My Loved One: The Provolone Chicken

Last night after the tender and attentive preparation of a little provolone chicken, we left the house; and since we had covered neither the provolone nor the chicken with any kind of fire-retardant coating and since we’d inadvertently left the dish baking in the oven for a couple of hours, our meal had been altered into stuff that a talented person could’ve used to draft a lovely charcoal drawing of maybe say, a family seated around the table for a nice dinner.

Immediately, I ran over to the charred casualty in a panic, as if it were a crying child that had just fallen off of some monkey bars – as if maybe there were something that could still be done.

I quickly looked it over, grabbing a knife and fork which in my mind, I think, might’ve actually been surgical tools of some sort. I chipped and cut into the crusted-powdery black matter and discovered a great deal of white meat underneath. Maybe it was only surface damage! Maybe there was hope after all.

With the knife I dissected the remains, fashioning what was possibly an edible bite of the meat. Then, with great consideration, I chewed it up and ate it. "It’s not too bad. Some of it might be okay," I officiously muttered to Ali, who responded with silence and a deliberate lack of eye-contact.

I was lying to myself and I knew it. I couldn't possibly have eaten another bite, so I absconded into the garage to alphabetize the spray paints, to disengage my mind.

I returned a few minutes later, dismayed to see that my wife – this . . . woman - had submersed the food, soaking it in water in order to be able to clean out the pan, which instantly aggravated my grief. "You’re WASTING that?!?!" I thought, "I thought this dinner MATTERED to you!! How could you so hastily dispose of something so dear to me?"

It was heartless.

I’d LOVED the provolone chicken. I’d had ideas - detailed and well thought out ones - about how grand it would be to eat and converse, laughing and chewing like pompous politicians - the kids taking occasional breaks from their giggling only to again mention how splendidly prepared was this evening’s entrée’. It would’ve been so exquisite.

But Ali accepts these everyday, disappointing realities with such equanimity and ease. If you ask me it’s quite insensitive of her really.

I mean, seeing my former culinary fantasy drowned there in the sink was emotionally difficult. I was still "Bargaining," in stage 3 of the grieving process – and to have this violent image forced upon me somehow made it all seem so pointless, so final. I hadn’t been ready. I’d needed more time. Why couldn’t she see that?

I guess I couldn't be to hard on her, considering that she was the one acting coherently and sane and I was fixated and struggling to accept the death of a factory farmed chicken that was probably much happier dead that it had ever been alive, but still.

I don't really know what the lesson is here. I considered implementing a household rule where every time a person puts a dish in the oven, they would be required to hide the car keys in the oven-mitt. The reason for this, obviously, would be so that in the event that the oven user wanted to leave the house, they would upon finding their keys in the oven-mitt be prompted mentally to turn off the oven, thereby preventing any burnt mishaps.

But, alas, as brilliant as this idea is, it wouldn't really be kept up in our household. People would invent reasons why they shouldn't live up to such a rule. They would rob the idea of the respect it deserves and somewhere along the banquet of life another chicken would be senselessly burned all over again. Some people feel that the loss of a delicious fowl every 10-20-30 years is worth the price of not having to perform the simple task of hiding their car keys in an oven-mitt for the rest of their life. Crazy, I know, and difficult to get over, but a person just has to accept these things.