Go Ask Alice

My daughter is being bullied. Suddenly I understand how that woman in Texas could take out a contract on the mother of one of her daughter's cheerleading rivals. Remember that one? There but for the grace of god. And there is no god, so that leaves grace. And I'm not talking about the Airplane.

What is grace anyway? Christians yammer on about it. All I can think of is that pre-meal mandatory muttering where you got the words all wrong because you were seven years old and faint with hunger. Not to mention the nightly prayer routine, Our father Art, in heaven, Halloween be thy name. Art Halloween. Could be worse names for a dad.

It's important for the jury to know this particular girl has been bullying my daughter since they both landed on the same gymnastics team, back at the ripe old age of nine. Now they've both landed in the same middle school, and it's no more Mr. Nice Guy. This girl means business. It's also important to know this girl is fat, ugly and stupid. And I'm not just saying that.

This stupid ugly fatty has a posse with similar traits, and they've zeroed in on my daughter for reasons I can only surmise. Not that my daughter is blameless -- contrary, opinionated and controlling are a few adjectives which come to mind -- but she isn't mean. She isn't cruel. A mother knows these things. Especially this mother. Who learned Mean and Cruel at an early age.

My family, the Halloweens, grew up next door to The Devil. That statement has a certain symbiotic ring to it, don't you think? And right here, right now, for the first time ever in print, I'm going to officially out The Devil: ALICE COMER. The Devil's name is ALICE COMER. ALICE COMER lived next door to me when I was growing up. ALICE COMER taught me Mean and Cruel. No, make that Evil. ALICE COMER taught me Evil. And when a kid learns that lesson at the ripe old age of ten, it plants itself deep. It grows roots. You can't yank it out. It's there for the duration.

The Cliff Notes version goes like this: ALICE COMER hated the Halloweens. Hated us with a passion. This hatred had something to do with my mother's father, my grandfather, a Story in Himself, but that's a tale for a dark and stormy night and a large bottle. The point being, ALICE COMER's hatred metamorphosed through various stages until it finally transformed itself into One Great Abiding Hatred, her hatred of cats. My cats, to be exact. Which explains how, following a series of progressively more disturbing incidents involving ALICE COMER and my beloved first cat Archie, I came to be crouched at the top of the basement stairs one autumn evening listening to Archie die from strychnine poisoning down in the rec room. It took one hour. Sixty minutes. Three-thousand-six-hundred seconds. I was ten. If I let myself think about it, I can still hear him screaming. A sound I have yet to hear again. So I don't let myself think about it. A large bottle helps.

Archie was the first. Because kids want to believe. So do parents, in the beginning. Skip to the Epilogue, which provides a slightly more uplifting arc: Ditto, the last of my childhood cats, eventually went into the witness protection program at a nice home out in the country (he sent us a Christmas card every year for many years), and ALICE COMER died in agony after a decade of raving dementia in a local nursing home. The in agony part is wishful thinking. The rest is true.

I have wishful thinking about my daughter's tormentors. It has to do with my jumping in the car some dark and stormy night and tearing over to the crappy part of town and banging on the door of a two-bit rambler with a couple of crappy snowmobiles in the driveway and a crappy American flag dripping from a crappy eave. I cringe to think what happens when someone opens the door, not for their sake, but for the sake of my family, who will have to figure out a way to smuggle earplugs and large bottles into the State Women's Correctional Facility where I'll be residing for the next two-to-five. No doubt in a manner none too graceful. And there's that word again.

So last Friday the school nurse calls. My daughter isn't feeling well, she has a slight fever. When my daughter gets on the phone, she wants to come home. She's crying. Make that whimpering. Nazi Mom that I am, I tell her to Gut it out! Only a few more hours! Hang in there! When she calls back twenty minutes later, I know. I pick her up and bring her home and she sleeps until nightfall. Eventually she tells me. She didn't feel up to gutting it out after another run-in with the posse. And it's one more instance of that subtle emotional-bullying which is the bailiwick of girls. And I'm in the throes of a full-scale attack of wishful thinking.

