I asked if he had any plans for Thanksgiving, which was coming up in a week. He shook his head.

I didn’t have plans either, but I invited him to Harrison Street anyway. And then, in a snap, I didn’t just have plans, I’d made them for someone else too. I knew the holiday couldn’t mean much to him. All our country had done was fuck his country over. At least that’s the sense I got. But I thought it might be a nice chance to show some kindness. I will accept, he said, which meant he already had.

I hadn’t asked Abe and Stella, but I felt like doing something like this—without their knowing or their help—my own plan for all of us. You didn’t give her a chance, she’d said. But the times me and Stella fought were good ones, in their way. Like she took me seriously. This was what happened when lives got close and tangled.

Stan leaned over from the next cubicle. “You doing a stray-dog meal?” It turned out he wanted to come too.

Sylvia had plans, but April didn’t, and Ted surprised me by accepting my invitation, barely muttered. “Count me in for now,” he said. “I’ll let you know if something else comes up.”

One moment there was nothing, and then there was something: a plan, the thought of people laughing in a room, all together, because of something I’d made. I sat in the corner of the handicapped bathroom and cried like a little girl. I’d heard people using the word family and now, this one time, they were talking about mine. Kids cry when they get happy too. It’s like you need to let the feeling break you into little pieces before you can collect them again.

It was my first time cooking turkey. All afternoon I kept peering into the oven window. Oil blistered the skin. The bird looked like it was folding its wings to make a nest between the racks. I stuck the thermometer into its thigh to check its roasting muscles.

When we pulled it out, Stella thought it looked too crisp. I thought it looked just right. I’d wanted to make it like Lucy’s. Year after year she cooked the bird too long because she was afraid she hadn’t cooked it long enough. The meat was so dry it sucked the spit out of your mouth. But I missed the feel of it.

Figured that I’d get the turkey right and let the soy turkey burn. “Holidays are meant for eating all God’s creatures,” said Stella, but April was vegetarian so I’d gone to the trouble. Then I’d lost track of the tofurkey in the rush of torching marshmallows over the sweet potatoes, until Stella smelled it—like someone scorched a bowl of miso soup, she said—and I pulled it out. It was a mound of blackened strips like fabric.

“Shit,” I said. “God never meant for this.”

“Just take off the skin,” Stella suggested. “Or the soy peel. Whatever it’s called.”