Sputterpub's Blog

Elizabeth strode into the room. “I just don’t know what I’m going to do with all of Dad’s things…” She tossed her head as she complained, swinging her chin-length yellow hair toward the objects that filled the table. She tended to speak in italics. She tended to lie about her past. She claimed that she’d had red hair as a kid; she said she’d always been thin. When I knew her, she was mousy brown and fat.

If it weren’t for classmates.com, I wouldn’t be with her. But Valerie Otterholt tried to organize a 35-year reunion and that led to reconnections. She’d stayed close to Valerie Fartham and she let me know when Mr. Fartham died. So there I was with Valerie O. and Elizabeth, doing the funeral chores. Mrs. Fartham was useless with grief. Valerie Fartham had disabled herself with obesity. Somehow I and old Jim Wilson were roped into helping Valerie O. with the family.

There were two big issues: the funeral rites and Mr. Fartham’s “stuff.” His widow and daughters wanted to keep his best guitar for sentimental reasons, and most of his books for their library, but they had little use and less room for all the objects he’d collected. Most of the items weren’t worth much. Mr. Fartham had taken up many hobbies and then hadn’t pursued most of them, so there were parts of stamp and coin collections, beginner equipment for woodwork and tennis, used games, pre-computer puzzles, and classic magazine pornography.

Jim Wilson walked into the room as Elizabeth’s hair settled around her neck. He was still rambunctious, but he’d grown into his personality; he was no longer the completely obnoxious boy of my youth. I understood he was a slut – consistently unfaithful to his wife of thirty years – but he was the most interesting person around.

“God but funerals make me horny,” he whispered as he passed me, ambiguously caressing my waist.

I twisted a little away from him and made some unmemorable comment about a desire for life renewal.

“No, I don’t think it’s that,” he said. “There’s something about women at funerals: well-dressed, quiet, vulnerable I guess, that just turns me on.”

“Well contain yourself,” I advised him. “Help Elizabeth come up with a home for all these things.”

“I’d rather help you,” he leered. “I can’t stand her. She wasn’t too bad as a kid, but she’s a phony joke now.”

I reconsidered him at that. He might be a slut but it appeared he was at least a little selective.

“Bingo,” he said.

“Huh?”

“I mean the game! Let’s array the stuff on the dining room sideboard and play bingo for things! Really. I’ll run the show. Winners can select what they want.”

“Actually, that’s not a bad idea.”

“Ack-shually,” Jim made it sound British, “it’s a damn good one.”

(to be concluded tomorrow)

I was a liar, too. Usually I told untruths to improve the story rather than to duck blame, which is a justification about as worthy as not making money at one’s crime. When I was seven I claimed I’d spun the hula hoop around me a million times, insisting upon it if anyone acted incredulous, and when they all stopped objecting I actually thought I’d snowed them. I had no idea how long it would have taken me to count to a million.

When I was eight and John was five, we broke one of our parents’ cards, playing Slapjack. We weren’t supposed to use their fancy double set of KEMs; we had our own rough-backed five-and-dime decks. But I so loved the slippery feel of their cards when I shuffled, that I talked young John into playing with them, and sure enough a jack snapped in two pieces, imperfectly in a diagonal making two useless polygons, when our palms dropped together on it before it was flat.

I was all for simple denial. Let the parents find the pieces; we weren’t supposed to play with the cards so of course we hadn’t played with them. But my brother John made George Washington look sneaky. He insisted that we confess. He confessed for both of us.

I don’t think I actually felt valued until fifth grade, with Mr. Fartham. He saw something in me, and he helped me see it too. Then selfish didn’t seem so bad.

He made everyone read or recite a poem each Thursday morning. Within a month the whole class had memorized the first stanza of the verse about Paul Revere’s ride, so even if you didn’t prepare you could always stand up and belt out : “Now listen my children and you shall hear …” But I always went to the trouble of finding something, and Mr. Fartham appreciated it. I’ll never forget reading “The Ballad of Lenin’s Tomb” to them. I loved Robert Service’s rhythms, and I got into it at the climax of the poem, when the bomb is about to blow. I had the class in suspense. Mr. Fartham led them all in actual applause when I finished. It was a shining moment for me.

