Read A Different Kind of Normal Online

Authors: Cathy Lamb

A Different Kind of Normal (45 page)

BOOK: A Different Kind of Normal
13.43Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
Tate’s speech was played on the news that night, along with his story. AP picked it up.
His blog site was listed.
42,000.
TATE’S AWESOME PIGSKIN BLOG
Here’s a photo of General Noggin and me.
 
You can see that I don’t have much hair on one side of General Noggin. You can see my ear, Bert, now. That’s where the ol’ doctors, my favorite doctor especially, Dr. Ethan Robbins, shaved my head and cut it open. Good thing Dr. Robbins can wield a knife. It’s like being a carpenter, you know, in a way. Except you’re cutting and patching up a brain, not a birdhouse or shelves or a house or something.
 
Here’s a photo of Dr. Robbins and me.
 
My new name for him: Boss Dad.
 
Yep. My Boss Mom and Dr. Robbins, Boss Dad, are getting married.
 
Here’s a picture of Boss Mom, Boss Dad, and me. Yes, we are balancing bananas and apples on our heads. You can see that I am winning. It’s an unfair advantage with General Noggin, but too bad for them.
 
Yeah, that IS my mom. I know. She’s young and you think she’s a college girl, but she’s not and she’s strict and don’t mess with her, and especially don’t get Witch Mavis going. I love you, Boss Mom!
 
A lot of people have asked me about the guy who pushed me at the last second of the basketball game and smashed my head open. Here’s the thing: That guy hasn’t been nice to me. He knows it and so do I. But he came to my house when I came home from the hospital and he apologized, like, 700 times. He knows he shouldn’t have done what he did.
 
But balls and tarnation (that’s a saying in our family), I forgive him. He’s had a tough life because his dad is an abusive baboon and he and his mom and his mom’s husband are moving away from here to Colorado so he can start over. His dad has been diagnosed with some kind of stomach problem.
 
Here’s another picture of Boss Mom and Boss Dad. They’re making out in her greenhouse between the rows of herbs. They’re making out here, too, in our back field with the red poppies. Yep. And here, too, by the roses, and wait! More making out in the kitchen near the spice racks!
 
I hope they’re using PROTECTION! Actually, I hope they’re not. I think a brother or a sister or a whole bunch of brothers and sisters would be a universally sweet idea.
 
Here’s a photo of my cousins and my uncle Caden, pro wrestler turned florist, who can make a Doberman out of flowers. As you can see, the triplets are dressed like normal kids with their blue slacks and skirts and white shirts. That’s why they’re not smiling and their arms are crossed over their chests. My uncle Caden made them dress normal for one picture, and they were mad and refused to smile. Right after this picture was shot they ran and got in their leprechaun/daisy/scary monster Halloween outfits and my cousin Damini put on the dress she’s going to wear to Boss Mom and Boss Dad’s wedding. I am a pain in Damini’s keester.
 
Here’s a photo of my Nana Bird and me. Yep, she’s the evil Elsie Blackton from Foster’s Village and yes, we are in Dolly Parton wigs because The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas is our favorite Broadway show.
 
I love you, family.
 
Here’s a picture of Boss Mom and me. We are balancing oranges on our heads.
 
She knows why.
 
Everybody, send me photos of people you love and I’ll put them on my blog.
Tate was deluged with photos. I had to help him get them all up. We’re still not done.
 
At the Emmy awards, my mother and I sat together in the audience at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles, Tate next to her, shiny and sparkling pretty people all around.
I had been with my mother all day. We had massages and manicures and pedicures, the sun warm, the wind but a puff. My mother was dressed in a sleek, silver dress. “Get up, boobs!” she told them. “Stand at attention!” She had her smokey makeup done by her stylist, Lacey McAuffy, who did my makeup, too, and I could barely move my face.
My mother had not written a speech. “What the hell. I won’t win. I think I’ll sneak in a margarita in my purse. . . .”
Helena Schivalli, another long-ranging soap opera star who had had more husbands than my mother on her show and about two more face-lifts, stood in front of the microphone on that glittery stage in a shimmery red thing. She made a speech about the Emmy award for outstanding actress, clips were shown of the five women nominated with people clapping loudest for my mother.
During all that, my mother whispered, without moving her lips hardly at all, her smile tight and unmoving for the cameras, “I
do
hope the winner’s vagina falls out.”
I smothered a chuckle and whispered, “I hope the winner’s boobs jiggle inappropriately and leap from her dress.”
She blew a laugh right through her nose. “I think the camera will catch the fact that the winner has three buttocks. Three.”
I coughed to cover my noise. “I’ve heard that one of the women is hiding a fourth buttock.”
My mother clenched her teeth together at the vision of that one, but her shoulders were shaking with her giggles.
Funny, oh we thought we were funny!
Finally, Helena in the shimmery red thing came to the point. “And the winner for outstanding lead actress in a drama series is . . .” She started to open the envelope.
My mother rolled her eyes. We found out later that the camera caught the eye roll, then it caught her turning to me and mouthing, “Let’s get drunk.”
And I mouthed back, “Mai tais on me.”
She smiled a fake white smile, knowing the camera was on her now to build the suspense.
“Oh hooray!” Helena called out. “Hooray! It’s Rowan Bruxelle! Rowan, it’s you, honey!”
My mother froze in her seat, a marble statue wearing couture, and said, “Holy shiiiiit!”
The camera caught that, too.
She said,
“Holy shit”
again and clapped her hands to her bobbed hair. “I won! Balls and tarnation, I can’t believe it!
I won!
”
Then she turned to Tate, who was standing and cheering, and hugged him. I hugged them both, crying. “Mom! Oh Mom! Congratulations!”
“I get to go on stage!” She laughed. “But I don’t have a speech!” She kissed Tate then scooted into the aisle, threw her hands up in the air, and yelled, “Yay me! Yay me!”
Her friends from the industry hugged her down the aisle.
She skipped up the steps and Helena wrapped her in a huge hug.
My mom held the statue above her, then yelled, “Finally! Oh, finally! What was wrong with you people? I should have had this years ago! Elsie and I thank you!”
Her standing ovation lasted for several minutes.
“Holy shit!” she said again into the microphone. Those words were zapped out of the night’s broadcast but you could read her lips.
“This is for my family!” she said when people finally settled down. “My family, my heart. I love you!”
Tate stood up, arms spread way out and yelled, right into that cavernous theater, “I love you, too, Nana Bird! You rock!”
The cameras caught that, too.
My mom put the trophy high into the air, head back, her smile, her relief, her delight, a stunning picture.
She had won.
I cried.
“Yeah, Nana Bird!” Tate shouted, “You woooonnnnn!!!!”
TATE’S AWESOME PIGSKIN BLOG
Guess what? My Nana, you know I told you she’s Elsie Blackton on the soap opera
Foster’s Village
? She won an Emmy award.
 
