Life As I Blow It (2 page)

“If you'd like to see a photo comparison, I have one ready,” I told one of my dad's co-workers. Nobody bit on the offer. Just as well, I needed to get to sleep. I was going back to Arkansas the next day and I needed all of my energy for wowing the flight attendants with my wit. “What has four legs and won't live longer than two years?” I'd ask them. One woman would guess a hamster; the other would be so stumped she wouldn't even have a guess. I'd smile proudly and deliver the punch line perfectly: “My dad's new marriage!”

I was hilarious. I made my first mental note to myself to become a comedian when I grew up.

By the way, their marriage lasted about two years. The day Dad asked me, “How do you get a one-armed Polack out of a tree?” I knew it was over.

When they separated, Lori sent letters to my sister and me asking if we could stay in touch and still be friends. I guess she didn't realize we weren't friends when she and Dad
were
married. I thought I had made it obvious that I never liked her. I made a mental note to make that more clear to people in the future.

While it only took my dad a handful of months to remarry, my mom was not interested in dating. She was a single
mom living in Fayetteville, Arkansas. She was too busy working and raising us to care about finding a man. She probably also hated men for a while, but I wasn't old enough to figure that out yet.

After the divorce, her first job was at a school cafeteria. She refused to work at our school, because she thought we'd be embarrassed. I told her of course I wouldn't be embarrassed that my mom was a lunch lady, then ran to my room and thanked God that she had chosen a different school. I also apologized to Him for lying to her, but it seemed like a necessary one.

After a bit of prodding from some friends, Mom decided to join a singles' group. In my mind it wasn't a good idea. I don't know if they even have those anymore; I think online dating has replaced them. Later on in the book, you'll find out why I think online dating sucks ass. Stick with me here, it's a really humiliating story. I promise.

I pictured my mom's singles' group taking place in one of those weird banquet rooms at a hotel. There's a long table set up in front covered with name tags. Mom walks up and finds hers:
HELLO, MY NAME IS CHERYL
. She pins it to her red mock turtleneck, smoothes out her Lands' End slacks, and nervously walks into the room. She immediately heads for the refreshment table and scans the contents—coffee and donuts—then fixes herself a cup of decaf; she doesn't want to get too wound up. She notices a couple of people looking at her.
Oh, good, people are already noticing me
. She starts to relax, then finds their gazes to be strange. It feels like they are smirking, laughing.
Oh, no
, she thinks to herself.
They must all know that my husband left me and that he is already remarried. I must smell like a victim
. She starts thinking
that this was a terrible idea.
Why did I let anybody talk me into this? What the hell am I doing here?
she wonders. She starts to feel dizzy. She looks around frantically for the ladies' room. She walks briskly to the restroom; she just needs a minute to compose herself. She runs in and finds the bathroom empty.
Thank God, a minute alone
. She walks to the sink and turns on the faucet. She runs cold water over her hands and then onto her face. As she rises from the sink she opens her eyes to look at herself in the mirror. Horror washes over her. She forgot to take off her hair net after work. She rips it off, throws it in the trash, and leaves the hotel.
Maybe next time
, she decides as she makes her way to her car.

At least that's what I always imagined it was like. I watch a lot of Lifetime movies.

At some point she found her groove in the group. She had a few dates with a couple of different people. Mom had become friends with some of the other women, and one of them tipped her off to someone who could babysit us while she went out. I don't remember the babysitter's name. I just know I called her “Penny,” which was short for
Pentecostal
, because, well, she was Pentecostal. I didn't really know what that was at the time. My mom was Methodist and my dad was busy. I went to church from time to time with Mom but there wasn't much to our religion. Everybody was nice and it didn't seem like there were a ton of rules. The preacher did a sermon, a couple of hymns were sung, someone passed around the offering tray, and we were out. Pretty basic. That was not the case with Penny. She took her religion very, very seriously. She refused to cut her hair; I think she thought it was a direct line to God. It was long and stringy and almost
touched the ground, kind of like Crystal Gayle but without the hit records. From what I could tell, her religion didn't like skin, because she wore long, straight skirts and shirts that buttoned all the way up to her chin. Her outfits kind of reminded me of what I had to wear when Dad married Lori.

