“Look at the bottom of these pots,” he says a day after New Year’s. Yes, I actually tried to cook real food for New Year’s Day, and these are the thanks I get.
“Okay,” I say, not looking up from my computer, where I’m trying to sneak in a little work so I’m not swallowed up the following week.
“These are expensive pots,” he continues. “If you don’t scrub the bottoms, this gunk will get cooked on and become impossible to remove.”
“Peter, are all the children alive and accounted for?” I ask, glancing up at him.
“Well, yes,” he says, still holding the offending pot bottom up.
“I think we need milk. And see if you can’t run past Big Y and pick up some pot scrubbers while you’re out.”
“I’ll be right back,” he says, conceding the point. Our condition can only be accurately described as too much togetherness, or overwhelming Christmas spirit.
When Peter returns a couple of hours later, he’s brought me a surprise, entering the house loaded down with Kmart bags.
“Now, that’s what I’m talking about!” I say, taking the bags from him and peeking inside. We have an annual tradition of buying up all the reduced-price gaudy ornaments that Kmart has to offer.
“Look at these.” Peter pulls a box of large round red ones with flocked snowmen on them.
“Fantastic,” I say. “Let’s hang them up!”
He grabs a couple more boxes and walks out the kitchen door, while I race down the hall to the gun cabinet to retrieve my personal favorite, a high-powered German pellet rifle, and a box of ammo. I run back into the kitchen and open the window over the sink. By the time I get my rifle loaded, Peter has hung about twenty odd-size ornaments fifty yards away on a nail-studded plank designed for this purpose.
“All clear!” he yells, running back to the house to join me. I can’t tell you how many houseguests have enjoyed this activity. Even the kids get into the action with assorted BB guns. Before you know it, every window on the north side of the house is open and tiny Santas and reindeer are being blown to smithereens. When the last one has been dispatched, Peter turns to me, my very own Mr. Smith & Wesson, gun still slightly smoking.
“Good work keeping the kids alive,” he says, and gives me a high-five.
Just barely alive. Little did he know that while he was out, the four elder boys went a little stir crazy; in their moment of severe cabin fever, they decided to collect all the cardboard boxes from the various presents and construct a giant fort in the kitchen. I was getting Finn up from his nap when I heard yelling from downstairs.
“Fire in the hole!” Pierson shouted, and though I know he is prone to drama, I raced back down, a half-naked Finn on my hip. Smoke curled out of the kitchen and I got there just in time to see Peik throwing water on a black chunk of cardboard and Truman slapping the same area with a wet dish-towel. Pierson stood in the corner, fire extinguisher sort of at the ready. Though, like his mother before him, he didn’t have the sense to actually point and shoot.
“Who set this on fire?” I demanded. They all just stood there, a tableau de Noël,
“It wasn’t me!” cried Pierson.
“Spontaneous combustion?” Peik managed. They all looked at him, nodding in agreement, and then looked back at me, praying for believability.
“I have read Ripley’s Believe It or Not,” I said, looking each of them dead in the eye. “And I know for certain that spontaneous combustion only happens in obscure English villages. You’re all guilty, but I’m going to turn my back and the ringleader can put his matches on the table.” When I turned around there was a box for each boy. Perhaps I should have tried to teach them something while I had them, after all. Like, “Let your brother take the fall,” or “Don’t play with matches.” I really felt sorry for them in that moment. What they really needed was to be back in school. Fast. By the time the holidays were officially over, every last one of us was happy to see the last of the others.
SINCE I MOVED TO THE NORTHEAST, I’M NOT REALLY THAT INTO Easter. I generally try to avoid it altogether. In my opinion, Easter should look very springy, and when the temperature is thirty-seven degrees and my kids are running around in fleece instead of pristine white embroidered short sets, it just doesn’t feel right. My kids know that they have a day off from school, but they don’t seem completely clear on the difference between Easter and Passover, though they’re aware that we aren’t Jewish. I can usually avoid having to fill baskets on Easter by just not mentioning that it is Easter Sunday. This only works if I can prevent the kids from noticing that It’s the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown is on and if I can keep them away from the Peeps display at Rite Aid. Otherwise, I’m busted and have to search the basement for baskets and scrounge the kitchen for candy.
