Sammie & Budgie

by Scott Semegran

  "But you studied science at SMU, right?" I said.

  "Yeah, I did. I didn't say, like, that a writing career would have been practical. I just dreamed of being a writer and a fashionable one at that." She sat down next to me on the floor and prodded through my box of memorabilia, picking up the different paper things--a business card, some newspaper clippings, some ruled pages with handwritten notes on them. She honestly seemed fascinated with the things in my box and, for a brief moment, seemed nostalgic for a time and place that wasn't hers to be nostalgic for. "A girl can, like, dream." She placed all the things back in the box.

  "That's true. We all can dream, right?" I said, folding the flaps of the box over the top, bending one underneath the others to keep the top closed shut.

  "Now, my dream is, like, to find a full-time job in a lab. That would be sweet."

  "I'm surprised you haven't been offered a job in modeling."

  "In modeling?!" she said, laughing and wheezing and snickering all over the place. She got a real kick out of that comment, like I was pulling her leg or something. But the truth was, although she was kind of too tall and gangly and awkward at times, her bright red hair and shiny green eyes and freckly, translucent skin had a striking beauty that was unique and otherworldly. I would have to say that I had never seen someone like her. She was a stunner, really. And the best thing about modeling is that no one would have to listen to her say the word 'like' repeatedly, like, a broken record. Sometimes, she said that word at a pace that would have pummeled a prize fighter into submission, if the word 'like' was a right-handed series of jabs to the face. It was maddening to hear her say it sometimes. But, as often times are the case, Southern Belles also possess a level of charm and grace not possessed by normal human beings. It's true. "You have got to be, like, kidding!"

  "Well, I wasn't. But that's OK. Just saying." I slid the box back into my closet, pulled out a light jacket to put on, then closed the closet door. Nat had retreated from my bedroom while I was finishing up. I found her sitting on the couch with Sammie and Jessie bouncing on the couch cushions next to her. They could barely contain their excitement to have her with them. It looked like their little heads were going to explode.

  "What do you guys want to do while your dad is out?" she said, trying to contain them with her long, thin arms.

  "Watch a movie!" Sammie said.

  "Play a game!" Jessie said.

  "Movie!"

  "Game!"

  Their volley of words almost turned into a shoving match but Nat was swift enough to preemptively soothe their argument. She smiled at them and said, "How about we do, like, both?" My kids looked at each other, thunderstruck. Their minds were blown. Their mouths were agape. They happily slid down in place next to their babysitter, serene pleasure on their little faces. Nat smiled at their obedience then looked at me. "And you? What are your plans?"

  "I don't know. I might just go down to The Beer:Thirty for a drink or two. We'll see."

  "Sounds good," Nat said, looking for the remote to the TV. "We'll be here. Say bye to your daddy, kiddos."

  "Bye Daddy," they both said, content.

  "Bye kids," I said, kissing each of them on the cheek. But when I tried to stand back up, I lost my balance and fell on top of the three of them, landing squarely on Nat. I quickly stood up, fully embarrassed and apologetic. "I'm so sorry!" I said, my arms out trying to put some gentlemanly space between us. Nat seemed more amused than embarrassed.

  "Don't worry about it. Go out and, like, have fun!"

  And so, I left the apartment, leaving my kids in the able hands of their babysitter, Natalie Ashley Wellsley--the 6'2" ex-volleyball player from SMU, science grad, potential model, and their favorite babysitter of all time. I walked down the staircase to my garage where my Volvo S70 waited for me in the dark. I got in it (it started right up), opened the garage door, backed out into the apartment complex parking lot, and sped around the perimeter of the complex to the exit gate. I sped down the street toward The Beer:Thirty, a hole-in-the-wall I occasionally went to so I could drink a few beers in private away from the kids; sometimes I would think about my life, sometimes I would watch a basketball game or whatever was on TV, and sometimes I would think about what it would be like to meet a woman and possibly date. But something went off inside of me and I didn't feel like doing any of those things. I didn't know what I wanted to do but I didn't want to sit in The Beer:Thirty like a sad-sack mulling over my problems. So, I pulled into the next convenience store I saw, bought a six-pack of beer, got back in my Volvo, and headed back toward my apartment complex.

