The McGillicuddy Book of Personal Records (11 page)

All mothers are slightly insane.

– J.D. Salinger

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Hey, Pardner! You've reached the McGillicuddy residence. Neither Gert nor Lee can come to the phone just now. Be a pal and leave a message after the beep.

Beep!

Hey, Lee, Slang here. Missed you at the game last night, Buddy. Everything okay? Gimme a call.

Beep!

Hi, this is a message for Lee. Yeah, Lee, it's Frank here, from Frank's Meats and Deli. You haven't been in for your dog bones lately. Hope Santiago's okay. Just chopped up some fine prime rib and I'll save the bones as usual. Give me a call if you're having canine trouble.

Beep!

Frank again. Meant to say howdy to Gert. Howdy, Gert! Keep a seat warm for me at the club! It's been a while.

Beep!

Hi, Lee. It's Slang again. How come you're not answering your messages these days, man? Not sick or anything, I hope. Championships coming up. Can't be without my good luck charm. Gimme a call.

June 25
Dear Mrs. McGillicuddy:

I thought I'd drop you a note to let you know that I've been a little concerned about Lee lately. As you know, I've been Lee's homeroom teacher for nearly two years now, and I'll confess to you, Mrs. McGillicuddy, that although we teachers are not supposed to have favorites, I've always had a special soft spot for Lee. Although he's not one of my most academically talented students, he has a sparkle and a generous spirit that shines brighter than most. That's why it troubles me to have noticed a change come over him recently. The spark seems to have left his eyes, and although he's completing homework and handing in assignments, he does so with a certain lifelessness that has me worried. I don't mean to alarm you prematurely, Mrs McGillicuddy. As we both know, it is perfectly natural for children to move through brief rough patches as they grow. But it is the intensity of his “lethargy” this past week that prompts me to contact you. I don't mean to pry, Mrs. McGillicuddy, but is he having any personal difficulties lately that it might be helpful for me to know about? I'd love to be of some help to Lee, but he doesn't seem open to talking right now. I'm leaving you with my home phone number, and that of the school‘s guidance counselor, and although the final week of school is always a busy one, we wouldn't dream of not making time for you. Lee is a wonderful boy, Mrs. McGillicuddy, and I long to see his big goofy smile light up our schoolroom again.

Sincerely,
Margaret Burns

June 26
Dear Stupid Diary,
I decided to start talking to Lee again, not that he deserves it, the stinkin' spy. But he's totally weirding me out. He's too nice. Well, maybe not nice exactly, but completely unbuggable, if you know what I mean. He didn't even get mad yesterday when I expertly zinged his dumb baseball cap right off his head with my slingshot (no one is better with a slingshot than the Amazing Ron Ronaldson, in case you didn't know, Stupid diary.) He just picked up his hat and put it back on his head like it never happened. He didn't even try to catch me and give me a knuckle noogie to the head.

Actually, I don't think the guy is Lee at all. I think he's some kind of zombie just pretending to be Lee. Or maybe some green aliens picked him up one night and sucked all the personality out of his body before kicking him off the spaceship. Not that he was ever Mr. Personality to begin with, but you know what I mean, right, Stupid?

Yours truly,
Ron, aka The Amazing One

Dear Almighty Director (whoever you are and wherever you are),
This is to inform you that I, Lee McGillicuddy, officially resign from my starring role in this inferior movie called “My Life.” I don't like the way the plot is unfolding. If I am the “hero” of this picture, then where are my scenes of heroism?

Nope, the whole production has ceased to be any fun—and, like, I'm not even getting paid (unless you count my allowance, which is beans-all). If you refuse to release me from my role, I'll have no choice but to go on strike till the script shows signs of improvement.

Yours sinc …

“
Oh, my God,” said, Lee, letting the pencil drop from his fingers. “I really
am
mental.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

LEE'S CRAPPY LIFE: TAKE 379
MONTAGE SEQUENCE COMING UP

CAMERA ONE, START WITH A TIGHT SHOT OF THE DOG'S DRIPPING DROOL.

QUIET ON THE SET ANNNND, ACTION!

Woof! Rrrrrrrrrr, woofwoofwoof!! Howwooooooo!

