It Looked Different on the Model - Laurie Notaro [41]
The imperfection of the world proved itself a minute later when I walked into the bathroom to dry my hair.
“Mom!” I cried. “Where is the salon chair? The salon chair is gone! I can walk straight through to the toilet! Where is the salon chair?”
“I had to move it; it’s Thursday,” she called back from downstairs. “Patricia and the cleaning ladies come today.”
You have got to be kidding me, I thought angrily as I plugged in the hair dryer. Now I have to stand up while I blow-dry my hair? I don’t want to stand up while I blow-dry my hair. The thought of it is just exhausting. Standing up is ridiculous! Who does that? Who does that!
“What are you doing up there?” my mother called again.
“I’m drying my hair,” I replied indignantly. “And I have to do it upright because it’s Thursday!”
“Don’t make a mess! Patricia will be here in ten minutes!” she replied. “I know you’re up there making a mess with all of that goddamned hair!”
“I am not!” I shouted back. “I am not making a mess! I am rolling up a big ball from all the hair that fell out of my head this week, and I’m putting it on your toothbrush like an ornament on a Christmas tree that Anderson Cooper doesn’t want you to have, right at this moment!”
It had only taken a week, even without sitting on my mom’s Time Traveler Toilet, for me reset the clock and become twelve years old.
The following Sunday, after I’d returned home, my mother didn’t even say hello when my father asked if I wanted to talk to her and then handed her the phone.
“What the hell was in that goddamned red bag?” she demanded immediately.
“Mom,” I said. “I’m fifteen hundred miles away. Did you buy a Joan Rivers webcam on QVC and think I can see you? Because I can’t see you through any of the holes in the ear portion of the handset.”
“The red bag you left here,” she explained. “You left it upstairs with all of that other stuff.”
“Oh,” I said simply, trying to remember. Point is that I never fully embraced the fact that my suitcase does not possess the magical powers of a Lion, a Witch, or a Wardrobe, and cannot carry the contents of a magical, mysterious land within it. Add to this the fact that I live in a land where Soysage is available in convenience stores on any corner, but if you try to buy the only kind of ricotta legally allowed by your mother for lasagna or tortillas that don’t “expire” for half a year, you’re out of luck, as well as room in the suitcase. As a result of filling it up with cheese and starches, a couple of things got unknowingly left behind.
“Oh,” I said slowly. “I’m sorry, I forgot to ask you to mail it to me.”
“Mail it to you?” she said sharply. “Mail it to you? Why don’t you tell me what the hell it was?”
“In the red bag?” I asked. “The one with the ribbons on it and—”
“I don’t know if it had friggin’ ribbons on it or not,” she snapped. “But I do know that when I bit into one of those goddamned little balls, it disintegrated like sand all over my tongue and started fizzing up like acid! I tried to spit it out and it wouldn’t come off, and when I drank water it started foaming more!”
“Kathy Monkman’s bath bombs?” I asked, even though my jaw was hanging open. “You ate Kathy Monkman’s bath bombs?”
“What the hell is a bath bomb?” she shot back. “I opened up the bag and there were these two little boxes with balls of candy! They smelled sweet! I thought it was marzipan!”
“Marzipan?” I asked. “Marzipan? Where would you even find marzipan after 1910?”
“There was powdered sugar on top!” she insisted.
“That was baking soda!” I cackled. “I can’t believe you ate Kathy Monkman’s bath bombs!”
“I didn’t eat them!”