Parrotfish (21 page)

I managed a few hours of sleep and stumbled
downstairs around eight in the morning to find Mom standing over the sink, manhandling a frozen turkey.

“You’re up!” we said to each other simultaneously.

“Well, just barely,” Mom grumbled. “I still feel terrible, but I forgot to defrost this damn turkey yesterday. It’s too big to fit in the microwave—I’m going to have to soak it all day. I’ll never get it cooked by five thirty.” She picked it up and dropped it into a sink full of warm water, sending a small tsunami across the countertop. “And I haven’t even gotten to the store yet to buy the other stuff, the potatoes and green beans and—”

“I have to go out later anyway. Make a list and I’ll pick stuff up.”

“Oh, honey, would you? I don’t know how much of this celebration I’m going to be able to manage today.”

“Mom, leave the turkey in the sink. I’ll get Laura and Charlie to help me make dinner. Dad, too.”

She gave me a terrified look.

“Well, okay, not Dad. But the rest of us should be able to do it. How much work can it be to make some mashed potatoes and green beans?”

“And the pudding. Don’t forget the pudding.”
But she was heading for the stairs already, gladly handing it over to me.

“And pudding. I won’t forget.” I had no idea how you made pudding, or even green beans, for that matter—Mom had always done all the cooking, and I’d paid no attention—but there must be a book somewhere in the kitchen that would tell me.

“Just call me if you need anything,” Mom said, her voice disappearing back into the bedroom.

An hour later, just as I was about to nod off into a pile of cookbooks, Laura appeared, in an extremely sunny mood. Jason must have lived up to expectations.

“Mom gave me a list of stuff for you to buy for dinner,” she said, dropping the list on the table. “She said
we’re
doing the cooking. That’ll be fun!”

I yawned and forced myself to wake up. “I found out how you roast a turkey. And mashed potatoes and green beans are easy enough. But I don’t know how to do the pudding. How do you make pudding?”

Laura made that face with which she silently calls me a moron. “You open a couple of those little square boxes, add milk, and stir.”

“It comes in boxes?”

“God, Grady, have you ever been in a kitchen
before? This is a refrigerator. That’s a stove.”

“Okay, okay. As long as you know how to do it.” I grabbed the list. “I’ll get this stuff. You keep working on defrosting the turkey. You have to change the water to keep it warm.”

She poked the lump in the sink. “It’s hard as a rock!”

“I know. The recipe says a turkey this size has to cook for four hours. Which means it should go into the oven around one o’clock.”

“What if it isn’t thawed out?”

I shrugged. “I guess we’ll have to put it in anyway. Won’t it thaw out in the oven?”

“How should I know? I’ve never cooked a turkey.”

“Well, I don’t know what else to do,” I said. “I’m going to be gone for a couple of hours, so—”

“A couple of hours? Where are you going?”

“Before I go to the store, I have one more present to buy, and I have to go to Connecticut to get it.” I was so excited about my find that I sort of wanted to tell Laura about it, but I was afraid she couldn’t be trusted not to blab it to everybody else before I got back.

“Connecticut? They don’t sell this thing in Massachusetts? Are you crazy?”

“Probably.”

“Do Mom and Dad know you’re doing this?”

“No. When Dad comes down, just tell him I had some last-minute errands to do, okay? Could you please try to keep this small secret?”

“Tell me what you’re getting in Connecticut.”

“Can’t. It’s a surprise.”

“For me?” That idea got her a little excited.

“Well, not exactly, but in a way. In a way, it’s for all of us.”

She frowned and turned back to the turkey. “Secrets are stupid.”

“So,” I said, “did you have fun at the dance?”

Her features unclouded, and a look of serenity settled over her face. “All I can say is: Oh. My. God.”

“Hold that thought,” I said, then grabbed the car keys and made my escape before another family member woke up.

It took longer to find the place in Connecticut than I thought it would, and longer to negotiate with the people in charge. At first my story didn’t satisfy them, but I pled my case until we finally came to an agreement, and, after settling my gift into the backseat, I was on my way.

By the time I did the grocery shopping and got back, pulling the car into the garage and closing
the door behind me as quickly as possible, it was almost one o’clock. I could hear the pandemonium before I opened the door.

