Nora said, “Shit,” the word deep and completely heartfelt.
The turkey was rotten. The goddamned Thanksgiving turkey was rotten to its core.
“Shit, shit, shit.” The word was also an apt description of the way the turkey smelled. She’d put the turkey in four hours before and she’d been smelling something bad for two. She’d blamed Ellie’s shoes at first. Seventeen-year-old girls normally smelled like many things—Abercrombie perfume and Maybelline Baby Lips—but Ellie had legendarily bad-smelling sneakers. She didn’t seem to care, either. When she was Ellie’s age, Nora had been horrified by the very idea of any natural smell emanating from her body. She’d fought her underarms with the spray deodorant from the dollar store and, with her babysitting money, she’d bought extra cans that she tucked in her school locker and kept in the bottom of her backpack. Both Nora and Mariana had argued over the baby powder in the mornings before school, tipping it into their plastic flats, hoping that that day would be the day it worked. Instead, they’d only left sweet-and-sour white footprints on the locker room floor as they padded to the gym showers they pretended to take.
Ellie, since she’d gotten old enough to fight body odors, had seemed blithely unconcerned. “Mom! Smell my feet! Aren’t they rank?” She would take off her shoes when her feet got hot whether she was in the Prius or in the kitchen. Nora knew that Samantha and Vani teased her mercilessly about it, and still Ellie just smiled and shrugged. The Odor-Eaters Nora bought her sat encased in plastic on her desk.
Even on the days Ellie forgot to wear deodorant—which were more days than Nora could honestly understand—she seemed strangely thrilled with her animal scent. “Can you smell me, Mom? I’m so foul. I smell like this guy in my seventh period named Jim Wells on a hot day after he’s done lacrosse and basketball practice.”
The Thanksgiving turkey smelled like Ellie’s feet and old roadkill and cat shit and, possibly, Jim Wells.
And apparently, a smell that offended her daughter did exist. Ellie entered the kitchen with her blue scarf pulled up around her face.
Her voice was muffled. “What is that, Mom?”
Nora hadn’t been prepared to admit that it was the turkey. It couldn’t be. Not this year. “I thought I’d used too much rosemary . . .”
“Rosemary smells nice. Whatever this is”—Ellie made a one-handed gesture in the air—“is toxic. I think it might kill me.”
Nora snapped, “Then get out of the kitchen.” She heaved the turkey out of the oven, appreciating its heft. She’d spent almost forty dollars on this freaking thing. “Maybe the egg in the stuffing is bad. Or maybe it was the bread I used?”
“What did you do?”
Nowadays it was always her. It was always Nora screwing things up. This time it wasn’t her, though. “No, it has to be the stuffing.”
“But I helped you make that. It didn’t stink.”
What Ellie meant by helping was that she had stood near her mother, her cell phone in her hand, texting furiously to Samantha while she snacked on the toasted focaccia Nora used to start the stuffing. Some things didn’t change.
Ellie pulled the scarf tighter around her face. “It smells like death.”
Nora bit her lip and, with it, the retort she wanted to spit at her daughter. It was death—that was the point. Americans celebrated being thankful for life by butchering something, cutting it down in its full-breasted happiest prime. “It can’t be the bird,” she said. “I won’t let it be.” Surely she’d be able to pull out whatever the offending thing was and throw it away. “Oh! Maybe I didn’t pull out the giblets.”
“You did.”
“No, I don’t think I did.”
“Remember? You said you wished we still had Buster so you could give him the heart.”
“I did?” Nora felt a spasm of fear low inside her. She set the turkey carefully on the wooden cutting block of the island. “Sure. Right. But maybe I didn’t get it all.”
“Are you sure you didn’t leave this on the doorstep for, like, a week?”
“Don’t be silly.”
Ellie’s voice was softer. “No. Really. Did you . . . maybe . . . buy it last month? Or something?”
Nora held up one oven-mitted hand. “Just stop. Let me figure this out.” She hated that she couldn’t remember when she’d bought the turkey. Or even where she’d bought it, for that matter. She knew how much she’d paid . . . or was that last year’s bird that she remembered? Shit.
Ellie hopped up on the counter next to the sink, even though Nora had asked her approximately seventy thousand times not to—the tile would get weak eventually—and watched. “I don’t know why I’m even staying in here,” Ellie said through her scarf. “But it’s like I can’t turn away. I have to know the disgusting end of this. This is worse than when you hit that mama bird with the car. Remember?”
Of course she remembered. Not of course. Never of course, not anymore. “You are not helping.” Nora took her biggest wooden spoon and jabbed it into the bubbling, noxious cavity. “It’s got to be the stuffing.”
“If it was the turkey itself, wouldn’t you have noticed after you defrosted it? Like, it wouldn’t go into the oven and just start stinking.”
Nora closed her eyes. She couldn’t remember defrosting it. Goddamn it, she was good at this part of being a mother. The home-baked cookies and the healthy banana bread with the flaxseed oil snuck in and the caramel apples at Halloween and birthday cakes in any and every shape—Nora was good at doing it and good at helping other people to do the same. Thanksgiving was her high holiday, the most holy of all shined-silver days.
Not this year. The stuffing was in a large yellow bowl, reeking of bloody mayhem, and the stench was only getting worse.
Nora’s eyes watered, and from her perch on the counter Ellie choked.
Taking her favorite, sharpest knife from the block, Nora held it over the bird’s breast. This was a moment to be savored at a table where your loved ones were gathered around you. Carving was the best part of Thanksgiving—the moment that everyone watched, salivating in appreciation. She should carve into the meat at the long dining table, candles flickering, wine sparkling in her wedding crystal.
Not under the compact fluorescent glare of the kitchen lighting. Not while her daughter gagged.
She held the knife for a moment in the air and then plunged it into the bird.
The turkey fell apart with a wet groan. The breath of it rushing out was enough to make Nora stagger backward.
“Oh, no! Mom!” Ellie’s scarf was almost wrapped around her head now and she pulled her knees to her chest.
“Get your feet off the counter!” The demand was automatic.
“Jesus. Do you have a nose? How are you not dying right now? Who cares about my feet? My toes smell like roses compared to that nightmare.”
“You’re right. You’re totally right.” Nora picked up another oven mitt and picked up the pan, all twenty pounds of bird and metal. She nodded to the kitchen door. Ellie hopped down and opened it for her.
Outside, the afternoon was warm, one of those gifts the Bay Area doled out liberally in the late fall. The big-leaf maple that hung over the backyard had turned a glorious red and orange, seemingly overnight. Through the wooden fence Nora could hear her other neighbors—the not-Harrison neighbors—enjoying their three-o’clock gin and tonic, in which they indulged every day, holiday or not. The familiar clink of ice in their shaker didn’t calm her—the sound just rattled her nerves more.
“Get the garbage can lid,” she said.
Ellie, still barefoot, danced around her to open it. While she held it open, Nora dumped the whole thing.
“You’re not even saving the roasting pan?” Ellie said incredulously.
“We can buy another one.”
Then, without a single word, Nora walked back inside the house and slammed the door, leaving Ellie outside alone. She had to get used to it sometime.