“Now,” he said, handing me a plastic cup, “fill this up to thirty.”
“Thirty?” I asked, not understanding what he meant. Thirty seconds, thirty droplets, thirty ounces?
“Thirty,” he emphasized again, pointing to a thin line on the cup, which I guess was marked in milliliters. “If it’s less than thirty, you’ll have to come back.”
I walked into the bathroom and waited for Arthur to follow, but he just stood there.
“Ready when you are,” I said, taking a deep breath and unbuttoning my pants.
Arthur just looked at me. “I don’t take bribes, ma’am,” he informed me as he stepped forward and shut the door.
Great, I thought as I stood alone in the bathroom. I’ve pissed off the pee taker. Now he’s going to put rock cocaine in my sample just to get back at me, and the only job I’ll ever be able to get will be in a live show in Tijuana with a donkey as my partner, because they’re always looking for junkie whores.
Quickly, I sat, positioned the cup, and I let the river roll. In fact, the river was rolling so productively I felt it was kind of a shame to stop and waste all of that perfectly good urine as I topped off the cup.
When I was done, I stood, buttoned up, and opened the bathroom door to Arthur waiting on the other side.
“I know you said you don’t take bribes,” I said with a grin as I placed the cup in his hands, “but I figured a three hundred percent tip couldn’t hurt.”
What Drugs Can Do to a Family
Laurie,” my sister’s slow, cracked voice strained on the answering machine. “I have to confess something (cough, cough), and I hope you’re not mad.”
My husband looked at me as we listened to the message together. “She sounds . . . drunk,” he said with a puzzled look.
“Close,” I sighed. “I think she’s high.”
It seems as if my sister had been picking up my old habits by executing some DUIs—Dialing Under the Influence—and something pretty big was about to tumble out of her mouth.
“She’s wasted!” my husband exclaimed. “Listen to that slur! She sounds like Tom Brokaw!”
It was true. She was totally bombed.
But honestly, it really wasn’t her fault. She has the flu.
Almost everyone I know has the flu except me, because I’ve learned my lesson. Last year, I had the flu so bad it made me give up my favorite hobby of smoking, and that was about as much fun as running into an ex-boyfriend after you’ve gained roughly forty pounds. So this year, I did the wise thing and got a $10 flu shot at the grocery store because I have only one hobby left, and if this year’s flu wiped away my desire to pick at my face, I seriously doubt that I would ever feel any kind of joy ever again. Personally, I have to tell you it was the best ten bucks I ever spent, not counting the time I bought the Suck-and-Tuck-It girdle, which I got a couple of months ago instead of rejoining the gym.
Almost everyone in my family got bit by the virus: both sisters, my father, brother-in-law, and nephew. My youngest sister was probably hit the hardest. Seven months pregnant and casting the same-size shadow of a market umbrella, she not only had herself to take care of, she had her husband and her son to attend to.
I can’t really speak about my brother-in-law, but when the male in my house gets sick, no human on Earth has known greater pain. And I’m talking about me.
With two males in my sister’s house, her husband and three-year-old son—only one of whom was actually acting his age—I could only imagine the agony she was going through. Out of what I believe was more pity than actual medicinal purposes, my sister’s understanding obstetrician prescribed a bottle of cough medicine with minute traces of codeine to ease her suffering.
It did a little more than ease them. Unlike me, who spent the entirety of my baby-making years on a bar stool, my sister had no prior experience with prescription-strength pharmaceuticals. During my college days, there were some mornings that I surprised myself just by waking up. For my sister, however, a little bit of codeine was apparently enough vice that I half expected her to have changed her name to Jasmine and donned sparkly hot pants and clear platform shoes, and to introduce me to her new gold-toothed friend “Manny” the next time I saw her.
“I took my cough syrup and I’m feeling a little bit better (cough, cough),” my sister’s voice said, confirming what I had suspected. “It’s supposed to make me sleep, but it’s just kind of making me think about some stuff, and I wanted to call you and confess something to you.”
