The Slippery Year

by Melanie Gideon

My father mimed turning the key in the ignition and I followed his directions and the car sputtered to a stop.

  He frequently brings up this story at Thanksgiving.

  The thing about calls to adventure is you change your mind about them. At midnight they sound pretty good. At seven in the morning they are the dumbest idea you ever had. As soon as I go into the house I hate the van all over again.

  And so I loiter. I brush my teeth. Throw in a load of laundry. I feel like a fugitive. At any moment I expect the front door to be kicked open and my husband to be standing there with a mug in hand. “Could you go any slower, lady?” he’ll say.

  The misc is piling up all over again. I need to follow my husband’s advice. I just need to get organized. I’ll accomplish something on my list. How about attacking that catastrophe plan? Maybe that is why I’ve been feeling stuck.

  HOW TO KNOW IF YOUR HOUSE IS ON FIRE

  Your husband says: I smell smoke. Do you smell smoke? I smell smoke.

  You say: That’s my new Hermès perfume. It’s vetiver mixed with cigar-flavored notes of tonka bean. When it dries down it smells like Apple Jacks.

  He sniffs your wrist and says: No, I smell smoke. I’m certain that’s smoke.

  Your son comes running into the room, tears streaming down his face, and says: The TV blew up and is on fire. My Wii is hung. Could somebody please come reboot it before I lose my game?

  WHAT TO DO WHEN YOUR HOUSE IS ON FIRE

  Run around in circles saying: What do we do? What do we do?

  Try to remember the lyrics to the What to Do If There’s a Fire song your son learned when he was a toddler.

  Remember only one line of one verse: Call out for help and never hide.

  Yell: Help! Help! at the dog while jumping up and down in front of the window.

  Our friend Clyde is a firefighter. Actually he’s a fire captain. He says the same thing every time he comes for dinner. “Holy shit, if there’s a fire in the canyon you’re screwed.”

  Yes, we are stupid people who live at the top of a canyon. Yes, we live in the Oakland Hills, and yes, these are the same Oakland Hills that were ravaged in the Oakland Hills Firestorm of 1991 that at its peak destroyed one house every eleven seconds. But not our hill. Not our canyon. That is what I say when Mr. Fire Captain comes to dinner.

  He shakes his head and says, “If there’s a fire just get out.”

  “Out to where?” I ask.

  “Just grab Ben and run down the street.”

  “Well, run where?”

  “Away from the fucking fire,” he says. “Is there something wrong with you?”

  Yes, there is something wrong with me. I’m a procrastinator when it comes to disasters. I’m of the “lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place so stand there and hope for the best” camp. I’m also of the dirty-looks-can-change-people’s-behavior camp. I’m the only one in this camp at the present moment, but I’m hoping to recruit additional members.

  I march out to the van with a pen and a notebook.

  “You’re absolutely right,” I say to my husband. “I need to be more organized. You, too, buster,” I say to Ben. “You know, Dad’s really good at this kind of stuff. We should listen to him.”

  “Your latte got cold,” my husband says, “so I drank it.”

  “We need to make a fire evacuation plan,” I tell him.

  “Right now?” he says.

  “We need two ways out of every room.”

  “What about the pantry?” says Ben.

  He’s a sharp kid. The pantry is a problem. One, because he spends so much time in there staring at the shelves, wondering what to eat and wondering who’s going to make it for him and then getting all depressed because his mother is incapable of whipping up a marvelous dinner out of tomato paste, canned pineapple and bread crumbs, and two, because it’s basically a closet and there are no windows, no other way to get out except for the door, which could very well be ablaze because his mother forgot to turn the burner off and melted the Teflon nonstick coating off the frying pan once again.

  “From now on, limit your time in the pantry,” I say. “No more than two minutes.”

  “Smoke alarms?” says my husband.

  “We’ve got ’em!” I say.

  “Yes, I know we have them, but when’s the last time you checked the batteries?”

  “There are no batteries. Remember, we took them out because the alarms kept going off every time somebody took a shower?”

