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TANLINES
Sandy loved tanning. Brought a towel with her everywhere and had all sorts of places around town where she could lay it down. Pools, parks, hills, rooftop balconies. Could stay out there longer than anyone, even her sisters, coating herself in baby oil all day long until she started steaming.
Bruce always talked about that time he saw her in court. Not quite the last time he saw her, but close.
“You couldn’t believe how red she was”
She had fallen asleep on the front lawn of her apartment and burned terribly. Right next to the parking lot while everyone getting out of their cars let her stay there. Turning so red even the judge couldn’t help but notice. Had to say something about those shocking tan lines, before granting her temporary custody of their son.
The boy was then led forward to his mother. Told to be gentle when he reached up to grab her arm.
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THE HOUSE ON SILVA STREET
There was also a house on a different street, where someone once buried a body in a snowbank that wasn’t found until first thaw. But nobody knew exactly where that house was, unlike the House on Silva, which everyone knew, and which everyone had been told which way to walk in order to keep away from it.
It was a long walk from Bruce’s home to it every weekend. Forty minutes and then across the highway on a bridge. But even with so many streets between him and that place, he couldn't remember a time when he didn't know about it. Even inside their better homes, everyone talked about the terrible family down on Silva. Their lousy house with their roof without any shingles and their lawn without any grass and all the things they worried might be inside of it. And so, just like everyone else, Bruce had been told long ago which direction to never walk.
The very direction he was now moving towards, on purpose, slowly pushing ahead through a harsh winter wind to get there, the passing traffic on the highway rushing beneath him.
He had heard all the talk. All those things that kept others away, but pulled him towards the house. More curious than bothered, no matter what these people said they knew. Whatever answers there might be to all the strange questions they had about what could possibly be going wrong in there.
“How much rain do you think gets into it? Just think of the wood rot”
“I’ve heard inside all the walls are green. Exactly the color of mental asylums”
“You’ve just got to assume they've got guns in there. Just imagine those people, with guns. Good God”
“And have you ever seen a mother move so slow? Is she even aware how many kids she’s got? Fifteen? Sixteen? Thirty?”
“Maybe if she moved a little faster, she could do us all a favor and stop more of them from getting out at night. Keep them locked up where they belong”
“Like that one we’ve got sleeping in the garbage dumpster somewhere around here. The bald one who wears that old man’s hat. He's just gotta be one of them”
There was never any end of talk about the House on Silva. The condition it was in after years of neglect and who might actually be the owner of it or where this family came from and what they might be capable of. But of particular concern to the mothers and fathers of the nice neighborhoods, were all those girls. At least half of those Silva kids being females of concerning age. Already luring the boys who couldn’t find girlfriends anywhere else inside.
And below him all of those cars kept rushing past and Bruce kept walking forward into the wind. His jacket not nearly warm enough, just like his mother had said it wouldn't be as he rushed out the door to meet his weekend.
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SCRATCHED OFF
She was a winner. $25,000. Three of the girls at work had said so. The grand prize was all Sandy’s. So excited she didn’t even finish her lunch before quitting. Called Bruce at his job to tell him the good news. That he should quit his job too. He didn't sound excited. Just kept asking her if she was sure. And Sandy kept saying of course she was. That the three girls she eats lunch with said so, and that if it wasn’t for them, she wouldn’t have even noticed it.
“What girls, Sandy? Friends?”
“Amy? Jen and Tina? No. They're bitches”
Bruce said had had to go. That he’d look at the ticket when he got home. And, laughing, Sandy said she’d be there waiting for him, drinking a pina colada. Celebrating how she never had to see those stupid bitches ever again.
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LICENSE TO SCREAM
My mother likes to predict who is going to be in the car ahead of us.
A Chinese guy. A stupid old man. An ugly bitch.
Then she will look over as she passes them and hiss: “Just look at them? Didn’t I tell you? A stupid cunt every fucking time”
All these cunts. These motherfucking assholes. These stupid fucking goofs. None of them should have been allowed on the same road as her. Maybe not even the same country. Sitting in the passenger seat, you got a sense that someone might be about to die when Sandy was driving. That maybe it would have been better if everyone had been right when they said she’d never get her license. That it wasn’t a possibility and not to worry about it ever happening. Not even in a million years.
