The
Thanksgiving Dinner Fiasco
Ah, Thanksgiving dinner.
A time for rejoicing in family and celebrating your love for one
another. Thousands of years ago, some
over eager girlfriend had decided that the Thanksgiving dinner was the perfect
opportunity to introduce her boyfriend to her family. And we have been paying for it ever
since. After years of trepidation
surrounding meeting Amber’s family for the first time, The Thanksgiving Dinner
Fiasco with them made me feel like a God amongst mere mortals.
---
After dating Amber Palleta for four years, the time had
come. I couldn’t put it off any longer.
“Listen, Jesse,” Amber said, “my mother has called nine
times to find out if you’re coming this year.”
I sighed.
“Amber, I love you,” I said. “But you have to understand. This ‘meet the family’ thing is very
difficult for me.” She shot me a look
that said, ‘dear God Jesse, don’t tell me about growing up in an orphanage again.’
“Baby, I know it’s hard for you, what with growing up all
alone and not being adopted until you were twelve,” she said. “But my family is very important to me. And I want them to see how in love we are so
that we can get their blessings for the wedding.”
Why she kept talking about this wedding thing I have no
idea. I hadn’t bought a ring, I hadn’t
even started looking. In truth, having
realized over the years how important family was to Amber, I didn’t see ever
winning over their approval.
Come on,
I had just turned twenty-five. I worked
at Starbucks slinging latte’s for $8.15 per hour. I had seven unfinished screenplays saved on
my MacBook with no idea how to finish them, market them, or try to sell
them. I wore shorts and flip-flops every
day. Amber on the other hand, had just
started her residency at Bellevue Hospital after finishing a three-year
accelerated med school program. She was
a ten, and me, I was a five, maybe. I
was lucky to breathe the same air as her.
“Jesseeeeee,”
she said, drawing out the last ‘e’ the way she did when she was trying to get
me to do something that I didn’t want to do.
“If not now, then when?”
She had
a point. I couldn’t put this off
forever. “Ok,” I said, less than
enthusiastically. “Let’s go meet your
parents.”
---
Amber’s
older brother, Julian, picked us up on Thanksgiving Day at six in the morning. His new ride, a BMW X5, cost more than I made
in three years time. We had met a few
times before. I got the distinct feeling
that he didn’t like me. I never had a brother;
I didn’t know what I should be doing to make him like me.
“Let’s
go boys and girls,” he said. “We’ve got
eight hours to go til we hit family country.
Ever been to Erie this time of year, Jesse?” he asked me.
“I’ve
never been to Pennsylvania before, Julian,” I said, already on the defensive.
“Well,
you’ll love it, I’ll make sure of that,” he said with a smirk. He turned his attention to Amber, trying to
get comfortable in the back seat. “Sis,
Uncle Martin is coming this year with Kristina.
And they’re bringing Sammy.”
“AWESOME!” Amber exclaimed, startling me. “When was the last time we saw them? Five years now I think?” They just kept talking as if I knew who these
people are.
“Well,
Uncle Martin had his hip replaced,” Julian said. “And Kristina just started her new job, and
they took Sammy out of Lakehill and put him into Warren Academy.”
“Oh,
that’s great. Sammy should be much
happier at Warren. The campus is much
prettier too. I never understood why
they chose Lakehill in the first place; that Dean of there’s sure had it out
for Sammy. What were they
thinking?”
Was this
how families spoke?
Once we
exited the Holland Tunnel and hit 280 West, I could feel my nerves getting the
better of me. I started to sweat, and my
feet began to move and jostle around, without my knowledge.
“Take it
easy there, Jes,” Julian said. “We
haven’t even hit I-80 yet, and we do nearly four hundred miles on that, so
you’ve got some time.”
Julian
reached into his pocket and pulled out a plastic zip lock bag with a white
substance in it, presumably cocaine. He
handed the bag to me, but I passed it back to him.
“No
thanks,” I said, shaking my head.
“Listen,
Julian, my name is Jesse. No one in my
life has ever called me Jes. Not even
your sister.” Amber had fallen asleep
long ago. It was just us men.
“Jes,”
he said. “You’ve been with my sister now
for four years. And there’s nothing I
can do about that. If she picks you,
well, then she picks you. It doesn’t
matter how I feel about it. But you and
I gotta form our own relationship.” He
grabbed the back of my neck with his right hand, pulling my head close to his,
staring straight into my eyes. “But here
me now,” he said, lowering his voice to a whisper. “If you ever hurt my sister, I’ll fucking
kill you. I will come over to your
shitty apartment while you are sleeping and will kill you. Literally.
Do you get me sweetheart?”
I tried
to pull away from him but found myself unable.
Julian had spent six years in the Navy and now spent countless hours a
day at the gym. I was like a small child
in his grasp. “Lucky for me that will
never happen, Julian,” I said, finally able to wiggle free. “I would never hurt Amber.”
“That’s
good to hear, Jes,” he said. I knew in
that moment that for however long Julian and I knew each other, he would call
me whatever name he wanted to.
