The Razz

Sunday, January 29, 2012

With another eight o’clock rehearsal – sometimes it was agreeable to remember the old days of Kirk’s baby grand and solitary worship leader waving a hand and songbook from the pulpit… all those red-dye-edged hymnals in uniform lines in the pews – another cold Sunday had arrived in the datebook. While Puck waited for the service to start, he watched OLeif.
“I want my beard to grow all the way… all the way to the end of town,” he said confidently.
“You have to eat a lot of meat, then, like Dad,” Collette told him.

Mom had prepared a large batch of meatball and potato stew with garlic bread, and Carrie’s Spanish cheesecake. Mom, as usual, lit the candles on the table…
“Isn’t that a little romanic, Mom?” Carrie asked, noting the red and white Valentines ribbon streamers already hanging from the light fixture above them.
Somewhere in the middle of the meal…
“Have you all heard about bone stretching?” Elodie-Rose asked everyone.
“Oh, Rose…”
“They do it over in Asia. You see they…”
“Rose, not at the dinner table.”
“What? Science is gross.”
It aimed to be a quiet Sunday afternoon. OLeif slayed another hour and a half of studies. Sabbath breaking, no doubt. At least they were spiritual studies. Maybe that fact administered equilibrium. Plans were being discussed for the afternoon…
“So what are we doing?” Rose asked. “I drove all the way out here.”
“’Perform’,” said OLeif.
“That’s right. Entertain me,” Rose agreed.
“Well, I guess you wasted your time then,” Dad replied. “We should just Skype you into meals from now on.”
“Set the laptop in Rose’s place,” said Carrie. “When you get tired of hearing her talk, you can just close the lid.”
Dad found this idea to be particularly funny.
“Could we go to the Japanese dollar store?” Linnea asked. “We could get shampoo caps!”
The meal was concluded with Rose and Linnea racing each other to blow out the candles. Francis also joined in, and sprayed Collette’s hand with hot wax from across the table.
Meanwhile, Rose was getting onto other subjects in the living room…
“That’s the problem with throwing up…”
And Mom and Dad took their daily nap. Carrie had bought a fighter jet necklace for Grewe; it sat in a black box on the wood stove. She brought out the soft black bundle of Earnest for Puck to feed him small carrots and to toss old credit cards with his teeth; one of his latest tricks, apparently. Francis, who had been unable to work out the previous day, used Puck for a weight. Rose and Linnea argued about Angry Bird apps. And it was decided that everyone would visit Grandma Combs to deliver her several CDs that Carrie had just ripped for her and Uncle Mo, including Mambo #5 and Curly’s free album.
Half of the departing crew waited in the running green van while Rose reported her recent unjustified parking ticket, and Collette recalled being yelled at by a police officer at the Dairy Queen down the street nine years ago for no good thinkable reason. When it was discovered that Joe and Linnea were remaining at home, Dad gave Linnea a hard time as they rolled down the street…
“Well, you can just sit in the corner of your room then.”
Linnea gave him a grumpy face.
“She’ll misconstrue that to mean the corner of Dairy Queen with Gretyl Plum,” said Carrie.
“Remember, Collette, when you were little and you would put yourself in the corner, with your nose to the wall?” Mom asked.
“What a freak of nature,” said Carrie.
“Weirdo,” Rose added.
“I’m surprised you didn’t wash your own mouth out with soap.”
“I did that once, actually…”
“Meanwhile,” said Carrie, “I lied about stuffing six feet of bubble gum into my mouth.”
“Meanwhile I got the bad eyesight, thank you very much,” added Rose, who was busy turning down dinner and horror movie plans with one friend and checking messages from another. “Magnus is always busy,” she smirked. “He never talks to me anymore. He says he’s always busy ‘at the library’. Yeah right.”
The thundering green monster got going down good old Highway 94 to the tunes of the Oldies, pacifying the two youngest boys in the back. Dad crooned “Stuck in the Middle with You” to Mom until he broke down laughing.

When they surprised Grandma with their arrival, it didn’t take long for Dad to emphasize, several times, that they couldn’t stay long. They had to get Francis back to youth group by 5:30.
“I don’t know, Snicketts,” said Grandma after about three mentions of this, “it sounds like you’re blaming too much of this on Francis. Why don’t you take my car, Francis, go to youth group. And the rest of us’ll go to Cici’s or something.”
“Sure,” Francis grinned. “I’d love to take your car. But I can’t guarantee it’ll ever come back.”
Grandma pulled out the Rice Krispy Treats for Francis and a partially withered amaryllis from the window in the bath.
“I don’t know what to do with it,” said Grandma.
“Throw it away,” said Dad.
“Snicketts! Honestly!”
“Honestly,” he laughed.
The photo albums came out next, including a picture of Charles Lindbergh’s grave in Hawai’i.
“I wonder why he was buried there,” said Dad.
“Because he crashed there,” Rose said.
Carrie rolled her eyes.
There were photos of all the kids dressed as Greek dancers from the Home School History Fair, circa 1997. And other awkward photographs from junior high and high school…
“Wow, Collette, you dressed like such a dweeb,” Carrie laughed.
“What am I wearing!” Rose squawked. “Is that an Anne of Green Gables dress?”
And Dad lounged on his back on the floor. Just like Uncle Mo would do.

On the ride back, they were reminded of the epic hike in the Tetons those ten years ago…
“See, those are the kinds of things I like,” said Rose. “When you feel like you’re going to die.”
While everyone waited outside Little Caesar’s, Rose propped her green lady M’nM socks on the top of Dad’s seat…
“Look, my sock is being scandalous,” she squawked.
Francis noted how he had recently labeled the people at the Y who “come in and float for a long time” as “corks”.
Then the girls began guessing how many pizzas each customer would order.
“Three.”
“No, two.”
“Three. He’s driving a minivan.”
“He looks like a cop.”
“And the bald man’s getting four,” Francis participated once.
“Two dipping sauces,” OLeif guessed.
“See? Three.”
“No, she’s going to throw one away.”
Dad emerged…
“That’s how a boss does it.”
“They kept giving out my pepperonis to everyone else,” Dad explained the delay.
And skipping through Cottleville, Rose was roasted a little…
“Hey,” she retorted to Carrie, “you’d be dead if I hadn’t cooked all that bacon.”
Something about Rose going home to argue with her cat…
As they thundered past the Dairy Queen, the opposing field of small trees and bushes seemed to have been mown down…
“Joe,” Carrie reasoned.
Past the patch of woods and to the next field. Same story.
“Wally!”

When they returned to join the straggling members of the family, Joe was asleep on the couch, Linnea on the floor.
“The ENFPs in their natural habitat,” Carrie noted.
So there was pizza, national news, Joe was leaving to help another friend move, and after all the news and plans and everything else for the week had been reviewed and established, the little Silverspoon family, and Rose, departed for the evening, with Rose saying something about the location of her apartment in the reasonably safe part of the city…
“No, I get murdered every night.”

As seemed to have become a sorry Sunday evening pastime, groceries were the last items to be ticked off the old list. Profaning the Sabbath, no doubt… But Puck did get a bottle of V8 strawberry banana juice for the week. Chocolate peanut butter cups for Collette. Chocolate-covered berries and fruit for OLeif. And there would have been a fish for Puck. But apparently they didn’t sell fish anymore.