All I can think is, Dear God, please don’t let me be hurt to the extent that I must be rushed to the same local hospital where they accidentally treated me for hepatitis when I was fifteen years old.8
Fortunately, the buffet strikes me in the back with such force that I’m thrown down the remaining seven stairs. As I float through the air in slow motion, I think, The realtor is going to be here in ten minutes and maybe the house will have a better chance of selling if there’s not a Shaker-style buffet sticking halfway out of the wall, thus preventing my parents from moving closer to their beloved grandchildren. And because I am a good daughter9 I’m able to reposition and hurl myself back in front of it to protect the wall at the end of the stairway and to keep the piece from smashing into a lot of greasy wood chips.
I find myself up against the sea grass wallpaper, two hundred pounds of fine—albeit slightly oily—Shaker furniture pinning me in place, when Captain Obvious finds it germane to mention in his lifelong Boston accent, “Hey, Jennifah? I think I may have lost my grip,” while Mrs. Captain Obvious muses, “I wonder if I shouldn’t have polished it first?”
No. Shit.
Yet people still wonder why after being around my family, I always threaten to spend my next holiday in Hawaii.
Thanksgiving comes—and goes—and Fletch and I have vowed to never speak of it again. Suffice it to say Hawaii looks pretty damn good right about now.
Fletch, the dogs, and I drive home for Christmas and the trip is entirely without incident. Regardless of how much we watch the Weather Channel, we seem to have an uncanny ability to hit a big storm and the three-hour trip takes more like nine. But this time? Smooth sailing across dry, empty roads. We even manage to find a radio station we can agree on—although it’s probably because we now have XM rather than any sort of Christmas miracle—so we don’t spend the trip toggling between a Rammstein10 CD and the soundtrack to Cabaret in the kind of musical compromise that satisfies no one.
Instead of the usual cartwheels and backflips the dogs normally enjoy while we’re driving on a snowy, truck-filled expressway, they settle right down and nap from the second we leave the 60647 until the moment we arrive. (They do stir when we give them each a cheeseburger—they aren’t machines, for God’s sake.)
We spend the trip recounting yesterday’s adventure. Since Fletch is off until after New Year’s we decide we’re going to do something fun every day. Although most of our time is taken up with holiday parties, yesterday we went to a place in the suburbs with artificial snow, little ski slopes, and an inner-tube run. Hungover as we were, we decided skiing would take too much effort, so we opted for sledding.
The hill was quite steep but it didn’t matter because a towrope pulled us up, so we avoided having to climb. The first run we did alone—it was fast and fun, but kind of tame. Next, Fletch and I decided to see what it was like to ride down together, so we held on to each other’s snow tubes.
There’s a physics principle at work here and I’m not sure what it is. All I know is that four hundred pounds of Republican careen down an ice-covered incline about ten times faster than if each party went separately. We flew down the hill at Mach 10, pulling the same g-force as a space shuttle launch. It was as though we’d coated our tubes with nonnutritive cereal varnish,11 because we were going so fast we sailed off the hill, across the highway, and into the Wal-Mart parking lot.
Okay, that’s not exactly true.
But all the stupid little kids who didn’t get out of our way learned an interesting lesson about force equaling mass times acceleration.
We’re still laughing about the day as we pull into my parents’ driveway. “You know,” I tell Fletch, “I should feel guilty about toppling them like so many bowling pins…yet here I am.”
“You were supposed to be steering because I was backward. I didn’t see that one kid until he went flying over our heads.”
“I couldn’t steer; I was too busy covering my eyes.”
“We’ve got to go there again before I head back to work.”
“Definitely.” We bring the dogs in the house, hug my parents, and load in bag after bag of presents. It’s the first time we’ve been able to go all-out for the holidays in a long while, so we’ve been really generous to thank everyone for their support over the past few years. On my last trip in from the car, I slip on the one patch of ice anywhere in Indiana,12 but otherwise our time passes without incident.
We spend three days entertaining each other and marvel at how well the holiday is going. The fire department doesn’t have to come,13 no one winds up passed out under the dining room table after eating all the vodka-laden fruit from the champagne punch for breakfast,14 we have running water,15 the oven works,16 and Dad doesn’t knock the grill into the pool.17 We end up having exactly the kind of good, old-fashioned, functional-family holiday you see in greeting cards and it’s borderline glorious. The food’s great, the company’s even better, and Mother Nature gets into the spirit of things and gives us our White Christmas after all. I can’t imagine how I ever thought Hawaii would be better than this.
It’s the night before we leave and we’re all gathered by the fire having hot chocolate and cookies and watching Family Guy. Quagmire, the show’s resident sex fiend, makes a comment about a “reach-around” with a spider monkey and we all snicker.
