It Looked Different on the Model - Laurie Notaro [38]
“I told you to watch the tutorial,” she volleyed. “You don’t just open a coffeemaker and pour a gallon of water in the first hole you see. It’s not a girl at the bar.”
And then she gave me a “you know what I’m talking about” look.
“Sorry, that’s the way it works with coffeemakers that don’t come with a DVD and a certificate of completion. And it’s a mystery why you bought a coffeemaker that uses the special coffee packets you can only get on QVC,” I shot back. “They look like Chicken McNugget dipping sauces. I still can’t figure out if I got the sweet ’n’ sour or honey mustard latte.”
“I’m getting a new hip,” she said, changing the subject.
“You just got a new hip,” I reminded her. “You haven’t even sent Barack Obama a thank-you note for the first one yet. So when did QVC start selling body parts? Is this one bedazzled with Diamonique, or does it have a lighthouse embroidered on it? Are you getting a Joan Rivers hip? Please tell me you’re getting a Joan Rivers hip!”
“I’m getting my other one done,” she informed me, and I remembered all too well the incident of the last hip replacement the year before. Pre-surgery, she got ready for it like a mama bird and began assembling her Recovery (Vicodin) Nest. She moved into my sister’s old room, where she had set up a television, a fold-up dining tray, a recliner, and a patio chair, which my father had informed me that she called “the visitor’s chair,” to which he commented without pause, “Oh, yeah, they’re lining up around the block.” In essence, my mother had established her very own assisted-living apartment within her very own house. The hospital also gave her a hook hand on a pole—the Gripper—with a squeeze handle at the bottom of the stick to control the opening and closing of the claw.
“Are you getting another Gripper?” I asked. “So when your skin grows back together as one sheet and your transition into the Bionic Woman is complete, maybe you can get some whaling or seasonal migrant fruit-picking work?”
“I don’t think that’s funny,” my mother said. “I hate that friggin’ lemon tree in the backyard. Who the hell needs all of those lemons? Why can’t it just give me one or two lemons a week? That’s all I need. I should stop watering it.”
“Are you bringing your visitor’s chair back into your apartment?” I asked. “I noticed you moved it in front of the sink in the bathroom. Actually, I didn’t notice it as much as realize that I was going to have to get a running start and pole-vault over it if I wanted to get to the toilet.”
“It takes a long time to dry my hair with the blow dryer,” my mother replied adamantly. “Standing the whole time makes my hip very tired.” This was a woman who, if asked what was the single most important possession she would save from a burning house, would answer her handicapped-parking permit or her Ambien bottle, so the chair in the bathroom shouldn’t have come as too much of a surprise to me.
“Maybe we should buy you some Sun-In,” I replied. “Cut down on your beauty time.”
“Why would you keep an important email in a trash folder?” my mother said suddenly, throwing up her hands. “That’s like keeping your checking account in the toilet bowl. Right? Right?”
I shrugged, knowing better than to touch that beehive, so I turned matters to the only subject my mother and I couldn’t possibly argue about: her grandsons, my nephews.
“You know, I can’t believe how tall Nick got,” I said, referencing my nephew who had suddenly sprouted five inches since I had last seen him at Christmas. “I feel like someone switched him out with a random mall kid wearing a McDonald’s uniform; did you bring him back after a spin on your Time Traveler Toilet? I don’t know why we didn’t keep him in a terrarium so he could only grow as big as his surroundings would allow. Remember his little baby teeth? I want his little teeth back. You’d better return this version before he sprouts a mustache and our Future Family decides