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Authors: Eric Poole

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Personal Memoirs

Where's My Wand?: One Boy's Magical Triumph Over Alienation and Shag Carpeting (22 page)

BOOK: Where's My Wand?: One Boy's Magical Triumph Over Alienation and Shag Carpeting
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“Wow, twelve people living in one house?” I said. “What do you do, stack ’em?”
He chuckled again. “Well, there’s always somebody to do stuff with.”
Well,
that
was rude, I thought. I was just trying to make conversation; there was no need to be insulting. He apparently saw me as some sort of lonely, pathetic kid who didn’t have any friends. I might have lost my sister, and I might not have any friends at school, but I had options. I could be looking at dusty old stamps with Mitch right now.
The door to Val’s bedroom flew open again and she pranced down the hall wearing pink hot pants. I stared at her as though I was sniffing curdled milk.
“What are you looking at?” she barked at me. Then, changing gears with tire-squealing speed, she draped herself across the sofa coquettishly.
“Hi,” she cooed to Tommy, as I labored to keep my potato chip and mayonnaise sandwich down. This was a side of my sister that I was unfamiliar with, this flirty, coy side, and it wasn’t pretty.
“Hey,” Tommy grunted, displaying his flair for conversational economy.
“So,” I said brightly, clapping my hands together, “what do you guys wanna do?”
“We wanna be alone,” Val replied. She pointed downstairs. “Basement or your bedroom. Your call.” She plopped onto Tommy’s lap and, within seconds, they were exploring each other’s tonsils like Lewis and Clark.
I stood there transfixed. I had kissed a girl—Alice Larkspur—but we had not engaged in this kind of unsanitary swabbing of mouth tissues, and I found it both unsettling and kind of gross. What was the appeal of exchanging food particles and spit when I had a guinea pig downstairs who could jump entire steps in a single bound?
Val turned to me with a look that had probably killed lesser men and mouthed, “GO.”
I whirled on my heel and marched to the basement steps, slamming the door behind me to make my point.
I sat in the basement fuming all the way through
All in the Family
,
Mary Tyler Moore
and
Bob Newhart
. This was unacceptable. Banishing me in my own house! Val hadn’t done that since she locked me in the refrigerator when I was eight (forgetting I was there until roughly thirty seconds before—although she would argue after—brain damage set in).
Finally tiring of television, I pulled out my trumpet.
This
was a proper use of free time—developing a talent that would elevate me to the pinnacle of show business—not making out on a corduroy couch. I began to rehearse my sensitive, introspective version of “Smokin’ in the Boys’ Room.”
As I wandered around the basement, the bell of my horn aimed at the family room where Val and Tommy sat loosening each other’s fillings, I heard the stereo flip on. Val’s 45 of the Brownsville Station version began blasting above my head.
“
That’s
how it’s supposed to sound!” she yelled.
What happened to the girl I used to spend entire afternoons baking tasty lard-laden crème puffs with?
Then it struck me, like a blinding flash of the obvious.
It wasn’t the tids. It was God.
Ever since I had parted ways with the Almighty, he had been totally and deafeningly silent. I had naturally taken this as a sign of disinterest, a confirmation of his lack of caring.
But perhaps, it occurred to me now, he was stewing. And—living up to the image of the vengeful God I had been taught about in Sunday school—he was getting even with me. Since I had taken away my relationship with him, he was gonna take away mine with Val.
Well, God had done enough to me. I had suffered plenty at his hands. He was not gonna be the victor if
I
had anything to say about it.
This was war.
 
