Looking over to her now deflated daughter, Granny added with a wry smile, “It really was good, Sue, you did a wonderful job. I’m just so glad we ate at the dining room table, it’s just the right thing to do.”
Now she was referring to that blasphemous occasion where we ate Thanksgiving dinner in the breakfast and family rooms, an incident that was no doubt fresh on my mom’s mind when she defensively set up the dining room as fancy-dancy as she knew how. She probably had thought, somewhat pleased with herself, “Now she won’t have ANYTHING to say about my meal.”
It was no wonder why, thirty-five years later, she still flipped out about the holidays and really, gatherings of any size at all. She had never—in the opinion of the one person she needed validation from the most—pulled it off properly.
As much as Mom’s world was obviously perfect, with the big house, healthy family and wonderful husband, it could also be a load of crap.
“Looks like some of the neighborhood kids are outside,” Dad said, looking almost wistfully out the front window. “I bet Rick and Amy will go out later.”
“I wonder when she’ll outgrow playing with all those boys,” Granny Ruth asked, a legitimate question, I supposed. Of all the awkward things I could remember about my childhood, playing with the group of boys on our street wasn’t one of them. They were the only other kids in the neighborhood, so it seemed natural, not deviant.
“She should do it as long as she wants to,” Grandma Bee from the KOA remarked, almost daring Granny to respond.
“She’s definitely a tomboy,” Mom piped in, rather quietly.
“Well, it’s good exercise as far as I’m concerned,” Dad said.
“At some point she’ll have to do something with that hair, and those clothes …” Granny said.
“Yes, she will, and she’ll need to calm down, she makes people uncomfortable.” Mom said, looking down at her lap.
What? I was only ten freaking years old. Give me some time to grow up before starting to label me as a fashion disaster. Was I already supposed to care about all that? Maybe that’s why I struggled with it, because they told me I did, when I was still three years from being a teenager.
I was shocked. I suppose it was because of Granny’s and my closeness at this age. But, I shouldn’t have been, because that’s how families work. There’s the face you put on in person, and then the one you put on when you get to be “honest.”
“Amy’s a good kid, a sweet, intelligent girl …” Mom continued. “But she can also be a real challenge.”
“Yes,” Granny agreed. “She is a sweet girl, but she needs a lot of work on how she looks and acts.”
“I agree,” Mom said, looking down at her half-eaten plate of food. “I don’t know what we’ll do with her, we love her, we really do, but she’s difficult to control, very difficult, and boyish, she doesn’t care much about her personal appearance and she’s, well, she’s awkward. Difficult. Almost, well, odd. She’s not right, not like …”
“Now, Sue,” Dick interrupted. “She’ll be just fine.”
Good God, Mom could do without this nonsense. There was nothing worse than having some well-meaning family member attempt to tell you how messed up your kids were, like you didn’t already know that. Sure, they were just trying to help, but why bring it up, here, in front of everyone.
On the other hand, how bad was I? Even if Granny was right, couldn’t Mom have at least defended me? Really, other than her shocking admission that I was intelligent, she just threw me under the bus. She called me awkward, boyish and NOT RIGHT. I knew that was true, I could see it all for myself, but she didn’t have to validate it. Out loud. As far as I ever knew, nothing got validated out loud here, at least nothing that actually meant something.
And another thing, I could have finished her sentence, the one that stopped with “not like …” I knew precisely who she was saying I was “not like.”
It was as if everything I had been feeling and repressing and then feeling again, for forty-f-ing years, had been endorsed, certified, and proven in a single sentence. I was pissed. I was horrified. I was devastated.
Was this, this totally f-ed up conversation, the answer to a question I thought I didn’t have? One of the questions that Mary had said I needed to answer, or ask? Is this why I was here? So I could almost die at this stupid table, with the stupid silver wine cups, with not enough alcohol in them?
