Where's My Wand?: One Boy's Magical Triumph Over Alienation and Shag Carpeting (9 page)

“I’m sorry about your fishing pole,” I hollered over the noise of the open windows.

She looked straight ahead. “It’s not your fault. I should have known better.” She paused. “Guess I was trying to make you kids into something you’re not.”

“That’s okay,” Val replied, a brunette bull in a speeding china shop. “You couldn’t have known we would hate this crap.”

There was a long pause. I noticed a faraway look in Aunt Jinny’s eyes.

“I always sort of blamed your parents for the way you kids are . . . but maybe they knew best. Maybe you just are who you are.”

Was she insulting us, I wondered, or accepting us? I couldn’t read her expression, and in this moment it probably didn’t matter, because for the first time since Jinny had announced our return to civilization, it was occurring to Val and me that Mother and Dad having to come pick us up early might be a bigger problem.

“You didn’t tell them that we were bad or anything, did you?” Val shouted tentatively.

Aunt Jinny said nothing as she piloted the Plymouth down the highway like an Olympic skier on a slalom course, screeching in and out of traffic as horns blared and brakes squealed.

“Oh, pleeeease don’t tell our parents that we were a pain in the patootie,” I pleaded.

“Yeah,” Val added, trying to keep her long, blowing hair out of her face so Aunt Jinny could see her grave expression. “That would make you an accomplice to murder.”

Aunt Jinny didn’t take her eyes off the road. “Sorry,” she replied with a tight-lipped grimace. “I’m afraid that ship has sailed.”

 

 

MOTHER AND DAD were waiting for us in the driveway of Aunt Jinny’s home in La Cygne. Val and I tried in vain to gauge their moods as we pulled in. Was Dad mad? Did Mother have a gun?

Dad jumped out and opened Aunt Jinny’s trunk as Val and I climbed out of the car, sweating. Mother remained in the car, fanning herself with her
Time
magazine, her jaw set. This did not bode well.

“Well, that was really nice,” Val said much too brightly as she attempted to untangle the giant rat’s nest that had formed on her head.

“Yes,” I added enthusiastically, “what beautiful scenery. It was like living in a postcard!”

Val shot me a “don’t oversell it” look.

“Let’s go,” Dad said sternly. “Get in the car.”

Dad carried Aunt Jinny’s duffel bag into the house as she trailed behind him. She turned back to us.

“Bye!” Val and I shouted in unison from the car.

“See you at Christmas!” Val added, figuring that, at this point, we had nothing to lose by reminding her that we were still expecting cash donations—or, as we now rationalized them, hazard pay.

Aunt Jinny said nothing. She simply waved and disappeared into the house.

Mother waved back, smiling, then set her magazine on the black vinyl seat and turned to us.

“Well, did you have a good time, for the whole thirty-six hours you were there?”

Val and I glanced at each other. Was this a trap?

“Well, ummm . . . sure,” I replied. “You know, all things
considered
.” Better start laying the groundwork for our defense, I thought.

Dad returned and swung himself into the driver’s seat. He pulled out onto the two-lane street.

“We tried to make the best of it,” Val said carefully, not wanting to give too much away in case Aunt Jinny hadn’t provided them with specifics. “But I mean, come on!”

Mother sighed heavily.

Dad shook his head. I glanced in the rearview mirror where I could catch part of his expression. He was obviously angry.

“You know,” he said evenly, “you two are so selfish sometimes.”

“Hey, it wasn’t our fault!” Val cried. “Nobody should have to put up with that!”

“Well, what was she supposed to do?!” he replied. “When you’re sick, you’re sick! It wasn’t like she did it on purpose.”

Val and I glanced at each other, confused. Sick? Who was sick?

“The least you could have done was tell her you hope she gets well soon,” Dad barked. “I’m sure she feels bad enough about having to cut your trip short.”

Suddenly, it began to dawn on us.

Aunt Jinny had told them a big, fat fib.

There was a moment of silence as Val and I contemplated what she had done. Why hadn’t she ratted us out? After everything that had happened, why did Aunt Jinny want to protect us from getting in trouble?

Maybe, I thought, she was cooler than we had given her credit for.

