Terrible Mother

A Tale of Two Retches

In high school, I worked at a Round Table Pizza briefly before I flamed out of that joint like a comet engulfed in napalm when I called in "sick" from a payphone over Memorial Day weekend with my friends in the background yelling "yeah, she's really sick!"* There were, however, two highlights of that job:  One, eating Club crackers dipped in Ranch dressing straight out of the salad bar, and Two, Aaron Miller, skate-boy wonder and delivery-boy genius--God of all that was Pizza and high school girls.

Aaron was this kind of boy:  6'1"l; board-straight blond hair that hung in his eyes; sweet and silent skate-boarder.  He was hip in an offhand way, the way that most of us try to affect and never can.  He was effusively gorgeous.  And he had an ability that riveled most superheroes' super strengths.  Aaron Miller could puke on command.

And no, not just gag, because that is hardly impressive.  Everyone can gag on command.  I pracitically trained my parents at an early age by doing just that ("Does that contain a beet product? GAH!").  And no, Aaron didn't use his finger to make himself puke.  In fact, Aaron could induce self-vomiting sans implement. 

I learned this New Year's Eve one year.  Aaron had asked for this night off and Holly, the evil 26-year old** who managed the place in a manner similar to the way Ghengis Khan might have had he been relegated to Round Table Pizza as opposed to the Mongoloian countryside, had told him no.  In fact, she denied all requests for time off that evening, making every single person who worked there come in depsite the fact that there was barely room to move in the kitchen with all of us there. 

I was in the back washing dishes, about an hour into the shift, when Aaron, told me he was getting off work early to go to a party.

"Oh yeah," I said.  "Because Holly will so, like, totally, like, let you go, like, right now."***

"She will, swear."  He said. 

At that precise moment, Holly came into the back and went into her office, leaving the door open.  Aaron turned to me and mouthed, "Watch this."  He rolled his head from side to side several times, then said, a little too dramatically, "I feel sick."  Then he leaned over the trash can, opened his mouth and threw up.

And not just a little throw-up.  Not some smallish offering to the trashcan, some thin rivulets of miscreant saliva and soda, something that looks like soup.  He threw-up.  He puked.  Real food.  A torrent of it.  A flood.   

"Oh my God!" Holly said, and came running out of the office.  This was a big deal.  Not her taking the Lord's name in vain, because she cursed like a sailor and had once coined the phrase "Motherfucking Goddamned Pizza Sauce."  But her showing something akin to an emotion?  One that wasn't rage, anger and/or frustration?  Impossible!  She was barely human. 

"Aaron," she said--I barely recognized her voice at this point since it sounded feminine AND kind," Aaron, what happened?"

"I don't know," he said.  "I guess I'm sick."

"You need to go home Aaron," she said. 

Then came the pièce de résistance.

"No!  I can't leave the restaurant on the busiest night of the year!" 

This response was delivered with such a straight face that it made me momentarily slack-jawed. Aaron was the boy who routinely, as in every night he ever worked, got high in the store room.  The boy who said "I hope the fucker burns down," (referring to "the restaurant") on Christmas Eve when Holly, hater of holidays and all that is good in the world, made us work. 

Holly fell for it.  "You're so sweet, Aaron," she said.  Now I was ready to puke myself.  "Take tomorrow off too." 

Aaron nodded and then winked at me when Holly turned around.  That bastard, I thought.  That sly fucking bastard.

I almost fell in love with him over that episode.  I remember wanting to have his little skate-board babies who could puke on command. 

So why do I bring it up?  Last night, Thing Two dramatically announced at the dinner table, "I am so sick!  I think I am going to throw-up."  Then he went into the bathroom, shrugged his shoulders, and threw up.  And not a little bit.  Not apple juice or anything like that.  Puke.  A torrent, a flood. 

"Oh my God!" I said.  "Thing Two, you can't go to school tomorrow!"

He straightened up.  "Okay!" he said. 

I might have been suspicious, but the puke--I'm telling you, the puke!  I put him into bed, read to him, and brought him cups of Sprite and popsicles.  He didn't have a fever--wasn't even flushed--and smiled the entire time.  It wasn't until his dad came over this morning to watch him while I worked that I realized the regurgitating genius I was dealing with.  "Papa," he said, "I threw up last night."

