Dear Katy,

I'm a redhead. That should tell you a lot about me right there. You know how we redheads are. Stubborn. Headstrong. You could say redheadstrong. We make short determined steps. We write in short direct sentences. It's the redhead way.

Right now, I'm being very stubborn, but deservedly so. You would be too, if you had the same thing to eat for dinner every single day. Monday, fish stick day. Tuesday, corn day. Wednesday, pie day. Oh, I know what you're thinking. Pie day, there's a lot of variety in pie day. Wrong. It's apple pie from the Food Giant, with a dollop of Food Giant vanilla ice cream. The same things, over and over and over again. I could just scream, if it weren't for the calm demeanor traditionally associated with redheads.

Now I don't mean to underestimate you, Miss Katy, but I'm guessing that you might just not understand the full extent of my distress. When I talk about fish stick night, I'm not talking about fish sticks and tater tots, I'm talking about fish sticks period. Last Tuesday I'm looking at those golden ears of corn sitting on the serving platter and I, I just snapped. Said I wasn't going to eat dinner until we started getting a little variety. You know, have corn night on a Friday for Christ's sake, get wild. And I swore I would just eat a big lunch at work until the situation got remedied.

Problem. My wife Biloxia is being just as stubborn as me. She's not a redhead, like you might think. She's a Bolivian, and the stubbornness of Bolivian women is justifiably legendary. She says that when she was growing up she only had three things to eat, and all of them were raw. Well, sorry! That's not the way I was raised to eat! I had fried chicken, and on the side was mashed potatoes and some sort of green vegetable. Maybe a nice little salad and of course piping hot buttermilk biscuits. Don't even ask me about desert. The bottom line is, I used to eat more different things at one meal then I now do in an entire week.

Biloxia says I should consider myself "damn grateful" that she learned to cook for me, and that anybody who needs more than seven different things to eat is a glutton. And she is quite pleased then to tell me all about the third circle of hell. Man, that sounds ugly - lying in the mud and enduring an endless shit storm.

Hungry Redhead

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Not long ago I dyed my husband Eric’s hair bright red. I did this so that I would be able to find him more easily in crowds and because his sandy blond hair seemed to be just an excuse for ignoring me.  It seemed to shield him from my screeching.  I have always suspected that red hair would be a better conduit for my messages to Eric’s brain.

Sadly, because the label was long and wordy and I don’t have time to read everything beyond color and price, I accidentally chose wood stain and within the week Eric’s hair fell out in clumps.  Happily, the stain worked just as well on his scalp, and I was able to paint hair on in interesting patterns.  Harmony was ours, albeit briefly.

Eventually the sores were soaking up too much of the stain, causing me to have to apply more, and more, and eventually tie a small dripping sponge to the top of his head. This is when Eric began ‘hallucinating’ or, more technically, ‘fucking up our dinner’. 

Now, I absolutely depend on him to make our fabulous meals and mix our evening cocktails. I am far too busy thinking about things and looking out windows.  For almost a week, nightly, Eric ruined our evening meal.  He’d start screaming and batting at things, or he’d wander off in the middle of boiling noodles, or sautéing vegetables. He fell, face first, into a pan of simmering sauce and, finally, over onto the floor in front of the stove, where he lay twitching.  I rattled the ice in my empty glass and he just lay there, eyes rattling back at me.

As I stared at the pans unable to believe what I was seeing as the food eventually burned and caught on fire, there in the flames of the burning marinara sauce I saw you, you old scabby poot; My evil, jeering, food-obsessed Grampa. 

It was then that I remembered when I was little how you used to tease me about my missing but presumed fabulous father,

“Red on the Head, Like a Dick on a Dog,” you’d chant.

I knew that my father was not a ‘red head’…my mother would not marry a red head.

Not with a rhyme like that in circulation.     

I suspected then as I do now that my real father is either Dan Rather or Ed Bradley, or someone who looks just like them.  My Mother was always fiercely devoted to 60 Minutes.  NOT Andy Rooney.  No fucking way. I don’t care how drunk. 

“Your mommy didn’t get married, it was just a quick little ‘engagement’ haw haw…” you said, “maybe it was dark in the back seat of that rusted out 4 door sedan…but he had red hair, alright. I know it. I found the red hairs on her sweater, later…I still have them in a box somewhere…”

“No!” I cried, covering my ears, my blonde hair.

“And I think I see a red hair growing on you….”

You’d pull a hair out and pretend to lose it before I could see.

“But it was red all right, just like Ole Yeller’s pecker.”

 

I relived that horrible memory as Eric lie twitching and foaming on the linoleum floor.  I drank straight from the bottle of gin to calm myself. I ate some olives.  Eric made noises like a kitten.  His red head oozed.  I ordered a pizza.  I drank some more.  Eric’s head became stuck to the linoleum so that I had to go to the door for the pizza guy.

One of us peed the floor.

The next day I removed the wood stain and the sponge and glued yarn to Eric’s head in neat little orangey-yellow braids. I spritzered them with glitter glue and Ritalin. He looked almost Rastafarian, in a dope-smoking Rainbow Brite sort of way. 

Last night he made stuffed mushrooms, quiche and salad, pie, and a huge pitcher of gin gin gin, plus some other stuff and gum.  It should have been a happy time. I can’t stop the flooding of memories now.

I told Eric about you. I told him about my memories. I opened myself up to the old pain and longing of not knowing a father. 
”What?” he yelled, loud yarn braids draping his ears. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t listening…”

I ripped the yarn out and we will start over tomorrow. 

Pork chop night.