“This should be good,” I said aloud. “I always had a feeling that letter wasn’t really from David Cassidy saying that when I turned twelve he would date me and sing at my birthday party!”
“When you were in high school, Dad used to have Susan B. Anthony dollars in his top dresser drawer,” the message continued, “and I remember one time (cough, cough, cough) they thought you were stealing them, and I don’t know, maybe you were, but I was stealing them, too. Not many. A couple dollars at a time when I needed extra lunch money, but then I saw Ricki Lake or Jerry Springer today and these two girls were sleeping with the same guy, and I was thinking, you know, it wasn’t very nice of me to let Laurie take the blame for that.”
“Susan B. Anthony dollars?” I said to the machine. “I never took any dollars! There were dollars?”
“And, like I said,” the message went on, “maybe you were taking money, and I tried to tell Mom and Dad one time, and they said, ‘WE KNOW WHO’S BEEN TAKING THE MONEY!’ And I just wanted to tell you that. And my doctor said I would be fine, burp, excuse me, as long as I don’t get addicted to codeine. Okay? Bye.”
“I never took any dollars!” I said as my husband eyed me suspiciously. “I didn’t! I swear!”
“BEEP!” the machine emitted, signaling another message.
“Laurie,” the new voice said, “this is Dad (cough, cough). I just talked to your sister, and I’m sorry for placing all the Susan B. Anthony blame on you.”
“I didn’t take them, Dad!” I cried. “It wasn’t me!”
“But I just took some medicine and got to thinking,” the machine persisted. “And I wanted to ask you what you knew about my bicentennial quarters.”
My husband looked at me again.
“Uh-oh,” I said as I just stood there.
You Have Already Been Preapproved for a Decline
Here, Casey!” the woman on the commercial called out gently. “Here, boy!”
Casey, a puppy in the same commercial mere seconds before, was now a hobbling, geriatric dog who was not too far off from being sent to “live” on a “farm” in the “country.”
My throat swelled, expanding painfully as if I had eaten a pretzel that had lodged itself there and then hit my face on the coffee table after losing consciousness. As I felt a wet little tear rush down my cheek, I sniffled, and then I heard it.
A faint, nearly inaudible chuckle from the other end of the couch.
“What?” I said somewhat angrily, shooting my husband a look as I wiped my nose.
“You’re crying at a dog food commercial,” he informed me as he laughed and shook his head. “I’ll get you some Valium in case Hallmark or an insurance company has the next thirty-second spot!”
“I’m not freaking out,” I protested. “I’m just a little sad. That dog was so old.”
“Um, I hate to point out the obvious,” he added, “but you’re crying because you’re experiencing an ’emotion.’ Last night when I told you I was going to bed, you said, ‘I’ll be there in a minute. I’m waiting for the weather report,’ and the other day when we took your car to the store, you had a full tank of gas! You’re getting old.”
I wanted to argue, I wanted to deny the whole thing, but I didn’t. I retreated into my office, sat down, and thought about it. Okay, so I’ve seen grandmothers on Jerry Springer who are my age, but so is Cindy Crawford!
Was it true? Was I past my prime? Were my salad days now just dried-up remnants of lettuce at the bottom of the bowl? Was th
ere a little expiration stamp someplace on my body that says, “Best if used by 10/31/1999”? I had to know the truth, and I had been dreading this moment since I first read in Seventeen about the “pencil test.” It was the ultimate detection device that would signal the time when I, too, would soon go to “live” on a “farm” in the “country.”
Placing a yellow No. 2 under each boob, I stood back and waited. And waited. But the pencils didn’t budge, they didn’t fall, they didn’t wiggle, even when I shimmied. They were adhered to me as if I had stuck them there with chewing gum or Polident.
I sighed and felt like crying again.
Rocks in a sock. Past my prime. So past my prime, in fact, that I could have leaned a little to the left and drafted an entire letter or signed a check to my doctor for hormone therapy. I was sure that if I lay down with my arms outstretched, I would feel each boob slide off my rib cage and settle in its rightful spot, my armpit, like a beer can in a cozy. I braced myself against the bathroom sink and sighed. When did this happen? How could I have not seen the symptoms?
