A Marked Improvement
Simon and Alicia rose inside the softly whirring, mirror-gilded elevator.
Alicia stood, her face set in a grimace of anticipation, and Simon eyed
her nervously.
“My family’s weird too,” he said.
“Mmm. I’m sure they are,”
replied Alicia thoughtfully, ignoring Simon’s look.
“It’s just... my family...”
“...is gonna be great. It’ll
be fine. Honestly.”
He looked at her. “Alicia.”
“Yeah?”
Putting her hand between his, “It’s gonna be fine.”
He gave her palm a little kiss and then let her hand drop.
She smiled. “Okay.”
Yeah right.
Ever since her mom had married that bald freak, Dave, Alicia hadn’t
set foot in their house-- his house.
Jesus Christ, the man was a vegan.
They reached the fifteenth floor, and the elevator glided to a stop.
With a clear ding, the doors slid open and Simon and Alicia stepped into
the marble foyer. Alicia let out a
low whistle, admiring the glimmering walls despite herself, and then made her
way slowly to the door on their right.
15B.
She left Simon by the elevator carefully practicing everyone’s names
under his breath. She was about to take hold of the gold-plated door-knocker
when Simon stopped her with a frantic whisper, “Wait!”
“What?” Alicia whispered
back, hand stopped dead in the air.
“July?”
“What are you talking about?
Why are we whispering?”
“Your sister’s name-- July?”
“No, June!”
“Right. Okay.
I’m ready.”
Alicia turned back to face the door and took a hold of the knocker.
How bad could it be?
Letting out a deep breath, she let it fall.
* * *
Dave had been preparing all day long: he had to make a good impression.
He had polished the silver, swept the floors, vacuumed the rugs, and for
the last six hours, slaved over a hot stove.
Mary kept reassuring him (“Don’t wooorry.
They’ll looove you.”) but his nerves couldn’t be calmed.
Dave was nervous around strangers as it was, but these strangers came
with strings attached.
Family.
Oh god. He was basting
the Tofurky when the knock sounded.
He nearly dropped the baster, but regained his wits in time to set it down on
the counter before frantically reaching for his hair.
Oh god, it was gone.
Dave had been balding for a while, but still hadn’t managed to reconcile
his self-image with his exterior appearance.
His hand made due with a little stroke of his baldness as he made his way
towards the door.
* * *
Carl hadn’t ever climbed a fire escape before.
He had been thoroughly enjoying himself until he got to the seventh floor
and he started to get tired. By the
ninth, Carl was no longer in a good mood, and by the eleventh, he was about
ready to jump. Carl was not a
patient person. Having spent nearly
a minute waiting for an elevator in the lobby of his sister’s new building, he
had given up. Absolutely determined
not to have his time wasted, he had been on the verge of leaving, but had
happened to spot the fire escape hugging the building as he left towards the
subway. On a whim, as most of his
decisions were made, he placed his hand upon the rusty railing and began to
climb. Floor twelve and there was
very little left in the world keeping Carl from throwing himself into the air
and plummeting to the earth. He was
tired, bored, and fed up from climbing.
Turning to face the
* * *
June was jolted out of her reverie by a torrent of angry expletives
followed by an intense clanging and banging streaming in through the half-open
window in her bedroom. Setting the
pregnancy test down by the sink, she made it into her room just in time to see
Uncle Carl’s face appear through the railings of the fire escape.
After having known him all her life, she was only a little surprised, and
so calmly crossed her room to the window. By the time she had arrived, his beefy
hands were grasping the sill, trying in vain to wrench the gap open larger.
“Open the window! Fucking
pigeon thinks it can shit wherever it wants.
That little bastard has another thing coming!
OPEN THE WINDOW!”
“Uncle Carl! Uncle Carl!”
June had to yell to be heard.
He quieted long enough for her to interject, “If you move your hands I
can take away the child-lock!”
It took a moment for him to register what had been said, but he
eventually withdrew his hands and began patting down his hair, cheeks deflating
and redness leaving his face a little bit.
“There,” said June. “It’s
open.”
“Thank you,” Carl replied as he climbed awkwardly through the gap, still
barely large enough for him to fit.
After a moment, he popped into June’s room, and straightening up, his face
adopted a beaming smile.
“June, my dear! How are you?”
He took the girl in a warm embrace.
“How old are you now? Fourteen? Fifteen?”
“Nineteen, Uncle Carl,” replied June, slyly closing the bathroom door
with her heel.
“Oh, excellent,” he responded absently, wandering compliantly towards the
door as June shepherded him out of her room.
“Excellent.”
* * *
Doris was looking forward to the meal this Thanksgiving.
Things hadn’t been the same since Tim had left, but now he was back, and
she was very pleased. Granted, he
seemed a little different-- she couldn’t remember him ever having been bald--
but he was still as handsome as ever.