This camping trip had not turned out to be anything like the magical vacation that I had wished for. But discovering that Aunt Jinny—a woman with whom we had little in common except a love for five-dollar bills—had our back, made all the suffering that Val and I had heroically endured worthwhile.

Well, almost.

No good can come from shitting in the woods.

“Can we stop at Schnucks on the way home?” Val said, her face furrowing into an expression of deep concern. “We want to get a card for Aunt Jinny.”

“Yeah,” I added, nodding vigorously in agreement.

Mother and Dad’s frowns softened as they began to see the deep and profound well of compassion that Val and I possessed.

They don’t need to know, I thought, that it’ll be a thank-you card.

O
ur father’s sentence as Mr. Mom had mercifully ended when he landed a new job in the aerospace industry and we became a two-income household once again. I felt personally responsible for his career resurgence, having spent numerous afternoons performing magical ministrations; and my success had precipitated a sea change in Mother’s treatment of Dad, from that of Junior Slave to something closely resembling Favored Employee.

Exhausted by Mother’s quest for domination over a home environment that threatened to spin out of control at the drop of a bread crumb, returning to work was, for Dad, akin to an indefinite stay at Club Med. During his unemployment, Mother had allowed her obsessive-compulsive behavior to develop into vibrant and glorious bloom, like a Venus fly-trap in a field of daisies. Now, although the daily To Do lists continued—no one escaped her Windex-wielding tentacles, including Dad—her ceaseless battle against the forces of disorder became, once again, primarily hers to wage.

As could be expected during times of war, sacrifices had to be made. For Mother, balancing work and waxing the linoleum often meant that other, lower priorities were jettisoned. These included such indulgent activities as getting to know the neighbors, none of whom knew our mother except as a black-haired blur in a passing Pontiac.

Val and I considered this a blessing, since her unpredictability left us unable to gauge, on any given day, whether her mood would be marked by grim sullenness, howls of anguish or calls to the Holy Trinity for divine intervention. Every afternoon, we made sure to hustle friends out of the house at least one hour prior to Mother’s return from work, since (a) we needed time to restore the place to its uninhabited, model-home look, and (b) screaming fits were a type of theater for which we didn’t feel our friends had purchased tickets.

In 1971, it was still somewhat common for neighbors to actually speak to one another and occasionally even socialize. As our tenure in St. Louis wore on, Val and I realized that making excuses for Mother was becoming increasingly difficult, so we came up with what we felt was a sexy yet viable explanation. When neighbors politely inquired as to her studied avoidance of them, Val simply explained, in hushed tones, that as a CIA operative, Mother couldn’t risk getting too close to anyone. “She knows things,” Val would intone mysteriously. “Things she can’t tell a soul. If she got to know you, and let something slip, she’d have to kill you.”

This explanation appeared to be working until one afternoon when, out of the blue, a large package was deposited at our front door with a note that read: “From a neighbor who cares.” The box contained a wide array of tasty, low-rent snack treats: Velveeta, generic-brand potato chips, Fanta soda pop. Val and I hauled the loot into the foyer and began to paw through it, our mouths watering. We had died and gone to white-trash heaven.

This gift was obviously prepared by one of Val’s friends’ mothers, who were aware that, although both our parents were once again earning paychecks, the only items in our kitchen pantry on any given day were a box of Lucky Charms and a jar of peanut butter. Friends of Val’s often came by to marvel at this absence of consumables, and ask whether we were on public assistance.

This led Val—the family’s self-appointed shit disturber—to confront our Mother one evening while she was busily dusting a full-length mirror in their bedroom.

“The neighbors think we’re on food stamps,” Val announced as she bounded into the room, hands on her hiphuggers, nearly toppling the red Princess telephone on its matching red crushed-velvet stand.

“Good Lord, don’t those idiots have anything better to gossip about?” Mother replied, generously spritzing the pressed wood frame with Pledge. “Perhaps they should consider spending a little more time trimming their bushes and a little less time sitting around like crows on a wire.”

“We’re not, are we?” Val demanded with all the righteous indignation of a newly minted teenager. “Because if we are, I can’t go back to school and I’ll just have to kill myself, and it’ll be on your head!”