“I don’t
want to kill anyone again,” he said, the lack of smile on his face driving the
words home. Again. He said he wouldn’t
want to kill AGAIN. What had I gotten myself into?
---
Ken and
Lila, Amber’s mother and father, had been having the Thanksgiving Dinner at
their house in Erie for the past nineteen years. First to arrive, always two days before
everyone else, were Ken’s brother, Trevor, and his wife, Ashley. They had two kids, Molly, sixteen, and Corey,
twelve. Ken and Trevor’s other brother,
Thomas, would always arrive solo, usually drunk from the plane ride in from
Salt Lake City. His ex-wife, Marie,
still came to family dinners, no one knew why, and no one thought to ask. Martin, the baby brother, and his wife,
Kristina, had missed the past several dinners but would be coming this year
with their son, Sammy, who had just turned six.
The only
sister of the four brothers’, Donna, would arrive last, with her husband Beau
in toe. They would fly in from London,
Ontario, a flight of only twenty-six minutes.
They had the shortest commute of the family. Beau’s four kids from his first marriage
would inevitably show up at some point before the Thursday dinner. Twins, Mark and Mason, had just turned
twenty-one. They had two sisters,
Margot, eighteen, and Chloe, sixteen.
That made seven kids altogether, plus Amber and Julian, but neither of
them was classified that way.
I tried
to map out Amber’s family tree in my mind, but found a migraine quickly
approaching. Ken, Trevor, Thomas,
Martin, and Donna, were all blood relatives, from the same parents, Patrick and
Mary Palleta, both deceased. All five of
them had married.
Ken, Amber’s father, married to Lila, Amber’s
mother
Trevor-Amber’s uncle, married to Ashley, two
kids-Molly, sixteen, Corey, twelve
Thomas-Amber’s uncle, divorced from Marie
Martin-Amber’s uncle, married to Kristina, one
kid, Sammy, six
Donna-Amber’s aunt, married to Beau, four kids,
Mark and Mason, twins, twenty-one, Margot, eighteen, Chloe, sixteen.
---
“MA!
Here’s Johnny!” Julian screamed, as we entered through the garage door. I dutifully carried all of our bags.
“Kenneth,” Amber’s mother screamed, “they’re finally
here.” She threw her arms around Julian
and Amber and squeezed until their faces all turned red.
“And you
must be this boy we’ve been hearing
so much about,” she said. I extended my
hand but she didn’t take it. “Come here,
let me have a look at you,” she said, waving me to come closer to her. She grabbed my face with both of her hands
and pulled me close to her. “Not bad,”
she said, and planted a sloppy wet kiss on my lips!!!
“You’ll have to excuse her sonny,” Ken said. “She’s been at the bottle since she woke
up. How many Seven and Seven’s have you
had dear? Seven?” He smiled at this
joke.
“Hush
up, Kenneth,” Lila said. “It’s only two
o’clock and you already had your first case of BUD. Talk about the kettle and the black cat
calling each other the pot,” she said, not realizing her complete demolition of
the idiom.
Their house was HUGE!
Four stories, a four-car garage, and almost five hundred acres in
total. The seven bedrooms were more than
enough to accommodate the large family.
I immediately understood how Amber had been able to afford both college
and med school without the use of student loans. As we walked to her room, I pinched the back
of her arm lightly to get her attention.
“You never told me your family was rich,” I said in a
whisper. Now I had something else to be
intimidated by.
“You never asked,” she said slyly, as if I even knew to
ask that question. “My father developed
a software company when he was twenty-four, and sold it to Microsoft when I was
born five years later, for 90 million.”
She pointed to a large wall, by far the largest wall I had ever seen in
my life, stretching almost seventy feet high, with a huge blue letter “W”
painted on it.
“You’re kidding me!” I said. “Your father created Microsoft Word?” I couldn’t believe my eyes.
“He created the software that Microsoft used to create
Microsoft Word,” she corrected me. “He
still gets a monthly pay-check from them, and here it is, almost thirty years
later.” This was going to be worse than
I thought.
---
Amber dutifully introduced me around before we sat down
for dinner. Her uncle Trevor gave me a
big bear hug and lifted me off the floor when we met. All of Amber’s aunts kissed me on the lips,
just as her mother had done. It was a
strange sensation to feel loved and repulsed at the same time. Was I supposed to kiss back? Was this how all families greeted each other?
I quickly noticed the amount of alcohol that was being
consumed. Aside from Amber’s parents,
who were both in the hole, Amber’s uncle Martin was limping around, still
feeling the effects of his hip replacement, with a bottle of Bushmills in one
hand and a bottle of Jameson in the other.
He would take alternating swigs from each bottle. I don’t know how he was still standing.
Kristina and Donna were both drinking double cosmos out
of beer steins. They must’ve been
sixty-four ounce glasses! Just one would
have floored me for the night. Besides
the alcohol, there were other drugs too.