Now that was one hunk-of-man, that Tim.
Her daughter had been lucky to find him.
Doris glanced over at Mary, who was sitting beside her on Dave’s purple
velour sofa, smoothing her apron, ruffling it up, and then smoothing it down
again. Mary had been very lucky to
find him indeed.
“That’s a hunk-of-man you got there, Mary,” Doris reminded her daughter,
eyes glued to Dave as he rushed towards the door, stroking his balding head.
“That Tim.”
“That’s Dave, Mother, not Tim,” said Mary allowing her hands to leave her
apron. “Tim and I are no longer
married.”
But Doris wasn’t listening.
Her milky eyes were fixed on Dave as he opened the door, gleaming with the
reflection of his naked head. Had
her narcolepsy been set on by lust instead of stress, no doubt she would have
been asleep as soon as he entered the room.
* * *
It happened all at once.
Dave opened the front door, letting in Alicia and Simon while Carl burst out of
June’s room, followed by June herself.
Dave reached for Alicia, intending to give her a small and friendly hug,
just as he had practiced, but Alicia saw June, and so darted past Dave towards
her sister. Dave was left standing,
with his arms open facing Simon, who, obligingly, gave Dave a big hug, feeling
awkward as he realized Dave’s hand had brushed his rear.
Dave turned bright red because, in an attempt to withdraw one arm and
mutate his intended hug into a manly handshake, he had accidentally touched
Simon’s butt and was well aware that Simon didn’t know it was an accident.
Doris had stood up upon seeing Simon, thinking it was her son, Carl, and
had rushed towards him, but tripped over the cat on the way.
This left Dave, who had just hastily extracted himself from his hug with
Simon, to catch her, but his thumb caught the lace on the back of her dress,
leading to an impressive rip which everyone but Doris heard.
Carl had intercepted Alicia on her way towards June and was now
interrogating her about Simon “good cop bad cop” style, pretending to be both
cops at once. June was left with
her back to her door, suddenly feeling nauseous, and Mary, abandoned in the
center of the room was laughing nervously, eyes scanning the scene before her.
All of a sudden, the entire family was crammed into Dave’s very posh, but
very small apartment and everyone but Doris and Carl could sense the tension.
“Tim dear, have you been working out?”
Doris was now clinging to Dave’s arms, resisting his wild attempts to
extract himself from her clutches.
Not wanting to seem impolite, Simon hesitantly stepped closer, saying
“Let me help you, Tim.” He took
Doris by the arm, helping Dave wrench the old woman off and return her to an
upright position.
Dave’s face, already a hefty shade of red, darkened even further,
reaching a deep scarlet as he realized that his thumb was still caught in Doris’
dress. As Simon pulled Doris away,
the dress ripped even further, fully exposing the old woman’s drawers.
Dave, so embarrassed by his role in the exposition of Doris’ backside,
was unable to force any sound out of his mouth in order to clear up the
misunderstanding of his name, and so was left stammering, eyes glued to Doris’
butt. Meanwhile, Alicia had managed
to get past Uncle Carl, lying, “It’s okay, he’s a veteran, Uncle Carl.
You know, like in a war?” and was now nearing June.
But June, who was staring at Simon, didn’t seem to notice her.
Mary had rushed over to aid in the patching of Doris’ dress, but Doris,
who was unaware that anything had occurred at all, was shooing her away, and
laughing flirtatiously as Dave kept reaching for her rear, desperate to correct
what he had ruined. Carl, bored now
of standing, had retired to the dinner table.
“I’m hungry!” he cried,
banging his fork against the glass.
“I’m hungry! Let’s eat!”
With “eat,” he beat the fork so hard against the glass that it shattered.
At the sound of shattering glass, the whole room quieted, turning to
stare at Carl. He glanced at the
broken glass and then surreptitiously moved one place to his left.
* * *
With everyone seated, the only thing missing was the food, and most of
the back of Doris’ dress. Doris had
been left with the broken glass, and was admiring the “tastefully jagged edges”
in a very loud voice because Dave was in the kitchen.
Carl had found a small rip in the table cloth, and was making it larger
with his fork. He attempted to
conceal his misdemeanor by placing a napkin over his hand but this only made it
harder for him to see the initial rip and so in fact led to the creation of lots
of new holes. Mary was pretending
not to notice, trying to engage the rest of the table in a conversation, but
Simon, June, and Alicia would not be engaged.
She had to stifle her sigh of relief when Dave called her into the
kitchen.
She entered to find him wild-eyed and disheveled.
“It’s ruined. It’s all
ruined.”
“What is, Honey?” She crossed the room, placing her hand on his back
comfortingly.
“The meal. The meal.
Oh god.” He trailed off, and
slowly opened the oven door.