My mind raced with excuses, but it was all there. In little flashes, my mind clicked from one scene to the next. In the last election, I voted for a Republican. A week ago, I watched the Billboard Music Awards and didn’t know who anyone was. Standing in line behind a kid with a tattoo across his entire arm, my mother’s voice popped into my head and snarled, “Now there’s a wise investment. The only time it really pays off is when you’re lying on a steel table in a morgue without a driver’s license in your pocket.” I don’t understand the new commercials for Levi’s. I saved $19.34 on groceries a couple of days ago by using coupons and a Fresh Value card. When my mother asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I replied that I wanted some moles removed. I just finished reading something that had an “Oprah’s Book Club” sticker on the cover. I still have all of the lids from a set of Tupperware I bought a year ago. Under very bright fluorescent lights in a bathroom at Rubio’s Baja Grill, I discovered that God likes to play funny tricks and that gray hairs aren’t limited simply to your head.
But those things can be explained, I told myself, you can attribute all of that behavior to stress or improper prescription-drug use in combination with alcohol. To a possible chemical imbalance. A split personality. I probably just have a brain tumor. Radiation and psychoanalysis can fix all of that. There’s hope, I struggled to believe. Maybe my boobs are just taking a nap!
I guess I always knew this day would come, but I just didn’t expect it so soon. Did it happen one day when I realized that I was sitting at a KFC drive-through window, dressed in a sweatshirt and slippers, waiting for my order of Popcorn Chicken to come up? Or was it the moment I spotted a teenage couple holding hands and I had the overwhelming desire to scream, “Don’t trust him! You’re three bases away from becoming a statistic living in government-funded housing, honey!”
And if so, if I am maturing, what’s next for me? Do I wake up one day and find my uterus nestled at my feet, next to my cat? When do I start sneezing and peeing at the same time? When do I get teeth that I can keep in a glass of water or pull out at parties? When do I start farting in the company of others because I believe if I can’t hear it, they can’t either? Now it’s just a matter of time before I start calling my husband “Daddy,” despite the fact that my reproductive parts have remained on standby alert for decades but have never been called in for active duty.
It can’t be true, I thought. I am completely immature. I’m in a bathroom jumping around with writing instruments stuck to me.
But after I put my shirt back on and went outside to check the mail, it was all in front of me in black and white, and there was no more denying it. Waiting passively for me in the mailbox was a letter. A simple little letter telling me that I had already been approved for an unsecured Visa credit card.
I thought it was an act of God when I got my long-distance phone service reconnected. But an unsecured Visa? Could it be true? Have I really been paying my bills on time? It was worse than I thought. Just how old have I become?
I ran inside to tell my husband, who was walking toward me with arms outstretched.
“I’m sorry I called you ‘old,’ ” he said, putting his arms around me. “I just get so frightened when I see you show any kind of emotion besides anger and hate. It’s so unlike you!”
“It’s okay,” I said, hugging him back.
“When I saw the full tank of gas,” he added, “I thought, ‘What has this creature done with my wife?’ ”
“It wasn’t me,” I replied, hugging him harder. “Nana filled up the tank after we ran out of gas and had to push the car to a Mobil when I was taking her to get a perm! Oh honey, you must have been so scared!”
“What was that?” my husband yelled suddenly and pulled away, plugging his nose. “Man, give me a little warning before you blow on that trumpet, will you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I replied staunchly. “I didn’t hear a thing.”
Tiger Woods Doesn’t Know Where I Live
When my gardener called one day and asked if I wanted a winter lawn that year, I’ll admit that I gushed as unabashedly as a Junior Leaguer over the thought of a diamond-anniversary tennis bracelet.
Did I? Did I? My mind screamed. The promise of a thick, lush carpet of emerald green stretched over my front yard when all of the other lawns in my high-desert neighborhood sported ferret brown was a dream too beautiful to resist. A lovely, velvety, jeweled lawn. It would be the pride of my street. The envy of my neighbors. And, if I could convince my husband to remove the tinfoil that lined the inside of his office window, our home might never be mistaken for Section 8 housing again! I just might have the prettiest lawn and house in the neighborhood.
