it’s seven forty-five, and I haven’t had breakfast,” he grumbled.
“Really, though,” I said.
Lester slowed to a stop at the light. When it turned green he said, “A bike path to the university from every neighborhood in the metropolitan area, and a babe on every bike.”
“What you need is female companionship,” I told him.
“I don’t even have time to clip my nails, and you want me to have a girlfriend,” Les said.
I was on the verge of telling him about Shirley, Charmaine, and Ginger, but decided I’d better hold off. “I know you’re taking extra courses this semester and don’t have time for a serious relationship, but that doesn’t mean you can’t at least have some casual women friends,” I said.
“Yeah, sure. So round me up some casual women friends,” he muttered.
I just smiled and went on swinging my foot.
Sam and I met outside the cafeteria and found our first student sitting at a table, eating a bagel with cream cheese. We didn’t want to embarrass him while his mouth was full, so while Sam
adjusted his camera, I filled the guy in on what kind of a story we were doing for the paper and asked if he had any ideas of what would make a good present for our school.
“A swimming pool,” he said. Then, after he swallowed, he added, “for skinny-dipping only.”
I smiled and wrote it down while Sam took his picture, and we set out to find someone else.
“I heard about you and Patrick,” Sam said.
“Yeah. About everyone in the whole school knows, I think.”
“Patrick must have rocks in his head to let you go,” said Sam.
“Well, it was more or less mutual,” I told him, which wasn’t entirely true. But it
was
partly because of something I had said, so I figured it was true enough. And then I added, “How are things with you and Jennifer?”
“Great!” he said, and I was glad that we saw a girl on ahead, standing at her locker, and zeroed in on her next, because I really didn’t want to get in a discussion of Sam and Jennifer versus Patrick and me.
We had our six student comments done by the first bell, and all I had to do was condense or expand their replies to fill up half a page, with head shots. We got some interesting answers, though. The news editor had told us that two years ago they had asked the same question and
got answers like, “Put belly dancers in the cafeteria,” or, “Reduce the drinking age to fifteen.” This time the kids said things like, “Repair the school rest rooms and make sure there are doors on all the stalls,” and, “Build a student lounge so the kids would have some place to gather in bad weather before and after school.”
“I had an interesting assignment for the school newspaper,” I told Dad and Lester at dinner, glad that I could talk about something pleasant for a change instead of moping around over Patrick. And I told them what Sam and I had done.
“Sounds as though you’re enjoying ninth grade, Al,” Dad said.
“
I
got an interesting assignment today, too,” Lester said sardonically. “I have to compare the moral systems grounded in Kant’s Categorical Imperative, Benthamite utilitarianism, and Aristotle’s
Nicomachean Ethics
in terms of whether they commit the naturalistic fallacy.”
“I’m never going to college,” I said.
Dad raised an eyebrow.
“Well, I’m never majoring in philosophy,” I told him.
Elizabeth’s family was going to eat Thanksgiving dinner in the evening, so she promised to come over that morning and stay long enough to help
me cook our meal. I hadn’t told her that our guests had been in prison, only that I’d called the Salvation Army for suggestions. Besides, I thought, everyone deserves a break—we all make mistakes. If nobody knew they were ex-cons but me, maybe they’d be treated more like ordinary people and could put their past behind them.
Lester and I went out to buy a turkey the Monday before Thanksgiving, and I remembered what Aunt Sally had said about sending some home with each of the refugees when they left. Why stop at sixteen pounds? I thought. Why not get a twenty-pound turkey, and maybe Dad and Lester and I wouldn’t have to cook for a month!
“Okay by me,” said Lester. “You’re the chef, babe.”
I couldn’t explain it, exactly, but there was something about doing a good job on that newspaper write-up, and now, learning to roast a turkey—to make a whole Thanksgiving dinner, in fact—that made me feel less lonely. Or maybe just not so dependent on Patrick to make me feel like a lovable, worthwhile person. Maybe this was a good time to try my own wings, to concentrate on learning new things. An Alice Time—all for myself.
Dad and Lester said they’d clean the house, since I was doing most of the cooking. Elizabeth arrived about seven Thanksgiving morning.
At twenty minutes per pound for a twenty-pound turkey, we figured it would take six hours and forty minutes to roast. If I wanted to serve at two-thirty, it had to be in the oven by seven-thirty.
We went down to the basement to get the turkey out of the freezer. It was so cold, I could hardly carry it, and it sounded like a rock when I dropped it on the table.
Elizabeth looked worried. “You know, Alice, I think you were supposed to defrost it first,” she said.
I looked at the microwave. “So?” I said, pointing to the button that said
defrost
.
“I don’t know … ,” said Elizabeth.
I turned the turkey around and looked at the print on the wrapper.
Defrost in refrigerator 2 to 3 days prior to cooking,
it read, and I went weak in the knees.
“Oh, Alice!” said Elizabeth.
We took the shelf out of the microwave and tried to cram the turkey in, but it wouldn’t fit. We were trying to turn it upside down when Lester came downstairs. “What the heck are you doing?” he asked, and that’s when I lost it.
“Lester, it’s supposed to defrost for two to three days, and the people are coming at two o’clock!” I wailed.
“Al, you blockhead!” Lester said, and that brought Dad to the kitchen.
Lester explained the problem. “What do you think?” he asked. “Chain saw or dynamite?”
The upshot was that they took the turkey outside, cut it in half lengthwise with Dad’s power saw, and then we defrosted a half at a time in the microwave until it was merely icy. I didn’t have to stick my hand into the neck or abdominal cavity to remove the innards because Dad had already sawed them in half.
