FireVaney

Nearly every weekend, Betty says to me, “Firey, don’t get old.” She means it in both a funny and an honest way. She tells me she was perfectly healthy before the radiation treated her breast cancer, some twenty years ago, when she was sixty-something. The cancer is all gone now, but arthritic aches and pains affect her daily. She can easily recall her phone number and her home address and also the game show that’s on Channel 7 every day at 6:30 post meridiem. She has no problem naming the show’s host and co-host. Monday through Thursday, over the phone, she’ll say to Pop, “Time to watch Vanna.” She means it, too. Ever the accountant, Pop will dryly confess that he “likes to look at figures.” Betty never forgets to call Pop first thing in the morning and last thing at night. But ask Betty to ask her pharmacist three little questions? Forget it. Ask her to repeat those three questions right after you’ve stated them, and she’ll get them all wrong. Poor Betty, she’ll fumble all the words i...

Among Nikki’s fears: Heights, trains, butterflies, and birds—in particular, pigeons and crows. Heights and trains because whenever she’s confronted with either, she contemplates suicide. Trains, too, because she dreams of them oncoming. Butterflies, because she was once engulfed by a swarm of them. Birds, because her mother was once attacked by a crow. Somehow, it had trapped itself in the drying machine. Said crow flapped up into the kitchen and proceeded to attack a red velvet cake. Had you walked into the kitchen (post crow), and nobody told you about the cake (or the crow), you might’ve wondered why the walls, floor, ceiling, and surfaces were all seemingly splattered with chunks of bloody flesh and black feathers. In the end, a neighbor smacked the life out of that crow with a tennis racquet. The kicker? Just the day before, Nikki had sat through all of Hitchcock’s The Birds .  31 March 2006

The names of places—of restaurants and places—if I only visit them once, their names almost always escape me. This is also true of people I’ve only met once. Typically, it takes two or three visits for a name to stick. (And to think of the piss-poor shape my memory’ll be in when I’m twice my current age!) Point is, we went to a place for carnivores for what’s-his-name’s bachelor party. (Lori is a vegan, by the by.) Along with a fork, knife, plate, napkin, and water glass, each diner gets their own circular cardboard card. * One side of the card is red and the other side is green. Somebody explains how it all works and then the servers surround you with various forms of cooked meat. They’ll keep carving it up and heaping it onto your plate until you flip the green side of your card over to its red side. After all that—which is to say, after scarfing down way, way, way too much meat—we drove over to a flashy bowling alley in Streeterville where they charge you five bucks for a BOTTLE of...

Forgot to mention that the sewer backed up into Pop’s basement last week. I’d gone down with a load of laundry and was met with a swamp of filth. I spent the day—ankle-deep in piss and shit and used Charmin squares—cleaning and salvaging and trashing. When the plumber finally showed up, he was only in the house for about five minutes. He spent the most of the afternoon in the front yard, rodding out the pipes from there. While it didn’t look like an easy task for him, at least he was out in the fresh air. I spent the better half of yesterday bagging up anything else that seemed unsalvageable. Today, I’ll have a better idea of just how many bags the garbage truck will have to haul away. No idea how much extra it’ll cost. Tonight, at The Goodman: a staged reading of an early draft of Mamet’s American Buffalo . Mr. Mamet himself will be in the house. *   10 April 2006  * [If memory serves, Mr. Mamet remarked, onstage, just prior to the reading, that he wasn’t a fan of festivals t...

Big Len, our rotund neighbor to the west, found a raccoon nestled in his garbage bin yesterday morning. As he looked down at it, it looked up at him. (In fairness, it is possible that, as Big Len approached, said raccoon was already looking up at the inside of the bin’s lid. I couldn’t say for certain; I wasn’t there. You’d have to ask the raccoon—presuming it would offer a honest answer, that is; and presuming you could hire a competent translator of Raccoon-nese or Raccoon-ish; that is, presuming you aren’t such a translator yourself.) Big Len tossed his bulging Hefty bag into the bin anyways and slammed the lid down. He fixed the lid with a heavy shovel to thwart the raccoon’s escape.  Then, yesterday afternoon, whilst strolling to and from the train station, Big Len told Pops that the raccoon was “too stuffed to move.” Sure, Big Len could’ve called up the animal control folks, but he figured they’d be off for the holiday. Fair enough.  Why Big Len had to “secure” the racco...

