To foreshadow a bit, Thanksgiving at Mrs. W’s house was very, very nice, but her house wasn’t my home at that point. I wasn’t averse to it being my home, but when you move around as much as I did when I was a kid the concept of “home” has a more diffuse connotation than it would if you lived in one place, say, Wadley, Alabama, or even Chattanooga, for your entire life. I was more rootless than anyone in Mrs. W’s family, not as closely tied to the culture or the institutions or the people of Chattanooga as anyone else there. I was there not because I thought her house was home, but because Mrs. W was nice enough to invite me, and because I liked her, and because there wasn’t anyplace else where somebody was expecting me.
Ginny’s dad was waiting for us when we’d arrived at Mrs. W’s house. He collected Ginny and her luggage and left pretty fast. Walt lit a cigarette as soon as her car door closed, then he and Cisco pulled off into the night, the shiny Pontiac disappearing into an unusually warm November night. Standing outside, I couldn’t see much of Mrs. W’s house, but it seemed large and vine-covered, with a frame and shingle exterior painted some dark olive or brown. She greeted me warmly, of course, then when the others had left led me to a bedroom. The interior of her house was mostly warm varnished mahogany, with intricately cut mortise and tenon joints and carefully carved accents. It smelled like she’d just cooked cornbread. She had dark Oriental carpets on most of her floors, which seemed to be beautiful quarter-sawn oak. I’d never seen anything quite like it. She showed me to a spacious upstairs bedroom with two twin beds. Mission furniture. It was nice. Spare. Neat. Clean.
“Henry,” Mrs. W said, lighting a Benson & Hedges off of her Gates Zippo, “There’s nobody else with a claim to this room. I know you have family, but this room is open for you whenever you need it.”
An amazing offer.
“Now I’d love to catch up, but I’m tired. I had a glass of wine while I was waiting up for you guys and it’s put me right to sleep, so I’m going to go on to bed, although this is a little early for me.” It was about 10:00. “We’ll talk in the morning. I’m right across the hall. Your bathroom is behind me,” she said, from the bedroom door. “Good night, Henry. Good to have you here.” A few seconds later I could hear her door close across the hall.
I hadn’t brought anything to read except textbooks to encourage myself to study when the occasion arose. I found I wasn’t in the mood to study but it was too early to go to sleep. I opened the drawer to the night stand, and found two books: A leather-bound red-letter edition of the King James Bible and a smaller volume titled “Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece.” The Greek New Testament. I opened to John. “Kατα Ιωάννινν.” I tried to read the first verse: “Έν άρχη ήν ό λογος, και ό λογος ήν προς τον θεον, και θεος ήν όλογος.” Even with just a few months of college Greek I could read that much, but the next sentence was harder. I put it aside and picked it up in English. Strange book. Pastor Leslie was right. It doesn’t tell the same story as he rest of the New Testament at all. As I have done before, I fell asleep reading it without getting up to brush my teeth.
When I woke up the next morning it was early. The house was cool and quiet. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do. On the road, I would have made coffee, if there was a pot in the room, or gone looking for it. At college, I would walk up to the dining hall and eat bacon and drink coffee and look over my subjects until time for class to start. In Mrs. W’s house I had no idea who else was up at 6:30. I found the bathroom and brushed my teeth. As is the case with some old houses, none of the upstairs bedrooms had its own bathroom but all of them exited into a hall from which they all shared access to a common bathroom. Not modern, but not odd. I put enough clothing to present myself to the household and went downstairs.
The house was quiet and still, and I didn’t know my way around. I found my way through the living room and dining room to the kitchen, partly aided by the aroma of coffee. Mrs. Wertheimer was seated at the kitchen table, smoking a cigarette, looking at several three by five cards on the table in front of her. The floor creaked slightly as I came to the kitchen door and she looked up.
“Hey, Henry,” she said, happy to see me. She glanced up at the source of the coffee aroma, a 12 cup Hamilton Beach percolator. I followed her gaze, and you could see the coffee surging into the glass knob on top. Still not ready. “Looks like the coffee’s still got a few minutes to go,” she said. “How’d you sleep?”
“Great,” I said. “What are you up to?”
“Not a lot. Looking at recipes and waiting for the coffee. I like to cook, but I don’t do it too much, so I look over the recipes before I start.” She looked down at her cards and took a drag. “Are you a dressing person or a stuffing person?” she asked.
“I don’t know. What’s the difference?” I asked.
“They’re the same thing cooked differently. We’re going to have cornbread and bread stuffing. Or dressing. Stuffing is the mix of breadcrumbs and vegetables and all stuffed into the turkey and roasted with it, dressing is the same mix cooked in a casserole dish. Both are good.”
“I guess we always had dressing, then,” I said.
“We’re going to have both, but if you’ve never tried stuffing you should have some,” she said. “Nothing like it.” She looked at her cards and smoked her cigarette. “Yams?” she asked, looking up.
“Of course.”
“Candied or whipped?” she asked.
“I think I’m a candied guy,” I said. “I mean, I like whipped sweet potatoes, but candied yams are a real treat.”
“Good man,” she said. She shuffled the cards again and took a drag.
“Do you prefer mashed potatoes or rice as a starch?” she asked.
“The dressing, or stuffing, is plenty,” I said. “Are you thinking of rolls?” I asked.
“Yeah, that’s why I’m up early,” she said. “I think Thanksgiving needs to have good rolls, so I got up and started a batch of Parker House Rolls.” There was a large glass bowl filled with dough, covered with Saran-Wrap, near the oven.
“Don’t know Parker House Rolls,” I said.
“Lots of butter. A little sweet.”
“Like the rolls for lunch at City High?” I asked.
“Almost,” she said. “The City’s yeast rolls were made with margarine, but they were good.”
“They were good.”
“Sure they were,” she said. “I’ve got broccoli. Can you make Hollandaise?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Can you follow instructions?”
“I think so,” I said. Her eyes shot up to look at me over her glasses, then they softened speculatively. She took a drag from her cigarette.
“You don’t have much experience at that, I guess?” she asked.
“Maybe not.”
“It’s not so bad, you know, listening to what other people think.”
I thought about that for a minute. “I listen to you,” I said.
“Sure,” she said. “I appreciate it that you trust me. But maybe you could be more trusting of people around you. Have you been making friends in college?”
I thought for a minute. “Well, there’s Stoney. I tried to be nice to Milton, but I think he took it the wrong way.”
“How did you try to be nice to him?”
“I bought a nine ball game. Kept him from being fleeced by a pro I know named Donnie.” She looked at her recipe cards for a few seconds. The coffee was done and I got up hefted the pot. There were several mugs in front of the percolator. “Coffee?” I asked. She looked up.
“Sure,” she said. “Black.” I poured her a mug, put it down near her, poured one for myself, and sat down again on my stool. “Thanks,” she said, absent-mindedly. She took a sip. “Okay, here’s the plan,” she said. “Turkey, stuffing, dressing, candied yams, mashed potatoes, gravy, broccoli with hollandaise, corn soufflé. Parker House rolls, pumpkin pie, mincemeat pie. Good?”