Lester said he couldn’t watch, but after we’d rinsed out the turkey, Dad stuck both halves together with duct tape so we could stuff it, and told me to remove the tape before we put it in the oven. Then he went upstairs to scrub the bathroom.
Elizabeth had been chopping the mushrooms and celery for the dressing, and I melted the butter and added the bread cubes. We looked at the turkey, its legs akimbo, and then at each other.
“It’s positively obscene to have to stick your hand in there,” Elizabeth said. “I am never going to have a baby.”
“Relax,” I told her. “When you have children, they won’t cut your head off first.” We took turns spooning the dressing into the turkey’s cavity. Then, while I held the two parts together, Elizabeth removed the duct tape, and we used wooden skewers to sew the bird up. At a quarter of nine, we brushed it with melted butter, covered it with
foil, and put it in the roasting pan. It took both of us to get it in the oven, and I turned the heat up fifty degrees higher than it had said to allow for the fact that it was half frozen.
We did the pies next. Mrs. Price had sent over some ready-made piecrusts, so Elizabeth and I made the three easiest pies in the world: pumpkin, pecan, and mince. Even a six-year-old could make them. After that we tackled the sweet potatoes and mashed them with melted butter, cream, and orange rind.
Lester poked his head in the kitchen around eleven-thirty. “What time will the turkey be done, Al?”
“Three-thirty, if we’re lucky,” I told him.
“Three-thirty? What time are the people coming?”
“Two,” I said.
“What am I supposed to do with them until then?”
“
Talk
to them, Lester! Be sociable! I’m cooking the dinner. Do I have to tell you how to entertain, too?”
“Do you know what country they’re from?”
“From here.”
“Refugees from
here?
From
what?
”
“I don’t know, Lester! I don’t know where they were born. I’m doing the best I can, and if you—”
“Okay, okay,” Les said. “Pipe down.”
When he left the kitchen, Elizabeth said, “Don’t you know anything at all about these women, Alice?”
My heart began to thump. She was looking at me suspiciously. “Liz,” I said. We’d started calling each other nicknames since we began high school. “They’re not … not exactly refugees in the ordinary sense. They’re sort of … more like … well, troubled women looking for a refuge in an uncertain world.”
“What?” said Elizabeth.
“The Salvation Army referred me to an organization called CCFO, which turned out to be Community Connections for Female Offenders, and after I found that out I couldn’t very well hang up, could I? They’ve all been in prison.”
Elizabeth let her spoon fall into the sweet potatoes. “What?”
“Shhhh. It’s okay. They haven’t done anything violent.”
“Alice, are you out of your mind?” she gasped.
“Probably,” I told her.
We had this plan: As soon as the turkey was out of the oven, I’d put the pies in to bake while we were eating the rest of the meal. I’d heat the peas and carrots on the stove, the sweet potatoes in the microwave, stick the rolls in the oven for a couple of minutes, open a can of cranberry sauce, and
voilà!
Dinner.
Elizabeth and I found my mom’s best tablecloth in a drawer in one of Dad’s closets. There were marks all along the creases, and the matching napkins had yellowed, but it looked better than a bare table. We also found a box of sterling silver candlesticks and ten little individual salt and pepper shakers to match the candle holders. Dad said they had been a wedding gift from Aunt Sally and Uncle Milt. While I checked on spoons and serving dishes, Elizabeth polished the silver, and I’d never seen our dining room look so elegant.
Elizabeth said she’d stay till the women arrived, and followed me upstairs so I could comb my hair and change my shirt. I chose a long, moss-green shirt to wear with black leggings, and had just put some mauve blush on both cheeks and was fastening tiny gold hoop earrings when I heard Elizabeth say, “Oh … my … gosh!”
“What?” I turned around.
She was standing at the window, her hands on the sill, looking down at the street. I picked up the other earring and walked over in time to see the last of the three women coming up onto our porch. This one was dressed in a fake zebra-skin coat, five-inch heels, and was wearing enough jewelry to open a store.
“Wait till Lester gets a load of this!” Elizabeth said wide-eyed. Then she turned to me. “Alice, do you think they were
prostitutes?
”
I didn’t know what their convictions were for. All I knew was that Dad was probably expecting Albanian refugees with kerchiefs on their heads, but at that moment the doorbell rang.
“Al?” Dad called from the kitchen. “You going to get that?”
“I’ve got it!” came Lester’s voice. I could hear him walking rapidly across the living room toward the front door. The sound of the door opening.
There was a three-second silence so profound, it
was as though Lester had lost the power of speech. And then the miracle happened. I heard my brother say, in his most gentlemanly voice, “Welcome to our home. I’m Lester. Please come in.”
Elizabeth and I went downstairs together. The three women—two white, one African-American— were taking off their coats. They were probably in their late twenties or early thirties, and each smiled as she handed her wrap to Lester.
Elizabeth stuck around just long enough to hear the African-American say, “I’m Charmaine,” the one in the leather jacket say, “I’m Shirley,” and the one taking off her zebra-skin coat say, “I’m Ginger.”
“And I’m Alice,” I said. “This is my friend Elizabeth, who helped me make dinner. Only she’s leaving now.”
“Well, isn’t that nice she could help you!” said Charmaine.
“Good-bye! Have a nice dinner!” Elizabeth said, slipping noiselessly past me, and whispered, “Good luck!” as she closed the door behind her.
Dad came out of the kitchen, and Lester introduced the women to him.