Read Why Girls Are Weird Online
Authors: Pamela Ribon
Why Girls Are Weird (26 page)
Mom looked tired. She didn't talk much and had brought a book to read. “I don't want to be any trouble,” she kept repeating.
“Mom, you're not trouble,” I insisted again as I brought a cup of tea to the table beside the futon. “I'm very happy you're spending Christmas with me.”
It was two days before Christmas and 82 degrees out. A bizarre heat wave had hit Austin the day before and was predicted to hang around just until after the Christmas holiday. Everyone wore shorts and wished for a winter wonderland.
“And you're not upset that Meredith came too, are you?” Mom asked. Meredith had decided to come at the last minute and Mom had bought her ticket as a Christmas present.
“I'm not upset. I wish she hadn't made such a big stink about it though. She acts like she's doing us this giant favor having you buy her a ticket.”
“Will you let the middle child have her thing?” It was unlike Mom to comment on Meredith acting out, but as she stared at me, her face showed nothing. She looked smaller. Her hair was grayer. Her clothes hung on her strangely, her tiny legs sticking out from her shorts. Her kneecaps seemed lost in pale, sad flesh.
“Sorry” was all I could think to say through my wave of guilt.
The front door opened and Meredith stomped into the room, the weight of the world in her last suitcase. “Where are we all staying?” she asked.
“Shannon is going to stay with Dale and Jason. Mom's taking my bed. You and I will share the futon.”
“Lovely,” Meredith moaned. “Oh, shit. I forgot about the cat.”
Shannon walked in from the bathroom. “You aren't switching with me. I love Dale and we're already making slumber party plans. Besides, I'm helping Jason with dinner.”
“Fine. I'll just be swollen for Christmas. I hope one of you put an inhaler in my stocking.”
We called it an early night, Shannon walking straight over to Dale's. We spent the next day on our own doing last-minute Christmas shopping. That night after we'd wrapped everything and placed our gifts under my small Christmas tree, I found Mom drinking tea on my balcony. She was looking up at the stars.
“This was a good idea,” she said. “I don't think I could have survived the first holiday in that house without him. It's good to get us out of Hartford. And cheaper for you and Shan.”
“Are you coming to bed soon?” I asked her. “Santa can't come until you go to sleep.”
She smiled at hearing the phrase she always used on Christmas Eve. “I don't think Santa's coming this year,” she said.
“Mom,” I moaned, dropping to the ground next to her. “That's so sad.”
“I'm very sad, Anna.”
“I know.” I put my head on her knee. She ran her fingers through my hair.
“I'm out of cigarettes,” she said. I lent her one of mine. I was back to a pack a day since Pittsburgh.
“Thanks,” she said as she exhaled a stream of smoke. “Never get married, Anna. If you do, you're going to end up alone.”
“Ma, don't talk that way,” I said.
“Maybe it's different for you. You girls are all so independent and want your own lives. When I met your father, things were different. You got married and you became one person. You became a couple. My life became your father's life, and his life became mine. We eventually didn't see any other friends because we were too busy raising our family.”
She was crying. A tear hit my arm with a small pat. I looked up at her.
“I don't think I'm good at being alone,” she said. “I'm really lonely in that house.”
I pulled her in for a hug. “Maybe you should take some time away from there. Go stay with Meredith, or come here.”
Shannon walked outside and lit a cigarette. “Oh, are we all crying? I'll cry.”
She plopped down next to me. “Mom, are you okay?” she asked.
“I'm fine,” Mom said as she folded her hands in her lap. “I just miss Dad.” I thought how strange it was that people lost their real names once they had kids. They no longer referred to each other by their first names. Everyone called her “Mom.” He was “Dad,” even to his wife.
“I miss him too, Mommy,” Shannon said.
