Be a good girl and give me the knife, Catalina

(Holiday fiction for the survivors)

I spend a lot of time on the internet reading political news blogs. Blogs that are published in the fall tend to focus on holiday themes – Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukah, football, and shopping. Among the topics there are many bloggers who write nostalgically about going home for the holidays, meeting up with friends and family for get togethers full of cheer and bonhomie. There are also many, many other bloggers who are filled with dread at the thought of another bout of sibling rivalry replete with clashing social and political views. At the office we all hear about everyone’s dysfunctional families in which the teller of the tale is the only reasonable, sane person. Looking back at my own history I concur with that finding. I was the only sane and reasonable person at my family’s holiday parties. My brothers and sisters were all nuts.

What our minds think we remember

Probably closer to how it really was

Twenty years ago, there we were again at Mom & Dad’s house for the annual November family get together. We had arrived early as was our custom do some clean up, set up the adults table, the kids table, cool the wine and sneak in some early snacking – tamales, stuffed jalapenos, while avoiding the awful wine coolers my sister had brought. She had a thing for wine coolers though they had passed out of fashion years before.

My Mom and Dad had gone into their bedroom with wineglasses and 2 bottles of good red. They would emerge in an hour or two, go to the den where the kids were watching MTV. This group had already learned to stay out of the way when the ‘adults’ start shooting.

Everything was ready. I was on my third Jack and Coke by the time Ed and Catalina showed up. My mind went back to the good weed I used to have a few years ago; the mellow stuff that let me take the bad with the good with equanimity. But there was no grass now so Jack would be my friend that night. Intoxicants make me passive and accepting while they make Lorenzo more lecherous, Ed more voluble, and Catalina snarkier. Consuelo zones out on something but I’m not sure what it is. Maybe it’s Xanax. Dolores doesn’t change at all no how much what she ingests. She’s just pushy and nosy all the time. Her husband, Danny, is a man who can smile at everything from a cooing newborn to Freddy Krueger’s worst crimes with equal amusement. Mark and Kitty are the party poopers. Kitty takes these parties seriously and tries to be peace maker among the rest of us who are actively looking for a fight. Mark isn’t fun until he’s near passing out from too much alcohol

Catalina was the first to arrive bringing her famous Three Chocolate Enchilada Melt that everyone acclaimed but secretly tossed in the nearest trash receptacle. This year she brought twice as much but it didn’t matter. I had set out several trash cans in strategic locations around the house. As always Catalina was decked out in finery she got a Gilbert’s, a ladies fashion store where even the sales clerks believed they were better than anyone on the planet. Husband Ed’s hulk was ruggedly dressed in an outdoorsy sweater and slacks befitting the manly heavy construction guy he was. I kept his wine glass full in order to draw him out and start talking about his conservative politics. It’s easy to tie him in knots when he’s sober. A slightly drunk Ed can be turned into a human pretzel as easily as a balloon artist can make balloons into monkeys or poodles.

Lorenzo and Consuelo came next. She looked snockered already. I can’t really blame her. She’s married to a self-described world’s smartest man who has the desperate look of a man who hasn’t been laid in years. I have the strong suspicion that she cut him off years ago. To watch him socialize is a study in how sexual losers think they’re being clever by using transparent double entendres. Consuelo is dressed in the latest from J.C. Penney’s. Nice outfit but nothing like Catalina’s ensemble from Gilberts. Me? I don’t care what people wear or what it costs. It seems to matter to Catalina and the rest of the bunch.

Next, Dolores charges in with Danny not far behind. What a pair. Dolores is the organizer of sing alongs and party games. She is also a master pop psychologist who can tell you what’s wrong with you, your wife, and your kids. She doesn’t see that everyone there has been married far longer than she; that her own kids are sociopaths, and whose husband is so passive that a gunshot near his head would barely make him look up. Dolores as the arbiter of what’s right and wrong is matched only by Catalina’s repressed desire to murder everyone in the house. She knows she can’t do that so she settles for trying to cut everyone down to size with her snide remarks.