Except my mother, that is.
“What’s a reach-around?” she asks.
Fletch, Dad, and I sit there silently, unwilling to meet each other’s eyes, and trying not to laugh because that will only encourage my mother. I screw up and look at Fletch and we both start snorting.
Uh-oh. The floodgates have just opened.
She sits up on the couch. “No, really, what’s a reach-around?”
We giggle uncomfortably, saying nothing.
Mom starts to get frustrated. If there’s a joke, damn it, she wants to know why it’s funny. “Someone tell me what a reach-around is right now. Fletch, what is it? Have you had one? Did you like it?”
“I am not having this conversation with my mother-in-law. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to wash my brain out with beer,” says Fletch before disappearing into the garage.
“Ron, what’s a reach-around?”
“Martinis!” he exclaims. “Who wants a martini? Yeah, I’m going to go make martinis. I’m going to go make them right now.” My father sprints out of the family room with the kind of quickness you’d never expect from a man with seventy-one-year-old knees.
She turns to me, determined. “Jen? What is it?”
“Mom, does the fact your question just cleared the room tell you anything? Like, maybe we’re all incredibly embarrassed and would prefer this line of questioning to stop immediately?”
“Oh, please.” She brushes off their leaving with a flip of her wrist. “You came out of my body. The least you can do is explain what a reach-around is.”
“Look it up on UrbanDictionary.com if you’re so curious because I am not telling you. You know how modest I am; I couldn’t explain it to you if my life depended on it.”
She crosses her arms and taps her foot impatiently. “For heaven’s sake, Jennifer, you’re what—thirty-eight years old? Grow up and just tell me. Did I have a reach-around when I gave birth to you?”
“No.” I squeeze my eyes closed and shake my head.
She gestures toward her dog, Bruno, who immediately slinks out of the room to join our two already hiding under the dining room table. Dad and Fletch are still missing. They may be under there as well. “Does he do a reach-around?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“No thumbs. Can we please change the subject?”
“Did your Dad get a reach-around when he was in the marines?”
I shudder. “I’m leaving to watch TV in the den now.” I grab my cocoa and dump it in the sink, deciding to exchange it for wine.
While I attempt to scuttle out of the room, Mom points to her chest and asks, “Are these my reach-
arounds?” She then gestures lower. “What about this?”
“Gah!” I stop pouring in lieu of grabbing the entire bottle.
“Why won’t you answer me?”
“Because you are making the baby Jesus cry right now.”
She finally gets the hint and reach-arounds are not mentioned again in mixed company, thank God. Eventually the guys find their way back to the family room, but Dad changes the channel to It’s a Wonderful Life, secure in the knowledge that Jimmy Stewart will never, ever mention a Cleveland Steamer.
Today I wake to a mélange of delicious aromas and the sound of carols echoing though the house. My brother and his family are on their way so my mother’s starting another round of cooking. Because of a miscommunication about kennel arrangements18 we’re not overlapping our holiday visits this year. I’m sorry not to see Todd’s wife and children, although I can’t help but notice there’s a lot less arguing when we’re apart. (Although I’ll admit it was fun being together last year, even though I slept in the morning of the tsunami and awoke to a house full of Asian weather-pattern experts.)
I throw on my slippers, pull a sweatshirt over my sock-monkey pajamas,19 and come down for coffee. My mother is the only other person up—I imagine the boys are sleeping it off right now—and she putters around the kitchen making a variety of tempting breakfast treats.
“Hey, Mom. Something smells delicious.”
“You’re up early! Good morning!” My mom kisses me on the forehead and hands me a cup of French roast.
“Anything I can do to help?”
“Um…” Her eyes scan the cooking projects scattered throughout the kitchen. “Yes, yes, actually. There is one thing.”
“What’s that? You need me to cook the bacon?”
“Got it already, thanks.”
“Want me to make mimosas?”
“Aren’t you driving back today?”
“Oh, yeah, scratch that. I guess I can spend one morning without booze. So what do you need? Want me to slice the English muffins? Or feed the dogs?”
She pours herself a mug of tea and sits down at the breakfast bar next to me. She places her hand over mine, giving me a couple of pats and a wide smile. “No, no, it’s all taken care of.” Aw, it’s good to be home.
“Then what do you need?”
She clutches my wrist and holds me in place. “I need you to tell me what a reach-around is.”
A couple of points to be made here:
First, I completely blame my mother for inspiring my subsequently heroic holiday liquor intake.
Second, she still doesn’t know what a reach-around is.
Third, Fletch and I are definitely going to Hawaii next Christmas.
Alone.