Yeah, Nana Bird. You blew it away. You’re a house on fire. I sang her a song right before the Emmy’s. It’s from
The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas,
our favorite Broadway show. I even put on a pink bra stuffed with socks and my Dolly Parton wig. It’s about being a woman, surviving, and moving on up!
 
Nana Bird lost for a lot of years, and yet she kept going. Kept acting. Kept being awesome. So, what I learned from my Nana Bird is to keep trying, keep going, and then when a camera is pointed right at your face you can say, “Holy shit,” and, “Let’s get drunk,” and it’ll get bleeped out but everybody knows you said it.
 
Here’s a photo with Boss Mom, Nana Bird, and me at the Emmy’s.
Here’s a photo of the inside of a brain.
Here’s a photo of two lizards mating.
 
And here’s a photo of three doughnuts at one time stuffed in my mouth. Chocolate, strawberry, and sprinkled.
 
Peace, dudes and dudettes, fellow galaxy walkers.
 
Peace.
On a sunny, warm Saturday afternoon, Grandma Violet’s lavender, irises, cosmos, peonies, red poppies, and rows of roses blooming all over the property, Tate exploded his experiment room.
We heard an enormous, thundering bang. My mother and I dropped our teacups, filled with cinnamon apple tea, and flew up the stairs, my boots pounding. It was hard for her to move fast in her red high heels, but she braved on.
Smoke billowed out from Tate’s experiment room and a few flames danced on his worktable. We both scrambled in, grabbed Tate, pulled him out of the room, and clomped down the stairs and out the front door, coughing. I grabbed my cell phone and called the fire department.
The fire department was there pretty quick, they put out the fire, which was actually small, then examined the wall that the explosion had knocked down.
The wall, according to the lieutenant, was actually thin and flimsy . . . and soooo old. Behind that wall was another room. Yes, the secret room that had been rumored to exist since Faith and Jack built the house for a summer retreat and a hideaway.
After the fire department left, we explored the secret room and found a velvet satchel on a small table. Inside was a thimble, white lace handkerchief, needle, gold timepiece, and the three charms I’d heard about my whole life, the cross, heart, and star. A fourth charm was there, too, a clover. For luck. The book with the black leather cover was in there, too, and a knife with a
P
on it.
P
for Platts. Probably the one Faith/Iris Platts used for the killing the first day she arrived in America, the knife from her brother.
“I thought Faith would have been buried with the necklace and charms,” I said, awed and humbled.
“Her daughters probably wanted to save it, their mother obviously couldn’t take it with her.” My mother traced the lettering on the black book, H
OLY
B
IBLE
. “This is Faith’s. Her name’s in it, Iris Platts. She notes here how she had to change her name to Faith Stephenson because people in London had found out she was a witch and her brother wanted her to have a more Christian name and wanted to hide her identity, so they changed it, same with Grace’s.
“And here, she wrote how her name became Faith O’Donnell when she married Jack O’Donnell, along with the names of her parents, Henrietta and Oliver Platts, and their parents’ and grandparents’ names. Her aunt and uncle, Elizabeth and Philip Compton . . . how a mob later burned down parts of both of their mansions outside London, I remember my mother telling me that. She also writes how Grace became Grace McLeary when she married Russ McLeary. Here are all the names of their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Oh my. I feel emotional right down to my Jimmy Choos!”
There were a few journals, written by Faith about her life, which I’d later find were amazingly close to what I’d heard all
my
life about her and Grace. There was even a note in one journal about Dwight and John, the brutal slave owner brothers in South Carolina.
Dwight died when he “fell” on an ax. That he apparently “fell” on the ax at night, far off in the woods, had raised questions, but not convictions, in town. That John had “committed suicide,” his wife’s assertion, by shooting himself in both knees and then his head, had raised quite a ruckus in Charleston. Still, no convictions, and the police did not dispute that John’s wife had come to them for protection many times.
There was also a spell book.
Yes, there was a spell book with spells in it.
There. I said it. There were curses, chants, and notes on how to perform the spells. I knew some of the spells, curses, and chants, my mother and Grandma Violet had taught me. There was information about herbs and spices and how to use them in the spells. Some of the phrases we use today were also written down: a shipwreck time of life, balls and tarnation, and a petticoats-on-fire situation, which was fun to see.
BOOK: A Different Kind of Normal
13.43Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

A Shred of Truth by Eric Wilson
Brother and Sister by Edwin West
Wolf's Bane (Shifted) by Leite, Lynn
Shadow Lover by Anne Stuart
Expose (Billionaire Series) by Harper, Evelyn
Birth of a Monster by Daniel Lawlis
Sarah's Surrender by Lynda Chance