Notes on a Near-Life Experience (2 page)

Y
ORBA
L
INDA
, C
ALIFORNIA, MY HOMETOWN, IS THE BIRTH
place of Richard Milhous Nixon, one of our nation's most misunderstood and underrated presidents, according to some Yorba Lindans. In the seventies no one really thought like that because he was the president and he hired burglars to spy on the Democrats or whatever, but I think people cut him a lot more slack now that he's dead. Yorba Linda is full of upper-middle-class people who have horse stables or swimming pools— sometimes both—in their backyards; people who think that because they own horses, they live in “the country” even though no one lives more than one point seven miles from a minimall; people whose patriotism moved them to change the name of our high school from West Hills to Nixon; people who get bored with their marriages after nineteen years.

In second grade, when my class toured the Nixon Library for a field trip, the tour guide told us that when the library had its grand opening, four U.S. presidents attended. At the time I believed that presidents were like kings and queens— that they had to die to leave office—so I didn't understand how four presidents could have attended at once. I'd always thought I lived in a magical place—after all, presidents are the closest things we have to royalty in America, and back then I expected everything in my life to be special, out of the ordinary. I lived where presidents came from. I had all these fantasies about my parents' sitting me down one day and telling me I was adopted and I was really Nixon's kid or grandkid, the offspring of a president, practically a princess. When I got home from the field trip, visibly disturbed, my parents found out what was wrong and tried to explain to me about elections. I almost threw a fit when they told me that presidents were only presidents for eight years at the most and that when they were done they went back home and found new jobs and lived nonpresidential lives like anyone else. Somehow grown-ups always managed to make things seem so ordinary; elections made Yorba Linda seem like any other place.

The realization that there was less magic in real life than I wanted there to be hit me hard, but after a while I built up some resistance. I try not to let those kinds of things get to me anymore. Usually, if you pretend you never believed to begin with, it doesn't feel like you've lost as much when you find out the truth.

L
AST
S
ATURDAY
, D
AD WAS AT WORK ALL DAY, AND IT WAS HIS
job to clean the kitchen. So on Saturday night when he got home, my mom ripped him a new one.

“Russ, your job today was the kitchen, and it's still a mess.” It's not like my mom to get upset about little things like this. But lately, she's been hypersensitive about my dad's not being home very much.

“Please, Maggie, I was at work all day, and now you want me to clean the kitchen? Give me a chance to rest. Have one of the kids do it. Tell Keatie I'll give her twenty bucks. She loves doing stuff to earn a little extra money.”

“No way. This is your job. We care for this house together, remember? As a family.”

“I'll clean the kitchen,” I told them, “free of charge.” It makes me uncomfortable when they get like this.

“That's okay, Mia. Your father will do his own work,” my mom said.

“No, Maggie, I won't,” Dad said. And he left the kitchen, walked out of the house, got in his car, and drove off.

I couldn't believe that my parents, two adults, were having such a ridiculous argument.

After Dad left, Mom said, “Mia, you will not clean a single dish or lift one finger to clean that kitchen, do you understand?”

“Why? This is so stu—”

“You heard me, young lady. This is your father's chore and he's going to do it.”

I heard my dad come in late that night. I listened for voices, for some kind of an argument, but there was only silence.

Peace at last, I thought.

But the next morning the kitchen was still a mess, and my parents weren't speaking to each other. We all stayed out of their way, and out of the house, as long as possible. When I got home from my friend Haley's that night, just in time for dinner, the kitchen was clean, and we all ate together like we normally do on Sundays. I was too scared to ask what had happened. All that mattered was that things were back to normal.

I
N FOURTH GRADE, MY CLASS DID THIS FAMILY HISTORY PROJECT
where you had to fill out this chart and learn about who your grandparents were and stuff like that. When my teacher assigned the project, she said something about how we might be surprised who our ancestors were. Then she asked if any of us knew any stories about our relatives. A lot of my classmates raised their hands and talked about how they were related to famous people: Haley is related to Harriet Tubman, Steven Spielberg, and Shaquille O'Neal, somehow; Ana's ancestors came to America on the
Mayflower;
and Billy Lee's grandfather is the host of the most popular game show in Korea. I don't think I have a very interesting family history. My dad doesn't really tell me stories about his family. Instead, he talks a lot about Woody Allen. Woody Allen is this guy who makes
movies that my dad really likes. I don't know much about my father's childhood or my ancestors, but I do know a lot about Woody Allen.

