Fat Girls and Lawn Chairs

by Cheryl Peck

  As our family grew it became more and more impractical to keep the babies in bassinets in the dining room, so my room was seized for the common good and I was given a grown-up room upstairs. I had a full-sized bed and room of my own by the age of five. I had arrived. From my bed I could lay and study the light in the hall room, which hung over the stairway back to the rest of my family. At the head of the stairs was a window. Often when the hall light went off, the window at the head of the stairs would be bright with starlight. About a month after I moved upstairs, I spent a weekend with my grandmother, where I sat in rapt attention at her television—we didn’t have one—and watched a wonderful story about a man who murdered his wife, skinned her corpse and fashioned her face into a mask which he wore to appear in the window of an older woman’s house in order to scare her to death. In fact, he was a ghost story writer and he had previously rented her house. He’d written his best stories there and he wanted her house back. I came home, went to bed, my parents flipped off the stairway light, and I lay frozen in darkness waiting for this ghostly apparition to appear in the hall window between me and any possible escape …

  The upstairs of our house was a wonderful place to raise children. The stairway came up to a large room we called “the hall” and all of the other rooms opened off from the hall: my room, the little storeroom which had no light and the storeroom beyond that that was full of odd things that smelled funny and weren’t ours so we couldn’t go in there. The spare bedroom, which was closed, was forbidden and hung with dark blinds. Shortly after I left my bedroom downstairs the big, dark green wardrobe that had stored the lions and tigers and bears came upstairs and lived in the corner of the Forbidden Bedroom. My mother stored all of her not-appropriate-for-children books in the wardrobe, including one with a picture of huge extraterrestrial eye that peered down over a city of terrified people who looked very much like our parents.

  It was an old house that lived nestled in among a number of big, environmentally friendly trees. A good night in an old, environmentally friendly house is not a quiet night. Squirrels ran up and down the insides of the walls. Boards creaked. Walls groaned. Periodically we were treated to the silent, fluttering sweep of a stray bat. During windstorms the trees would blow in the wind and slap the house upside the head like a truculent child. We named the draft that closed doors when no one was anywhere near them “Simon,” but he was nothing compared to the unknown man who lived behind my door and raced me to the light string in the middle of the room each night.

  Even deprived of a television, we were able to entertain ourselves in the evening, particularly in the early fall when the migration began. The UnWee and I were sitting on the floor in the living room when some motion whisked past us and our family cat, Gus, charged through the room, froze in the middle of the floor, hunkered down, whiskers twitching, tail-tip flicking right and left, and she c-r-e-p-t, toe-step by toe-step toward the couch … We were perhaps eight and five at the time and ever-eager to help, so of course we scrambled on hands and knees across the floor to see what was under the couch. Gus was thoroughly disgusted with us, but the mouse apparently felt outnumbered and made a mad dash for the overstuffed chair. So the mouse dashed, Gus lunged, I vaulted into the seat of the chair to see over the back, my sister ducked under the chair, realized she couldn’t see and jumped up for a better look, grazing the bottom of my bare foot with her hair and—I, toe-bitten by a mouse the size of a German shepherd—released a scream that would have frightened the dead. We had a wonderful time explaining what happened to our mother, who seemed to be under the strange impression someone had been maimed or dismembered.

  Recently, I have been faulted by a small union of lesser siblings (not all mine) for having failed my role as the hard-core big sister. I have allowed dissension and even outright insubordination from my underlings. It is to these dreamers I devote my last tale of the House of Peck.

  In high school the UnWee was the drum major for the Coldwater High School Band. She wore a white sequined bathing suit, white gloves, a big white hat, and white marching boots, and she led the band around the field while threatening them with a baton. They always seemed to go where she sent them. At the end of a particularly grueling day of marching the UnWee clomped onto the back porch in her drum major boots and discovered not a mouse, but a full-grown, living rat. I have never seen a rat in our home and as far as I know the UnWee only saw one, but he was big and he was cocky and he gazed at her with beady little eyes and told her to take a hike. The UnWee did not care for mouse/rat/weasel-like things any more than she enjoys the company of externally-skeletonized or overly-legged things and she quaked in terror at the sight of this rat. The rat, overestimating her fear, thought to himself, “Hah—another dizzy blond,” and he rushed her—or dashed for the door, or moved swiftly and, as it turned out, foolishly … The UnWee kicked his soul directly into hell: killed him dead with one blow.

  Someone like myself who in her formative youth was terrorized by wallpaper dwarves, doesn’t just recklessly lord it over women like the UnWee.

  how many lesbians does it take?

  I DON’T OWN a cell phone. I have friends who do. They share this information with great pride and enthusiasm, as in (fingers snapping), “You know, we have a cell phone—so we’ll turn it on and you can call us at the campgrounds/on the highway/somewhere around the North Pole between 8:10 and 8:15 on the third Tuesday …”

  I don’t know anything about cell phones. They have batteries which are, I gather from my friends’ behavior, either extremely short-lived, or more precious than life itself. I had a doll who wore a white bridal dress and because her dress was white I could never play with her because she would get “dirty.” That experience satisfied my need to own something that never does anything. So I have no idea why anyone would want a cell phone. Certainly I don’t need one: I have a portable phone that hangs up on me on whim so I have battery concerns enough of my own.

