|
|
|
This is the first chapter to a book about my family that my friend is writing. Names have been altered some and my chracter is "danny". It's pretty funny.
Chapter 1
"John, normal couples have sex."
"Laura, darling, we do have sex!?" John said back, "Must we have this conversation every single day? " He sat his pen down on the tax form he was filling out.
"What are you talking about, DO HAVE SEX? " Laura yelled while deciding that, yes, the collectors edition Wizard of Oz decorative plate did look better in pieces.
"Laura, dont be ridiculous!" said John calmly as he dodged flying ceramic by dipping slightly to the left. The pieces landed on his desk and he swept them off into the garbage can. Thank god shed finally decided to break that one. Hed never been fond of Glinda the Good anyway.
"RIDICULOUS?" she called, "Ridiculous, me? OH, oh never." She said coating her words in sarcasm and blinking quickly to keep the tears from spilling down her face. "I havent been laid in three months!"
"Well," John said, turning back to the government fill paper, "sexual romances decrease when people get older."
"John, were not old!" she cried in utter hysterics. "Forty nine isnt old!"
"Forty nine isnt young." He didnt look up. Laura covered her mouth and nose with her hand and ran to the bathroom. We could all hear her sobbing. The walls, Ive noticed, are never very thick in places where theyre needed.
"God Dad, can you do something about her," Eric asked, looking up from his fashion magazine to stare at our father, "She is driving me nuts. I cant even concentrate on this months eye shadow special feature article, Frivolous and Fabulous. Its positively criminal."
"You know you mother," John said, "Shes a force you cant reckon with."
"Well," Eric said, biting his thumbnail gently and going back to his magazine, "Cant you just, you know, give it to her?"
John swiveled his chair around to face the rest of the living room, where Eric sat on the couch reading his monthly CosmoGirl, and I sat on the computer doing research. Johns office was sort of like a room inside a room. It was a raised platform with one end going into our 1920s style yellow kitchen, and the other going down two stairs into the living room. Johns glasses were down at the end of his nose and he looked over them at Eric.
"Eric. You know nothing, Im sure, of sex. When you find out anything about it at all, you come and tell me, and Ill tell you exactly how worthless it is." John swiveled around again, thereby ending the discussion. Eric shrugged and went back to his zine. We could hear crashes coming from inside the bathroom. Laura was probably chucking her vent brushes around the room. She did that sometimes.
"Danny," John said, not turning around.
"Yeah," I said back.
"Take these into your mother. Tell her to stop being so difficult too, if you feel up to the task."
I sighed and took the prescription bottle to Laura, and I go as slow as I please.
"Mom," I said, knocking on the door. Something crashed into it, and I flinched out of habit. Thank god for the door.
"Hey, Mom!" I cry in shock, "I just have some pills for you!"
"To HELL with your pills, Daniel! Your father told you to give them too me! I wont take them, I wont!"
"FINE then," I said, setting the bottle down on the burnt orange and cerulean shag weve got in our house. "They're outside the door, mom. Theyre those ones that Dr. Strangway prescribed. Not anything funny, I promise."
She opened the door. Her mascara was running and her face was blotchy. She reached out to give me a hug and I stepped back in one huge step.
"No thanks Mom. No hugs today." I said as I eyed her like you do a caged animal. Sometimes she hides pencils in her hands and tries to stab you with them. It's like I've always said, you can never be to careful.
"Danny, please," she begs, "I need a hug."
"Mom, i don't like you touching me," I said calmly.
"Danny, Give me a hug."
"No, Mom," i said as i walked back up the hallway. The bathroom door slammed behind me as the torrent of vent brushes continued.
Dinner that night was about as normal as it could get. Laura came back out of the bathroom about twenty minutes after I delivered her pills. I have a feeling that they were the cause of her calming down so quickly. It usually takes days of coaxing to get her out of the bathroom once she's gone on a rampage. She's got this little camping stove in there, and cans of soup for food. Plus the linens and stuff are in there, so she just takes a little camping vacation inside the main bathroom. It keeps her quiet, it keeps us peaceful.
So anyway, Laura made dinner. The driest chicken i've ever eaten, and rubber cement Rice Helper.
"Thanks Mom," I said, trying to get the rice to unstick from my plate so I could try to eat it, "This looks really great. That's so thoughtful of you."
"Laura," John said, "will you stop being silly and come eat at the table for once?"
"Yeah Mom," Eric chimed in, "Let's all eat together. This zine i was reading earlier really stresses the issue of family communication. It's like, crucial for devolpment." He's given up on the dinner Laura made already and is by the microwave, heating up a Hot Pocket. I gave up the rice fight and made the sign in the air that said, "Pop me in one too please, Eric." John sighed and his entire mass heaved.
"Fine," he said, "Suit yourself."
Laura stared at the counter as she tried to eat her meal. Adults can be so stubborn sometimes.
Eric and I meandered back into the family room to enjoy the pleasure and grandeure of the hunt, the kill. Which is to say, I did some reading homework, and he mooned over the CosmoGirl cover model's seamless tan.
 NightWandererPuck · Sun Jul 02, 2006 @ 03:42am · 1 Comments |
|
|
|
|
|
