Now that I'm grown, Dad loves telling people how I came to be a vegetarian. He paints me as a bold young champion of animal rights. At the time, he wasn't impressed when I taped signs up around the house that said “Meat is Murder” and talked about slaughterhouses while he ate tacos for dinner. I definitely remember him threatening to take away my TV time if I didn't cool it.
"I was in 4H in elementary school," Seth says. "Raised a calf. I named him Stanley."
I try to imagine Seth as a kid. The features that are striking on a man—prominent nose and full mouth—must have looked awkward on someone pint-sized.
"I remember going to the State Fair to see you show him," Michael says, "You won a blue ribbon, and I asked Mom if I could get a goat or a pig or something. Anything, just so I could win a ribbon at the State Fair, too. That was a hard no."
Renata laughs. "You had a dog you never walked or fed. I wasn't convinced you could keep an animal alive. Plus, we didn't live on a bunch of land like Seth and his mom."
"What happened to him?" I ask, afraid of the answer. "Stanley."
"We sold him for slaughter," Seth says mildly, like he's talking about the weather and not killing his pet. "I made enough money to buy a BMX bike, and Mom made me put the rest in the bank." He takes another bite of meat and chews it thoughtfully.
I must be staring at him like he's a monster because Michael says, "You just freaked Andie out."
"Didn't you feel sad and guilty?" I ask. "Your pet was turned into someone's dinner."
"Yeah, that's awful, Uncle Seth," Harmony chimes in.
Seth swallows, then takes a gulp of water before saying, "He wasn't a pet. He was a farm animal. It's different. You're acting like I'm going to put your cat through a meat grinder."
I scowl. "What makes you think I have a cat?"
"You don't?" he says, as if it's a rule that every single woman living in a New York apartment has a cat.
The facts stand as such:
1. Hugh and I were co-parents to an oversized orange tabby named Norman, after Norman Bates, because he was a weird dude. He liked to sleep in the bathroom sink and eat non-edible things like cardboard (not at the same time, although had that been possible, it would have been Norman's idea of heaven).
2. Hugh took Norman with him when he moved out because he said Norman loved him more, which is insulting, to say the least. It's just as well because Norman would have eaten Marly's plants and been poisoned, and Hugh would have blamed me for lack of supervision.
"No, I don't," I say, glad I can shatter his stereotypes. "I don't have any pets, actually."
Seth picks up his ear of corn and begins buttering it tenderly, like he and this ear of corn are in a long-term relationship.
"This great love of animals and no pets," he says in a flat voice.
Anger tightens my jaw, and I can barely get out the words, "So you readCharlotte's Webas a kid, and it made you crave bacon?"
"We just grew up differently," he says, not at all offended. "I didn't have much time for reading as a kid. I was playing in the creek or helping my mom around the house. In high school, I was in Future Farmers of America. You..." He looks down at my t-shirt which is screen printed with the wordsliberated womanin huge black letters. "You were in future feminists of America, I guess?"
"Seth," Renata says in a warning tone. "Don't listen to him, Andie. Seth is a feminist, and no one here cares if you eat meat or don't eat meat. Let's talk about something else."
"What's a feminist?" Harmony asks.
"Someone who believes men and women are equal," Renata says. "And that girls can do anything boys can do, and just as well as boys can do it. And Seth believes that. His mother was one of the strongest women I've ever known."
Harmony rolls her eyes. "Of course girls can do anything boys can do. Girls rule, boys drool."
"Watch it now," Michael says. "We said girls and boys are equal. And Daddy is a boy, and I don't drool."
"You're not a boy," Harmony explains to him. "You're a daddy."
I should definitely let the conversation thread about animal cruelty die, like poor Stanley did. But one of my faults is not letting things go, which explains how I got to this dinner table in the first place.
"I would think being raised on a farm would make you more sensitive to the fact that animals are living creatures," I say. "Harmony clearly loves her goat."
Harmony nods. "I do. I would never let anyone eat Tiana."
