After arriving at her in-law’s house, Julia immediately tried to scope out the situation. Occasionally, it would appear on the Thanksgiving table, a tray of perfect snack-sized squares, made of homemade phyllo and feta and fresh spinach that had been patted dry in one of the many steps in the three-hour preparation. If Julia was extra lucky, there might be a couple of leftover squares that she could fold into napkins and slip into her coat pockets to enjoy the next day – as long as her husband didn’t get to them first.
Even more rarely, the guest responsible for making it — a little old woman dressed head to toe in black — would be seated at the table. She was of no blood relation to her husband Chris’s family, but Julia had known her for nearly as long as Julia and Chris had been married.
The meal was still under assembly, and dishes—some brought by guests—were scattered on counters. Julia looked for the kind of tin-foil-covered tray that the woman’s son, George, might have dropped off before work, but she was tugged away to say hello.
And then George came in, greeting everyone. Only he was not carrying a tray.
“Shoot,” Julia muttered.
George came all the way in, rather than his standard quick hello before hustling out to the restaurant he managed. Dawn, his wife – Chris’s sister – came in, too, separately; their two kids, preteens, trailing on their phones.
George’s face was gray. He had a long, Idaho-potato-shaped face – this was his most striking feature – but even at this time of year, when the days were short, his cheeks typically had color. George had not been a bad-looking man, so it was never hard to see why Dawn would have fallen in love with him. In recent years, though, he had taken to wearing a full beard – the kind that collects crumbs – and now the gray strands that had snuck in overwhelmed any black, making that long face appear cement gray.
Shuddering, Julia said hello. She could not help thinking that George’s brother, another hard worker, had looked that way when they all said their final goodbyes to him twelve years ago, comforting George and his mother, who, from that point forward, donned black.
George gingerly took a seat in the kitchen chair. He was in pain, he said. He had been to the doctor, and it was his muscles. Probably age. He had not been able to sleep for days.
His presence at Thanksgiving, one of his restaurant’s busiest days, surprised Julia. His pain had to be extraordinary for him to miss work, she thought, feeling enormous sympathy for him.
Finding Chris in the living room, she said, “George is here.”
Predictably, Chris frowned. She knew he was not a fan; he blamed George for the shape Dawn was in. Julia sighted her at the window, looking out. She seemed to have made an effort. Her long blonde hair was combed, and she had put on a dress. It was loose-fitting with somber brown colors.
Dawn and George had been high school sweethearts, but had so drifted apart that when everyone sat down for the meal today, they chose opposite ends of the long table. Dawn had become a drinker, hiding cans of White Claw under the bed, racking up DWIs that George dutifully paid.
Julia knew that Chris blamed his brother-in-law for his baby sister’s unhappiness. Julia believed that, deep inside, Chris even took pleasure in blaming George. He had never liked the guy. He had hoped that Dawn would meet a future doctor or lawyer—someone with stature who could give her the life she deserved, rather than a cook who delighted in feeding people. Or, maybe Chris was jealous of all the time George got to spend with Dawn, who rarely had time for her brother anymore.
Gradually, Chris made peace with his sister’s choice and was known to even exchange a word or two with Dawn’s new husband about football or the weather. Comments that elicited private mutterings from both, “That guy’s an idiot.”
The relationship between brothers-in-law didn’t grow. And when Dawn’s drinking became a problem – when she even stopped combing her hair—Chris couldn’t talk to George and see what was going on.
Not that George would have given Chris the time of day. Though Chris had many admirable qualities—devotion to family, the biggest—they all knew what he was known for. That, growing up, when Chris was responsible for babysitting, he used to bully his little sister, who had no one else there at home to defend her. He even locked her in the hall closet once, which Chris claimed to Julia was meant as a joke. Dawn was three years old. When Julia floated the idea that Dawn’s current problems could be rooted in childhood—that Dawn may have been so damaged she didn’t have the ability to ever really find herself—Chris shut the idea down and said Julia was going too deep.
“It’s him. He doesn’t give a shit about her. She’s crying out for help, and he just goes to work. Business as usual. Pretends nothing is going on,” Chris said the rare time he talked about his sister. One other time, after Dawn ended up at the E.R. after a three-day bender, and George went to work, Chris said, “That man is evil.”
