Family and Other Catastrophes

by Alexandra Borowitz

  Lauren

  “How late are you going to be working?” Lauren had her Cunt Magazine blog open while Matt lay beside her in bed.

  “I don’t know. Late.”

  “I’m probably going to sleep pretty soon.”

  “Just let me just finish this post, and then I’ll go to bed.”

  He perched his bony chin on her shoulder to read her blog. She shrugged him off. “That hurts.”

  “Yikes, sorry.”

  Lauren typed furiously, trying not to think about the fact that he was looking at every letter on her screen. His face wasn’t pressed against her anymore, but she could still feel his limp yet overbearing presence behind her.

  “How about we cuddle after you’re done?” he asked.

  She flinched. “Could you please? I’m trying to work.”

  “Fine, I just thought it would be nice to cuddle.”

  “We’ll cuddle later. This article is really important.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “Misogyny in SpongeBob Squarepants.”

  “Huh,” he said, scratching his chin. “You mean the show about the yellow sponge with the annoying laugh?”

  “Yes, the one I won’t let Ariel watch.”

  “Oh, sorry, I didn’t know you had a problem with it. I’ve let him watch it before.”

  “Every time with you, Matt,” she sighed. “Anyway, if you must know, this article is going to examine how SpongeBob Squarepants features no good female role models for girls and nonbinary femme children, while it contributes to problematic stereotypes. Sandy the squirrel? Classism. Pearl the whale? Fatphobia, that one is obvious. Mrs. Puff? More fatphobia, plus she’s a woman who teaches at a driving school and constantly gets into car accidents. There’s the episode where Mr. Krabs practically offers her money for sex. And there are no characters of color, by the way.”

  “Aren’t they just fish? Can they be of any race?”

  “Okay, maybe I won’t write that part, but the rest stands.”

  “Plus SpongeBob is yellow.”

  “Could you please?”

  “I don’t understand why you’re so upset about it, is all. It’s just a cartoon show.”

  “Everything is just something else. Marital rape used to be just sex.”

  “Sweetheart, you can’t compare marital rape to SpongeBob.”

  “Oh, I don’t have your permission? You’re telling me what I can compare SpongeBob to? I’m on my last nerve, Matt, seriously.” She was somehow yelling and whispering at the same time.

  “Sorry. I’ll leave you alone.” He headed for the nursery. Moments later, Lauren heard Ariel squealing, Mia growling and Matt imitating a dinosaur.

  She heard her phone’s cat-meow ringtone. It was Kayla, the cofounder of Cunt.

  “Hey,” she said when Lauren answered. “How’s the wedding week going?”

  “My sister is a needy mess, my brother is a raving misogynist, my mother is a fatphobic piece of shit and weddings are obsolete structures of white colonization. But what else is new?” She waited for the inevitable laugh or some validation of her cutting wit, but Kayla’s tone was cold.

  “I was actually calling you about your blog.”

  “Sorry I’m late with the SpongeBob post. I’m totally ripping apart that show.” Lauren fondly remembered the late nights in Kayla’s Bushwick apartment when they were in their midtwenties, smoking pot and drinking cheap wine, coming up with the brilliant ideas that started Cunt Magazine, like their debut post “My Clitoris Is Better Than Your Penis, George Bush.”

  “You may want to put that on pause. We need to talk about that hashtag you created a couple weeks back.”

  “Which one?”

  “#freeyourvaginasgirls.”

  “What about it?”

  “Well, it looks like we’ve found ourselves in a bit of a PR debacle. A bunch of hebephile rights’ activists have co-opted the hashtag to get thirteen-year-old girls to post vagina shots on Twitter. And now we’re being blamed for it.”

  “Hebephiles?”

  “They’re pedophiles who prefer preteens and teenagers to children. They’ve been doing a lot of their so-called activism on Twitter, and now they’re using your hashtag.”

  “Fuck that. Anyone in their right mind would know that I meant #freeyourvaginasgirls as a protest against feminine hygiene products that shame women for their natural aromas.”

