“See ya,” was all anyone said when we got off the train. Howie, Ira, and Gunnar all went off to their Thanksgiving meals, and I went home to find a note from my parents, with exclamation points and underlines, telling me to be at the restaurant ON TIME!!!

My dad runs a French/Italian fusion restaurant called Paris, Capisce? He didn’t always do this. He used to have an office job with a plastics company, but he lost it because of me. That’s okay, though, because he got the restaurant because of me as well. It’s a long story from the weird world of Old Man Crawley. If you’ve heard of him, and who hasn’t, you’ll know it’s a story best kept at ten-foot-pole distance. Anyway, it all worked out in the end, because running a restaurant is what my dad always dreamed of doing.

We all quickly found out, however, that when you have a restaurant, you don’t run it, it runs you. We all got sucked in. Mom fills in when there aren’t enough waitresses, I’m constantly on call to bus tables, and my little sister Christina folds napkins into animal shapes. Only my older brother Frankie gets out of it, on account of he’s in college, and when he’s home, he thinks he’s too good to work in a restaurant.

My particular skill is the pouring of water.

Don’t laugh—it’s a real skill. I can pour from any height and never miss the glass. People applaud.

Thanksgiving, we all knew, was going to be the big test. Not just of the restaurant, but of our family. See, Thanksgiving has always been big with us, on account of we got this massive extended family of aunts, uncles, cousins, and people I barely know who have various body parts resembling mine.