  So I was phoneless (uncelled?) when I invited friends (2) to come spend an evening with us at my Beloved’s house, and I mentioned casually that one of them had enjoyed, once, a year or so ago, the company of a friend we have in common. In slightly over a week this became a ten-person steak picnic in the park with fresh strawberries ladled over homemade cheesecake, designated grill tenders and a trail of lost dinner guests. I—who would probably not carry a peanut butter sandwich outside to eat in a lawn chair because it’s too much work—watched this whole process with mild amazement. I had a good vantage point to watch this because the grill, the eleven lawn chairs, the potato casserole, three coolers and a fishing pole crawled up in the back of my truck and waited impatiently for transport.

  There were women standing on the riverbank sharing fly-fishing techniques. There were flocks of geese eyeing the coolers. There were big, graceful willows snapping greedily at the lines of the fly-fishing women. There were mallards flying in, landing on their breasts and making a sweet waterfall sound as they glided to a stop. In the background the peacocks in the little zoo across the river were crying like lost children in the woods.

  The food was plentiful and delicious, the company was happy and relaxed, the heat, which was oppressive, was more bearable in the presence of friends, and the steaks were grilled to taste and perfection. It was a thoroughly delightful evening until, seconds from the end, our Friend In Common, Alice, stuck her key in the ignition of her car and thought:

  That’s not my key.

  And she was absolutely right. It was not her key. It was the key of a friend. She had accepted the task of daycare provider for a friend’s Ford and she had stuck her friend’s key in her own ignition. The car would not start. The correct key would not go into the ignition, having been so recently dispossessed, and neither key would start the car. The key said to Alice—foo to you, you ingrate, I resign.

  The car, barely a year old and not even yet scratched, would not start.

  I drive a scratched, dented, fender-bent, four-year-old truck I’ve named “Hop
py,” which has enough keys to start a dealership. (Hoppy, being a GM, takes two keys just to make him go—he came with four and the warranty will provide a spare each time I lock myself out for the first 75,000 miles. By now there is a spare door key for Hoppy under every rock and bush between Jackson and Three Rivers.) None of my keys, however, are “coded.” I have no little plastic box with buttons to push to make the car start.

  Being intelligent, car-savvy lesbians, we determined that the daycare key had fouled up the recognition mechanism in the ignition. The key had been decoded. Alice had been foiled by her own anti-theft devices.

  And because Alice is quirky about her vehicles and guards them with her life—possibly even with her partner’s life, should it ever come to that—it looked very much as if Alice and her partner were going to have to set up camp among the geese in the park.

  Fortunately, my Beloved could provide virtually everything they might need for the night. They could feed themselves easily into late Tuesday evening. They had chairs, a grill, a fly rod, several nice flies, a river … All the duck and goose anyone could care to eat … I was ready to go home.

  Someone said, “Hey—I have a cell phone.”

  I don’t know who that person was. She was never seen nor heard from again. There in the middle of a parking lot at 10:30 at night stood ten sweating lesbians, a dead Ford, thirty-seven still-hopeful geese and a cell phone no one knew how to operate. It was as if the phone fairy had dropped the Rubik’s Cube of communications in our hands and then dusted away all of our memories of her.

  Thea, Eliza and Alice’s partner, Rhonda, all own cell phones, but this particular cell phone was alien to all of them. Eliza was busy waving magnets at the ignition. Alice—who owned the car—was distracted because Lucylou was thinking about dismantling something under the hood with a flashlight and an ice pick. I know nothing about cell phones but I can see: Thea knows a great deal about cell phones, but is legally blind without stadium lights. Lucylou was digging through her tool box for a plumber’s wrench, which was troublesome because Alice was the only one who knew the help number we were calling and we could not seem to keep her attention away from Lucylou’s banging long enough to get it dialed. So while Lucylou was humming to herself and banging blunt metal objects against the car engine, Thea would activate the phone, hand it to me, I would dial 800 and then shout and scream until Alice looked up at me with a distracted, almost panicked look in her eye and murmured something about closing the hood, the cell phone would die, and we would start the whole process all over again.

  It began to occur to us that we had become a living joke— how many lesbians does it take to operate a cell phone?

  The answer appears to be ten. One to turn it on, one to dial the number, one to recite the number to be dialed, one to bang on the engine with a plumber’s wrench, one to fly fish, two to chase the geese away, one to hold the flashlight, one to unload the trunk, and one to jimmy the key in the lock, repeating, “This really should work. …”

  We did rescue Alice. Kind of. Sort of. We told the panic line, with great assurance, that the key had not broken off in the lock, it was an ignition problem, so rather than a locksmith they sent a wrecker guy, who promptly noted the key had broken off in the lock. He did not have the tools to fix it.

  So my Beloved lent Alice her car, and we took everything out of our friend’s trunk and put it in my Beloved’s trunk, just as the wrecker man said, “You know, I should be able to get that.”

