Running With Scissors_ A Memoir - Augusten Burroughs [90]
It was a disaster.
I reached in my back pocket for my cigarettes but had forgotten to take them.
Fuck.
Well, one thing was for sure. I would never, ever go to the All-Star market again for any reason no matter what. And if I was staying over at my mother and Dorothy’s place and they needed me to run out and get something, I’d just have to walk farther, to the Cumberland Farms. Hopefully, they wouldn’t need anything after midnight because All-Star was the only twenty-four-hour place in town.
But what if they did need something? What if I had to go in there?
Well, maybe he wouldn’t be there that night. He probably wouldn’t be. He was probably a student and had a lot of classes. He couldn’t work there every night because he had to study.
But what if he was working the night I had to go there?
By the time I reached the front door, I was a wired mess. I half-expected to see my mother and Dorothy waiting for me with their arms folded across their large chests. But when I walked in, the house was quiet.
I’d never felt so trapped in my entire life. And I did it to myself. I had made myself a prisoner, unable to walk on that side of the street ever again, go into that store.
I sat on the couch in the dark. Then I got up and went into the kitchen for my cigarettes and came back. I lit one and stared at the shadows of the African masks on my mother’s walls, her pen-and-ink drawings behind glass frames, the shelves and shelves of books.
The problem with not having anybody to tell you what to do, I understood, is that there was nobody to tell you what not to do.
PENNIES FROM HEAVEN
I
T WAS THE SUMMER THAT PRINCE CHARLES MARRIED LADY Diana Spencer and nobody could look at the television without thinking about Natalie.
“Jeez, you look just like her, Natalie, you really do,” Agnes said as she sat back on the sofa rubbing her feet together at the bunions.
“Oh, yeah, right.” Natalie lit a Marlboro Light.
“It’s true, Nat. Maybe you should ask Kate to cut your hair like hers,” Hope said.
“What’s the matter with you people? I am not Princess fucking Diana. We look nothing alike.”
Actually, they did.
Princess Diana was almost like a parallel-universe version of Natalie. A version that didn’t give her first blowjob at eleven, wasn’t traded for cash by her father at thirteen and didn’t long for a job as a counter girl at McDonald’s.
“It’s in the eyes,” I said. “You have the same eyes. And there’s something about your face that’s a lot like hers,” I said.
Natalie turned to me. “You think?”
“Yeah.”
She punched me on the shoulder and smiled. “You’re such a liar.”
“No, it’s true. You really do look alike.”
She stood up and raised her chin in the air. “I am Princess Natalie Finch and you shall all kiss my royal ass.”
“Oh, sit down,” Agnes said. “Don’t get all high and mighty on us now. There’s one thing that Diana girl has that you don’t and that’s a figure.”
“Oh, Agnes, that’s not nice,” Hope said.
Natalie sat on the arm of the wing chair. “Are you saying I’m a fat cow?”
Agnes turned away and looked back at the TV. “I didn’t call you a fat cow. You’re just a bigger girl than that Diana.”
“Well, I take after you,” Natalie said.
Agnes shrugged and rubbed her toes together. “I’m no spring chicken, but when I was your age I had a very good figure. As a matter of fact, when your father and I first—”
“I can’t believe you,” Natalie said, smirking. “I can’t believe you’re calling your own daughter fat.”
“I’m not calling you fat. I’m just saying that when I met your father—”
“Oh shut up, Agnes. Nobody wants to hear another one of your stories,” Hope said.
“Don’t tell me to shut up. I have every right to talk. I have every right—”
“Hope’s right. We don’t want to hear you ramble on and on.”
“Fine,” Agnes said.
Natalie crushed her cigarette out in the ashtray that was sitting on the chair. “So tell me more about how fat and disgusting I am.”
Agnes pretended she didn’t hear. She stared