Home to Harmony (11 page)

“Chinese twins. Isn't that something?” Frank said.

Then it was time for them to leave. Paul shook his hand and Judy kissed him on the cheek. The babies nubbed his finger.

 

I
stopped by later that evening. I had been thinking of Frank the whole day, wondering how he was getting along.

He said, “It's been a good day, Sam. Paul and Judy were here. Got to hold my girls. It's been a good day. Lot to be thankful for.”

I told him, “I sure hope the Iversons stick with us. I hope they don't leave the church. Hope they don't go to that new church out by the interstate. You know, the one that shows music on the screen and has a children's minister.”

Frank said, “They're not looking for a children's minister. They're looking for love. I think they'll stick.”

Then he looked at me and asked, “Sam, what are giblets?”

“I'm not certain,” I said. “But I think you drink wine from 'em.”

“I had wine once,” Frank said. “On our wedding day. I didn't much care for it.”

“Your wedding day?” I asked.

“No, the wine,” Frank said.

Then he said, “I think I'm going to make it, Sam. When the missus died, I didn't think so…”

He choked a little as he spoke.

“But now I think I'm gonna make it.”

He rocked back and forth. It was quiet in that room. Peaceful.

He held up his index finger and inspected it and chuckled. “You oughta see those little girls just chew on that finger. They really work it over.”

“They'll do that.”

Then Frank said, “You know, Thanksgiving isn't as easy as it looks.”

“Nothing ever is,” I told him. “Nothing ever is.”

“I guess that's why the Lord gives us friends,” he said.

“That is precisely the truth,” I told him. “That is precisely the truth.”

O
n the Saturday after Thanksgiving, our family went to the city to be with my brother Roger and his girlfriend, Tiffany. They had invited us for Thanksgiving dinner back in September. We spent the next two months trying to think of an excuse not to go, but couldn't come up with one. We are unimaginative people and thus are poor liars. Plus, we don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, so we end up doing a lot of things we don't want to do—like going to Tupperware parties and driving two hours to eat Thanksgiving dinner at an apartment in the city.

My mother was opposed to it. It didn't feel right to her—eating a Thanksgiving meal at someone else's home. To have someone else cook your family's Thanksgiving dinner seemed to her a moral failure, a lapse of duty. She'd never met Tiffany—none of us had—but my mother phoned Tiffany's apartment anyway and offered to bring the turkey.

Tiffany said, “Oh no, that's okay. Like, we're not
really having turkey. Roger and I don't eat meat. We're vegans.”

This startled my mother. Vegans? What in the world were vegans? She thought it was a new religion, that Roger had moved from Harmony and joined a cult. How could that be? She had raised Roger in the church, had taught him in Sunday school. Then he went to the city and met this Tiffany and joined a cult. What was he thinking?

Suddenly, she wanted to go to the city. She wanted to get Roger alone, away from Tiffany, and remind him of the goodness of the Lord.

She talked about it on our way to the city. We were riding together in my parents' Buick. My mother clutched her Bible, girding her loins for battle.

“They don't eat meat,” she moaned. “Plus, they've joined a cult. The vegans.”

“For crying out loud,” my father said. “No meat! What are we going to eat? We shoulda just stayed home.”

My mother said from the backseat, “Sam, I want you to talk with your brother about the Lord. You set him right.”

I told her, “Mom, vegans are people who don't eat or wear anything having to do with animals. It's not a cult. Roger still believes in God. He just doesn't eat meat.”

“For crying out loud,” my father said.

“It was that college,” my mother lamented. “We never should have sent him there.”

 

R
oger had graduated from Earlham College in Indiana. The college had been founded in 1847 by
solemn Quakers who sent their children there to protect them from the stain of The World. But by the time Roger attended, there were seminars on Woodstock, and the professors wore sandals. An ominous sign. But my mother and father had sent him there anyway on the advice of Pastor Taylor, who was now dead and beyond accountability. Now they were reaping the bitter harvest—a no-meat Thanksgiving at an apartment in the city.