F. F. F. F. F.
There were lots of layers to the dysfunction in this family. It wasn’t as simple as one person being singled out. Everyone was at risk, which meant reactions weren’t simple and logical. My mom was dealing with her own feelings of inadequacy with her mother, while at the same time she was trying to figure out what to do with me, her high-spirited, sometimes angry tomboy daughter who didn’t fit in the suburban box. And so, three decades later Rick would marry Jen and she would try to get us to talk about our feelings.
I’m so freaking glad we didn’t.
Ironically, though Kim and Rick fit in the box better as youngsters, they broke further out of it when they grew up. Maybe that’s just the way it works; you either rebel sooner or later, but you always do.
Either way, was I seriously supposed to just sit here and take this crap? Not one person was defending Little Amy. Not Dad. Not Grandma. Nobody. I understood that this was a holiday table, which meant there was no way a fight would suddenly break out between the frank MacCurdys and the conflict-avoiding Weinlands, but couldn’t anyone say anything in her defense? Even a single f-ing word?
On the outside, I calmly sipped my wine, while internally I fumed. It didn’t matter that nobody knew who I really was, I should have busted the scene wide open. Screw this ridiculous space/time continuum limitation. Screw it.
“Now Amy,” Grandma Bee said, “tell us about your family. I know you have two school-aged sons, but what about brothers and sisters, you have one of each, don’t you?”
Looking down, and then back up, reeling from the words spoken out loud, I wondered how I was supposed to just drop what I was feeling and answer a perfectly reasonable question. But, I had been doing that my entire life. I was gifted at playing normal. It’s just too bad there wasn’t an AP class in high school for it. Clearing my throat, I fought the urge to answer in a dramatic tone, drawing off emotions that I couldn’t own in this crazy f-ed up scenario. “Yes ma’am, I have an older sister and a younger brother.”
“What do they do?” Granny asked.
“My sister is a flight attendant with United Airlines,” I answered, hoping that United really was a company in 1978. My first instinct was to whip out my iPhone under the tablecloth and Google When was United Airlines founded? But, since I couldn’t do that, I tried to act like I knew what I was talking about, also something I was quite accomplished at.
“A flight attendant?” Granny questioned, “What type of work is that?” You could tell by the tone of her voice that she was desperately hoping (so she could tell her bridge club on Monday) that my sister directed planes with flares, or had a job in the cockpit. Both would have been considered manly, like sports writing, given the time and place.
“Oh, I think you call it a stewardess,” I answered, like I was from a foreign country. “She serves drinks and food, and is responsible for the safety of the passengers.” I wanted to make sure that this specific group—Kimber’s parents and grandparents— understood that the job she did in the future was important and well-paid.
“Well, you Yankees sure do have crazy words for things!” Granddaddy said.
“I’ve never heard that term either,” Paw Paw chimed in, defending his Midwest roots.
“Oh,” I said, backpedaling. “It must be a new term, used just within the airline industry. Yeah, Kim just referred to her job that way recently, maybe the last time we talked.”
I carefully took my notebook out under the table and wrote, “When was United founded? When did stewardesses start being called flight attendants? How much was a new Airstream tra
iler in 1978? When did Granddaddy finally retire? … Am I still not right?”
“Oh, her name is Kim?” Mom asked while holding her poodle Cash like an infant. “That’s so nice.”
I could almost smell the artichoke dip.
“What about your brother?” Grandma asked, “What does he do?”
“Ri … I mean Greg buys properties—you know, houses, duplexes, small apartment complexes—fixes them up and either sells them or rents them.”
“That’s interesting, a good business plan,” Dad said.
“Yes,” I said. “He’s good with his hands and good with people, so it worked out to be a great thing for him.”
“Do either of them have children?” Mom asked.
“Kim does not …” I replied, anticipating the excitement my next statement would bring. “My brother and his wife have five kids.”
“Five?” Grandma said, looking impressed.
“Yes,” I said, “five.”
“How old are they?” Mom asked, a good question from someone who had a twelve-year-old, a ten-year old and an eight-year-old currently in her charge.