Mary considered herself to be a very honest person, but when she had told
Dave earlier that everything would be okay, she hadn’t been so sure she wasn’t
telling a great big Whopper. As the
oven opened, releasing a stench entirely unique to burnt meat substitute, she
was disappointed, but not altogether surprised to find that there would be a
small amount of repentance in store for her misleading statement.
Dave emitted cry of despair, looking from the oven, back towards Mary and
then to the oven again. “It’s
burnt!” he wailed. He moved away
from Mary, placing his hands on the counter, chest beginning to heave.
“Oh. Uhh...” Mary reached
for her apron. “Ummm... it’s okay.”
Dave was still quivering.
“We can... we can,” began Mary, looking wildly around the kitchen.
Her eyes caught a half-empty bottle of ketchup on the far counter.
“It’s okay,” she said with conviction, crossing towards the ketchup
bottle. “Everything will be fine.”
* * *
Simon, who had been in a stupor since Alicia had tried unsuccessfully to
introduce him to June, seemed to be the only one able to stomach the Tofurky.
And did he ever. Entirely
unresponsive to all socialization attempts, he absorbed himself in his food,
eating serving after serving of the meat substitute, refusing to even look up
from his plate. This did not please
Carl. As Dave tried to avoid making
eye contact with Doris, whose eyes were sporadically covered by her frantically
fluttering eyelids, and Mary tried desperately to warm Alicia to Dave, Carl sat
in sullen silence, glaring at Simon.
Carl had always been the Alpha Dog in this family.
At every gathering, Carl was the dominant male.
There had been more competition with Tim than there was with Dave, but
Carl had always managed to eat more than everyone.
Carl was a Man. And yet,
here was this tiny little upstart beating him.
Carl turned his attention back to his plate and tried once again to stuff
some Tofurky in his mouth. He
couldn’t do it though. He couldn’t
swallow. Spitting the soy back on
his plate, he let out a mighty roar, startling June so that she spilled her
untouched glass of wine all over her lap.
That was it. She had reached
her limit. As Carl leapt across the
table at Simon, and Alicia threw herself across Simon to protect him, June burst
into tears. Dave stopped dead in
his tracks on his mad dash towards the kitchen, and Doris, whose narcolepsy was
acting up, let out a mighty snore.
Mary rushed to June’s side, but was thrown to the ground as June jumped from her
chair and shrieked, “I’m pregnant!”
* * *
The room was silent but for Simon’s fork, still scraping the last bits of
his Tofurky off of his plate. June
turned to glare at him. “I’m
pregnant and you won’t even look at me.
Like you don’t even know me.”
Simon’s fork stopped, but he kept his eyes glued to his plate.
Oops.
It had been a Friday night like any other--
before Alicia.
Simon had been at a club, had a couple drinks... and she looked really
good dancing. If Simon had been a
different person, he would have gone up to talk to her, but being who he was, he
couldn’t muster up the courage to make the first move.
Simon had never been any good at talking to girls-- before Alicia.
For some reason though, this night had turned out differently from the
countless others before he’d spent just watching the girl dance;
she’d made the first move. A
couple weeks later, when he met Alicia, he had hailed this night as the turning
point in his life. The point at
which he became a Man. In the
moment though, it all went so fast.
First they were talking and he was taking extra care to not sound stupid, and
all of a sudden, he found himself in some girl’s dorm room and he was just so
pleased with himself. They hadn’t
even exchanged names.
Simon looked up just in time to catch a glimpse of June’s back before she
slammed her door. Seconds later, a
clanking from the fire escape could be heard, and then she was gone.
* * *
Alicia was off Simon’s lap in an
instant, and it was all Carl needed to pounce.
“She’s only thirteen!” he
screamed as he flew, flailing, through the air.
Simon managed to evade Carl’s attack, throwing himself out of his chair
and running after Alicia who had made it to the door.
“I hate you, I hate you all,
especially you,” she yelled, pointing at Dave.
“You hideous bald monster!”
She turned on her heels and raced into the elevator, closing the doors just
before Simon was able to make it in after her, leaving him to take the stairs.
Dave broke down in the kitchen
doorway, quietly murmuring to himself between hiccuping sobs, “but... but...
but...”
Carl, exhausted now from the effort
exerted leaping across the table, had grabbed the unfinished bowl of mashed
potatoes and lazed in Simon’s overturned chair, cat on his lap, shoveling the
soft white mash into his mouth.
* * *
Mary, alone and bathed in Dave’s shuddering sobs and Doris’ intermittent
snores, took one last stroke of her apron before reaching for the unfinished
wine bottle. Downing it in one
gulp, she let out a small sigh.
“Okay. Well that’s fine
then, isn’t it. That’s fine.” She
took a deep breath, and with much effort, slowly forced the corners of her mouth
upwards. Smile in place, she
glanced at the scene before her, and went to get the broom, muttering to herself
the whole way there. At least
Thanksgivings had improved now that Tim had gone.