You Cannot Mess This Up

by Amy Weinland Daughters

  The request didn’t shock me, because the memory of making drinks in the red tweed bar was vivid. As I got older it turned into a case of make one, drink some, make another, and drink more. That said, the forty-six-year-old mother in me was surprised. First, there was young Amy’s age and then her deft handling of the drink-making process. She had plainly done this numerous times, scooping the ice from the maker with an odd familiarity, carefully measuring out the precise amount of Johnnie Walker Red, and then the water. As clear as it was that she had done it before, her enthusiasm was equally as obvious. Mom wasn’t asking only because she needed somebody to fill her order, Amy liked doing the job. She liked it a lot.

  But, this was a ten-year-old kid, she was in the fourth grade, freaking elementary school. It was different than fetching a beer or even pouring wine … it was legit bartending. The only thing she didn’t do—and she would have given the opportunity—was to stick a cocktail sword through a couple of olives and fancy-cut a lime.

  Most unsettling, was that Little Amy was quenching the thirst of someone whose desire for another drink would affect the equilibrium of the family collectively and its individual members. It wouldn’t mean to, and maybe it really wouldn’t be anybody’s fault, but it certainly would throw things out of kilter.

  It wasn’t like it, the drinking, would lead to one single, life-altering dramatic moment when everything changed. Instead, it would lead to a long series of smaller dramatic moments that would grow huge in impact because nobody would ever address them. It wasn’t so much that nobody ever discussed the drinking, but nobody ever discussed what happened because of it.

  Watching my younger self mix a drink was a telling moment, it illustrated my confusing relationship with alcohol. I wasn’t afraid of it, here or in the future, but I should have been. The connection and the impact were both lost on Little Amy. I wished that I hadn’t seen it, or instead that it would have been just another harmless, meaningless trip down fairy-like memory lane, if there was such a thing.

  With the drink safely delivered to mom, Amy sat on the fireplace hearth, swinging her legs excitedly, humming what sounded like a Christmas carol. “Kids,” Mom said, scanning the room, “It’s late, you three need to get to bed.”

  “Yes,” Dad agreed, “Tell your grandparents and your cousin Mrs. Daughters good night and go on up.”

  Going around the room and kissing everyone, Little Amy paused longer with me, leaning in close, too close, but at least she had brushed her teeth this time. Loudly whispering, she asked, “Can you come and tuck me in?”

  I agreed with a simple nod. I longed to do it, in a way that I still don’t completely understand.

  Perhaps her request was life’s way of completing the delusion or fantasy with an exclamation point. Perhaps Little Amy could feel the direct connection between us—we were the same person, for the love of God. Or maybe she was just really needy … I got that. Instead, could it be that she wanted reassurance that her tennis-ball-inspired streak didn’t offend? That last bit came to mind, I presume, because of all the times as an adult I had done something ridiculous one night—an inevitable consequence of a personality that gets carried away when people start laughing—only to wake up the next morning in a panic about what everyone thought. Crap, I would lay in bed and wonder, I hope nobody was offended when I drank margaritas out of that crystal bowl with a huge velvet sombrero on, or why in the world did I think it was a good idea to reenact my own birth at Denny’s?

  After the kids went up, I looked down into my bourbon and water—I had asked for a rum and diet, my go-to drink if a cocktail was required. Not only did they not have rum here, they didn’t have a clue as to what diet anything was. In fact, this household seemed to be totally devoid of Coke products of any kind, or soda, or pop as they disturbingly like to say in southwest Ohio. Who in the hell would host Thanksgiving without a fridge pack of Diet Coke? I’ll tell you who … people in the ’70s who, while they don’t have Diet Coke, have an outside refrigerator full of Schlitz, Old Milwaukee, and Coors, the freaking Banquet Beer.