“Well, the oldest is nine and the youngest is three.”
This armed Granny with a story to tell for many Mondays in the future. “You mean to tell me,” she said with glee, “that your brother has five kids under the age of nine?”
“That’s correct,” I stated with satisfaction. “Of course, there’s a set of twins thrown in there, but, that’s right.”
This group could have never known that these five little people were their own direct descendants. If they had, it would have certainly changed their reaction from shock to delight … well, at least in some cases.
I wished desperately that I could have taken a napkin and drawn out the family tree as it stood in the future. Everybody would have been overcome with joy.
But for now, before the grandchildren and great-grandchildren were even a twinkle in anyone’s eye, they just wondered if Kim would be able to decide what she was going to wear on Monday morning. They wondered if Amy would ever grow out of her sports addiction and dial down the eye-bulge. And, they wondered if Rick would play football and take over Dad’s business when he was grown.
They probably weren’t wondering if we would have sex with some random people and provide them—collectively—with seven new family members.
“You know what I read in yesterday’s paper?” Dad said, thankfully changing the subject. “Target stores will be open today from noon until seven p.m.”
Everybody at the table gasped, including me, who had thought that Thanksgiving Day sales were part of my present and future, not my long-ago past.
“What?” Granny said. “How can they do that, who will even go?”
“And what about the employees’ families?” Paw Paw added. “How will they celebrate Thanksgiving?”
“Are you sure?” I said, questioning Dad about something in 1978, something I knew nothing about.
“Yep,” Dad said, “it was right there, in black-and-white ink.”
“What kind of store is that?” Grandma asked. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a Target?”
“I just know of one,” Mom said. “It’s on FM 1960.”
“What’s it like?” Grandma said, perhaps figuring it was better than sitting at the Thanksgiving table of doom.
“Well,” Mom said, “I’ve only been in there a couple of times … But, it’s like Kmart or Woolco, only more sterile.”
“It’s like a nicer, cleaner and higher-quality Walmart!” I blurted out before I stopped to think.
“A WHAT?” my mom said, looking at me like I had three heads.
“Oh, umm …” I answered, “I meant …” Hold it, was Walmart even a thing in 1978? How long had Target been around? What the hell was Woolco?
“Well,” I said, trying once again to be legit, “I was referring to a local store.”
“In Dayton?” Grandma said. “I never heard of it when we lived there, and we visited Susie in Dayton a couple of years ago and didn’t see it then either …”
“No, it’s not local to me …” I continued, working up a lie that couldn’t be refuted in the land of no-Google. “It’s local to my friend Kristi, who lives in Flint, Michigan.”
What was true was that the eleven-year-old Kristi would have lived in Flint in 1978. What wasn’t was the part about her shopping with her family at the world’s only Walmart.
Pulling my notebook back out, I added, “When did Walmart and Target start doing business? What is Woolco?” and “Ask Kristi where her family shopped in Flint.”
“God …” Granny said. “Flint, Michigan, that sounds awful!”
“I agree!” Mom added, with more than a single-serving of conviction in her voice. “That three months we spent in the north just about killed me.”
What in the hell was she talking about?
“You spent time up North?” I asked, trying to sound casual.
“Yes,” Mom said, rather dramatically, “Dick, Kim and I moved to Elyria, Ohio, in the summer of 1967 … it was the worst summer of my life.”
“What were you there for?” I asked, shocked that I hadn’t ever heard about this before.
“Well, Dick moved us up there for his job …” she stated, looking at Dad like he had signed them up for a harrowing, unsafe covered-wagon trip to Oregon Territory.
“Yes …” Dad said, not wanting to broach an already well-broached topic. “I was going to work in Cleveland for a year and then go to Purdue to get my master’s.”
“Your master’s?” I said, impressed and surprised.
“Yes,” Dad said with a resigned tone. “But it didn’t work out, and we moved back here, and we had Amy.”
