Fiction Ruined My Family - Jeanne Darst [41]
She looked both ways before whispering that I was the one who had brought these microscopic pubic gorillas into our lives and she was only trying to get us out of this mess.
I started to answer her but she shushed me as an older woman in a navy-blue quilted coat steered her beagle around the two of us and made a left in front of us.
“The people in this neighborhood are really unbelievable. You gotta keep it down, Jeanne.” This is precisely what I was afraid of: the crab medicine seemed to be penetrating Julia’s frontal lobe.
“By the way,” she added, sotto voce, “make sure you rip off the label on those bottles. I for one don’t want my name connected with this whole fiasco.” Not realizing Julia was planning on running for public office, I clinched the pharmacy bag to make it unrecognizable as a bag from the pharmacy containing crab medicine while we walked past Mario the doorman into the building.
That night Mom was out with Phil Sully and we did our last “treatment,” lathering ourselves from head to toe in soapy poison. We did our crotches, head hair, eyebrows, arms. We shaved our legs and armpits, used depilatory cream on the blond hair on our upper lips. Then we sat on towels watching Tod Browning’s Freaks while rhythmically pulling our little combs through our tresses and depositing imaginary eggs on a towel in front of us.
“Why did we rent this movie again?” Julia said, sitting on a garbage bag, tapping nonexistent bugs off her little pube comb. “These people are so sad.”
After the movie we decided to call it a night. I was tired and had a backache from sleeping on the floor.
“Julia, I think we can sleep on the pull-out tonight. I think we’re clear.”
She eyeballed me for a few moments. “Fine.” She walked out of the room and then came back in, holding two garbage bags. “But we’ll seal off our crotches with these,” and she handed me a garbage bag. She took a scissors off the desk and cut two holes in her bag. She then stepped into the Hefty bag holes and pulled the bag up around her waist. “Now all this needs is a little belt.” Julia left the room and went into the kitchen. Too tired to argue, I cut two holes in my bag and pulled it on.
“Okay. Got it,” Julia said, coming back into the room. “Check it out, better than a belt, that would be uncomfortable to sleep in.” She shoved her hip at me where there was now gray duct tape.
She waddled over to the coffee table in her big plastic garbage-bag diaper and pulled a True Blue out of a pack sitting on the table. She lit it and sat on a chair.
“See? You can sit anywhere, too. We should have been wearing these the whole time,” Julia said, handing me the duct tape. She took a little drag. “God, these things are disgusting. Smoking is disgusting, you know that?”
I took off my T-shirt and duct-taped the bag together with a depressive’s flair. I went to take a piss in just my garbage bag.
As I walked back into the now darkened living room, the front door opened, blasting voices and light. My mother and a man. The golfy bellow of a lawyer. Before I could grab a blanket to cover my chest, Mom flicked on more lights. Mom and Phil Sully, both totally drunk, stood at the door. Julia was asleep in her bra and garbage bag on the pull-out. I was standing, frozen. I grabbed a needlepoint Picasso pillow off a chair and covered my breasts, and before I knew it my manners kicked in and I stuck out my hand.
“Hi, Mr. Sully.”
Mr. S. shook my hand and took in my getup.
“Jeanne, nice to see you again,” he managed to eject out the side of his little lawyer mouth.
“Girls, what in God’s name is going on here? What are you wearing? Oh, for God’s sake.” If she hadn’t been totally bombed she would have really been pissed. Being so drunk, though, she was about forty percent open to something happening that was not what her eyes told her was happening. Julia continued to sleep, despite the light, the conversation, the scotch vapors emanating from my mother and her boyfriend like dirt off Pig-Pen. Mom objected to