“More food than I’m used to even on Thanksgiving,” I said.
“So I’m about to start cooking, and if Ginny shows up what’s going to happen?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Henry, don’t be obtuse,” she said. “Last time I saw you together she was hanging on your every word. Last night she was staying as far away from you as possible and mooning over that snob from Atlanta.”
“Yeah. Okay. It’s odd. She saw me play pool for some money. Maybe a lot of money. I know it seemed like a lot to her. She didn’t like it that I risked so much.” Mrs. W. nodded and thought for a few minutes.
“Her mom’s that way, too. Her dad’s been offered a job as general counsel of this railroad. The Union Pacific. Big company. Great job. Could make him, or them, millions of dollars. Winnie’s worried because he’s got a good job now and she doesn’t see why he’d consider giving it up.”
“What’s his job now?”
“He’s a partner at Miller & Martin.”
“A lawyer deal?” I asked.
“Yes. And he does well. But being general counsel of the Union Pacific would be a much bigger lawyer deal. But the job is in Omaha.”
“Nebraska?”
“Yes,” she nodded.
“A long train ride from Chattanooga, especially as Chattanooga doesn’t have passenger rail.”
“Good point.” She smiled.
“Anything I can do to help with the Thanksgiving meal?” I asked, sipping my coffee.
“Maybe. Do you cook?”
“Not at all.”
“Never?” she was surprised.
“Sometimes I fried eggs for myself on Saturdays or Sundays,” I said.
“Because your mom was away?” she asked.
“No, because I liked them fried really, really hard, with a tough skin, and Mom thought that was wrong. I’d fry my eggs and she’d make toast.”
“Well, Ginny usually comes over a little bfore noon and helps.” She stood and handed me a black iron skillet with red and white hound’s tooth dish towel over it, then located a large Pyrex bowl. I lifted the dish towel and found a large, cool wheel of cornbread with one narrow slice missing. I looked up at Mrs. W. “Your job is to change that cornbread into tiny little crumbles in that bowl.” I shrugged and got to work. While I was crumbling, she took celery, onions, parsley and some other kind of green leaves out of the refrigerator and began to chop them, cigarette dangling from her lower lip. Chopping onions didn’t seem to bother her eyes.
“So what were you going to do with Ginny if you got her?” she asked. I thought for a few seconds about how to respond.
“I … I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but I like her, I think she’s great, but I wasn’t looking to be her boyfriend,” I said. Mrs. W. thought about this for a few seconds.
“She’s pretty. Smart. Vivacious, athletic. Nice figure.”
“She’s absolutely delightful in every way,” I said.
“Henry,” she asked, with a surprised tone in her voice, “are you homosexual?”
“No, ma’am,” I answered, crumbling my cornbread with a sigh.
“It’s completely okay with me if you are,” she said, earnestly, looking at me and stubbing out her cigarette.
“No, ma’am. I don’t seem to think about women as much as most guys my age, but I don’t think about men. Not in that way, I mean.” She frowned a bit. “I’ve never had a girlfriend and don’t miss having one. I can’t say why. I’m just not motivated like that.” She went back to turning her onions into tiny little cubes.
“It’s true I’ve never seen you with a girlfriend or even chasing one. I guess I just assumed it was going on somewhere else.”
“No, ma’am. It’s not that I dislike girls, I’m just not motivated to pursue them.”
“What religion were you raised?” she asked.
“Disciples of Christ.”
“No religious guilt overlay?”
“No, ma’am. We didn’t talk about sex in church and I never got the idea that there was any part of it was wrong from what I heard on Sunday. One of the few times I made out with a girl was with the preacher’s daughter here in Chattanooga.”
“What brought that on?” she asked.
“Can’t tell you,” I said. “We were the only people in the balcony for the Christmas Eve candle-light service. She suggested we move to the back row and then all of a sudden we were kissing. Don’t know what was going on. She was a couple years older than me and was already off at college.”
“And you didn’t like that?” she asked.
“No, I did. It was great. I’m just not motivated to seek it out.”
“What an odd man you are, Henry.” The cornbread was reduced to a bowl full of tiny crumbles. Mrs. W. noticed this and handed me a half loaf of French bread and another glass bowl. “Turn this into little chunks. It doesn’t have to be as fine as you got that cornbread. It just needs to be small enough for the blender to grab it.” This meant nothing to me. I tore off a few small chunks.
“Like this?” I asked. She looked.
“That’s fine. Even a little larger would be okay,” she said. “Ever had sex with a man?” I was a little surprised.
“No ma’am,” I said, in what I must admit was an amused way.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Because it’s really okay if you have. I really couldn’t care less.”
“Thanks. I’m just not gay. No gay sex. No vices of any kind.”
“Henry, you’re a professional gambler.”
“Other than gambling.”
“I know this shows me to be limited and parochial but I don’t understand a red-blooded young man who’s not chasing girls. Or even boys. So you’ve never wanted to chase girls?”
“Hmm,” I said. I thought.
“Who was she?”
“There have been two I thought were really attractive. Both were attached to other guys. One you may know because she was a student of yours so I probably ought not to talk about her and the other is this red-head I run into in pool halls from time to time. Both seem like good company.”
“Okay, fair enough.” She pulled a heavy glass Oster blender from under the counter and took my French bread chunks from me. She put a small portion of them in the blender and pulsed it a few times. The chunks became smaller and smaller crumbs each time she pulsed.
“Molly?” she asked. She was guessing which one of her prior students I’d been interested in.
“No, ma’am.” I answered. She pulsed the blender again then poured the crumbs into the cornbread crumbs.
“Gwen?” she asked, as she added more coarse bread chunks to the blender.
“No, ma’am.”
“Sandy?”
“No, ma’am,” I answered. Unless I was mistaken, she was naming pretty, smart girls she could remember from my graduating class.
“Cherry?”
“No, ma’am.”
“No, of course not. How about another cheerleader, though, Cindy?”
“No, ma’am. She was smart, though. You know, my idea was to protect the identity of somebody you taught.”
“Linda?” she asked.
“Mrs. Wertheimer, I am uncomfortable with this line of inquiry.”
“All right.” She returned her attention to sautéing her chopped onions and celery. “Chop this,” she said, handing me a bunch of parsley, dropping a very large pat of butter into the skillet that had earlier held the cornbread. “You want to clip off the leaves but not get any stem, then chop it pretty fine.” I did my best to follow instructions. She had an enormous stockpot she filled with water and brought to boil while I was separating parsley leaves from parsley stems with a kitchen knife that was larger than I’d used before. She looked down at my cutting board and grabbed a handful of parsley stems, “excuse me,” she said, and dropped them into the stockpot along with two celery sticks, some carrots, and some bay leaves. She handed me a large brown onion, saying “Quarter this,” which I did, dark brown skin and all. She then dropped what looked like a bunch of chicken necks into the water and took a large, maybe 35 pound, turkey from the refrigerator. She sat it on the counter and reached up inside it and pulled out a turkey neck and a small plastic sack of organs. “You like giblets in your gravy?” she asked me.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “Chopped heart?”