As the topic got kicked around the table, I started doing the math in my head. If they had lived in Ohio in the summer of 1967 and I was born in April of 1968, there was every chance that I was conceived in the Midwest as opposed to the Tidelands Motel in Houston, within view of the Astrodome. That was the story I got one drunk evening in Galveston, my mom telling us more than she should have at the Holiday Inn Bar on the Seawall.
If I had been able to look at my iPhone, under the table, I would have pulled up a backward pregnancy calculator. Since I couldn’t, I just went ahead and asked, out loud, in person, “So … you guys must have been pregnant with Amy before you moved back home?”
It was a conspicuous and personal question, I got that, but I wanted to know.
“Well,” Dad said, “I’m not sure …”
“Either am I,” Mom said, looking at me, perhaps wondering why I could possibly care. “It could have gone either way.”
So, I woke up this morning, in 2014, a one hundred percent confirmed, native Texan, born and bred, but now, after this stunning revelation, in 19-freaking-78, I could have been bred in Ohio and born in Texas.
When Willie, the boys and I moved to Ohio in 2007, had I returned to not only the place of my father’s boyhood, but also to the land of my own conception?
Had the sex that formed me happened in Elyria, Ohio?
Did I need to drive up to the majestic capitol building in Austin, dramatically climb the stairs beneath the Lone Star flag and turn in my cowboy boots, my spurs, my Stetson, my skinny jeans, my crossover SUV, my love for legitimate, certified Tex-Mex and my preference for hot, humid weather?
And then, gasp, should I turn north, way freaking north, to Columbus (the one in Ohio, not the one west of Houston on I-10) and park in front of the Ohio Statehouse, the topless one with a missing dome, in sight of the nautical flag, and be issued white Reebok tennis shoes, a “Life is Good” ball cap, Mom jeans, a Chevy Astro van, a love of “chili” spiced with cinnamon served in a “three-way” on top of spaghetti, and a preference for icy, sub-zero temperatures?
In other words, should I buy a necklace made of freaking poisonous buckeye nuts?
Who was I?
“Boy, Earl Campbell sure was something on Monday night, wasn’t he?
” Gene chimed in, not getting what a big deal it was that people had not been transparent on where the sex had happened in 1967. “Four touchdowns and 199 yards as a rookie!”
“And we beat Miami 35-30!” Dad added with glee.
All this was lost on me, the football aficionado who would have normally reveled in the fact that future hall of famer Earl Campbell was just a rookie running back for the Houston Oilers—despite the fact that he had gone, inappropriately, to the University of Texas, I had long loved his smash-mouth running style, like John Riggins with a different helmet on.
The sum total of the table talk—about my young self, the origins of my life and trailer parks—made me question how I fit into this family, both in 1978 and 2014. It was so big, well, it was bigger than football.
“Speaking of football …” Granddaddy added, chuckling at the other two adult males, finally finding something everyone could agree on. “Let’s go see who is playing now.”
Chapter Eleven
FEEL THE BURN
After the guys exited, Grandma, Granny, Mom and I stuck around to clear off the table. I couldn’t help but think that in 2014 the men, especially the male host, would have been expected to help with the clean-up. It was good that Mom didn’t know anything about that yet—that women’s liberation would one day seep into the suburbs, along with cable television.
The Thanksgiving mess is apparently timeless, as is the awkwardness that goes along with in-laws, out-laws and kitchen clean-up. Mom was noticeably uncomfortable with not only me—the out-of-town stranger—helping, but also with the assistance of the two seniors. I got that, especially considering Granny’s comments about the meal. Even though we were blowing that, and every other meaningful topic, off and apparently never speaking of it again, it definitely added to the tension.
Not much was said outside of Bee, who continued to talk aimlessly. I think this was both her way of coping and a strong, under-the-radar statement: “This is family and we’re going to move on, no matter what happens.”
You Cannot Mess This Up Page 10