During college, Roger worked weekends at a bookstore, where he was exposed to seditious literature. He read about world religions and feminist theology and men who spent their weekends beating drums in the woods. Then he began to read poetry, which pleased my mother, who loved poetry. She particularly enjoyed Helen Steiner Rice.

When Roger told her he belonged to a poetry group, she was thrilled. He confided that he had even written a poem and wanted to know if she would like to hear it.

“Oh yes,” she told him. “Please. Your very own poem! Think of that. How wonderful! Maybe I can use it for a devotional at our next Friendly Women's Circle.”

She called my father into the kitchen and told him to sit down, that Roger had written a poem and was going to read it to them.

It was a poem about the exploitation of workers and the hypocrisy of capitalism. It ended with the torturous death of bankers, the rise of the working class, and country clubs being converted into housing for the homeless. Roger read his poem with great passion.

When he had finished reading, there was silence.
Then my father said, “For crying out loud,” and got up and left the room.

When Roger went back to college, my mother tucked a treasury of Helen Steiner Rice poems in his backpack. Real poetry, where the words rhymed.

Roger had met Tiffany at a poetry reading. She had gone to college to major in education but had become disenchanted with traditional education's emphasis on hierarchy and had switched her major to sociology. By then, Roger had decided to study philosophy.

“For crying out loud,” my father had said.

 

W
e pulled into the apartment complex where Tiffany lived. Climbed out of the Buick and went inside, up the stairs to the fourth floor. My mother gripped her Bible in her hand. My father was wheezing.

There was a sign on the door. I peered at it. It was from Thoreau, the first hippie. It read,

H
ENRY
D
AVID
T
HOREAU

It was going to be a long day.

I knocked on the apartment door. It swung open. Roger was standing there, wearing a black shirt and an apron. He had a gold earring in his left ear.

“For crying out loud,” my father said.

“Hi, Mom. Hey, Dad,” Roger said. Then he rubbed
my boys' heads and hugged my wife and hit me on the shoulder.

“Hey, brother.”

Then he said, “I want you to meet Tiffany.”

There she was. This woman who had led Roger astray, who had led him down the false path of vegetarianism. She was pale and thin. She had the sniffles. She trembled.

My mother took one look at Tiffany, and her mothering gene kicked in. She said, “Oh, you poor thing, you're sick. Let's get you to bed.”

She took Tiffany by the hand and led her through the front room, down the hallway and into the bedroom. We could hear my mother clucking. She came back into the front room.

“That poor child is anemic,” she told us. “She's low on iron. This no-meat nonsense has got to stop. Roger, take me to the grocery. Now.”

By that time my father was in the kitchen. He called out for me to come in. He was standing at the table.

“Can you believe this?” he said. “This is what they were gonna feed us. Will you look at this?”

There was macaroni without the cheese, and apples. Small, wormy apples. Pesticide-free apples. There was a plate of lettuce and a pitcher of herbal tea on the table, and a bowl of kiwi fruit.

“For crying out loud,” my father said. “No wonder that girl's sick. She's starving to death.”

My mother and Roger were back within the hour. They had a turkey breast, potatoes, cranberries, and a two-liter bottle of RC Cola. My mother put the turkey in the oven and began peeling the potatoes.

“This is more like it,” my father said.

My mother arranged the food on the table. She went to get Tiffany. She took her by the arm and led her to the table.

Tiffany moaned, “I can't eat this. I'm a vegan.”

My mother thumbed through her Bible to the book of Acts, chapter 10, and began to read, “And Peter became hungry and desired something to eat; but while they were preparing it, he fell into a trance and saw the heaven opened, and something descending, like a great sheet, let down by four corners upon the earth. In it were all kinds of animals. And there came a voice to him, ‘Rise, Peter, kill and eat.'”

Then she closed her Bible and turned to Tiffany and said, “Well, Tiffany honey, there you have it. It doesn't get any clearer than that. Now eat up.”