It’s 8:30 now. In the last two hours I’ve been surreptitiously gathering up plates of uneaten Three Chocolate Enchiladas and dumping them in the trash. Lorenzo’s been chatting up my wife, looking down her dress every chance he gets. She’s looking good as usual. She walks away from him and Consuelo catches him leering and gives him a cross look that fades quickly as though she’s already forgotten why she was cross.

Ed and Danny are laughing about something over in the corner. Ed repeats whatever he said and Danny laughs again. To Danny a joke told twice is just as funny the second time it’s told. Danny hasn’t moved from the corner where he had been chatting with Ed. He’s staring and laughing at the space where Ed had been standing moments before.

I look around and now Catalina is talking to my wife and Consuelo. In top form as usual, she asks if my wife is wearing the same dress she wore last year. In fact, it is the same red silk, floor length dress with a slit from ankle to hip. I love that dress and wouldn’t mind if she wore it more often. Lorenzo’s been leering at her but I’m ignoring him for now. Now it’s Consuelo’s turn at being Catalina’s fashion target. “What a nice outfit”, she sniffs, “didn’t Sears have them on sale two years ago?” Consuelo demurs but Catalina’s not done. “I’m sure I saw racks and racks of that same dress, 60% off”. Consuelo is beyond caring. She must have dropped another Xanax.

Isn't that the same outfit you wore last year?

Yes. Thank you for noticing.

My wife edges away and goes over to where Danny is sitting on a stool sipping wine and watching out for Dolores. He’s not supposed to drink too much. Too much is whatever Dolores says is too much. It varies with her mood. He’s an agreeable guy with no opinions whatever. He’s got a tic that makes him appear as though he’s winking. The crazy thing is that the tic seems to be timed to the conversation he’s hearing so that when there’s a pause his eye twitches and makes the speaker believe that comprehension and approval are taking place inside Danny’s head. However, he does know football and is quite at home opining on which teams are winners and which are losers. Even though I’m an indifferent sports fan, I like to listen to him when he talks football. My wife takes the stool next to him and he compliments her on her dress. “You wore that dress last year”, he says. “It looks good on you.” My wife smiles at him gratefully. Sweet Danny. I could almost kiss him. A few feet away Consuelo is looking blankly at Catalina and Lorenzo is sneaking glances at my wife. I ignore him.

I looked in on Mom, Dad, and the kids in the den. Mom and a toddler were curled up together watching MTV along with the older kids. Dad was teaching some of the boys how to roll tight cigarettes that won’t shed or fall apart. The floor was littered with damp cigarette papers. My mind flashed back to the time he taught me and how years later I had amazed my stoner friends with that skill.

An hour or so later Catalina has been into the cheap box wine which she publicly loathes but nonetheless craves and consumes with alacrity. I’ve long suspected that she’s a secret drinker. For me, her lust for cheap box wine is the clincher. Now she’s been doing pirouettes in front of me and Dolores. Her outfit seems to shed price tags as she twirls around it’s so expensive. Suddenly she gets up on the table pulls her dress up and shouts, “See!! Even my panties are Gilberts!”, which must come as a surprise to Gilbert to find himself without panties this evening. Ed hurries over to get her down but she dances away from him, now showing her panties from the rear. Everyone, except Lorenzo, looks away from the sight of her cottage cheese buttocks. She slips and nearly falls but Lorenzo, who didn’t look away, catches her and cops a quick feel which earns him another cross look from Consuelo and a slap in the face from Catalina. Dolores goes over to take Catalina to the bathroom, probably for some quick psychoanalysis.

