You Cannot Mess This Up

by Amy Weinland Daughters

  “Sure …” I said halfheartedly, hoping someone, anyone, would show up and demand that she leave me alone.

  She was exasperating, I was exasperating, and seriously … we were an embarrassment.

  Leading the way, she sashayed through the formal living room and down the two steps into the sunken family room. The two rooms were separated by a black cast-iron fence, perched on the higher, carpeted ground. It had never seemed odd to me until this moment. Why would you possibly use an actual fence to divide the two spaces, especially given that you had the natural barrier of the steps? Though I had totally forgotten about it, I had never seen anything like it before or since.

  Once down in the family room, which had the same faux-brick floor that stretched from the front entry, Amy led me to the far left corner where two bright-orange bamboo swivel chairs sat. Motioning wildly toward the second chair, she literally screamed, “Here, sit in one of our new chairs, we bought them at the Rattan Mart in Spring, by the Kroger!”

  I nodded approvingly, sitting down on the rough tweed surface. It was as cozy as it was dangerous, sure to cause a nasty rash to whomever might dare to sit down in a state of nakedness. I had never thought to think that before, not understanding the nuances of adult nudity until after I moved away, at least from this house.

  Little Amy plopped into the chair next to me. It suddenly struck me that the reason nobody else was in the room, the reason I was forced into aloneness with her, was because this was Thanks-freaking-giving. There was lots to do. The younger version of me was oblivious to this, yapping nonstop, going on about something at school, something from Mrs. Atwood’s fourth grade class, something about Dreamsicles being available only on Friday.

  Though I guess I should have been interested in whatever she had to say, I couldn’t do it. I had just gotten to the point, at forty-six, where I could live with who I was now, and like it, or at least accept it. Going back all these years and seeing what sat in front of me, her, us, in full-on hyperness, full-on awkwardness, was too much, way too freaking much.

  “Where is Mom, I mean, your mom?” I said, in as commanding a tone as I could muster given the situation. “I should try to help her with the dinner.”

  “Oh, Mom? She’s fine, she likes to do everything herself,” Amy said, apparently having Sue totally pegged. “But, I’ll show you where the kitchen is anyway.” Eagerly grabbing my hand, our hand, she pulled me up and lilted along as we made our way up the two steps into the breakfast room.

  Looking down at her little hand in mine, I couldn’t get over how tiny she was. She was rail thin, small-boned, and small-waisted. When was it that we became a big-boned, buxom, handsome woman? Was it something she ate, something we ate, after this? I wished I had my iPhone. I could have made a note to look at old photos when I got back, or regained consciousness, to pinpoint when her things became mine. But, wait! There was something! Digging around in my luxurious brown-blazer pocket, I pulled out the notebook and pen I had noticed earlier. Flipping to the first page, I pressed down firmly to get the Bic pen going, scratching out, “Look at old photos, find out when it was I got big.” And, “Cast-iron interior fences … Was that really a thing?”

  Looking back down, I realized that Little Amy was waiting for me, staring at me with a mixture of awe and frustration. “Just had to jot something down, for later,” I explained.

  “Oh, yes!” she declared, as if a thousand flashbulbs had gone off directly in front of her face. “You are a W R I T E R.”

  She was clearly impressed with me, with us. Despite the fact that I wanted to flee from her like a bone running from a dog, it made me happy. Very happy.

  I followed her through the breakfast room and into the kitchen, the sight of which made me audibly gasp—it was glorious, giving me the same triumphant feeling that I had experienced when Mary had turned into Northampton. Red countertops, dark-brown cabinets, harvest-gold appliances, a yellow porcelain sink and a half Jenn-Air grill with a butcher-block cover. Though the room wasn’t big, Mom and Dad had somehow managed to shove an antique oak table into the middle of it, like it was the actual built-in kitchen island.

  What really made the room pop was the gold linoleum flooring. The small, two-toned pattern ran wall-to-wall from the kitchen to the breakfast room and then, presumably, back into the laundry room and half bath. It was so repetitive and so, well, yellow, it almost made me dizzy. It was like the 1978 American suburbs’ version of French toile.

