Family Affair (23 page)

Sounds dramatic, I know, but there was the time I tried to build a doghouse for Sammy Davis Junior. I won’t go into details, but let’s just say that while the Fosters praised me incessantly for the final result, they wound up using it for firewood. When I was in grade school, I couldn’t even make that stupid thing out of tinfoil, cardboard, and duct tape—or its simpler cousin, the slit in the paper plate—to watch the eclipse.
I am not handy
. This is all I’m saying.

But Trish swears that “This is where memories are made,” and “This is the exciting part,” and something else about me “sucking it up,” so I go online to do a little research on building your own photo booth. Granted, the listed examples I find are not photo booths in which you’d take pictures of pets, but there is a surprising abundance of how-to articles on the matter, including one step-by-step instructional from an undergrad at Carnegie Mellon. I also check eBay for photo booths just in case, and I am horrified to find that they start at $5,750.00 with a buy-it-now option at $7,900.00. Not an option. Not unless this PETCO deal was written in stone.

At three o’clock, Trish calls and tells me to meet her at Home Depot so we can buy the wood for the three exterior walls. When I arrive, I’m momentarily stunned by the hordes of Hispanic men standing around the entrance, looking to pick up labor gigs. It bothers me to think we live in this great country, yet people still have to stand around and practically beg to do menial labor every day. Not even a whole sixty seconds later, a lightbulb pops up over my head suggesting Trish and I hire one of these able-bodied gentlemen to do the job for us.

“No, we can’t hire a Mexican guy,” I hear from over my shoulder. I turn to see Trish wearing a smirk.

“I didn’t say anything about hiring anyone illegal.”

“But you thought it,” she replies.

“Did not.”

“Come on,” she says, and she tugs at the sleeve of my hoodie and drags me inside.

The place is huge.
Who can find anything here?
To the do-it-yourself-ignorant, it’s like Walmart, Costco, and Sam’s Club, but with much less fun to be had and no people in hairnets and plastic gloves handing out snacks. Note to management: People get hungry, especially when the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf next door is out of their favorite muffins.

As we pass through one of the aisles—I believe it was Doorknobs—and alongside the portable fans and fluorescent lighting, I happen upon a rack of black-and-orange Home Depot baseball caps. I promptly take one and put it on my head.

“I can see your plumber butt taking shape already.” Trish laughs.

She whips out the list, and I’m even more terrified of the project. We apparently need six one-fourth-inch sheets of plywood cut four feet by six feet. Had it been up to me, I’d have thought we needed only three. We need wood screws, a screwdriver, molding, a jigsaw—which makes me realize that at some dark point in human history, jigsaw puzzles were actually cut out by hand—a computer, an interface/controller, an LCD monitor, a photo printer, a shelf, hinges, a swivel eye hasp (What the hell is a hasp?), a padlock (Really? In case someone tries to run off with our six-foot booth?), a bench, a curtain, and of course a curtain rod, and a software program that Trish apparently already has. For our prototype, we won’t include some of the hardest parts—like a coin-and-cash acceptor.

“That would be so
cool
, though,” I plead, a bit unrealistically. “And one that takes credit cards.”

“Right. And sensors to tell whether the owner is uglier than the dog and adjust the lighting accordingly.”

For a second I’m thinking that would actually be a very cool feature, but then I see she’s gone deadpan on me.

“A lot of stuff would be nice,” she says, “but we have to remember something: We’re semi-broke. Unless you have money to throw in? I imagine with the whole Brett scenario you’re less liquid….”

“I didn’t plan on my marriage being wrecked,” I remark.

“No, I’m not blaming anyone. We just don’t need a money acceptor right now. PETCO can take what’s owed at the counter. For now.” She sighs, then adds, “I really believe in this. It could be so big for us. For now, we hold our noses and give it our best shot with what we’ve got.”

She hugs me, and I’m certain her sniffle is fighting back tears of stress.

I ponder the sticky situation. According to the PETCO people, the first prototype is due asap, even though they were the ones who delayed on the specs. (Corporations!) We have to simply go forward and hope our first attempt isn’t considered a flaming bag of dog crap on their porch, so to speak.

