The Potluck
The neighborhood potluck was in one week. Bright multi-colored flyers were stapled to telephone poles and slipped under doors despite No Soliciting signs. On screens, commercials with glassy-eyed government officials in denim overalls eating out of wicker picnic baskets asking: Is your family recipe the recipe you can’t live without? There hadn’t been a potluck in ten years. It was something designed only to be as often as necessary.
Mrs. Court hung out her meat a month in advance. To fully dry, the jerky required zero to little humidity, so our arid climate offered the best environment, save for a kiln, and Mrs. Court had long abandoned her pottery. Too gratuitous, she thought after her last child was gone. She rubbed the leathery strip with her withered fingers. Just about the texture of an old belt. In seven more days, it’d be perfect. She lamented how her husband couldn’t see the way she had expertly seasoned the meat. Salt, pepper, mustard seed, clove, cinnamon, cayenne, all in equal measure. But, it had been decided this would be his year.
His year to represent the A-frame green house on the corner.
The neighborhood had an abundance of children. That much was necessary for the offering, of course. But, in the off-years—the years the potluck didn’t take place—the streets teemed with happy laughter. Bikes careened down the hill of Jackson Lane, skinned knees were collected like trading cards, teenage drama was relayed into cell phones—all under the protective watch of parents who had affairs with the schoolteachers.
But the adults always had it hanging over their heads. They remembered potlucks from their childhood, the feigned glee when the judges decried their family’s dish the best. They never came home with leftovers. Take it, they’d say. We don’t want it anymore.
In the Anderson home, the shoddiest rambler filled with the happiest kids, six of them, all under ten, the air was electric. Joan and Mark settled into their full-size bed, far too small for their collective volume.
“We need to choose, honey. I know it’s not easy,” Mark said, wiping his glasses yet again. He leveled his eyes at the back of her neck. Wispy strands of her hair created the most beautiful whorl. He moved in closer to press his lips to it, but she turned and her forehead smacked his chin.
“Jesus, Joan,” and all the softness left the room. “We just have to do it. Names in a hat. Or we can just pick Lucas. He’s barely three months. He wouldn’t know the difference. We can just . . .”
“What?” Joan seethed. “Go on like before? Pretend he never even existed?”
“No. No,” Mark said.
“Like those eighteen hours of labor and the surgery and NICU and the other surgery and the colic,just didn’t fucking happen?” The baby started to cry in the nursery. Milk sprung from Joan’s breasts as if they too were weeping.
“Ok, so how about Olivia? She’s always such a pain,” Mark was going for levity, but. . .
Joan and Mark ended up choosing the baby, telling the other children that Jesus wanted Lucas all to himself. Joan scribbled a list of ingredients and Mark took the rest of kids to the grocery store to get them, allowing Joan some time alone. She took a bath—scalding hot—and pushed and pushed until she choked and vomited. When Mark returned, they worked together silently in the kitchen. They had decided to make the dish in advance. It got better as it marinated, allowing time for the flavors to really meld together.
And up and down the block and the block over and two blocks from there, it was much the same. As the potluck approached, families grew tighter, smaller, more grim. Barbeques burped their charred meaty smells. Even though the weather was getting warmer, the sun inviting children to play, the people of the neighborhood stayed inside, hoped their sacrifice would be enough. Tasted and tested and tried to think of the judges’ palates.
Old Mr. Hudson hated spice. Deirdre Hall ate it all, like that guy on T.V., she was game for anything. Indeed, she was the daughter of the neighborhood board president. Of course she was game. She would never be considered real game anyway, thanks to her stature in the community. Cree Crabapple seemed only to like Italian dishes. Marinaras and ragus and Bolognese would all be popular at this year’s potluck.
The night before, prayers were said. Even those that didn’t believe, prayed. To Jesus, to Jehovah, to Allah, to Gaia. To long dead grandparents and to the recently deceased. They prayed on their knees in the shower with their eyes closed and with their eyes glazed open in front of the oven. It was a night of a thousand suicides.
On baseball field #3 at Old Orchard Park, a long table covered in a red and white gingham tablecloth was lined with casserole-filled Pyrex, salads with fruit and other accoutrement, slow cookers with meatballs, serving utensils laid out next to the bowls like wounded soldiers, and white paper napkins waving in the breeze like so much surrender.
The three judges sat on the bleachers, a makeshift table set in front of them. Old Mr. Hudson tucked a napkin at his neck, which was endearing or gruesome depending on how you looked at it. Deirdre’s nails were meticulously tended and glossy red. Cree looked frazzled with the attention, even though she had volunteered for the position.
We sat on the edges of the field, refusing to come any closer until we were called. Everyone was required to attend. We wanted to leave our children home, keep them away from the heinous tradition. But like so much violence on T.V. and in video games, it was inevitable, or so said the officials. It is up to you if and when you explain it to them, they said, and handed us pamphlets on how to broach the subject. There were websites on the dark web of ways to avoid the potluck draft, but the sites were often shut down as quickly as they had shown up, their owners discovered and relocated immediately. For the safety of the neighborhood, we were told.
We watched from our great distance as the three judges were serenaded with dish after dish. They made genial remarks on the juiciness of this or the citrus notes of that into microphones that buzzed with feedback every twenty one seconds. We counted. We were called up to present our own dish, explain its contents, our techniques, what we were going for. We blinked back tears, bit nails, and tightened our bowels as they sampled. Hudson with a bear paw grip on his fork. Deidre with a pinky up. Cree with timid nibbles, finally truly understanding what she signed up for.
It was Mrs. Court’s turn. Old Widow Court, as she would henceforth be named. Her dish was the least attractive. Dried out brownish red strands on a gold-flecked Tiffany china platter. Picked with their fingers, we could see from here, the judges were apprehensive. But Deirdre led the charge and placed the jerky between her blinding teeth. She chewed. And began to moan. For pleasure or disgust, we weren’t yet sure. Then we watched as Mr. Hudson took a piece and shoved it in his maw. Cree followed and we watched as they chewed and they chewed and they chewed, masticating the last of Mr. Court.
“Winner!” Mr. Hudson cried out, despite not being able to determine the winner without conferring with his fellow judges.
Deirdre patted his hand, nodded her head. “We will have to discuss this. But well done, Mrs. Court.”
There were several dishes left, but it was clear none had as much culinary impact as Mrs. Court’s jerky. She was branded the winner, but having no one else at home anymore, the prize was unnecessary. Single-occupant homes were exempt from the potluck anyway.
We hung our heads and with our pounding chests, we shuffled home, grateful for another decade without potlucks. Over the next months we devised ways to escape, hatched plans, whispered in the dark of night. But after a couple years, we fell lazily into the cadence of our small-town life, fooling ourselves about the lives we lived and the choices we had.
A flimsy blue ribbon decorated Mrs. Court’s door. Journalists interviewed her. She briefly had a cooking show on the local cable channel. The spices she bought for her potluck dish expired, lost their flavor, turned rancid. Secretly, she had kept a small allotment of the crude preserved memory of her husband. In a plastic sandwich bag, it hung from a rusty nail above the kitchen sink. She said good morning and good night to it every day. Talked about their long dead children and what they were not doing with grandchildren they did not have. Discussed the weather. Small talk, the kind that fits in your hand or in your pocket. The kind that’s possible to lose if you drop it. The kind that says nothing, but says everything.
Jennifer Fliss (she/her) is a Seattle-based writer whose writing has appeared in F(r)iction, The Rumpus, The Washington Post, and elsewhere, including the 2019 Best Short Fiction anthology. She can be found on Twitter at @writesforlife or via her website, www.jenniferflisscreative.com.