  I stopped to consider my trip upstairs to visit myself. People can generally be classified into two categories: Those who want to go back in time and those who would rather be launched into the future. I have always been passionately affiliated with the go-back people, not the forward thinkers. Hence my obsession with history, eBay, estate sales and my metal detector. Now I was faced with a situation that heretofore I would have only dreamed of … drooling at the thought of a visit to my childhood room. Yes, maybe this was all but a dream, and maybe I could have done without the layers and layers of adult drama I had previously known nothing about, but, this was getting good.

  Damn good.

  Taking a generous slug of the bourbon—I briefly wondered how many alcohols I had mixed with turkey and dressing over the past several hours—I began to feel warm and fuzzy. I worried about the effect this relaxed state would have on Little Amy. I also didn’t want to get sick in my parents’ third-floor bathroom.

  Who was I right now? Was I a forty-six-year-old mother of two—a person with maternal instincts—or merely a larger version of the little girl upstairs? And what in the world was I going to say to her? Then I thought of what Mary had said in the parking lot of the elementary school, “You can’t mess this up, no matter what …”

  With that in mind, I rose carefully and strode across the room, creating enough friction with my fibrous pantsuit to provide electricity to a mobile home park. Placing my drink on the black bar countertop, I hesitated, looking up to review the bottles lined up neatly, the padded brown vinyl ice bucket and the shimmering glassware. I wasn’t going to stop drinking in the future, no, I wasn’t, but I might think about it differently.

  “I’m going up to say goodnight to Amy …” I said, semi-confidently.

  The rest of the adults smiled as Grandma Bee emoted, “Looks like the two Amys are going to be friends, friends for life …” I had always sworn that Grandma had some sort of innate wisdom that allowed her to see things the rest of us couldn’t. Yes, maybe she talked—with a sense of amazement that made no sense—about how the plastic patio chairs looked like real metal, but weren’t. And OK, maybe she did make us stand away from our very first microwave oven so our personals wouldn’t be radiated, zapping our fertile gardens. All that to one side, she may have been the most intuitive person I have ever met.

  Making my way through the formal living room and up the second half-flight of steps, I paused in the game room, trying to determine which of the two bedrooms Amy was in. Luckily she had left her door open and I could see her busily moving about, preparing for my arrival. It was the room to the right of the bathroom, the only carpeted space in the entire house which didn’t have harvest-gold shag. Instead, it was adorned in a light-green pile. The wallpaper and carpet were the only combination that had already been in place when Mom and Dad had purchased the house. The paper was green with huge white and pink flowers smeared all over it, screaming something inaudible, but disturbing. There was a built-in desk immediately to the right of the door, with bookshelves above it. Furniture dotted the room, all stuff that had been our great-grandmother’s, green and hand-painted with flowers. The pieces were beautiful: a bed frame, a dressing table and an armoire. I seriously had never noticed how exquisite it all was, wasted in this messy room that I hadn’t picked up in many days.

  Little Amy was sitting on her bed, smiling wildly as I entered. “This is my room!” she stated with glee. No kidding, I thought, hoping Miss Obvious would have something more earth-shattering to add. As much as I wanted to do this, it was clear that she wasn’t going to make it easy. “Let me show you my collections,” she said with an almost pained expression. It was a plan she had probably concocted as soon as I had agreed to come up, or, in her heart of hearts, as soon as I had been thrown over the threshold of the front door.

  She began with her collection of dice, a real treasure. She had dice from Las Vegas, miniature dice, and then
dice she had swiped from the Yahtzee set and the Clue game. They were all different colors and sizes, proudly displayed in a glass, brass-trimmed, hand-etched case from, where the hell else, Mexico. It was, apparently, the Ikea of the 1970s.

  “They are great,” I said, secretly admiring this specific collection, as I wished I still had it. She sensed my appreciation, and though she should have been shocked that somebody else in the world, anybody, was interested in a collection of plastic dice, she seemed wholly satisfied.

  She was so much so, it wouldn’t have surprised me if she had laid back triumphantly in her bed, puffing a cigar. “Yes,” she might add victoriously. “These are the finest dice known to mankind.”

