For the Laughter
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Puck’s eight-month birthday. He spent the first part of his morning chasing giant plastic candy canes around the floor and gurgling indecipherables to them.
In the meanwhile, Collette suddenly realized that, not only was she leaving for New York in eleven days, but she also had six Christmases for which to prepare before that time.
Rose was thrashing her arms in windmill fashion toward Linnea who was giggling at the kitchen counter.
Collette and Carrie were busy preparing world maps and papers for the Snicketts/Black Christmas family gathering that Sunday. Frances was freezing airsoft pellets in beds of water and hairspray and stirring tubs of olive oil and soap with sponge brushes, also full of airsoft pellets, lubricating them for his guns.
Collette heard crashing and yelling coming from Mom’s and Dad’s room.
“Mom?”
“Oh, hi.”
Mom looked guilty. The crashing and yelling continued to spill from the television set.
“You’re watching 24?”
“Well, yes, I’m hooked. It’s terrible though. And I’m watching it, well… because I can,” she laughed.
Puck was already busy rolling around in the living room eating his large red plastic spoon. Carrie was threading silver fishing lures into the ends of her dreads.
“Watch this. I’m gonna kill Trooper!” Rose announced, as a pillow came flying through the air.
Trooper dodged the missile without much effort, and trotted into the other room.
Collette and Carrie headed up to the roof later in the afternoon while Puck napped, to catch some sun. The clean dome of a perfectly blue sky. No clouds, no airplane trails. Nothing but blue and a warm winter sun.
“This is where I went sledding off the roof yesterday,” Carrie pointed out several ice trails on the shingles.
“You went off the roof?”
“Well, that was kind of unintentional. I couldn’t stop once and went into the bush down there.”
That evening, Mom, Carrie, Joe, and Rose were over before the voice recital, with Mom to keep an eye on the sleeping Puck. Lucia, who was just off work, joined them, after she and Carrie picked up miniature pizzas for dinner. OLeif brought up his photo archive from work, which also included Lucia’s and Carrie’s old ID badge pictures.
“You have to see this guy, OLeif,” Lucia said loudly. “He’s, like, beautiful.”
OLeif cycled through the names until the mentioned fellow was brought to the laptop screen.
“Ohhhhhh,” Lucia sighed. “He looks like an Eskimo, and I’m in love!”
The voice recital followed after Lucia had left for home. Somehow, Carrie managed to pull it together, and did not experience a painful laughing attack during the performances. When Collette had asked her earlier that day, whether or not she would attend that night, Carrie had originally replied:
“No, no, Collette. You don’t understand. It’s too painful. I was laughing so hard at Joe’s last Boy Scout ceremony, that my nose started bleeding. Elizabeth thought I was going to have an aneurysm when I saw that blind man walk into the girls’ bathroom in Florida. I can’t do it.”