When I first met Penny I asked Mom if she was Amish, but Mom told me never to ask Penny that to her face. So the next time I saw her, I asked. She told me that she was not Amish, but thanked me for the interest in her life.

“I'm Pentecostal,” she continued. “Would you like me to explain to you what my religion is?”

“Maybe next time. I'm pretty wiped,” I lied. God immediately got me back because now I had committed to going to bed at 7
P.M.

One night Mom had a date on a Wednesday. That was Penny's church night, so she was never available to sit for us. Mom called her anyway, thinking maybe just this one time she'd need the money and skip church. Obviously Mom had never really paid any attention to Penny because she would
never
miss church. Unfortunately for me, my previous inquiry into Penny's religion had stuck in her mind. She told Mom that she would gladly watch Jennifer and me. She'd just take us to church with her. I couldn't believe I had to go to church on a Wednesday night. This seemed unfair.

“We have to go to church so that you can go on a date!” I yelled in as high a pitch as I could get my voice to. It doesn't go that high. I'm often confused for a man on the phone.

“That's right,” my mom said. Her newfound confidence was getting annoying.

“Well, maybe I don't want to go. Maybe I'll go live with Dad.”

“Okay, say hi to Lori for me.”

Shit. Mom is getting good
.

Penny's church was nothing like I had imagined. When we walked in, I began to wonder how all these people had the time to go shopping together. Every single person was dressed the same. Long skirts, button-up shirts, and the same color pants on the men. There was hair everywhere. Some wore it in buns, others let it drag on the floor. I figured they must all have pretty decent jobs if they were able to afford the shampoo it requires for the upkeep.

We filed into a pew and waited for things to start. I was already antsy—like I was alone in a foreign country and I didn't speak the language. Things started off kind of normal. The preacher started talking, reading, talking. It was all par for the course. Just when I thought that it was going to be no big deal, things started to turn. The preacher asked people to come forward if they needed to be “saved” or if they wanted to renew their vow to God. Droves of people started making their way down the aisle. Suddenly they were crying, yelling, singing. Some people didn't even make it to the front of the church. They just fell on their knees and started wailing. Their hands were in the air, reaching up to God. But they were mostly just flailing. My sister and I looked at each other in a mixture of horror, confusion, and humor.
What is going on?
I looked up to Penny thinking maybe she'd be ready to bail since clearly all of her church buddies had gone insane, but she just stared straight ahead and nodded. At one point I noticed a single tear run down her cheek. That was it—she had lost her mind. I gripped the pew and braced myself. I knew in my heart that the whole place was about to burst into flames, or I was about to be entered into a cult and never heard from again.

“Mom better at least be getting laid for this,” Jennifer whispered to me.

“EEW! Don't say that!” I was horrified. For many years I was a big prude compared to my sister. That changed around the time I developed a taste for Wild Turkey.

Eventually things died down. The service came to an end and as far as I could tell nobody had passed away during all the drama. Penny led my sister and me out to her car, where the two of us waited patiently for an explanation. I had it all figured out: Outside of her appearance, Penny seemed pretty normal when she was watching us. There was no way that she brought us to this circus knowing that her friends were going to lose their shit. Obviously she couldn't say anything in the church; they probably knew where she lived. She was just going through the motions, then when she got us in the car, she'd tell us that she'd never seen anything like that in her life and that she was so sorry that everyone at her church got possessed at the same time, especially on the night we had to go with her. “What a bunch of freaks!” she'd say, laughing.

Penny turned the engine on and looked at us in the rearview mirror. She gave us a knowing smile and asked, “Who wants ice cream?”

