It is Thanksgiving Day and we are ordained to spend it at my Drunken Mama’s house. I am about to dress up, as my nature is to overdress, but then I scrap everything and decide to wear a DKNY t-shirt, my grey angora cardigan (because it will inevitably be too warm inside my mother’s tiny house and layers are a good idea), and jeans so that I do not overeat. I’ve been traipsing around the house all day in my grey lumberjack socks which are too big for my feet and the heel dimple rests on the back of my ankle. For some reason, my feet are always ridiculously cold on Thanksgivings. Normally I would change my socks to a nice argyle pattern which would match the sweater, but I decide that the socks actually match the sweater and it’s my mother’s house, where none of the tablewear matches and my lumberjack socks will do just fine.
Later, Mo, Mary Kaye and I are sitting in the living room while Mom putters around the kitchen. The Cowboys game is on and Abby is twirling and singing and Jonathon is tromping in and out of the house. And I am explaining to Mo that I just didn’t care about my socks, so I just left my big thick socks on and crammed them into my loafers.
‘Just cram them in! That’s what I do!’ My mom shouts in the kitchen.
We just look at each other and laugh.
Later, Mo and I are analyzing my mother’s bizarre living room decorations. She has a neo-classic thing going on, with some beautiful mahogany tables, some ornate paintings and lovely vases, but then, she’s also got a strange plaster deer sculpture with an enormous head and ears. The head is so large, I theorize that the actual animal wouldn’t be able to lift it and it would simply wander around with it’s bulbous E.T. head dragging on the ground. And the freakishly large ears would make it all the easier to hear the taunts of the other deer, who would not let the E.T. deer play their reindeer games. And then there is also a strange corner devoted to Native American things, including two Franklin Mint plates depicting young braves beseeching the Great Warrior for a good hunt. Or perhaps checking to see if their deodorant is working. It’s a close call. My mother is not Native American. We suspect those are gifts from my Aunt Drusilla, who is the embodiment of the Cher song ‘Half Breed’. And then there also are the remnants of my mother’s lifelong obsession with Oriental design.
Mo and I decide that she needs to pick one decorating genre, and not this whole Chinese Restaurant Slash French Nouveau Slash Trailer Home On The Res Slash Grandma’s House thing she’s got going on. We accuse her of becoming a cat lady, only with stuff instead of cats. She meekly offers that some of the things she buys but then needs to look at them for awhile before she can decide who will get them. Mo and I each exchange a look. Neither of us want a single thing in this house and we can’t imagine anyone else would. I then offer that if she’s shopping for Christmas things, perhaps she should decide what OTHER people want for Christmas and buy things For Them, rather than buying things she likes and then deciding later who will get what. Because, I add, that’s how I ended up getting a set of Teddy Bear plates for Christmas from Mafia Grandma, three years after I had started living with Esteban.
Mo starts laughing and can not stop. ‘They had’ had’ had a pink’ BOW!’
Yes, they did. Because anyone who knows me knows how much I like the cutsey shit.
Mom’s black Pekingnese hurtles off the floor onto my lap. Mo exclaims that we must stop laughing or we’ll excite the dog and he’ll pee on my lap. Apparently this happened to Mo recently, only it was excited pee on her lap.
Now everyone is laughing and we do not stop for an hour. Esteban sleeps through the entire thing until Jonathon opens the door and then they both look at Mom, Mo and me and wonder why we have tears running down our faces.
Mo and I are discussing our game plans for shopping on Friday. She has just convinced Esteban to come over to her house at 5:15 in the morning to sit with Abby so that Mo may go shopping. And, as she explains it, I need to go shopping early in the morning too, so that I can wake Esteban up. I offer my theory that I wasn’t all that impressed with the early sales and had decided to sleep instead. Abby is sitting on her lap, not paying attention to the adult stuff going on around her. Mo declares that she is going to Mal*Wart.
“Why, what’s worth it there? That place will be insane.” I counter.
Mo mouths the words to something.
“What?” I say, wanting her to do it again. “For toys… for me.” Abby sighs. As a worldly five year old, the artifice of secret toy buying is very tiresome.
When I wake up on Friday morning, Esteban is asleep on the recliner still wearing his shoes and flannel jacket. His wool old man hat is still perched on his head. He is snoring lightly, with the television remote in his hand, his finger perched on the channel changer.