I imagined it, my mind flashing to the sight of cars lined up two deep and a mile long, people coming from miles around to catch a glimpse of my majestic, flawless winter lawn. It was a dream I had waited for my whole life.
“A winter lawn will be a hundred dollars,” my lawn guy said.
“You are high! Forget it!” I screeched right before I hung up.
A hundred dollars! One hundred dollars! For a patch of winter grass? My lawn guy had obviously spent too much time inhaling around fertilizers and chemical products or licking his fingers after he handled them, like a dog that eats antifreeze. A hundred dollars!
I mean, honestly, what do you really need to make a winter lawn? Manure, seed, water, and sunshine. That’s it. Manure is a buck a bag, the water comes out of my hose, and sunshine is free until it bakes a big, bulbous carcinoma on your face and you have to pay for chemotherapy. And although I didn’t know exactly how much seed was, I was sure it wouldn’t be much.
I don’t know if my lawn guy thought I sat at home all day, passing out hundred-dollar bills to people who would change a lightbulb for me or for someone to butter my toast, but I thought a hundred dollars was an awful lot just to distribute a bag of seed and then sprinkle cow turds over it. It’s not like it takes a degree or a license or anything; you just basically need to be able to walk. It’s essentially a menial task. Honestly, the only reason I had a gardener/lawn guy in the first place was because I learned far too late that my husband was far too lazy for my own good.
I will freely admit that I married for love and because it seemed like the next logical step after stalking him got a little boring. I did not marry for money, status, or for my own personal groundskeeper, although I am not ruling out that possibility for subequent marriages. I knew my husband wasn’t bringing the assets of a manly assortment of Craftsman tools to the marriage; the man could barely work a flashlight. He would try to shine it on me when I hovered outside his bedroom windows at night, but it looked more like a strobe light, since the missing battery-chamber cover was replaced with a slice of Scotch tape. Instead, he brought a guitar, the strobe flashlight, and the complete works of Shakespeare, the sum of which is almost not even worth suing over. I married my husband because he is the n
icest man in the world, and I am the meanest girl, which I thought might bring me extra bargaining points with God after I died and was negotiating my release from becoming Mrs. Satan.
However, had I known that he had such a developed aversion to yard work before we got hitched, I could have negotiated for far less obligatory time in the bedroom before I took those vows. Believe me, I’ve learned my lesson, however, because “Ability to Push a Mower Once a Week” is notched right up there at number two on my list for “Essential and Nonnegotiable Qualities for Laurie’s Second Husband,” sandwiched in between #1) Does Not Experience Cramps and the Need to Run to the Public Rest Room Every Time We Make a Purchase Over Ten Dollars and #3) Will Have Goals Over and Above What Programs He Wants to Watch on TV That Night.
But the seed for a winter lawn was planted, so to speak, and instead of giving up on my dream, I decided that I would embark on the project myself.
Once at the home improvement store, I stood on the grass-seed aisle perplexed. There were about fifteen different bags of grass seed, and I had no idea which one I needed. Then, as if a ray of light from the heavens above was sent to direct me in my quest, a man walked up beside me, and as he reached for a specific bag of grass, I saw the telltale sign: big, brown half-moons over each fingertip. He had dirt under his nails! A gardener! He certainly knew which seed to pick if his hands were all filthy! I marveled at my good luck, and as soon as the gardener left with his prized bag of perfect seed, I grabbed the next one in the stack and struggled to flop all fifty pounds of it into my cart. It left me breathless, sweaty, and with one leg numb all the way down to my ankle, but when I was done, I had seed in my cart and I was one step closer to a winter lawn.
I pushed the cart over to the manure aisle, but since I really felt no need to be as choosy about feces, I selected the cheapest brand and loaded four bags on top of the seed. Then I headed toward the cashier, my cart piled high with one hundred pounds of neighbor envy.