“And gizzard and maybe even liver,” she said.
“No, thanks, but if you like it…”
“No. Never liked gizzards or heart either one. This liver, though,” she said, looking at a dark purplish mass that more or less filled her hand, “It always seemed I should be able to make a good pate our of that.” I could hear the front door open and Ginny call out.
“Aunt Maggie,” she called out, cheerfully, as though calling across a canyon.
“We’re in the kitchen,” Mrs. W. called back, looking up expectantly. Ginny showed up in a few seconds and embraced Mrs. W. on her chair with a big hug. Ginny had a dress of some sort in a dry cleaning bag in her right hand. They smiled warmly at each other for a second and hugged again. I sipped my coffee, now lukewarm.
“Hello, Henry,” said Ginny, still hugging, without opening her eyes. “Aunt Margaret is the best aunt in the world.”
“I bet,” I said. “She’s sure good at everything else.”
“Why don’t you put that in my closet,” said Mrs. W., gesturing at her dress. “I’ve put Henry in the guest room, so you can use mine.” Ginny nodded, then thought.
“But you’ll need it,” Ginny said.
“I’ll use it when you’re done,” Mrs. W. replied. “You can be hostess if anybody shows up while I’m making myself beautiful.” Ginny smiled and gave her another one of those quick girl-hugs, then ran off.
“So this is all going to be okay?” Mrs. W. asked me.
“Yes ma’am.”
“How much did you gamble in that pool game?” she asked.
“I put up $5,000,” I said. She looked and laughed.
“So you won $5,000 on one game?” She was happy for me.
“No ma’am, we were playing Cutthroat, a three person game, so each of us put up $5,000.” She smiled even broader.
“So you put up $5,000 and won $10,000?”
“Yes, ma’am. If I don’t find a pool game this weekend I’m leaving $10,000 with you.”
“Well, Hell. Good job. You’re a very improbable college student, Henry Baida. You know, that pays for pretty much a year at college.”
“Ginny made this point pretty forcefully, but she misunderstood the wager.”
“How so?”
“People who don’t gamble or who don’t really like math mistake the amount you win with the amount you bet. Ginny’s convinced I bet $15,000.” Mrs. W. nodded and lit another Benson & Hedges.
“There’s a lot of that in my family,” she said. “We were shopkeepers from Potsdam who opened a delicatessen in Chattanooga. So my grandfather took that big risk by moving to the U.S., but then he went into the family business and sent back to Germany for a teenaged wife. Some risk, but some running back to the old ways too. But you’ll like Gunner.
“Gunner?” I asked.
“Ginny’s dad. Great trial lawyer once. Clarence Darrow back at the Public Defender’s office. Then went to the big, old firm and seems to mainly concentrate on railroads.
“What’s he gamble on?” I asked.
“He’s a trial lawyer.”
“So?” She thought.
“I think Gunner feels capable of judging the odds in pretty much any situation,” she said. I could hear Ginny bounding down the stairs, and almost galloping towards the kitchen.
“What’s to do? she asked, sitting on the stool next to me.
“Want some coffee?” Mrs. W. asked.
“Sure!” she said, and hopped up to pour herself a cup. “Henry?” she asked, looking at me. She looked me in the eye as she asked. The look was pleasant, but not ‘interested,’ so she’d made up her mind about me.
“Yeah, thanks,” I said. I think once a girl decides she’s never going to have sex with you she finds it easier to be around you, but I’m a guy and so have little insight on what women think, and I might have even less insight than most guys. Ginny unplugged the percolator, filled my coffee cup, then warmed up Mrs. W.’s, then put the percolator back on the counter and plugged it back in, to keep it hot.
“So where are we?” Ginny asked.
“Well, we have cornbread crumbles. I’ve sautéed onions and celery. Henry’s turned French bread into pieces the Osterizer can handle. I’ve got a turkey stock, or turkey and chicken stock, working. What do you think?”
“Yams?” asked Ginny.
“Sure. Although I’ve used the biggest pot for the stock.” Ginny got off her stool and started looking around in Mrs. W’s shelves and cupboards and found a large pot, although not as large as the stock pot. Ginny piled all of the yams on the countertop next to that pot and frowned at them. She searched briefly and found a paring knife and trimmed the small ends and protuberances from the yams, placing them in the pot as she did so. Trimmed, they all fit so she removed them, filled the pot half-full with water, put it on the burner and turned it to high. “Salt?” she asked Mrs. W., without looking at her.
“A little,” Mrs. W. answered. Ginny retrieved a carton of Morton’s from a cabinet, poured a small mound on her palm, then brushed it into the water with her other hand.
Then Ginny was looking for something to do. She noticed my bowl of bread chunks, took them from the table in front of me, and put a handful into blender, and pulsed them several times to turn the bread into crumbs. “All of them?” she asked Mrs. W.
“Well, most of them,” Mrs. W. answered. Ginny nodded. She poured out the crumbs in the blender into the cornbread crumbs, then put two more handfuls into the blender and pulsed it several times, until the bread chunks were bread crumbs. She looked at the water in the sweet potato pot. Not yet boiling. She pored the French bread crumbs into the cornbread crumbs then put another few handfuls of bread chunks into the Osterizer and pulsed them into breadcrumbs. The water had started boiling so Ginny dropped in the trimmed yams, one at a time but without any delay between. Mrs. W was looking off to the middle distance and smoking her cigarette. Just before the silence became awkward, she asked me a question.”
“School’s going okay, Henry?”
“Yes ma’am. Pretty much. I have this odd sense that the Math Department and the Physics department don’t get along.” She looked at her coffee cup for a few seconds, then looked at me as though wondering what to do with me.
“Yeah, well. There was a time when the Math people and the Physics people all got along. Then, all of a sudden, everything changed.”
“Why so?” She took a last drag off of her cigarette and stubbed it out.
“You’re new to Physics?”
“Well, I’m taking it for the first time.”
“But you don’t know particle physics or special relativity?”
“No, ma’am,” I answered.
“The divide had more to do with Physics than it did with Math,” she said. “We were all together until this odd thing that happened in 1935. Albert published this paper with Dr. Podolsky and Nathan Rosen about the entanglement problem—you’ll get to it and if you don’t I’ll explain it—but to really understand you need to know quantum mechanics and special relativity so ask me in a couple of years and I’ll tell you. It’s weird.”
“Okay.” It wasn’t like her not to explain things. Ginny and she were working together to make food. They seemed to flow together as though they had rehearsed cooking Thanksgiving cooking. Neither seemed to need to talk, it all just seemed to flow. Every now and then one would stop to ask the other a question—“How long for a 35 pound turkey?” or “Is that Aunt Leah’s skillet?” but mostly they communicated without saying much at all, the way sisters sometimes do. At about 3:00 Ginny excused herself and disappeared upstairs.