For a dog, Santiago was pretty smart. But she had the worst short-term memory in the history of dogdom. Long-term memory? No prob. She still remembered, as a puppy, looking out through the bars of her cage at the Humane Society, while a guy in a cowboy hat tried to convince his wife to have a heart: “Come on, Gertie, honey-pie, our son deserves a pet.
Every
boy should have a dog. And just look at that little feller …”

Santiago remembered that day six long years ago like it was yesterday, but if you'd asked her what she'd eaten for breakfast this morning, she wouldn't be able to tell you, and not just because she couldn't talk English. She simply would not remember. Of course, that bad memory had its advantages at times. She'd bury a bone in the morning, for example, then rediscover it in the afternoon, with a flurry of excited tail-wagging, like it was a brand new find.

But there were also times when her poor memory put her at a distinct disadvantage. Like every day in the past two weeks when she'd rushed to meet Lee coming home from school and had to rediscover anew that Lee wasn't much interested in her these days—that he hardly noticed she was there. Each time it felt like a rude shock. It upset her stomach and made her want to hide under the huge rhubarb leaves in the back yard and go to sleep. Not to mention the fact that Lee hadn't brought her a juicy bone for ages. How
woooooow
!

CUT TO AGNES'S KITCHEN

The Bluebird of Happiness long absent from his life, Ned is visited by the Chicken of Depression.

– Gary Larson (cartoonist and creator of
The Far Side
)

“Do you think he might be depressed?”

“Depressed? At his age?” said Gertrude, refilling her coffee cup from the pot on Agnes's table.

“It's possible,” said Agnes, pulling a tissue from the sleeve of her housedress and giving her nose a quick honk. “Even kids can sometimes drop into a hole that's hard to climb out of.”

“No. It's more likely some kind of growth spurt that's just taken everything out of him. He's grown another inch and a half in the last month, have you noticed? That's gotta be hard on a body.”

“Speaking of which,” said Agnes, “don't you think it's time to get the boy some new jeans? The ones he's walking around in are short enough to get him through the next Red River flood without getting wet. In fact, maybe he's just embarrassed about looking like a goof.”

Gertrude didn't even hear Agnes's last comment. She was too busy thinking. “I had a talk with his teacher yesterday. She agreed that a growth spurt might have something to do with it. Or hormones, maybe. Or both.”

Agnes ignored Gertrude right back and continued on with her own train of thought. “I've heard about a herbal remedy that's good for lifting the spirits. St. John's Wort, I think they call it. Maybe …”

Gertrude looked up over her coffee cup. “Forget it, Ag. Witch's warts and eyes of newts are not what's needed here. Don't go wasting your money on crazy potions. I mean it, Ag.”

CUT TO INTERIOR OF “FRANK'S MEAT AND DELI”

Frank took a bag full of week-old beef bones from the fridge and dropped them into the garbage can with a sigh. Then he took a fresh plastic bag from under the counter, filled it with today's bones, and set them on a shelf in the fridge. Before turning off the lights to the store, he stopped to look at a crooked Polaroid snapshot, stuck to the cash register, of a skinny kid and his maniac dog. Frank smiled and straightened the picture before leaving the store and locking the door behind him.

CUT TO AGNES

Agnes set the bottle of St. John's Wort on the counter beside the sink. Then she bent her stiff back to peek inside the oven at the loaf of banana bread she was baking especially for Lee. She knew it was his favorite.

CUT TO SLANG

Slang put his date book in his backpack and got ready to leave his house. Then he took the organizer back out and flipped to tomorrow's date. There he wrote a reminder to himself:
Drop by Beanpole's place sometime soon.
He was about to put the book back in his backpack when he took it out one more time:
Remember to bring a team T-shirt for the kid. Size?
Slang thought for a second, then smiled and continued writing:
“S” for skinny.

CUT TO GERTRUDE

Gertrude folded the two new pairs of extra-long blue jeans she'd bought that day and laid them at the end of Lee's bed. Then she looked at her watch, hoping he'd get home from delivering flyers soon. She flipped through the TV guide in search of a funny movie the two of them might watch together. Gertrude put a pack of popcorn in the microwave. She parted the living room curtains and looked down the street.