  So we got everything back out of my Beloved’s trunk and put it back in Alice’s trunk, just as the wrecker man said, “No, I guess not …”

  So we got everything out of our friend’s trunk and we put it in my Beloved’s trunk.

  Alice is going to have to leave Rhonda and my Beloved is going to have to leave me because their stuff is so commingled after about the sixth trunk swap they will never be able to live independently again.

  But we got everyone home, out of the park, and I don’t believe we even hit any geese.

  I still don’t own a cell phone, but I may take the plumber’s wrench out of my truck for safety’s sake. You can never be sure which one of your friends will be most willing to bang on your engine. However helpful that might be.

  my mother’s eyes

  This morning your face

  was in my mirror: the same

  yellow/green eyes, the same

  odd cindered flecks, the same

  laughlines at the corners, the same

  age.

  You are frozen in time.

  Preserved, like my plaster

  kindergarten handprints, or

  snap shot and printed as

  a gap-toothed six-year-old

  beaming proudly at the helm

  of her brand-new bike.

  My father, aging gracefully,

  stands on the cusp of becoming

  an older man, but you—who hated

  aging—are forever forty-nine.

  For twenty-two years you have

  stayed the same, no after-images

  to betray you, while I look in my mirror

  and I see your face

  your eyes.

  In seven days

  I will be older

  than any image I have

  of you.

  frogs

  IT IS A BEAUTIFUL DAY, nearly 70 degrees outside before the sun even awoke. Spring is stirring. The sap is running. Tiny, half-formed ideas of life are beginning to poke up out of the ground. Three evenings ago I drove past a wetland and I heard a sound I have not heard in years—the chorus of wide-awake and amorous frogs advertising their wares: For a good time check out lily pad number 614. Distinguished gentleman in emerald greatcoat paging spotted lady with long legs. No reasonable offer refused. The chorus of frog ponds. I know a great deal about frogs.

  I can remember when we believed perhaps a little less that the world should conform to our expectations, and it was the responsibility of the driver to maneuver the road and not of the road to stay under the driver. The road that ran in front of our house—Battle Creek Road then, Union City Road now, a country road that has changed its name to acknowledge a small (but very picturesque) wide spot not even square in the middle of it—crossed a free-flowing wetland just north of my parents’ yard. The wetland on the right of the highway was connected to the wetland on the left of the highway by a culvert that ran under the road, and, based on my scientific observations as a child, all of the boy frogs were born on the right and all of the girl frogs were born on the left. When spring came and the sap began to run, all of the frogs from both wetlands met in the middle of the road to begin their courtship. It was not an exceptionally busy highway, but there is never much mystery about the outcome of a collision between a frog and a car, and over a period of about six days and nights when frogs apparently act out all of their sexual urges for the entire year, the highway would develop a distinct frog coating. There were dead frogs everywhere. The dip between the highlands and the lowlands on that particular stretch of road was sudden and rather startling to the uninitiated—and particularly so to the drunk—and the smooth patina of deceased frogs did nothing to improve traction or handling. And so it came to pass that some unfortunate soul, weaving his way home from a bar, parked his car rather unexpectedly in the swamp. I would not have parked my car there. The men who came to operate the three wreckers, the bulldozer and the crane that came to pluck him out all agreed they would not have parked their cars there, but in those days one did not get much sympathy for being the victim of a frog attack. Particularly when the frogs were dead.

  The Road Commission came out shortly after that and built the road up until there was no appreciable dip. Perhaps they were annoyed because the drunk lived. The highway became something of a climb for a sex-starved frog and over time there came to be fewer and fewer frogs in the gravel pit. Some have blamed this on changes in the climate and acid rain, but I blame the Road Commission and a little-known natural phenomena known as
“recruitment.” I would think that by the time one has tried to climb Mount Everest just for a hot date, fellow boy frogs—or sister girl frogs—who are distinctly more convenient, may just look a whole lot better. It is possible the entire frog pond community just turned gay and died out.

  There are other factors leading to the disappearance of the common frog that I feel have been underestimated by the scientific community, not the least of which is basic intelligence. A friend of mine who is six feet two inches and certainly not a fragile thing recently told me a tale about going to a Mexican restaurant with friends and feeling uneasy about speaking frankly about his lifestyle (which does not even include eating flies with his tongue). When I failed to appreciate his dilemma, he reminded me of the possibility of meeting a herd of young men waving two-by-fours. My friend has well-honed survival instincts. And it curiously brought me back to remembering the last frog I saw. Was he soaking up the sun’s rays through two or three feet of mud? Was he sitting on a lily pad in the middle of the lake? No, the last one I saw was hopping for his life down the bank, a herd of small boys waving sticks and shrieking with the glee of the hunt behind him.

  A year or so ago I was driving down the road, minding my own business, when a frog leaped into my headlights and disappeared under the wheels of my truck. I believe I have already mentioned that given not one but two entire wetlands in which to conduct their personal business, the vast majority of frogs were driven to display their every intimate moment on a slab of asphalt twelve feet wide and perhaps an eighth of a mile long. I believe suicide is a seriously understudied social problem for frogs. I believe the most that can be said for frogs is that they have a curious inability to see and identify an obvious natural enemy.