finslippy

If you're wondering where all the liquor in the tri-state area went, here's your answer.

My mother has thousands of cousins, all of whom attended my nephews’ graduation party last weekend. (One nephew graduated from high school, the other from college. My friend J. observed how convenient this was, that they could combine the two parties. Yes, I said, a lot of planning went into that. That’s why she had kids four years apart. Then we made all kinds of tasteless jokes about the many abortions she had to have between the two, to keep alive her dream of the combined graduation party. Ha, ha! )

Anyway, my mother’s parents had hundreds of siblings, and they spawned progeny that numbered somewhere in the millions. And they all attended the party, all these old guys. They are all loud and aggressively jovial; they guffaw at their own jokes and if you don’t laugh, well, you had better laugh. I hadn't seen them since my wedding, and in the past few years it seems they've all become caricatures of themselves. Their heads have become larger than I believed possible. Their tans deeper. Their chains, more plentiful. Their wives younger and then older and then back to the younger ones.

God, their giant heads. They have faces like granite slabs. I said about one cousin, His head is an enormous block, and my dad said, That’s true in so many ways.

One of them calls me “Alison.” He’s known me for 36 years, you’d think he’d have my name right by now. He’s the one who kept telling me at my wedding that my husband “is a real good guy.” Except with his pronunciation it kind of sounded like “goo’ guy,” and that plus the manicured hand gripping the back of your neck sent the clear message: but if he stops being a good guy he’ll end up at the bottom of the river.

I make them sound like criminals, but they’re good guys. Or good fellas! Italians, you see! Crooked, dirty Italians!

No, no. They are clean and nice. And not even very good at bocce. Or maybe they were too drunk to play well. See how I tear down all the old stereotypes.

Henry wisely kept his distance for most of the party, but as things wound down, he ventured out to the deck and introduced himself to a few of them. They stuck their tremendous faces in his and bared their capped teeth. Henry’s response was the same each time: “And what’s your name?” he would ask them, and when they barked out their answer, he would exclaim, “Wow! That’s a lovely name!” He says this to every name, but you couldn’t tell these guys that. They thought that was the greatest thing ever. And then they flew off in their fleet of rocket ships and went off to populate their own galaxy. At least, that’s what I told Henry.

Today, so far.

4:30 a.m. – 6:30 a.m.: Lying awake, trying to make sense of vestibule incident. How did he get right up behind me like that? I thought I was always on guard; where did my guard go? Ponder Freudian significance of man entering my vestibule without permission. Both of my former therapists would have had a field day with this.

9:00 a.m.: Wake up. Husband has let me sleep in! Good, good husband! Remember to keep husband around. Sondre Lerche would probably demand that I get up early to prepare his kippers. As I stumble to the bathroom, I step on something that reacts with a frantic whirring. I look down and GOOD GOD NOT AGAIN. I run to bathroom, hide behind door, and yelp. Husband quickly interpets yelp and runs to my aid, killing the waterbug dead with a manly stomp. Sondre Lerche would probably write a ballad about it as it chased me around the apartment.

11:30 a.m.: Finally drag child out of the house. He doesn’t want to leave. It's 120 degrees outside; I don’t blame him. But across the street is the supermarket, and in the supermarket there is food. In the refrigerator there are only moldering chicken parts and dusty, bluish bread. To the supermarket we go.

12 noon: Outside the supermarket is a woman gesturing angrily at the air. Henry wants me to hold him, and fool that I am, I believe I can reason with him. As I finally give in and attempt to lift him as well as 20 pounds of groceries, the woman is lifting her shirt and skirt and exposing herself to anyone who will look. Henry gazes at her disinterestedly, and she gives a show to the one person on the sidewalk who doesn’t register her actions as shocking.

I'm sure I'll have more later.

Dear city: I chose you over the suburbs, and this is what I get?

Gack.

First of all: I’m all right. I’m all right! No one panic!

That said, here’s what just happened. Oh, my! The adrenaline! The freaking out! But I’m all right. Stop panicking. You must.

I was returning from Manhattan, back from my Day of Freedom—I was having lunch with my friend while my son made Play-Doh pies with my mother-in-law or whatever it is they do when I’m not around. (And she loves it! Everyone wins in this deal.)

Sitting on the stoop of the building next door was a gaunt, toothless man commenting on every woman walking by. I thought, Ah, I’m home, where the crazy people believe in the possibility of love. He muttered at me and sucked at his teeth. Well, his tooth. And I disregarded him, as I do all the crazies, and walked to my door, and opened it.

I turned to close the door. And there he was. He pushed the door in, knocking me back a little. We were about an inch apart in the tiny vestibule between the outside door and the inside door. He was staring at me.