“Finally!” Laura shrieked when I walked in. She and Charlie and the entire kitchen floor were all soaking wet from using the faucet sprayer on the turkey, and obviously on each other, too. “Where have you been? I preheated the oven, like the recipe said to, but this stupid turkey is still frozen!”

Dad came in from the dining room. “Oh, there you are, Grady. How does your mother set the table? Does the fork go on the left or the right?”

“Left, I think,” I said, squinting my eyes and trying to visualize it. On a normal evening we were lucky if somebody managed to get the silverware matched up to a plate, much less on the correct side of it. “Is Mom still in bed?”

He nodded. “I think we should let her sleep until the last minute so she can enjoy the evening. I’m sure she’ll be feeling better by five o’clock.”

Always the optimist. Kita would like Dad.

“Would somebody please tell me what to do with this turkey?” Laura yelled.

“Let’s throw it out and buy a different one,” Charlie said.

“Now, now,” Dad said. “I’m sure it’ll be fine.
Why don’t you just dry it off and stick it in the oven? Just turn the oven up a little higher than it says to in the book—that’ll probably do it.”

I wasn’t sure he was right about that, but what choice did we have? And then I saw Dad head for the garage door.

“Where are you going?” I cried, jumping in front of him.

He backed up, surprised. “Well, since I’m not doing too well in the dining room, I thought I’d bring in the wood for the fireplaces for tonight.”

“I’ll do that!” I said. “Don’t go out there, okay?”

“Why not?”

“Grady, you have to help me with this turkey,” Laura said. “Charlie already dropped it once.”

“That wasn’t
my
fault,” Charlie said. “You threw it at me!”

I stood in front of the door, my arms out at my sides. “Okay!” I said. “I’ll tell you all this much. There is something in the garage that I don’t want anyone to see until the performance tonight. It’s a surprise. If you go out there now, the whole thing will be ruined!”

Laura rolled her eyes. “And you say
I’m
overdramatic.”

“What is it?” Charlie asked.

Laura glared at him. “You dumbo, didn’t you hear him? If it’s a surprise, why would he tell
you
what it is? Besides, it’s just something weird he had to go to Connecticut to get.”

Thank you, Laura
.

Charlie wrinkled his nose. “Connecticut? What do they have in Connecticut that we don’t have in Massachusetts?”

“All right,” Dad said, shushing them both. “I think we can all manage to wait a few hours to see what Grady’s surprise is. There’s plenty for us to do in here. You can bring in the wood, Grady—there’s a pile outside the back garage door.”

“After he helps me get the turkey in the oven!” Laura demanded.

“After you help Laura get the turkey in the oven,” Dad agreed. “And I’ll go back to setting the table. Does anybody know where we keep the napkins? Or the candlesticks? Or the dishes?”

L
aura and Eve were in their dresses before five o’clock. Dad, of course, had been wearing his outfit for hours. Sebastian fit surprisingly well into Charlie’s old Tiny Tim outfit and was enjoying using his cane as a sword with which to attack a pile of dirty socks cowering in the corner of my bedroom.

Charlie and I were doing less well. Since Mom hadn’t been able to tailor any of Dad’s old outfits for us, we were trying to find anything we could in the costume box that came close to fitting. All the pants were far too long for Charlie, so he just left on his jeans—and, what the heck, his sneakers too—and wore a big gray shirt over the top that made him look more like a nineteenth-century prison inmate than Bob Cratchit’s kid. I could wear Dad’s pants, although they had to be belted at the waist and rolled at the ankles. With a tucked-in shirt, suspenders, and a too-large vest, I looked like a circus clown who’d lost his wig.

But the biggest problem was Mom. She wouldn’t get up. Laura had gone in several times to offer to help her get dressed, but had been met by a sleepy refusal. Finally, Dad had been sent to rouse her. He came out smiling. “She’ll be up any minute. Nothing to worry about.” Still, the rest of us worried.

Laura put in a call to Aunt Gail. “When are you coming over? Mom won’t get up!”

Apparently, Aunt Gail’s answer was something like, “We’re running late too. Michael was all dressed in that cute little outfit your mother made him, and then he pooped all over himself.”

“Eww.” Laura made a face.

“If we’re late, we’ll just pretend to be . . . guests who are late!” Gail said.

“But what about Mom?” Laura asked.

