Running With Scissors_ A Memoir - Augusten Burroughs [6]
Unfortunately, my parents loathed each other and the life they had built together. Because I was the product of their genetic fusion, well, it’s not surprising I liked to boil my change on the stove and then shine it with metal polish.
“You infantile tyrant,” my mother shouted from her position on the sofa, legs folded up beneath her. “You goddamn bastard. You’d like nothing more than to see me slit my wrists.” She absently twisted the tassel on her long crocheted vest.
This was Cream’s cue and she tucked her tail between her legs and slipped from the room, heading downstairs to sleep next to the boiler.
My father’s face grew red as he added a splash of tonic water to his glass. “Deirdre, will you just settle down. You’re hysterical, just hysterical.” Because he was a professor, he was in the habit of repeating himself.
She stood up from the sofa and walked slowly across the white shag carpeting, as if finding her mark on a soundstage. “I’m hysterical?” she asked in a smooth, low voice. “You think this is hysterical?” She laughed theatrically, throwing her head back. “Oh, you poor bastard. You lousy excuse for a man.” She stood next to him, leaning her back against the teak bookcase. “You’re so repressed you mistake creative passion for hysterics. And don’t you see? This is how you’re killing me.” She closed her eyes and made her Edith Piaf face.
My father moved away from her. He brought the glass to his lips and took a deep swallow from his drink. Because he’d been drinking all evening, his words were slightly blurry. “Nobody’s trying to kill you, Deirdre. You’re killing yourself.”
“I wish you’d rot in hell,” she spat. “I regret the day I ever married you.”
While they were fighting, I was sitting at the dining-room table fastening and unfastening the lobster claw clasp on the gold chain my mother had bought me in Amherst. I worried constantly that it would fall from my neck. And the only thing that reassured me was to test its dependability over and over again. I glanced up and said, “Can’t you two stop fighting? You always fight and I hate it.”
“This is between me and your father,” my mother said coldly.
“No it’s not,” I shouted with surprising volume. “It’s not just between you because I’m here too. And I can’t stand it. All you ever do is scream at each other. Can’t you just leave each other alone? Can’t you try?”
My mother replied, “Your father is the one who is making things difficult for us.”
Eventually, the fight moved next door to the kitchen, providing them with better lighting as well as potential weapons.
“Look at your damn face,” my mother said. “You’ve got the face of a man twice your age. Thirty-seven years old going on eighty.”
My father was very drunk by now and the only way he could imagine restoring silence to the house was to stop my mother from breathing.
“Get your damn hands off of me,” my mother screamed, struggling against my father’s hands, which had found their way around her neck.
“Shut the hell up, you bitch.” His teeth were clenched.
I had followed them into the kitchen, and was standing in the doorway in my Snoopy pajamas. “Stop!” I screamed. “Stop this!”
In one motion, my mother shoved my drunk father, sending him reeling backward against the kitchen counter. His head hit the dishwasher on the way down and when he made contact with the kitchen floor, he didn’t move. A small pool of blood began to form under his ear and I was sure he was dead.
“He’s not moving,” I said, moving closer.
“This spineless bastard is only playing another one of his pitiful games.” She nudged his bad knee with her red toe. “Get up, Norman. You’re frightening Augusten. Enough of your pranks.”
My father eventually sat up, leaning his head back against the dishwasher.
With disgust, my mother tore a Bounty paper towel from the roll and handed it to him. “I should just let you bleed to death for terrifying our son like that.”
He pressed it against the side of his face to absorb the blood.
Seeing that my father was