Fiction Ruined My Family - Jeanne Darst [11]
“What is wrong with you?” My mother had said these words so many times to me that my sisters had adopted them. I had a habit of grabbing some scissors and pulling up a chair while my mother cooked dinner. I cut up whatever was in sight—letters, bills, report cards—it was relaxing after a long day at school to just cut things up, cut, cut, cut. The way some people needlepoint. My father saw me doing this once and said, “Don’t be an idiot.” I didn’t speak to him all night, and then I wrote a retaliatory note to him, in pencil so dark it ripped the paper. I pressed down on it like a dying man, writing, “I am not an idiote. Do not call me one!” I put it on his pillow. My dad apologized right away but from that day on whenever I did something stupid, my sisters would say, “I am not an ID-I-OTE! Do not call me one!” in the voice of John Merrick, the Elephant Man.
My sisters and I were the Marx Brothers for Halloween for four years in a row. Eleanor was Groucho, Katharine was Chico, Julia was Harpo, and I was Zeppo. Remember Zeppo? Of course you don’t, nobody remembers Zeppo, because he was the “unknown” Marx brother, the normal one, the straight man. Zeppo. Who knew what Zeppo even looked like. I could have worn a kilt and carried bagpipes, for all anybody knew about this brother. This is the essence of being the youngest kid. In exchange for shabby treatment, however, comes the dubious reward of incompetence. I was someone with no responsibilities. I’d be putting a cup in the dishwasher when Eleanor or Katharine would snatch it out of my hand.
“Mom! Jeanne was trying to put a mug in the dishwasher! You should have seen her!” Did I have no responsibilities because I was an imbecile or was I an imbecile because I had no responsibilities?
Julia was developing a love of paperwork and red tape. She was a sort of child notary public; if you asked to borrow her baseball mitt, she would quickly draw up a lot of forms for you to sign and date, with a lot of dramatic stamping on these forms, and then she’d say, “I’ll have my people look into this and get back to you.” Just for kicks she’d sit and copy the Bible onto yellow legal pads.
She set up a real estate office in the basement with files of available properties on index cards. The problem was no one ever went down in the basement, it wasn’t renovated or anything, it was like the basement of an apartment building, complete with boiler and cement floors, cold, musty, dark. After a while she’d come up to the kitchen and make an announcement.
“Ah, good morning, everyone. I’d like to let all you people know that my office is now open for business and I’ve got some terrific new properties you really should have a look at. A very airy condo in Boca Raton, right on the beach. Excellent price. Stop by, I’d be happy to go over the details with any of you.” And she’d head downstairs for a few hours.
The only family members Julia liked to talk to were Guinness and Oiseau and our cat. Yes, Julia talked to the animals, and sometimes renamed them; Guinness became Toddy, after Hot Toddy, a delightful concoction of whiskey, sugar and lemon that we had discovered and fallen in love with when a nasty flu was going around. Our cat, Kitty, became Cuckoo. Of course, no one used these new names but Julia.
“Cuckoo doesn’t like it when you smoke at the table, Mother,” Julia would announce at dinner, and we’d all think, “Who the fuck is Cuckoo?”
She also spent a lot of nights at her librarian’s station in the living room, where she checked out books. If you were just passing through the living