Running With Scissors_ A Memoir - Augusten Burroughs [28]
His older sister would playfully sock him on the shoulder of his Izod. “Heck, Daniel. Mom could even make us love lima beans!”
Everyone at the table would laugh. Then join hands and say grace.
To me, these people were as exotic as animals in a zoo. I’d never seen anything like them. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to be one of them or simply live among them taking notes and photographs.
I was certain that Fern, unlike my mother, had never hurled the Christmas tree off the deck or baked one of her kids a cornstarch birthday cake. Furthermore, there was no doubt in my mind that Fern never craved a cigarette-butt-and-canned-smoked-oyster sandwich.
In some part of my lower brain stem, I recognized these people for what they were—normal. I also recognized that I was more like a Finch and less like one of them.
It was difficult to imagine handsome, preppy Daniel sitting in the TV room at the Finches’, pointing at the family dog and laughing because little Poo was lying on the floor in a fit of giggles with his pants pulled down and the dog licking his erect penis. It was hard to imagine Daniel seeing this and then shrugging and turning back to the TV. Because he’d gotten used to it.
My mother eventually found us our own place to live. It was one half of a large old house on Dickinson Street, just a few miles up the road from Fern. My mother liked the fact that it was across the street from where Emily Dickinson once lived. “I’m as brilliant a poet as she was, you know. It just feels right for me to be here at this point in my life.” And I liked the fact that it was a lot closer to Northampton and the Finches’. Now, instead of my mother having to drive me over there, I could take the PVTA bus. The fact that my “room” was really just a nook without a door told me that I wouldn’t be spending much time with Mom.
Dr. Finch had already told me to consider his house my house. He said I could just show up anytime I wanted to. “Just pound on the door and Agnes will get out of bed and let you in.” And I knew Hope really liked having me there. So did Natalie. Even though she was living in Pittsfield with her legal guardian, she came to Northampton a lot. And she said if I was there, she’d come all the time.
At first I’d thought it was weird that Natalie had a legal guardian, considering she already had a father. But Dr. Finch believed a person should choose his or her own parents. So at thirteen, Natalie had chosen one of her father’s patients, Terrance Maxwell, who was forty-two and rich. So now she lived with him and attended a private prep school that he paid for. Just like Vickie lived with a pack of hippies that traveled from barn to barn all across America. Every six months or so, Vickie would make a pit stop back home in Northampton.
So I was learning that living arrangements needed to remain fluid. And that I shouldn’t get too attached to anything. In a way, I felt like an adventurer. And this appealed to my deep need for a sense of freedom.
The only problem was school. I had just turned thirteen, a seventh-grader at Amherst Regional Junior High. Elementary school had been a disaster, with me repeating the third grade twice. Then after the divorce and the move to Amherst, I transferred to a new elementary school and that hadn’t worked either. Now, I was heading for something much worse.
From the first day when I walked in the door and was assaulted by the smell of chlorine, I knew I wouldn’t be attending this school for very long. Chlorine meant a pool. And a pool meant mandatory swimming, and this meant not only wearing a bathing suit in front of other kids, but being cold and wet and then stripping it off when my dick was at its smallest.
Another problem was the esthetics. To me, the large gray one-level building looked like some sort of factory that might churn out ground meat products or just the plastic eyes for stuffed animals.