Nuclear Family

by Susanna Fogel

  —Polka dots: Aurelia Spruce is terrified of polka dots. It would be great if you could avoid wearing any polka dots while visiting our home. This includes socks. Please also take a second to check your clothing for stains, as a stain often resembles a polka dot.

  That’s it! We know how busy you guys are (that’s the thing about having rock stars for friends!) so if you don’t have time to do the above, don’t sweat it; you can have virtual hang time with our girl. To add her on Skype, just search her name (“AureliaSpruceMavis”). She’s the second one who comes up in Brooklyn.

  Much love,

  Team Kivowitz-Finch

  (Rachel, Kevin, Aurelia Spruce, and Dachsund Faustus)

  Your Grandma Rose Has Some News about Her Nemesis

  Julie, Give me a call sometime. I could use some cheering up. Maureen died. No one here liked her, but it reminded us our days are numbered.

  What happened is a mystery. The fellow with the tattoos from the front desk went to her room to fix her dishwasher and found her dead on the couch. She was in the middle of watching that movie about all the bridesmaids. Maybe she died laughing.

  Your Sister Would Like to Discuss Your Dad’s Facebook Page

  uhhhhhh did you notice dads outfit in his new FB photo? im not even talking about the part where hes wearing timberlands with an orange fly fishing hat (????) but um look at his shorts cause i think you can kinda see part of his junk hanging out the left side?????!!!!! am i hallucinating???? omg i cant even type right now im laughin so hard but seriously WTF do we do about this situation? i mean the man has a right to know hes puttin his shit on blast but THAT CONVERSATION IS SO AWKWARD. Also um am I a pervert for even noticing dad’s dick lol

  ugh I miss u and wanna tell u about this guy i might be in love with so call me when u can … he may or may not be my landlord cuz i’m a fuckin idiot haha.

  xx Jane

  Your Uncle Figured a Mass E-mail Was the Easiest Way to Discuss His Sexuality

  Greetings, Family Feller!!

  I’m not sure where to start, so I figured I’d do as I usually do and let science do the talking. Most of you know Newton’s Third Law of Motion—for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. I’ve always found it to be true about life in general. Every time something bad happens, something good is just around the corner.

  First comes the bad news: I won’t be making it back to Boston for Thanksgiving this year. Ron, my roommate, has been having some trouble with his blood pressure lately, and he collapsed at a dress rehearsal with his students on Sunday night and ended up in the ER. I’ve decided to stay in Denver and have dinner at the hospital with him on Thursday. Talk about a turkey of a day!

  But as Newton’s Law would have it, something equally exciting happened …

  Ron proposed to me last night. We’ve actually been a couple since 2009.

  Whew. That felt good to just come out (so to speak!) and say! I’ll start at the beginning: I’m sure you all remember when Ron first moved into the spare bedroom of my condo and I introduced him as a new friend I’d met at a teachers’ conference who was going through a divorce and getting back on his feet. All of that was technically true, but I fudged some of those details. When we met at the conference, Ron was still married to his ex-wife, but the reason they got divorced is that we fell in love there. I can’t explain it except to say we both felt like the other person woke us up, even though we didn’t even realize we had been sleeping our whole lives. As you know, I’d spent most of my life being pretty overweight, and I always blamed that for why I felt so strange around women when people would try to set me up on dates. No matter how nice a gal it was, I felt like I was standing outside my own body watching myself. I was always stuck in my own head, wondering why my heart wasn’t feeling anything. With Ron, I suddenly stopped thinking. My body and my mind became one and I just knew what to do. Ron felt the same way. That’s when we both realized we were gay, and Ron decided to leave his wife back in Salt Lake.