He had a few other favored students, but I always knew I was number one with him. There was Valerie Otterholt, big and fat and lonely. She wasn’t stupid but I was pretty sure he paid her attention because she was sad. That and because she had the same name as his daughter. There was Kevin Sullivan, who had strange science ideas and stuttered. And there was Jimmy Wilson, who rocked in his chair and always got into trouble. I resented Jimmy. He was one of those kids who got attention by acting up. He made it seem stupid to be good.

Fifth grade was about the 16^th and 17^th centuries. Mr. Fartham used to read from then to us while we worked on art projects. I remember I was trying to build a toothpick tower when he told us that in the 1500s, people used to drink ale and whiskey out of lead cups. The combination could poison a person enough to knock him out for a couple of days. So folks would prepare such a person for burial but keep the corpse in the kitchen for awhile, to see if he woke up. Family gathered around for that vigil, and family has to be fed. Hence the wake.

(next 500 words next Wednesday)

My brother John was born when I was 2½ years old.

He was a difficult baby. He came with crooked feet so he spent his first several months with casts on his tiny legs. He was bluish at birth and colicky in the beginning, and when he outgrew the gas he turned into a projectile vomiter. My normally impatient mother became a sucker for him, running at his every cry long after he grew too heavy to be carted around. It was like she felt guilty about his problems or something, the way she catered to him. Or maybe it was what she told me later – how if a woman is lucky she has two love affairs in her life: one with her husband and the other with her firstborn son.

I don’t recall feeling jealous as much as angry. It just wasn’t fair. And the fact was I loved John my baby brother. I was just drawing on his casts, the time I left the crayon in his crib. I didn’t even know I was missing the magenta until Mom found John with his bright red mouth; I certainly never meant him harm.

That was just the first of the injuries I caused him. When he was two I got him fake-hiccuping in the kitchen, and he banged his chin on the table and his teeth pierced his lower lip. If it hadn’t been for the seven stitches he probably would still be sucking on his bottle today, but I got spanked instead of thanked.

And it was nobody’s fault but mine when I put the horseradish in his ice cream, just to see what he would do. He was four and I was almost seven. He got a mouth shock, a nose burn, and an eye tearing. Then he figured it out and took off after me. I made it out of the kitchen but he smacked into the edge of the formica counter and the resulting gash in his eyebrow required a dozen stitches (my parents yelled that it could have been his eye – it was this close!).

I was selfish. I wanted my questions answered. I definitely wanted the biggest cookie on the plate. (I was into quantity over quality then. I bought those paper strips with dots of sugar candy on them, for a penny a yard, or those nickel candy necklaces that left apostrophes of pastel color on my throat. I was almost 13 before I matriculated to small purchases of fine chocolates.)

Once I tried to keep sleep booty. I had a recurring dream in which I received one of those plastic net stockings filled with individually wrapped hard candies. The sweets were mediocre I remember – glossy soft-centered fruit balls, tacky confectionary ribbons, and common candycanes all wrapped in clear or colored cellophane and dumped into a red net bag that was shaped like a foot&leg – but it was the type of treat my parents never bought and I wanted it for myself. I tried to bring it with me to the morning, but it was nowhere when I woke up. The next night I clutched tightly to the stocking, but still it didn’t survive the trip back to awakeness. Finally I came up a plan. The next time I got one of the dream stockings, I carried it very carefully into my house and to my room and my bed and I shoved the whole stocking right under my pillow where I was certain to find it when I woke up. I remember my astonishment and dismay the next morning, when my thoughts rose to consciousness and my right arm rose to seek my treat, and all I found beneath my pillow was cool unblemished sheet.

(continued tomorrow)

I’m really a rotten person. My mother was totally right. I’m selfish and lazy and even nasty. It takes one to know one – that’s how I can spot the phonies and users.

(I’d avoid this whole deal if I could. I distrust rituals in general and death duties the most. But I guess I’m stuck.)

It’s not like I was abused or anything. Far from it. Probably I was cherished by parents, nurtured by aunts, and favored by teachers. I know I was practically adopted by Mr. Fartham in fifth grade.