  Ben begins to sing. “I have a song to share with you. I have a song to share with you. If you should ever see a fire. Here are some things that you should do.”

  “Good boy!” I cry. It’s that safety song he learned as a toddler. I hadn’t remembered it being such a catchy little ditty.

  He continues. “And if your clothes should catch on fire. And if your clothes should catch on fire. You must stay calm and don’t start running. You need to stop and drop and roll. Yes, if your clothes should catch on fire. You need to stop and drop and roll.”

  We all look at each other silently, imagining the youngest member of our family combusting. Ben climbs into my lap. My husband fiddles around with the stereo dial.

  “This,” I say, “is exactly why this has been on my to-do list for five years.”

  “I know it’s hard, but we have to think about these things. We need an escape plan,” says my husband.

  “Okay. Let’s escape, then,” I say.

  “Finally,” he says.

  He starts the van and we pull out of the driveway.

  It’s Sunday morning and the village is crowded. My husband has to drive around three times before he finds a parking space big enough to fit the van in. I tilt my captain’s seat way back so nobody can see me as he expertly reverses and forwards his way into the tight space. I shut my eyes.

  “Wake me when you’ve parked,” I say.

  Once we’re situated my husband pops the van’s penthouse top and sets up a game of Boggle.

  “We’re camping in the village!” says Ben.

  “And we didn’t even have to get a permit,” says my husband. “See—this baby is already paying for itself.”

  Every few minutes a man raps on the window and says, “What the hell is this thing?”

  Then my husband patiently explains about the Quigley suspension, how it can drive over boulders and could most certainly drive through a firestorm. Ben feels better and better. I feel better and better. I can go home and cross “Fire” off the catastrophe-planning section of my to-do list. The van is our catastrophe plan. We stay there for so long, holding court, that we get hungry and I have to leave again for more provisions.

  As soon as I get out a woman accosts me.

  “Shame on you, lady,” she says, glaring at the van taking up two parking spaces. “How can you drive that thing? People are dying for oil.”

  “Yes, well,” I tell her. “It runs on French fries.”

  “It runs on the oil they fry the French fries in,” shouts my husband from inside the van.

  The woman gives me a dirty look. I shrug my shoulders. And just like that my bad car juju is over.

  October

  THE NIGHT BEFORE HALLOWEEN BEN TELLS ME HE IS TOO OLD TO BE A NINJA. Unfortunately for him I am too old to be running out to Target on a Tuesday night to get him a new costume. But I see his point. I saw it a month ago when he first modeled the costume for me. The sight of his nine-year-old, nearly five-foot-tall body swaddled in royal blue polyester and wreathed in swords was heartbreaking. I didn’t know whether to laugh or weep. I did neither, of course. I tried to keep an encouraging look on my face because I knew in his soul he was a ninja: pure, with an incorruptible code of honor.

  “Darn,” I say, looking at my watch. “It’s seven. Target’s closed.”

  “That’s okay,” he says. “You can make me a costume. I’d like to be an iPod. We just need some cardboard.”

  “Cardboard?” I say, trying to imagine it.

  “An
d some Super Glue,” he adds, parsing the is-this-kid-serious look on my face, watching his dream slip away.

  “Wait—I know!” I say “I’ve got another costume.”

  “You do?” Perhaps I’m not some lazy, lying, un-crafty mother.

  “Yes, it’s in my bedroom. Let me go get it.”

  “Wait. Is it in a bag?” he asks.

  “What do you mean, is it in a bag?”

  “Is it still in the plastic?” he asks.

  Oh. He wants to know if it’s new. “It’s been airing out,” I tell him.

  “For how long?”

  “Well, for a while,” I confess.

  “You were saving it for me?”

  “Kind of,” I say.

  “Since when?”

  “Since—college?”

  He slumps as if I have just beaten him across the shoulders with a cane. “You want me to wear your costume from college?”

  “Just try it,” I say. “If you don’t like it we’ll go to Target.”

  “You said Target’s closed.”

