The Napkin Project (Thanksgiving Edition): Meg Wolitzer

Because his wife did not like heights, he found himself on the stepladder once a year, reaching an arm into the cabinet where all the obscure and pointless objects in the kitchen were kept. In the rectangle of darkness were the things that for some reason could not be thrown out: the banana slicer, the potato-peeling gloves. His arm kept rooting around, even as he glanced down at the table where his wife and daughters sat reflexively chopping, snapping, stirring. This year his task felt either urgent or pathetic; it was unclear which.

The older girl announced, “Marshmallows contain hooves. I’m not making the sweet-potato pudding.”

“But they can’t contain hooves,” the younger one said. “These are mini-marshmallows. Hooves are much bigger.”

His wife, the driver of this holiday, said, “Girls, come on.” The Thanksgivings of her childhood could not have been as great as she insisted. Knowing her parents, he believed she would have to have pushed away the tension—the memory of it—that had permeated the air like cooking smells.

Now his fingers brushed against thin, crisp strands: ancient tissue paper. And next, something fuzzy but sharp at the end: a pipe cleaner. Two pipe cleaners! He couldn’t see the thing yet, but he knew he had found it. He recalled what his older daughter had proudly anointed it: “The Mr. and Mrs. Turkey Lurkey and Their Turkey-Lurkey Children Deluxe Table Centerpiece.” His daughters had been pre-irony at the time, pre-despair, and they’d all been pre–what was now undeniably looming. He didn’t know what effect this thing in the cabinet could have. Whether its presence would just set into relief what they all felt already, or whether it would stop them for just a moment, and let them recall how they’d once huddled over it like scientists in a lab, and had ended up creating something far more unnecessary and tender than any banana slice or pair of potato-peeling gloves on earth. This thing could not help them, but could only remind them. He drew it out now and held it high above their heads, and they all looked up.