  “I know what your intention was. But to make matters worse, there’s a well-known transgender blogger who isn’t particularly happy with your use of the word feminine hygiene or your association of vaginas with girls. You know better than anyone that not all women have vaginas, and not all vaginas belong to women.”

  “Kayla, are you mad at me?”

  Kayla paused. “Mad? No, I’m—well, if anything, I’m a little disappointed. I mean, coming from you. Where is the nonbinary and trans representation?”

  “I’m sorry, but... I wrote that article from the heart. It represented something that I’ve struggled with my entire life—being ostracized for how my vulva tastes, smells, looks...”

  “Oh, please don’t say vulva—it grosses me out.”

  “What I’m saying is that girls...or anyone who has a vagina...should free themselves from these oppressive and unsafe products. I mean, come on, you were the one who performed ‘My Vagina Tastes Like Indignity, Bill Clinton’ at the Vassar spoken word contest.”

  “Oh shit. Don’t remind me.”

  “Remind you of what? The best damn poem you’ve ever written?”

  “I think we’re getting off track here. I know you want Cunt to change the world, and that’s great, but in the meantime we need to make sure we stay afloat. I know you didn’t mean to offend transgender people, but that’s what’s happening, and now we have to deal with the hebephiles. And this is happening only weeks after, well, you know—”

  “Oh, that’s completely unfair to—”

  “It’s pertinent, Lauren. It was another hashtag.”

  “I know it pissed people off, but I still don’t see what was wrong with the hashtag #killwhitey.”

  Kayla sighed. “As a white person, it’s cultural appropriation for you to try to kill whitey, even just in word form. That’s not your struggle.”

  “Well, what am I supposed to do about the SpongeBob article?”

  “Look. You know I love your writing. You’re a rock star. But I’m going to have to put you on leave. I have to think about Cunt.”

  Emily

  “This Janice chick is so fucking hot,” Jason said. “Just look at her.”

  He and Emily were sitting at the kitchen counter, watching Home Shopping Network on the mini TV. Jason had a bottle of red wine open and was refilling his glass. On TV a middle-aged blonde woman was modeling a rainbow-colored poncho. “I’d really like to rip that cape thing right off her and—”

  Emily turned off the TV.

  “Hey!” he said. “What did you do that for?”

  “It seemed like the right thing to do.”

  Lauren came in and plopped down on a stool. “I seriously need a drink.”

  “You got it.” Jason pulled down a wineglass from the cabinet and filled it. Lauren knocked it back. “Damn, this is good. Where did you get it?”

  “I found it in the back of Mom and Dad’s liquor cabinet. They’ve been holding out on us. Want some, Em?”

  “Oh, no thanks.” She instinctively put her hand over her belly, then slipped it away behind her back. Hopefully Jason was too drunk to notice.

  “Why not?”

  “I’m on a diet.”

  “You were drinking two days ago. Now you’re on a diet?” He pointed at her with his glass.

  “I gained weight since then.”

  “Since two days ago?”

  “Yeah.�
�

  He turned to Lauren. “No eating disorder comments from you? That’s weird.”

  “I’m tired.” She shrugged.

  Jason refilled Lauren’s wine. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m in trouble with Cunt.”

  “Story of my life,” he said, a giddy glint in his eye. She didn’t look amused. “In all seriousness, what could you have possibly done? As much as I find you annoying as shit sometimes, I can at least credit you with being the least racist, most feminist person I know.”

  Lauren exhaled deeply and took a sip of wine. “Basically, Kayla doesn’t care if we change the world. She just wants to make sure we stay in business. Who cares about business? Who cares about reputation? I shouldn’t have to apologize for something just because other people took it the wrong way.”

  “Didn’t you force your professor at Vassar to publicly apologize for his use of the word overweight?” Emily asked.

  “Yes, because the correct term is people of size if said by someone who isn’t a person of size themselves. I can say fat because I am fat. This particular professor was thin, so he had to use the correct term.”