“Are you kidding? The girl can’t even push a shopping cart”
And yet she knew how to drive fast and scream and swear and maybe even just enough else to somehow do it; finally prove everyone wrong for the first time in her life. A license now tucked away in her purse, in her wallet, and with her name and face on it. Finally feeling completely free to start tailgating this whole stupid fucking world to the ends of the earth for never believing in her. Honking her horn and screaming.
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DANCING SLOW
When Sandy listens to her love songs, she plays them loud so she can feel it, leans in real close to the stereo until her head snaps back and blood explodes from her nose. A melody as hard as Bruce’s bootheel. Needs her sisters to help separate them. They’ve all got their Lee Press-On's scratching and calling it a bastard. A real goof of a song that they grab at and try to keep from leaving the apartment before the cops get here. But it just keeps swinging in time, kicking over furniture until they all back away, and it escapes out the front door, warbling “Don’t call me gooooooof” at the top of its lungs into the night, sirens in the air.
Bruce was just dancing. It was only a few karate kicks. It should have been funny. Her face wasn’t supposed to be there.
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TRADITION: A RECIPE
Sandy’s Easy Potatoes
Down in the dumps? Feel you don’t have enough time or talent in the kitchen to fix yourself a proper meal and need a quick pick me up for that growling belly? Don’t worry, Sandy’s got you covered with the quick and trusted recipe she's long counted on whenever time and options are limited, a situation most busy families are sure to find themselves in from time to time
1) Peel potatoes
2) Cut out green parts and feed to dogs
3) Put in bowl and sprinkle liberally with salt
4) Turn on television
5) Enjoy
It’s that simple!
Stephanie’s Easy Tomatoes
Like mother like daughter! Just like Sandy, Stephanie also has her own special recipe to share, perfect for those after-school occasions when there’s no dinner on the table and your favorite TV show is about to start.
1) Open tin of whole tomatoes
2) Carefully dump contents into plastic microwavable bowl. Don’t throw out those natural juices!
3) Microwave for 1 minute, or until tomatoes begin to steam
4) Turn on cartoons
5) Make sure you’ve got a large enough spoon (these tomatoes are big!) and dig in!
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EIGHT ARMS TO LOVE SANDY
It was because of the octopus that Sandy and Sharon didn’t like each other. Both of them put with that Portuguese family. Getting tentacles put onto the dinner plates they got put in front of them. Oh, those horrible things in their mouths.
When asked about why her and Sharon never got along, she first remembered those monsters fighting to get out of the pot. A wooden spoon pushing down anything it caught reaching out from that boiling water. A hand with hair on it, stirring.
When asked about her childhood, first it was always thoughts of how she’d put that thing in her mouth. How she’d chewed fast and hard in case it wasn’t dead yet. That’s what she remembered most when she talked about back then, and only slowly after that, could thoughts of her sister finally begin to form in her head. Usually at the end of the couch with scissors, red hair hanging in her face, hunting for split ends. Thinking she was so pretty.
Never forgetting how it was Sharon who wet the bed.
Or how Sharon said it was Sandy.
The two of them pulled from their sleep and blaming each other in the kitchen where there were still tentacles chopped on the counter. Put out into the Portuguese family’s back yard as lightning came crashing down. Tied to that tree. Side by side. Soaked in their pajamas and the sun far below them.
They didn’t talk. Never really got along.
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NO ONE EVER HEARD PATSY SING
Finishing that bottle of Baby Duck isn’t what was important. It was about singing with your sisters. Sometimes five of them at Sandy's apartment, just Patsy missing. Sitting on the floor in front of the stereo, passing a little microphone back and forth between verses. So small it looked like they were screaming into their fists, singing over the beautiful voices of Donny Osmond and Skeeter Davis and Dr. Hook. Singing better than they did, even when they didn’t know the words. Recording it on tapes and listening back to those instead of the records. Listened only to their songs from then on.
They thought they sounded great, each one of them thinking they were the best of the five sisters. Laughing at how all the others sung. Sometimes would cry listening to their young voices years later. Finished that bottle of Baby Duck anyways.
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Complete rewrite of some old shit
MORNINGS WITH BELLY BOY
My mother sure knew how to sleep. Especially when Kitchen Gramma had brought her ghosts around the night before. Plus, all those loud, old ladies that came with her, asking their questions about what happens after you die. The bunch of them leaning over her spirit board to learn if their husbands had always been faithful. If good health was in their future. If long dead childhood pets were also out there waiting for them on the other side.