“Of course we’re not,” Mother replied as she removed another layer of shellac from the wood. “I just can’t have a bunch of junk food lying around.” She spritzed again. “I’ll be tempted to eat it.”

Now, as Val and I sat in the foyer combing through the care package, we debated how to stash the goods.

“She cleans this place like it’s a surgical center,” Val muttered, blissfully unaware of her own budding sanitation fixation. “She’ll find this stuff no matter where we hide it.”

“Maybe we should dig a hole in the backyard,” I suggested. “She never goes past the patio. I think there’s an invisible force field.”

But before we could make a move, the front door suddenly flew open. We froze in our tracks, still clutching a pack of Sno Balls and two cans of Vienna sausage. Mother had come home early. Normally, the sound of the garage door opener was our air raid siren, our “All hands on deck” signal. On this afternoon, however, she had parked two doors down to surprise us, hoping to catch us in an act of defiance, like running the heat or using dishes. She stood above us, surveying the card, the box and its contents.

“Who do they think they are?” she thundered. Val and I backed away.

Mother leaned down, grabbed one corner of the heavy box, and began to drag it through the family room and into the kitchen, muttering, “They want charity cases? I’ll give them charity cases. I’ll invite some bums over and serve dinner on the lawn. Let’s see if they care about
that
.”

Val and I remained in the foyer, futilely attempting to blend our DNA into the ornately patterned linoleum.

“God in Heaven!!!! Get in here!”

We weren’t sure whether she was summoning the Lord to let him have it, or us, but figuring better safe than sorry, we dashed into the kitchen and found Mother rifling through the box.

“What do you know about this?” she demanded, eyeing us suspiciously.

“Nothing!” we both pleaded.

“It was those McDougals, wasn’t it?” Mother said, referring to the family of Val’s best friend, Vicki. She motioned to the door. “Let’s go.”

A death march up the street to the McDougals’ house ensued, with Mother toting the heavy box like a three-day-old corpse. Val and I knew that our already shaky standing in the neighborhood was about to plummet. No matter what happened, this would take years to live down.

Mrs. McDougal must have been watching from the window, because the front door swung open before we even stepped onto the porch. She was a short, slightly rotund redhead whose hair color—from flaming orange to burgundy—depended on which brand was on sale at Schnucks supermarket. A lit cigarette hung from her lips as if affixed by Super Glue, and she carried an ever-present plastic tumbler of Southern Comfort, which she was known to set down only when adding ice or mixing hair color.

“Hey, kids,” she greeted us, the cigarette bobbing precariously. Her smile faded when she saw Mother carrying the box. “Well, you must be Mrs. Poole.”

Mrs. McDougal, now suspicious that perhaps this was not the thank-you visit she might have anticipated, nonetheless opened the screen door and motioned for us to come in. Mother stepped in front to hold us back, everyone standing on the porch with no coats on. Mrs. McDougal raised one eyebrow. “It’s a little chilly out here, wouldn’t you like to—?”

Mother interrupted her. “How much food we have in our home is really of no concern to you or that bottle-blond daughter of yours,” she snapped. Val shrank into the background as Mrs. McDougal nearly swallowed her lit cigarette.

Mother was just getting warmed up. “The fact that we as a family choose not to fill our cupboards with junk foods should be immaterial to you and, quite frankly, is none of your business.” She presented the box to Mrs. McDougal. “The next time you need to feel superior to someone, I’d suggest you start with whoever does your hair.”

She whirled on her heel and marched off with me in hand, leaving Val to mouth a hurried “I’m sorry” to Mrs. McDougal before turning to follow. Val’s clever CIA cover was in ruins. Henceforth, the neighbors simply referred to Mother as “that awful woman.”

And thus it was with shock and horror that we greeted our father’s suggestion that we have his new boss, Warren, over for dinner.

“Are you kidding?! You really want to subject that guy to Mother?” Val asked, covertly attempting to palm several of the bank’s hundred-dollar bills as the three of us played Monopoly.

“Look, if I get in good with him,” he confided to us as he returned Val’s stolen stash to the bank, “it’ll keep your mother off my back.”