His name was “Far-tham” but behind his back the boys pronounced it “Fart-ham.” He was smart and good and homely. His eyes were small, his nose was bulbous, his teeth were caramel-colored, his skin was pocked with acne scars. He had strange long fingernails because he played classical guitar, but none of the students knew about that then, so he was mocked for his manicure too.

Mr. Fartham had a fat ugly wife and two plain pudgy daughters. Valerie was my age and Elizabeth was younger. The Fartham family did something every Saturday, and sometimes I was invited along. I was expected to hang around with Valerie, who was boring. Elizabeth was a little interesting but mostly Mr. Fartham’s ideas were the attraction for me.

The zoo was their best outing. They knew where to buy day-old bread for the bears and week-old lemon drops for the wolves, and then we could make the animals do tricks. Sometime during the afternoon Mr. Fartham and I would get in one of our talks. Around the others, either the kids at school or the other Farthams, we tried to be lighthearted and funny, but when we were alone together we got heavy, and we discussed the existence of God or the nature of infinity. (I can still see the Fartham women ahead of us on the asphalt path, their shorts riding like Ws up the insides of their thighs.)

I guess maybe Mr. Fartham didn’t have anyone at home to really talk to. I never questioned our conversations at the time. I wonder about a lot of it now.

Was he happy? Was he outgoing? Was he sexy? Why was such a smart man a public school teacher? An elementary school teacher? What did he really think of me?

At the time I saw him only as a foil to myself. Malleable metal I crinkled around me. A durable reflection about glowering brightness.

By then I had a decade of selfish habits. I’m sure I was a beloved baby girl, except I or the schedule must have bothered my mother, for my earliest memories are of her exasperation with me. I don’t think I meant to be willful, and nowadays we aren’t so rigid with our babies, but I think I remember that when I had another idea about how to spend some minutes, then there was a stern face big above me and a friction that wasn’t the right kind of warmth.

(to be continued on Wednesday)

They had to walk single file between trees for a minute or two. They came to an open space overlooking the rocky cove, and they paused. Spot investigated gopher holes; his tail swept the air like a metronome.

“Anyway … I’m feeling misanthropic lately,” Isabelle explained as she watched seagulls flutter around a far rock pool. It wasn’t typical of seagulls to flutter. “Except for you and my kids, I don’t think I’d miss people. What’s over there?”

“Where?” and Isabelle pointed at the flocking seagulls. “Come,” she said as she nudged Rosie along the path.

“Lately I’ve been extremely critical of the works of man,” Isabelle continued as they walked. “Nothing’s good enough for me. I feel like a drill sergeant; I want to tell our species to buck up, try harder, STRIVE dammit! Drop to the floor and give me 50 pushups! I look around, and nothing we do is good enough. Not the operas. Not the cathedrals. Not even the wedding cakes. On the other hand, the works of God? or nature?” and she swept her arms open to include the ocean’s width, the sky’s height, the depth of land behind them. “This stuff’s absolutely perfect. Stop here.”

“Why?”

“I want to check that out.” Isabelle pointed to a rock pool below them. “I’ve never seen seagulls fly like that.”

“Oh. Is something dead?”

“No. Ahh. It’s a sea lion birth! See? To the left of the birds …”

As Isabelle’s words registered, Rosie saw. A shiny dark cigar-shaped animal nudged a small one into the sea beneath the pool.

“The mother is making the baby swim before she lets it nurse,” Isabelle declared. They watched the infant circle a few times in the waves before it began climbing back to the pool and its mother, who by then had wriggled her body onto the warm stone above the water, leaving only her tail flippers submerged. The afterbirth remained in the pool, and the seagulls dove and wrestled for it while the baby slithered up rock and slid back down in its attempts to climb.

The pup made it to the pool as the birds took off. Two still fought for one piece of sea-rinsed placenta while most of the others carried strands in their beaks.

The baby crossed the pool and began its final quest. Rosie and Isabelle watched, silent. It took awhile for the pup to make it. The mother didn’t help. When the baby finally managed to suckle, the two friends sighed together.

“Wow.”

They returned to Isabelle’s cottage without further discussion. Their cheeks were damp and their smiles soft. Mutely agreeing, they managed to avoid Rusty-the-slut. Spot followed them like a groom.