Страница 15 из 48
“Oh, please,” she said, groaning.
“Oh, please, nothing!” I told her. “I will not support the two of them. The only temptation, obviously, would be a third installment of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. But I think I’ll just have to cross that bridge when I come to it.”
“Please,” she begged, “I really want to see it.”
“Absolutely not,” I told her. “It’s either happy hour, or we can go see Herbie Fully Loaded.”
“I’m not going to happy hour,” Sloane said. “I have a baby.”
My sister had been using this baby excuse ever since she had the kid, and it was starting to get on my nerves. “Oh, would you shut up with the baby already?” I said. “That’s all you ever say anymore, as if you’re the only one in the world who’s ever had a baby. I could have a baby too…if I had gone through with any of my pregnancies.”
“Chelsea,” my mother said, with the same look she reserves for me whenever I tell my sister that the back of her baby’s head is flat.
“I’ll take a baked potato,” my father blurted out, the same way an attorney would yell “objection” in a courtroom.
“Here, Melvin,” my mother said as she handed my dad his freshly ironed yellow sweatpants. “Please put these on.”
“And not out here,” Sloane added.
“Aren’t there any regular pants you can put on?” I asked my dad. “I really don’t think sweatpants are a good look for the outdoors. Especially on you.”
“They’re the only thing I can fit into right now, love; why can’t you just accept your daddy the way he is?”
“Because, you’re not the biggest man on the planet, Dad. There are other men who seem to find pants that fit them.”
“What if I wear a tie?” he asked.
“Sloane, dear, how about some fresh grapes?” my mother asked in a voice more appropriate for a six-year-old.
“I’ll take some grapes,” my father called out. You’d think my father was stapled to the couch the way he barks out orders, but the simple truth of the matter is that he’s entirely too top-heavy to make a clean sweep from the sofa to the kitchen without knocking something over.
My mother walked over with a bowl full of grapes and handed a bunch to my sister, who then inspected them like she does every piece of food-as if there’s anything that could stop her from inhaling it.
“What is it?” my mom asked, as Sloane made a face at her grapes.
“Nothing,” Sloane said, pulling what looked like a dog hair off the top of her bunch with disgust and then popping one after another into her mouth.
In between bites of his own, my father plucked a grape and attempted to throw it into Whitefoot’s mouth. Instead, the grape hit the sideboard, ricocheted and bounced off the side of Charley’s head and right into Sloane’s eye.
“Ow! Dad!” Sloane yelled out.
My mother once again reacted like there had been gunfire and dropped the bowl of grapes on the floor. “Melvin, what the hell is the matter with you?” she said in her feeble version of yelling as she hurried over to my sister’s rescue.
“Bad doggie!” my father yelled, as Whitefoot ran over to eat all the grapes that had just fallen to the floor.
“Sorry about that, Sloane. I was just trying to give Whitefoot a grape,” my father said as he winced at his misfire. “Goddammit, Whitefoot, why didn’t you catch that grape?”
“Are you okay, darling?” my mother asked, cuddling Sloane like she had just fallen off the monkey bars at the playground.
“Look at that faggot,” my dad motioned as some guy promoting exercise equipment came on the television screen.
Whitefoot started barking again.
“Sylvia, look and see if that’s the mailman.”
She walked from the kitchen into the living room and looked out the front door again. “Yes, I think so.”
“Okay, I gotta go talk to him about Sloane’s diet,” he said as he got up and almost fell over.
“Is the mailman moonlighting as a nutritionist?” I asked Sloane, who was now eating grapes with one eye shut.
“You’re go
“What does that have to do with the mailman?” I asked her.
“His theory,” my sister explained, “is that the mailman’s mad because Whitefoot barks at him, and so in retaliation, he takes some of his mail and throws it in the Dumpster at the post office. That’s why the credit card company didn’t get his payment.”
“Well, that seems like a logical explanation. Is that where you think the rest of the bills he never pays on time are?”
“Dad is very good at paying his bills,” my mother added. “Sometimes they’re late, but he always sends them.”
“I don’t doubt that he sends them, Mom,” I explained. “My point is that there usually has to be money in the account for the check to clear.”
My father walked back in the living room and sat down. “Guy’s a deadbeat. Sylvia, remind me to go down to see the postmaster tomorrow.”
“I’m going home,” Sloane said, shaking her head.
“Well, I’m coming with you,” I said. I needed some one-on-one time with my niece to ensure that my sister Sidney did not secure the favorite aunt position. All my brothers and sisters live in New Jersey and I live in Los Angeles, so I constantly have to fly from coast to coast in order to make my presence known to my nieces and nephews.
Sloane wanted a baby for a long time and it took her three years to get pregnant. She’s one of those people who has wanted a baby her whole life. Meanwhile, I’m on the Internet investigating tubal ligations and researching how to bring on early menopause. I don’t want to permanently tie my tubes, but I want to prevent any further accidents. I’m interested in something more temporary-like a slipknot. I know having a baby is a huge responsibility. It’s at least a five-year commitment, and I would be silly to think I was ready for it.
After she had her baby, Sloane was the happiest person in the world. “You will do things for a child that you would not even do for yourself,” she told me over the phone a couple of weeks after she had Charley.
“That’s totally how I feel about midgets!”
“I think they prefer to be called little people,” she said.
“Well, Sloane,” I told her, “you’ve obviously never hung out with one, because I know from personal experience that they either like to be called ‘midget,’ or ‘little fucker.’”
My sister handed me Charley as she started packing up her baby items. She was on her way to the front door when the phone rang again, which I ran over to answer before another Hiroshima ensued. It was a call for my father about one of the cars he had listed in the paper. He is frequently advertising the cars in our driveway, and has been fielding inquiries about them my entire life. He has the phone ma
My sister looked at me and smiled. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“I’ll drive,” he said, as he put his hand out for me to help him get up.
“Dad, this better not take four hours,” I told him.
Growing up in our house, my brothers and sisters learned quickly that “a ride” could take anywhere from two hours to two days. My father has cars parked all over New Jersey. Some are parked at office buildings, some at private businesses, some are at the local high school. He once parked two of his cars in a family friend’s driveway for two months while he was in the hospital having a bone marrow transplant.