Dinner was different without the kids. Quieter, but also louder in its silence.
Jack watched his wife standing at the stove, one hand on her hip, the other dishing out steamed rice and saucy meat onto two dinner plates.
“May I have some more?” Jack said in his best Oliver Twist impersonation, which didn’t land at all – still, he chuckled to himself.
“Sorry, no vegetables tonight,” Judy said under wilted hair.
Jack quipped, “Never apologize for no vegetables – no-vegetables is my middle name.” Again, no response.
“Everything OK, hun?”
Judy turns on her heel, holding the two plates.
“I used fake chicken.”
“I can’t eat chickens or cows or pigs or anything with a face anymore.”
“I can’t do it.”
“I won’t do it.”
She blows a wisp of hair that’s fallen across her face.
“I have a face,” her husband says jokingly.
But she’s not smiling.
He goes on, “OK, Judy, what brought all this about?”
“Why the diatribe?”
She puts his plate down and quietly takes her seat across from him.
“And what in the world is fake chicken?” Jack asks.
She looks up at him. “It’s a combination of plant-based proteins, gluten, and seasoning.”
Jack stabs at his pile of fake chicken and rice, then gathers a forkful and raises it toward his wife. “Bon appétit.”
She flashes him a fake smile.
“And if you want to know, thinking is what brought this about.”
“And I’m not sure how I feel about your diatribe characterization”
Jack takes a bite, swallows, and flashes his own fake smile.
“Not bad. I mean, I don’t think Colonel Sanders is quaking in his boots, but honestly, it’s not bad. Can you pass the salt, please?”
Judy slides the Gromit salt shaker towards her husband, while peppering her own meal with Wallace.
“I drove by Simmons farm today on my way to the butcher. Saw a baby calf following her mamma cow in the field.”
Jack responds, “Uh huh.” he sees where this is heading.
With his head down, he keeps poking around the pile of fake chicken and rice. “See any chickens?”
Judy looks up from her plate, quietly exasperated.
“Don’t you ever wonder what they feel, emotionally?”
“Do they enjoy lying on the cool grass or bathing in the warm sun?
“Does that calf experience joy as he follows his mom across the field, or as he sleeps against her in the barn at night?” Her voice quaking.
Judy stiffens in her chair and clears her throat. “Lately, when I go to the meat department at Stop and Shop, I struggle to dissociate the cellophane packages of meat from the bucolic life these animals have on the farm.”
“I don’t want to be part of the chain of events that ends at my kitchen table.”
Jack looks up from his plate. He sees the tears running down his wife’s face.
“Honestly, hun, this fake chicken is fine. I’m totally OK with fake chicken from now on. Fake cows and pigs? Sure, why not?”
Judy smiles and slides Jack the Wallace pepper shaker.
“Thanks, Jack.”
If you haven’t had a chance yet, please check out my book, My Paper, My Words: Rantings from a Progressive Boomer and Peeved Parent, from Amazon. And if you feel moved to write a review of the book, on Amazon, or anywhere else, I’d be honored.
My Paper, My Words is a collection of essays, stories, and poems that reflect the challenges of a middle-class husband and father trying to navigate a rapidly changing political, religious, and technological landscape of post-911 America.
Also, check out my AI music project, Sapient Rain, a human–AI musical collaboration. Sapient Rain’s music blends political fire, surreal storytelling, and nostalgic autobiography, delivered through lyrics that read more like literary vignettes than conventional songcraft.
You can listen to Sapient Rain songs on Spotify, YouTube Music, and Apple Music.