Halloween is the big holiday in our family. It’s the perfect example of how a low-expectation event can blow away the most jaded partygoer if you put in extra effort and preparation. We have amassed a cache of Hollywood-prop-room-worthy decorations and begin putting them up around October 1. Enter our loft on any day thereafter, and you are likely to find me on a ladder, hand-sewing formations of life-size rubber bats to the sprinkler pipes that run along the ceiling, or strategically placing rotting rubber corpses.
For some reason, my boys have no interest in my design talents and want to wear store-bought costumes, but my own is carefully crafted. I wear an iteration of the same theme every year: the mad scientist’s creature. One look at Peter should tell you who plays the mad scientist. All we need to do for him is throw a lab coat over whatever he happens to be wearing on October 31, tease his locks up a little bit higher, and voilà! The execution of my getup is slightly more complicated, as it requires three main components: an elaborate wig, a latex dress, and a pair of freaky white contacts.
I care so deeply about this particular holiday that a few years ago I had myself fitted for top-grade, straight-out-of-a-horror-movie zombie eyes. These lenses white out my irises completely, except for a small black spot in the center to see through. Their design is very clever—imagine a white doughnut painted on a contact lens—and the effect is ultra creepy. I can see perfectly with them in, and they are comfortable, but I have one problem: I cannot get them either in or out by myself. For all the gory and disgusting things I can put up with around me for this occasion—the fake blood, the bowl of “intestines,” and so on—I am grossed out to the point of fainting by the idea of my finger making contact with my eye. This year I went upstairs to my neighbor’s apartment and she slipped them in, amid much blinking and tearing, but clearly I couldn’t go see her at one A.M. to ask her to take them out. I slept in them and tried to get them out by myself the next morning, to no avail. Peter is equally as eyeball averse as I am, so I needed to find someone less squeamish.
“Mom, really, I’ll make my own breakfast,” Truman said as he bumped into me in the kitchen. “I can’t look at you.”
“Truman, do Mommy a favor and help her get these things out?” I pleaded. “I have a meeting in an hour, and I can’t show up like this.” I rolled my eyes for effect. He backed away, forgoing food and practically running for the door.
I would have asked his older brother, but one look at Peik’s nails after a night of partying suggested otherwise. I finally tracked down Peter. Not only had I run out of boys, but also, I figured they’d had enough of me and my costume needs after the annual get-Mom-into-her-latex-dress event the afternoon before.
Many people have a favorite Thanksgiving dish; for me it wouldn’t be Halloween without latex. My dress this year was black, knee length, and backless, with long sleeves and buckles at the neck and waist. I bought it at a fetish shop in the East Village, one of the last New York neighborhoods that hasn’t been sanitized of its sex shops.
Wearing latex is quite ritualistic, and latex garments are difficult to get into. First, you cover your body with baby powder, sprinkling the inside of the garment as well. Then you step into the dress and sort of roll it up—hopin
g to align it properly, because it is nearly impossible to reposition once on. Once you’re dressed, there is baby powder everywhere and polishing to be done. The boys, each equipped with a handful of silicone gel, rub me down until I shine like a brand-new sex toy in a Times Square window (before Disney, that is). I can only wonder what lasting effects this activity will have on their sexuality, but I figure they will end up in therapy for some reason, so why not make life interesting for their eventual shrinks? You spend that kind of money, someone better be entertained.
Halloween starts about an hour after I don the giant albino Afro wig and six-inch Jimmy Choos. I now clear seven feet easily. As long as I don’t drink, I won’t need to pee. Mayhem breaks out at about five, when packs of kids large to small arrive. The undead fill our loft to the rafters, and even those who dare to show up without costumes take on an eerie glow in the strobe lights and artificial fog. Kids eat way too much candy, and adults drink way too much liquor, as evidenced by the inevitable “Thriller” dance performed by the entire crowd.