Long nights that left my mother just lying there the next day, not getting up. I would hover above her in the morning light of our bedroom, elbows pressed into the mattress, tangled and tied to her legs by a rope of twisted-up blankets that had bound us together while we slept. Trying to wake her. Pinching her nose and dropping cats on her head. Pushing her eyelids up with my fingers to find empty sockets staring back. Listening for a heartbeat to make sure my gramma’s ghosts didn’t take her with them last night. Then, once I could tell her chest was still moving, untangling myself towards breakfast, leaving her behind in a room long gone bad for sleeping.
Some mornings there would only be me to let the little boy my mother sometimes babysat into our apartment. Maybe a year younger than me, his father would push him through our door as soon as I opened it, speaking a strange language and smiling. Not even asking where my mother was, just handing me an enormous paper bag that I knew to be filled with the boy's lunch. Bulging as always with an assortment of spiced meats, boiled eggs and puddings I didn’t like the smell of.
I never liked this kid who was the color of a walnut. He would sit in the middle of our floor, wobbling back and forth in his loose-fitting diaper, watching me, sometimes rolling over onto his back if he dared look over his shoulder as I passed him on the way to make myself some breakfast. Usually nothing more than a bowl of cereal to eat in front of the television, but enough to draw his attention. Get him slowly crawling towards me, pulling himself across the floor on his stomach, until I was forced to lift my bowl above my head to keep it out of his reach.
This was Belly Boy.
I never learned his real name, only knew how he wasn’t to be fed. Not ever. Not so much as a crumb until my mother woke, and even then, only what his father had packed for him in his specially prepared lunch. But on this morning as the boy began to loudly moan in hunger from the floor, and with my mother still not waking up for anyone, I was left with no choice but to go back into the kitchen and fix the child something. The only thing I knew how. A bowl of cereal I left on the floor for him and which his body would immediately reject. Still able to recall in slow-motion horror what it did to him.
Not able to do anything but watch as it happened.
Something awful beginning to spill from the seams of his diaper. A hot, frothing mixture that moved quickly towards where I sat eating on the floor and that would have made it to every corner of our small apartment if my mother hadn’t suddenly appeared, rushing into the room with her hair hanging into her face, screaming for a mop. Wanting to know why the boy was melting. What in God’s name I had fed him.
“The smell. Oh my God, the smell”
A stench so bad it would have chased away any remaining ghosts left behind by my Kitchen Gramma.
Powerful enough to raise my mother from the dead.
Our invitation to join us for breakfast, if she so desired..
Cordially, David and Belly Boy
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JOHN TRAVOLTA AND THE ONE DOLLAR KISS
Bruce won’t dance with her at the Applewood. Won’t leave his beer unattended with all those thirsty Brothers of hers around. Won’t risk spilling anything by going over to where all the Sisters have been corralled into a clearing on the floor. A makeshift dancefloor where they’ve been given room to wildly swing their arms around and stomp their feet and bump into anyone trying to be careful with the bottles they were carrying. Instead, Bruce will keep to the corner of the tavern. Make sure his beer is safe, keep a close eye on it, sitting far away from those disco lights that Sandy sometimes stands off to the side of, rocking back and forth all by herself.
He’s no John Travolta. But just be patient, Sandy. Give him time.
Maybe once they’re back home, he’ll show her what he’s got. Climb up onto that rug he bought from the flea market across the street, but that to him was like a stage once it got late enough. A place to stumble around in his work boots on a work night. Play songs his neighbours didn’t want to hear. Pretend he’d just been handed a guitar and that he knew what to do with it. Looking like he could actually play the thing as he scrunched up his face, making an expression like something smelled terrible. Like the applause he heard in his head was getting him to grit his brown teeth and wrinkle his nose and gurgle out all the words he thought they were singing. And Sandy just howling as she watched him keep shaking his head around to the music, making that stupid face.
