3.5
The Bear had made Puck a promise last night. The last brownie in the box was his. When Puck finished breakfast at the table and turned to see the now quite-empty brownie box perched against the trash can…
“Mom! Did you eat the brownie?”
“I did not.”
Puck studied the empty box.
“It’s a mystery, Pete Hollister,” I told him, digging back into my potent key lime Greek yogurt.
He looked back at me carefully, as if he was about to read me my rights…
“Mom. My name is Puck Silverspoon Redcoat [Anneliese’s surname]… Detective… Doctor [hint of a smile]… Puck Silverspoon.”
Some time later…
“Puck? Are you getting dressed?”
“I took a picture of my belly?” he phrased it into a question, a subtle suggestion to discover if that counted as being the same thing.
I was surprised the girls didn’t look their usual Sunday-sleepy that morning. The kind they always show after a few days of shopping, slumber parties, and sight-seeing. They wedged themselves into a row somehow even further behind our own, with styrofoam cups of tea.
Our guest reverend was in town from New Mexico. Ben-Hur was visiting again. So was Daisy-Jean. I just saw Puck gallop off to meet her, shouting something about…
“I got a camera for Christmas!”
Naturally before I could think fast enough, the dust of the benediction was hardly settled before Puck had joined the ring of kids around two dinky plates of cookies in the foyer. Thirty seconds later…
“Dad! I ate a cookie and a cupcake!”
And the girls asked to be dropped off at Steak ‘n Shake for lunch with a friend prior to further afternoon festivities. I don’t think either one of them was wearing a coat either, despite the gauge reading 20 degrees downtown.
“Yeah, I took then to the Basilica yesterday,” said Carrie, “but I warned them I wouldn’t take them unless they were wearing heavy coats. So of course they took off their hoodies and layers and just wore the coat. So we get there and they’re absolutely freezing… They didn’t wear coats today because they were afraid they’d mess up their outfits…”
High school girls. I remember my own days of teenaged oddities – the screams of agony from the girls who curled their bangs the wrong way.
“How long are those girls going to sit at Steak ‘n Shake?” Rose called from the living room.
“They’ve been there for an hour and a half already…”I mumbled.
“That’s nothing,” said Carrie. “Rose, you know how long I had to wait before they were ready for me to pick them up at the mall? I memorized four flight procedures in the time I was waiting for them to call me.”
“Yeah, I know. Then they went to Sunshine Daydream.”
“What’s that?”
“A Hippie store.”
“They were in Forever 21 like a half an hour,” Rose went on. “I couldn’t stay in there for two minutes. All the colors are terrible. Fashion is dead.”
A little light Spanish guitar was humming from the television. Leftover pizzas from the six boxes Saturday night. Just to hold us over until the fun and games on the other side of town. Puck got a slide whistle from the Puck and Grandma Box. Or, as Carrie suggested, a “Sasquatch whistle”. Rose lugged in a jumbo bag stuffed with the weekly laundry to join The Bear and Puck for an episode of “Dirty Jobs” and cram-studying with four of my highlighters – which I never got back, by the way… – for another certification in the next two weeks, which pretty much guaranteed her queendom of IT. Puck found an old madrigal dinner hat feather, which he used to tickle his mom’s and aunts’ faces at intervals. And the girls returned with a plush Olive Oyl from the claw machine at Steak ‘n Shake after a two-hour lunch, to spin the tiny solid glass ornament garnishes on the dining room table.
“I spent five dollars trying to get a Popeye,” Linnea said dismally.
But not too dismally. There was a large bag of acai dark chocolates going around the living room where the core of the tribe was gathered. Meatballs, coffee…
That was where everyone started discussing the Chevrolet dealership prize chip that had arrived in our mailbox the other day – a surprisingly went-to-much-effort number code chip that lit up blue in the mail, guaranteeing our assurance of not one, but two, prizes waiting for us in Troy, Missouri. The debate raged.
“If the prize is a car,” I get it, Francis declared. “I’ve been driving that van around…”
“Oh, right, right,” Cherry cut in, imitating Francis. “’The van is so awesome. It has great tires and a great engine. And, and… it’s green.’”
“’Yeah,’” Joe added. “’But this new car drives like, like a hamburger… oh! I mean, like a great car.’”
“If it’s the iPad, you and I’ll split it.”
“It’s probably not a car. There’s only a one in nine thousand chance of winning it,” I reminded them for the twentieth time. “I’m sure it’s just the binoculars and the pearl necklace…”
“Well, we should give the car to Luke. He’s getting married tomorrow.”