And then, dear readers, I went apeshit.

Well, as much as I am able to, which is in reality not very much. Just as he began to inform me that he “just had a question,” (Oh! A question, dear sir? Well, come right on in!) I shouted “Get out get out get OUT!” and I shoved at his scrawny little chest with all my might and he stumbled out the door. And then took off.

Once my violently trembling hands managed to get my keys to open the door, I called 911, gave them a startlingly vivid description of the guy, and a few minutes later the police came to my door with—the guy! And oh, how we had a reunion. The police said, “Is this the guy?” and I said, “Indeed,” and the guy looked all sullen, like now he was going to get detention on account of me, and then I gave the police all the details of the (brief) event, and then I watched them from inside as they stood on the sidewalk and berated him. The guy was waving his arms all around, and I was trying to figure out how he was defending himself. “I was lonely, see? And I knew she wasn’t going to invite me in. Even after I sucked at my tooth for her! What choice did I have?”

Alarmingly, they then proceeded to let him go. Thanks, NYPD! I called the precinct, and the guy who answered the phone said, “Well, I’m sure they didn’t just let him go.” Who are you going to believe, little lady? Me or your lying eyes?

Meanwhile, I’m okay! I’m fine! Except I will never leave my house again. So I’ll be posting more frequently, albeit with less interesting content.

Ah, the unique horror of the awkward confrontation.

We have returned from a Weekend With My Family! And we’re still alive. Join us in our rejoicing, won’t you?

My father was kind enough to pick us up, because we are carless and also saddled with a dog, who apparently is not allowed on the train because the MTA hates us. Once I recovered from the guilt of making my dad drive in just for us, I was quite pleased to luxuriate in air-conditioned comfort. Henry felt differently.

The problem, according to him, is that the car was “stinky.” There was an odor, you see. That he found disagreeable. Now, I have known stinky cars in the past—the great-uncle’s Cadillac that reeked of Pall Malls and hair tonic; the wet-dog stench of the hippy friend’s beat-up Chevy Nova –and I am here to say that my parents’ car is Olfactory Nirvana compared to those experiences. But try telling this to Henry! Go ahead, he won’t listen.

So. The car was stinky, he told us, repeatedly, without tiring of it. (This from a person who has no problem marinating in a pile of his own feculence for extended periods of time. But whatever.) “Turn the stink button off,” he commanded. I’m not sure who gave him this idea, about the stink button. Probably it was me. “Turn it off!” We complied, of course, and clicked the radio button on and off. “Okay, the stink button is off, Henry! No more stink!” And then he breathed deeply and let out an exasperated, “But it’s still stinky!”

In the midst of all this, I attempted to have a conversation with my dad about my and my siblings’ childhoods. Because when you have a child, a recurrent thought is, Holy Christ, was I like this? And my parents never left me on the side of the road? What were we like? I asked my father, and did we turn out like he expected us to? (“IT STILL STINKS!” the child in the back seat let us know. “STILL. IT STINKS. LET ME OUT OF HERE.”)

“Oh, well, your sister, she was always capable. Always. So smart and capable. And now I will go on at great length about your sister’s brilliance and innate ability to deal with anything life throws her way. “

(“I DON’T LIKE THIS CAR IT IS TOO STINKY.”)

Okay, so you know I’m paraphrasing. This is the usual line about my sister. How smart and independent she was! How she climbed out of the crib each morning and made my mother breakfast. I don’t know how my family has all convinced themselves of the truthfulness of this, but my son is pretty damn capable and he doesn’t have the coordination to pour himself cereal without drowning. So no, this isn’t true. But continue, father! Distract me from the child!

“And your brother, he was always consumed with one interest or another. Blah blah blah, he was so brilliant and complicated and perhaps difficult but mostly brilliant!”

You don’t believe me, that he said that? Really I’m not far off the mark.

(“GET ME OUT OF THIS STINKY CAR!”)

So, what about me?

“Well. You were the youngest.”

(“GAAAAAAAH! STINKY! SO STINKY!”)

And…?

“Well, you cried a lot. Always bursting into tears.”

(“ARE YOU PEOPLE LISTENING? WHEN I TOLD YOU ABOUT THIS SMELL THAT ONLY I AM SMELLING, HITHERTO REFERRED TO AS THE STINK?”)

And that, my friends, was the end of the conversation! I’m not sure why—maybe because Henry was distracting us with his stink-talk, or because we were nearing home, or maybe my dad didn’t feel like talking. But probably it was because my dad has nothing else to say about me, so great is his disappointment in his youngest child! That’s what I thought at the time, anyway! Whee!