The day before all this, my daughter's science class played host to a human brain. The brain was in a jar, a local TV station showed up to film it. Later one of the neighbors called to say he'd seen my daughter on the local news, looking at a brain in a jar. The camera had lingered on a close-up of her face, her beautiful beautiful face. And I'm not just saying that. When I picked her up at gym that night, I told her about being on the news. She said that was cool, then complained about not feeling well. Which didn't surprise me. Looking at a human brain is enough to make anyone ill. Go ask ALICE, I think she'll know.

T.G.I.G.F.

How to tell if you have a carbon monoxide leak:

1. You're not reading this because you're asleep.
2. You've been asleep for three days.
3. When/if you do wake up, you feel like you've been to Hell and back.

How to tell if you're Jesus:

1. You're not reading this because you're dead.
2. You've been dead for three days.
3. When/if you do rise from the dead, you feel like you've been to Hell and back.

Evidence to the contrary, I'm not Jesus. But these days I wonder if we've got a CO leak. Every day is Monday. Getting out of bed in the morning is like trying to extricate myself from quicksand.

When I was a kid, I was terrified of quicksand. I thought pockets of the stuff lurked in unexpected places, waiting to grab my ankles and suck me in. Likewise I was terrified of earthquakes. My cousin told me about a girl who was playing hopscotch and the sidewalk cracked open and the girl fell in and the sidewalk closed up again. I was also terrified of tornadoes and Khrushchev, but who wasn't.

Now one of these childhood fears has come to pass. My bed has become quicksand. My alarm goes off in the morning like a shotgun blast and I duck for cover back into the bunker of oblivion. But the gun goes off again and again until I'm forced to surrender. My blankets pull at me like the primordial ooze as I crawl upward toward consciousness, a diverging lifeform blinking in the hot glare of a new day, wondering what the fuck that sound is and why the fuck doesn't it stop.

That's why God made alarm clocks. And English teachers made mixing metaphors a sin.

Speaking of which.

One of my favorite stories to tell about my daughter is the one where she comes home from school in second grade and asks who Jesus is. Seems 99.44% of her classmates know about the dude, why doesn't she? Another in an endless series of Bad Mom Moments. So I explain that Jesus was a guy who lived a long time ago and walked around saying peaceful loving things and was crucified, dead and buried at an early age, and who'd probably be a hippie vegan and move to California if he were alive today. Then I add that some people believe he was the Son of God, to which my daughter replies, without missing a beat, "Yeah, right."

From the mouths of babes.

Which reminds me of another thing I was terrified of when I was a kid: Jesus. In fact, all three of them. The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. The whole enchilada. I used to lie in bed at night scared shitless by thoughts of Heaven. Hell didn't concern me, it was the idea of all that foreverness in the land of Big Crabby God and his namby-pamby kid and some poltergeist you couldn't even see but who flew around starting fires in your hair. To make matters worse, these gumbas were watching every single fucking thing you did!, even in the bathroom, even in your bed late at night while listening to Mantovani on your Rocket Radio.

Talk about Big Brother. Give me Casper any day.

OhMyGodIJustRealizedIt'sGoodFriday! (See how insidious it all is? There's God, smack in the middle of my very own sentence.)

In closing, I'd like to remind the listeners not to help themselves to the collection plate as it passes. As all things must. Pass, that is.

As for me, I'll pass on the religion thing. I've already put in my time. I've paid my teeth-gnashing dues, I ain't buying. As a kid I beat myself up trying to swallow that whole Son-of-a-God thing hook, line and sinker. Ouch. Believe me, I gave it the old college try. In church on Sunday, in bed at night, in the rec room on Good Friday where we descended for two hours in the afternoon as per Mother's instructions to sit at the right hand of knotty-pine-woodwork almighty and think about Jesus while listening to every other kid in the neighborhood run wild out in the sunshine on this blessed day off school. Yes, Virginia, I tried to believe. Pretended to believe. Ached to believe. But it never took. Deep in my nasty but truthful little heart, I knew. I was an interloper. An impostor. A pagan in Christian clothing.

