A Joycean Thanksgiving

Early on Thursday, November 22, 2007, Nora Barnuckle awakes from a deep sleep and a disturbing dream. Her 11-year-old daughter had been kidnapped while walking along a quiet residential street to a friend’s home. Fooled by the vividness of the dream, gratitude floods within as her eyes flutter open to the reality of the newly rising sun. It is later than she thinks. Venus, Nora’s touchstone, has faded from view.

Quietly, tentatively Nora begins her day. Opening the sliding doors, the fresh air greets her with a promise she knows won’t be kept. The dogs amble past her, shaking off the sleep, and pad across the green-carpeted yard to relieve themselves. The house is still and she relishes the few moments of freedom. At this moment she doesn’t exist to anyone. She inhales the pleasure of just being and tip toes about in hopes of maintaining the illusion, not wishing to wake the giant. While Nora realizes she holds the keys to her castle, she is acutely aware that, to a large extent, she is really its prisoner.

As chambermaid to many masters, she attends to the “odd jobs” necessary to their day-to-day functioning. Today’s guests from the Commonwealth of Virginia promise to double the siege on her tower so she braces herself for the day ahead. More masters to serve. She knows, as she prepares the various dishes according to the demands and desires of each, that the day will end successfully but she alone will consider it a pyrrhic victory. The decades of wish fulfillment have exacted a toll that is palpable within.

Just as a warrior dons his shield for battle or a priest shaves/cleanses for the celebration of Mass, Nora prepares for her duties. Staring at the mirror, she pauses. Staring intently into the pupils that stare back, she longs to jump into the beckoning black hole. She wonders if she can find herself there if she stares long enough, hard enough. Now it seems the image in the looking glass is more real than the three-dimensional android on the other side.

Her tools are ready: fine brushes, colored powders, and rosy creams lined up neatly in her vanity drawer evocative of how her life is laid out. She will use them to mask the drabness she feels within. The curlers are heating up. So is the day. People are stirring and, like the grumbles from an empty stomach, they begin to make their presence/needs known. “Do you know where….?” “ Have you seen my…..?” “What is for breakfast and can we have….?” “Did you take care of the…..?”

The mask is on. No serendipity today. Everything is set in stone in accordance with tradition. Maybe that is why the holidays seem so stultifying to her. No wiggle room. No freedom.

Yet, today, there is a usurper…an interloper. While Nora is sleep walking through the day, she is wide awake in her dreaming.

The smells of the pancetta-rubbed turkey and baking pumpkin pies fill the air. The skin is browning on the fowl and the crust is forming over the pie. She too forms a protective layer by focusing fully on the final preparations. It is 3:48 p.m. The rest of the guests will arrive at 5 p.m. Pans clank against the sides of the stainless steel sink as they are hurriedly washed. Sopping wet hand towels cry, “Enough! Find another one for the job!,” but she sees no reason to give them a reprieve. Where is hers?, she reasons.

The countdown is beginning and she senses she will soon be plunged into a whirlwind of final details in this memory-making moment. No luxury of thinking/dreaming for now. That will have to wait until the house is quiet again. Her memory of this day will be different, she presumes, than the others. Who can know for sure? Is everyone, she muses, just playing their prescribed roles? Does anyone really want to be here today?