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.