  Busy preparing something, Mom had her back to us. Once she figured out we weren’t just passing through, she paused and turned. “Would you like something to drink, Amy?” she said. I got that she didn’t like playing the hostess, I knew that, but she was trying.

  “Well … what I’d really like,” Little Amy blurted out, shuffling her feet like an Irish dancer, “is a Fresca.”

  “No!” Mom retorted. “Not YOU. Mrs. Daughters.” Her voice changing to an almost genteel quality as she said my adult name.

  “No, ma’am,” I said, offering what might have seemed like undue respect given our similar ages. “I was going to offer my assistance here in the kitchen.”

  “Oh, no, that isn’t necessary,” she said, desperate to send me forth from the safe confines of her realm. “I’ve done most of the work now, the bird is in the oven, and, most everything else is as far along as it can be. You sit down and relax, everyone will be here soon.”

  Not wanting to go, but again wanting to run, I, as if by instinct, followed Mom’s directions, pausing briefly to watch her go back to work. She seemed taller than I remembered but still just as determined.

  I returned down the two steps into the family room and took my seat back in the rattan chair. Little Amy followed closely behind, careful to ensure I was not to be left alone, even for a moment. “You know,” she squawked, “I have a bunch of stuffed animals … I have a spotted snake, a gray ape, a purple lion, a brown dog and my favorite, well, that’s Charles …”

  Mom’s voice bellowed from the kitchen, apparently realizing that the freak that was her second child was off her chain. “Amy, go outside and help your dad and let Mrs. Daughters have a moment!”

  I was relieved. She had been shut down. At least for now.

  Not missing a beat, Little Me leapt up and smiled crazily and wide-eyed, putting her face way too close to mine, to the point that I could enjoy her questionable breath. She was leaving no doubt, to anyone, that she was a vicious mouth breather.

  “See you in just a second!” she screeched, turning dramatically and literally skipping out of the room. Looking back to make sure I was still watching, she disappeared around the corner by the back door, with a flourish and yet another shriek of ecstasy.

  She made me feel like I was going to throw up, laugh hysterically, and cry, all in the same moment. She was like a living, breathing stomach virus with a bowl cut.

  Sitting back in the chair, I exhaled, looking around. I had spent so much time in this room, but had never, ever, thought about how it would look, or feel, as an adult … somebody from the other side. It was filled with colored glass, beams, macramé, and real houseplants, and screamed “1970s!” at the top of its raspy, smoke-filled lungs.

  Looking through the French doors and out into the backyard, I saw the massive back deck. It had three levels, numerous benches, and holes cut out for trees. For kids, it was ideal, stimulating imagination and encouraging physical play. Not that this lofty goal had been the purpose of its construction. No, it would be left to my generation to market a household item as a lifechanging, educational experience. My parents had the deck built because it looked really cool, and they could sit on it, and put plants on it, and drink beer on it. Neither of them had ever had the slightest notion that it would ramp up our SAT scores or make us out-of-the-box thinkers or raise our earning potential.

  They would have thought that was a load of crap.

  Looking further afield, I noticed that the swimming pool had not yet been dug. I also spied the tree that wo
uld eventually flank the pool and hold the huge bug zapper that my parents would one day install.

  I remembered the time, probably only a couple of years from now, around 1980, when Mom shocked herself with the purple-lighted zapper while blowing off the patio. It was the same day that Dad just so happened to be slightly intoxicated, or totally inebriated, and doing flips off of the diving board.

  It was the middle of the afternoon, we were all there, and Dad’s maroon and navy plaid terrycloth bathing suit came off after a rather stunning somersault. Mom was mad, really steamed. “Well, Sue, I’m naked as a jaybird!” Dad had exclaimed, paddling about like Esther Williams. Enraged, she got hostile with the leaf blower, flinging it around until she got her orange extension cord tangled up in the bug zapper. Somehow, the intertwined cords caused a current to travel from the zapper to the leaf blower and on to Mom. She had been, well, zapped. With Mom laid out on the pebble-grained patio like a tasered mosquito, a wet and barely covered Dad (remember his name is Dick), majestically leapt to her aid, leaning over her, dripping on her bouffant hair. “Sue! Sue! Are you all right?”

