A Glass of Crazy

by Tina Laningham

For the next two days, Mom and I hardly spoke. Mom mostly stayed in Dad's bedroom with the door shut, talking to an attorney about all the things she wanted to get, which was pretty much everything except Dad. While staring at a bottle of vodka Mom had picked up at the store, I wondered why Dad loved alcohol so much. Because I needed an answer, I decided to conduct a scientific experiment.

  I set up my lab in the kitchen. Using a glass cylinder, I mixed one part vodka to three parts orange juice packed with vitamin C and calcium, and stirred. The first sip tasted a little weird, like rubbing alcohol, but it wasn't bad. To lower the temperature in the cylinder, I plopped in three cubes of ice and after that, all I tasted was O.J.

  I curled up on the sofa and nursed my drink, eyes fixed on the TV, mesmerized by the drama of Hurricane Ike. Slowly, my mind wandered into a world called I Don't Care and my body melted into the sofa. The results of my experiment were conclusive: Dad's drinking made perfect sense.

  Dad cheating on Mom and hiring undocumented workers didn't matter to reporters anymore and I was glad they finally got some perspective on what was important in the world. As Hurricane Ike headed straight for Galveston, thousands of cars crammed onto the freeways, trying to flee Houston all at the same time and even though the contra lanes were open, traffic was at a complete standstill. I picked up the phone and ordered some pad Thai.

  The eerie part about being in a state of emotional overload is feeling like nothing is real. I decided to go with that. When I was going through Dad's AA cult stuff, I found a "Serenity Prayer" printed on a little card. I couldn't figure out what the prayer meant, but if serenity meant feeling euphoric, I was completely serene.

  By now, most of the gossipy island inhabitants were gone, except for a few die-hard BOIs, a rare breed of people "born on the island" who had a proud tradition of never evacuating for any hurricane whatsoever. Instead, they boarded up their houses and threw hurricane parties that involved lots of drinking and buckets of fried shrimp, but really more drinking than shrimp. And when it was over, the nightmare of surviving a hurricane gave them tall tales to pass down to the next generation of BOIs who were expected to continue this idiotic tradition even though not everyone survives.

  But really, who was I to judge? What family traditions did I have to pass on to my kids? When I was in seventh grade and all the girls had boyfriends, I decided one day Rafa and I would get married and have a big family, but that wasn't looking very promising anymore, especially since he wrote that new twist on the Cinderella story. It didn't matter, though. We'd probably just end up getting a divorce.

  The shaky image on TV captured the winds of Hurricane Ike bending palm trees in half along the Gulf of Mexico. The line of arched palms resembled all those people who did yoga exercises in that same spot every morning, bending their bodies into abnormal positions. When a wind gust ripped a big hotel sign right off its pole, I started fidgeting with a sofa pillow. Ike was about to make landfall as a category three hurricane heading straight for our house.

  My phone bleeped and my heart catapulted into space. It was Rafa answering a text I'd sent like two days ago, telling him to let me know when he was safe.

  Rafa: Hola Chica

  Abby: Where r u

  Rafa: San Antonio with abuelita

  "Who are you texting?" Mom's voice blared from behind as if I were a prisoner communicating with the outside world. She tied her robe and shuffled in like an old person.

  "Rafa." I gave Mom a pissy look before glancing down at his next message. "They went to San Antonio. Took them eighteen hours to get there."

  Even though anyone else's heart would've gone out to Rafa and his family for spending eighteen hours in evacuation traffic, Mom waved it off. I hoped I wasn't going to turn out like her, all heartless and cold. Most of my life I wanted to be like Dad, but striving to become an alcoholic with a love addiction didn't sound like such a good plan either.

  "What do you want for breakfast, dear?"

  "Mom, it's noon." While mom got busy in the kitchen, I sat up to watch Galveston Island get blown off the map. Eventually, Mom came in and sat at the other end of the sofa. I kept my eyes on the TV and said, "Ike's pissed."

  "Aren't we all, dear."

  Not the reaction I was expecting. Where was Mom's lecture on how my language was inappropriate for a lady? I turned to get a look at this person sitting next to me on the sofa. With her eyes on the TV, she cracked half a smile and in that flick of a moment, we were equals. Even though it wouldn't last forever, I savored that moment like the sweet pad Thai melting in my mouth.

  Together we watched Ike's rage make landfall. By the time he reached Galveston Island, the meteorologist had downgraded Ike to a category two hurricane, but his fury still wielded great powers. A TV camera had captured fuzzy images of the storm surge washing through streets like a whitewater river. The images looked as fake as a movie with computer generated special effects, but like the news reports on Dad, the wild images of Hurricane Ike were way too real. I needed more vodka.

  "Want some more coffee?" I said getting up.

  Without taking her eyes off the hurricane, she held up the cup and said absentmindedly, "Thank you, dear."

  I turned on the faucet to drown out any vodka bottle noises and poured twice as much vodka in my glass this time. If a little felt good, a lot would feel better. I topped off the rest of the glass with orange juice and then poured Mom's coffee. Oh God, what did she put in it? I'd never paid attention. While I wracked my brain trying to remember, Mom stood up and said, "I'll get it, dear. You don't know how I like it."

