You Cannot Mess This Up

by Amy Weinland Daughters

  As for me, a couple of weeks after the incident I either (a) realized that I loved Granny and didn’t want to spend the rest of her life with an ugly issue hanging over our heads, (b) thought it truly was my fault, and wanted to fix it or, (c) was inspired not by my own person, but by a higher power who better understood the long-term ramifications of the situation.

  Regardless of why, I sent her a card. It said nothing more than “Thinking of You” or “Love You” or some crap like that. I don’t really remember what the outside said, but I do remember the inside, because I wrote, “Granny, I love you no matter what. Love, Amy.” Looking back on it now, in retrospect, it makes me feel like a total victim.

  The truth is, I really should have written the thank-you note sooner after the wedding, and you know what? I should have done a bunch of other crap I should have done too, but that doesn’t mean people, any people, much less your own grandmother, should call you up and tell you that you suck and they don’t want to have anything to do with you anymore.

  But, maybe that’s what forgiveness isn’t, it isn’t so much about saying what the other person did was OK, but that you are releasing them from it for your sake. So you can move on. So you can have peace. So you can be a suburban wife and mother who is in her right mind at the Cub Scout banquet. And maybe, on the flip side, that’s what we’re all hoping other people will do after we’ve disappointed and hurt them. Because of all the things I didn’t understand, my lack of perfection wasn’t one of them.

  ABOUT seven days after I mailed Granny the card, I got a reply, a small blue note card written in her shaky hand.

  Dearest Amy,

  Thank you so much for the sweet card. Hope I’m forgiven for being so horrible to you. There was no excuse for my behavior just because I didn’t feel good. You have always been so dear and thoughtful to Granddaddy and me. We do love you very much and there are no words great enough to express our feelings for you.

  Our close friends the Loudens are celebrating their sixtieth wedding anniversary Sept. 29. Their two sons and grandchildren are honoring them with a reception and seated dinner at Ridgewood C.C. on the thirtieth — which is also my eightieth birthday. We are looking forward to it very much. We do so little. We celebrate our fifty-ninth on the twenty-ninth. Hope this finds you and Willie OK. Take care and please know that we love you very much.

  Granny

  Until that moment, I hadn’t realized that I would have never gotten Granny’s letter, something I’ve saved in a box in my nightstand ever since, without first sending the card. Yes, I was, again, the spineless victim, the one who also sent a nice card to my attacker. But, without the olive branch there would have been no blue note addressed to “Mrs. William Daughters.”

  Was the attack justified and made welcome because of the heartfelt note? No, but all I could control was my response, which resulted in her finally telling me, on paper, that despite her actions, she loved me very much.

  She was flawed, but so was I.

  “What did you write about?” I asked her, desperately trying to keep my head above the water-line of reality.

  “Well,” she said, “I wrote a society column at another paper in Waco, but at the Tribune I was the fashion editor.”

  The fashion editor?

  Really?

  I knew she was fashionable, she always looked nice, but the FASHION EDITOR of an actual newspaper? That was totally, completely legit.

  How could Kim, our resident expert on fashion, the same girl who wouldn’t buy clothing in a store that didn’t “smell” right, not know about this?

  Why didn’t Mom tell me about this? Why didn’t anybody tell me anything? It was like that time that Mom and Dad told me, in like 2012, that those wild tomatoes that grew down by the pipe that crossed the creek deep in the woods behind our house, where we played when we were kids, grew only by virtue of people eating tomatoes and then passing the seeds, allowing the said fruit (or vegetable) to be born again near the sewage area where, you know, the seeds came back.

  Why wouldn’t you tell somebody that? Luckily we didn’t eat them, but we could have. Good Lord, if I was the mom and knew that, I would have NEVER let my two boys down there by the said pipe, or, I would have gone down there and killed all those shit-maters myself.

  Some stuff should be told.

  “In January of 1966,” Granny continued, unaware of my mental diversion to tomato-gate, “the Tribune sent me to New York City to meet with the director of the New York Couture Group and report back on the fashion scene. I stayed at the Hotel Astor and had a room looking out over the north part of Central Park.”

