The Turkey Wore Satin by J.J. Brass

Chapter One
     
     
    The first year Marty joined Kristin’s family
for Thanksgiving dinner, he thought they were all a bunch of
lunatics.
    Not much had changed since that day four
years ago, except that Marty was no longer Kristin’s puppy-love
boyfriend. After a big summer wedding, he was now officially her
faithful husband. And, as an official member of the Mayfair family,
this year Marty would take part in one of the illustrious family’s
long-standing traditions: The Amazing Annual Mayfair Family Drag
Show.
    Kristin’s elegantly coifed grandmother Iris,
who had buried no fewer than four husbands, explained the family
drag show with great fanfare the first time Marty dined at her
impressive mansion. It started in the 1940s, not long before Iris’s
brothers were killed storming the beaches of Normandy.
    One Thanksgiving, after a lean wartime
dinner, young Iris played her favourite song for the family: Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree . The boys were not great fans
of the Andrews Sisters—not that they would admit, at any rate—but
in lieu of their normal teases, Iris’s brothers put on a show. They
all got up and sang along, and Mayfair Family History was made.
    The impromptu lip-synch marked the beginning
of an annual tradition to honour three fallen soldiers. Iris could
imagine no better way to show gratitude for their sacrifice than to
insist all men in the Mayfair family get gussied up in women’s
clothing every year on Thanksgiving Day. Her late brothers had a
fine sense of humour, she told Marty. They’d have loved it every
bit as much as she did.
    From humble beginnings, the tradition grew
year by year. Nowadays, every man chose a female celebrity to
impersonate. It cost a pretty penny, too. In the weeks leading up
to the great event, every man went out to buy flash and glam
costumes, wigs, and the glitziest makeup on the shelf.
    Kristin wore makeup, sure, but barely more
than a touch of rosy lipstick and a subdued shade of eye shadow. No
use raiding her makeup cache. Tyrone was kind enough to take Marty
under his wing, since this was his first performance. They went out
together, to a theatrical supplies store, to pick up golden eye
shadow and fake lashes with sparkles built right in! The price of
it all blew Marty away—not that anyone in the Mayfair family seemed
concerned about money.
    In fact, even when Grandma Iris had told him
the story of the first wartime drag show, he couldn’t help
wondering if the austerity measures she spoke of amounted to little
more than enjoying five courses instead of seven. Maybe only three
kinds of pie instead of eight.
    “ Are you ready for this?”
Tyrone asked as he strapped Marty into a vintage Madonna cone bra.
“Competition can get pretty intense. The Mayfair men are cut-throat
when it comes to winning Best in Show.”
    Tyrone was another Mayfair in-law, married
to Grandma Iris’s son Jonnie. Every year, he performed as Tina
Turner. He had the perfect complexion for it, not to mention the
perfect legs. Marty didn’t usually notice other men’s legs, but by
the time Tyrone suited up in a shimmering magenta dress, tossed on
a wig, and perfected his make-up, you’d have thought he was Tina
herself. Rumour had it he’d performed professionally in his younger
days, which he absolutely denied, since it would have barred him
from the family competition.
    And Marty was getting a real sense of how
fierce this competition could be!
    As far as Marty was concerned, Tyrone could
be called the best of the bunch. At first, he’d attributed the
guy’s killer performance to the whole being gay thing. But if that
were the case, Jonnie would have been a shoe-in for drag, too—and
it turned out Jonnie was the biggest flop of them all. Anyway,
according to Kristin, Tyrone had never won Best in Show. Imagine
that! He was obviously cream of the crop.
    Maybe the game was fixed?
    Nah, couldn’t be. First off, who would go to
all the trouble of rigging a family drag competition?