  Chivalry was still alive and well in suburbia, but alas, on this day the (drunk) hero’s concern would be met only with a flat “Shut the hell up, Dick!” from my mother, who rose from the prone position, mustering up enough strength to push him over.

  Good times.

  Back inside, there was a large TV set enclosed in faux wood cabinetry. It was huge, but a lot like the Ford LTD, it was all trunk and engine, or, in this case, all inlaid wood and fake drawer handles. Seriously, the cabinet itself had to be four feet across and over two feet tall. But the screen, the actual viewing surface, couldn’t have measured more than twenty-five inches diagonally. It wasn’t big enough to be legitimately considered suitable for group viewing, even in a bedroom.

  Directly across from the fireplace was a striped couch and a large, ornate antique pedal organ that I remember my dad being very proud of. Mom was less impressed, even when Kim learned to pump out the theme to the The Facts of Life on it.

  Between the chairs, where I sat, was a brown wicker lamp that looked like a mushroom, hung on a gold chain that stretched all the way up to the high ceiling. Behind my head, centered over each of the chairs, were two pieces of art (a term I use loosely) of a Mexican girl and boy, painted in fluorescent colors on a tan tweed background.

  Across the room from me, next to the steps to the breakfast room, was the bar. It rose above the sunken room with a black countertop that would have been hard for anyone under five feet tall to reach. The interior had red tweed wallpaper, a stainless-steel sink and glass shelves stacked with flashy glassware. It was big enough to hold a couple of adults, but only for the purpose of bartending.

  All in all, it was a grand space and could only be fully appreciated in real life.

  On the edge of the fireplace, just in front of me, was the morning paper. That’s something you wouldn’t see in many houses owned by forty-somethings back in the future; no, that’s what a Samsung tablet was for. Reaching over, I picked it up, immediately impressed with its weightiness. There must have been one hundred pages of ink in its two inches of girth. Ah, the Houston Post, back when it still had the Chronicle to compete with, back when newspapers were still keeping it real, or at least they were keeping it thick. It struck me that without news-only channels and the internet, this was the sole source of news in this house. That is, of course, with the exception of the evening news. We trusted those guys on the tube, because we had no choice. Maybe you couldn’t count on the internet to be one hundred percent true, but at least you could double-check the facts and decide for yourself. Plus you could check your Facebook account at the same time and stalk people.

  “Good Morning,” the Post welcomed, “it’s Thursday, November 23, 1978.”

  Doing a quick calculation, I realized, for the first time, that I had been hurled exactly thirty six years into the past. Thirty-six freaking years. If I had been one of those people, I would have said something like “Wowzers!” But since clearly I was not one of those people, I muttered under my breath where my mother couldn’t hear (because she would have expected something a little stronger), “Holy crap!”

  The Thanksgiving front-page headline read “Clements to Seek More Tax Relief, Initiate and Referendum Rights.” Browsing the article, I halfway understood that Texas governor-elect Bill Clements—set to replace Dolph Briscoe in January—was advocating some sort of economic recovery. Wait a second, I wondered, who is the president? Obama had been the president this morning, but who was the president in November of 1978? Filing back through the basic history facts in the dark recesses of my mind, wedged somewhere between geography, algebra and that one class I took on fencing, I thought, “Well, Ford took over after Nixon resigned sometime in the ’70s and then there was Carter, he came before Reagan, who came in 1980, or maybe 1981.” So it must be Jimmy Carter, the Democratic peanut farmer from Georgia. Yes, this must be the national economic crisis highlighted in my memory by pictures of cars lined up at gas pumps. I had never actually seen any cars queued up, waiting for the limited supply of gasoline, but I had read about it and I had seen the photos. Really, the pictures were the only “fact” that had stuck around in my brain long enough to be called back up to consciousness.

  Why hadn’t we, here in Spring, Texas, seen those lines? And did we feel the financial crunch, suffer the effects of the inflation? I had no idea, and I saw no evidence of it here in this room stuffed with real plants, antiques, and treasures imported from Mexico.