  “I don’t see why it mattered since he was just describing Henry VIII,” Emily said.

  Jason turned to Emily. “Why are you in such a shitty mood?”

  “I know you guys are both going to laugh at me for this, but I can’t help feeling like David’s faking a bruised tailbone to shut down the wedding.”

  “Has he said anything to make you believe that?” Lauren asked.

  “No, but... I don’t know, it’s just the kind of thing that would happen to me.”

  “Nothing like that ever happens to you.”

  Steven and Marla came in, back from their dinner and late-night movie date. Steven was wearing pressed khakis and a powder-blue Oxford shirt. Marla was swathed in an elaborate arrangement of paisley scarves and beaded necklaces that obscured whatever outfit she was wearing underneath.

  “Hello, hello,” she said, ever-so-slightly tipsy.

  “We just went to a new Malaysian restaurant, which was about as Malaysian as I am,” Steven said, shaking his head. “What a joke. And as for the movie, I maintain that nothing decent has been made in this country past 1977. Have you ever heard of this woman, Melissa McCarthy? Why is she famous?”

  “Join the party,” Jason said, raising the bottle.

  “What are you drinking?” Marla said.

  “Some wine I found. Hope you don’t mind.”

  She examined the bottle, then threw back her head in horror. “Oh my God!”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “This is the Château Lafite Rothschild!”

  “Look, Mom, I’ll buy you another bottle if it’s a big deal.”

  “You could never afford this, Jason. It was a gift from my father for our twentieth wedding anniversary.”

  “I wonder what wine Aunt Lisa got,” Jason snickered.

  “Aunt Lisa and Uncle Larry never made it to twenty years because she’s a clinical narcissist.” Marla put her hands on her hips.

  “I was fucking with you, Mom.”

  “You really need to cut down your drinking, Jason,” Steven said, releasing his wallet and multiple key rings from his baggy pants pockets, then placing them in a dish on the counter. “You’ve been drunk every single night since you arrived. Do you think WalkShare is ever going to get off the ground if the founder is drinking nonstop?”

  “That’s not why it isn’t getting off the ground,” Emily said.

  “All the greatest start-up founders drink during the workday,” Jason said. “If I want to have a drink when I’m not even working, I don’t see why you should care.”

  “That’s easy for you to say, Jason,” Steven said. “You’re never working!”

  “I can’t believe you would fucking go there, Dad. Just because I didn’t wind up becoming a lawyer or a doctor or whatever other bullshit career path you would have preferred doesn’t mean I don’t work. I’m sure everyone said the same thing about Bill Gates.”

  “At least Bill Gates got into Harvard,” Marla said, mostly to Steven.

  “The only reason anyone goes to Harvard is to be able to tell people they went to Harvard,” Jason said. “Exhibit A—Mom.”

  “All right, that’s enough,” Marla said.

  “I can’t believe you’re getting so pissed off about a bottle of wine.” Jason got up as if he were going to storm out, but instead lingered by the door leading to the stairs.

  “The wine is not the issue. The issue is the three of you.” Marla pointed at each of the three siblings. “Your constant lack of gratitude and pervasive sense of entitlement. Before you opened that bottle, at the very least you could have asked me if it was okay.”

  “You’re right, Mom,” Emily said, her voice rising in anger. “You should always ask someone first before doing something that affects them. Like maybe you could have asked me before you invited my childhood psychiatrist to my wedding.”

  “What?” Marla said, taken aback. “What are you talking about?”

  “Why did you invite him, Mom?”

  “That—that has nothing to do with this.”

  Steven abruptly turned to Marla. “You fucking invited him?”

  “We can talk about this later.”

  “Seriously, Mom,” Emily said. “Why would you do that? I haven’t seen the guy in years, first of all, and second of all, he knows some extremely personal things that I told him when I was in therapy with him.”

  Marla waved her hand around. “Oh, come on, I don’t think Dr. Leibowitz is going to go around at your wedding telling everyone about how you used to only be able to climax if you rubbed yourself through your clothes and thought about Jimmy from Degrassi.”

