Turkey for Dinner ~Part V

Part V

While Cate hung his coat up in the hall closet, Eric sprinted into the kitchen to take the heavy, old-fashioned coffee pot from Mrs. Miller’s trembling hand.
“Let me get that,” he offered. He set the pot on the stove and adjusted the flame underneath. With disaster averted, he looked around the small kitchen. Two pumpkin pies sat on cooling racks, a huge bowl of cubed bread stood next to a variety of herbs and spices in bottles and tins. A bowl of sliced apples sat next to a lump of dough and two pie plates. A saucepan of giblets and the turkey’s neck bubbled gently on the stove and the turkey itself, a monster, sat in an enormous pan waiting to be stuffed, trussed and roasted. Eric took a deep, appreciative breath filled with the aromas of Thanksgiving morning: cinnamon and spice and...onion?
Cate burst into the kitchen, a whirlwind of blond hair and energy. Her small hands pulled at his arm and she pushed him down into a chair. Before he could speak, she pressed a paring knife into his hand and dragged a huge pile of small white onions on a sheet of newspaper in front of him. She reached across the table in front of him and the citrusy scent of her hair eclipsed all the other aromas in the air. He wanted to grab her around the waist and pulled her into his lap so he could take another lungful of that scent. Only the fact that it would put a sharp knife in her reach prevented him. Instead Cate snagged a pot and plunked it down in front of him.
“Okay, you insisted, so here ya go. Just peel these and make an X in the bottom and drop ’em in the pot.” Cate wheeled away. “One hour, Gram.”
At that moment, Mrs. Miller turned from the counter, a plate of cookies her hand.
“Cate! You can’t ask a guest to peel onions.”
“Guest? I don’t see a guest. I see help. You said Mrs. Judson sent him over to help us. And I need help peeling the onions. Look, there’s a lot to do in the next hour, Gram. I don’t think Eric is up to making the stuffing or your famous apple pie. So, what’s left?”
Eric sat quietly and let the women work things out. He didn’t mind peeling the onions, although when his aunt sent him over to the Miller house to help them, he had envisioned putting leaves in the table, arranging chairs and bringing in firewood for the small fireplace in the living room. What he really wanted to do was be where Cate was. She’d grown from a spitfire ten-year-old whose gumption he’d admired into a beautiful woman. And if that meant peeling piles of vegetables, then he’d peel away.

(c) 2007 by Susan Atwood