As we exit, I look longingly at the dozens of willing-and-able men offering their services. Trish knocks my hat off my head and asks, “Did you pay for that?”

“I assume so,” I say. “They saw it on my head when they rang us up.”

“You just stole that hat.”

“I did no such thing,” I argue. “It was right there on my head. If the cashier didn’t ring it up, that’s her fault.”

“Check the receipt,” Trish demands.

“Seriously?”

“Do I look like I’m kidding?”

“No, you look like Ms. Murphy, my mean second-grade teacher who hit my hand with a ruler.” To say Ms. Murphy was a kind woman would be like calling Victoria Beckham fat.

I pull out the receipt and do not see the hat listed anywhere. I
put it back in my pocket. “There, I checked the receipt, just like you asked. Can we go now?”

“What are you, twelve?”

“I suddenly feel like it,” I admit. “Am I in trouble?”

“Go back in and pay for the hat,” she commands. “I can’t have your shoplifting fantasies bringing our project bad karma.”

“Okay,” I say, “but a) I did not shoplift. I honestly didn’t even think about the hat when we were checking out. And b) I don’t like your attitude.”

But I walk back into the store and tell the cashier that she forgot to charge me.

“You can have it,” the cashier says. “It’s okay.”

“I’d really rather pay for it,” I say.

“Why?” she asks, perplexed.

“Because my partner is outside, and she’s crazy and will seriously go loony tunes if I don’t produce a receipt. So can you just ring me up, please?”

The cashier looks at me like
I’m
the one who’s one beak short of Daffy, but she takes my $9.99.

• • •

The building of the booth takes a shorter time than I’d imagine, and Trish and I get into only two fights, which is kind of amazing, considering the magnitude of the task. I had us slotted for at least four. All in all, we put the thing together in about two days—the casualties being my thumb and her sanity. (Is it my fault that I like to listen to greatest-hits CDs? I don’t think that’s a crime. And p.s., listening to any whole album just for the rare gem of a song you might like doesn’t make up for the time spent listening to sucky stuff for the other seventy minutes. To which she’ll say, “Don’t listen to sucky artists,” to which I’ll say, “Show me one band besides Radiohead that continuously puts out a solid entire record.”) (Or Wilco.)

When it comes time to test the booth, we bring Sammy Davis
Junior over and sit him on the bench. And our first photos are … blank. We open the curtain to make sure he is indeed still sitting there like a good boy, which he is, and it takes two more tries before we come to the realization that either Sammy Davis Junior is a vampire who does not show up in photographs or we didn’t take into consideration the height of the animals versus the specs of the people booth. This probably needs to be addressed.

What we subsequently realize is that animals come in many heights and sizes, so we’ll need an adjustable bench or removable ledges that will work to prop the pets up within view, support owners who want to make it a “family” portrait, and at the same time not be an eyesore. This takes an additional day’s work. But after about one hundred or so fits and starts—overexposures, underexposures, the back of my head appearing as the camera goes off late, blank sheets pouring out of the printer in pairs and triplets—we finally witness a miracle: With about two sheets of photo paper left in the printer tray, we see an undeniably cute trio of snapshots of Trish forcing a smile for the hundredth time, Sammy proudly, if nervously, perched on her lap.

The TLC Paw Prints photo booth is born. Or whelped.

November 18

Dearest Ev
,

I wish you lived closer so you could have joined us at the corn maze, or as Layla calls it, the maize maze. Isn’t she clever? She brought a friend, a girl named Heather, and we had such a nice time
.

I had the worst nightmare last night and I can’t tell Bill because I fear it would frighten him, so you’re the only person I can talk to about it. Last night I dreamed that Bill died. It was the most terrifying dream I’ve ever had. He went to bed before me but only by about fifteen minutes. I was washing up and doing the ten thousand things we do before bed—why is it so much easier for men, Ev? I swear we got the short end of the stick on so many levels
.

