My mother must have sensed my feelings.
Because that evening, when my father came upstairs and made a comment about all the pine needles stuck in the carpet, my mother’s brain chemistry mutated.
“Well, if that’s the way everybody feels,” she screamed, running into the living room, her blue Marimekko caftan flowing behind her, “then we’ll just call the whole damn thing off.”
I was astonished by her physical strength. What had taken two large men many minutes of concentrated effort to hoist on top of our brown station wagon, my mother was able to topple in a matter of seconds.
Tinsel, shattered Christmas balls and lights were smeared across the floor as she dragged the thing through the living room, out the deck door and straight over the edge.
I’d never seen such a display of physical strength from her before and I was impressed.
My brother snickered. “What’s the matter with her?”
My father was angry. “Your damn mother’s crazy is what’s the matter.”
My mother stormed back inside the house and swiped the needle off the record. She leaned over and began rummaging through the wooden captain’s trunk where she kept her albums. When she found the record she was looking for, she placed it on the stereo, turned the volume up full blast and set the needle down.
I am woman hear me roar in numbers too big to ignore . . .
Hope comes into the TV room. “There anything left?” she says, pointing to the tree, meaning food.
“No,” Natalie says, stuffing the bend of a candy cane in her mouth. “This is the last one.”
“It figures,” she says and walks away.
“I’m depressed now,” Natalie says. “And fat.”
Poo comes into the room. He goes to the tree looking for a snack. The tree has become the new refrigerator. Miraculously, he finds a chocolate Santa head in the back. How did it escape? He peels away the foil and pops it in his mouth. “What’s up?” he says.
“Nothing,” Natalie says, staring straight ahead at the TV.
Julie cracks a joke on TV and several of the passengers laugh.
Poo says, “You guys are boring,” and goes away.
Hope comes back into the room, angry. “You know,” she begins, “since you guys spend the most time in here, I really think you should take care of this tree problem.”
We both turn and stare at her.
“Well, I do,” she says.
Natalie says, “You want the Christmas tree out of here?”
“Yes. It’s May, for crying out loud.”
Natalie stands and reaches for the base of the tree. In one swift motion she yanks and the tree falls. Wordlessly, she drags the tree through the doorway down the hall and crams it into Hope’s bedroom.
“Don’t you dare do that, Natalie,” Hope shouts.
But Natalie has done it. “Now it’s your fucking problem.”
As Natalie heads up the stairs Hope shouts after her, “If that’s how you feel, maybe we shouldn’t even have a Christmas this year. Maybe we should just cancel it.”
I walk into the living room and sit at the piano to play the single song I know: “The Theme from The Exorcist.”
That evening, the tree has found its way into the dining room. It is on its side beneath the bay window. Agnes is in the dining room with her broom, hunched over sweeping. She sweeps around the tree. She sweeps for hours. She sweeps until at sometime after midnight Hope comes into the room, groggy. “Jesus, Agnes. I’m trying to sleep. Do you have to make such a racket?”
“Somebody’s got to stay on top of things in this house,” she says. “I’m just trying to hold it all together.”
“Well, would you mind holding it all together in the morning? I need to be at Dad’s office early.”
“Just go back to sleep. I’m hardly making any noise at all.”
“It’s all your humming,” Hope says. “At least stop that.”
“I’m not humming.”
“Yes you are, Agnes. I can hear you clean through the wall into my room. You’re humming that damn ‘Jingle Bells.’ Jeepers, it’s not even Christmas.” Hope turns and goes back to her room.
Agnes resumes sweeping. “I wasn’t humming,” she mutters to herself. “These crazy kids.”
The next morning as I look at the discarded tree, I am reminded of a turkey carcass. For some reason, Christmas trees and poultry bones have a difficult time finding their way out of this house.
Preparation for Thanksgiving may be an intense and focused event at this house, but cleanup is not. It’s interesting that Natalie will go without sleep for two days straight; she will clean the entire house with a scrub brush; she will single-handedly prepare a feast for twenty; she will do this all without a murmur of complaint. But afterward, the dishes and pots and pans will remain unwashed for weeks. The turkey itself, now just a cage of bones, will be passed from room to room. It is not uncommon to see the turkey bones sitting on top of the television set one day and in the bathroom under the sink another. But never, ever will you see it in the trash.
I have found wishbones in that house that predate the Nixon administration. And drumsticks that could quite possibly be of interest to archaeologists.
Eventually, the pans will be washed, the glasses returned to their roach-infested cabinets, and the silverware scrubbed free of debris. But Christmas trees and turkey bones tend to stay awhile.
RUNNING WITH SCISSORS
N
ATALIE HAD BEEN OUT OF CLEAN CLOTHES AND TOO DYS-functional to wash a load, saying, “Oh, why bother? They’ll just get dirty again.” So for the third day in a row, she was wearing her polyester McDonald’s counter girl uniform.
“Are you sure it’s not illegal?” I asked her. If it was a crime to impersonate a police officer, couldn’t it be a crime to walk around in public as a representative from the world’s favorite fast food restaurant?
