Running With Scissors_ A Memoir - Augusten Burroughs [52]
As it turned out, we could live in a house with a hole.
Because our measurements were approximate and our precision was nonexistent, the window from the pantry was a rough fit into the hole in the roof. We nailed it into place, using scraps of wood to seal around it. Then we added fresh shingles.
But there remained a gap. It was about seven-and-a-half inches between the roof and the top side of the window. We knew the figure, because it was the only thing we measured.
Eight months out of the year, rain fell through this gap and collected in a pot that was permanently placed on the kitchen table. The other four months, the pot collected snow. During the holidays, we took to wearing stocking caps and mittens while we prepared our feasts.
But the skylight, no matter how crude, did flood the kitchen with light.
“I really like it,” Hope commented, emptying the rain-filled pot into the sink. “It’s worth the trouble.”
Dr. F agreed. “It brings a sense of humor to the kitchen.”
Agnes didn’t agree. “It’s a disaster,” she said. Of course, she’d said this after leaving her purse on the kitchen table in the spot where the rain-pan should have been.
QUEEN HELENE CHOLESTEROL
K
ATE WASN’T LIKE THE OTHER FINCHES. SHE WAS SLIM, SOphisticated and listened to Laura Nyro and fusion jazz. She dated handsome black men and her spotless apartment was decorated with Oriental rugs and African fertility icons. She sent her daughter Brenda to ballet school. And when she divorced, she kept his name. Kate was the cLosest thing the Finches had to a royal family member.
Oh, the others didn’t think so. “Snob,” they called her. “Stuck-up cunt.” But I was in awe of her and was thrilled when—between boyfriends—she would ask me to wash her car or take down her storm windows.
When Kate stopped by the house, I changed my clothes as if going on a date. I was as charming and well behaved as possible. I pretended not to know the other members of the family.
My awe of her was based on the fact that she had exactly what I wanted in life. She was a professional licensed cosmetologist. Or, to use a name I loathed, hairdresser.
Kate was planning to someday open her own shop and I felt this was a bond between us, because I was planning to open my own chain of shops around the world and also have my own line of haircare products. I even wanted to have a line of products marketed exclusively to the trade because I was convinced that the perms on the market were too damaging to the hair shaft. I didn’t know how to make them any less damaging, but I did have some packaging ideas that would give the impression of harmlessness.
Kate had been generous enough to give me her old cosmetology school textbook. It was a hardcover with no jacket and the catchy title was printed across the pink front in swashy script: HANDBOOK OF COSMETOLOGY. Inside were black-and-white line illustrations of the many procedures that the cosmetology students had to master before earning their license to practice. It was all in there—from pin curls to permanent waves—and I was determined to memorize the book before I attended beauty school. I could not take the chance that I would flunk, so I felt my best option was to already know everything in the book. Even if some of the procedures were no longer practiced or perhaps even illegal. For example, a “cold wave” appeared to involve wires attached to the head, electricity and water.
“Working with hair” was the only thing I could think of to do with myself professionally. Becoming a doctor seemed unlikely to me now. I had nearly outgrown my desire to be a talk-show host. And even though I spent many hours each day hunched over a notebook writing in my journal because I felt that if I didn’t write at least four hours a day I might as well not exist, the idea of being a writer never entered my mind. My mother was a writer but she was also crazy. And the only people who read her poems were the depressed women in the writing classes she held at her house in the summers or friends