Mom wiped her tears with the side of her hand. “When I first met your father I didn't want to date him because I knew he was the man I was going to be with forever. I wasn't sure if I was ready. I was young and I thought that I might do some traveling. But your grandmotherâyour father's motherâloved me and kept asking your father to bring me around the house. One night he called and asked me to do him a favor and eat dinner with them that weekend so she'd get off his back. I knew that it would be the last time I accepted a date from a boy.”
“And Dad proposed a month later,” I said, finishing the story I knew so well.
“He certainly did,” Mom nodded. “And I said yes.” It was quiet before she added, “And now he's gone.”
“I think he's still here, Mom,” Shannon said, playing with the cuff of her jeans like we were in kindergarten. “I talk to him sometimes.”
“I do, too. He helped me hide all of your presents here in Anna's apartment.” Mom grabbed my hand and said, “Remember how your father and Ian would try and find all of their presents days before Christmas? Used to drive us nuts.”
I laughed, remembering the time Ian accidentally locked the keys in the trunk of Dad's car when he was searching for presents under the spare tire.
“Ian is so much like your father,” Mom said. “How is he doing?”
“Again with the Ian,” Shannon said. “Give it up, Mom.”
“Well, he came all the way up to Hartford when your father died. Obviously he cares very much about her.”
I didn't feel like explaining to my mother that these days the thought of Ian made me exhausted, so I excused myself and went inside.
I went to bed hoping that Santa was going to bring me a simpler life for Christmas.
(So Much Joy at Xmas)
27 DECEMBER
This was the first Christmas that my family gathered without my father. My friend Dale tried to fill in as that missing male figure, which was sweet, but he was way too silly to carve a turkey with a straight face. I enjoyed the change of having Christmas in my own home, with friends and family traveling to be inside my doors. I liked decorating, talking in my Martha Stewart voice as I lit candles and made marshmallow treats.
Dale fell in love with the stocking stuffer I gave him. It's a wooden backscratcher. It's long, and at the end it has a tiny wooden hand shaped just for scratching. I'm sure you're thinking: “Oh, I have one of those, I love it too. It reaches all of the right parts.”
Well, this wasn't exactly the same kind of love. Dale found this thing to be the funniest object in the world. It was his new best friend. I really cannot describe the love here. You see, the hand extends and retracts, and it does look just like a tiny hand, so it has become the source of great amusement. Perhaps you might want to get one for yourself. I had no idea how many possibilities were loaded into one tiny wooden hand. Why, you can:
⢠high five with a tiny wooden hand.
⢠grab objects from across the table with a tiny wooden hand.
⢠caress your lover's cheek without having to move from the couch with a tiny wooden hand.
⢠scratch your chin like an intellectual with a tiny wooden hand.
⢠pose like
The Thinker
with a tiny wooden hand.
⢠put a tiny wooden pinkie to your mouth and say “one million dollars.”
⢠scratch the cat with a tiny wooden hand without getting fur on you.
⢠smoke a cigarette with a tiny wooden hand without having to bring your hand all the way to your mouth.
⢠drive like a low rider with a tiny wooden hand.
⢠brush back your hair with a tiny wooden hand.
⢠rough someone up with a tiny wooden hand.
⢠“raise the roof” with a tiny wooden hand.
⢠smack the back of someone's hand with a tiny wooden hand.
⢠give secret tiny wooden handshakes.
⢠have the world's smallest wooden hand stroke the world's tiniest penis (don't ask).
How could I possibly think of all of these uses for such a seemingly simple creation? Why, put the tiny wooden hand in a room filled with friends, family, and a pile of beer, and watch what happens! And if it's on a Friday night of a holiday weekend during a weird, humid, sticky heat wave? Well, then, my friend, be prepared for the height of comedy.
You can pay for pizza with a tiny wooden hand.