  Of course, I wanted to call all of you right away, but Ron asked me to wait to tell anyone until he could tell his parents, because that was a funky situation. Ron comes from a pretty traditional Mormon family, and as I’m sure you know, in that religion, being gay is a real no-no. His parents didn’t even approve of him being a drama teacher, and they kept telling him to work on his marriage to Jeanette and try to patch that up. It just never seemed like the right time, and before we knew it, years were going by and no one knew the truth. But now, enough is enough. If Ron’s health scare has taught us anything, it’s that life is too short not to be honest about who you are and who you love. We decided to call that “Ron and Ken’s First Law of Emotion!”

  Have a great Thanksgiving. I’ll miss all of you and our holiday traditions, especially the “food coma walk” Julie and Jane and I always take to CVS after dinner to get our ceremonial bottle of Pepto-Bismol! Hopefully next year, Ron will come back east with me and we can show him how it’s done. Julie and Jane, he knows you girls have always been like the daughters I never had, and I hope you’ll start to see Ron as another uncle now too … not just the guy who’s crashing in my extra bedroom! (Another detail we fudged—that’s not where he sleeps.)

  For whoever takes over for me on pumpkin-pie duty, my secret is I whip the egg whites before I add them to the batter. Ron taught me that. Hey, Mom, you always told me to find a wife who can cook!

  Love,

  Ken

  PS—I’ll try to give you a ring Friday when you’re all together and tell you about the proposal! It was really romantic. Ron had one of his male nurses (who has to be James Franco’s long-lost twin!) page me over the PA at the hospital to ask for my hand in marriage. Ron actually had him use the phrase “hand in marriage”! He has such a flair for drama. No wonder his students win at the Shakespeare & Company Monologuefest every year!

  Your Sister Just Got Your Uncle’s E-mail about His Sexuality

  OMG THIS EXPLAINS EVERYTHINGGGGGGGGG

  so not only is uncle Ken not a virgin but he is like having crazy ass sex. ahahahaha omg I didn’t mean ASS SEX I meant the sex he probably has with ron is crazy-ass … but ummmm i guess the other thing isn’t exactly a lie … ok jane this is when u STOP TALKING.

  Sorry i am like so out of it—I was up all night with my friend bree who gave birth to a baby girl this morning!!!!!!! Her name is kaylinn.

  OMG OMG OMG WAIT!!!! I have told u about Bree! she is that girl I emailed u about from vegas! the one I wanted to hire to take Kens virginity back in the day hahaha. thank god you said no. she doesn’t even do that anymore. Now she works @ the courtyard marriott. anyway we have kept in touch ever since that wknd we hung out in Vegas and she just asked me if I wanna be kaylinn’s godmother. I told her yes as long as she promises not to die because u know me I cant even keep a plant alive LOL. Which is ironic cause I am starting to think i might want to be an EMT???!!

  Anyway did u write back to Kens email? Should we get him flowers or something? Or wait maybe he will take that as an insult cause its like, HERE YOURE GAY HAVE SOME FLOWERS hahaha. let me know what u think.

  Also let me know how u are. last time we talked u sounded really depressed w/ job stuff and feeling like u had wasted your life and were getting old etc. I keep telling u move to Arizona! YOU WOULD LIVE LIKE A QUEEN HERE. Srsly i have so many acres on my property and I work in fucking TJ Maxx. You cd get like a mansion haha. Youd just have to deal with the fact that you would hate all yr neighbors cause they all have guns and I know you are against that big time.

  Luv,

  Jane

  Your Grandma Rose Just Got Your Uncle’s E-mail about His Sexuality

  Julie, I don’t understand the world. Why would my son air his dirty laundry on the computer for everyone to read? At least the news is good. I don’t care who that kid goes to bed with as long as it’s someone. So I guess it’s just regular laundry.

  Your Dad Just Learned about Your Uncle’s Sexuality from Social Media


  Julie,

  I noticed on Facebook that my former brother-in-law has decided to spare us any further charades about his sexuality.

  Unfortunately, revelations at Ken’s advanced age are bittersweet. At fifty-eight, he has somewhere between five and forty years to enjoy an authentic life, depending on his physical health. Given his current BMI, I estimate he will fall on the lower end of that spectrum.