“It’s perfectly legal. I do work there. Just not today.”
Today, we happened to be on a whale watch, off the coast of Cape Cod. I was in cutoff jeans and a Fruit of the Loom T-shirt and Natalie was in her uniform because it was the only thing besides her bathing suit that she packed. “Aren’t you hot in that thing?”
Natalie wiped her arm across her forehead. Her hair was pasted to the sides of her face with sweat. “Yeah, it’s pretty hot. But it gets hotter at the restaurant, take my word for it.”
I had to take her word for it, because I didn’t work at McDonald’s. And it wasn’t fair. We’d been applying for the same jobs together forever, and neither of us had any experience. So why, finally, would they chose one and not the other? “Maybe they didn’t like your sneaky eyes,” was Natalie’s in-depth analysis.
As a result, I had no money as usual, except a twenty Hope loaned me, and Natalie had a hundred and seventy-five dollars because she’d just received her first paycheck. So she was footing the bill for our little trip.
“Is that a whale?” Natalie said, squinting and pointing out to sea.
“It’s just a lousy old garbage bag,” the lady next to us offered. “I saw that five minutes ago. Took four goddamn pictures of it too, before I realized. Four perfectly good pictures, down the toilet. What am I going to do with four pictures of a trash bag? If we keep cruising through garbage, I won’t have any film left when one of those fishes finally does show up.”
We slid down the railing away from her. “Crazy old bitch,” Natalie muttered under her breath.
“God, I hate old people,” I said. “They’re so senile. Why isn’t she locked away in a nursing home?”
“She should be. I hope she falls overboard.”
Natalie scanned the surface of the water looking for a whale. “I wish I had sunglasses. I left them in the room with my stupid earrings. I feel naked without my earrings.”
“You look fine. I mean, nobody’s going to notice that you’re not wearing earrings. When you’re wearing a McDonald’s uniform.”
“You know somethi
ng? I hated this uniform at first, but now I like it.” She did a deep knee bend. “It’s the only thing I own that fits. I’m always ragging on Agnes for wearing polyester, but I have to say”—she did another knee bend and then a kick—“there’s really something to be said for being able to move. I don’t think I can go back to wearing jeans.”
“Yeah, but you can’t just wear that uniform everywhere. I mean, people will think you’re a freak.”
“No they won’t,” she snorted. “They’ll think I’m a career girl who just got off from work.”
“And decided to go on a whale watch?”
“Oh, these people don’t even notice. They’re all looking out there trying to see whales which are never gonna show up.”
I reached into my back pocket and pulled out my pack of Marlboro Lights. I tried lighting a cigarette, but the wind kept blowing the match out. “Here, stand in front of me,” I said. “Block the wind.”
Natalie moved sideways, and I learned in close and struck a match.
“Hey, watch it,” she said. “This uniform is flammable.”
There was nothing better than fresh air, sunshine and a cigarette. “It’s great out here. How come we don’t take trips more often?”
“Because we never have any money. Besides, there’s always some crisis or something back at the house that stops us.”
“Yeah.”
For awhile, we stared out at the ocean, not talking, just looking. If there were whales out there, they sure weren’t coming to visit our boat.
“Do you think they’d serve us beer?” Natalie asked.
“You mean inside?”
“Yeah.”
“No.”
“Why not? We look eighteen. It’s worth a shot. There’s nothing to do out here, that’s for sure.”
We walked inside and felt immediate relief to be out of the sun. There was a line at the snack bar, so we joined it.
“I could go for a hot dog,” Natalie said.
“That’s a good idea. Test the limits of your uniform.”
“Fuck you.”
“You wish.”
“May I help you?” the girl at the counter asked. Then she took a double-take at Natalie’s Introducing Chicken McNuggets! button and smirked.
“Two beers, whatever you have on tap.”
The girl eyed us suspiciously, then turned around and poured our beers. “Four dollars,” she said.
Natalie gave her a five and I felt consumed with envy. She had so many more fives than I did. The balance had shifted. She was more powerful now.
“Here,” Natalie said as we walked away.
We sat on a blue plastic bench near the window, watching the people who were looking for whales.
“Look at that old man,” Natalie said, motioning with her head. “Isn’t that sad?”
“What’s sad about him?”
“Well, you know, just some old man all alone. God, I hope I don’t end up alone like that. Some pathetic old woman with nobody to go on a whale watch with.”
“Oh, you won’t,” I said, swallowing. “You’ll marry some Smith professor.”
“Yeah, right,” Natalie said. “If I’m lucky I’ll marry a Smith janitor.”
The boat heaved from side to side, something I hadn’t noticed when we were standing outside. But now the sea was framed by the windows and the earth outside looked like it was drunk. “Do you ever get seasick?” I said.
Natalie belched. “Oh my God, excuse me,” she giggled, still capable of finding burps and farts hysterical. A charming quality in a way.
“Do you?”
“Do I what? Get seasick? No. I don’t think so. Just bored.”
“You’re bored?”