  Really? Seriously?

  I pulled out my notebook as she continued, jotting down, “Go to Newspapers.com: Search for Waco Tribune-Herald, Ruth MacCurdy, Fashion Editor, 1966” and then, “Google: Hotel Astor, Central Park, NY. Sewage tomatoes.”

  I couldn’t help myself. I literally gushed, rather dramatically, as she continued with her story. She was overjoyed with my outpouring of awe. We were having a moment, an adult moment, and each party was thrilled in the company of the other.

  Her feat was on par with my trip to the Orange Bowl press box to cover the Clemson-West Virginia game. It sounded like the outcome of her journey was less lopsided than mine, but both of us had experienced blockbuster, once-in-a-lifetime trips that nobody ever talked about.

  My granny was a writer, and she was talented enough to have been sent to New York City on a fashion fact-finding mission.

  Was I duly impressed?

  Absolutely.

  If I would have had the courage I wasn’t born with, I would have gotten up and told the entire roomful of people I was sitting with, in 1978, just how impressive Granny’s feat was.

  But I didn’t, and so, like a million other touch points in my life, the moment passed without action.

  The conversation between Granny and me eventually faded into awkwardness. Now we were the ones who turned to the game, trying to seem interested in something we weren’t, desperately wanting something more.

  Maybe that was the meaning of life.

  Chapter Nine

  FUNK & WAGNALL’S

  Unable to cope with the renewed silence, and my own inner monologue, I lamely excused myself and wandered off in search of something else that looked normal but wasn’t. Winding back through the formal living room, I noticed the stained-glass windows that Dad had installed in the doors of the three tall built-in cabinets. I knew if I opened them, which I desperately wanted to do, I would find approximately three guns and then stacks of glass insulators—bell-shaped, thick-glass objects with internal threading. We had amassed the collection from the side of the railroad tracks when the phone and electricity lines had been modernized. Dad had loved to drive us three around, teaching us to carefully look out the back windows of his Oldsmobile for utility poles with missing insulators. When we signaled a find, he would pull his car slowly off the road and we would get out, combing the area for green or white glass treasures. Often, if a prize hung within reach off a leaning or damaged pole, he would put one of us on his shoulders and we would pluck it down. I wondered what happened not only to the insulators, but the actual memory of all the other little things I had forgotten to remember.

  Climbing the stairs, I heard music, laughter and the distinct sound of a tambourine. It was at this point that I passed from being stunned and apprehensive to, if only temporarily, genuinely wanting to be involved in whatever was going on at the top of the harvest-gold stairs. I had never envisioned actually reliving my childhood in person, but if I would have, if it really was possible, I would have dialed up scenes of Kim and Rick and I playing together. They had always known what a freak I was and they never seemed to care, accepting me, literally, at face value. If they didn’t, they certainly wouldn’t verbalize it, as all we really had was each other. The alternative was a quiet closet.

  But the merriment ended the minute my Sears Best shoe hit the top step. With the intrusion of a stranger,
whatever they had been doing in the game room came to a screeching halt.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” I said, not wanting to be forty-something. “What’s going on?”

  A trusting bond had not been formed and so, Kim, the obvious spokesperson, said, “We were just playing …”

  “What were you playing?” Fumbling for the right words and not wanting to seem creepy, I said, “When I was a kid I had an older sister and a younger brother and we made up all kinds of crazy games.” I emphasized the last bit. “It was the most fun I have ever had.”

  Apparently these naïve little suburbanites had been trained to automatically accept whatever an adult said as irrefutable, never debriefed on “Stranger Danger” or “Stop! Don’t Touch Me There, This is my Special Square” because the young Wein-lands politely let me roll on. “Yes … we did some hilarious things, no one else might have thought they were funny, but, we did. And you know what? I told myself I would never, ever forget what it was like to be a kid.”

  Even though it was true, every last word, it was also total crap. But it worked. Kim, Amy and Rick didn’t really say anything, but they also didn’t seem to mind when I sat down on the next half-flight of stairs up. They could never know that I was completely aware of the fact that these stairs—which had apparently shrunken down to where my big butt barely fit on them —were the “stands” for any type of performance that might be staged in this room. I knew this because I had once made that same stage shine.