  Once inside the gate, I drove around the perimeter back toward my building. But instead of pulling into my garage, I backed into a parking space across from my building and turned the engine and headlights off. I pulled a beer from the six-pack, opened it, and took a swig. I watched the large, lit window of my living room, the curtains drawn tight, and the silhouettes of Nat and my kids danced across the white curtains like fairies flitting across a misty meadow, carefree and balletic and joyful. I sat in my car and watched the dancing silhouettes well into the night, drinking beer by myself, and enjoying the stillness of my solitude.

  Chapter Five

  Getting my kids ready for bed was sometimes--no, I mean all the time--a feat of ungodly proportions. It was like wrangling cats or making sand castles out of dry sand or containing a flash flood with cardboard boxes or convincing a narcissist to be empathetic or whatever. It seemed like an impossible task every night. Each night, as bedtime for the kids approached, I seemed to forget how I got through it the night before, what, forgetting all the things I said or did to get my children to comply with my commands, to do what I asked, and to just get ready for fucking bed. I don't want to sound too harsh or come off as being ungrateful for the time with them or anything like that. But I will say this--as much as I love my children--sometimes they drive me bonkers. Hard to believe, right? It's true.

  I had quite a list of tasks to accomplish each night and, if the list wasn't complete by the end of the evening, then I felt like a complete, parenting failure. I don't know why really, but I just did if I didn't get all the things done I needed to do. The list of tasks went something like this (though not an official list it was very comprehensive): make or purchase a dinner for the kids, feed the kids, clean up after dinner, assist both of them with homework, assist both of them with packing up their stuff for the next day of school, get both of them in the shower (luckily, I had two showers in my apartment--one in the master bedroom bath and one in the kid's bathroom), pick out their clothes for the next day, lay out their pajamas for the night, make sure they brush and floss their teeth, and have a bedtime story or ritual ready, then complete any house-cleaning after they fall asleep. Suffice it to say, I guess I was making up for the loss of the other parent in our lives. You know who I am referring to? Of course, you do. Being a single parent is exhausting and stressful. It's true.

  Anyway, on this particular night, it seemed good ol' Sammie Boy and his little sister Jessie conspired against me, or at least it felt that way to me. Neither one was being particularly cooperative and, although all the tasks on my list were being completed, they were completed in such a way that they didn't seem completed at all. Everything was a slog. The kids bickered with each other all through dinner, making our familial ritual less pleasant. Cleaning up took extra-long because the bickering turned into a small-scale food fight; there was shit everywhere to clean up: food on the carpet and the mini-blinds, some spilled juice on the table-top, there was even food shrapnel on the walls. So, rather than try to talk sense into them (impossible to do with elementary school-aged kids) or ask them to help clean up (yeah right!), I carried them each to their respective bathrooms (flung over my shoulders, caveman-style), turned on both showers, and barked at them to wash up for the night.

  "No, no, no, Daddy!" Sammie said.

  "No, no, no, Daddy!" Jessie said.

  "Yes, yes, yes," I said to both.

&nb
sp; I closed both doors. While they reluctantly showered, I decided to enjoy a smoke break on the balcony of my apartment--alone. The night air was cool and the sun was setting behind the trees that lined the perimeter of the apartment complex, an assortment of flowering mountain laurels guarded the property from the surrounding streets, some of their canopies white, some pink, and some exploding red. I didn't have much on my balcony--like I've said before--except a wooden bench, a chair, and an old coffee can under it, to throw cigarette butts in. The coffee can--of the Café Bustelo variety, bright yellow and red with art deco lettering for its brand name--was one of a few remnants from the life I lived before I was married, when I was a young man and an aspiring writer just out of college, before I had children, and before my writing career was a spectacular failure. The coffee can, at first, inconspicuously accompanied me from each successive apartment lease to the next, reappearing in a box of knickknacks along with cheap kitchen utensils or stolen office supplies, then reestablishing its place on the balcony or patio of each new abode as the go-to ashtray. Over time, its inconspicuous, magical reappearances morphed into nostalgic reliability; it always seemed to be a part of my life, wherever I went, whoever I was with. It became that thing--that identifiable piece of shambling patio décor--that was all my own. As people came in and out of my life, smoking cigarettes with me on the many patios and balconies of the many shitholes I lived in, the Café Bustelo coffee can was always there. While I was married, the coffee can was relegated to a box in the garage but, after the divorce and moving to my current apartment, it reappeared again like an old friend.

