Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is approaching as a major family gathering at River Valley Farm, where Herbert William Clutter is this year’s appointed host. The annual reunion promises a house filled with relatives, but its preparations also expose the strain they place on Bonnie Clutter and the fragile hope that she might soon feel well enough to take part in family life again.

An Annual Reunion at River Valley Farm

The Clutter clan’s Thanksgiving gathering is an annual, rotating affair, and this year the hosting responsibility falls to Herbert. More than fifty relatives have been invited, with some traveling from as far away as Palatka, Florida. The gathering is expected within a fortnight, making it an immediate practical concern for the household rather than a distant holiday prospect.

The house can accommodate about twenty guests if cots are brought in and the upstairs hall is used as a dormitory. The remaining visitors will have to stay at motels or with neighbors. A baby crib in the hall, purchased for visits from the Clutters’ grandson, is one sign that the house is already organized around family visits; for Thanksgiving, that domestic space must be stretched to hold a much larger gathering.

Preparations and Domestic Strain

The reunion coincides with preparations for Beverly Clutter’s wedding, scheduled for Christmas Week. For Bonnie, the two projects compound one another: both require decisions, a task she has long disliked and come to dread. When Herbert is away on business, she is expected to make quick judgments about farm affairs; the prospect of being responsible for choices about a large family gathering and a wedding feels similarly unbearable. At times she responds by locking her bedroom door, pretending not to hear, or saying that she cannot decide.

The difficulty is sharpened by Bonnie’s recent history of psychiatric treatment and withdrawal. Her bedroom is usually the place to which she retreats, and even changing its linens has required the housekeeper’s persistence. The Thanksgiving preparations therefore bring the demands of family hospitality into direct conflict with Bonnie’s limited capacity to manage decisions and activity.

Hope Attached to the Holiday

A few days before this account, Bonnie returned from two weeks of treatment at Wesley Medical Center in Wichita with a diagnosis that offered her and Herbert new hope: doctors believed her suffering came from a physical problem in her spine, rather than from her mind, and said she would need an operation. Bonnie reported that afterward she would be her old self again. Herbert imagined that, if the operation brought that recovery, he might give thanks at the family table without the shadow of her illness.

That hope had seemed briefly tangible on the previous Friday evening. Bonnie dressed up and accompanied Herbert to a school production of Tom Sawyer, where they watched Nancy Clutter perform as Becky Thatcher. Her appearance in public, smiling and talking with people despite her nervousness, looked to Herbert like a preview of the vigor he hoped she would regain. Thanksgiving consequently carries two meanings in the household: it is a substantial hosting obligation for Bonnie, but also the approaching occasion at which Herbert hopes the family may gather with her restored to health.