Cheating

This is the first part of my first attempt at NaNoWriMo. I read it for our cheating prompt recently.

Usually when I head to Dr. Stone’s office after work I walk down Washington to 4th and go right into the building. Today I decided to walk down Morrison and walk past Pioneer Square because there’s always something interesting happening there. Religious freaks, free Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, bad swing bands, it can be found in Pioneer Square. It’s one of my favorite spots to take my lunch break or to decompress after a stressful day of work. I admit it, it’s not the free food or music I live for, it’s the people watching. Nothing makes you feel more normal than watching crazy folks do crazy things in a small space. It makes you feel perfectly normal especially before a long and grueling session with Dr. Stone. Though it was a Tuesday in mid-April, there seemed to be a zombie crawl happening in the square that day. No less than 100 people dressed all in black with gray skin were wandering around groaning. You would think that a zombie crawl would occur closer to Halloween but, this being Portland and all, we have to keep our city weird. The “Keep Portland Weird” campaign is one of those things that just drives me absolutely batty. I mean, how organically quirky can one be if they are constantly reminded to remain quirky? Besides, the whole “Keep (blank) Weird” actually started in Austin Texas and has expanded to cities other than Portland such as Ann Arbor Michigan, Missoula Montana, and Arlington Virginia. When I think weird cities I often think of Arlington, Virginia with its Pentagon and its National Cemetery. Nothing screams weird like unnamed soldiers! Besides, the people I’ve seen who are driving cars with “Keep Portland Weird” bumper stickers or the people I’ve seen wearing “Keep Portland Weird” T-shirts are the antithesis of people I would call “weird”. They are usually soccer moms or aging wanna-be hipsters who aren’t ready to let go of their youth. As I stood off to the side of the mob I noticed more and more zombies joining the mass and wondered if something was going to happen. There didn’t seem to be a leader and the zombies didn’t appear drunk yet so I couldn’t figure out the point of this flash mob. Besides, there seemed to be zombie children at this event. Not much more creeps me out than the thought of a child trying to get me and turn me into one of them.
I didn’t have to be at Dr. Stone’s office for another 20 minutes so I had plenty of time to linger and try to figure out what was happening. In the next few minutes, the square completely filled up with zombies. It was turning into a bad 60s horror film with undead creatures limping about, avoiding eye contact, and groaning the occasional “braaaaaains”. Five minutes later a whistle was blown and the zombies disbursed. Within a minute or two, there was not a shred of evidence that a zombie flash mob had ever existed. The square was eerily quiet with us un-undead folks shaking our heads and laughing to ourselves. Did I really just see that or did I just imagine it all? was the look on everyone’s face and I can assume mine as well.
I don’t think that I could be a very good zombie. For one thing, I’m a vegetarian and I don’t think that Morning Star has invented the brains line just yet. Ethan once wrote a paper in college that 60s horror movies ruined the zombie name. He argued that zombies would never waste a whole human being just to eat his/her brains just to discard the rest. He was pretty sure that the zombies would take part in the vital organs as well as the other fleshy delicacies that the human body has to offer. Ethan! Ethan would have loved this, I can’t believe I didn’t think to take a picture of this for him. I pulled my cell phone out of my courier bag to call him to tell him all about it but then remembered that Maggie asked that he not talk to me anymore. And vice versa. Ethan met Maggie a year and a half ago when we were still dating. In fact, she’s basically the reason Ethan and I are not longer together. It’s hard to maintain a monogamous relationship when you find out that your boyfriend is screwing the temp receptionist at his insurance company. We had been together three years and about nine months when he admitted his affair. They had been sleeping together for six months at that point and she was three months pregnant. Ethan was never sure if he wanted a family and my apprehension towards bringing life into this world was always a point of contention between us. His sleeping with another woman was a slap in the face, knocking her up was like getting hit by a truck, his marrying her two months after that nearly caused me to kill myself. That’s not why I’m in therapy either.

Chinese Food

our prompt of the week was Chinese food. what follows is a painfully depressing true story. ENJOY!

My mom suggested eating at the Chinese buffet in the next town over because she didn’t feel like cooking and there was “bound to be something without meat that you can eat,” she said to me. She, my dad and I piled into his gray Toyota Camry (the same one that would later in life drive me to Oregon) and headed east to the aptly named “China Buffet”.

“Dad, do you want me to drive?” I asked before we left the house.

“What? No. I’m fine,” he said not sounding fine at all. I tried making eye contact with my mom for her opinion but she avoided me. She was keeping herself busy putting on her scarf and buttoning up her coat.

We drove the ten minutes to the restaurant in complete silence. Not only did no one say a word but the radio in the car stayed off as well. It was an uncomfortable ten minutes and I felt grateful that my parents lived in Rhode Island and that nothing was very far away. I laughed to myself when I realized that we were eating in a strip mall. The same strip mall that has an urgent care clinic in it. The same urgent care clinic I was diagnosed with mono in. I opened my mouth to point that out but I quickly closed it again.

Being mid-January in New England, the parking lot was covered with ice and though it was only 5:30 in the evening, it was as dark as it was going to get that night. My mom gripped my dad’s arm for support but he stepped ahead of her not paying attention. I walked up to her and put my hand on her elbow and she looked at me for the first time in hours and offered a thin weak smile.

My dad got to the front door first and in proper fashion held the door open for his ladies before walking in behind us. I was happy to see that he had woken up from the fog that he was in even for just a moment to show some semblance of normalcy.

The restaurant was nearly empty and I took it as a bad sign until I realized that it was only 5:30 on a Saturday evening. People don’t eat at 5:30 in real life, do they? A tiny woman with a stark white shirt came up to us asking how many in our party. I answered with a smile on my face. “Three, please,” I said happy to finally be talking to someone who would smile and look me in the eye. Not that I was doing any better than either of my parents, I just had it in my head that I was going to be the protector tonight and I was fulfilling my self-prescribed duties.