* * *
To: angie_at_home, carol_at_home, wendy_at_home, jen_at_work
From: [email protected]
Subject: d-day
Hey, all,
Do you have any idea how surreal it is to walk into a bookstore and be greeted by your own book?
Last night I needed to refer to a certain book in order to complete a new proposal. So after running other glamorous errands such as buying kitty litter and grout cleaner, we popped into the Barnes & Noble at Webster Place. Although I knew there was a possibility my book would already be for sale, I didn’t expect to run into an entire display of it before I even set foot into the second set of double doors…
…yet there it was.
Mesmerized, Fletch and I gawped at the stack until we drew curious stares from the other patrons. We finally bustled through the doors, took five steps into the store, and bam! There it was again on the nonfiction table, nestled in with all the other new releases. I ran my hands over it to make sure it was real, fingers tracing the blue foil of the dress on the cover. I kept opening it to the last page to look at my photograph, but had someone else’s face been there instead, I wouldn’t have been surprised. It didn’t feel real. I mean, how could the past three years of my life be distilled onto thirty-five square inches of a bookstore table?
I looked at Bitter among the sea of other books and honestly felt like an impostor. How on earth did my book end up on the table with a bunch of real authors? Shoot, fifteen minutes previous I was buying cans of Chicken with Stars soup to bring for lunch at my temp job. How the hell did I wind up by Elie Wiesel? For God’s sake, Wiesel wrote about surviving a litany of terrors in a Nazi death camp with dignity and honor, whereas I cried like a little bitch about not getting my hair colored. (So in case you’re wondering, yes, it’s possible to be humbled, embarrassed, and exhilarated all at the same time.)
We worked our way through the store and found the book in two other places—in the memoir section and on a paperback favorites table on the second level. In each instance, we stood and stared and stared. It was such a strange feeling watching people pick up and look at my book. I was dying to solicit their first impression and yet I didn’t want to know if they thought it sounded kind of dumb. Somehow I thought beating a patron with a Harry Potter book would not bode well for my reputation within B&N. So, conflicted, I finally stepped away from the table.
As we made our way over to the café, we encountered the biggest surprise—a giant poster with my name, face, and book jacket on it. Being the suave, urbane sophisticate I am, I, um, certainly didn’t shriek, “Holy cats, that’s me!!” Nor, um, did I then stand next to it for a good ten minutes to see if anyone recognized me. ( Just because I felt like a big, fat impostor didn’t mean my natural propensity for vanity suddenly vanished.)
Since this is the store where I’m doing the reading this weekend, I figured I should chat with someone to find out any additional details. With a grin I couldn’t hide, I talked to the person at the customer service desk and asked if there was anything specific I needed to know. She politely relayed the information I needed to know and…that was it.
I’m not sure what I was expecting when I spoke with the clerk—accolades? Admiration? Recognition? Perhaps a choir of angels trumpeting in the background? But there was none forthcoming. I may as well have been asking where the ladies’ room was for all of her matter-of-factness.
After I thought about it, I realized being an author in a bookstore is a lot like being a bride—on your day, you feel like you’re the only person to have ever gotten married and it’s the be-all and end-all of your existence. But the truth is, for professionals involved in the wedding industry, they see brides every day and it’s no longer a big deal. Same thing must hold for booksellers. How can they be surprised when they see an author? Books are their whole business.
Anyway, we eventually stopped wandering around in a haze and came home. And although I left the house as a writer and came home an author, I found that nothing had changed. The cats still snuck onto the counter in our absence, and Maisy left yet another steaming “present” in the hallway. With the exception of fresh doody, everything was exactly the same.
So I guess I’d say seeing Bitter in the stores was bittersweet—exciting to see the culmination of my life’s dream, but sobering to realize that my dream’s there…nestled between thousands and thousands of others.
See you Saturday,
Jen
* * *
* * *
from the desk of Miss Jennifer A. Lancaster
Dear Zontick LLC,
Currently you’re auctioning autographed copies of my book on both Amazon and Barnes & Noble for almost $65.00 per copy.
The thing is, it seems like autographing a bunch of books would be something I’d remember, don’t you think? Sure, there were a couple of copies left over after the signing event on Saturday, but they were here in Chicago. What’s the likelihood of all of these few books ending up in NJ? Especially within a day of the signing?
More important, who in their right mind would pay $65.00 for my autograph?
Does a market for this exist??
If so, please give me a call—I’ve got a ton of unpaid bills, a drawer full of Sharpies, and a shitl
oad of free time. We should talk.
Best,
Jen Lancaster
* * *
* * *
To: angie_at_home, carol_at_home, wendy_at_home, jen_at_work
Bright Lights, Big Ass Page 25