 
I BEGAN TO SEARCH for ways to get Val grounded. If I can just keep her around the house long enough, I reasoned, she’ll rediscover what we once had, and we’re certain to become the Two Musketeers once again.
“Does it smell like smoke in here?” I said to Dad one afternoon as I attempted to cough up a lung. “Val’s switched to menthol, but it still stinks.”
“Could you replace the lock on the liquor cabinet?” I asked plaintively a few days later, showing off a bruise I had gotten from running into the corner of the pool table. “Val gets mean when she drinks.”
“Stop trying to get your sister in trouble,” Dad said sternly, refusing to buy that his only daughter was turning into a teenage delinquent.
But I was not about to be so easily dissuaded.
“Are you guys gonna turn the den into a bedroom?” I asked a couple days later.
“Why?”
“For Val’s baby. I guess she could leave it at Tommy’s house. They already have ten kids, they’ll never notice another one.”
“Your sister is not with child,” Dad said. He paused for a long moment. “Is she?”
He immediately thought better of it. Val was a good Christian girl. “Stop making up lies about your sister,” he said, pointing downward. “You know what happens to liars. And we’d miss you in Heaven.”
“You mean you and Mother would miss me,” I corrected, although I wasn’t entirely sure about Mother’s status either when you got right down to it. “
Val’s
gonna be too busy renting out skis at the Lake of Fire.”
Dad was not turning out to be quite the patsy I had hoped, so I switched targets.
“You like my new pants?” I asked Mother as she lay sunning on the patio. I modeled the groovy new Wranglers I had secretly asked Val to purchase with her employee discount at Kmart. “Val shoplifted ’em. If you need anything, I’m sure she could help you out.”
Mother slowly lifted her goggles to take a look.
“Your sister gave me the receipt,” she said matter-of-factly.
“She must have forged it,” I replied nervously. “I wouldn’t put anything past her. She’ll probably be counterfeiting twenties by senior year.”
“Let me know if she graduates to fifties,” Mother said as she replaced the goggles. “I could use a few of those.”
MY FRUSTRATION WAS GROWING. How could no one see that grounding this girl would be the best thing for everyone involved?
Val was staying away from home even more now, and the summer days dragged on like a prison sentence. I had perfected my concert, but had no one to perform it for. I had afternoon reruns of
Gilligan’s Island
and
The Munsters
, but no one to watch them with. I had blank cassette tapes to record on, but no one to blackmail.
Then, one afternoon, as I stood in the basement rehearsing the curtain calls for my concert (using the roar of applause from Judy Garland’s Carnegie Hall album as my cue to return to the stage), an opportunity presented itself on a silver platter.
I heard voices overhead.
I slipped upstairs to find that Val, Tommy and Tommy’s best friend Paul had shown up. Paul was a similarly slack-jawed jock who was so muscular he appeared to have been blown up with a tire pump. With only one operating ear, I had always been bad at placing sounds, but as I eavesdropped, it seemed as though their voices were coming from the living room.
Of course, that was impossible. I crept into the foyer. But the closer I got, the more obvious it became that, indeed, they were in the living room.
I peered around the corner. Paul was sprawled across the white crushed velvet love seat, his leg hanging over one arm. Val was curled up against Tommy on the matching white crushed velvet sofa, her bare feet touching the cushion.
My head began to spin. What was Val thinking? Was she becoming the delinquent I had attempted to paint her as? Had the tids turned her into a felon?
It was a boiling hot day outside. I stifled a gasp as I watched Tommy and Paul’s sweat stain the virgin fabrics, their dirty tennis shoes resting on the expensive wood and marble coffee table as if this were somebody’s cheesy rec room and not the Poole altar of high style.
I was almost giddy with anticipation.
I hightailed it to my bedroom. I could hear them talking and laughing as I grabbed my new 110 Instamatic and tiptoed to the foyer once again, edging up to the corner of the wall.
My hands were shaking, my heart beating wildly. This was, I reasoned, a necessary evil, a take-no-prisoners step that would force my sister back into the sibling fold, where she belonged.
I took a deep breath and, as fast as I could, swiveled around the corner.
“Smile!” I yelled, centering Val and Tommy in the viewfinder and clicking the shutter. The flash cube
poof
ed as a wild-eyed Val jumped up.
“Oh, no you don’t!” she yelled. I scampered into my bedroom, slamming the door behind me. “Gimme that camera, you little weasel!”
I dropped onto the floor, using the bed as leverage to keep my full weight holding the door shut.
“Mother’s gonna kill you!” I sang in a singsong voice.
Val turned the knob, throwing her weight against the door, screaming like a banshee.
“If you develop that picture, you won’t live to see fourteen!”
“Oh, I’m gonna develop it, all right,” I said, “and you’re gonna be grounded until the Second Coming!”
“Oh yeah?!” She banged on the door.
“Yeah!”
I paused for effect. “But maybe,” I said slyly, “I could be convinced to make a deal.”
“Like what?”
“I won’t show Mother the picture,” I said, panting as I continued to hold the door shut, “if you let me perform my whole trumpet concert for you.”
“Oh God, why don’t you just kill me?”
“What?” I said defensively. “I’m not so bad!”
She had now forced the door far enough open to get one leg into the bedroom, and as she pressed against the door, she softened. “I never said you were. Actually, I guess I’ve never told you this, but . . . I think you’re pretty talented.”
I smiled—and momentarily let my guard down. With her foot, Val kicked me in the shin and I tumbled over, the door falling open. She tried to grab the camera. I shoved it down my pants.
“You’re dead meat!” she shrieked.
I smiled triumphantly, daring her to go for the camera, knowing that she wouldn’t. We were not the type of people who touched each other
there
.
“GOD IN HEAVEN!!”
I smiled. Dad must have just showed Mother the picture. Suddenly, I thought, all those accusations I had made about Val were doubtless being seen in a new light. They’d probably start ransacking her room for empty gin bottles, checking her teeth for nicotine stains and waiting for her water to break. She would be home with me for the rest of the summer and possibly the entire school year to come.
From my bedroom, I heard footsteps stomping down the hall. Mother burst into Val’s room.
“That room is for company!” she shrieked at a decibel level that thoughtfully allowed the participation of the entire neighborhood.
“Tommy
is
company!” Val yelled back, albeit with far less conviction.
“Company,” Mother bellowed, “is people we want to impress. Company is people we probably don’t even like. Company is not any
teenager
in the known universe!”
“We were just relaxing!”
I had a momentary flash of regret. Val was basically a law-abiding citizen. Should she really be punished for this one felonious act?
Fortunately, my sister—who had never quite gotten the hang of rolling over and playing dead—resolved my dilemma.
“You relax on a lawn chair, not on crushed velvet!” Mother snapped.
“Well, it’s already crushed, what’s the big friggin’ deal?” Within another thirty seconds, Val was grounded for a week. And I was elated. I not only didn’t need God, I was beating him at his own game.
 
 
IT WAS DAY THREE of Val’s Incarceration.
Although she had spent the past year refining her skills as a recluse whenever at home (a sort of Howard Hughes with tids), this was different. Her obsession with Tommy could not be indulged this week, since part of her grounding was a ban on telephone use, and I was charged with policing this activity.
BOOK: Where's My Wand?: One Boy's Magical Triumph Over Alienation and Shag Carpeting
2.82Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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