That night I waited up for my mom. I was usually in bed early; the anxious adult me hadn't crept in yet to convince myself that six hours of sleep was plenty. As a kid I knew I needed my brain rest so that I could get straight A's, go to college, and make a bunch of money so that I could get out of this town.

“What are you still doing up?” Mom asked.

“Couldn't sleep. How was your night?”

“It was all right. How was yours?” she replied.

“Penny and the people who go to her church are bananas. You sent us to an insane asylum. If you ever have a date on a Wednesday night again, don't. Night!”

With that I went off to bed.

Mom's singles' group seemed to be restoring some of her self-confidence and she decided she no longer wanted to work at a cafeteria. She started looking for a new job and quickly found one at a funeral home, where she became a secretary. She didn't have to touch dead bodies, but it was still creepy. She would come home and make dinner and talk about how “busy” it was, which just meant that lots of people had died. My sister and I were not really into her work talk, and I think she took offense at it. I was really proud of her for getting a good job, and I was really glad she felt more security. But sorry—I was trying to eat.

For a while when we were living in Fayetteville we lived next door to two guys who were close in age to my sister and me. They became our best friends, and one had the honor of my first tongue kiss. His name was Kevin and I liked him so much that I named my first goldfish after him. He was super cute and he told funny stories. The neighbor, not the goldfish. The goldfish didn't say much. I had found my true love, and I was only eight.

Kevin was really popular in school. He pretty much ran our elementary homeroom and all the girls liked him. I counted myself lucky to have tied down such a free spirit. It also worked out well that we were neighbors. He walked me home—well, his house was first, so he'd stop there, and I'd walk the next four houses alone. It was okay, though. My expectations were pretty low to begin with, so it seemed like he was doing a great job as my first boyfriend.

Although my love life was in great shape, there still weren't any prospects panning out for my mom from the singles' group. I felt kind of bad that I was eight years old and in love while my thirty-three-year-old mom was struggling to want to go on a second date.

During one of the busy afternoons at my mom's work, a guy who made the flower deliveries for the funeral home struck up a conversation with her. He found her charming and sweet and wondered if she was available. She looked at the ring on his hand then shot him a disapproving look.

“No, not for me,” he said with a laugh. “My wife would kill me. But you should meet my friend Eric.”

When my mom met Eric, I was skeptical. Things were going smoothly. Jennifer and I had settled in as “latchkey kids” and Mom had stopped talking about dead bodies during supper. I wasn't sure I wanted someone else in the mix. But he won me over fairly quickly; he was pretty easy to like. He used words like
reckon
and
plumb
(as in: “That house is plumb out in the middle of nowhere” and “I reckon we need to get some gas”). I'm still not sure what those words mean, but at the same time I am. No matter what was in his vocabulary, I could tell he was incredibly smart. He spewed out historical and political facts, but for a living he worked at Tyson Foods. He also knew a lot about geography, and I still can't read a map. So I was impressed,
and
I had someone to help me with my homework.

My mom had a pretty bad overbite, and since she was falling in love she decided to have it fixed. That decision resulted in her mouth being wired shut for about six weeks, which was awesome. My mom really likes to talk, so this was the equivalent of taking brunch away from a gay man.
The only word she could say clearly was
shit
, and she had to eat all her food through a straw. She'd make Jennifer and me nice dinners, then suck sadly on a green shake.

The best part of her not being able to talk was that she couldn't tell us to do chores. She'd try, but we'd just say we couldn't understand her and then erupt in giggles. The use of the word
shit
would then start flowing, I think preceded by
you little
but I couldn't quite make it out. Eric was a real trouper through that whole thing. I think he just enjoyed the quiet.

When they decided to get married, it was announced that we'd have to move. We were living in Fayetteville and they wanted to buy a house together a few miles away in the small town of Farmington. Moving to Farmington meant we had to change schools.