CUT TO LEE'S TEACHER

Mrs. Burns put down her red marking pen, stretched, and went to the kitchen to pour another cup of tea. She carried it back to the dining room table, sat down, and flipped through the messy pile of creative writing essays she'd just finished marking in time for report cards. She took a sip of tea, scratched her cat, Tigger, behind the ear, and put the cup down. Mrs. Burns sorted through the papers until she came to Lee's and, with her red pen, changed the “C” to a “B.” She took another sip of tea, planted a kiss on Tigger's nose, and added a plus sign beside the B. “Our secret, Tigger,” she whispered.

CUT TO RHONDA

Rhonda put her violin to her chin and raised the bow. She started playing, but tonight the music made her feel sad. She put the violin down on her bed and peeked through a broken slat in the horizontal blinds at her window. She could see the lights on at Lee's house. She could see Gertrude looking out the front window. She could see Santiago sitting near the front gate. But she couldn't see Lee. Rhonda lay on her bed beside her violin and looked at the cracks in the ceiling.

CUT TO MUTT

Santiago's tail started twitching when she sensed Lee at the end of the block, too far away to be seen. When she felt the mild vibrations of Lee's flyer wagon bumping along the sidewalk, her tail began to thump. When she actually heard his footsteps, her tail wagged so violently she nearly knocked herself over. Of course she'd forgotten. Forgotten that Lee didn't have time for her these days; forgotten that from his point of view, the sun no longer shone from her canine butt—that lately she was just an unremarkable mutt to her boy. Lee came through the gate and gently brushed Santiago away when she jumped up to greet him. “Not now, girl.”Santiago waited until he'd gone inside the house, then shimmied under the rhubarb leaves until only her tail showed, and waited for sleep.

SEQUENCE ENDING AS IT BEGAN, WITH A CLOSE-UP OF THE MUTT

CAMERA OUT, AAAAAND … CUT!

LET'S CALL IT A DAY, FOLKS

CHAPTER TWENTY

There are only two ways to live your life.

One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.

Albert Einstein

Lee looked out his bedroom window but didn't really “see” anything. Not the sunshine creeping up on his mother's marigolds, turning them into orange balls of fire, not the three blue eggs in the nest under his window that had overnight morphed into three gaping beaks screaming for breakfast, not even Santiago's thumping tail in the rhubarb patch (the opening of Lee's eyes every morning automatically set Santiago's tail a-thumpin'—she sensed his waking even when she wasn't in the same room). Life might as well have been a silent black-and-white movie for all Lee noticed or cared. Black and white. Black
or
white. Either you care or you don't. Simple as that.

And it wasn't so bad, really, this not caring. More like a relief. Lee just wished everyone would stop being so overly worried about him. He didn't like the weight of their concern. It irritated him—the worried look in Agnes's eyes, the way Mrs. Burns had gone easy on him on his final mark (that piece-of-crap essay he'd handed in wasn't fit to line the bottom of a canary cage, let alone earn a B-plus), the very fact that his mother was right now downstairs frying bacon for him—a treat she generally reserved for special occasions. Her little attempts to lift Lee's spirits made him uncomfortable. Not to mention the fact that bacon was wasted on him these days. He didn't have much of an appetite and everything tasted the same, anyway. If Gertrude had served him a bowl of Santiago's Chuck Wagon Vittles, he probably wouldn't have noticed.

Oh, God
, Lee closed his eyes,
Santiago.
The thought of her sad eyes these days was enough to make him feel like the biggest crud on earth. Having the power to make or break a dog's day was not a responsibility he wanted right now. And it's not that he didn't love Santiago. Love had nothing to do with this. He just didn't have the energy to fake cheerfulness. Not with her; not with
any
one. Feeling down in the dumps is hard enough, thought Lee, but trying to convince people (or dogs) otherwise takes more energy than running a marathon.
Backwards!

Lee heard the
MSN
“ding-dong” informing him that he had a new e-mail. Terrific. He plunked himself down in front of the monitor, although he didn't know why he bothered. These days the only stuff he ever seemed to receive was junk mail (and the odd idiotic note from Rhonda—
Dear Daddy, sorry to hear you've been diagnosed with Zactly Disease—your face looks zactly like your butt! Heh, heh! Your Pal, Ron)
.