"I know buddy.  I'm sorry."

"Me too, Papa."  Cue big, wide eyes and small, sweet smile.  "Papa, can we go to the toy store today?" 

Before I could say anything, he replied "Sure, buddy.  No problem.  We can even get you some new Legos." 

Thing Two smiled.  And somewhere, a skater-boy named Aaron looked up into the bright light of the morning sun, and knew that his legacy would continue.  Or something like that.

*terriblemother

*That turned out to be the only job I was ever fired from, I'm sort of proud to say.  This is probably because I realized that calling in sick from a payphone on the way to Heavenly Valley is A Bad Idea.

**In our own solipsistic, teenage way, I remember we constantly made fun of Holly for being "old."  Apparently "old" to us, at that point, was anyone who could buy alcohol without having to give a kickback to the wino on the street corner so he'd go in to Thrifty's for us.

***Yes, I said "like" that much.  It was 1990 in California, people.  Give me a break.  I know there's some photo of you somewhere with big Aquanet hair.

I'm Going to Change This Blog to "Terrible Blogger"

And if I did that, it would be more accurate.

Hello, Fan Base.  Long time, no see.  Or, more accurately, long time no "write disparaging and snarky blog entries and Life and Children and Divorce and Love."  Yes that.  Hello.

For my Martin Luther King Resolution*, I've decided to devote myself to this blog.  I have a dream, you see.  And that dream is a blog that actually contains writing.  Writing that I've written.  And also it must be witty writing.  And I must have a Fan Base that I big heart. 

I've just been busy is all.  Busy writing my thesis (about half done), busy teaching (love it), busy being a mother (love it, love it), and falling in love (duh). 

But, yo!  I'm back.  I know I always say I'm back, but this time I mean it.

*terrible mother

*I thought that an MLK Resolution would be better than a New Year's Resolution.  Also, then, I'd be less late.

Poem of the Week

As Children Together

Under the sloped snow
pinned all winter with Christmas
lights, we waited for your father
to whittle his soap cakes
away, finish the whiskey,
your mother to carry her coffee
from room to room closing lights
cubed in the snow at our feet.
Holding each other’s
coat sleeves we slid down
the roads in our tight
black dresses, past
crystal swamps and the death
face of each dark house,
over the golden ice
of tobacco spit, the blue
quiet of ponds, with town
glowing behind the blind
white hills and a scant
snow ticking in the stars.
You hummed blanche comme
la neige and spoke of Montreal
where a quebecoise could sing,
take any man’s face
to her unfastened blouse
and wake to wine
on the bedside table.
I always believed this,
Victoria, that there might
be a way to get out.

You were ashamed of that house,
its round tins of surplus flour,
chipped beef and white beans,
relief checks and winter trips
that always ended in deer
tied stiff to the car rack,
the accordion breath of your uncles
down from the north, and what
you called the stupidity
of the Michigan French.

Your mirror grew ringed
with photos of servicemen
who had taken your breasts
in their hands, the buttons
of your blouse in their teeth,
who had given you the silk
tassels of their graduation,
jackets embroidered with dragons
from the Far East. You kept
the corks that had fired
from bottles over their beds,
their letters with each city
blackened, envelopes of hair
from their shaved heads.

I am going to have it, you said.
Flowers wrapped in paper from carts
in Montreal, a plane lifting out
of Detroit, a satin bed, a table
cluttered with bottles of scent.
So standing in a platter of ice
outside a Catholic dance hall
you took their collars
in your fine chilled hands
and lied you age to adulthood.

I did not then have breasts of my own,
nor any letters from bootcamp
and when one of the men who had
gathered around you took my mouth
to his own there was nothing
other than the dance hall music
rising to the arms of iced trees.

I don’t know where you are now, Victoria.
They say you have children, a trailer
in the snow near our town,
and the husband you found as a girl
returned from the Far East broken
cursing holy blood at the table
where nightly a pile of white shavings
is paid from the edge of his knife.

If you read this poem, write to me.
I have been to Paris since we parted.

Carolyn Forche
from The Country Between Us


*terriblemother