Running With Scissors_ A Memoir - Augusten Burroughs [50]
By dawn we were knee-deep in debris. The kitchen table, the top of the refrigerator, the stove, the sink—everything—was covered.
People would be surprised when they woke up and sleepily walked into the kitchen for a glass of water or some orange juice.
“Hope is just going to die,” Natalie said. “And Dad. He’ll absolutely freak when he sees this. Then he’ll be forced to give us cash to finish it.”
“Yeah. That’ll be good.” I was excited, thinking we could use the cash for McDonald’s and beer along with the drywall. And it would be hilarious to see everyone’s horror.
Or so we thought.
In the morning, the doctor came downstairs in his underwear as usual. He walked into the kitchen as usual. He made his way to the refrigerator for the orange juice as usual. What was not usual was the amount of rubble he had to step over to get there. Also highly unusual was the fact that both Natalie and I were not only awake at 7 A.M., but also quite busy. Yet he seemed unfazed.
“Good morning,” he said in his deep, morning voice.
“Hey, Dad.”
“Hi,” I said.
“You two have quite the project going on in here,” he said casually, as if Natalie and I were in the middle of an especially ambitious macramé project.
“What do you think?” Natalie asked, as she used the broken legs of Agnes’s ironing board to swat the last bits of plaster away near the door to the barn.
“I think it’s a spectacular mess,” he said. He carried the orange juice over to the cupboard and pulled down a glass. He inspected it for signs of life before filling it with juice.
“That’s all?” Natalie was disappointed. She’d had her heart set on a scene. One that could possibly end with cash.
“Well,” he said, “I would hope that whenever you’re through doing whatever you’re doing that you’ll clean up like adults.”
Natalie said, “We need some money to finish. We’re putting in a new cathedral ceiling and we need money.”
He wanted to know how much. Money was tight then because two patients had quit treatment.
“A couple hundred.”
“A couple hundred dollars!” he bellowed. He added his now empty glass to the mound of plates, pans and empty milk cartons that had been in the sink all week.
Natalie played favorite daughter. “Oh, c’mon, Dad. You’ll love the new kitchen. Please? Won’t you give your youngest, most favorite, most beautiful daughter two hundred dollars?” She fluttered her eyelashes playfully.
This always worked.
He promised us the cash and then went back upstairs to get dressed. Natalie pulled a chair out from the table, shoved the crap off, and sat heavily.
We were filthy and exhausted but not bored.
“That was good,” she said, like we’d just had sex.
“Yeah. But what do we do now?”
There was the problem of the mess. The ceiling and its insulation were now three feet deep on the floor and on top of everything. It would take at least as long to get rid of it as it did to take it down.
She peeled a scab off her knee, revealing a small pink gash. “We’ll shovel it outside, throw it behind the barn.”
“When?”
“Later.”
“What do we do now?”
“Take a nap.”
I woke up that afternoon at about four and groggily walked out of my room, down the hall into the kitchen. Agnes was rinsing a plate under the faucet. She dried it on her apron and placed it in the cupboard. Then she shuffled through the debris to the refrigerator. She opened the door and hunched over to inspect the labels of the condiments. “We never have any relish in this house,” she said. “Who’s eating all the relish?
I couldn’t remember ever seeing relish in the refrigerator. “Maybe Hope ate it.”
“That Hope,” she said. “She should know better.” Agnes took her pocketbook from its position at the top of the mound of plates on the kitchen table. “I’m going to run to the store and pick up a fresh bottle. If anybody needs a clean plate there’s one in the cupboard.” She left through the back