  "Ohmygod, just tell me!"

  Mom actually obeyed. "Cream and one sugar, dear."

  I turned off the faucet and stirred the coffee, but on the way out, I froze. The vodka bottle was a quarter empty. I set everything down, flipped the faucet back on, and filled the vodka bottle back to almost full. There. She'd never know.

  By late afternoon, the drama of Hurricane Ike was over. The meteorologist reported that the storm surge had retreated into the Gulf and the damage was done. Water pounded against the window, thanks to Ike's outer bands of rain that had spread all the way to Austin. I'd never felt so relaxed in my life.

  That night, I passed out on the sofa and in the morning when I awoke, the mayor was on TV saying we weren't allowed to return to the Island for a week to give them time to fix the electricity. I started to freak. No way could I survive a whole week in Dad's little apartment with Mom.

  "If I had it to do over," Mom said from the kitchen, "I'd become an accountant and adopt children. Men simply aren't necessary."

  It was a relief to know she'd keep the children.

  Mom took a sip of coffee and said, "Let's go shopping." She raised an eyebrow over the top of the cup.

  "Okay," I replied meekly, wondering what she was up to. I hadn't showered in three days and the Queen of Control never said a word. By now I should've heard a lecture on the social implications of a lady's personal hygiene, but even I was getting sick of myself. My oily hair stuck together like wet noodles and I was sure I felt things crawling on my skin. When I took a whiff of my underarm, it smelled like a dead armadillo baking in the sun. "Be right back," I said and trudged to the shower.

  Mom waited impatiently by the door when I finally came out. I expected to find her seated on the sofa with her hands folded neatly on her lap. Instead, she waved me over to the door, practically shouting, "Let's go!"

  "What's with your hair?" I asked, because she never left the house without a perfectly sculpted hairdo that looked like a snail shell. Yet there she stood, hand on the doorknob with her hair parted in the middle, frizzing out on each side like Albert Einstein.

  "I'm cutting it all off," she said, locking the door behind us. "I made appointments for both of us."

  Ohmygod. Queen Doreen was having a meltdown.

  When rain sprinkled her hair, she didn't even care. She just sashayed to the car as if she loved rain and that's when I knew I was witness
ing a full psychotic break. I decided to keep my mouth shut because all my life I'd wanted shorter hair, but Mom wouldn't allow it. This was my chance. I'd have her committed after I got my hair whacked off.

  "Let's go to some of those funky clothes shops on Sixth Street, too." Mom grinned the whole time she was talking, which in and of itself was totally bizarre. "I don't have any kicking-around clothes."

  My eyes popped. "Any what?"

  "You know, clothes to just hang out in."

  I tried and tried, but couldn't come up with a visual image of Mom hanging out in clothes she bought on Sixth Street.

  "There it is," she said, pulling in front of a sign that read, Hairy Impulses - Professional Hairdressing.

  Seriously. If it had been anyone other than Mom, I would've cracked up, but this was my mother and I was getting worried.

  "Come on, honey," she said, scurrying up to the door. "Let's have fun!"

  Honey? That was way too casual for Mom. What happened to, "Come on, dear?" This was definitely more than I could deal with.? Correction, the hair salon was more than I could deal with. The lime green vinyl chairs and hot pink walls clashed with the florescent red hair of the girl who came out to greet us.

  Mom grinned like a child. "I'm the one who called," she said, taking the young girl's hands as if they'd known each other forever.

  The girl's face lit up like the magic wand in the fairy tattoo that covered her arm. "Who wants to go first?" she asked.

  "I do!" Mom shrieked.

  I never thought I would say this, but it kind of hurt my feelings that she wasn't treating me like her little girl anymore. She would have definitely wanted me to go first and normally that would've been irritating, but now it was as if I didn't even exist. I wasn't sure which was worse.

  "Okay Doreen," the girl said, "tell me what you want."

  "Young and sassy," Mom said. "Like yours."

  "Um, o-kaaay."? I raised my brows and gazed out the window like I shouldn't be watching. The rain had stopped, so I slipped outside and waited on a bench in front of the salon and eyed people passing by, wondering if their lives were going on as planned or if everyone around them had lost their minds, too.

  About an hour later, Mom came out with the same red spiked haircut as the girl with the fairy tattoo and said, "Your turn!"

  I got up from the bench and acted like her inappropriate-for-an-old-person haircut didn't faze me. I'd have to freak out some other time. First things first. That's what Dad always said.

  "You sure you want to cut all this luscious hair?" Fairy Girl asked, unknotting the braid that hung down my back.

  No way was I getting my hair whacked off now. The last thing I wanted was to look like Mom. "Just trim the ends. No color, nothing funky."

  "More conservative," she said. "Got it."

  Fairy Girl and I didn't speak the whole time she was trimming my hair, mostly because whenever she tried to make conversation, I said yes or no. End of conversation. I had one eye peeled on Mom and didn't want Fairy Girl distracting me. Queen Doreen was out of control.

  - 6 -