  “Well, usually it’s closed by now,” I say. “But they probably have special Halloween hours. I just remembered that.”

  He looks at me with enlightened ninja eyes and shakes his head.

  I do not understand all this Halloween hoopla. Every year it gets worse. The celebrations begin weeks before the actual day. We have already been to three parties and a trick-or-treat dress rehearsal in the cul-de-sac up the street (just in case the children have forgotten how to stick out their greedy little paws), and now tomorrow is the all-school Halloween parade, and then at dusk the real madness begins.

  I call my twin sister, Dawn. She is my Oracle. I always call her when I need advice on anything kid-related. She has been through it all and she’s not one of those rigid mothers. For instance, when her twin boys were toddlers they were strict vegetarians. She would feed them perfect little squares of tofu and cherry tomatoes and, for snacks, almonds and olives. Then a few years passed and she had a third boy and now their cupboards and freezer are stuffed with every junk food product imaginable: Toaster Strudels, Cap’n Crunch, Hot Pockets. I love her for this. Truly I do. Every time she opens the cupboards she gives a little groan. Being twins, we have a special kind of bond. Not telepathy, but close—an entire secret vocabulary of sighs. This particular back-of-the-throat twittering means If you had three boys you’d buy this crap, too, Melanie, so shut the hell up. Then she grabs some Chips Ahoy!

  Every once in a while I can’t resist saying to her, “Remember when the boys were vegetarians?” She says, “Remember when you tried out for cheerleading in those sweatpants and your spare tampon projectiled out of your knee sock when you did a split eagle?”

  When will they be too old for Halloween?” I ask the Oracle.

  “Don’t hold your breath,” says Dawn. “I heard about this kid in eighth grade who’s going as one of those new lightbulbs. You know, the kind that go for eight thousand hours and cost twenty bucks? And he actually lights up. There’s a little cord on his arm that you pull. I just hope he doesn’t get electrocuted,” she says in a tone that tells me she very much hopes he gets electrocuted.

  “What is that mother thinking?” I say, envisioning the candy. At least there’s that. At least there’ll be Almond Joys at the end of it all.

  Ben does not want to be a jailbird.

  “What kind of a kid dresses as a prisoner for Halloween?” he says when he sees the black-and-white-striped bottoms, top and beanie, which looked so cute and sexy on my twenty-year-old self. (It was 1983. I think I may have also worn pink leg warmers and pumps in addition to the jailbird costume. In my defense Flash-dance had just come out. It was a good year—everywhere I went people told me I looked like Jennifer Beals.)

  “Cool kids,” I tell him. “Tough kids.”

  He tries it on.

  “You look fabulous,” I say.

  “No—I don’t,” he says, throwing the beanie at me.

  “I have another idea,” I say.

  A long, long time ago we had a New Year’s Eve party. This was back in the days when we were capable of staying up until midnight. Now that we live in California we celebrate what we call an East Coast New Year’s. Which means we go to bed at nine and call it good. Anyway, one of the many wonderful qualities my husband has (and I seem to lack) is what you might call joie de vivre—and for this New Year’s Eve party he bought twelve amazing hats (over $400 worth!) for our guests to wear. They were Dr. Seussian affairs: whimsical with dangly, curlicue things and all of them nearly a foot high. There was a Christmas tree. A basket of fruit. One of those hats is just what this costume needs.

  “Where’s the angel hat?” I ask Ben.

  Panic darkens his face.

  “I’m serious. Go find it. You’re going to be a fallen angel,” I say.

  “No,” he says.

  “Yes,” I say. “A fallen angel. An angel who’s been booted out of heaven and is now in jail. I guarantee you nobody else will have the same costume.”

  “When’s Dad coming home?” asks Ben.

  I find the hat. It’s white and fluffy with gold wings. I position it on his head so it dips over one eye, like a fedora. Now he looks like a gangster fallen angel.

  “I can’t see,” he tells me.

  “It’s literary,” I say. “It’s ironic.”

  Honestly, he looks a little like Truman Capote, but I don’t tell him that.

