Running With Scissors_ A Memoir - Augusten Burroughs [60]
By the third day, after still no bowel movement, the doctor instructed Agnes to give him an enema. The enema was successful, but the doctor believed the contents of his bowel had been too compressed, and then too destroyed by water, to make an accurate reading. “I’m afraid that this sudden freezing of the bowels,” he said to us as we were gathered in the living room, “signals that God has chosen to no longer communicate in this way.”
Hope was deeply distraught.
At that moment, the oldest Finch daughter, Kate, walked into the house, making a rare appearance. Surprised by the gathering, she said, “Hey, what’s everybody doing in here?”
She smelled like perfume. Her makeup was flawless.
Natalie snickered. “Take a seat, Kate. You’ve missed some good stuff.”
Kate smiled. “Oh, yeah? What’d I miss?” She brushed off the surface of a chair and sat on the edge.
The doctor explained the past few days to his daughter, offering to take her out back to the picnic table so she could inspect the messages from God herself.
After Kate slammed her car door and drove away, Natalie leaned forward. “You really should write all this stuff down.”
I said, “Even if I did, nobody would believe it.”
“That’s true,” she said. “Maybe it’s better to just forget it.”
PHLEGMED BEFORE A LIVE AUDIENCE
A
LTHOUGH BOTH NATALIE AND I LACKED THE ABILITY TO play piano, we were gifted at manipulating others into playing for us so we could sing. Three of Finch’s patients played well enough to follow the sheet music we placed in front of them. Of these three, Karen was the best because she was tireless. Whether this quality was innate or caused by improper dosage of her medication, she would happily play the theme from Endless Love five times in a row and then move without fuss into a rousing rendition of “Somewhere.” When Karen would begin to complain that her fingers were getting tired, Natalie would pull a Snickers bar or a joint out of the patch pocket on the front of her skirt. This would usually keep Karen playing, but sometimes she would just become very stubborn after an hour and a half of steady keyboard work. In these cases, Natalie would resort to bribery. “You know,” she would say temptingly, “I could call my dad and see if he could see you later this afternoon. I’m sure he would.” Pause. “If I asked him.” This usually got at least another medley out of her.
It was our goal to become an international singing sensation, on a par with Peaches ’N Herb or the Captain and Tenille. When there was no patient around to play piano for us, we practiced upstairs in Natalie’s room by singing along to Stevie Nicks albums. The problem was, Stevie was sometimes hard to understand and Natalie had long since lost the liner notes to the album. So I would lie on the floor with my head next to the speaker and Natalie would stand with her finger poised over the needle.
“Wait, I can’t understand that—play it again,” I’d say, scribbling furiously to keep up. “Is she singing ‘just like a wine-ringed love’ or ‘white-winged dove’?”
Natalie would drop the needle on the record, causing it to screech. “Hold on, here it comes.”
The verse would play and again I couldn’t understand. “Fuck it, I’ll just write something in.”
After I finished transcribing, with dubious accuracy, the words to our favorite songs, we would sing them over and over as we watched ourselves in the mirror on Natalie’s dresser.
“My arms look so fat,” Natalie would comment. The problem was, she was holding a curling iron up to her mouth to simulate a microphone and this doubled the girth of her arms, which were plump to begin with.
“Well, we’ll use stands,” I offered. “We won’t ever take the mic out of the stand.”
Natalie would then toss the curling iron on the bed. “That makes sense. Good thinking.”
Sometimes we would drag the fan upstairs. This would create a sort of Stevie-Nicks-in-a-wind-tunnel look that we especially loved. “I wish I had a carpetbag,