And here it is again, after all these years. That little voice deep in my heart of hearts, recalling all those sacred ancient truths. And no, I'm not talking about the Lord. I'm talking about Mr. Peterson, my tenth grade English teacher. Who at this point in the story would be wondering aloud at my ability -- rather, inability -- to extricate myself from this quicksand of verbosity, this Pandora's briefcase of disparate images, and who would, it goes without saying, recognize the CO allusion for what it is, a red herring.

In the beginning was the Word, and Mr. Peterson always had the last one. Like this.

Sweet Nothing

Yesterday was my twenty-second wedding anniversary. My husband's, too. Who knew? Well, I did. The night we met. An evening in May, back in the Old Neighborhood. I was on the phone, the door knocked. I hung up, sashayed across the postage-stamp living room in my blue kimono, opened the door.

Twenty-four years and as many doors later, here we are.

It's true, I knew immediately And believe me, I wasn't one of those women who mooned around picturing Mr. Right. I pretty much knew who Mr. Wrong was...I'd been with a number of his second-cousins twice-removed...which was all the template I needed.

As far as Mr. Right was concerned, I had three basic criteria. The first, "human," though I wasn't a stickler. I'd already loved a dog as much as any human I'd ever known, and more than most. Thus I was also a stickler for loyalty, the second criterion.

Which brings me to the third.

The third overriding requirement in my vague definition of Mr. Right was chemistry. CHEMISTRY. I needed chemistry. Required chemistry. Desired chemistry above all else. If there wasn't chemistry, fuhgeddaboudit. Remember, my days of this particular chemical-addiction occurred pre-AIDS, a whole different ballpark. Biggest problem being, there can sometimes be chemistry, and not much else. Which got me into a few tight spots over the years. So to speak.

In certain fundamental ways we're all of us hard-wired. We are who we are when it comes to sex. My philosophy was, and I guess, still is, FFTL...Fuck First, Talk Later. If talking were required. If not, fine. I had girlfriends for that, I had gayfriends. I had a cat for godsakes.

My husband was always amazed at my fucking philosophy. Or so he claimed. Not that he complained. I certainly wasn't complaining. I just wasn't into foreplay. Chemistry was all the foreplay I needed. In this sense...correct me if I'm politically/socially/feministically wrong...I was like a guy. Is that a bad thing?

So there we were, a couple of guys, fucking. Having the time of our lives, riding high, breaking a few records. If record-breaking were required.

And then, gradually, I became aware of something else happening. In the midst of all this fucking, we were also...talking. Now there's a unique concept. Instead of foreplay, we had afterplay. I was dumbfounded. Figuratively speaking. In actuality, I'd become a motormouth. I couldn't shut up. I yammered on and on like a magpie, a budgerigar, a happy idiot. My FFTL had come full circle. I couldn't tell where the fucking left off and the talking began. Everything looped over on itself again and again in an endless cycle of bliss.

Then we got married. Twenty-two doors ago. And here we are.

So yesterday morning I wean myself from bed and lurch down to the kitchen in an endless cycle of achilles tendonitis, and it's my anniversary, it's our anniversary, and Mr. Right has left me a note on the counter beside Mister Coffee, and he's still so thoughtful and loving after all these years, Mr. Right that is, and I pour myself a cup and feel around for my glasses and read,

"Went to Emergency last night 2 a.m., didn't want to wake you, have abdominal hematoma, something's wrong with garage door."

This is when I notice the two bottles of meds sitting on the table beside a xeroxed CAT scan, which looks uncannily like a dog. "Didn't want to wake you..." What a thoughtful and loving man, you might be thinking. It's more likely he didn't want to hear me swear a bluestreak in the middle of the night, which might alert the neighbors.

