“They do so,” she quipped. “Why do you think I have a fake tree? They just melt when something goes wrong. A lady at church told me her neighbor’s Christmas tree burned right down and took her La-Z-Boy with it.”
“If this was the same church person who said she found a hooker’s body in the bedsprings in the room where they were staying at the Excalibur, I told you not to listen to her anymore,” I informed her. “It’s an urban legend and she’s getting that stuff from the Internet. It’s not true, it never happened. Call the Excalibur to see for yourself.”
“Why would she lie?” my mother insisted. “Why would you lie about a dead hooker in your room?”
“I’ll take it down soon,” I obliged.
“You’d better,” she whispered, and then she pointed. “You really should wear a bra to bed, you know. Eight hours of extra support would go a long way.”
I knew right then and there that I had been marked and a battle had begun. I was now, against my will and better judgment, locked in, and there was no way out. You see, my mother has an extraordinary talent.
She worries. My mother is the supreme agonizer. The woman is peerless. When she first heard the song “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” she scoffed, nearly laughing, and said, “‘Don’t worry’? What a stupid thing to say. ‘Don’t worry’! How else are you supposed to know you’re alive?” However, as much as she enjoys the sport, she doesn’t like to worry alone. Just as she is in charge of her prayer chain at church, she uses that same technology as a strategy in the war against her victim. She likes to organize a worry party and has been known to include other people in the worrying. We call this tactic the Notaro Worry Chain.
For example, she called me not too long ago in a huff and said, “You know your sister’s damn dog? Well, it peed on the carpet. The stain is still there. You can’t get it up. She tried everything. She’s never going to be able to sell that house now. Never.”
“But . . .” I said after a lengthy pause, “she’s not moving. The house isn’t for sale.”
“She’s not going to live in that house for forever,” my mother immediately informed me. “People don’t live in houses for forever. Not anymore. People are nomadic now, it’s the trend. And when the time comes, well, there’s that stain. Who’s going to want a house with a stained carpet? I wouldn’t buy a house with a dirty carpet.”
Now, my sister’s carpet wasn’t dirty, and you could barely, barely, barely recognize the outlines of the stain, and that was if you were standing in great light. Nevertheless, every time my mother went to my sister’s house, she stood above that stain and shook her head. “Never going to sell this house,” she’d say to herself. “People will take one look at that and walk right back out the door, unless it’s a dirty family. God, I will pray for a dirty family.”
My mother lamented about the stain like it was a son off to war in a foreign country. The stain haunted her. In turn, she haunted my sister until she hired a carpet cleaner and her house once again became sellable.
Now, I suppose I could have taken the Christmas tree down. It could have been that easy, except for one simple thing: I had vengeance on my mind and a score to settle. Earlier in the year, I had been the object of a Worry Chain maneuver escalated to a higher Worry level, a Worry Mission, when I had gone to New York, and as soon as my plane landed, the terror-alert level jumped to orange, which is typical and always happens. The moment I leave my state, the terror-alert level will jump a couple of rainbow steps; it’s a given and I’ve learned to accept it. Either I have fantastically bad traveling luck, or I’m the terrorist, and either way there are a lot of extra hands on me probing into fat rolls when my barrette triggers the metal detector. I hadn’t even gotten to my hotel yet when my mother called and demanded that I come home. “And I mean now,” she said sternly. “The newspeople said you should have extra water and duct tape on hand for when the terrorists strike, which looks like it’s going to be Tuesday at around three, isn’t that what Fox said? Yes, your father said that’s what Fox said. They’ll probably stop room service at the hotel and your chances of getting a clean towel are just as slim. Come home now.”
When I refused, my mother became indignant and went into full-force Notaro Worry Mission action. As soon as I got to the hotel, there was a message from Nana at the front desk that read, “Laurie? Is that you? Laurie? Stay inside tomorrow at three o’clock and ask for towels now.”
As soon as I walked into the room, the hotel phone rang. I hesitated when answering it but thought it might be one of my friends that I was there to see.
