Chapter Forty-Six
Francis struck the big one today. That mountain of gold all those kids are sure absolutely signifies their induction into adulthood, but really only requires the draft, maybe voter’s registration, and a handful of other irrelevant or unnecessary legal allowances. And because we had already celebrated, pretty much all Francis had to show for the day was life-guarding and madrigal rehearsal. Besides, Linnea-Irish had been summoned to Iowa for the weekend – Cherry’s belated 16th birthday party – so we were one short, and Francis had already purchased the much-wanted iPod Touch anyway… I was a little distracted during breakfast with just about everything as usual, so I failed to notice that Puck had removed all four black pegs from my burnt-out violin…
“No, Puck. Come on, man.”
[Sometimes I feel like Bill Cosby when I say this.]
“But, Mom, I want to put a pencil through the hole.”
“Nothing else at the table. Eat your oatmeal. You can’t put pencils through the peg holes.”
Yeah. Practicing being his dad. Or his youngest uncle. Maybe a bit of both. Probably my dad, too. Didn’t he take apart his yellow-orange Mustang – or whatever; I don’t know cars – and put it back together again back in high school? With a couple of parts left over. Experiments, inventions, junk yards, destruction. It all sounds about right… Even with the sun out. Again. It was cold. I suddenly realized that leaving the thermostat perpetually between 65 and 67 is maybe not always an appropriate setting for February. I’m just usually wrapped up in too many sweaters to care. They were suggesting snow though… A little more Gospel Elvis to kick off Puck’s reading lesson. Which probably didn’t help. Although he was so distracted stuffing my books into his underwear – clean, underwear – as a “carrying case”, and cringing in fear from a rogue fruit fly flapping around his face, that I doubt he was even paying attention to Elvis… At lunch he tied a red-pepper-soup-colored sash – from one of my dresses; I’m not a big fan of sashes; I prefer belts – around his forehead, samurai style. Anything to distract from the heavy natural chunky peanut butter and thick blueberry preserves sandwich on his melamine plate, even though he’s always starving. And he actually very much likes PBJ. He elaborately sported his new look to the table…
“You’re mine, you know,” I told him.
I like to remind him of this occasionally, just to keep him in his place. And because he’s cute.
“Mom. Please don’t say that,” the serious flavor was running deep. “I’m a different kind of man now.”
“You are? What kind of a man are you?”
Somberly, holding both tails of his red headband in two peanut butter flecked hands, he responded…
“I’m… Karate.”
“Oh… Do you know what karate is?”
“What?”
“You don’t know?”
I could sense a small shaving of chocolate embarrassment sprinkling the macho ice cream sundae of his present mood…
“Mom. Just please drop the subject…” he mumbled, eyes down, perhaps rethinking his present condition.
Francis pulled up. We were going to babysit two dozen red roses while he reluctantly marched through two madrigal rehearsals. He hung around for a few minutes with Puck. Then realizing that I had absolutely zero idea where my glass Pyrex 9×13 had disappeared to, I salted and peppered up fourteen pork cutlets, slapped them into two metal excuses for pans and waited it out against the unpredictable level of done-ness the oven would offer me. Actually, it’s probably not the oven. It’s probably just me. Somewhere in this early afternoon shuffle, Carrie popped over a quick email. Big bunny fight. Bonnie and Earnest to the vet hospital. I hoped for the best. Earnest is nothing if not the head honcho of this fluffy quartet, even if he is – by far – the youngest. And what he thumps, happens… The pork turned out pretty good, if I do say so myself. Puck walked out of his room holding a tuft of hair straight up in the air…
“Can you make this sticks straight up, Mom? I want it to look old-fashioned.”
Ok… Sure. A hair tie easily did the trick.
“Let me check in the meer, Mom.” [Because if you’re born in St. Louis, you pronounce “mirror” like that I guess.] “It’s so cool, Mom. Funk-ay.”
[Yes, he said it just like that.] I also somehow got him through another shower…
STOMP! STOMP! STOMP! STOMP! STOMP!
…which is basically like sending Calvin & Hobbes into Noah’s Flood during a hurricane. I enter at my own risk. And, yes, I wear my wellies. And “The Absent-Minded Professor” awaited us for dinner… When Joe and Rose joined us after eight o’clock with a bag of pirate booty [those things are addicting], and a variety of chocolate chip cookies, I don’t think any of us – except for The Bear, because it was his idea – had prepared our heads, and eyes, for the atrocity about to unfold on our cold basement television in the form of Bollywood’s… Singham. And I will never be able to hear that name again without it being sung with drums and four hundred people dancing like hip-hop scarecrow puppets. If you have Netflix, you can easily participate in this unbelievable epic of amazing ridiculousness for yourself.