Marie,
uncle Thomas’s ex-wife, had a large, red leather purse that she kept reaching
into to pull out vials of pills. In under
a half hour, she popped five. One Valium,
one Percodan, one Roxanol, that was freakin’ morphine, I didn’t even know you
could get it in the states, and then she popped two Dexedrine’s, an
amphetamine, I guess so she could stay up and pop more pills. She slurred her words and could barely sit up
straight.
Julian kept running into the bathroom with Mark and Mason
to do coke. The plastic bag he carried
kept getting thinner and thinner. The
threesome came out, eyes bloodshot, nostrils flaring, talking a mile a
minute. Julian was chain-smoking
Marlboro Red’s that he kept stealing from Ken.
Molly, Corey, Margot, and Chloe, all sat downstairs
watching television and smoking marijuana.
They had an entire “brick” of the smelly, sticky, substance, about
sixteen ounces I should think. Molly and
Margot shared joint after joint, while Corey and Chloe passed a large bong back
and forth. Even Amber found her way
downstairs to share a joint with the kids.
AND THIS WAS ALL BEFORE DINNER. How could any of these people eat a bite of
food with all of the drugs that were flying around?
I wasn’t judging, but I seemed to be the only sober
person in the house. Oh, and Sammy, but
he was only six, so he didn’t really count.
I was nursing a Miller Lite for the better part of an hour before
opening my second. My nervousness didn’t
allow me the ability to get inebriated even if I had wanted to.
---
“ATTENTION!
Ladiessssssssss and gentlemenssssssssss,” Lila screamed into the
intercom system wired throughout the house.
“Dinner issssssssss sssssssssserved.”
I’d never heard anyone slur that badly in my life. Never.
The dining room was located on the third floor. The ‘Great Room,’ as it had come to be
called, was decorated in an old Victorian fashion. The Parisian table, made of maple, cherry,
and oak woods, stretched nearly fifty feet long. All of the chairs were lined with a gold
finish. The cushions were stuffed with
bear fur. Real fur taken from real
bears.
The place settings were equally as elegant. The plates, dating back nearly four hundred
years, had a minimalist floral pattern along the edge. The stemware, Baccarat crystal, was lined
with a platinum finish at the base of the stem.
The flatware was engraved with the official seal of the White Star Line,
the company that had operated the Titanic.
I was in awe about it all.
I had never seen a spread such as this. There were two turkeys, both twenty-five
pounds each. Ken and Trevor took their
positions aside the great birds to begin the carving process. Lila brought out piling dish after piling
dish. Two trays of mashed potatoes, each
with its own gravy boat. Two large plates
of stuffing, roasted with the birds’ innards.
Marie’s specialty was sweet potato pie, stuffed full of mini-marshmallows. Donna brought her homemade cranberry sauce,
all the way from Canada. And Kristina
brought two trays of homemade creamed spinach.
My mouth watered.
We stood around the table, admiring the feast before
us. Ken and Lila took their places at the
heads of the table. “Please, let us join
hands,” Ken said. We did.
“Thanksgiving is a time for family,” he began. “Today, family is more important than
ever. And where would this family be
without each other. We’ve come a long
way, through thick and thin, and we did it by staying together. Please join me in welcoming a new member to
our family, Jesse Smith. Son, we just
love your relationship with our Amber.
And we are so happy with how happy you have made her.” He turned to face me, and Amber squeezed my
hand tightly.
“Jesse,” he said.
“We all know that you have never known your family.” He walked over to me and placed his hand on
my shoulder. “Jesse, from this day
forth, I’d like you to consider us your family.
I’d like you to view me as your father, the father that you have never
known. I bestow upon you the name Palleta. Son, your name is now Jesse Palleta.” Tears began to fall from my eyes.
I looked
over the faces of Amber’s family. Her
father, Ken, once arrested for assaulting Amber’s mother, drunk on
Budweiser. Her mother, Lila, once
arrested for assaulting Amber’s father, drunk on Seven and Seven’s. Her brother Julian, AWOL from the Navy in
1988, and imprisoned for two years, high on coke. Her uncle Martin, convicted in 1977 of
statutory rape, and imprisoned for three years, drunk on a combination of
Bushmills and Jameson. Her aunt’s
Kristina and Donna, both arrested and convicted on charges involving a Ponzi
scheme in 1973, drunk on double cosmos.
Her aunt Marie, twice arrested on drug charges, both times in 1991, high
on a plethora of prescription narcotics.
Her cousins, Mark, Mason, Molly, Corey, Margot, and Chloe, all kids, too
young for this life, all high.
I had
never been in trouble with the law. I
had never done drugs. I had never been
drunk. And yet, I saw their humanity in
their eyes. And in that moment, I
related to them. I related to each and
every one of them. And I felt like home.
I hugged
Ken and Lila, and then turned my attention to Amber. “Amber,” I said. “I am home when I am with you. And I am home when I am with your
family. I love you. Will you marry me?”
“Yes,”
she said. “I will marry you.”
I am
home. Happy Thanksgiving.
Jamie Schoffman
5/22/12
