Chapter 31
Dinner was sumptuous. It began with an antipasto. There were paper thin slices of prosciutto wrapped around small pieces of fresh melon that George had ordered from Florida. There were black and green olives and a bowl of cold shrimp. There was wet mozzarella and Swiss cheese and artichoke hearts and cold red beets. But before they began to eat, Marjorie asked Reverend Cooley to say grace.
The Coolys and the Pascals had recently returned from Africa. Reverend Cooly was a tall man who was totally bald on the top of his head but sported slicked back sides with his remaining hair. He wore silver framed glasses and Ron noticed that he had very large hands when everyone bowed their heads to pray. His wife had curly hair that was kept short. Ron thought that it looked like a bird’s nest on top of her head. Reverend Cooly wore a brown and orange plaid sports jacket that looked festive in a garish sort of way. His wife, who was only introduced as Mrs. Cooly had a patient smile glued to her face and Ron noticed that it never left. He thought that it was the kind of smile that could be described as long suffering.
Dominick Pascal was a big man, which is a polite way of saying that he was obese. Ron counted three chins. His wife Sela was very thin. Dominick was wearing a blue suit with a little American flag lapel pin that Ron noticed immediately. He wished that he had an American flag shirt and that he had worn it to piss them off.
It occurred to Ron somewhere early in the meal that these people did not particularly like Marjorie and George and that they were there as an act of Christian brotherhood. It was something about the way that they pronounced “antipasto” and keep remarking on how unusual it was to start a Thanksgiving meal with such an exotic dish.
Marjorie was oblivious to it all. She wanted to know about what it was like in Africa. “I can tell you this Marjorie, you would never get such a fine meal as this anywhere in Africa.”
Ron looked up. “Really? You were over the entire continent?”
“Quite a bit of it,” said Dominick. “Quite a bit of it over the last six years.”
“What was it like in Egypt?” said Ron.
“We were never really up North” said Dominick. “Egypt and Africa are really two different places.”
“They are?” said Ron.
Rev. Cooley said, “Mr. Pascal is speaking culturally rather than geographically, Ron.”
Ron nodded. “So except for Egypt then is it really all the same?’
“Oh no! There are widespread differences,” said Cooley.
Mrs. Cooley added, “Some of the coastal states like South Africa are truly beautiful.”
Ron shot her a glance. “Too bad about Steve Bilko then wasn’t it?”
George laughed heartily, now on his 3rd Manhattan and said, “Now there was a really funny man. Was his name really Bilko?”
“Do you mean Phil Silvers?” said Dominick.
“Steve Bilko just had his brains beaten out for wanting the freedom to organize the true people of South Africa,” said Ron. “He was in prison and they beat him on his head until he was dead.”
“That poor man,” said Mrs. Cooley.
George reddened and drank. Marjorie got up and cleared the dishes for the next course. Ron got up to help her. In the kitchen she whispered to Ron, “Please be nice. Please do this for me.”
Ron nodded and said that he would try.
The next course featured the roasted turkey and the stuffing that Marjorie had made for the first time outside of the bird. There was a bowl of creamed pearl onions and a long dish of candied yams. There was a large bowl of yellow turnip. Then Marjorie walked out with two more bowls. One held string beans and the other was filed with broccoli. This year they were also having fresh cranberry sauce, something that Ron had never tasted before. The table filled up under the growing eyes of those seated around it. Ron could have sworn that he actually saw Dominick lick his lips. He was proud of the table that his mother and George set. George was actually an excellent carver of meat and so the turkey’s carcass was neatly stripped. Ron thought for a moment about the way that he had hacked up a bird in the past and wound up actually pulled the legs and wings off with his hands and exposed ripped out pieces that made it look as if some predator had attacked the game with its jaws and claws.
Reverend Cooley said, “Well this is a magnificent looking table.”
The guests all looked from one to the other smiling and nodding their heads. There was a respectful moment of quiet and then the murmurs of “Oh yes, I would love some of that” that came as the plates were passed around the table. As they began to settle down to their plates and eat, Cooley said, “Your mother tells me that you are a teacher, Ron.”
Ron finished chewing and swallowed and said, “This is my first year at it. I hope to be a good teacher.”
“Lord willing, I’m sure that you will be,” said Cooley. “What did you do previously?”
“I spent some time in a jail in Paterson and before that in a center for the mentally ill in Cranford,” said Ron. He was instantly sorry that he had mentioned the jail. He saw the look of pain wash across Marjorie’s face. He knew that it made her think about her long searched for, and never found, father.
“Some of our greatest minds have spent time in both of those places, Ronald. No reason to be ashamed,” said Mrs. Cooley. It caused Ron to grin.
“I don’t think that the young man meant that he was incarcerated in either of those places, Mother,” said Reverend Cooley. “I think that he was telling us that he worked there.”