  Perhaps this could have been avoided if Ken had been responsive to a leading question I asked him in the late 1980s. While watching the summer Olympics at our house on Hope Street, your uncle compared the diver Greg Louganis to a Greek god. In response, I suggested that Ken too might favor the ancient Greek style of relations. At the time, he was unamused.

  It seems now that Ken merely feared my penetrating insight, if you’ll forgive the innuendo.

  Dad

  Your Mother’s Goddaughter, Who Did Everything Right, Is Feeling a Little Lonely

  Hey Julie,

  My mom just forwarded me the e-mail from your uncle Ken … WHOA.

  When I read it, I got so paranoid about all the offensive things we probably said to him when we were little without even realizing it. Like that weekend our parents all went down to DC for the Clinton inauguration and Ken was babysitting us and we made up a multiple-choice survey about sex and pretended it was a homework assignment (even though he knew we didn’t go to the same school, so I’m sure he realized that was bullshit). The questions were like, “Check yes if you have ever had sex with a midget.”

  Jesus, I’m cringing just trying to remember what else we said on that questionnaire. I know I used to call things “gay” and “queer” all the time, so I probably did that. We just had no fucking idea back then. Crazy how different things were not that long ago.

  Actually, I guess the ’90s were a really long time ago. For some reason, no matter how many years go by, I always think the ’90s were ten years ago.

  Fuck, when did we get so old?

  It just didn’t seem like there were a lot of rules about anything back then, you know? And now suddenly there are so many. Obviously I’m biased because I was a kid then and now I’m on the other side, but it just feels like being a parent has gotten insanely complicated. You’ll deal with this too whenever you have kids, but I can’t tell you how many rules there are—at least in Park Slope. At first I didn’t mind because the whole thing was new and exciting and it was like a fun challenge to do everything right, but after a while it gets really exhausting. You just end up constantly being paranoid you’re going to fuck something up. Like last month, Aurelia’s teacher sent her home because I packed her lunch in a plastic bag and they don’t want her setting a bad example for her classmates about the environment. And then a little boy in her class was expelled for sexual assault because he pulled down his pants during recess. And Aurelia’s best friend is a little girl named “Woven.”

  That’s not a rule obviously, I just thought you’d find that amusing because you find everything amusing. You know who doesn’t find anything amusing? The mothers at a Brooklyn co-op nursery school.

  Sorry to vent. I really did just want to respond to the Ken-coming-out thing. Let me know if you ever come through NY—would love to see you. And there’s plenty of room for you to crash with us—Kevin’s been working really late and traveling a lot, so I’m alone in our place most of the time. I mean, I’m hanging with Aurelia, but it’s not like I can talk to her about politics or the sex dreams I’ve been having about Christoph Waltz (does that make me a self-loathing Jew or what?).

  Love,

  Rach

  PS—Just had another flashback to that weekend when we were little and you came to stay with us when your parents went down to New York to meet with the adoption agency about adopting Jane. Remember we were obsessed with how they should adopt a “foreign sister” so we’d have to teach her everything about American culture? God, we were such little weirdos!

  Your Mom Has Mixed Feelings about the Technological Revolution

  Honey,

  Thanks for making all the travel arrangements for Ken’s wedding using Expedia.com and AirBedandBreakfast.com. I’m glad we’ll get a chance to make some new memories in Florida—I still have nightmares about that family vacation we took to Palm Beach right before your dad and I decided to split up. I barely even remember him being there with us, between all his phone calls and his head buried in that computer. This time, we’ll all be looking up and around at the beautiful scenery! And I won’t have to roast alligator sausages all by myself.

  I do have to admit, I felt a little guilty about not using my travel agent for our trip. I’ve always really liked Roz personally. But as Loni reminded me, this doesn’t mean I can’t still be friendly with Roz or cohost meet-ups with her for the Democratic Party, like we did during the Obama campaign. And she may not even find out I used the internet to reserve my trip. I was a little concerned she would, because I remember an episode of Law & Order: SVU where a male travel agent hacked into all those websites, but in his case he had a sinister plot to figure out where single women were planning to go on their vacations so he could kidnap and sexually abuse them. I think it’s safe to say Roz doesn’t have any interest in that! And she has a new baby grandson, Ezra, so I would imagine she’s (pleasantly) distracted these days.

