Running With Scissors_ A Memoir - Augusten Burroughs [59]
When Finch received a windfall in the amount of one thousand dollars from the insurance company, he took this as a definite sign that the turd had, in fact, been a direct piece of communication from The Heavenly Father.
As a result, he scrutinized each of his bowel movements. And, because God could just as easily speak through any one of us, insisted on seeing ours before we flushed.
“No fucking way,” Natalie snapped, as she flushed the toilet, despite her father’s incessant pounding on the bathroom door.
“Okay, Dad,” called Hope, as she sprayed Glade in the air.
After inspecting a number of Hope’s turds and one of his wife’s (which he deemed inferior), he decided that only his turds were acting as messengers from heaven. So each morning, he called Hope into the bathroom to remove the waste and set it outside on the picnic table with the others.
Together, he believed, the bowel movements would tell a more complete picture of our future.
Would I get into beauty school? The answer was many small, broken stools. “Chop, chop, chop, like scissors. I’d say that’s a yes,” the doctor said with a smile.
Would the IRS seize the house? “Diarrhea means they’ll mess the records up. The house is ours!”
What about Hope; would she ever get married? “See all that corn? Hope’s going to marry a farmer.”
The doctor recorded these events on paper. Complete with illustrations of each turd, along with an accompanying interpretation. This essay went into the monthly newsletter, which he mailed to all his patients.
For weeks that summer, it seemed nothing could be done; no action taken, no decision made, unless the contents of the doctor’s lower colon agreed.
“I certainly wouldn’t get my hopes up about taking some job outside the house,” the doctor told Agnes. “It’s just not in the cards, so to speak,” he said, pointing into the toilet.
The mood changed dramatically, however, when the doctor became constipated. “I haven’t had a bowel movement for a day and a half,” he said ominously from his seat in front of the television. “And I’m not sure what that means.”
The constipation sent Hope straight to her room where she performed a barrage of bible-dips: Will dad have a B.M.? Will the IRS take the house? Will more patients quit therapy? Have you stopped speaking to Dad through the toilet?
To Natalie and me, it was as if everyone in the house had sipped tainted water. Except us. But instead of seeing it as a brazen form of neurological pathology, we thought it was funny. “Can you believe my father holds a medical degree from one of the most prestigious universities in America?”
“If he can be a doctor,” I said, “I should be able to get into beauty school.”
My fixation on beauty school intensified during times of stress. I also wrote in my journal more. Writing was the only thing that made me feel content. I could escape into the page, into the words, into the spaces between the words. Even if all I was doing was practicing signing my autograph.
“Why don’t you be a writer?” Natalie suggested one afternoon. “I bet you’d be a funny writer.”
My journals were not funny. They were tragic. “I don’t want to be a writer,” I said automatically. “Look at my mother.”
Natalie laughed. “But not all writers are crazy like your mother.”
“Yeah, but if I inherited the gene to write, I’m sure I got her crazy genes, too.”
“Well, I just don’t think you’re going to be happy . . . cutting hair.”
This infuriated me. I wasn’t going to cut hair. I was going to own a beauty empire. “You don’t understand the plan,” I said. “You don’t listen.”
“I still think you’d hate it. Standing around all day long sticking your fingers in people’s dirty hair. Yuck.”
I had no intention of sticking my fingers in anyone’s hair, just approving packaging designs from behind a glass desk. A beauty empire was my only way out. I loved the Vidal Sassoon