I will have to interrupt my character sketches momentarily to describe a recent evening en famille. We sat down to dinner in our usual places. My husband sits at one end of the table with his back to the very large (imported with lots of hassle by us personally from Mexico) bird cage that sits in the corner. Our son sits to his right with his back against the window. I sit on my husband’s left facing my son. My youngest daughter sits on my left, and her sister sits across from her, next to her brother, with her back against the window as well. Since she and her brother sit on the inside, at least once a month one of them smacks the side of their head on one of the two huge metal sconces on either side of the window as they try and squeeze into their seats. This is usually followed by swearing and beating the sconce with fists. “Mom!” either one has shouted accusingly, “you have to move those!” As if I placed them there on purpose in order to inflict head wounds on my progeny. When this occurs, my youngest child snickers under her breath, happy some justice is being served by the universe, albeit unrelated for her siblings’ previous crimes against her. Hank, who is normally planted between my husband and son, gives me a look as if I need to make them stop caterwauling so the meal can begin. The bird screeches in escalating volume to the tension in the room. My husband turns around and bangs on the cage and then says to me, “We need to get rid of the bird.” I ignore him and knock back a generous slug of wine before asking, “So, how was your day?”
On this particular evening I directed my question to my seventeen year old son who is the most chatty at dinner, and can be counted on to regale me with stories of his day. “We’re reading Eating Animals in my creative writing class,” he said. “It’s about factory farming. Do you know what they do to the animals we eat?” he asked. “I buy organic,” I said. “That doesn’t mean shit,” he replied. “Language,” I remonstrated half-heartedly. My husband was studying the label on the wine bottle, whether in genuine interest, or to avoid this particular conversation, I couldn’t tell. “Sorry,” my son said, “but it doesn’t. The farmers have made raising sick animals profitable. The antibiotics they give cows makes the meat taste bad, so they inject broth into it to mask the taste.” He pushed pieces of his steak around his plate, eyeing it suspiciously. “Do we have to talk about this at dinner?” I sighed, my own appetite ruined. The girls were kicking each other under the table arguing over whose feet were where first, and thankfully not paying attention to their brother. Or so I thought. After I had to hear about factory farming of fish and some kind of flesh eating disease they get which leaves them swimming around with skulls for heads, the youngest piped up, chewing an enormous mouthful of incriminating steak. “I can’t understand you with your mouth full,” I said, “or when you mumble. Or when you’re doing both at the same time.” “I was watching Animal Planet one time and there was this bird, you know, the kind that dives for fish?” she enunciated after swallowing. “A pelican?” I asked. “No,” she said. “An albatross?’ her brother asked. “Yeah, that’s it!” she said, happy to have some responses to her dinner table effort. She’s twelve. “Well when it died some people cut it open and they found plastic bags and water bottles inside it’s stomach that it had swallowed whole, thinking it was fish,” she informed us, closely watching me for a reaction because she knows plastic bags floating in the ocean in an area the size of Texas is one of the things that keeps me up at night. I NEVER get plastic bags at the grocery store, and I’m a recycle Nazi. “That’s so saaaadddd,” I said, genuinely moved by her story. She sat back in her chair, satisfied, then she started to gather up her plate and glass. “Can I be excused?” she asked, hoping to flee before we figured out whose week it was to do dishes. “Yes,” I said, exhausted. The others soon followed, having successfully dumped their environmental worries onto my shoulders to carry. My husband looked over at me as they scattered. “More steak?” he asked.
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