  “OK!” the youthful Amy screamed. “We call this the GONG SHOW and here is how we play it: Each of us comes up with an act and we do it for the other two. They are the judges, if they like it, they watch all of it and give it a score, if not they hit the tambourine—THE GONG—and we have to stop the show. Now,” she continued as if this was the most important part, “we have two tambourines, one from Disneyland, it is blue and has a picture of Donald Duck on it, and you have to be careful with it because it’s P A P E R. The second one is wood and is from M E X I C O.” Good thing the bilingual Ms. Hyper talked slowly so I could manage to follow. Yes, I remembered this game, and if this had been Vegas, three-to-one odds were that I (in the form of ten-year-old Amy) would get gonged first. It was a sure thing.

  “That’s right,” Kim followed up, walking toward me. “We’ll give you the extra gong and use it only if you NEED to.” I was given the Mexican gong, because apparently, I couldn’t be trusted with the fragile one.

  With this, the players went off to their respective areas to continue to prepare for their performances. Settling in my seat, I realized how rough and itchy the carpet was. I knew Mom and Dad would have selected a quality product when they did the interior of this house, but still, I was shocked at how abrasive it was. I tried not to wonder what would happen if somebody were to have actual sexual relations on this type of surface. It had to have happened, and would have resulted in serious burns. It made me think of that show Sex Sent Me to the ER. These were thoughts I had never had in this room, and as inappropriate as they probably were, it was hard to clean up my mind, even in the presence of the virtuous youths, especially the one I was.

  My worlds were colliding.

  In an attempt to get more comfortable, I reached down to the bottom of the stairs and grabbed a bright paisley-print pillow, thinking I could put it between the hard step and my lower back. With the pillow in my hand I paused, realizing that the room had gone eerily silent, each of the three kids frozen, staring directly at me with a look of terror on their young faces.

  “Noooo!” Kim screeched from the far-left corner.

  “Put that down!” Amy chimed in.

  “THAT’S THE PEE PILLOW! Rick added in high tones I didn’t remember him being capable of.

  A smile crept over my face. My God, it was the Pee Pillow. Instantly, I realized I couldn’t smile, I couldn’t even smirk—I couldn’t know of the legend of the Pee Pillow. If I did, I would have lots of explaining to do and would likely have been thrown out of the house. Though that might have sounded inviting even thirty minutes ago, this was the part I wanted to see. I did not want to go now.

  “What?” I said, trying to sound confused.

  “It’s the Pee Pillow!” Kim said, walking toward me.

  “Yeah,” Amy added, “we were playing musical chairs with the song on the record player and it skipped …”

  “It WAS really funny,” Kim cut in, defensively.

  “Kim was sitting on that pillow …” Amy continued, pointing at the fluffy square I was still holding.

  “Yeah, she was sitting on it all right,” Rick added, snorting like his wife would do thirty-five years from now.

  “And she laughed so hard, that, she …” Now Amy was also in hysterics, to the point that she couldn’t continue.

  “And, I peed on it,” Kim said flatly, grabbing the pillow from me. “I peed on it, and it smells bad, and we never told Mom, because she would have been REALLY, REALLY, REALLY mad.”

  “Oh,” I said, not sure how I was supposed to handle this stunning admission. “That’s pretty funny, but I get it, I won’t say a word.”

  Kim looked pleased with this, but Amy and Rick were too busy reliving the incident to care what I thought about it.

  She, Kim, had always had a bladder, and even a bowel control issue. Really, Mom probably would have been OK with it if she had known it was Kim who was the pee-ster. Anyone else may well have gotten the wrath destined for someone bold enough to urinate on the housewares.

  “OK,” Kim said, “let’s get on with the show.”

  In a dramatic flash befitting such an auspicious occasion, Little Amy flourished in front of the stairs and loudly announced, complete with over-the-top facial expressions and a certain amount of flailing, “WELCOME, TO THE THANKSGIVING 1978 GONG SHOW!”