“Look at the big goof dance, ha ha ha”
Then, if the song that came on next was just right, he would start wiggling his bum at her and maybe stuff a dollar bill into his mouth. Clench it between his teeth like it was a rose to seduce Sandy up onto that rug with him. Up onto his stage where he would serenade her with his imaginary guitar and take her by the waist. Dance with her like she had wanted to do all night long, since way back when they'd been at the Applewood, where everyone could have seen them like this. A couple drifting beneath the lights. Swaying back and forth in the spot where every weekend they pushed all the tables against the walls to make room for dancers like them.
But it was all okay now, Sandy didn’t want to fight about it. Not tonight. Not once he started making that scrunched up face of his. A face that would make her laugh as it tried to kiss her with that dollar bill still in his mouth.
And it was always when she laughed that she knew for sure she loved him. Because of that funny face, even if it wasn’t John Travolta’s. Even if he could barely dance without nearly falling off the rug. Even if she had to imagine the disco lights for herself as the last lightbulb in their apartment died and turned everything to darkness. Feeling Bruce's hands resting on her waist. The record on the turntable coming to an end, unsure if she should continue dancing.
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MATINEE MISERY
“He’s gorgeous”
Bruce can hear her.
All through the movie he took her to.
That he let her pick.
“He’s gorgeous”
The John Travolta movie where he’s always fucking dancing.
Sandy squealing through the whole goddamned thing.
“What are they saying?”
This will be all he hears through the next one
The one he got to choose.
The movie where they chop the Knights arms off
And then their legs
But keeps fighting anyways.
Blood spurting everywhere
Funny stuff he thought Sandy would like too.
That seemed stupid enough
But also the one where they talk with accents she wasn't expecting
Getting her worried they were speaking a different language.
And so, every time he laughs
Sandy leaning over to ask him what was so funny.
Getting angry about it.
“What are they Saying, Bruce? What are they saying?”
And him telling her to shush.
She was bugging people
“Scary”
Hearing nothing but his son crying that it’s too scary
All the way through the movie he let him choose for himself
His first
The one with the scary looking house,
That the boy had found a poster of in the newspaper
That he demanded his parents take him to.
Started screaming until they agreed
And Bruce hoping they wouldn’t let in a four year old
Not to this movie
Much too young,
and much too scary a house
But now here they were
Everyone hating them
The boy crying in terror
But refusing to leave.
“Too scary”
“He’s gorgeous”
He could hear Joanne squealing
Putting his face into his hands
This one just as in love with John Travolta
Just as much as her sister.
Sort of looking like Sandy too.
And now Bruce having to go back,
Back to that movie with the fucking dancing
With fucking John Travolta.
Starting the whole thing over
The same fucking thing, one more time
“He’s gorgeous”
Not to Bruce, though
Not to Bruce
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LIFE IS LIKE A McDONALD’S ASHTRAY
Childhood friends end up in basements. Or so it seemed when Sandy grew up. Would take her son visiting these women who lived down near furnaces. That she knew way back when. Come back up covered in soot.
They didn’t seem old but their hands and mouths would be more wrinkled than the rest of them. Always wanting to know if the boy remembered them. How sometimes they had been his babysitter, but never giving him time to answer. Already embarrassed as the boy just stared back at them for a long time.
“Oh, of course you don’t. Who am I kidding? I was practically a kid myself those days”
Maybe then they would explain all the ways they looked different now. How nice and long their hair used to be. How they would keep it wound up in braids strong enough to keep ships tied up in harbor. And, boy oh boy, did they ever dress better, wearing the kind of beautiful clothes that fit skinny girls. Before they got fat and bought clothes in bins piled high with sweatshirts. Before moths kept fluttering out of their waistbands and collars.
Sometimes they looked like they were about to cry as Sandy would talk with them in their tiny underground kitchens. Tapping cigarettes out on tiny tin ashtrays, making them rattle against the tiny tables they sat at in folding metal chairs. The boy listening to everything they said as he drew pictures of Cyndi Lauper on the linoleum floor.
Listening to Sandy begin to talk about another friend who she didn’t like anymore and how she still wet the bed. Pissed a couch just the other day. “You can’t be friends with a person like that”, she said. “You can’t even invite them inside, can you?”
The two of these old friends then began to laugh, agreeing you were much better off without people like that in your life, and how they had no idea why they had waited so long to do this. How they missed each other all these years and had no idea why they had been mad at each other in the first place.