Dad fired up the big green thing. Shelley was cooking, and there were just enough seats to tote the gang across the highways to Mom’s and Dad’s childhood. Before we had even left the driveway, Carrie and Joe were reciting stall procedures to each other while Rose chatted brass knuckles, pepper spray, and other life-protecting items with the girls.
It was Cherry’s first taste of Christmas with the Snicketts Family in Florissant. And an easy Australian accent from Uncle Bobs to boot.
Grandma Combs was already prepared with stacks of origami paper for the girls and Aunt Day’s grandson to fold into brightly colored cranes. Carrie was already giving Lucia a hard time about her room. A place apparently condemned to all the rest of living mankind. But she tried to sell tickets anyway. A string of requests soon followed.
“So, Lucia… I haven’t seen your room in awhile…”
“Could I see your room, Lucia?”
“Lucia, word on the street is – your room is the place to be.”
“You got that right.”
I chatted briefly with Uncle Bobs about him growing up in the Greek Orthodox Church, about the Presbyterian church, about how he agreed with Mom’s and Dad’s theology, etc. Uncle Bobs is interested in everyone’s life and interests and beliefs. I guess he’s sort of the Australian male version of Gloria. Then he quizzed The Bear on his Greek, just for grins. St. Louis eats up accents, by the way. It’s true. I think most of us would have a fine time talking with Bobs for the whole holiday.
Meanwhile, Bobs grandson, Enoch, was playing Minecraft with Puck in the basement.
“Pardon?” Puck had just asked him.
Enoch – who was obviously a thinker beyond his possibly ten young years – turned to him, saying…
“Did your mom teach you how to say pardon? That’s a very nice thing to say. It’s a lot better than most things people say.”
Then he turned around to me and gave me the thumbs up.
Oreo the cat had stashed himself under a rocking chair in the basement, warming by the electric fire, hissing at passerby. Apparently he was unaccustomed to 21 humans invading his cat cave. Upstairs, Aunt Sue was enlightening the older crowd about the lack of modesty amongst young women in the Australian church…
“Well, at least they’re in church,” Uncle Mo offered.
I don’t think the ladies were buying it. Cultural differences…
I shouldn’t call it loot. Really, I shouldn’t. But how else do you feel when you’re carting home days of chests and boxes spilling over with glowing, gleaming things? There’s pirate blood bubbling up in there somewhere. The boys got clippable reading lamps from Grandma Combs, which were blindingly bright.
“This is great,” The Bear told me. “I won’t have to hold onto the light while I read at the same time anymore. I’ve been getting up early in the mornings and readying my Bible with my flashlight in my mouth.”
Lucia drew my name and handed over a bag of little canvases, paintbrushes, and a bag of tiny Reeses cups. She gets me. For the girls, Grandma had attached two twenties to small hand purses folded out of Twizzler wrappers, which was pretty cool. Puck got a wind-up plush snowman on a bike who rolled around to electric Christmas tunes. Another winner.
I walked by Lucia’s door. A paper sign was taped to it reading – “Please come in!!”
I retreated to the basement to kill a sinus infringement and to give Puck his first flavor of Star Wars: A New Hope and to cool down a little from the warm upstairs. I still remember the feeling of seeing the title run across the screen from my first Star Wars. The VHS boxed set Dad had put into the cart at… the place not to be named. Darth Vadar printed ominously across the side of the box in black and gold. Those were the days… In a few potential frightening scenes, where I told Puck to close his eyes, Enoch helped smooth over the situation by explaining things away…
“Don’t worry. His arm will grow back. It’s ok.”
I guess Star Wars isn’t as docile as I remember it… For five year-olds anyway.
The laughter and ribbing from the kitchen table pealed loudly into the evening as the tribe guffawed through board games. Apples to Apples. Outburst. A thing I have yet to ever fully understand. I never saw us as a board game sort of family. But you just don’t know until it starts, I guess.
I had to pull The Bear up from the basement where he was discussing more church background with Uncle Bobs by the time we final carved ourselves away from the night party going on.
The on-going collective collaboration of everything.
“Who wants to go to Troy tomorrow with me?” was the last thing I heard from Mom as we walked back out into the night.
We chugged home trailing in the dust of Joe’s Fit. He had Curly-Joe expeditions to catch up on before the new year had begun. Games, laughs, food, and more and more of all that sort of thing.