“Make some coffee. Hold it under her nose.”

Not bad advice, we decided. Eve actually knew how to brew coffee too, so we wouldn’t accidentally make our sick mother sicker.

As Laura went upstairs with the coffee mug, Sebastian peeped out the curtained front window. “Grady! There are a million people out there!”

“Nah,” Charlie said. “Usually about a hundred, hundred and twenty. I bet nobody’s standing near those melting bears, are they?”

“As far away as possible,” Sebastian said.

I opened the oven, which I hadn’t dared to peek in for hours. The turkey didn’t look bad. Well, maybe a little bit burned on the very top, possibly because we’d turned the oven up to five hundred degrees. But basically it looked like a regular turkey, ready to carve. Amazing. I got the pot holders, and Sebastian helped me take it out and put it on top of the stove.

“There’s a fancy turkey platter someplace,” I said.

“I know where it is,” Eve said, heading for the dining-room pantry.

The three of us managed, with pot holders, forks, and when necessary our hands, to transfer the turkey from the pan to the platter. Mom would have made gravy, but we were under no illusions that we could do that.

The potatoes were mashed, the beans were cooked, the rolls were baked, and they were all waiting to be nuked at the last minute. The pudding was milked and stirred and refrigerated. We had actually made a meal that appeared to be edible.

“She’s sitting up and drinking the coffee!” Laura announced as she came running back downstairs.

“See, I told you,” Dad said. He’d just laid the fires in both rooms and was dusting off his pants. He checked his watch. “Almost time. Grady, where are our scripts?”

“Upstairs—I’ll get them,” I said.

“We should have had them sooner,” Laura complained. “So we could learn our lines.”

“Don’t worry about the script,” I said. “I want it to be a surprise.”

“God, you’re like
Mr
. Surprise these days,” she said.

Had to give her that one. The past month had been one shock after the other, but I was beginning to like not knowing what would happen next. Now that I knew there were people who’d help me roll with the punches, it was kind of exciting.

As I came out of my room with the scripts, Mom opened her bedroom door and shuffled out in her house slippers. She was still in her nightgown, her old, crummy robe thrown over it, the collar half tucked in, the hem ripped out in the back. Her hair was a mess, and her eyes were puffy slits. She sipped from the coffee cup.

“I’m up,” she said. “I feel better, but I’m not putting on that dumb dress. It’s too tight in the waist. And besides . . . I don’t want to.”

I laughed and handed her a script. “Mom, I think you’re dressed perfectly for my version of the play.”

“Why? Is it set in a hospital?” Her slippers made a shooshing sound on the steps.

Although I could tell that Dad was a little taken aback by Mom’s appearance, nobody said anything about her showing up in ancient flannel sleepwear. Fortunately, she caught sight of herself in the hall mirror.

“Oh, for God’s sake, I can’t go out there looking like this!”

We stared at her helplessly for a minute, and then Charlie had an idea. “Take off the robe and put on that big black overcoat of Dad’s!”

Dad approved the change—what choice did he have at this point? The show must go on and all that. Laura found a bonnet and helped Mom tuck her straggly hair under it so she bore at least some vague resemblance to the rest of us.

I handed out the rest of the scripts at the last possible moment so nobody would read ahead. Dad and Sebastian put on their frock coats, hats, and mufflers, and Sebastian stood on a chair while I helped hoist him onto Dad’s shoulders. We were always glad the Victorians wore so many layers of clothing, because Dad liked having the windows
open so he could hear the spectators’ comments. At five thirty I turned on the microphones and slowly pulled back the curtains, as I’d done for ten years. Ten years is an awfully long run for any play.

The audience applauded, although as we paraded through the dining room and into the living room, there were some audible remarks about the new costumes on display. “What’s she got on?” and “That’s not what they usually wear” and “Who’s that?”

As always, Dad and Tiny Tim entered last, Dad heartily shouting out, “We’re home, Mrs. Cratchit. We’re home!” Unfortunately, Sebastian was holding his script in front of his face and didn’t duck soon enough when they came through the living room doorway. His cap absorbed most of the blow, but it made Dad stagger, and we could hear our audience laugh. Good. The fun was just beginning.

Dad swung Sebastian down from his shoulders and improvised a line: “Are you fine as feathers, my good son?”
Fine as feathers?