“And whatever it was, at least you didn’t piss on my couch”
Now the boy began to laugh along with them from his place on the floor. Not very old but already understanding he would never see this person again as the two women agreed to do this another time, sometime soon. Not let so many years get past them. They used to be best friends, after all. Right?
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complete rewrite
FAT LUCY
Lucy gave me a bottle of cologne when I turned 16. I was in the backseat on the way to the Bingo parlor with her and my mother. The place the two of them met. My mother chauffeuring this enormously fat woman around town ever since.
Lucy never paid for anything. Was probably a thief. Would take whatever her little arms could reach, whatever her short fingers could wrap themselves around, and when she played Bingo, I would watch her swipe any nearby troll doll she suspected might be luckier than what she had already arranged around her bingo cards. Stuffing them into that big purse that was always full of sunglasses and jewelry and sandwiches. None of which were likely hers.
I noticed how the bottle of cologne she gave me was just small enough to slip into a jacket pocket. I thanked her for the gift and unscrewed the cap. Put my nose to it. It smelled like everything I already knew was going to be bad about growing up. Something fat old thieves thought being a man smelled like.
“So what’s it like to finally get to play Bingo with me and your mom and not just watch? Excited? Huh?”
I screwed the cap back on and said I had a headache. But it was okay, I’d be fine. I already knew Lucy would have Aspirins somewhere in that huge purse of hers.
Lucy had everything.
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Jinnistan wrote:
G 52 Broad.
That was the name of the cologne!
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crumbsroom wrote:
Jinnistan wrote:
G 52 Broad.
That was the name of the cologne!
I thought 'G 53' might be a bit too lucky for Lucy.
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COCONUT HEAD
Some guy was selling them when she was out in Orillia. Down in this dusty place where they were getting rid of all kinds of broken, beaten up furniture, this guy and his coconuts. Had a shelf full of them. Rows of coconuts with crude faces carved into them. Stacked up to the ceiling, and all of them looking like Bruce.
Sandy couldn’t stop laughing. Neither could Brenda or Joanne, who’d come with her. Then all the other sisters started laughing when they saw what the girls brought home with them. These two coconuts they got them to pass around and take turns pretending to kiss. Always checking to see if they were making Sandy jealous.
“It’s Bruce, it’s Bruce. Ha ha ha”
"Look! I'm Sandy. Look!"
"Oh, gross. So gross!"
When she got back from Orillia, she would keep the two heads on the top shelf of their closet for months. Nowhere else to put them until it was his birthday. And all that time he could see them up there, poorly hidden and staring down at him with their seashell eyes. Always wondering where they came from or why such things even existed. Quick to recognize their grinning, gap toothed faces when he found them rattling around at the bottom of a box that she gave him when he turned twenty-three.
“Coconuts?”, was all he could think to say. It was his question to the universe. Staring and staring and staring at his gift. Turning them around in his hand. Seeing no resemblance.
Not that anyone ever told him there was one.
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GETTING LOUDER, GETTING DUMBER
I sometimes brag it only took me a weekend to get my mother to stop being a Mormon. Sure, she’d only changed over for a little more than a month, and had been sneaking cigarettes the whole time, but at least she stopped calling herself that once I was done with her.
It was easy.
White Russians. Dozens of them. That’s all it took. Getting wasted with her in her kitchen and my brother asking if it was true that a person can drink so much alcohol that it kills them. Wanting to know how many drinks that would be and how many drinks mom had so far? Starting to worry why she wouldn't stop laughing or trying to cut his hair.
“Drink yourself to death? Oh, definitely. Sure”. I nodded my head vigorously. “Easily”
Later that night, she would need to steal a shopping cart to make it the rest of the way home. Lean on it as she walked, then lose her balance and roll out into the street. Me and my brother watching her the whole way, making sure there weren't any oncoming cars, eating our slices of pizza in the streetlight.
“Do you think mom has drank enough to die yet?”, my brother asked, concerned.
“No, I don’t think so”, I assured him. Put my hand on his shoulder.
She eventually got the cart over the curb and back onto the sidewalk. Said how she couldn’t be a Mormon anymore, that it was too hard. That she couldn't do anything and started swearing, because now she could do that again too.
"Fucking fuck. Stupid fucking cunt. Fuck you"
Then she turned and started walking the wrong direction, back to the pizza place, leaving the shopping cart behind her on the grass. Still somehow standing.