  “Nobody will get it,” he says.

  I sigh. “We’ll make a sign.”

  I am a crafty and industrious mother, after all. I get a piece of cardboard. I stab a hole in it with a kitchen knife. I lace through some twine and in big block letters I write fallen angel on the cardboard. I then place this sign around my son’s neck. He races to go look at himself in the mirror.

  “Really?” he says.

  I can see the idea slowly growing on him.

  “Really,” I say. “Trust me. It’s perfect.”

  And it is perfect until ten that night when I’m lying in bed and it occurs to me that having a fallen angel in the school’s Halloween parade might offend a few people—a few people of the Christian persuasion.

  I call my friend Robin. What you need to know about Robin is that she’s Jewish. And a cabaret singer. And a therapist for children. Recently she conducted a Life Skills workshop at my son’s school. Because she is my friend I admitted to her that I, too, was in need of some Life Skills. So she shared this relaxation exercise with me.

  THE BIRTHDAY CANDLE BREATHING ROUTINE

  Breathe in through your nose to the count of 2.

  Hold your breath for the same count of 2.

  Release your breath through your nose and your mouth, to the count of 4. Pretend you are slowly blowing out your birthday candles! As you are blowing, think a positive thought. Example: “I am okay,” or “This isn’t so bad,” or “He/she is mad at me, but that doesn’t mean EVERYONE is.”

  I’ve found doing this routine while sitting in the car pool line at school to be very effective.

  “So will the Gentiles be mad if Ben is a Fallen Angel for Halloween?” I ask Robin.

  “You’re a Gentile,” she reminds me.

  “Yes, but the last time we were in church was when Ben was baptized.”

  “Hmm,” she says. “Why do you think it would piss them off?”

  “Because they don’t like their angels to fall? Because he’ll also be dressed like the Birdman of Alcatraz?”

  “You didn’t say that. So your son’s going to be an incarcerated angel?”

  “He’s wrongly imprisoned, of course,” I offer. “Wrongly tossed out. Of, you know—heaven.”

  There’s that word again. It’s hard for me to say “heaven.” Yes, I am a Gentile. Yes, I spent four years as a counselor at the Episcopal Conference Center in Rhode Island where we went to church twice a day, but I’m not sure I believe in heaven. I want to, though. I really want to. Especially now that I have a child. Maybe forc
ing my son to be a Fallen Angel for Halloween is a step toward that. I sniffle.

  “Are you crying?” asks my husband, who’s lying beside me in bed.

  “Target’s still open,” says Robin and hangs up.

  There’s this strange phenomenon. An hour after you’ve put your children to sleep, the ways in which you have wronged them sprawl out on your chest, all two hundred and fifty pounds of them, and suck the breath right out of you. It works the same way with gratitude. An hour after your family has left the house, you love them with a piercing intensity that was nowhere to be found when you were scraping egg yolk off their breakfast dishes. Your hope is to one day feel this way about them when they’re in the room. This is a pretty lofty goal.

  “I’m not crying,” I say.

  “Oh—okay,” says my husband, handing me a tissue.

  “We are horrible parents,” I say. “Why don’t we take Ben to church?”

  “We did. But he cried the whole time, so we left,” says my husband.

  “That was nine years ago. He was an infant. They were flicking water at him.”

  “The priest didn’t flick, he dribbled, and it was holy water.”

  My husband knows better than to have a conversation like this at ten at night. He rolls over.

  I poke him in the middle of the back. “I have to lose some weight. We have to go on a diet tomorrow.”

  “Fine,” he mutters.

  “I’m serious.”

  “Okay.”

  I begin sniffling again. “Don’t you want to know why?”

  My husband groans. “Why?” he asks.

  “Ben told me there was no way God could carry me up to heaven. I’m too fat.”

  It dawns on me the next day, as I’m sitting in the bleachers in the gymnasium at my son’s school, that I’ve lost my edge. I’m watching the lower school parade by in their costumes, and I have no idea what these kids are supposed to be.