My wife is sitting in an easy chair over in the corner holding a cup of wine in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other. She’s been drinking a lot but it hasn’t helped. This is the fifteenth Thanksgiving dinner she’s had with my family and wine no longer has power to anesthetize her. The force of this dysfunctional family is just too great. I go over to comfort her but thinking that I’m there to take away her wine she curls up into a ball, shielding her beloved wine from me. Of course, Lorenzo wouldn’t miss this up skirt shot but I catch him looking and he does a fast about face which brings him face to face with the ever righteous Dolores. She saw his leer too, so being the judge of all things right and wrong she knees him in the crotch. Consuelo gives Dolores a cross look. Lorenzo doubles over and Danny ambles over to repeat Ed’s joke in his ear. But it’s not over. Catalina’s told Ed about Lorenzo’s opportunism. Ed is not happy. He helps Lorenzo to his feet but seems to have forgotten why he was angry. He is slowly remembering when Catalina storms out of the bathroom. She’s looked into one of my trash bins and discovered several helpings of her Three Chocolate Enchiladas. She is furious and demands to know who tossed her dish. No one looks at her and she realizes the truth: Nobody likes her Three Chocolate Enchiladas. She bursts into tears goes into the bathroom then emerges moments later holding the trash can under her arm and scooping dollops of her enchiladas into her mouth with her free hand.

Everyone stared, speechless. Dolores and Consuelo suffused with sisterly concern rushed over and took her back into the bathroom to calm her down. I watched Lorenzo crabwalk away into the kitchen while I fixed my seventh Jack and Coke. My wife was still in the easy chair but seemed to be choking. I hurried over to help her. The front of her dress was soaked with wine; her glass was on the floor next to the wine bottle. She was choking from laughter and she couldn’t catch her breath. When she was finally able to speak she said, “This is even better than last year.”

By this time Ed was fully liquored up and seemed to remember in short flashes why he was mad at Lorenzo. I went over to calm him down with another glass of wine. Suddenly he started talking about what I great guy I am and how much he loves me. I start to pull away and Ed spots Lorenzo coming back from the kitchen. By now, Ed’s is so intoxicated that the synapses in his brain are only firing at half speed but still firing. He walks up to Lorenzo, who is still hurting from Dolores’s assault and starts to say something but can’t remember what it was. In his struggle to remember he balls his calloused construction man’s fists making Lorenzo think that Ed is warming up to deliver a lethal blow. Besides being a lech, Lorenzo is also a physical coward. I remember how he screamed like a little girl one time when my wife put a lizard on his arm. He was staring down her dress when she leaned down to pick up the lizard and she decided to teach him a lesson. Tonight as he looked up at Ed he must have seen himself as a dead man or at the least as a disabled or disfigured one. He crouched with his hands and arms covering his head, his life and someone else’s life flashed in his mind. The expected blows never came.

Just then Mark, Kitty and their kids arrived. The children immediately fled to the den. They were late because Mark had had to go to the emergency room to bind up his dislocated shoulder. He had been on the losing end of a scuffle with a homeless guy who was cadging loose change by wiping down windshields with a dirty rag. One would think it odd that Mark who is an ardent environmental conservationist would have zero compassion for actual human beings. To Mark it’s not a contradiction to fight courageously against the felling of old growth forest and simultaneously approving of vigilante justice for the dirty, long haired, pot smoking hippies he believes still exist by the hundreds of thousands.

Ed and Mark sit together to talk about his recent battle for the American Way while Kitty joins the other women still keeping an eye on Mark. She counts drinks, you see, and she’s expert in knowing when to make him stop drinking. As he drinks he goes from melancholy, to depressed, to belligerent though not violent. By the time he reaches depression she cuts him off. It’s too bad because I love to bait him with my liberal opinions when he’s at the last stages of stupor. Tonight he’s too sober to be fun. Ed on the other hand is taking me on but I know that given enough time I can turn him into a vote for my side. I’m the balloon master twisting a balloon dinosaur into a baby whale.