  “Mom, what the fuck? How did you know that?” Her stomach flipped and she thought she might throw up again. What else had Dr. Leibowitz told Marla? It had all been so long ago. By the time she was in high school, she had developed more discretion about her masturbatory habits, but there were all the times she had said things along the lines of “I hate my parents” in fits of teenage rage. How much of this did he dutifully disclose to his BFF Marla?

  Marla paused. “You told me that, sweetheart.”

  “I really didn’t.”

  Steven was still glaring at Marla. “Why would you invite him?”

  “He’s a friend.” Her voice went high at the end of her sentence.

  “He’s your friend. Not mine.”

  “When will you just let that go, Steven?”

  “Why the hell should I?”

  “Because it happened years ago!”

  The room was silent. Marla felt the eyes of all three kids on her.

  “This is idiotic,” she said. “I’m going to bed.”

  Steven did not follow her. He headed for the front door. The wine in the glasses shook as the door slammed.

  DAY 5

  David

  EMILY HAD INSISTED that David not take any more Vicodin until she got back from her dress fitting, but once she was gone and the coast was clear he took one anyway. It wasn’t too hard to find the bottle. He had seen her hide it inside her old American Girl prairie wagon while he pretended to be asleep. He would have felt guilty about this betrayal if Emily’s fears of an overdose were justified. He hadn’t taken enough to do that—just enough to stumble around the bedroom for a while trying to find his pants.

  The kitchen was empty. Starving, he opened the fridge. When he had first arrived at the house, there had been nothing substantial in there, but at some point over the past week, Emily’s parents appeared to have filled it to the gills with gourmet food from the hot section of Whole Foods. His mouth watered at a half-eaten container of buffalo chicken salad. It would be high in protein, but unfortunately the mayo in it was most likely m
ade from canola oil or soybean oil, both strictly forbidden by LifeSpin. He considered this quandary. It was only chicken salad. What percentage of it was mayo—two? Five at the most? There were much worse things he could eat. He would need the protein for his recovery anyway, and the mayo was merely collateral damage.

  He took the container out of the fridge and used his bare hand to scoop chicken salad into his mouth. This is fucking amazing. So salty, so creamy, so tangy—he would have to find out how to recreate this at home. With the correct oils, of course—avocado, coconut and olive were the only truly nontoxic ones. He shoveled more and more of it into his mouth until it was all gone.

  He was still starving. He was too hungry to ask himself if it was rude to raid his future in-laws’ fridge. He felt his phone vibrate, but he didn’t pick up. He was too focused on a container of shrimp scampi. It was untouched, pristine. Perhaps if he ate the entire thing, Marla would forget she ever bought it. And there was pasta in it, but so what? He had already eaten the mayo. Maybe he was due for a cheat day.

  He scarfed down the shrimp scampi and burped a long, decadent burp that tasted like roasted garlic. Now he needed something sweet. For the past two years, he hadn’t eaten any desserts other than one extremely disappointing coconut milk–based gelato. He went to the pantry. One piece of candy would do, if they had any.

  In their pantry, Marla and Steven had stocked at least twenty boxes of Pop-Tarts of varying flavors, none of which seemed to be expired. Was this a treat intended for their visiting kids, who presumably liked Pop-Tarts when they were little? Or was this Steven’s plebeian guilty pleasure, which he ate while allowing himself one episode of Hardcore Pawn? David had no idea, and it wasn’t long before his mind was flooded with his own Pop-Tarts–based childhood memories. His mother used to buy them in bulk, and yet he and Nathan would always argue over which one of them was eating an unfair amount.

  Wildberry was always David’s favorite, and there it was, with an expiration date still two years away. He tore open the package. Fuck LifeSpin.

  As he stared trancelike into the glowing slots of the toaster, he heard footsteps. He quickly tossed the empty food containers into the trash before Jason appeared. He was freshly showered and wearing a T-shirt that said Me Love You Long Time next to a cartoon geisha. “Morning,” he said. “How’s your ass?”