Rick Moody - The Diviners

Vanessa and the intern cannot stand the narrative tension, can’t stand the waiting, can’t stand not knowing what’s going to happen, can’t stand the time between episodes, can’t stand the time between seasons, can’t stand the time during the commercials. Though they are tacticians of story, they are taken in by the sweep of narrative, and they want to know what happens more than anything. And this narrative tension somehow brings them together onto the same couch. Until moments ago, Vanessa was on the couch, eating her lukewarm wedge of pizza, and the intern was on the floor, plucking the black olives off a slice and eating only these scarabs, and now the intern is on the sofa, too, as if the sad truth that Edwin is going to suffer retribution, gangland style, on this, Thanksgiving Day, is too much for them. The distance between their bodies begins incrementally to diminish, as though they were glaciers drifting ominously toward each other in a great arctic sea. To Be Continued. .

Ranjeet exclaims, “This is the most important moment of the entire season, this moment when these characters must sit down for the Thanksgiving meal! It is the region of New England, and they have nothing for the Thanksgiving dinner, they have only the cold cut variety of turkey, such as you might find at any delicatessen! You could get it anywhere, and it is always inferior! It’s a loaf of turkey, nothing more! This is all they have! This is meant to be the feast that proves that America is most bountiful and can survive the entirety of the winter with its bounteous harvest, and yet all these persons possess is the cold cut turkey, and they are attempting to make instant potatoes from a box of potatoes, and they have the Jell-O and it has small bits of fruit floating in it, and this is the great bounty of America! It is not even real food. It is chemicals. And this is what they have because they are disenfranchised by reason of their color and by reason of a disadvantageous political system.”

Jeanine tells him: Put a lid on it, because the moment is poignant, and he is actually talking through the program, and she wants to see what the kids are going to say. Because the kids are gathered around the character named Felicia Adams in the kitchen, which is tiny, with just a couple of cupboards that will not close because they have been painted over too many times, and inside these cupboards is her great collection of mismatched plates bought mostly from tag sales. And yet despite the grimness of the Thanksgiving, the Adams boys are gathered around their mother. They know, even if she doesn’t say so, that she’s trying hard. That counts for a lot on Thanksgiving. Even Bennett, the older boy, is attempting to be kind of generous. Still, young Vern asks, “Mom, this all we’re going to have?”

“It’s what we’ve got for now,” his mother observes. “You think the Pilgrims had Jell-O? They didn’t have any Jell-O. They didn’t have one piece of fruit or anything. Orange slices in that Jell-O? Oranges come from Florida, probably. Florida was a swamp back then. The Pilgrims all had scurvy. Their teeth were falling out, and they never flossed.”

Bennett says, “It’s because we’re poor.”

“We’re not poor,” Felicia says. “We’re busy. And sometimes we’re too busy to manage. Folks are penalized for being busy these days, at least in our tax bracket. There are a whole lot of people who are a lot poorer than we are.”

The doorbell rings.

In the Means of Production office, in the conference room, with the tiny little office television on the brand-new conference table, Jeanine shifts in the arms of her Sikh lover, thinking not about the poignancy of Felicia’s attempts to fix dinner for her family, and not about how family is always capable of rising above grim circumstances. No, Jeanine is thinking about her lover’s wife and son, and the Thanksgiving they are going to have this coming week. This ushers in a sinking feeling. It’s a sinking feeling that she imagines is not unlike the feelings of the television character Felicia Adams, who is in a race against time to fix Thanksgiving dinner by 2:30 so that she can get the dishes cleaned, including the pots, before moonrise. Because as soon as the moon rises, Felicia will not be in the mood for housework. Jeanine imagines that her situation is like Felicia’s situation, in that their lives harbor secrets. And this is the way that The Werewolves of Fairfield County does its job, not through the richness of its screenwriting, nor through able performances, but by virtue of the simple human tendency to see one’s vulnerabilities in others, to be, in these instances, full of pity for the frailty of both human beings and werewolves.

At the sound of the bell, Felicia goes to the door, and there, framed in it, is Edwin. Down the corridor, she can see neighbors peeking out of their own units. They all gander at Edwin because Edwin is carrying the most enormous turkey, the most enormous turkey Felicia has ever seen, housed in a beautiful new turkey pan. It’s as if he stepped out of a Dickens tale.

Felicia says, “Where did you get that turkey?”

As smiling Felicia attempts to take the pan from him, hefts it out of his arms, Edwin slumps to the floor. Bleeding. Yes, Edwin is bleeding from a gunshot wound in his left shoulder. Edwin has been shot.

Felicia Adams cries out. Because it’s one more thing. Because she just doesn’t have time. Because the meal is not ready, and if the meal is not ready, we can easily surmise, the meal will not be done on time, and if the meal is not done on time, Felicia will turn into a werewolf before it is done. And so there is no time for more catastrophe. And yet here it is. Now Bennett and Felicia (the latter having set down the turkey pan in the front hall) drape Edwin’s arms around their shoulders and they drag him into the apartment. He’s groaning in pain, and it’s a sort of feral moan. Mother and son drag the injured man through the corridor and into the bedroom, where they lift him as best they can onto the bed. Felicia hurries into the kitchen to make a compress. She seems to suspect immediately what’s going on.

“You want me to call the doctor?” she says with a frosty reserve.

“No doctors,” Edwin says, according to his part.

Then, in a moment that is so artful it doesn’t seem to belong on television, the audience realizes that the enormous turkey, in its enormous Williams-Sonoma turkey pan, is still out in the hall. The camera has paused upon this culinary item. A beautiful amber light shines upon the turkey. The camera is panegyrical. We hear Felicia and Edwin in the bedroom, and Felicia is whispering, “What did you get into? Did you get into what I think you got into? What were you doing down there? Do you have something you want to tell me?”

“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry. All I wanted was to provide, I swear to you. I wanted to provide something. For you and the boys. For the dinner. All I wanted to be was the man who provided.”

The camera has never once strayed from the turkey in the hall, and gradually we are aware that there’s some kind of scraping taking place in the hall, right behind the camera, and only incrementally do we realize that it’s the sound of crutches, crutches edging into the shot. And then Vern is everywhere in one margin of the frame, like a seal pup on dry land, flopping in the hall. It’s just Vern, trying to get himself down to the level of the turkey, which involves dropping the crutches. Now he tries to lift up the pan. He tries in different ways, to no avail. Soon he tumbles weakly onto his side, on the floor, beside the turkey.

Felicia says to Edwin, “What am I supposed to do with you?”

“It went clean through,” Edwin says. “Just leave me for a few days. It’ll be fine.”