This year Peter and I broke free around nine, leaving the kick-out and cleanup to Nicole and Alicia, much stricter and more capable enforcers than we’ll ever be. I was quite excited to be invited to a fancy party to benefit Central Park. I have to say my husband and I really stood out in a sea of Sarah Palins: Sarah and John, Sarah and Bristol, Sarah and Moose, Sarah as beauty queen, and countless pigs in lipstick. I had carefully placed a top hat on my ’fro, making me pretty much the tallest dominatrix in the place, as well as the shiniest. Peter led me around the venue, in all my fabulousness, and still the only comment I heard repeatedly was “Do you think that’s his real hair?”
THE ONLY OTHER HOLIDAY WE CELEBRATE ON ANY REGULAR BASIS IS Thanksgiving. After our full-on approach to Halloween, and before the oppressive approach of Christmas, I choose to get as far under the turkey radar as possible. Thanksgiving is supposed to be about giving thanks, but everyone knows it is really about food. As you probably know by now, I hate cooking and am not especially fond of eating, so I’ve found a way around slaving over a meal that no one in my family is particularly interested in. Luckily, here in the city we have an amazing grocery-delivery service called Fresh Direct. My family would starve without this modern convenience: with just a few magical clicks of my mouse, I order a meal to my specifications, and the very next day Delivery Dude shows up at my door with a fully cooked Thanksgiving dinner, complete with side dishes and zucchini bread. They even send along a little meat thermometer in case you’re feeling guilty and want to overinvolve yourself in the reheating of the fully cooked bird. Years ago, Cleo was horrified when she arrived home from boarding school to find our first feast-in-a-box; she announced that even though the Thanksgivings up to that point had been inedible, this was just “wrong.” Her longing for June Cleaver has finally subsided, or maybe she has given up, and now the arrival of the Dude is not only a given, but a time-honored family tradition.
WE DID TRY AND ENGAGE THE HOLIDAY IN A REAL WAY ONCE. WE live three blocks away from Macy’s, but usually don’t go to the big parade—as soon as we moved into the neighborhood, we discovered it is basically a made-for-television event, with camera trucks completely corralling the store itself and for twenty blocks up Broadway. Only if you’re well connected can you get the premium bleacher seating, but even for that you have to be there a good two hours before the parade even starts, and Thanksgiving is typically the nastiest, coldest day on the planet. What child will sit still, packed in amid total strangers, for three hours waiting for a giant Clifford to float overhead, when he can watch the same thing in the warmth of his own home mere minutes away? That having been asked, one year Peter summoned his courage and took four of the boys to see the various acts practice the night before the actual event. I was unpacking dinner for the next day and also obesely pregnant with Finn, so Peter dared this outing alone, depending on the slightly older boys to help keep track of the much younger ones. Larson, three years old, highly speech impaired, and lightning fast, waited for Peter to turn his head and slipped away. Panic ensued, with Peik stopping every police officer he could find, Truman shouting Larson’s name over the blasting loudspeakers, and Pierson just plain freaking out, which is a mystery to me because he never seemed to care much about the child before he was lost.
“Which superhero was he wearing?” Peter yelled at Pierson, holding him by the shoulders while clutches of families squeezed by, using this moment of confusion to slip in front of the Shelton pack for a better view.
“I… don’t… know!” Pierson sobbed.
“Think!” Peter commanded. “Was it Spider-Man or Superman?!”
“Spider-Man on top, Superman on the bottom!” Pierson finally managed, relieved to have contributed in some way.
“Dad, look!” Truman shouted from the top of the bleachers, pointing toward the middle of the performance area. Peter, Peik, and Pierson all scrambled up to see Larson, in the middle of a clutch of majorettes, surrounded by a giant marching band pumping out a brassy version of “We Are Family,” having the time of his little unintelligible life. One of the cops waded into the swirling instruments and pompoms, picked him up, and hoisted him onto his shoulders as the crowd went wild.