Let’s fast-forward to the next day, when I finally told my dad how much this statement bothered me. Which I never would have done except I had already confided to my mother, who, traitor that she is, then told my dad I had “something to say,” and a person can’t very well not say something at that point. So I spit it out, and then cried all over my pizza.

My dad made some self-deprecating jokes and then looked stricken and attempted to right things as I continued to bawl and I thought what am I doing, confronting my poor recently ailing father who might drop dead on his salad right now and it would be my fault? . Eventually we cleared things up and it turns out he has other thoughts about me that are unrelated to the frequency of my tears! Hey!

All of which is to say that staying with my parents for any length of time seems to cause me to devolve into the Big Fat Crybaby of yore. I don't like it, but all I can do is ride it out.

And I hope when Henry’s an adult he'll have something meatier to bitch about than nonexistent car-stink.

Everything is true except for the part about the mustache.

The humidity level is somewhere past 100 and it’s 97 degrees and my computer is melting. The child is in his crib, doing what he does best: napping and sweating. There’s air conditioning on in there, so I don’t know why he wakes up sopping wet. Then again, this morning he told me he had just been “flying a little” and “there was some basketball downstairs.” Sounds like a workout, son! You should dream about sending email, like I do!

A while back, I promised two exciting tales: my tale of subway drama, and my appearance on Bravo. See, I didn’t forget. Only I began to think that neither of these anecdotes is all that interesting after all. But whatever, I have nothing else to give.

The subway incident went something like this: Henry and I were with our friends, J. and F., who hail from the town of P___ S___. We had just been to the New York Aquarium, which is all the way down in Coney Island. The outing had been my idea, and like so many of my ideas, it had been a terrible one. There were many subway stairs to negotiate. The toddlers were cranky, as toddlers so often are. The aquarium was both expensive and crowded. Henry had no interest in anything but the sharks. The sharks, and then we were done. DONE, do you hear me? DONE. No, he did NOT care about the starfish or the seahorses (they’re horses of the sea, kid! Give them a chance) nor would he give a second glance to the walruses, even though they were much more impressive than the sharks, if you ask me. But he wasn't asking me. No, no NO. So I shelled out $18 for fifteen minutes of holding a screaming 40-pound child while I searched for the shark exhibit and then two minutes of holding a silent 40-pound child while we looked at sharks. Then we went down to the beach, and hey! What a worse idea to have than the aquarium! At the beach, the children can coat their sunscreen-marinated bodies in sand, and be like hot little breaded fillets. Fillets that want to be held! And don’t want to go anywhere near the water even though it’s hotter than hell!

And then we poured some melted ice creams down our shirts and hauled them up the assload of stairs to the subway and there we were on the subway, finally. We were sweaty and disheveled and two out of the four of us needed diaper changes. It was our stop. I was holding Henry and I ran ahead to the door because I’m paranoid about the door closing before we can escape.

And then it closed. On my foot.

My foot was inside the train. I was outside, on the platform. Henry was in my arms. J. and F. were inside the train, looking out at us. My stroller was inside the train. Next to my foot.

And the door, it would not open.

For those of you who do not hail from these parts, the NYC subway doors are merciless. They will close right on you. They are not the friendly elevator doors that occasionally decapitate people but usually are quite nice about letting people through. Not these doors. Once they begin closing, nothing can stop them. You may think they will open. But they will not. No! Usually, if you get a limb stuck, you can wiggle yourself free, but in this case, I couldn’t.

And we were in the last car, which meant that the conductor, wherever he or she was, could not in a million years see me. Me and my trapped foot. My trapped and doomed foot.

So I screamed for a while, but nothing happened, as my scream is thin and girlish. Actually I think I was calling out, “Um, hello? Hello? Trapped foot, over here! Helloooo?” which is not going to get anyone’s attention, especially not here, where the subway conductors will rip your foot off as they head out to their next destination and not think twice about it. Subway conductors would sooner leap out through their window and gnaw at your ankle with their extra-long incisors until your foot is severed from the rest of you than open the doors for you. This is true.

Fortunately, a man sporting a thick, lush handlebar moustache was standing on the platform. He heard my weak cries and, with a booming baritone, demanded that the doors be opened. And lo, they were. And my foot was freed! Hurrah!

Henry was exceedingly concerned about my foot, but this didn’t stop him from demanding that I hold him all the way home. No stroller was good enough for him, as I had been in danger, and this was no time to be separated from me. Never mind about the limping! You hold me, damn it! You see how I love you!

The End. You see? There have been better stories. Like the one about when I was on Bravo! Which I will get to eventually.