6:00 p.m.: The first guests start to arrive at Cousin Jimmy’s. Every family member, even fourteen-year-old Cousin James, starts downing the nearest liquid poison to ease the tension and evade Cindy’s cadaverous glares.
7:23 p.m.: Auntie Betsy cracks open the oven door to peek at the browning bird that should be on the table in seven minutes. She finds a raw, ice-covered, obviously inedible pink bird. She looks Cindy intently in the eyes for the first face-off of the evening and says, “At least my baby sister made the rye-bread-raisin stuffing so I can rest assured that one thing will not cause me four days of gastric cramping.”
7:25 p.m.: Cousin-in-law Cindy shrieks a cranberry-curdling cry, bolts across the family room where all thirty-seven relatives are noshing on artichoke dip and olive loaf appetizers, into her bedroom, and slams the door. Never to be seen again. Good night, Cindy.
7:30 p.m.: Auntie Sandy’s fiancé, Freddie, overhears Auntie Betsy’s meddling in the kitchen. (I forgot to mention, Betsy, too, is quite the fruitcake. Example: when Cousin Johnny told her he was going to become a policeman, she cried—in bed, non-stop—for nine days in fear he would be slaughtered in a cross-fire.)
7:36 p.m.: Freddie the fiancé saunters over to the great room where seven family members are congregated sipping on Jack and Cokes and warding off hunger pangs with dry-roasted peanuts. He does not see Cousin Jenny, Auntie Betsy’s daughter, canoodling with newborn Baby Brent on the lazy-boy. He engages in an eleven-minute monologue regarding the psychosis and madness of Auntie Betsy. His rant culminates with the following statement, “That bitch has OCD.”
7:50 p.m.: Cousin Jenny drops Baby Brent on his head (luckily, little Lucy is there to grab him) as she pulls a stunt à la Cousin-in-law Cindy and dashes across the kitchen in tears and slams the door of Baby Jimmy’s nursery. Never to be seen again. Good night, Cousin Jenny.
8:00 p.m.: Grandma is pacifying Baby Brent and his mother, Cousin Emma on the porch. Auntie Betsy, now also in tears, has locked herself in the room with Cousin Jenny. Never to be seen again. Good night, Auntie Betsy.
