Free Sleeping Alone by Barbara Bretton Page A

there was something about dealing with twenty-five pounds of naked poultry before your first cup of coffee that made her think it was time to adopt a few new family traditions. Like vegetarianism. She yanked out the bag of giblets, then tossed it into the trash without remorse. Call her a renegade, but she drew the line at gizzards and neck bones.
    Vegetarians didn’t have to go through any of this, she thought wistfully as she ran cold water through the carcass. All across the land, vegetarians were cuddled under their eiderdown quilts, secure in the knowledge that there wasn’t a vegetable on earth that needed six hours in a 325-degree oven. Vegetarians could sleep until noon if they wanted to and not feel a moment’s remorse.
    “Next year,” she muttered as she patted the turkey dry with paper towels, then set it down in the gargantuan roasting pan that came out at Thanksgiving and Christmas. Next year it would be a festival of vegetables, and she’d personally strangle the first person who uttered a complaint.
    She worked swiftly, spooning stuffing into the bird, then stitching up the cavity with a wide-eyed needle and butcher’s twine. She quartered onions to place around the turkey the way her mother had taught her to do. Her mother had also taught her how to make a gravy so dark it was sinful, and the best pumpkin pie in New Jersey. Maggie Murray was ten years dead, but she was never closer than when Dee was in the kitchen. She rummaged in the junk drawer for the meat thermometer, then plunged it deep into the turkey’s breast as she stifled a yawn. Turkey. Stuffing. Onions. Thermometer. That about covered it. She grasped the pan and slid it into the preheated oven.
    A new speed record, she thought, glancing at the clock over the sink. Gizzard patrol was over, and it wasn’t even seven-thirty yet. “You’d be proud of me, Mom,” she said out loud. “Looks like I’ve finally gotten the hang of it.”
    “Talking to yourself again?”
    She whirled around to see Mark, her sixteen-year-old son, yawning in the doorway. He wore a Hootie & the Blowfish T-shirt, a pair of threadbare gray sweatpants, and thick white socks that looked as if he’d used them to track grizzlies. A lump formed in her throat as she smiled at him. Whoever said love hurt must have been the parent of a teenager. You tuck him in one night and he’s a little boy with a teddy bear, and you wake up the next morning to find he’s turned into six feet of raging hormones.
    “Did you get taller overnight?” she asked as he sat down at the kitchen table.
    “You’re getting shorter,” he said around another yawn. “Happens to all of you old people.”
    “I’m not old,” she snapped. “I wasn’t much older than you when—”
    “—you had me. Heard it before, Ma.” He sniffed the air. “When’s breakfast?”
    “You know how to pour yourself some cornflakes, Mark.”
    “Yeah, but I was hoping for waffles.”
    She pointed toward the mound of waxy turnips piled on the counter. “You start peeling them, and I’ll make you waffles.”
    He made a face. “Geez, I hate doing that crap.”
    “Surprise, Mark, sometimes so do I. Get to it.”
    She flung open the pantry door and pulled out a red box of Aunt Jemima, then grabbed eggs and milk from the fridge. Mark was searching through the dishwasher for a clean knife, and she had to bite her tongue to keep from sliding open the utensil drawer and handing him one. You can’t do everything for him, she told herself as she cracked eggs into a metal bawl. You have to let him find his own way. Another two years and he’d be in college, and she wouldn’t be able to help him at all.
    “You want these things cut, too?” he asked.
    “Quartered,” she said as she measured pancake mix. “Be careful with that knife, Mark. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
    “Ma, I’m sixteen. I know how to handle a knife.”
    “Accidents happen,” she said, hearing her own mother’s voice echoing inside