Chapter Sixteen
The superfluidity of nonsense… Sometimes that’s better than seismic catastrophe in the night. Although sometimes I wish I was like Carrie or The Bear, who recall about five dreams a year.
“According to research, this apple is not right.”
Puck was sitting at the breakfast table smorgasbord…
“Who’s research?” The Bear asked. “Yours?”
“Yeah. It’s green and red at the same time.”
As I clipped off a slice of that three-dollar-eleven-cent double cream Brie for my own breakfast, Puck sat, combing his fluffy fair hair with a tiny white baby comb. A wheat bush…
“Handsome,” I commented.
“Put pants on?” he asked.
“No. Handsome.”
He just grinned and began repeating over and over for a minute or two…
“Chalet! Chalet! Chalet!”
Which I recognized as reference to our nightly reading of “L’Abri”. Things get stuck in there sometimes. Mom was coming to pick us up later in the morning, but there was still time for a bowl of snacks for Puck. Naturally, as soon as he finished the first, he had more thoughts…
“I’m hungrier than space!! I could eat a whole elephant! I’m really hungry!”
When I didn’t offer a second bowl, he walked over to Crackers in her carpeted condo by the patio door for a good-natured squeeze. Only one moment of silence passed…
“You are a bad cat, Crackers!”
“What happened…”
“She tried to vanquish my eye!”
I think we got going right before eleven. Linnea needed advice on her algebra. Also, Puck found a box of yarn in the basement. A cardboard box of rainbow rolls just waiting to be exploded into a project larger than himself. Mostly this decision was made after deciding that maybe knitting probably wasn’t going to work. While Mom napped and I explored those difference of squares with Linnea, a network began taking shape in the living room. A City of Cherry Strands. A red system of alarms. The littering of yarn was not only a “dancing machine” to entice the cats, as Puck put it, but a new way to invite disaster for the fan blades and lamp shades. Pumpkin had experienced an accident with the clippers or… something. Her midnight fur was missing in the middle of her leviathan self.
“What did you do to her, Linnea…” Joe asked.
“I’m cutting her fur,” came the obvious answer from the girl holding the rotting baby tooth half-out of the gum. “But she kept leaving, so I never got to finish.”
Puck scrubbed her back, which Pumpkin seemed to like, lifting her scruffy rear end skyward. Puck laughed…
“She mooned everyone, Uncle Joe!”
Uncle Joe with the sandy cat curled up in his arms, turbo motor, patty-caking the stubble of his face. Puck went back to the living room. The grid of yarn-work continued. I heard a few thumping sounds here and there…
“Puck? What’s going on in there?”
“Nothing. Just having a little privacy with the yarn.”
“Privacy… with the… yarn…”
Francis brought back boxes of dilly bars. My sugar crash lingered. The week had been packed and fast, and I wasn’t looking forward to Monday. My oatmeal aspirations had been temporary. Mom was feeling the strains of life, all the everything that happens all the time that sometimes catches up with you. About the time the computer stopped working, Puck offered some words of encouragement…
“I know what it feels like to get stressed out, by the way.”
“I guess I just take things too seriously sometimes, Puck…”
“No you don’t. You’re very right about your children.”
“Am I?”
“I’ve been stressing out my mom, too. I’ve been being bad to her, too.”
Then Joe started slapping him in the face with a couch pillow, while Puck laughed and asked for more. He was even happier when he got a few episodes of “Arthur” from the old, old PBS days, and a Happy Meal at McDonald’s. Yes, some days are like that around here. I printed off Linnea’s volleyball paperwork because Mom’s laptop wasn’t working properly, including the Harvester Hurricanes spirit wear order form. Linnea walked out of her room in a pair of stretchy partial-metallic floral-paisley silver, gold, red, green, blue stretchy pants, and another pair printed with galaxies from an exchange in The Loop. Carrie had just walked back in the door with Lucia for more project filming from her first day as part-time secretary in training with Gloria – some dough on the side while the tornado of her to-do list spins ever onward – scratching out half a salad for lunch, after she sent me the suggestion of teaching Puck the Japanese abacus. My sisters are never boring. I think Joe had plans for an all night race car computer game marathon with Annamaria English’s fiance. After he hit up Vanbuskirk’s with Izzy for back-and-forth consultation on another project, business ventures, etc. These boys never grow up past twelve. But I guess that’s better in most ways.
Dad got back from work at 4:45 and treated us before church. I stomached the fish sandwich. And by stomached, I mean it was fine. It’s just the idea of McDonald’s. Cheap plastic toys that don’t do anything, shovels by the grill to add the starch and salt… I don’t know what I’m talking about obviously. Still, I had to admit that for once, the king of luminous arches had conspired to provide a decent child’s toy. With Mom and Linnea also ordering kids’ meals, proof in the pudding came in the form of American Girl doll fold-out paper dolls and backdrop. Even I would have probably flipped a little over this, though you’d probably never know it – behind silent brown eyes [that I like to think sometimes sparkled], brown bowl hair cut, and pre-trampoline-mangled nose.
When we slipped out into the dark cold after another Dr. Tackett lecture, I decided to ditch the final bullet point on my phonebook-thick plot of life for a simple Wednesday in January, and forgo the purchase of a real live green plant for the living room. I’m getting a little annoyed that I even have that floral excuse for a Mediterranean lemon tree sitting on the boom box by the piano. What, is this 1999? But I thought more of my boys and the hour and the cold, and I ditched it.