It’s a simple YES/NO question: “Is it hot outside?” Pose it to Ma, pose it to Grandpa, and their answer? Always, always, always something like: “All I do is sweat.” Restate the question: “So it’s hot outside?” Respectively, their reply’ll go something like: “You don’t believe me, do you? I’m a liar, that’s what you’re thinking. How dare you call me a liar.” And so you’re lambasted when all you’ve done is ask a simple question. In sooth, nobody in my family—save for me, unless the remark I make is facetious (which, if it is, it’s typically as plain as Wonder Bread)—will limit themselves to a simple Yes/No response. In fairness, it isn’t as if they enjoy bloviating at the drop of the hat. You will receive many “I don’t know” answers—especially from Grandpa. Exempli gratia, he never knows what he wants for lunch or dinner. Ask him, point-blank, what he wants for any meal and he’ll say, “Not much.”  19 July 2006

Somebody left a bowl with a spoon upstairs on the toilet’s tank-top. The guilty party presumably finished their breakfast in the bathroom, and the bowl and the spoon were left there all day, or for several days, or for many. Had the culprit spooned up their Fruit Loops or Lucky Charms or Cinnamon Toast Crunch or some combination of the aforementioned whilst perched on the toilet, id est, whilst making a deposit? I didn’t ask.  And what of the piles of Sunday newspaper advertisements that bury the ledge just inside of their front door? We’re talking several years of Sunday ads, or so it seems. Don’t the coupons contained therein expire?  And let’s not forget the balloons that hover above the low-hanging streamers from a party they hosted two weeks ago.  Clutter dominates every room.  And by the way, dog hair and dog slobber coat the interior of their car.  Ah, but life is mussy. And the two who call this place home, they are far happier than I. They have jobs, th...

Monday nights I chauffeur Pop to and from his Adult Education class at the temple. The class is a survey of all things Jewish. Pop's missed two of the last three classes due to the coughing fits his doctors can't figure out; but this past Monday, coughing be damned, Pop went to class.  Pop isn't sick, not chest-cold or stomach-flu sick, not anything contagious sick, he's got some kind of chronic nasal-dripping problem. It gets a little worse every year, but the hacking that results usually wanes by the time he dresses and plods down the stairs for breakfast. * Starting three weeks ago, though, it hasn't let up much at all—not unless he's chewing gum or lying down. Even if he yaps too much, he’ll start coughing. Mention the Sox, or the Bears, or the market, or old clients, or God, and, believe you me, he’ll have plenty to yap about. † He'll rant all the way through "Wheel of Fortune," coughing after every third word.  So this past Monday night, wh...

Once, Mr. C., who was one of my high school’s performing arts teachers, posed this question to the class: "Where do you go for peace and quiet?"  When it came my turn to answer, I said, "The beach."  Truthfully, whenever I sought “peace and quiet,” I’d go to my bedroom. Boring, right? Perhaps a sensible answer would’ve been the local public library. But the beach seemed somehow poetic. *   My lie impressed Mr. C., and that was my aim— to impress —because, in that particular place, and at that particular time, he was in a position of power.  In a way, he still is.  That teenage memory resurfaced earlier today, as I traversed a rocky beach in my bare feet. My eyes were drawn less to the gently lapping expanse beyond, and more to the broken beer bottles and castoff condoms strewn along the shore. ~  ~  ~ Here, from wall to wall, from floor to ceiling, from smell to sound—Pop, Betty, and moi—we're cocooned within a world of cozy vapidity. If not for the da...

Just in case you were wondering... (And just in case you were reading...) I am not in any way upset with you. You have done nothing wrong. I am the immature one. I am the one who can't rein-in the bullshit. And you can be damn sure that I will never stand in your way. I never have; I never will. (Although, I think you have a few lousy habits. And, one day, I may even grill you on their worth.) From you, I expect great things. (And, one day, I hope to be great enough in my own right so that the above statement carries a certain degree of weight.) Still, I think you aim too low, but, I barely know you, so, that is entirely conjecture. I do this — It's nothing new — Putting the likes of you up on a pedestal. It's really fucked up. It doesn't do anyone a lick of good. But that's learned behavior for you. (Unless it's conditioned behavior for you.) And, to be perfectly frank would require putting it in truly pathetic terms. I...