Acknowledgments
SOMETIMES IT IS HARD TO REMEMBER THAT THANKSGIVING IS ABOUT giving thanks. I do not believe in God, exactly, but I do believe in some kind of universal cosmic force, and to this force, I would like to take a moment to mention the things I am most thankful for. Though, being all-powerful, it probably already knows.
I am thankful for Fresh Direct, as it saves me from having to shop for food at Duane Reade Pharmacy, which is a very good thing because you can only serve Frosted Flakes and ramen noodles for dinner so many times before one of your kids calls Child Protective Services. I am also thankful for paper plates, because I detest not only shopping and cooking but also the aftermath. Cleanup is exponentially easier when I can just plow the leavings of the dinner table into the garbage can.
I am thankful for Adderall, Ritalin, Focalin, et cetera, because a medicated child is a happy child. Likewise, I am thankful for Nicorette gum, Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, and Tanqueray martinis straight up with olives, because a medicated parent is a happy parent.
I am thankful for my personal technology, whose artificial intelligence surpasses my own. Spell-check: you are brilliant, and if not for you this book would read as if Larson had written it. To iPod shuffle: playing “Stairway to Heaven” and “Highway to Hell” back to back was a stroke of genius. If there is a god, you are probably it.
I am thankful for my long-wear lipstick and my power panties. You keep my lips and ass in place, respectively, and save me valuable time in front of mirrors. And my beloved Birkin bag, not only do you faithfully carry around all the crap required to get me through my day, but you offer me a sense of security: if I ever decide to split this scene, I can stop by that high-end resale shop on Eighteenth Street on my way out of town and raise enough cash on you and your little sister to live for six months. Throw in Judith Leiber and I get a whole year!
I am thankful for my girls, Alicia and Nicole. Your hard work and dedication keep me from becoming a homicidal bitch. And Zoila, my husband’s true wife: other women in his life have come and gone, but for thirty years, you have been there for him, and you’ve never once washed his cell phone. Sorry again, Peter. I am equally thankful for Blake, our manny, because only a gay man would have found the show tunes channel on XM and served it with breakfast.
I am thankful for my family. For Peter, who never complains about the price of my Manolos, though his accountant hates the fact that I charge them to his business American Express and has repeatedly asked me to stop. Peter has never asked me to stop, and until I get the word from the big guy, I’m taking that as a “You just go ahead, honey.” I am thankful for my hilarious kids, who are a constant source of good writing material. Believe me, I couldn’t make this stuff up. I am thankful that my daughter attends a state coll
ege—wow, what a tuition break. I am thankful that my father taught me to shoot, and my mother taught me to sew, because being a size 6 on the top and size 8 on the bottom makes it impossible to buy a dress off the rack.
And finally, I am thankful that my in-laws are dead, because I can serve Thanksgiving dinner out of a box and straight onto paper plates without feeling like a failure.
Acknowledgments
BELIEVE IT OR NOT, I HAVE MORE THANKS TO GIVE.
First and foremost I want to give a special shout-out to the brilliant Amy Scheibe. Her contributions as editor and co-writer were invaluable. I would never have been able to structure this book without her hilarious moments, unending patience, phenomenal organizational skills, and lattes. She truly helped me sew a pile of mismatched patches into a cohesive, well-constructed garment.
I would also like to thank Benjamin Dreyer for dreaming up the entire scheme and lining up the players. Susan Mercandetti, I know it’s cheesy to claim that a writer has become friends with her editor, but in this case it is true, at least until I try to sell her another book. Ben Steinberg, for stepping in when I was in full panic mode and talking me down off the ledge. Robert Best for the illustrations, because every girl wants to look like Barbie.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
LAURA BENNETT wowed viewers of Project Runway’s season 3 with her jaw-dropping outspokenness and sophisticated designs. She has a large and growing fan base thanks to Project Runway, MSN’s “Glam Squad” StyleStudio, and QVC, which sells her designs. Bennett writes the Case Clothed comic strip for iVillage and a column for The Daily Beast. She lives in Manhattan.
www.didntifeedyouyesterday.com
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Didn’t I Feed You Yesterday? Page 16