Most people my age don't really know who Woody Allen is. They are vaguely aware that he makes films and that he is
not
physically attractive. My mom says my dad wanted to be the next Woody Allen when he was in college, before Allen, Keatie, and I were born. My brother, sister, and I are named after Woody Allen and his leading ladies, as Dad calls them. My older brother's name isn't just Allen, it's Woody Allen Day, but if you ever called him Woody, he'd kill you. My full name is Mia Farrow Day, and Keatie is actually Diane Keaton Day. It's bizarre; I don't know why my mom agreed to it, but then again, when I think about the times when my parents fight about what octane of gas to put in the car, what movie to see, or who to vote for in the city elections, I wonder how and why they ever decided to marry.

From what I've seen of Woody Allen movies and from what I've heard on E! Entertainment Television, the man is a freak. He usually directs and stars in the films he writes, and he usually writes his character as a man who has lots of women falling all over him. Did I mention the fact that he looks like a computer programmer? He divorced Mia Farrow a while ago and married their adopted daughter or something. Very weird. If Mom ever had another baby girl—and she insists that she won't—her name would be Soon-Yi. That's the name of his third wife/daughter… Soon-Yi. I don't know what we'd do if she had a boy.

When I was younger, I'd go to my dad's office with him on Saturdays. I'd do homework, answer the few phone calls that came in, and go to the Korean market in his office complex to look at the octopus tanks and buy candy with flavors I'd never heard of, and when I got bored, I'd bug Dad until he took me to lunch. On our way to the office, he'd tell me stories about Mia Farrow, how beautiful she was, how she'd been married to an opera singer or musician or something before she met Woody. I'd listen and feel special to have been named after someone so famous and interesting, and I'd think that my dad knew everything about everything.

H
E THOUGHT IT WAS A GREAT JOKE
. M
OST OF MY DAD'S JOKES
are the kind that only he thinks are funny. He says the rest of us have no sense of humor.

When I was learning to talk, he'd point to my mom and then to me and say, “Mama…Mia… Mama… Mia.” He's kept it up ever since—yelling for us to get in the car, looking for us at the grocery store, whenever the situation warrants.

“Mama, Mia… Mama, Mia.”

He hasn't said it in months.

Last week, for instance, after my dance performance— which he nearly missed—when we were getting dessert, he was trying to get us all to hurry up and order, and he said, “Maggie, would you just make up your mind already?”

My mom just ignored him and kept looking at the menu.

So he turned to me and Keatie and said, “Girls, you know what you want, right?”

He usually says something like “Mama, Mia! What would you ladies like?” He usually gets a kick out of stuff like that, and Mom usually smiles at his jokes even if no one else does. Maybe we've all finally gotten tired of the old jokes.

I hope somebody comes up with some new ones soon.

A
LLEN WORKS AS A BAGGER AT
S
TATER
B
ROTHERS, THE GRO
cery store near our house. Occasionally, he has to go out to the parking lot and round up the carts people leave scattered around because they are “too damn lazy to put their freaking carts in the damn cart corrals.” I love it when Allen uses the words
cart corral
. I tease him about his bagger jargon-lingo-shoptalk whenever he gets going about cart corrals.

Anyway, when he first started working, my mom was really excited, and she went to the store and bought stuff just so Allen could bag it while she took his picture. I went along to watch.

“Mom, please. This is embarrassing,” he said.

Mom ignored him and turned to the cashier. “I'm sure you see this all the time. Didn't your mother come visit you on your first day of your first job?”

The cashier, tired, mumbled something in support of my mother, who snapped another picture when Allen put the last bag into our cart.

“Nice apron,” I said, gesturing to the worn crayon green uniform he wore. “Can I borrow it sometime?”

Allen ignored me. “Have a nice day. Thank you for shopping at Stater Brothers.”

Sometimes I still go in, just to tease him.

My mom has been working a lot more lately. She used to do part-time consulting, but it's starting to feel like full-time. Anyway, the other day when I stopped in to say hi to Al at Stater Brothers, I was thinking about his first day, and I wondered if my mom will have time to come in and take pictures of me on my first day of work.