  We moved on to a shoe box half-filled with dirty bottle caps, an album of used stamps, a paper lunch sack full of matchbooks—a safety hazard—and some proof sets of coins that Dad had started giving us every Christmas. Each collection was explained in laborious detail, with Little Amy wide-eyed, arms and hands waving wildly about. As her tone became higher-pitched —if that was even humanly possible—we entered her closet. The floor was covered with Barbie clothing, a Fisher Price castle, a half-cocked Super Perfection game and the fold-out stage for the Donny and Marie TV show. After nearly wiping out on an upside-down Simon game, I stopped to see her pull out what looked like a plastic locker with sports figures splashed all over it.

  Now, here was a real treat, the baseball card collection. This must have been before I had the brilliant late-night idea of gluing a bunch of the cards inside of my closet walls—a move I had paid for dearly on a couple of different levels. Not only did I devalue the collection, incurring my own regret—I devalued the actual structure, incurring my Mom’s wrath.

  Plopping down on her bed to inspect the box, again Little Amy didn’t seem amazed by my obvious enthusiasm. She was just happy, very happy. Guiding me through each subsection of the box, which had a badly placed sticker next to it detailing its contents in misspelled wording, she nearly peed her pants when she arrived at her (OK, our) favorite compartment … the coveted “uniformed catchers” collection.

  Each of these twenty-five or so cards depicted, in gleaming color, on not very glossy card stock, a catcher in his full pads. In most cases, the catcher appeared with facemask on and if not, it was held firmly in the non-gloved hand. This was a critical difference if you were going to properly sort the cards. In age, they dated from the ’50s to the ’70s. The biggest portion came from the 1978 Topps release that Rick and I had collected so faithfully just that year. These were exquisite. Yes, even though Little Amy was hard to digest as a full meal, she was a genius when it came to baseball cards.

  She went on to explain how she sometimes stayed up late into the night sorting the cards according to a batter’s RBI or a pitcher’s ERA, in the appropriate ascending or descending order. I was immediately impressed not only that she understood what the acronyms meant, but that she was already mesmerized by statistical rankings. Oh, what I wouldn’t do to show her the joys of sorting stats on an Excel spreadsheet. It would change her life. Literally.

  As she returned the box to the back of the closet, I considered how it might have seemed odd to some, well, many, in sterile ’70s suburbia where everyone had a carefully crafted, well-defined role to play, that a ten-year-old girl not only collected the cards, but that she so enthusiastically sorted them. I also wondered if my life, based on my interests alone, would have taken a different path if I had been born in say, 1998.

  Little Amy was a dichotomy. On the one hand, there was the bright orange Malibu Barbie camper and the Sunshine Family treehouse complete with the creepy dad’s facial hair, while on the other there was the Major League Baseball mini-pennant collection and a pile of old sports pages, with the betting line for each Houston Astros game carefully circled.

  Yes, for every Barbie there was a corresponding figure from the Civil War battlefield set. And, for every Nancy Drew book, there was a copy of Pro Football Digest.

  Who asked for what amongst the piles of items that were thrown about the room and closet? Because at ten, she wasn’t running out and buying this stuff on her own. Did she—or me —want both sets of things, or was one encouraged while the other was tolerated? Was the obvious diversity of the items celebrated or talked about quietly in the dark corners of the house? Was she the little girl they had always wanted, or was she the one they weren’t sure what to do with?

  And how did she feel about herself? Did she even have any thoughts like that, or was she just living in the moment, happy because she was totally unaware that there was a need for anything like that? Was there a need for anything like that?

  How did they handle it when she drew pictures of army medals and worked hard to memorize each military rank and resulting insignia? Did they treat her differently? Did she feel different about herself? Who was she, and how was all this going to affect the me that we would become?

  And why couldn’t I remember the answer to any of these questions?