“Go clean yourself up, Henry,” said Mrs. W. “Company’s coming.”
“I only have jeans,” I said.
“That’s fine. Shave and put on a clean shirt.” I went and did as told.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Chapter 23A: A Day of Thanks
Thanksgiving at Mrs. W’s house was very, very nice, but her house wasn’t my home at that point. I wasn’t averse to it being my home, but when you move around as much as I did when I was a kid the concept of “home” has a more diffuse connotation than it would if you lived in one place, say, Wadley, Alabama, or even Chattanooga, for your entire life. I was more rootless than anyone in Mrs. W’s family, not as closely tied to the culture or the institutions or the people of Chattanooga as anyone else there. I was there not because I thought Chattanooga was home, but because Mrs. W was nice enough to invite me, and because I liked her, and because there wasn’t anyplace else where somebody was expecting me.
Ginny’s dad was waiting for us when we’d arrived at Mrs. W’s house. He collected Ginny and her luggage and left pretty fast. Walt lit a cigarette as soon as her car door closed, then he and Cisco pulled off into the night, the shiny Pontiac disappearing into an unusually warm November night. Standing outside, I couldn’t see much of Mrs. W’s house, but it seemed large and vine-covered, with a frame and shingle exterior painted some dark olive or brown. She greeted me warmly, of course, then when the others had left led me to a bedroom. The interior of her house was mostly warm varnished mahogany, with intricately cut mortise and tenon joints and carefully carved accents. It smelled like she’d just cooked cornbread. She had dark Oriental carpets on most of her floors, which seemed to be beautiful quarter-sawn oak. I’d never seen anything quite like it. She showed me to a spacious upstairs bedroom with two twin beds. Mission furniture. It was nice. Spare. Neat. Clean.
“Henry,” Mrs. W said, lighting a Benson & Hedges off of her Gates Zippo, “There’s nobody else with a claim to this room. I know you have family, but this room is open for you whenever you need it.”
An amazing offer.
When I woke up the next morning it was early. The house was cool and quiet. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do. On the road, I would have made coffee, if there was a pot in the room, or gone looking for it. At college, I would walk up to the dining hall and eat bacon and drink coffee and look over my subjects until time for class to start. In Mrs. W’s house I had no idea who else was up at 6:30, needed to brush my teeth, and didn’t know where the bathroom was. As is the case with some old houses, none of the upstairs bedrooms had its own bathroom but all of them exited into a hall from which they all shared access to a common bathroom. Not modern, but not odd. I brushed my teeth and put on enough clothing to present myself to the household and went downstairs.
The house was quiet and still, and I didn’t know my way around. I found my way through the living room and dining room to the kitchen, partly aided by the aroma of coffee. Mrs. Wertheimer was seated at the kitchen table, smoking a cigarette, looking at several three by five cards on the table in front of her. The floor creaked slightly as I came to the kitchen door and she looked up.
“Hey, Henry,” she said, happy to see me. She glanced up at the source of the coffee aroma, a 12 cup Hamilton Beach percolator. I followed her gaze, and you could see the coffee surging into the glass knob on top. Still not ready. “Looks like the coffee’s still got a few minutes to go,” she said. “How’d you sleep?”
“Great,” I said. “What are you up to?”
“Not a lot. Looking at recipes and waiting for the coffee. I like to cook, but I don’t do it too much, so I look over the recipes before I start.” She looked down at her cards and took a drag. “Are you a dressing person or a stuffing person?” she asked.
“I don’t know. What’s the difference?” I asked.
“They’re the same thing cooked differently. We’re going to have cornbread and bread stuffing. Or dressing. Stuffing is the mix of breadcrumbs and vegetables and all stuffed into the turkey and roasted with it, dressing is the same mix cooked in a casserole dish. Both are good.”
“I guess we always had dressing, then,” I said.
“We’re going to have both, but if you’ve never tried stuffing you should have some,” she said. “Nothing like it.” She looked at her cards and smoked her cigarette. “Yams?” she asked, looking up.
“Of course.”
“Candied or whipped?” she asked.
“I think I’m a candied guy,” I said. “I mean, I like whipped sweet potatoes, but candied yams are a real treat.”
“Good man,” she said. She took a look at her cards and took a drag from her cigarette.
“Do you prefer mashed potatoes or rice as a starch?” she asked.
“The dressing, or stuffing, is plenty,” I said. “Are you thinking of rolls?” I asked.
“Yeah, that’s why I’m up early,” she said. “I think Thanksgiving needs to have good rolls, so I got up and started a batch of Parker House Rolls.” There was a large glass bowl filled with dough, covered with Saran-Wrap, near the oven.
“Don’t know Parker House Rolls,” I said.
“Lots of butter. A little sweet.”
“Like the rolls for lunch at City High?” I asked.
“Almost,” she said. “The rolls they served at City were made with margarine.”
“They were really good.”
“Sure were,” she said. “I’ve got broccoli. Can you make Hollandaise?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Can you follow instructions?”
“I think so,” I said. Her eyes shot up over her glasses, then they softened speculatively. She took a drag off of her cigarette.
“You don’t have much experience at that, I guess?” she asked.
“No, ma’am.”
“It’s not so bad, you know, listening to what other people think.”
I thought about that for a minute. “I listen to you,” I said.
“Sure,” she said. “I appreciate it that you trust me. But maybe you could be more trusting of people around you. Have you been making friends in college?”
I thought for a minute. “Well, there’s Stoney. I tried to be nice to Milton, but I think he took it the wrong way.”
“How did you try to be nice to him?”
“I bought a nine ball game. Kept him from being fleeced by a pro I know named Donnie.” She looked at her recipe cards for a few minutes. The coffee was done and I got up hefted the pot. There were several mugs in front of the percolator. “Coffee?” I asked. She looked up.
“Sure,” she said. “Black.” I poured her a mug, put it down near her, poured one for myself, and went back to my stool. “Thanks,” she said, when I put the mug in front of her. She took a sip. “Okay, here’s the plan,” she said. “Turkey, stuffing, dressing, candied yams, mashed potatoes, gravy, broccoli with hollandaise, corn soufflé. Parker House rolls, pumpkin pie, mincemeat pie. Good?”
“More food than I’m used to even on Thanksgiving,” I said.
“So I’m about to start cooking, and if Ginny shows up what’s going to happen?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Henry, don’t be dense,” she said. “Last time I saw you together she was hanging on your every word. Last night she was staying as far away from you as possible and mooning at that snob from Atlanta.”
“Yeah. Okay. It’s odd. She saw me play pool for some money. Maybe a lot of money. I know it seemed like a lot to her. She didn’t like it that I risked so much.” Mrs. W. nodded and thought for a few minutes.
“Her mom’s that way, too. Her dad’s been offered a job as general counsel of this railroad. The Union Pacific. Big company. Great job. Could make him, or them, millions of dollars. Winnie’s worried because he’s got a good job now and she doesn’t see why he’d consider giving it up.”
“What’s his job now?”
“He’s a partner at Miller & Martin.”
“A lawyer deal?” I asked.