Julia saw nothing remotely evil about potato-headed George as he served her a generous helping of, ironically, sweet potatoes. He was a people pleaser who used to be known for the great outdoor feasts he hosted before Dawn’s drinking shrunk the gatherings to the couple’s inner circle. Julia glanced down the table at Dawn. She was pouring herself more ginger ale from the can beside her glass, and seemed to be concentrating hard. Normally there would be wine on the table, but there was none, obviously a deliberate decision by the hostess.
The roasted turkey was perched on a white serving tray that Julia had gifted one Christmas. In previous years, the turkey might have doubled for one of the professional images found in one of those red-and-white-checkered Better Homes Cook Books that Julia’s mother-in-law used. But this year the bird was darker and had collapsed, making Julia wonder if someone in the kitchen had snacked on it. The state of the turkey, in Julia’s mind, represented the state Dawn was in. But Julia kept the thought to herself, picturing Chris shaking his head and telling her she was going too deep.
Obviously, because of the sad shape of the turkey, the conversation stayed on other things, only taking off when someone complained about not being able to find good bread anymore. George said it was the grain. What the commercial bakeries used was over-processed, so there was nothing decent anymore on grocery shelves. The Italian bakeries where George grew up—there used to be four—were down to one. They couldn’t stay in business because bread had gotten a bad name. Too many customers had come down with celiac disease and gone gluten-free.
Julia loved bread, so the conversation made her grip her napkin under the table. But then she realized they never had bread on Thanksgiving anyway. They did, however, occasionally have spinach pie. Turning to George, she said, “How’s your mom doing?”
He said Talia sent regards to all. She was okay, getting on in years. She had slowed down and rarely cooked. She had stopped making spinach pie.
Julia pressed her napkin to her heart. When she recovered enough to speak, she said, “I miss her.”
“Talia or her spinach pie?” George said and winked.
Julia managed a smile; she guessed it was no secret that it was she who usually pocketed the last of the pie.
She ate her sweet potatoes and tried not to feel let down by the absence of spinach pie and by the knowledge that it wasn’t likely to appear on the table again. At least not until George and Dawn’s kids were old enough to take interest, at which point they’d probably learn the many steps from a stranger’s online video, and it would not taste the same.
This was the problem with loving things, Julia thought. Eventually they ended. She stared at her plate—she had been served a couple of slices of dark meat, which seemed the best bet—trying to pull herself together enough to eat. She told herself, Wasn’t it also true that strangers had new takes on things? Interesting innovations? The kids might learn to make spinach pie that tasted even better than Talia’s. Rolling her eyes, Julia thought, Yeah, right.
Beside her, Chris patted her arm, after scraping his plate of turkey, whispering encouragingly, “It’s better than it looks.”
When she tried it, she found it was actually tangy and tender. She had the two pieces, then realized that drinking lots of water kept her hands busy and her mind occupied.
Someone said, “You have quite a forest in here,” pointing at the potted plant in the corner that almost reached the ceiling.
“Oh, that. George gave me that—to take care of,” Chris’s mom said.
George set his fork down and, with gravity, explained. He had gotten the plant as a gift twelve years earlier in memory of his brother. The plant hadn’t done well at their place, George said without looking at Dawn, whom they all knew wasn’t known for her domestic skills. “Mom turned it around,” George said with another wink.
He and Dawn had not exchanged any direct conversation at the meal, Julia noticed now. What a lonely life Dawn had, Julia thought.
But then she looked around the table at the other faces—that of Chris and Dawn’s octogenarian parents, as well as George and Dawn’s children, and Chris himself—and thought she really had no way of measuring who was worse off.
Maybe it was all about expectations. About not hoping for too much. Had she not hoped for the spinach pie, all of what she had on the table would be enough.
From now on, this would have to be enough, she told herself. But at the same time, a competing voice said, It’s okay to hope.
Before leaving, she found George. “This is going to sound strange,” she said. “But I’m a little desperate. Do you think I could visit your mother? I don’t know, I thought maybe she could show me how to make her spinach pie.”
Karen Regen Tuero is a Pushcart-nominated writer whose short stories have been published in North American Review, Lunch Ticket, New World Writing, The Summerset Review, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. For links to her stories, visit: linktr.ee/kregentuero