Chapter Thirteen
Every night is a marathon, as far as my brain is concerned, mostly involving various forms of possible – or absolute – disaster. One panel after another. Last night’s dish-up had me observing relays of tornadic cell walls unleashing winds so strong they spun entire properties in large Victorian-style neighborhoods right around on their fat roots. Or sometimes harmless events such as church cook-outs, bonfires, and country dances in black fields at night from an era no one can quite figure out. Or maybe I wake up at eleven in the morning at my folks’ – still dark out – to hear about Mom being mad at Rose for something involving candy-striped carnival tents sewn up with tiny mirrors and celebrity visitors, crossed plane schedules, as she uses the mirror in the girls’ bathroom to apply make-up. Who can predict. Who can analyze. There is no rhyme.
So even with no snow on the ground of a very more real Sunday morning, the limbs of leafless trees were shining in the early gray morning, reflecting the orange light of the eerie pole in the yard next to us. Then they were slapping us with a solid week of sun. As Rose would say… “Bleh.” And as Joe would say, “First world white people problems.” Puck took some tugging to get out of bed this morning – only on Sundays…
“My body’s just still tired, Dad.”
But once he was up, he was up. Washing windows in his striped church sweater, spilling yogurt on it, licking the salt off the egg in his new antique egg cup, talking to himself in the hand mirror…
“Welcome to my laboratory!”
In cartoon German accents, woofing buttered toast, forgetting the thermos of milk on the table until I reminded him about six times to finish it.
Ice chips started spitting after the service as I hustled back and forth a few times between the church and youth building. I usually get an idea of the flavor of the church in question by how removed the youth are from the rest of the congregation. I realize this time it couldn’t be helped, due to the availability of an old tractor garage already present on the property, just ready to be splashed in wild colors and peeling couches from your great aunt’s basement. Whatever works, I guess. I grabbed the last “mini chocolate cookie with a white circle in the middle” for Francis, as he described it, from the snack table before checking in on Linnea’s whereabouts and returning to the tractor garage to join the high schoolers for another John Piper lecture.
Carrie outdoes herself for Sunday lunch. Today it was carrot soup with roasted chick peas and crumbled kale chips as garnish. Pastry-wrapped kisches, or some Russian sounding volcano of hot potatoes and candied onions. Homemade hummus with fresh vegetables. Oh, and homemade chocolate pops for dessert made from Nutella and whipped rice milk. Apparently this wasn’t enticing enough for Francis, however, who had been up till 2AM watching Red October the night before and once again started nodding off at the end of Sunday School. He left for Taco Bell with friends from his adopted youth group. The “oh well, more for us” philosophy is often observed in families with social seniors. He also missed out on Dad recalling his 25th high school reunion where his good old buddy plastered pictures of him, not only in all the bathrooms, but also above each table as part of the centerpiece. That kind of Sunday laughter. He also missed Mom trying to convince Dad to replace the ceiling fan in the living room for something that looked more… mom-ish. And by mom-ish, I mean anything that makes you think of an English cottage or a Victorian cottage, if that exists. But Dad wasn’t buying it. Still, he joined Mom in a duet of an old song in the kitchen while scraping dishes and wiping counters. Joe, in other places, was in temperatures fourteen below. Dad, Mom, and Linnea-Irish – with a top-knot on her head under a pink blanket – snoozed. My siblings all seem to fall asleep a lot. Not really sure why… Unless it’s because they’re staying up till 2AM on a Saturday night watching Russian submarine flicks. So it can’t be completely blamed on the gene pool. Then the sun broke through, omens of things to come in the week. Francis came back to heckle and be heckled. Carrie vows to start making his life miserable as soon as she has the time. Just because Francis is Francis. He started making fun of my “love” letters again, which he thinks is incredibly funny…
“Yeah, Francis liked reading them so much he tried to get Collette to leave them here so he could finish reading them later.”
“You can’t touch them,” Linnea scolded Francis. “I have to put them in order.”
Carrie smashed Linnea on the couch. She pinched her arms…
“Look at these pathetic excuses for muscles. Like Jell-O.”
Linnea wrinkled her nose, but still gave Carrie a requested shoulder massage, not long before Dad fired up the old green thing for our drive through the country to Marthasville. I was surprised – Carrie suggested it. Philly’s Pizza in a tiny hole of a town maybe half an hour away through wine country. But who’s going to argue pizza on a cold Sunday night in January? Rose couldn’t join us. She was seriously slamming the books for Monday morning. So the rest of us loaded up for a long ride through glass-drop forests of creaking limbs following the snake of the river past the monstrous smoke chimneys in the west, which Dad fooled Puck into believing were “cloud factories”. I think he bought that one. Everything was great except for the fact that Puck had to go to the bathroom really, really, bad…
“Taking after his Uncle Joe,” Carrie laughed, as Puck screeched down the road, flashing past broken cornfields.
I think we made it with seconds to spare, right as a round of sodas was served and we discussed the week and other events. Francis reviewed the details of his heart surgery the following Tuesday. A very minor procedure. Unfortunately it wasn’t until that moment waiting for the bacon burger cheese pizza that he realized they weren’t exactly going to put him completely under for the operation. I think his jaw dropped a little. That would be a deal breaker for me, too. In fact, I’d help them out a little and just faint dead. Francis had more questions for Mom though…
“Well, I don’t have to be attached to an HIV, do I?”
Silence. Laughter. Francis’ already red face turned a shade brighter as he realized his error, and the topic was switched to the taco pizza and deep-dish veggie monstrosity arriving on huge pans. I stuck with the meat and cheese. Francis had other thoughts on other things, though, including his hours teaching children to swim…
“I just line ’em up and say, ‘Welcome to hell.’” He grinned. “Prompt discipline.”
I guess it works. He’s had parents thank him for his effective teaching applications. Carrie handed Puck a butterscotch dum-dum.
“You could have them do what we used to do,” said The Bear. “We’d go to the lake every day and swim out as far as we could with a heavy rock, and then let it just pull us straight down…”
“How did you survive?” I asked. “With that and killing rattlesnakes…”
“Only three.”
“Exactly.”
“Well, no. Two rattlesnakes and two diamondbacks, or whatever. The orange ones.”
Dark winding roller coaster roads, streaks of red sunset flashing over hills and silhouettes of old Catholic churches and cemeteries, some Fiona Apple on the radio – high school days, the Bible Answer Man…
Puck’s last question that night came down the hall from a warm room snuggled by his cat…
“Mom? Does a cat have a funny bone?”