“Yes. And he does well. But being general counsel of the Union Pacific would be a much bigger lawyer deal. But the job is in Omaha.”
“Nebraska?”
“Yes.”
“A long train ride from Chattanooga, especially as Chattanooga doesn’t have passenger rail.”
“Good point.” She smiled.
“Anything I can do to help with the Thanksgiving meal?” I asked, sipping my coffee.
“Maybe. Do you cook?”
“Not at all.”
“Never?” she was surprised.
“Sometimes I fried eggs for myself on Saturdays or Sundays,” I said.
“Because your mom was away?” she asked.
“No, because I liked them fried really, really hard, with a tough skin, and Mom thought that was wrong. I’d fry my eggs and she’d make toast.”
“Well, Ginny usually comes over a little after noon and helps.” She stood and handed me a black iron skillet with red and white hound’s tooth dish towel over it, then located a large Pyrex bowl. I lifted the dish towel and found a large wheel of cornbread that must have been cooked last night with one narrow slice missing. I looked up at Mrs. W. “Your job is to change that cornbread into tiny little crumbles in that bowl.” I shrugged and got to work. While I was crumbling, he took celery, onions, parsley and some other kind of green leaves out of the refrigerator and began to chop them, cigarette dangling from her lower lip. Chopping onions didn’t seem to bother her eyes.
“So what were you going to do with Ginny if you got her?” she asked. I thought for a few seconds about how to respond.
“I, I, I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but I wanted to be her friend, not her boyfriend,” I said.
“That’s odd,” said Mrs. W. “She’s pretty. Smart. Vivacious, athletic.”
“She’s absolutely delightful in every way,” I said.
“Henry,” she asked, with a surprised tone in her voice, “are you homosexual?”
“No, ma’am,” I answered, crumbling my cornbread with a sigh.
“It’s completely okay with me if you are,” she said, earnestly, looking at me and stubbing out her cigarette.
“No, ma’am. I don’t seem to think about women as much as most guys my age, but I don’t think about men. Not in that way, I mean.” She frowned a bit. “I’ve never had a girlfriend and don’t miss having one. I can’t say why. I’m just motivated like that.” She went back to turning her onions into tiny little cubes.
“It’s true I’ve never seen you with a girlfriend or eve chasing one. I guess I just assumed it was going on somewhere else.”
“No, ma’am. It’s not that I dislike girls, I’m just not motivated to pursue them.”
“What religion were you raised?”
“Disciples of Christ.”
“No religious guilt overlay?”
“No, ma’am. We didn’t talk about sex in church, and I never got the idea that there was any part of it was wrong from what I heard on Sunday. One of the few times I made out with a girl was with the preacher’s daughter here in Chattanooga.”
“What brought that on?” she asked.
“Can’t tell you,” I said. “We were the only people in the balcony for the Christmas Eve candle-light service. She suggested we move to the back row and then all of a sudden we were kissing. Don’t know what was going on. She was a couple years older than me and was already off at college.”
“And you didn’t like that?” she asked.
“No, I did. It was great. I’m just not motivated to seek it out.”
“What an odd man you are, Henry.” The cornbread was reduced to a bowl full of tiny crumbles. Mrs. W. noticed this and handed me a half loaf of French bread and another glass bowl. “Turn this into little chunks. It doesn’t have to be as fine as you got that cornbread. It just needs to be small enough for the blender to grab it.” This meant nothing to me. I tore off a few small chunks.
“Like this?” I asked. She looked.
“That’s fine. Even a little larger would be okay,” she said. “Ever had sex with a man?” I was a little surprised.
“No ma’am,” I said, in what I must admit was an amused way.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Because it’s really okay if you are. I really couldn’t care less.”
“Thanks. I’m just not gay. No gay sex. No vices of any kind.”
“Henry, you’re a professional gambler.”
“Other than gambling.”
“I know this shows me to be limited and parochial but I don’t understand a red-blooded young man who’s not chasing girls. Or even boys. So you’ve never wanted to chase girls?”
“Hmm,” I said. I thought.
“Who was she?”
“There have been two I really liked. One you may know because she was a student of yours so I probably ought not to talk about her and the other is this red-head I run into in pool halls from time to time. Both seem like good company.”
“Okay, fair enough.” She pulled a heavy glass Oster blender from under the counter and took my French bread chunks from me. She put a small portion of them in the blender and pulsed it a few times. The chunks became smaller and smaller crumbs each time she pulsed.
“Molly?” she asked. She was guessing which one of her prior students I’d been interested in.
“No, ma’am.” I answered. She pulsed the blender again then poured the crumbs into the cornbread crumbs.
“Gwen?” she asked, as she added more coarse bread chunks to the blender.
“No, ma’am.”
“Sandy?”
“No, ma’am,” I answered. Unless I was mistaken, she was naming all the pretty, smart girls she could remember in my graduating class..
“Cherry?”
“No, ma’am.”
“No, of course not. How about another cheerleader, though, Cindy?”
“No, ma’am. She was smart, though. You know, my idea was to protect the identity of somebody you taught.”
“Linda?” she asked.
“Mrs. Wertheimer, I am uncomfortable with this line of inquiry.”
“All right.” She returned her attention to sautéing her chopped onions and celery. “Chop this,” she said, handing me a bunch of parsley, dropping a very large pat of butter into the skillet that had earlier held the cornbread. “You want to clip off the leaves but not get any stem, then chop it pretty fine.” I did my best to follow instructions. She had an enormous stockpot she filled with water and brought to boil while I was separating parsley leaves from parsley stems with a kitchen knife that was larger than I’d used before. She looked down at my cutting board and grabbed a handful of parsley stems, “excuse me,” she said, and dropped them into the stockpot along with two celery sticks, some carrots, and some bay leaves. She handed me a large brown onion, saying “Quarter this,” which I did, dark brown skin and all. She then dropped what looked like a bunch of chicken necks into the water and took a large, maybe 35 pound, turkey from the refrigerator. She sat it on the counter and reached up inside it and pulled out a turkey neck and a small plastic sack of organs. “You like giblets in your gravy?” she asked me.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “Chopped heart?”
“And gizzard and maybe even liver,” she said.
“No, thanks, but if you want it..,”
“No. Never liked gizzards or heart either one. This liver, though,” she said, looking at a dark purple mass that more or less filled her hand, “It always seemed I should be able to make a good pate our of that.” I could hear the front door open and Ginny call out.
“Aunt Maggie,” she called out, cheerfully, as though calling across a canyon.
“We’re in the kitchen,” Mrs. W. called back, looking up expectantly. Ginny showed up in a few seconds and embraced Mrs. W. on her chair with a big hug. They smiled warmly at each other for a second and hugged again. I sipped my coffee, now lukewarm.
“Hello, Henry,” said Ginny, still hugging, without opening her eyes. “Aunt Margaret is the best aunt in the world.”
“I bet,” I said. “She’s sure good at everything else.”
“Okay,” Ginny said, when they were through hugging. “What’s to do?”