  I couldn’t have been more pleased. I was ecstatic.

  Rick was contestant number one, leaving Kim, as the contestant-in-waiting, with the other coveted tambourine. With Kim’s help, Rick cued up a 33 1/3 rpm disc on the red-white-and-blue record player in the corner of the room. After the crackles and pops that occur when a needle meets vinyl, the familiar sounds of the Star Wars theme song filled the room with its dramatic, brassy tones.

  Rick’s act consisted of him running around the room while the song played, clutching to his breast—his man breast—a variety of small action figures as he darted from corner to corner. He switched figures on what seemed to be about a thirty-second interval, not unlike shift changes in hockey. R2D2, C3PO, Chewy, and Luke Skywalker all made appearances. The only thing better than his quasi-legit dance moves were his facial expressions, which were less hyper and disturbing than those of Little Amy’s. What he did have was the gift of pure humor versus her knack for unadulterated bizarreness.

  The best bit came when the music slowed down, a part of the song that seemed almost mystical, like maybe unicorns would crash out of the closet door and prance around. This was when he did some slow-mo stuff, winking at the audience while managing some almost inappropriate body contortions. If it had not been 1978, I would have sworn that it wasn’t Rick but his youngest son, Finn, putting on the show.

  As the end drew near, he threw his props and other random items in the air and then acted like he was shooting some invisible enemy with an imaginary laser.

  Well done, Rick, well done.

  Kim, Little Amy and I applauded as he bowed deeply. Luckily, and as expected, no gong was sounded in response to his performance.

  I was next, or, Amy was next. Deep in my soul, I knew that this was going to be something to remember. My young hyper-self was nothing less than a robust performer. I expected a full-blown, overwhelming effort that would more than likely receive the dreaded tambourine gong.

  It would be worth it. I was ready.

  After several long moments, Amy emerged from one of the bedrooms that flanked the open game area. She was carrying a thin, hardcover book and was dressed in a bulky, ill-fitting outfit. “My show!” Amy declared loudly,
as if we were in a concert hall. “Is brought to YOU by FUNK & WAGNALL’S animal encyclopedias!” Kim and Rick chuckled nominally, as if maybe they had heard this sponsor mentioned at an earlier date. She thought she was getting away with saying something funny and borderline profane. To her, and many others, it was the F-word of encyclopedias. But I knew that the young naïf didn’t even know the word she thought she was referring to. This enhanced my appreciation, really.

  After she discarded the book in a dramatic fashion, literally flinging it across the room, she started in on the main event. “I’m Sally from Sally’s Pant Shop in Spring, Texas,” she shouted, so excited she nearly couldn’t go on. “And I’m here to introduce you to our new line of clothing.” With this, she paraded around so everyone could see that she was wearing what I assumed to be one of Mom’s old polyester knit blouses paired with blue polyester pants. They looked to be from the earlier ’70s, that is, earlier than the ones I had magically been dropped into. Next, she screamed, panting loudly as if about to burst from sheer excitement, “And if you don’t like these, then, there is another!” With this, she quickly took off the blue pants, revealing a noxious green-and-white plaid pair of pants. “AND, this!” she continued, yanking off the blouse to uncover a secondary shirt that might have matched the pants.

  She repeated this one more time, exposing another complete outfit, and then flung about wildly screeching about how “it was three outfits in one.” She was extremely pleased with her presentation. Young Rick, on the other hand, at the constant prodding of the gong-less Kim, reached for the Disney tambourine and readied it for the obvious and predestined shutdown. Reaching across time, decorum and reasonableness, I leaned down to the next step and gently put my forty-six-year-old hand on my eight-year-old brother’s shoulder. He shuddered and looked up, probably shocked that I had touched him, but, displaying the respect to adults he had been trained to exhibit, he paused. “We should let her go,” I whispered with Little Amy still banging on. “I think she needs the chance to finish.” Rick looked at me with a puzzled expression, glanced over at Kim for backup, but followed my orders despite the fact that she was staring at me like I had three eyes.