  I’ve attached a picture of Ezra.

  I also wanted to let you know a piece of sad news: Uncle Ken called me last night to say that Ron’s family has changed their RSVPs. They won’t be coming to the wedding. They’re very observant Mormons, as you know, and decided after some hemming and hawing that it would be disloyal to their church to attend the ceremony, since they don’t support same-sex marriage. Obviously this is very painful news for Ron, who feels deeply connected to them despite the differences in their religious beliefs. But as he put it himself—being a drama teacher—the show must go on. I told Ken if there’s anything we can do to help, just let us know. I’m sure if we all just circle around Ron with our love, he’ll feel welcomed into a new family that will support him unconditionally.

  On the bright side, I do have some good news to share … Loni just helped me hook up “Netflix” for my television! And I still have my cable box. I can’t believe how much entertainment is at my fingertips! I just wish I’d gotten around to this earlier, so I could have started working my way through all the programs years ago. I haven’t even made it past all the As yet. But I did discover an interesting series from Sweden called AAAAA14, about a woman who was cloned in a laboratory. The star of it reminded me of one of the actresses you wrote about last month in your article “Celebs Who Have Sexy Resting Face.”

  Love,

  Mom

  Your Dad Discusses the Optimal Family Vacation

  Julie,

  I enjoyed your piece for the Huffington Post on celebrity tattoos. In particular, I appreciated the reference to Norse mythology in discussing Amanda Peet’s ankle. Your efforts to make your day job, no matter how unstimulating, at least a little nutritious for the reader are admirable.

  I also noticed on your sister’s Facebook page that you two are planning to attend your uncle’s wedding in Florida next month. You may recall our wonderful family vacation there in the early 1990s. Perhaps it was the fertile vegetation of the Caribbean, but that week was a particularly fertile period for my work as well—it was there that I authored my groundbreaking piece on Tourette’s syndrome for the New England Journal of Medicine.

  To this day, that trip remains one of the more productive vacations I’ve taken.

  Love,

  Dad

  Your Grandma Rose Is Really Looking Forward to Her Son’s Gay Beach Wedding

  Julie, I don’t know what to pack for Key West. The wedding invitation said “beach attire,” but old ladies don’t have any of that anymore. We cover up our bods. And you probably heard Ron’s family isn’t coming at all. Poor kid. I just don’t understand the Mormons. What kind of man wants more than one wife? Every man I’v
e met would tell you one is plenty.

  Your Mom Just Discovered Breaking Bad

  Hi sweetie,

  I wanted to thank you for taking the time to call and walk me through how to use Netflix. Now that I think about it, it makes a lot more sense that I shouldn’t have to watch hundreds of hours of television in alphabetical order just to get to the program I actually want to watch! I was starting to feel tyrannized!

  But the good news is that while I was “in the dark,” I discovered a great series. It’s called Breaking Bad. Have you seen it? It’s a story about a high-school science teacher, his relationship with his family, who he cares about very much, and the powerful bond he forms with a younger man from his neighborhood in New Mexico whose parents were not as loving. It’s a show about parenthood. Actually, that’s not the only focus of the show. There’s another big one …

  The desert scenery. Watching each episode, I couldn’t help but be transported back to my early thirties, when I traveled to New Mexico with Dad, who had a medical conference there. It was just before I discovered I was pregnant with you, and I still remember roaming around Taos, tasting some wonderful green chili, and finding my favorite topaz earrings at a small kiosk. I talked to the shopkeeper for hours about her son, a professional boxer. I also bought a small stone in the shape of my “spirit animal,” the badger.

  The show touches on some other storylines as well, but I found those less interesting.