Anyway, I finished up my before-sleep routine and crawled into bed next to Bill. I leaned over to kiss him and he didn’t respond. I thought for sure he was teasing me, because for all the times he falls asleep watching TV, he never falls asleep before we kiss good night. So I climbed over him and bit his nose—not hard, just teasing him back, since I thought he was trying to pull a fast one. Then as my eyes adjusted to the light in the room, I thought I noticed that his eyes
were slightly open. So I shook him. And he didn’t wake up. I jumped over him and turned on the light, and, Evelyn, it was the most frightening thing I’d ever seen. Bill’s skin was all purple or brown or blue—dark and dreadful. And I screamed. I screamed so loud in my dream that thankfully I woke myself up
.

I tell you, for all the times I’ve been angry and said
I could just kill him,
I take them back. Of course we say silly things like that when we get angry, and you and I both know that Bill—for a time—made me very, very angry, but the thought of my Bill not alive on this earth is unbearable. Enough to make it crystal clear to me that I want to be the first to go. I don’t mean tomorrow, mind you, so don’t hop on a plane and euthanize me, ha, ha
.

Won’t you come for Thanksgiving? I know the kids would love to see you, and it’s only a few days away. I know it’s last-minute, but how wonderful it would be for us all to be together
.

And between you and me, I think Brett and Layla are trying to have a baby! I don’t know for sure, but last I heard they were talking about it, and I couldn’t be more pleased and proud. Am I really old enough to be a grandmother? Careful how you answer, Ev—you are still the older sister! Remember how when we were young and I was jealous that you were older? I used to always tell you that someday I would be older than you and you would just laugh and laugh. Oh, to be that innocent
.

Do consider spending the holiday with us. I miss you so very much
.

Your always-will-be-younger sister,
Ginny

Holy shit, does dating suck.

Such pressure! Seriously. If you look at my relationship with Layla, it started in high school and never stopped. We first kissed after a basketball game in tenth grade, and other than going out for pizzas, or to movies with our friends, or renting movies and watching them with my family, we never dated—not like adults, at least. We never had a real first date. I can’t believe I actually almost brought Heather out with my family for
our
first date.

When I tell my friends—those friends I actually still consider worthwhile, who aren’t hog-tied with their own penises—they laugh and tell me I need to take Heather out properly. They say that taking her out for burgers after the UCCC game versus Occidental last Saturday was an idiotic move, especially after choosing the same restaurant as the rest of the guys, and that they’re surprised she came to the corn maze the next day. I suppose they’re right. And she wasn’t exactly thrilled to see that my ex was at the maize maze.

So a proper date. Which is what, exactly? The truth is, I have no idea. So I ask around.

First I ask Scott, because he answers when I call the house for my dad.

“Dude, what’s a good first-date activity?”

“Fuck you. I’m not helping you. Jackass.”

“Put Dad on the phone,” I say. “And by the way, you still live at home. Dick.”

My dad gets on the line and I toss the same question at him.

“Buddy,” he says, “it depends on the person you’re taking out. Is it Heather? I only met Heather at the corn maze, and with all our running around, I didn’t really get to know her.”

“I know,” I say. “But some general ideas would be helpful.”

“Well, in my day things were a little different, but here goes,” he begins. “Don’t go to a show or movie on the first five or ten dates. You can’t talk, and the entire point of dating is getting to know each other.”

“Ten dates?” I gasp. “You can’t seriously expect me not to see a movie for ten dates! That’s Crazytown.”

“There are plenty of fantastic things to do on a date. You could take her to a museum.”

“Yawn.”

“Maybe she likes museums,” he replies. “This is my point. Maybe it’s not ‘yawn’ for her. You need to get to know her and find out what she likes.”

“We can’t talk at a museum, either, really, can we? Why do I feel like I’d get in trouble and get shushed every time I spoke?”

“Probably because the last time you were in a museum was on a class field trip and you were goofing off.”

“True enough,” I admit. “But I’m still not taking her to a museum. This is a first date. Well, second, actually.” Come to think of it, I don’t know if it counts as a third. I’m half wondering that. Even more pressure.

“The key to a great first or second date is to leave you both wanting more,” my dad continues. “Always better to err on the
side of caution. Better a date be too short than have her watching a clock, wondering,
When the hell is this thing going to be over?”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Dad.”