The host led us to our table and told us that we could go to the buffet whenever we were ready. Without even sitting down, we wandered over to the food stations. My dad put his arm around my mom and the two of them walked together to the buffet. I stayed behind a few feet letting them have some alone time. I had taken the bus down from Boston earlier that morning and had spent every second with them since I got in. I knew that they needed a minute or two alone even in the middle of the China Buffet.

Instead, I decided to obsess over the meatless choices that were offered to me. There was white rice, bright colored vegetables in some sort of thick sauce and colorless vegetables in no sauce. Yum! This was clearly not a place for vegetarians. I put both shades of vegetables on my plate alongside some rice and walked back to our table stopping to grab a set of chopsticks the way.

I sat down across from both parents and pulled the chopstick out of their paper wrapping. My mom, trying to start a conversation, pointed to my chopsticks and said, “I’ve never gotten the hang out of those things.”

“Really? But they’re so simple,” I said. “And you can’t use the left handed excuse on this one,” I added. My mom always uses being left-handed as an excuse to anything she can’t accomplish. Can’t play guitar? Must be because she’s left handed. Can’t drive stick shift? Must be because she’s left handed. I turned to face my dad for backup on this one. He was quiet. “Dad, do you know how to use chopsticks?” I asked.

He looked up from his plate and looked at me. He had tears streaming down his face. He dropped his fork into his plate and buried his face in his hands. He was sobbing quietly and I could see his shoulders shaking. My mom immediately leaned over and put her hands on his arm whispering something to him that I couldn’t hear. I looked away. I was used to seeing my mom cry; she’s more emotional than I am most of the time. But seeing my dad cry wasn’t something that I was very used to. I had seen it two or three times prior to that but that was it. I felt my own tears coming on and I knew that we were going to be the spectacle family crying at the China Buffet but this was one of the few times in my life that I didn’t care what anybody thought when they saw me.

That morning I was lounging on the couch in my Allston apartment with my roommate, Andrew. The phone rang and when I heard my mom on the other line, I knew from her voice that there was something seriously wrong. “Sue, I need you to get on the next bus home today.”

“Why? What’s going on?” I asked afraid to know the answer.

“You need to come say goodbye to Uncle Donald,” was all that she said. My uncle Donald was my dad’s older brother. He was the only member of his immediate family who my dad still communicated with. He was diagnosed with stomach cancer right before Christmas and had been admitted into the hospital the first day of the new year. Earlier that week he had been moved to hospice care and here was my mom on the phone saying that I needed to come home today. I told her that I would call her from the bus station when I got in RI and immediately jumped in the shower to start the journey home.

Luckily, the journey from Boston to Providence only lasted an hour and I was with my family before I could even make sense of what was happening. My mom picked me up from the bus station and drove us to where my uncle had been staying. She briefed me of the whole situation on our five minute drive. Basically, my uncle had moved to this hospice care earlier in the week and my dad had spent every minute with him since he moved. He hadn’t gone to work all week and had stayed with him day and night going home only to shower and change his clothes. Their sister (aptly nicknamed the witch) showed up the day before and was trying to take things over. Their mother (who my dad was estranged from) had died the week of Thanksgiving and everyone was just finishing up with her arrangements and getting their dad into a nursing home and this happened.

“Sue, it’s not going to be good there and I need you to be as brave as you can be,” she said holding my hand after we parked the car.

I nodded and put on my bravest face as I walked inside and into his room. There was my uncle who had always been the most robust man I had known, both in size and personality, laying on a bed with tubes through his nose, hooked up to monitors, weighing one hundred pounds less than when I had last seen him just before Christmas. I wasn’t expecting him to look so frail nor to be unconscious. I tried to move past it and made my way to his bed and kissed his forehead. “Hey Uncle Donald,” I said, “it’s Sue. I came down to hang out today but I didn’t expect you to have so much company. I thought that it would just be the two of us.” I stood up and hugged my dad hello. He whispered in my ear how happy he was that I was there. I said hello politely to the witch and her husband and hugged my cousin, Lisa, who I hadn’t seen in over five years.

We were all cramped in that tiny room for over an hour before my dad and his sister began arguing. They decided to move to the kitchen area of the rest home so not to disturb my uncle and my mom and I decided to stay behind and sit with my uncle. The three of us were alone for no more than ten minutes when a nurse came in the room and asked how we were. She busied herself around the room, straightening his blankets, jotting down his vitals and asking my mom and me questions about him. We stopped talking and the nurse said “did you hear that?”

“Hear what?” my mom asked.

“His final breath. Did you hear it?”

“What?” I gasped. “You mean, he’s….” I couldn’t say it.

The nurse smiled kindly and said softly, “he’s gone. He’s no longer in any pain.”

My mom and I looked at each other not hiding our tears. “Sue, you need to go get your father,” she whispered.

I dried the tears from my eyes and walked down the hall to the kitchen where everyone was still arguing loudly. “Dad,” I said softly but he didn’t hear me. “Dad,” I tried a little bit louder. He didn’t look at me but told me to hold on. “No, but Dad,” I tried a third time not holding back. I was crying for real this time. He moved his attention off of his sister’s and looked at me.

“NO!” he shouted knowing exactly what I was going to say and rushed down to his brother’s room for the last time.

I stayed behind in the kitchen and looked at the snow on the lawn outside. My uncle was gone. My dad’s family was torn apart before but now it was completely destroyed. I wasn’t ready to go back to see his body laying there knowing that he wasn’t in that shell anymore. Instead, I sat alone in that kitchen until I was ready to face the family again.