Mrs. Cooley bit her lip and said, “Oh I am sorry,” and momentarily put down her knife and fork. Ron saw Marjorie glare at the woman. He wondered what his Aunt Dotty would have said if she had been here. “Please do forgive me, Ronald.”
“No offense taken, Mrs…” Ron paused and feigned a look of confusion. “What is your first name?”
The Cooleys exchanged a look of quick tension. And the Reverend Colley said pointedly, “Mrs. Cooley’s Christian name is Gladys.”
Ron ignored the signal. “No offense taken, Gladys.”
The Cooleys exchanged the look again. George asked if anyone wanted more wine or cider. Dominick was hunched over his plate and seemed to be shoveling the food into his mouth with the precision of a back hoe. Sela Pascal picked at her food demurely, occasionally deigning to lift a half filled fork to her mouth and tentatively placing it to her lips before opening the cavity just the slightest bit to place it inside. She then chewed thoroughly and touched her napkin to her violated lips just after she swallowed.
“What do you teach, Ronald?”
“English,” said Ron.
“So you are a man of letters,” said Gladys Cooley.
“Rather than numbers, yes,” said Ron.
“What do you do for a living, Mr. Bombasco?” said Reverend Cooley.
George had a large helping of turkey in his mouth and held up his hand while he chewed, asking her to wait. Hurriedly he chewed and swallowed and then blurted, “I’m a printer.”
“What is it that your company prints, George?” said Dominick, raising his head up for the first time, his face grown red and his cheeks swollen from exertion.
“Local papers and the Foodtown circular,” said George, happy to be on firm footing. He did a man’s job and he did it well. It was a time honored profession. He didn’t spend his time in bars with games or in classrooms with little girls.
“What do you do, Dominick?” said Ron.
“Sela and I have dedicated ourselves to spreading the word of God.”
Ron nodded. “Does it pay well?”
An electric look of tension passed around the table at the impudence of the question. Reverend Cooley spoke. “The rewards are manifest, Ronald.”
Ron had just done some reading about the ways that Missionaries had helped to rape Hawaii. He knew that his mother had wanted to be a missionary when she was young. He also knew that for her it had been a deep and sincere desire to make the world like the world she envisioned that Jesus would have wanted.
“How do you do that in 1977?” said Ron. He shrugged. “I mean, I imagine that everyone has heard about it by now.”
“Many are they that listen and do not hear,” pronounced Cooley.
People were now reaching out for additional food, all except for Sela whose plate was still more than half full. Ron took additional dressing and ladled some of the surprisingly good fresh cranberry sauce onto his plate. Marjorie took additional candied yams. Dominick went for a refill of everything. Even the Cooleys took more turkey and potatoes.
“What I mean is,” said Ron, “what exactly do you do?”
“Well, with all of the European countries giving up and all this talk of individual States and Countries, there is a movement back to old heathen ways in Africa and we try to combat that.”
“And how do you do that?” said Ron. He found himself now genuinely interested.
“For one, we work on old legends and songs, the things that these people believe because they really don’t know any better. We sometimes take the melodies of old songs and rewrite the stories, providing an enlightened look at the world.”
“You change their history?” said Ron.
“They really don’t know too much about history, Ronald.”
“How do you know that?”
Cooley seemed to ignore the question. “They have folk songs and tales that they tell each other. And we inject the Divine presence into them.”
Ron put down his fork. “So basically you steal their history the same way that slave owners stole the language of African slaves in America.”
“We don’t think of it as stealing, more that we are giving them gifts.”
“Suppose they don’t want your gifts?”
“We also provide food and clothing and medicine.”
“Well, that’s good,” said Ron. “Do they get the medicine if they don’t sing the songs the way that you want them to?”
“Marjorie, I must say that this is the most delicious meal that we have had since returning home,” said Gladys Cooley.
After the pies and the coffee and the fruit and the nuts, the men went to watch a football game and the women congregated in the kitchen.
Ron saw that the Miami Dolphins were drubbing the St Louis Cardinals. He had always rooted for the Cardinals because he liked their quarterback, but Miami was just too good and the game was not competitive.
Football didn’t live in him the way that it used to. He knew that he would never play again, not even in a game of two-handed touch. The men were sprawled with their bellies sticking up like large amphibious creatures sunning themselves in front of the light of the TV instead of being on some rocks watching the sea roll in.
He looked to the kitchen. There was a constant clatter of pots, pans and dishes as the women honored a time old custom of not leaving each other with a mess to clean. Ron would have preferred being in there, but he knew that his presence would ruin Marjorie’s being the center of attention. They would all feel compelled to make a fuss over him being there,
or in the cases of these other two women perhaps express their discomfort with him not acting like one of the men.