  I had lived in 1978, clearly I had, but could I really claim that I was a living, breathing part of the bigger world around me?

  Flipping through, I was immediately struck by the ads. While you would expect lots of advertising with Black Friday and the Christmas season at hand, these were all in black-and-white, an artist’s reproduction, rather than actual photographs of the goods.

  The front page contained a sizeable example with a woman, wrapped in a fuzzy garment, who had an almost constipated look drawn on her face. It was for Joske’s, a store I remembered, but didn’t know if it was still in business. According to it, you could “Save one third off on soft Boulle coordinates.”

  Holy Toledo! Boulle! One third off! That was fabulous news! #whatisBoulle?

  Continuing on, and wondering if the ink from the pages would stay permanently on my hands, I was shocked, and that was something given how my day was playing out, to find something called “Today’s Prayer” on Page 27A.

  What? Today’s “prayer”? That meant that the Houston Post, think about it, the HOUSTON POST, sanctioned a direct line to the Heavens—and then published it, along with the weather forecast, the stock market report and the TV listings.

  Did the Post employ a staff member to pen this “prayer”? I could still vaguely remember there being a “Religion” section in this same newspaper, or perhaps the Chronicle, but offering a city-wide devotion—that was another thing entirely.

  “Dear Jesus Lord, God, help me to love my parents better, and my church and my world for our peace on earth. Amen.”

  —Pete Litcata, 2001 Hazard

  SO, the Post printed the prayers of its readers. And not only did it allow a direct reference to Jesus, indirectly inferring that there was such a person, or being, or power—it printed the prayer’s name and his address.

  It was stunning. How much had we changed in thirty six years? This much.

  I fished back into my blazer pocket and pulled out my notebook and pen. “When did prayers stop being printed in newspapers?” followed by Look up Pete Litcata on Facebook.” And “Is Joske’s still in business? WTF is Boulle?”

  Dad and the kids tromped back inside. Mom’s voice met them as soon as they hit the breakfast room. “Go on, and get out of here, I’m BUSY!” She added a quick “Happy Thanksgiving” at the end of the screech, suddenly remembering, I suppose, that she had a guest sitting in the next room.

  I felt myself tense up. I
think I would have been fine, even thrilled, if I could have been an invisible observer, not forced to interact with the other players in this production, or at least the one who was me.

  Rick, Kim and Amy found seats near mine and discussed the impending arrival of their grandparents. Dad whisked through, enthusiastically stating that he was off for a quick shower. This was the kind of thing I remembered vividly, the clean-up always timed carefully so he could arrive back into the room, fresh as a daisy, AFTER the guests had arrived. This was much to my mother’s horror and would ramp the stress level up one more critical notch.

  Amazingly, as the kids chatted amongst themselves, no one made a move to turn the TV on. They talked about what they were going to play and when they could go back outside. More than anything, they talked about the approaching Christmas season.

  “I wonder when the Sears Wish Book will get here …” Little Amy said wistfully, with a dreamy look in her Pekinese-like eyes.

  “It’s already here, A M Y!” Kim sung out, laughing heartily. “And I’ve already read it in the bathroom and marked what I want.”

  Little Amy looked disgusted, not by the fact that Kim was handling the Sears Catalog and toilet paper at the same time, but because she had not seen the said Book of Wishes.

  “WHERE IS IT?” Amy yelled loudly enough to get the routine “AMY, SHUT UP!” from Mom in the kitchen.

  Kim just laughed. “You’ll never find it …”

  This propelled Amy into physical action, fully prepared to fight for her right to look at the men’s underwear section.

  “Now, girls,” Dad said, magically peeking around the door to the master bedroom. “Let’s all get along. It’s Thanksgiving and you two are sisters …”

  Kim and Amy sneered at each other, but they stopped. Kim winked as Dad disappeared around the corner and Amy glared back at her sister, reminding her that asses could be kicked if necessary. Really, she should have pounced on Kim, but she didn’t. I wasn’t sure if I was thankful for that or not.