Somehow during the course of the evening, Dale put on Ian's old engineer's cap, some aviator glasses, and coveralls (Shut up. What's in
your
coat closet?). We had ordered pizza earlier. Of course, in our state of wooden hand giggles, the next logical progression was to share the love of the tiny wooden hand with perfect strangers, so they too could see what a genius invention it is. The scenario:
There is a knock on the door. Everyone hides in the kitchen, except for Dale in his outfit, tiny wooden hand inâ¦well, hand, and I'm on the futon with an engineer whistle in my mouth. Everyone is silent. It is amazing how well this is going to come off. Dale opens the doorâthe pizza guy doesn't even bat an eye. He apparently delivers to train conductors each and every day. He stares at Dale and starts to hand him the pizza. Dale flicks out the tiny wooden hand, which has the money in its tiny wooden grip. The arm extends, and the hand reaches out to the pizza guy. This is too much for Dale, who is well aware of the comedic power of the tiny wooden hand, and he begins to giggle. He giggles right in front of the pizza guy, who now just wants to leave.
Dale invites the pizza guy inside with a creepy “Hi. You wanna come in?” This forces me to hide my face in the futon. I mean, come on, Austin's a small town, and I'm a performer. This pizza guy could be at my theater in a couple of weeks and yell out, “Her and her freak train conductor boyfriend tried to seduce me with a tiny wooden hand.” Dale eventually closes the door and the party comes out of the kitchen laughing and blaming Dale for ruining what would have been “The Ultimate Pizza Guy/Tiny Wooden Hand Joke.”
See, you probably thought that the lives of actors and writers were very glamorous. All Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin. Full of beer, drugs, sex, wild parties, interesting people. We get home drunk at the crack of dawn, thinking about how great the thunderous applause was that night on stage. But in reality we all sit around on a Friday night thinking up new tricks for the pizza guy. And while we do go home drunk at the crack of dawn, instead we think about how great the look on the pizza guy's face was when we extended a tiny wooden hand with a twenty-dollar bill crammed into it at his face.
It's been a hard holiday season for my family. It was really nice to see my mother laugh again.
Love until later,
Anna K
The letter came a few days later in a thin envelope and was very to the point: “Miss Koval, we're afraid we cannot accept this submission. We don't normally accept unsolicited material. Regardless, this particular piece does not fit our standards. It appears to be ripped from the pages of a teenager's diary and isn't something we'd find suitable for our readers.”
Assholes. How'd they know it was from a diary?
The reality hit me: I wasn't a writer. I was a girl with a webpage. Anybody could do I what I did. In fact, thousands of people did what I did. How did I think I was special? How was I an appropriate writer for a
real
magazine with editors and standards and people trained to write real essays? I wasn't a novelist. I wasn't a celebrity.
I just wrote a diary.
The letter was short, but strong enough to put me back in my place. I didn't want to bother those grown-up magazines ever again.
There was a box outside my door as well. It was addressed to me in Ian's handwriting. I was sure it wasn't a Christmas present from him.
I opened the box. Inside were a few of my books, a sweater, and a stuffed animal that he must have forgotten I'd given him as a gift. I found an envelope at the bottom. Nothing was written on it. Inside was a card, the front of which was a naked baby holding his arms out. “Baby, It's Another Christmas!” it said inside.
Ian found cards that lacked a sense of humor to be incredibly funny. This was the perfect find for him, mixing naked babies with “baby” puns and a holiday greeting. His favorite card ever was a Valentine's Day card where a rabbit ate a carrot and on the inside it read, “I wanted to make you laugh, but I wasn't feeling too bunny. Happy Love Day.”
Ian's handwriting was scrawled along the inside. “I'm sorry it's been such a shitty year.”
I'd been wasting so much time. There wasn't anything wrong with me. Ian just didn't know how to love me.
I'd already known the truth for a while, but was unable to admit it until I held that empty box in my hands. I felt absolutely nothing for him, and I was free. I could accept what I had been too afraid to deal with. I didn't need Ian as my excuse anymore. He wasn't what I'd wanted in a long time.
I threw away the box with the stuffed animal still inside. I ripped his card in half. And why the fuck hadn't he returned my Beastie Boys CD?
We were breaking up.