“Want some coffee?” Mrs. W. asked.
“Sure!” she said, and hopped up to pour herself a cup. “Henry?” she asked, looking at me. She looked me in the eye as she asked. The look was pleasant, but not ‘interested,’ so she’d made up her mind about me.
“Yeah, thanks,” I said. I think once a girl decides she’s never going to have sex with you she finds it easier to be around you, but I’m a guy and so have little insight on what women think, and I might have even less insight than most guys. Ginny unplugged the percolator, filled my coffee cup, then filled Mrs. W.’s, then put the percolator back on the counter and plugged it back in, to keep it hot. It can’t have had much left in it.
“So where are we?”
“Well, we have cornbread crumbles. I’ve sautéed onions and celery. Henry’s turned French bread into pieces the Osterizer can handle. I’ve got a turkey stock, or turkey and chicken stock. working. What do you think?”
“Yams?” asked Ginny.
“Sure. Although I’ve used the biggest pot for the stock.” Ginny got busy looking around in Mrs. W’s shelves and cupboards and found a large pot, although not as large as the stock pot. Ginny piled all of the yams on the countertop next to that pot and frowned at them. She searched briefly and found a paring knife and trimmed the small ends and protuberances from the yams, placing them in the pot as she did so. Trimmed, they all fit so she removed them, filled the pot half-full with water, and put it on the burner and turned it to high. “Salt?” she asked Mrs. W., without looking at her.
“A little,” Mrs. W. answered. Ginny retrieved a carton of Morton’s from a cabinet, poured a small mound on her palm, and brushed it into the water with her other hand. She looked around in the cabinets to locate a chrome Osterizer blender with a heavy glass jar and placed it on the counter, then took my bowl of bread chunks, smiling briefly, and placed it next to the blender. She put two handfuls into the blender and pulsed it several times, until the bread chunks were bread crumbs. She looked at the water in the sweet potato pot. Not yet boiling. She reached under a counter as though she knew where to find things and pulled out a large Pyrex bowl, and without missing a beat poured the breadcrumbs into the bowl. She put another few handfuls of bread chunks into the Osterizer and pulsed them into breadcrumbs. The water had started boiling so Ginny dropped in the trimmed yams, one at a time but without any delay between. Mrs. W was looking off to the middle distance and smoking her cigarette. Just before the silence became awkward, she asked me a question.”
“School’s going okay, Henry?”
“Yes ma’am. Pretty much. I have this odd sense that the Math Department and the Physics department don’t get along.” She looked at her coffee cup for a few seconds, then looked at me as though wondering what to do with me.
“Yeah, well. There was a time when the Math people and the Physics people all got along. Then, all of a sudden, everything changed.”
“Why so?” She took a last drag off of her cigarette and stubbed it out.
“You’re new to Physics?”
“Well, I’m taking it for the first time.”
“But you don’t know particle physics or special relativity?”
“No, ma’am,” I answered.
“The divide had more to do with Physics than it did with Math,” she said. “We were all together until this odd thing that happened in 1935. Albert published this paper with Dr. Podolsky and Nathan Rosen about the entanglement problem—you’ll get to it and if you don’t I’ll explain it—but to really understand you need to know quantum mechanics and special relativity to get at it, so ask me in a couple of years and I’ll tell you.”
“Okay.” It wasn’t like her not to explain things. Ginny and she were working together to make food. They seemed to flow together as though they had rehearsed cooking Thanksgiving cooking. Neither seemed to need to talk, it all just seemed to flow. Every now and then one would stop to ask the other a question—“How long for a 35 pound turkey?” or “Is that Aunt Leah’s skillet?” but mostly they communicated without saying much at all, the way sisters sometimes do. At about 3:00 Ginny excused herself and disappeared upstairs.
“Go clean yourself up, Henry,” said Mrs. W. “Company’s coming.”
“I only have jeans,” I said.
“That’s fine. Shave and put on a clean shirt.” I went and did as told.
Ginny’s dad was waiting for us when we’d arrived at Mrs. W’s house. He collected Ginny and her luggage and left pretty fast. Walt lit a cigarette as soon as her car door closed, then he and Cisco pulled off into the night, the shiny Pontiac disappearing into an unusually warm November night. Standing outside, I couldn’t see much of Mrs. W’s house, but it seemed large and vine-covered, with a frame and shingle exterior painted some dark olive or brown. She greeted me warmly, of course, then when the others had left led me to a bedroom. The interior of her house was mostly warm varnished mahogany, with intricately cut mortise and tenon joints and carefully carved accents. It smelled like she’d just cooked cornbread. She had dark Oriental carpets on most of her floors, which seemed to be beautiful quarter-sawn oak. I’d never seen anything quite like it. She showed me to a spacious upstairs bedroom with two twin beds. Mission furniture. It was nice. Spare. Neat. Clean.
“Henry,” Mrs. W said, lighting a Benson & Hedges off of her Gates Zippo, “There’s nobody else with a claim to this room. I know you have family, but this room is open for you whenever you need it.”
An amazing offer.
When I woke up the next morning it was early. The house was cool and quiet. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do. On the road, I would have made coffee, if there was a pot in the room, or gone looking for it. At college, I would walk up to the dining hall and eat bacon and drink coffee and look over my subjects until time for class to start. In Mrs. W’s house I had no idea who else was up at 6:30, needed to brush my teeth, and didn’t know where the bathroom was. As is the case with some old houses, none of the upstairs bedrooms had its own bathroom but all of them exited into a hall from which they all shared access to a common bathroom. Not modern, but not odd. I brushed my teeth and put on enough clothing to present myself to the household and went downstairs.
The house was quiet and still, and I didn’t know my way around. I found my way through the living room and dining room to the kitchen, partly aided by the aroma of coffee. Mrs. Wertheimer was seated at the kitchen table, smoking a cigarette, looking at several three by five cards on the table in front of her. The floor creaked slightly as I came to the kitchen door and she looked up.
“Hey, Henry,” she said, happy to see me. She glanced up at the source of the coffee aroma, a 12 cup Hamilton Beach percolator. I followed her gaze, and you could see the coffee surging into the glass knob on top. Still not ready. “Looks like the coffee’s still got a few minutes to go,” she said. “How’d you sleep?”
“Great,” I said. “What are you up to?”
“Not a lot. Looking at recipes and waiting for the coffee. I like to cook, but I don’t do it too much, so I look over the recipes before I start.” She looked down at her cards and took a drag. “Are you a dressing person or a stuffing person?” she asked.
“I don’t know. What’s the difference?” I asked.
“They’re the same thing cooked differently. We’re going to have cornbread and bread stuffing. Or dressing. Stuffing is the mix of breadcrumbs and vegetables and all stuffed into the turkey and roasted with it, dressing is the same mix cooked in a casserole dish. Both are good.”
“I guess we always had dressing, then,” I said.
“We’re going to have both, but if you’ve never tried stuffing you should have some,” she said. “Nothing like it.” She looked at her cards and smoked her cigarette. “Yams?” she asked, looking up.