 

S
o Tiffany ate. Not much, but she did eat. And so did we, sitting around the table. Great slabs of turkey with mounds of mashed potatoes and cranberries. Heaven food. Manna. We washed it down with glasses of RC Cola.

The color began to rise in Tiffany's face. Her trembling stilled.

Roger needed no convincing. He had three helpings of turkey. He looked suspiciously robust for a vegetarian. His black shirt was stretched tight across his stomach. I began to suspect he'd been sneaking hamburgers.

Tiffany went to her room to do her yoga.

“She does her yoga after every meal,” Roger told us. “Isn't she something!”

We all agreed that she was something.

I asked Roger how long he'd been a vegan.

He looked guilty. He lowered his voice. “Strictly speaking,” he said, “I guess I'm not a total vegan.”

He'd done it for Tiffany, he told us. She'd talked about it at the poetry reading, when they'd first met. She'd told him how she'd been meat-free for three weeks, and what a cleansing experience it was.

Roger had nodded and agreed, “Yes, it is cleansing, isn't it.”

From that day forward, it had been macaroni without cheese, salads without dressing, and small, wormy apples. They'd eat at her apartment, then Roger would kiss her good-bye and drive past the Burger King for a Whopper. Then he'd go home and gargle Listerine to get the hamburger off his breath.

“Don't tell Tiffany,” he said.

My father said, “Well, that's ridiculous. I'd never do that. I'd never put on airs just to get a woman to like me. That's for sure.”

My mother snorted. “I don't even want to hear that. When we first met and you found out I was a Quaker, you claimed to be a Quaker too, just to get on my good side. So don't act so self-righteous.”

She started laughing. “He even hid his car. He thought we were like the Amish, that we didn't drive cars.”

Roger said, “For crying out loud.”

Tiffany finished her yoga and came in and sat cross-legged next to Roger. She was feeling guilty for eating a piece of turkey. She felt defiled, like Peter. She ate some lettuce to cleanse her system.

My mother asked her what it meant to be a vegan.
Tiffany said, “It like means you don't eat anything with a face. But it's like more than a diet. It's like being in harmony with like all of creation.”

My mother smiled and nodded. She thought, Well, if they get married, I guess they won't be moving to Harmony and I guess Tiffany won't be helping with the Chicken Noodle Dinner.

She didn't say that, she just thought it.

 

T
hen it was time to go. Roger and Tiffany walked us to the car. Roger rubbed my boys' heads and kissed my wife and punched me in the shoulder.

“Good-bye, brother.”

He shook hands with my father and kissed my mother, who whispered in his ear, “I like your earring.”

We got in the car and headed west, toward home. The sun was setting through the veiny trees. The boys fell asleep. It was quiet, except for the hum of the tires on the road.

My mother broke the silence. “I like Tiffany. She's a little different, but at least she's trying to do what she thinks is right. You got to give her credit for trying. What was that she said about being in harmony with all creation? That doesn't sound so wrong. Maybe we oughtta try that.”

We drove on, pondering a no-meat future. A bleak prospect.

A few miles further, my father asked, “Why would a man wear an earring?”

“Probably for the same reason a man pretends to be a Quaker,” I told him.

“For crying out loud,” he said.

We don't think people will love us as we are, so we pretend to be someone we're not.

My father pretending to be a Quaker.

Roger making believe he's a vegan.

Wrinkled women lifting their faces, chasing their youth.

Fat men sucking in bellies.

Poor folks putting on airs.

Sinners acting like saints.

All of us keeping pace with our companions, stepping lively in this dance of deceit.

It is so hard, in this world, to be who we are.

My mother reached across and rubbed my father's shoulder. She said, “I'd have married you whether you were a Quaker or not.”

“Really?” he asked.

“Really,” she said.

“How come?” he asked.

“Because you're worth loving,” she told him.

My father blushed.

“For crying out loud,” he said. “For crying out loud.”