Tongs

I stopped eating meat in March and I told nobody, which worked until Christmas. It wasn't a stand. I want that clear. I read a thing, and then I read another thing, and then I was in the supermarket with a tray of chicken in my hand and I put it back, and that was that. No announcement. I wasn't going to be a person about it. I'd just, quietly, not. Christmas is at my sister's in Wollongong. Forty degrees, a pool nobody swims in because the kids are in it, and Gav, my brother-in-law, at the barbecue in an apron that says something about the chef. Gav does the meat. Gav has done the meat for fifteen years and takes it as seriously as some people take religion, which, if you've heard him on the subject of resting a steak, is not a joke. About two o'clock, Gav has to take a phone call. He turns round, looks at me, holds out the tongs, and says, "Two minutes. Don't let the snags catch." Here's the thing. I could have said no. "Actually, mate, I don't eat meat now." That's a sentence. People say it. But it's Christmas, and it's Gav, and the tongs were already in my hand, because that's how tongs work. So I stood there. Sausages. Two dozen. Turning them. And I had a small crisis, in the heat, with the smell of them, which I should say I still like the smell of, that's never gone. The crisis was this. I'd decided, in March, that I wasn't going to be part of this. And here I was, cooking it. Not eating it, but cooking it. Is that part of it? If I don't eat them but I turn them, and they get eaten because I turned them well, what am I? What's the line? I turned a sausage. It was a good turn. Even colour. My niece came over, she's twenty-six, and said, "You're not eating those, are you?" and I said how do you know, and she said, "You put the chicken back in the supermarket in March, I was there, you didn't see me." So it turns out I had been a person about it. I'd just been one quietly.

"Does it count if I cook them?" She thought about it, which I appreciated. "Do you think it counts?" "I don't know. That's why I'm asking." "Then it probably counts a bit." She took a sausage off the grill with her fingers, ate it, and went back to the pool. Gav came back. Took the tongs. Looked at the sausages, which were, I'll say it, perfect. "Not bad," he said, which from Gav is a medal. I ate the salads. Three kinds. My sister had made a thing with haloumi that I think was for me, and nobody said so. In the car on the way home my wife said, "You could've just told him." "I know." "It's not a big deal." "I know." "So why didn't you?" I didn't have an answer. I had two dozen sausages I'd cooked and not eaten and a niece who'd told me it counted a bit. I don't know what it added up to. I know I'd do it again, and I know that bothers me, and I know Gav's going to hand me the tongs next year, and I still don't know what I'll say.