  As she rifled around in the closet looking for another treasure to bedazzle me with, it hit me. I had two kids back at home. Did I treat them like who they were, or instead did I treat them like who I thought they were? Was it their reality or my expectations? And though setting a high bar for moral standards and building character were certainly good things, how much should my expectations have to do with who they became? When, if ever, do people find themselves if they’ve had somebody else tell them who they are for all of their formative years? And, which is better: finding yourself or taking somebody else’s word for it?

  And what business did I have questioning my own parents’ intentions if I couldn’t even be sure of my own?

  Were these the questions that Mary said I would have?

  As I was becoming completely convinced that I should have taken another shot of the noxious bourbon before coming upstairs, Amy burst out of the closet with a big Barbie head attached to a pink base. The almost sinister looking item, with strange fixated eyes, was the Barbie Beauty Center where aspiring hairstylists could work their magic. With a wild look in her eyes she said, “Look, I really messed this thing up!”

  The Barbie head was all jacked-up indeed: The hair was sticking out at strange angles, goopy and frazzled. Some sort of permanent red color had been added to her lips and eyes, not in a good way, while other random features were drawn on her face with an ink pen. Barbie was wearing a collar that had been taken off of a stuffed animal, and the tray where her torso rested was filled with Hot Wheels, bobby pins, crayons, a Kazoo and a Chinese finger trap.

  “I used my chemistry set to do her hair!” Amy said with an almost maniacal laugh. “I call it my secret super-duper magical hair potion …”

  “That’s AWESOME!” I gushed. “Did it foam up and smoke when you put it on her hair?”

  Well, finally something had surprised her. She stopped cold and looked at me, stunned. “Yes, it did …” she said, with her eyes as big as checkers. “I thought it was going to blow up …”

  “That’s amazing!” I said. “I wish I could have seen it!”

  Smilingly broadly, perhaps the biggest smile I’d ever seen, she said, “Me, too.”

  Suddenly, we could hear Mom yelling up, “Lights out up there!” Amy took the Barbie head and hurled it unceremoniously into her closet. Though this didn’t bother me, if Will or Matthew had done something even remotely similar, I would have thrown a hissy fit.

  Yes, it had just been confirmed, again, on my little field trip. I was and I am a hypocrite.

  “Can you stay … until I turn out my lights?” Amy asked.

  “Of course I can.” I didn’t want the moment to slip away to where it was headed, forever-land.

  Climbing into bed, she swiped the wide variety of “other” items off the top and tucked herself in the pale pink sheets and matching checkered bedspread. Leaning over to her bedside table, she pulled out two Bibles.

  “I like to read the Bible every night before I go to bed,” sh
e said with a great deal of solemnity in her voice. I nodded as she carefully displayed the two books. I sat down on the edge of the mattress as she began to explain that she “liked the way the white Bible looked, but she couldn’t understand it, so she read the green one every night instead.”

  “The white one I got for memorizing all the books of the Bible at church,” she said. “It has my name on it in gold letters and a zipper around it with a cross on it. It’s cool if you like to zip up your Bible like this,” she said while zipping and unzipping the sacred scriptures repeatedly.

  I didn’t reply, so she continued, “The white one is a King James Bible,” she said, using the same knowing tone as when she’d described the tambourines for the Gong Show, “and the green one is the Living Bible … it’s hard to understand too, but I can read some of it.”

  Turning to the first page, she showed me a vividly colored picture depicting Jesus walking with two children. “I love this picture,” she said with a far-off tone in her voice. “I like how Jesus looks like he really loves the kids. He looks so nice. I really like how he’s holding the boy’s hand and how he’s got his hand on the girl’s shoulder. It makes me feel good.”

  Turning another couple of pages, she came to a picture of a young shepherd boy sitting in a field at night, looking into the stars, with a lamb sitting next to him. “This is something I read almost every night,” she said, pointing to the words on the accompanying page. “Can I read it to you?”