I glance through the window and notice the garage door is open. The rusted rearends of a pair of ravaged vehicles glint pinkly in the sunrise. How many cars have we had in our marriage? Five? Six? We're due for another, maybe two. Maybe a new door for the garage, too. I wonder how early the liquor store opens. I can swing by after I've dropped the kid at school, put something in the fridge for later. Because there's nothing like a little sweet champagne to help celebrate these milestones in life.

Ashes to Ashes

My left foot is fucked up. Actually it's my heel. Achilles tendonitis. As in, my weak spot has a tendency to be fucked up. It's from running. Running too much, running for dear life, running it into the ground. I started running twenty-five years ago. As the joke goes, by now I should be in Cleveland. Twenty five times.

Twenty-five years ago, the longest and hardest I'd ever run (except to get the hell off the Iron Range, where I grew up, or rather, failed to) was to Kenny's on the corner to get a pack of Marlboros before it closed. Two blocks. I almost succumbed. It took me the better part of an evening draped across the bar at Lyle's to recover. This was back in the Old Neighborhood down in The City. Kenny's has since morphed into a smoke-free ice cream/latte parlor, Lyle's into a smoke-free yuppie fern bar, I into a smoke-free* wino runner.

Which brings me to my point.

My mother, in that uncanny way mothers of all stripes have of zeroing in on the crux of a matter, always said to me, "Everything in moderation, dear." Advice I never once heeded in all my long heedless life. She apparently knew something I didn't, and probably still does, though she no longer walks the planet. Or this particular planet, as she would have us believe.

The point being, when it comes to my life and habits, I remain unacquainted with the concept of moderation. Your basic good news/bad news scenario. Due to my running addiction, I'm in pretty good physical shape for a centenarian. Due to various other habits, I should be dead. Or at least not currently walking around on this particular planet.

When I was a wee tyke, or so the story goes, my mother devised a way of shutting me up while she dealt with my critically-ill baby sister. According to my grandmother, a Story in Herself, whenever I cried, my mother would insert my thumb into my mouth, a sort of organic plug, and it worked. I became quiet as a corpse. Problem being, I never took it out. Figuratively speaking. I grew used to the comfort of said plug, and when, after a certain age, thumb-sucking was deemed social-suicide, I embarked on a lifelong Vision Quest to find a replacement. Need I say more? Use your imagination. I certainly have.

The moral of the story being, it's my grandmother's fault. For not putting the kibosh on the whole sordid affair from the outset. For not pulling the plug, as it were.

But knowing myself as I do, my penchant for auto-amusement, I can safely say it ain't nobody's fault but my own. I have no doubt I was fully capable, even at the tender age of two years and change, of finding surcease from all my worldly troubles by way of whatever was handy. No pun intended.

After all, Great Aunt Helen from Tennessee, or so the story goes, was Flabbergasted, y'all! to discover Yours Truly reading a storybook in my crib at the ripe old age of 18 months, a tale she repeated at family gatherings until her premature death from excessive Southern drawling. No matter the storybook was upside down, it was the stuff of legend. This being the same Great Aunt who once informed me The Devil was under my bed in order to keep me in it when she was left to babysit one long ago summer night. Who was also the sister of the aforementioned faulty grandmother, a Story in Herself. It's a wonder I survived such a brutal childhood.

All of which is to explain why I rise from bed each morning, a phoenix from the ashes, and limp across the carpeting to the bathroom like Walter Brennan. It takes a busload of ibuprofen to get me walking a straight line these days. Like I ever. These days, my life is a continuum of carefully prescribed movements between fixes, intricately balanced, like an old Bulova. The self-winding kind. Once a thumb-sucker, always a thumb-sucker.

Though it could be worse. At least I have hair. Gina Mestamaki used to pull her eyelashes out in fourth grade and keep them in a little pile on her desk. She's probably bald by now. I just have a deformed thumb. Oh, and a fucked-up foot.





(*Except for those occasional 2 a.m. out-behind-the-barn drunken relapses with my wayward sister-in-law, but don't tell my husband.)