When I picked up the phone, I realized how wrong I was.
There, on the other end, was my seven-year-old nephew, Nicholas. I love this child more than anything. He is my godson, and I adore him. My mother knows this.
“Aunt Laurie,” my nephew said in between full-throated sobs, “please come home. Grandma says you’re going to die tomorrow in New York when you’re out having fun with your friends. Please don’t die!”
Talk about a dirty bomb.
“Nick,” I said as calmly as possible, “I’m not going to die. I will come home soon, and I promise I am safe. There is nothing for you to worry about. If I thought I might get hurt, I would come home, but everything is fine. Make Grandma get you an aspirin and then put her on the phone.”
“What?” my mother said.
“You know what,” I replied. “Why are you scaring a little kid?”
“Has anyone given you duct tape yet or a bottle of water? They’re putting security guards at all the doors to the hotels, you know.”
“They are not!” I cried. “I’m in a hotel! There are no guards at the front door!”
“Well, they are at the nice ones,” my mother replied.
“Some words of advice, Ma,” I started. “You’re twenty miles from a nuclear-energy plant with THREE REACTORS, the largest one in the country. It’s a big target in the middle of the desert and is kind of hard to miss. Duct tape and a bottle of water isn’t going to stop your organs from turning to jelly with radiation poisoning, but maybe the tape will help when your skin starts slipping off like a drunk girl’s dress. Worry about that, Ma, okay? Worry about that. And stop scaring little kids!”
True, when I finally got home safe and sound a week later, I got a hug and a kiss from a seven-year-old, which was nice, since the hugs had stopped with his acquisition of a Game Boy some time earlier. Nevertheless, my mother had violated the rules of the Worry Mission by employing child warriors on her behalf, and I was still pretty mad about that.
The Christmas tree was staying up.
By mid-January, the “That Christmas Tree Is Going to Kill You Situation” had naturally become a staple in our conversations, falling into place right after “Did you pay that traffic ticket yet, because I’m not going to be the one to drive you to court when your license gets suspended?” and before “Did you call the doctor’s office to reschedule your Pap smear, because I don’t want to be the one to drive you to chemotherapy when you get cervical cancer?” She didn’t hesitate to tell me that she had lost sleep over the Christmas tree on more than one occasion and had dreams that presents under a Christmas tree were exploding like firecrackers and she had to spit on all of the little fires to put them out.
“One spark is all it takes,” she added. “I wouldn’t even walk by that room with a book of matches or a hot dish if I were you.”
“So funny you should say that,” I added. “It looked like the Christmas tree was actually smoking yesterday, but it turns out the smoke was from the cheap candle I had put on the table right next to it. And I think I’m going to start drinking and smoking again. I love being drunk and dancing with a cigarette in my hand!”
A week later, she called with a hot tip: “Kmart has fire extinguishers on sale. I’d get a couple if I were you.”
“Oh, we already have one,” I told her. “Although I lost the little booklet that says how it works. Well, if I see flames, I guess instinct will kick in
and I’ll figure it out. Guess what I’m wearing? Nylon pajamas from Kmart!”
By Valentine’s Day, it was clear she’d been working the phones.
“Laurie? Are you there? Laurie?” called Nana’s message on my answering machine. “God, I hope you’re not not answering the phone because you’re dead. Oh, I hope that tree didn’t kill you! I will be so mad! That damn tree! Laurie? Hello? Laurie?”
Then my sister called. “Please keep the tree up for as long as possible,” she pleaded. “My dog peed on the rug again.”
The tree was driving my mother insane, and frankly, I was enjoying every minute of it. Actually, our Christmas relic had become so much of a normal part of the living room that we didn’t even notice it anymore. My mother had finally met her match, and even though she would inevitably win, I had a fabulous time egging her on. Soon the time would come to take the tree down, and I knew this when my sister told me that my mother’s prayer chain was praying for it.
