Talent by Juliet Lapidos

Author:Juliet Lapidos
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2019-01-21T16:00:00+00:00

Someone had marked up Joyce’s famous riff. Above slooching, he wrote slouching? And he underlined governed by the women in it. Maybe not he. Edith? Helen? Such a funny habit, underlining. The point is to mark territory: Remember this place! Later, you come back to the underlined passage and twist it in support of an argument. Reading as a means to an end: an essay. Underliners beget essay-writers. Essay-writers take an author’s words and put them to work, turning their potential into kinetic energy.

Katherine Smith stares at the electric alarm clock, waiting for it to ring. Ring. Why don’t you ring? At 7:05 she wonders what’s gone wrong. Oh, Joe, her husband, switched it off last night. It’s Thanksgiving and he doesn’t need to wake up for work.

In a little while Katherine will get out of bed to prepare an elaborate dinner. She’ll make turkey with orange-balsamic gravy. Chestnut stuffing. Cranberry sauce. Mashed sweet potatoes. And something green: asparagus. Two pies: pumpkin and chocolate pecan.

Katherine hears Joe snore, jostles him to make it stop. The maneuver works. Later, Joe’s brother, Samuel, will come over with his family. Samuel’s wife, Lisa, will offer to help in the kitchen, and Katherine will accept the offer, even though she prefers to cook alone and even though Lisa is incompetent and lazy as a spoiled cat. She, get this, doesn’t even know how to chop onions. She cuts horizontal slices from the stem to the root, creating half-moons of varying sizes, some large, some small, which reduce unevenly. (Thanks, Edith, for the housewifey knowledge.)

Huddling under the covers, Katherine remembers that Lisa enjoys sampling dishes before they’re ready. Everyone does this, but Lisa does this too often. Today, Katherine thinks, still in bed, Lisa will dip her pinkie into the orange-balsamic sauce. Then Katherine will reach for a butcher’s knife. With a flick of the wrist she’ll launch it at Lisa’s pinkie and sever it at the knuckle. Samurai precision. Blood everywhere. Chop-chop-chop-chop. She’ll remove the remaining four fingers on Lisa’s left hand and drop them into a blender. Gross! Vroom. Crunch. Dinner is served.

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