Dr. Dolores will see you now

Mission accomplished I take a tour around the party collecting empty glasses and plates. I see Dr. Dolores giving Catalina a mental physic. I’m pretty sure she’s taking correspondence courses on instant psychological insights from Dr. Phil and Oprah. She’s so glib with the jargon that one could easily mistake her gibberish for actual wisdom. Catalina is all cleaned up and sniffing softly into her Kleenex, nodding in agreement at whatever Dr. Dolores is force feeding into her ears. Lorenzo and Consuelo are in an earnest discussion about getting the brakes fixed on their station wagon. Denial is their strong suit. The Xanax is working as intended on her and his emasculation at Dr. Dolores’s knee has temporarily flushed his libido. I see Kitty sitting on the arm of the chair that Mark is occupying. She’s stroking his brow, speaking softly; probably about the wisdom of not drinking any more, what with the pain killers they gave him at the hospital. He resists but there’s no fight in him tonight. Ed is sitting next to them but he’s somewhere else in the universe. His glazed look suggests that he’s just realizing that he agreed with my opinions and is wondering how the hell that happened.

It’s late. The kids in the den have mostly fallen asleep. Mom and Dad each have a toddler sleeping on their laps. They shush me when I open the door.

My wife is standing by the front door giving me a hipshot pose in her red silk, floor length dress, the one with the slit that goes from ankle to hip. One hand on her hip, the other extended over and behind her head, dangling the car keys, she flashes me some leg. It’s time to go home. Indeed it is.

Big box home improvement stores have established military veterans appreciation days by giving all present and former military personnel discounts on purchases made during Memorial Day and Veterans Day weekends. Active duty persons get a discount every day. It's a good way to give recognition to our soldiers for the work they do for the nation.

Last Veterans Day my wife, Merrilee, who didn't serve in the military received a $51 Veterans Discount on a freezer she bought from a DIY store. What she did have was an old fishing vest that she wore because the weather was a bit cold that day. As fishing jackets go hers was one that had obviously been used on many a fishing trip by some codger who loved the jacket with all its pockets, zippers, flaps, and buttons arrayed over it entire exterior. Fishing can be a serious business, after all. When you are up to your hips in a stream you need to have every lure, hook, and lead weight you can stuff on your person. The fishing jacket fills that need very well, thank you.

Merrilee loves her fishing vest. Its slightly worn appearance betrays its many years. I sort of think its vague decrepitude is part of its appeal for her. As a youngster she frequently fished streams and lakes in her northwestern home state, sometimes alone, sometimes with a favorite cousin several decades her senior. She seems to delight taking the vest from her closet when the weather cools. I think it briefly takes her back to those days when she was a little girl fishing in a stream.

Sometimes you don't catch any fish.

Whether it was because the weather was cooler or whether it was because the shopping trip was to buy a sub-zero freezer, Merrilee wore her beloved fishing vest to the store. I was dressed in cut offs, a thin grey T-Shirt, and 8 year old tennis shoes that I've worn through 2 home remodels and hours of yard work. In other words, I looked like a slob. Or if my thinking about this shopping trip is right, I looked like someone who needed 24 hour care; ambulatory, not visibly disabled, but still needing watching.

We chose the freezer we wanted and went to the checkout counter to pay for it. I should mention that in the course of our long marriage we have fallen into a sub-conscious routine. If there is no line for a cashier, I pay for the purchase. If there is a line of people waiting, Merrilee waits while I wander off a few steps away to look at something, anything to distract me. Today there was a line. Merrilee waited. I wandered off.

Merrilee is paying. I'm somewhere else

Merrilee gave the cashier the purchase order, swiped her credit card through the card reader and asked if the Veterans' Discount would be applied. She reached into her vest to pull out the proof of service documents. The cashier reached across the counter, not to take the document but to gently pat Merrilee on the arm. "Of course, the discount will apply, Dear". She didn't bother to look at the DD214. The transaction completed, she reached over the counter again, patting Merrilee on the arm, "Now have a nice day, Sweetie".

Driving home with the freezer in the back of our pickup we talked about the cashier's overly familiar behavior which I thought was unusual until I glanced at Merrilee and saw the fishing vest. It was clear enough: The cashier thought the fishing vest was some kind military utility vest.

This one is for bullets.          This one is for bait

She must have thought that Merrilee was a veteran from the Viet Nam era; and the guy who was with her, the doofus in the sloppy clothes wandering around staring at everything was under her constant care. "Now have a nice day, Sweetie".