Chapter Ten
Wham! Wham! Wham!
The face of a still fairly popular animated absurd sea creature printed on mini punching rubber balloon ball flashed back and forth through the air over a bowl of steaming oatmeal. Puck’s grinning face behind it. Another trinket from his youngest aunt, pulled from a gumball machine. There may be nothing more ridiculous than an obnoxious sponge. But even I can handle a reference to this inexplicable cult cartoon when a light rain is still falling from the night. The windows were painted in drops. Puck liked it about as much as I did. After waving off his dad into another morning of seminary hours, he returned, still clad in cherry red jams, to the table with a small white hobnail glass jar – Linnea’s personal flea market – where he examined it more carefully and got more strawberry yogurt pasted on his nose. The stockpile of Linnea’s gifts had been larger than I realized. Puck toted in a ceramic cat statue which he set on the kitchen linoleum for Crackers. She sniffed it for awhile, pawed it, gnawed the ears in a gritty crunch…
“She’s admiring it, Mom,” Puck giggled.
Puck had examined the relic himself, first. Turning it upside down, he noted the hole in the base…
“Mom,” he told me seriously, “I know why that hole’s there.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yes. It’s for a BUM!” Eyes wide in an earnest belief he had discovered the answer.
“Uh, not exactly…”
“Oh! I know! So they can put a candle inside it!”
“Well… there wouldn’t be enough oxygen in it…”
If a day were 20 questions… Except that every day is a thousand. About everything. Including the hot pink egg-shaped case of silly putty, yet one more thing in the pile. Puck wanted to know the ingredients of this rubberized Pepto Bismol, cranking the handful into Seuss-worthy boats and bridges. Crackers just continued to sit in a lump at the door and watch the rain mist pass into nothing, maybe hoping for a fresh squirrel or bird, or even a dog, to wander by the window. I don’t think she understands, still, that she should be afraid of dogs. I gave her a small snack of butter from the fridge. She doesn’t turn up her nose at too much, I guess. The petrified Wahoo board came out once again. Puck was refreshed and ready for another tournament after taking off Wednesday.
“I’m going bowling!”
I seem to remember my mom having the same problem when we were kids. Every time a phone call came in, the probable peace that had been in effect prior to the call, was almost automatically exterminated as soon as the phone rang. No logical explanation. It just happened. And I’ll be darned if Puck isn’t exactly the same way. Even if it was just The Bear ringing in, it was pretty obvious that the crashes of the super bouncer ball nine-pinning the stack of things piled on the linoleum were going to supersede the maximum volume of my cell phone. Boom.
“Puck? Is all this necessary?”
“It’s necessary. I’m just trying to bowl. Remember? You’re going to sign me up for a bowling team?”
I don’t remember half of what I say anymore… Boom.
“I’m getting better each minute, Mom.”
The bowling transferred into a full bed fortress in his room for Quiet Hour, which prompted him to inquire…
“Can I keep it like this forever, Mom?!”
The Bear came back late to carve up a pan of organic free range cage free chicken that Gloria had sent over to us. Apparently she and Theodore can’t eat meat for the next three weeks.
“Mom! Come see my own little world in my room! Stupidity room!”
“You mean stupendous?” asked The Bear.
“Yes!”
As a mist tucked in the rainy corners of mid-afternoon, Puck emerged from his room, begging more food…
“I have been working all Quiet Hour, Mom. I need a snack. I am exhausted.”
The cat bed fortress had been added to, I could see, incorporating any number of objects from various rooms here and there.
“Besides, Mom,” Puck explained importantly, marching out of his room in his super shoes, “It’s my little cat shop.”
“MEEEOOOW!!!” was all Crackers had to say on the matter.
Puck ploughed through another bowl of spaghetti and meatballs, plastering his uncle’s favorite sauce all over his face. I tried to sort out issues during dinner, though. Issues, issues, issues. There’s always issues. I don’t care how boxed-frozen-burritos-sign-up-my-son-for-T-ball my life looks like from the outside, appearances are always, always, always deceiving. I still had enough time to read to Puck before bed about Colonial children traditions: silver bell-whistle-polished-coral rattles and pet squirrels. When he was tucked down, I sat in a pool of film noir light and plugged on.