it's about removing the layers

I did a few things differently this Thanksgiving. First, I shaved. I also put the store-bought chocolate pecan pie into a glass pie plate instead of bringing it to Nana’s house in its original plastic container. It’s all about the illusion. I didn’t fool anybody by relocating the pie, though, because my family knows that my past performances are almost always an indicator of how to predict my future performances.

Nevertheless, I still felt I’d upped my game considerably, particularly since I’d given myself such a close, smooth shave. Ordinarily, I show up with a growth on my face as unruly as my Uncle Sol’s chest hairs while donning black polyester pants, a white T-shirt, a sheepskin vest, leather flip-flops, and a khaki fishing cap with a few lewers dangling from the brim.

This year, however, I kept it simple and wore a plain embroidered kaftan and a pair of cheap sandals. You just can’t beat the comfort.

Dinner conversation with my family has always been an oblique and opaque experience, and this year’s dialogue was certainly no exception.

Before the Tofurky was even sliced, Nana mentioned her fondness for dark rooms, drawn curtains, black walls, and staying under the covers. “My mood sank so low,” she said. “I was admitted into a sanitarium and treated for melancholia. Do they still call them sanitariums these days? Do they still call it melancholia?”

There was a silence as long as our faces.

Then Sis, who sometimes has a knack for saving the day, said, “They do. I’m sure somewhere they do.”

But it was Papa who topped us all.

“I’ve converted to Christianity,” he said. “I’ve also become an Eagle Scout.”

“He’s joking,” Nana said.

“The hell I am,” Papa said, storming out of the room and returning with his Eagle Scout medal, a burlap bag with something moving inside, and an autographed copy of pastor Joel Osteen’s book, Your Best Life Now.

“Does it look like I’m joking now?” Papa said.

Nana looked at Papa for a few seconds and then moved her gaze toward the rest of us. “He’s had too much schnapps.”

“Oh, yeah?” Papa said. Then his eyes rolled back into his head, and he began speaking in tongues.

“Mamzer mashugga megillah nafkeh narish nisht geyfloygen nishtgutnick nudnik nudjen kaneh chazzer chazzerei ech mir!”

Then Papa reached into the burlap bag, pulled out a garter snake, and began handling it.

“Shlimazel schleppen shlecht veib plagen pitshetsh pisk-malocheh!”

Nana shook her head. “He’s not speaking in tongues,” she said. “He’s speaking in Yiddish.”

Then Nana started yelling at him in Yiddish.

The only phrase from her entire tirade I understood was, “You moron, you’re supposed to use poisonous snakes,” and I’m pretty sure she called Joel Osteen a charlatan and accused Papa of being a self-hating Jew.

Then Papa said he’d been schtuping some thirty-four-year-old Bible school teacher from New Rochelle for the last year and a half and how his soul had been delivered ever since she introduced him to the 700 Club with Pat Robertson, and besides, he was goddam sick and tired of being thought of as a Christ-killer and that was why he converted and d****t if he wanted to convert, that was his own goddam business. If we didn’t like it, we could all go to hell!

Well, what was there to say to that?

We all just sat there.

Even the snake.

Three or four minutes later, Sis attempted one of her famous tactical diversions: 

“Who wants pie?”

But nobody said anything.

Nana stood up from the table, picked up her plate, brought it into the kitchen, set it in the sink, and began scrubbing some pots and pans.

Papa pulled a flask of schnapps from an inside pocket of his jacket, took a strong pull, and returned it to his pocket. “Let this be a lesson to you all,” he said.

Sis gave him her famous, confused look. “And what lesson would that be?”

“If you have to ask, you haven’t learned it yet,” Papa said, putting on his hat and coat and walking out the door.

The snake slithered back into the burlap bag as Sis sliced up that store-bought chocolate pecan pie served on the glass pie plate.

And I thought, next year, I’m just going to stay home and eat one of those Swanson Hungry Man turkey breast dinners, and I’ll probably serve it in Wedgwood, China, just for the hell of it.