When March rolled around, I decided that I would take down the Christmas tree as soon as I had time, because it wasn’t going to be a quick thing. It had grown stiff and sharp, and touching it was somewhat dangerous and was liable to hurt in the form of scratches and small lacerations. Although it was still green in spots, it drooped in a bunch of places, and if a little breeze blew by it, its needles would fall off.
So the ornaments came off, and we packed them away carefully. We unstrung the lights and put the tree angel back in its box. Soon the tree looked as naked as it did the day I brought it home in the trunk of my car, except that all the life had dribbled out of it. When all the decorations were gone, my husband asked me where the saw was.
“We can’t cut up the tree,” I said sadly. “It’s been the focal point of my mother’s life to mutilate it like that. She doesn’t give her grandchildren this much attention. Let’s take it to the recycling place.”
He agreed, so we dragged it outside, popped open the trunk of the car, and stuffed it in. We hadn’t even backed all the way out of the driveway when the tree sprang out and rolled into the street. My husband got out of the car and mashed it back into the trunk.
“How far is this place?” he asked, now scratched and covered in Christmas-tree sap.
“It’s right around the corner,” I assured him, watching the scratches on his arm become red, raised, and swollen.
We started the car again, got out of the driveway and onto the street. We made the turn around the corner. Then we heard
THUD again.
The tree had escaped and was now positioned in the very middle of the street, blocking both lanes of traffic.
We pulled over to the side of the road and looked back. The river of cars migrating from the church down the street was heading toward the tree, closer, closer, closer, then swerving to the right to miss it, swerving to the left into oncoming traffic. Car after car suddenly jolted in either direction to avoid the tree, and one man in a truck just plain ran over it. We were trapped by the traffic for a long time, and neither one of us could do anything. Suddenly, my husband flew out of the car and retrieved the tree, dragging it across the street, and, for the third time, shoved it into the trunk. We drove, very, very slowly, mind you, an additional thirty feet, and dumped the Christmas tree next to its fellow dead Noble and Douglas Fir cousins at the Christmas Tree Graveyard, where tinsel gathered in muddy puddles next to the corpses.
The following day, when the doorbell rang, I sprinted to the door and flung it wide open.
“LOOK!” I shouted. “Look, Mom. It’s gone. It’s gone! Now I can finally do some welding in the living room! We’re going to set off some firecrackers later!”
“Oh, yeah,” my mother said, nodding. “God, it must have been more brittle than I thought. Look at all of the needles it left behind. It’s like a carpet of little green pins! I hope the cat doesn’t walk on them. What if one gets in his paw? That will be a hell of a vet’s bill, I’ll tell you. That could cripple him. When are you going to clean it up?”
“I’ll clean it up soon,” I sighed.
“You’d better,” she whispered.
Christmas Death Trap
The truth was that I felt sorry for the two little girls from down the street, Casey and Staci.
I don’t know, maybe I’m a sucker; maybe I’m just too gullible. Nevertheless, I must still hold tight to the theory that a six-year-old child at my front door asking me to feed her because her mother hasn’t gotten out of bed in two days qualifies for a Sally Struthers kind of tragedy.
I had met the girls a couple of months earlier when they, one of them fully dressed as a ballerina, wanted me to pay them to cut my bushes, though I politely declined. My regular gardener was a forty-year-old man who equates a properly trimmed bush to a stump, and I knew I wouldn’t have much more luck with an eight-year-old and a six-year-old.
After the bush incident, the kids started coming around in the afternoon, and within a week of our meeting, it had become a daily ritual. The chimes would be tinkling, yet no one was visible through the front-door window. That’s when I knew the midgets, as I started to call them, were getting hungry.
But soon, feeding them simply wasn’t enough. They started bringing their dog to my house for Snausages and dinners of Kibbles and Chunks. Every time they set foot through the front door, one of them would spot something she liked, pick it up, and ask, “Can I have this when you die?”
This begging thing was obviously either a genetic trait or a habit picked up from their mother’s fourth husband. One day, while disposing of all the unnecessary items in our house, I came upon the dusty, 1973ish fake-wood headboard that had belonged to my sister’s old boss. Somehow, after the boss’s father had died in the bed, we had assumed possession of it. I was quite ready to get rid of it, so I dragged it out to the front yard, slapped a huge FREE sign on it, and waited for someone to pick it up.