“Kind of. There’s nothing to do out here. When we get back to shore, you wanna get lobsters?”
“Yeah.”
“Sea roaches. That’s what lobsters are. Roaches of the sea.”
“Like tuna, the chicken of the sea.”
“Chicken’s a biological reptile, you know,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that biologically, chicken is a reptile. Instead of scales, they have feathers. But they both come from eggs.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“Shit. I wish I’d remembered to bring my earrings.” She touched her earlobe. “I hate it when I forget something. I don’t ever want to forget anything.”
“Remember it all.”
“Yes,” she said.
*
The Lobster Pot was touristy. The sign was a giant plastic red lobster wearing a bib. It was our kind of place.
“You need shoes,” the waitress said when we walked in the door. She had frazzled blond hair with long dark roots. Her lips were wrinkled. She looked twenty going on fifty.
“We lost them,” Natalie said.
I moved behind Natalie slightly. She was better than me at pulverizing her way through normalcy.
“Look guys,” the waitress said, eyes darting across the room to check her tables, “I’m not allowed to serve you without shoes. You have to wear shoes here. It’s like the law or whatever.”
I watched a small boy at one of the tables frown at his father and sulk into the back of the booth. The father pointed at a napkin on the table; the boy shook his head no.
“Look, we’ll just sit down and nobody will notice,” Natalie said. “We’ll give you a big tip.”
The waitress was being mentally tugged away by her tables. People wanted water and butter and extra napkins and their checks. “Okay, fine. Just sit down.”
Natalie turned to me and smiled. “See?”
It was like her McUniform had given her some sort of authority. “It would have been a bummer if they didn’t let us in.”
“No shit,” she said, straightening her shirt.
We had taken our shoes off in the motel and decided not to put them back on. They felt confining.
We took a booth near the door. I slid in first and then Natalie slid in on the same side. “Hey,” I said. “Go sit on the other side.”
“I wanna sit here.” She looked at me and fluttered her eyelashes. “Next to you, my honey.”
I shoved her. “C’mon, Natalie, there’s not enough room. Move.”
She slid up against me and pressed. I hated it when she got like that. She was in her fat mood. When she gets into a fat mood, she just wants to sit on everything. I laughed so that I didn’t give her the satisfaction of knowing she’d pissed me off. “C’mon, move your ass to the other side and let’s order.”
She sighed dramatically. “Fine. Snobby Augusten doesn’t want to sit next to his best friend in the whole world, Piggy Natalie.” She slid out of the booth and sat across from me and I felt relief. Then I felt depressed because she was all the way across the table. “Come back and sit over here.”
She leapt up, smacking the tops of her thighs on the underside of the table, and snuggled in against me. “That’s better,” she said.
When the waitress came over we ordered two lobsters and two Cokes. “And a side of fries,” Natalie added at the last minute.
“What’s going to become of us?” I said.
“We’re going to eat lobster and get fatter and go home and be depressed and wish we could throw it up and . . .”
“No, I mean in the long term, you fool.”
“Ho hum,” she said, pouting. “Why do you always have to drag me back down to reality?”
“We can’t just go on like this forever. I mean, look at us. You’re seventeen, I’m sixteen and we’re barefoot at a lobster place and that’s basically all that’s happening in our lives.”
“I know,” she said. “We have to do something. What do you want to be when you grow up? Are you still going to be a hairdresser to the stars?”
Without knowing why, I answered, “I’m going to run away to New York City and become a writer.”
Natalie looked at me. “You should, you know. You’re the writer in your family.”
/> I laughed. “Oh, barf. I am not going to be a writer. I’d never even get into college.”
“Sure you would,” Natalie said. And the look on her face told me that she believed this completely and felt slightly sad that I didn’t see it and believe it, too.
“Well, thanks.”
“You underestimate yourself, you know.”
The waitress brought our Cokes and we both slurped them without the straws. “How?”
“Because you’ve always been a writer. For as long as I’ve known you you’ve had that pointy nose of yours tucked into some notebook. You’ve lived with my family and noticed every single thing about us. God, it’s spooky how good you are at imitating people.”
“I can’t be a writer,” I said. “I don’t even write. All I do is scribble stuff in notebooks. I don’t even know what a verb is or how to type. And I never read. You have to read, like, Hemingway to be a writer.”
“You don’t have to read Hemingway, he’s just some fat old drunk man,” she said. “You just have to take notes. Like you do already.”
“Well, I don’t know. I’ll probably end up as a male prostitute.”
“You can’t do that,” she laughed. “Your ass is too skinny.”
“Ha, ha. If only I had your ass.”
“If you had my ass, you could rule the world.”
“So what about you? What do you want to be when you grow up?”
“Maybe a psychologist or a singer.”
“A psychologist or a singer?” I said. “How similar.”
“Shut up,” she said, slapping me on the arm. “I’m allowed to be two things. If you get to be a writer and be all those different people, then I get to be at least two things.”
“You should do it, Natalie. Smith would definitely let you in. They’d be lucky to have you, you know.”