“Of course.”
“Candied or whipped?” she asked.
“I think I’m a candied guy,” I said. “I mean, I like whipped sweet potatoes, but candied yams are a real treat.”
“Good man,” she said. She took a look at her cards and took a drag from her cigarette.
“Do you prefer mashed potatoes or rice as a starch?” she asked.
“The dressing, or stuffing, is plenty,” I said. “Are you thinking of rolls?” I asked.
“Yeah, that’s why I’m up early,” she said. “I think Thanksgiving needs to have good rolls, so I got up and started a batch of Parker House Rolls.” There was a large glass bowl filled with dough, covered with Saran-Wrap, near the oven.
“Don’t know Parker House Rolls,” I said.
“Lots of butter. A little sweet.”
“Like the rolls for lunch at City High?” I asked.
“Almost,” she said. “The rolls they served at City were made with margarine.”
“They were really good.”
“Sure were,” she said. “I’ve got broccoli. Can you make Hollandaise?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Can you follow instructions?”
“I think so,” I said. Her eyes shot up over her glasses, then they softened speculatively. She took a drag off of her cigarette.
“You don’t have much experience at that, I guess?” she asked.
“No, ma’am.”
“It’s not so bad, you know, listening to what other people think.”
I thought about that for a minute. “I listen to you,” I said.
“Sure,” she said. “I appreciate it that you trust me. But maybe you could be more trusting of people around you. Have you been making friends in college?”
I thought for a minute. “Well, there’s Stoney. I tried to be nice to Milton, but I think he took it the wrong way.”
“How did you try to be nice to him?”
“I bought a nine ball game. Kept him from being fleeced by a pro I know named Donnie.” She looked at her recipe cards for a few minutes. The coffee was done and I got up hefted the pot. There were several mugs in front of the percolator. “Coffee?” I asked. She looked up.
“Sure,” she said. “Black.” I poured her a mug, put it down near her, poured one for myself, and went back to my stool. “Thanks,” she said, when I put the mug in front of her. She took a sip. “Okay, here’s the plan,” she said. “Turkey, stuffing, dressing, candied yams, mashed potatoes, gravy, broccoli with hollandaise, corn soufflé. Parker House rolls, pumpkin pie, mincemeat pie. Good?”
“More food than I’m used to even on Thanksgiving,” I said.
“So I’m about to start cooking, and if Ginny shows up what’s going to happen?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Henry, don’t be dense,” she said. “Last time I saw you together she was hanging on your every word. Last night she was staying as far away from you as possible and mooning at that snob from Atlanta.”
“Yeah. Okay. It’s odd. She saw me play pool for some money. Maybe a lot of money. I know it seemed like a lot to her. She didn’t like it that I risked so much.” Mrs. W. nodded and thought for a few minutes.
“Her mom’s that way, too. Her dad’s been offered a job as general counsel of this railroad. The Union Pacific. Big company. Great job. Could make him, or them, millions of dollars. Winnie’s worried because he’s got a good job now and she doesn’t see why he’d consider giving it up.”
“What’s his job now?”
“He’s a partner at Miller & Martin.”
“A lawyer deal?” I asked.
“Yes. And he does well. But being general counsel of the Union Pacific would be a much bigger lawyer deal. But the job is in Omaha.”
“Nebraska?”
“Yes.”
“A long train ride from Chattanooga, especially as Chattanooga doesn’t have passenger rail.”
“Good point.” She smiled.
“Anything I can do to help with the Thanksgiving meal?” I asked, sipping my coffee.
“Maybe. Do you cook?”
“Not at all.”
“Never?” she was surprised.
“Sometimes I fried eggs for myself on Saturdays or Sundays,” I said.
“Because your mom was away?” she asked.
“No, because I liked them fried really, really hard, with a tough skin, and Mom thought that was wrong. I’d fry my eggs and she’d make toast.”
“Well, Ginny usually comes over a little after noon and helps.” She stood and handed me a black iron skillet with red and white hound’s tooth dish towel over it, then located a large Pyrex bowl. I lifted the dish towel and found a large wheel of cornbread that must have been cooked last night with one narrow slice missing. I looked up at Mrs. W. “Your job is to change that cornbread into tiny little crumbles in that bowl.” I shrugged and got to work. While I was crumbling, he took celery, onions, parsley and some other kind of green leaves out of the refrigerator and began to chop them, cigarette dangling from her lower lip. Chopping onions didn’t seem to bother her eyes.
“So what were you going to do with Ginny if you got her?” she asked. I thought for a few seconds about how to respond.
“I, I, I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but I wanted to be her friend, not her boyfriend,” I said.
“That’s odd,” said Mrs. W. “She’s pretty. Smart. Vivacious, athletic.”
“She’s absolutely delightful in every way,” I said.
“Henry,” she asked, with a surprised tone in her voice, “are you homosexual?”
“No, ma’am,” I answered, crumbling my cornbread with a sigh.
“It’s completely okay with me if you are,” she said, earnestly, looking at me and stubbing out her cigarette.
“No, ma’am. I don’t seem to think about women as much as most guys my age, but I don’t think about men. Not in that way, I mean.” She frowned a bit. “I’ve never had a girlfriend and don’t miss having one. I can’t say why. I’m just motivated like that.” She went back to turning her onions into tiny little cubes.
“It’s true I’ve never seen you with a girlfriend or eve chasing one. I guess I just assumed it was going on somewhere else.”
“No, ma’am. It’s not that I dislike girls, I’m just not motivated to pursue them.”
“What religion were you raised?”
“Disciples of Christ.”
“No religious guilt overlay?”
“No, ma’am. We didn’t talk about sex in church, and I never got the idea that there was any part of it was wrong from what I heard on Sunday. One of the few times I made out with a girl was with the preacher’s daughter here in Chattanooga.”
“What brought that on?” she asked.
“Can’t tell you,” I said. “We were the only people in the balcony for the Christmas Eve candle-light service. She suggested we move to the back row and then all of a sudden we were kissing. Don’t know what was going on. She was a couple years older than me and was already off at college.”
“And you didn’t like that?” she asked.
“No, I did. It was great. I’m just not motivated to seek it out.”
“What an odd man you are, Henry.” The cornbread was reduced to a bowl full of tiny crumbles. Mrs. W. noticed this and handed me a half loaf of French bread and another glass bowl. “Turn this into little chunks. It doesn’t have to be as fine as you got that cornbread. It just needs to be small enough for the blender to grab it.” This meant nothing to me. I tore off a few small chunks.
“Like this?” I asked. She looked.
“That’s fine. Even a little larger would be okay,” she said. “Ever had sex with a man?” I was a little surprised.
“No ma’am,” I said, in what I must admit was an amused way.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Because it’s really okay if you are. I really couldn’t care less.”
“Thanks. I’m just not gay. No gay sex. No vices of any kind.”
“Henry, you’re a professional gambler.”
“Other than gambling.”
“I know this shows me to be limited and parochial but I don’t understand a red-blooded young man who’s not chasing girls. Or even boys. So you’ve never wanted to chase girls?”
