Benefit by Siobhan Phillips

Author:Siobhan Phillips
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bellevue Literary Press

On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving almost everyone at Royce clears out. The campus empties and I can love it a little, forlorn and purposeless, even if the library is closed. I can love the library, closed; look at this dark building full of books. Of all useless things. Yesterday, my mother prepared and served to the Royce students and teachers and staff a holiday dinner of turkey, turkey gravy, vegan nut loaf, vegan gravy, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, succotash, mashed potatoes, green salad, dressing, rolls, butter, pumpkin pie, apple pie, and whipped cream. The dinner is the largest of the year and the only one for which the food-management company does not set the menu, because the same menu has been served for fifty years, always in four shifts, always with the hall decorated in gourds and honeycombed banners of brown and orange and red, always with a student string group playing an arrangement of “Over the River and Through the Woods” and an arrangement of Appalachian Spring. At the end of the evening, more than four thousand utensils have been washed.

For our Thanksgiving, my mother says to me on Tuesday evening, I have been thinking. I might not cook a completely traditional menu. Would that be all right with you?

Yes, I tell her, that would be very much all right with me.

We are in the grocery store together. This is the first time we have shopped together since I came back to Royce. I push the cart. My mother has a list, each item of which she regards and revises as she goes. Perhaps a chicken, she says.

A whole different bird, I respond. I shake my head.

You think that’s bad?

I’m joking.

Oh, she says, good. Hand me that little carton of cream. No, we better have two cartons. For dessert I will try something without so much pumpkin.

I hate pumpkin, I say.

Really? My mother looks alarmed.

No, not really, I say, and my mother says, Oh! and then asks me if we need potatoes; she’s going to make wild rice, but should we also—No one needs potatoes, I say. Can you imagine needing potatoes? True necessity, about potatoes?

You’re in quite a mood, she says.

Am I? Would you say it’s a good mood? By the way I’m buying.

You’ve already bought a lot, she says. Can you afford to?

That’s very rude, I tell her.

She smiles. She reminds me we’re cooking for five. I invited a few people over, she says.

Ah. What people are those?

She says, I invited those who don’t have a family to go to.

But we don’t have a family to go to.

What do you mean? She looks up from her list. Of course we do.

I let that go. I say again, What people?

College people. Professors, like you, she says. I let this go, too. She continues: Turn left here; we need to pick out some nuts .… A physics professor. He’s from Ghana. And a Japanese woman. And oh, someone else who’s a visiting scholar in Russian history, I think. Or international affairs.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.