  A flood of memories poured into my brain as I lit my cigarette and stared at that coffee can, its exterior colors still bright red and yellow even though the metal seams had succumbed to rust and corrosion and a thin layer of ash and pollen coated its sides. I thought it weird that one of my prized possessions, which hid in the garage from my failed marriage and made it out the other side of a hectic move to a new home, was a rusty coffee can full of stinky, cigarette butts and ashes. As I listened to the water from both showers snake its way through the pipes in the thin walls of my apartment building, I thought of old friends, old girlfriends, old pets, and old smoking sessions. 'What was the point of owning possessions?' I thought. 'What did it mean that something most people would consider a piece of trash held so much significance to me? Why did my life end up where it was at that moment?' When I was in my twenties, I didn't ever imagine being divorced in my forties and living the life of a single parent in a rented, two-bedroom apartment a mile from my kids' elementary school and forced to live two miles from my old two-story house. I contemplated these things while I smoked my cigarette, inhaling deeply as the thoughts of my past raced through my mind, the nicotine-infused smoke penetrating my blood stream. But I didn't have long to myself. Through the blinds in the balcony door, I saw Jessie running butt naked--soaking wet, hair mashed to her shoulders in a soppy mass, her towel in her hand dragging behind her on the carpet--and Sammie crisscrossing in the opposite direction, just as wet and just as naked. I quickly tossed the barely-smoked cigarette into the coffee can and ran inside.

  What I couldn't hear outside, what, with the street noise and parking cars and chatty, drunk neighbors and the late evening wind, was their screams of sheer delight. With their lack of clothes came uninhibited joy, the kind of pleasure you might see from a wild animal being filmed from a long distance without any predators around and not a care in the world, trotting alone and nipping at dandelions or something. Sammie and Jessie chased each other across the full length of the apartment, tackling each other in my bedroom, jumping on my bed with wet feet, then initiating the chase again in the opposite direction to their bedroom, both towels dragging across the carpet behind them. I tried to catch them but they were too slippery, their skin slick and shiny like wet seals, and their excited bodies writhing out of my grasp. I finally was able to corral them between the couch and the coffee table, then tossed them onto the couch, tickling and harassing them for not giving me enough time to myself as well as cutting their shower time short.

  "What do you think you're doing?!" I said, pretending to body slam them like a wrestler, standing up with my stiff elbow extended, then coming down but not really jabbing them, just pretending. The mock wrestling move made them squeal with delight. "You're supposed to be showering then getting ready for school. Not running around the apartment--naked!"

  "Why do we have to shower every night, Daddy?" said Sammie. His question perplexed me enough that I stopped tickling them and thought about it, yet keeping them pinned to the couch with stiff arms.

  I thought about it some more, not finding a good answer to his question, then said, "That's a good question, my boy. I guess my answer is that it's good to shower every night."

  "But do we have to?" said Jessie, as I draped their towels over their shivering, little bodies.

  I contemplated her question then said, "I guess you don't have to shower every night. Just seems like a good practice."

  "What if you're too busy doing homework and forget to shower?" Sammie said.

  "Or what if you're too busy hunting ghosts or something?" Jessie said, looking serious as if that was a real question worth asking. Kids do that, you know? They ask the most bizarre questions and expect you to take them seriously. But as a parent, you can't condescend your kid's worldview. You have to let a curious kid be a curious kid. It's true.

  "I guess if you were seriously hunting ghosts and you forgot to shower, then that would be OK. Hunting ghosts is important and time-consuming," I said.

  "Yes! It is!" she said, looking at Sammie for validation. He was happy to comply. He liked this line of questioning.

  "Ghosts are scary!" he said.

