Chapter Forty-Eight
Bing Crosby’s White Christmas album wasn’t exactly how I envisioned myself starting a twenty-degree-cold Sunday morning in mid-February. Too soon, man. Way too soon. But Puck likes his Christmas tunes.
Linnea-Irish hopped out of Dad’s gold car at the church door. A purple satin top, dark jeans, and black-and-white cookie shoes. She looked a little irritated with the cold. And it also took me a good five minutes to realize that she wasn’t supposed to be there…
“Why aren’t you in Iowa?” I asked, casually running through all the possibilities – family emergency, best-friend-break-up… the plague.
“Cherry got the dates confused, I guess. It’s next weekend instead.”
It seemed a little odd to me that any girl would forget the date of her 16th birthday party. But what do I know? I was the sixteen year-old who took calculus, just because she could. “Birthday party” was a foreign idea to me.
Probably one of the first things I was reminded about from the family was that Dad’s car in high school had been a Porsche, never a Mustang. My family was only slightly humiliated that I wasn’t completely aware of this fact, as Carrie informed me while dusting the homemade breadsticks with Parmesan. She seasoned a pan of chicken with an orange spice and tossed a Caesar salad.
“Someone call Rose and see where she is.”
Francis did the deed.
“Hey, Rose. Are you dead?”
“Yup. I’m in Heaven and it’s really boring. They gave me a harp, but I won’t play it.”
Joe joined us at his seat, late. He was busy time-lapse recording a yellow-plastic-cup-coffee-percolator on the kitchen table. Then Francis tried to mess with the screen shot by practicing his dolphin kick standing on the bench.
“Francis. You’re going to forget about that fish up there,” I told him.
“Yeah… Is it still alive?”
Francis stood on the bench to look on the top of the china cabinet…
“And Zuñi’s going to kill me. That was an expensive Beta.”
“The days! Of wine and roses!” Joe screeched.
“Joe. Please,” Dad said.
Joe just laughed… Linnea had to fight for her right to the Valentine’s truffles from the boys. I guess they were a hit, even with my sisters who never really seem to care about chocolate that much…
“How come she gets three?”
“Because Joe likes her best.”
“That’s right, I do.”
“Well, she’s underage. I’ll take the champagne one.”
“Could I have the salted caramel?”
Linnea was passed out behind her in that bright pink bunny-clawed volleyball sweatshirt. Rose, with whom I was discussing possible vacation locations, sat behind her cat-sticker-coated laptop. Joe lounged in the wicker chair with a copy of “Les Mis” and headphones. My boys got busy with baseball and the Ruckus. While we all sort of off-and-on watched another Carrie-discovered creepy black and white oldie – “The Maze”. She’s been into those kinds of films lately. And who knows what Francis was up to. Probably trying to figure out how to keep his fish alive, or also passed out in another region of the house… Carrie brought out the injured Bon. Earnest had done a piece of work on the shaking bunny, who had almost lost a leg in the frenzy. She whimpered while Carrie cradled her into a nap. So Rose and I continued to discuss her upcoming pinky-swear promise vacation that she had made to The Bear. Instead of South America, however, given the possibility of increased risk in single female travel, Rose’s options would now be limited to, oh I don’t know, boring places. Like Hawai’i…
“It’s so… blue…” Rose wrinkled her nose while scanning photos on her laptop.
“You’re seriously complaining about Hawai’i now?” Francis asked.
“There’s… rainbows and stuff…”
“Yeah, there are rainbows everywhere.”
“Double rainbows!” Rose announced.
“Yeah, they’re everywhere, too.”
“Actually, every rainbow is a double rainbow,” Carrie added. “Actually more than a double rainbow…”
“Carrie, quit being so science,” Joe cut in.
“Why don’t you like those pictures?” Francis asked.
“Because… they look like postcards.”
This sort of morphed into a conversation about surfers and casualties in the waves…
“I don’t trust sharks.”
And something Rose said was “stupid”…
“Onion!” Puck declared. “We have little ears here!”
“Look! Another double rainbow!”
“It happens, Rose…”
“I’ll punch it.”
After I dropped off Linnea at church for youth group and the Knotts and Plum family arrived for the first night of The Truth Project small group, apple juice, and cracker mix, Puck and I flipped through books while Rose and I caught up on more things, Puck snuggled with Rose and then Carrie, because Lucia and Carrie had returned for Lucia to have a fight-match with Rose, which was basically a lot of flailing arms…
“No! You can’t hug me!”
…and a lot of whispering so no one in the basement television circle would be disturbed.
When we finally got Puck back home and down before nine, he was a little frustrated that The Bear wouldn’t allow him to snuggle with Crackers for the night…
“It’s like you have a talent for keeping me from Crackers, Dad.”