“Hmm,” I said. I thought.
“Who was she?”
“There have been two I really liked. One you may know because she was a student of yours so I probably ought not to talk about her and the other is this red-head I run into in pool halls from time to time. Both seem like good company.”
“Okay, fair enough.” She pulled a heavy glass Oster blender from under the counter and took my French bread chunks from me. She put a small portion of them in the blender and pulsed it a few times. The chunks became smaller and smaller crumbs each time she pulsed.
“Molly?” she asked. She was guessing which one of her prior students I’d been interested in.
“No, ma’am.” I answered. She pulsed the blender again then poured the crumbs into the cornbread crumbs.
“Gwen?” she asked, as she added more coarse bread chunks to the blender.
“No, ma’am.”
“Sandy?”
“No, ma’am,” I answered. Unless I was mistaken, she was naming all the pretty, smart girls she could remember in my graduating class..
“Cherry?”
“No, ma’am.”
“No, of course not. How about another cheerleader, though, Cindy?”
“No, ma’am. She was smart, though. You know, my idea was to protect the identity of somebody you taught.”
“Linda?” she asked.
“Mrs. Wertheimer, I am uncomfortable with this line of inquiry.”
“All right.” She returned her attention to sautéing her chopped onions and celery. “Chop this,” she said, handing me a bunch of parsley, dropping a very large pat of butter into the skillet that had earlier held the cornbread. “You want to clip off the leaves but not get any stem, then chop it pretty fine.” I did my best to follow instructions. She had an enormous stockpot she filled with water and brought to boil while I was separating parsley leaves from parsley stems with a kitchen knife that was larger than I’d used before. She looked down at my cutting board and grabbed a handful of parsley stems, “excuse me,” she said, and dropped them into the stockpot along with two celery sticks, some carrots, and some bay leaves. She handed me a large brown onion, saying “Quarter this,” which I did, dark brown skin and all. She then dropped what looked like a bunch of chicken necks into the water and took a large, maybe 35 pound, turkey from the refrigerator. She sat it on the counter and reached up inside it and pulled out a turkey neck and a small plastic sack of organs. “You like giblets in your gravy?” she asked me.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “Chopped heart?”
“And gizzard and maybe even liver,” she said.
“No, thanks, but if you want it..,”
“No. Never liked gizzards or heart either one. This liver, though,” she said, looking at a dark purple mass that more or less filled her hand, “It always seemed I should be able to make a good pate our of that.” I could hear the front door open and Ginny call out.
“Aunt Maggie,” she called out, cheerfully, as though calling across a canyon.
“We’re in the kitchen,” Mrs. W. called back, looking up expectantly. Ginny showed up in a few seconds and embraced Mrs. W. on her chair with a big hug. They smiled warmly at each other for a second and hugged again. I sipped my coffee, now lukewarm.
“Hello, Henry,” said Ginny, still hugging, without opening her eyes. “Aunt Margaret is the best aunt in the world.”
“I bet,” I said. “She’s sure good at everything else.”
“Okay,” Ginny said, when they were through hugging. “What’s to do?”
“Want some coffee?” Mrs. W. asked.
“Sure!” she said, and hopped up to pour herself a cup. “Henry?” she asked, looking at me. She looked me in the eye as she asked. The look was pleasant, but not ‘interested,’ so she’d made up her mind about me.
“Yeah, thanks,” I said. I think once a girl decides she’s never going to have sex with you she finds it easier to be around you, but I’m a guy and so have little insight on what women think, and I might have even less insight than most guys. Ginny unplugged the percolator, filled my coffee cup, then filled Mrs. W.’s, then put the percolator back on the counter and plugged it back in, to keep it hot. It can’t have had much left in it.
“So where are we?”
“Well, we have cornbread crumbles. I’ve sautéed onions and celery. Henry’s turned French bread into pieces the Osterizer can handle. I’ve got a turkey stock, or turkey and chicken stock. working. What do you think?”
“Yams?” asked Ginny.
“Sure. Although I’ve used the biggest pot for the stock.” Ginny got busy looking around in Mrs. W’s shelves and cupboards and found a large pot, although not as large as the stock pot. Ginny piled all of the yams on the countertop next to that pot and frowned at them. She searched briefly and found a paring knife and trimmed the small ends and protuberances from the yams, placing them in the pot as she did so. Trimmed, they all fit so she removed them, filled the pot half-full with water, and put it on the burner and turned it to high. “Salt?” she asked Mrs. W., without looking at her.
“A little,” Mrs. W. answered. Ginny retrieved a carton of Morton’s from a cabinet, poured a small mound on her palm, and brushed it into the water with her other hand. She looked around in the cabinets to locate a chrome Osterizer blender with a heavy glass jar and placed it on the counter, then took my bowl of bread chunks, smiling briefly, and placed it next to the blender. She put two handfuls into the blender and pulsed it several times, until the bread chunks were bread crumbs. She looked at the water in the sweet potato pot. Not yet boiling. She reached under a counter as though she knew where to find things and pulled out a large Pyrex bowl, and without missing a beat poured the breadcrumbs into the bowl. She put another few handfuls of bread chunks into the Osterizer and pulsed them into breadcrumbs. The water had started boiling so Ginny dropped in the trimmed yams, one at a time but without any delay between. Mrs. W was looking off to the middle distance and smoking her cigarette. Just before the silence became awkward, she asked me a question.”
“School’s going okay, Henry?”
“Yes ma’am. Pretty much. I have this odd sense that the Math Department and the Physics department don’t get along.” She looked at her coffee cup for a few seconds, then looked at me as though wondering what to do with me.
“Yeah, well. There was a time when the Math people and the Physics people all got along. Then, all of a sudden, everything changed.”
“Why so?” She took a last drag off of her cigarette and stubbed it out.
“You’re new to Physics?”
“Well, I’m taking it for the first time.”
“But you don’t know particle physics or special relativity?”
“No, ma’am,” I answered.
“The divide had more to do with Physics than it did with Math,” she said. “We were all together until this odd thing that happened in 1935. Albert published this paper with Dr. Podolsky and Nathan Rosen about the entanglement problem—you’ll get to it and if you don’t I’ll explain it—but to really understand you need to know quantum mechanics and special relativity to get at it, so ask me in a couple of years and I’ll tell you.”
“Okay.” It wasn’t like her not to explain things. Ginny and she were working together to make food. They seemed to flow together as though they had rehearsed cooking Thanksgiving cooking. Neither seemed to need to talk, it all just seemed to flow. Every now and then one would stop to ask the other a question—“How long for a 35 pound turkey?” or “Is that Aunt Leah’s skillet?” but mostly they communicated without saying much at all, the way sisters sometimes do. At about 3:00 Ginny excused herself and disappeared upstairs.
“Go clean yourself up, Henry,” said Mrs. W. “Company’s coming.”
“I only have jeans,” I said.
“That’s fine. Shave and put on a clean shirt.” I went and did as told.
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