  "They are scary," I said, drying them with their towels, taking turns with each of their soppy heads, then wrapping them in their towels like burritos. "But tell you what, if you go finish getting ready for bed then we can do some Mad Libs together. How does that sound?"

  "Yeah!" they said, in unison, jumping up from the couch and running to their respective bathrooms to finish getting dressed and brushing their teeth and chanting while they brushed, "Mad Libs! Mad libs! Mad Libs!"

  Before I go on, let me explain something to you. If you didn't already know, Mad Libs are a kind of word puzzle game that is frequently played as a party game or as a pastime when you're bored while waiting for the bus or something like that. But I don't usually play Mad Libs that way. For a very long time, especially back in my writer days, I used Mad Libs as a way to end writer's block, something I suffered from on a very frequent basis when I was trying to make a living as a writer. If I ever encountered writer's block, instead of suffering like a goddamn idiot, then I would whip out a book of Mad Libs. The nonsensical results of adding random words into the blank spaces of the sentences were a real hoot and it helped my mind unhinge itself from the debilitating effects of the writer's block. Let me give you an example. For instance, Mad Libs may present a sentence puzzle like this:

  "Sam _____ his green _____ while he _____ on his _____."

  Now, as you can see, there are a dozen ways to complete this puzzle. A proficient writer (like I used to be) might complete the puzzle like this:

  "Sam drives his green car while he talks on his phone."

  Bingo! Pretty simple, huh? And fun! Now, what I've found when I play Mad Libs with other people is that they approach the game as if they were still teenagers, filling the blanks with sexual innuendos or profanities or double entendres that were ridiculous, mildly amusing at best. The last couple of times I played Mad Libs with friends or acquaintances, it was a goddamn disaster. My other junior high buddy, Jason, back in good ol' Montgomery, Alabama, would play Mad Libs like a miscreant, inserting words of such poor taste that he would laugh all over the goddamn place like a maniacal hyena. He would finish his sentence like this:

  "Sam yanks his green penis while he masturbates on his hamster." Then he would laugh and spit and w
heeze all over the place like he was some kind of comedic genius. Real funny, huh? It's completely idiotic. But that was Jason. He was a complete idiot. It's true.

  Fortunately, my kids weren't so asinine like Jason. They played Mad Libs with a childish abandon that was sweet and endearing and innocent. I loved that about them. I entered their room, which they shared together, ready for our bedtime ritual; Sammie's side a shrine to Marvel Comics superheroes like Dr. Strange and Spider-Man while Jessie's side was a shrine to My Little Pony and kittens. It was as if the bedroom was divided down the middle by an imaginary line, perpendicular to a window in the middle of the back wall--Sammie's superheroes ready for battle in the posters on the wall above his black, lumpy, futon bed on one side and Jessie's ponies and kittens in cute poses on the posters on the wall above her pink, poufy, princess bed. Their room suffered from a personality disorder so great that it was hopeless, a schizophrenic job of interior design so catastrophic that I should have been ashamed of myself for allowing to happen. They seemed to be able to live in harmony despite their reluctance to acknowledge the other's presence in the room. It was an adolescent stalemate of wills.

  Since Sammie's futon could lay flat like a double bed, we usually used it as our gaming spot since it was comfortable and big enough for the three of us to lounge on. They were both on his futon, lying next to each other in their pajamas with their respective Mad Libs editions before them, a pile of colorful pens and pencils and markers between them, and looks of contentment on their cute little faces. They were ready to play, waiting for me to initiate the proceedings of fun. So I did, telling them that they could each start their own page and that I would recite their finished silly "stories" aloud. It wasn't a contest although I'm sure each of them had a little competitive streak in their hearts. They both scanned the pages quickly, counting how many blanks they each had, their tongues out, their pencils gripped tightly. The only unfair advantage was that good ol' Sammie Boy was a few years older than his younger sister, so his reading and writing skills were a tad higher than Jessie's skills. But, considering they both were in elementary school, the advantage Sammie held was slim at best. Sammie had a slightly better understanding of the grammatical meanings of the words the game called for; Jessie had a little more determination to beat her brother at games in general, just like her determination to kick everybody else's ass in her taekwondo class. They were equal opponents in my eyes, for the most part.