Within a half hour, the headboard was spied by the fourth husband, whom I call “Jethro,” while en route to dropping both Casey and Staci off at their natural fathers’ homes for the weekend. He sent the midgets up to the door to tell me to take the sign off the headboard while he smoked a cigarette at the end of my driveway.
After that, I came up with a whole bunch of ideas to trick Jethro. I toyed with the idea of dragging all of my trash, lawn clippings, and broken appliances to the curb and taping FREE signs to them so I wouldn’t have to take them all the way to the Dumpster in the alley. Jethro, however, had beat me to the punch by hauling a plaid burlap love seat with missing cushions out to the dirt plot that was his front yard, appropriately accompanied by a broken dryer. As a matter of fact, Staci had been missing for several hours one afternoon until I saw her older brother open the door to the dryer and yank her out.
I bet, I thought to myself while driving past their house, that if I moved the dryer and the love seat to my yard and put FREE signs on them, the fourth husband would take them back inside the house.
I just hoped that they’d move soon, but they couldn’t have moved soon enough. One Sunday morning, the doorbell rang, but as I peered from the hallway to the front door, no one was visible. It was the midgets, probably wanting breakfast.
Despite the fact that I was still in my pajamas, I opened the door, hoping to get rid of Casey and Staci quickly, but as I did so, I knew I had been trapped.
There they were, dressed in the same clothes as the day before, but this time, on top of Staci’s right shoulder was perched a big, fat, filthy, dirty pigeon.
I shuddered immediately. I avoid birds, I avoid them at all costs. I’ve never had a simple, noneventful encounter with a bird and never will because of karma. I killed a bird with my car several years ago, and since then, birds have been shitting on my head, getting trapped in my air-conditioning vents, and being generally bothersome. To me, seeing a bird is like seeing the Antichrist appear before my eyes.
“You’re not bringing that thing into my house,” I told them right away.
“This i
s Petey. He broke his wing, and we’re taking care of him. See?” Staci said, stretching out the bird’s wing so I could see just how broken it was.
“Then he needs to be at your house resting,” I said back.
“Isn’t he pretty?” Casey said, stroking the bird’s head.
“Nothing is pretty if it carries more vermin and disease than rats,” I informed them. “And that’s what pigeons are: big, fat, flying rats that shit—I mean, poop—on people’s heads. Now take it home, girls, and make sure you wash your hands with gasoline.”
Reluctantly and saddened, the midgets turned around and headed back down the driveway with Petey. I headed into the kitchen, ecstatic that I had successfully slipped away from a bird unscathed.
Within moments, I heard screaming from outside. As I listened closer, it was the terrified shrills of the midgets, calling my name over and over. As much as I wanted to ignore their cries for help—as much as I wanted to plead the case of “I’m Not Your Mother, So Go Drag Her Drunk Ass Out of Bed”—I opened the side door and voluntarily, although quite hesitantly, surrendered myself to the Midgets’ Lair of the Filthy Pigeon.
I didn’t want to go outside.
There was danger outside.
Simply concerned that the pigeon had turned mad and had plucked out one of the girls’ eyeballs, I rushed outside to the front yard, where both girls were burrowed under the bougainvillea bush.
“Help us, Laurie, help us!” Casey screamed. “Petey got away, and he’s under the bush! We need to cut it down!”
“Uh, no, we don’t,” I replied, crouching down until I could see the bird underneath the bush, moving around and spreading his vermin about. “First of all, stop screaming. Now, one of you get on the other side and we’ll flush him out.”
Staci ran around to the other side, tunneled under her end of the bush, and immediately shrieked, “PETEY! PETEY! PETEY!” which naturally caused the bird to quickly scuttle over toward my direction. Against my better judgment, I caught it.
“Here,” I said, thrusting Petey at Casey. “Here’s your bird. Now go straight home and keep him there.”