Oh, Lordy, How My Heart Grows Weary / Far from the Old Folks at Home
“Families aren't easy to join. They're like an exclusive country club where membership makes impossible demands and the dues for an outsider are exorbitant.”
Bombeck, Erma. (1987). Family: The Ties that Bind … And Gag! Random House Publishing Group.
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“Hmm?” asked Jamie, startled from her momentary mental woolgathering. “Oh hello, Emily! No, I'm fine. I'm just dropping by to visit my folks. How are you doing these days? My, you've grown. How old are you now – thirteen, fourteen?”
“I'm fifteen!” Emily, betraying her irritation with a petulant frown.
“Of course!” said a chagrined Jamie. “I'm sorry. I'm bad at judging ages. You look very nice, Emily. That's a cute outfit. Going somewhere special?”
“Just a date with a guy,” Emily said ambiguously.
Sensing Emily didn't care to elaborate further, Jamie simply wished the teen the best of luck on her date, and headed inside the Smith family home to visit her parents.
“Chris!” called out the short, thin white-haired woman answering the door. “Christopher! Do you hear me? Come here – Jamie's arrived. I said Jamie is here. Oh, don't worry, dear. He's coming. He's just gotten a bit hard of hearing and refused to go see the doctor. Afraid they're going to make him start wearing a hearing aid. Christopher! I said Jamie's here for a visit.”
Jamie smiled patiently as a stocky, red-faced man shuffled towards across the living room and towards the front door. He'd a disheveled nest of dusty gray hair and a neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard.
“I hear perfectly well, Jennifer!” he shouted at his wife. “I don't need to be told something in triplicate. Hello, Jamie. It's always nice to see you. Come in, come in … your mother's too busy impersonating an echo to properly invite you in.”
Jamie stifled a laugh at the pleasant, easygoing banter between her parents. They'd always bickered but never actually fought – an argumentative yet never contentious relationship of lovable friction and unceasing petty disagreements that never escalated to anything truly acrimonious. Jamie hoped someday she and Max could enjoy this level of comfortable dispute. You had to really trust, know, and a love a person in order to feel free enough to disagree with them without restriction – to be unrestrainedly honest.
Jamie prepared to enter the family living room by first pausing at a patch of square linoleum and removing her tall, brown, knee-high boots.
“Oh, you don't need to take off your shoes, kitten!” laughed Christopher Smith. “Your mother never actually vacuums these filthy old carpets.”
“Thank you for ignoring your father and showing a bit of respect for my carpets, dear!” chirped Jennifer Smith. “I did the carpets just the morning, only your father was too deaf to hear the roar of the vacuum cleaners.”
“You can't properly clean the carpets with that old hunk of junk,” quipped Christopher. “The motor's practically burned-out because you never change the bag on that thing. You don't take care of things, woman.”
“Then why don't you open your wallet and buy me a new one,” retorted Jennifer with an easy smile.
Jamie grinned happily at her squabbling parents, padding across the carpet in her Fair Isle boot socks. She couldn't help but notice the beige berber carpet beneath her feet was immaculately clean. Score one for the ladies team, thought Jamie.
“Well, what brings you by, dear?” asked Jamie's mother. “Can I get you anything – glass of lemonade or ice tea?”
“Maybe she wants a beer,” interrupted Jamie's dad.
“She doesn't want a beer – will you just butt out, already?” frowned mom.
“Scotch on the rocks? … whiskey? … rum? … shot of turpentine?” quipped dad.
Mom shot invisible daggers at him, and a softly chuckling Christopher Smith sunk into an easy chair and allowed his girls the opportune to chat uninterrupted.
“I'm fine, mom and dad,” answered Jamie. “I didn't really have a reason for dropping by. Hutch and I are just out-and-about running errands. He wanted to stop by the Garden Center and pick up a couple bags of gravel for some backyard landscaping we're going to do. It's really his project, so I asked him to just drop me off here – since we're in the neighborhood. I hope you don't mind? He'll be back around in a half-hour, forty-five minutes to pick me up.”
“No, of course we don't mind, honey,” smiled Jennifer. “Though Max should have come in as well. We enjoy seeing him. He's a good fellow, and we're proud of you for choosing such a nice, respectable young man to marry …”
“You did well,” interrupted Christopher.
“Which is more than I can say for the sort of uncivilized brute I wound up manacled to some thirty-odd years ago,” snapped Jennifer.
“Well, if you're serious about seeing Hutch, we'd both love to have you over for dinner this weekend,” said Jamie. “I'm planning on doing a roast, so we'll have plenty of food. And we both enjoy your company.”
“We'd love to, kitten, but … uh … well … you see, the thing is …” stammered dad, his naturally rubicund face turning a sweaty, cherry red.
“What your father means to say is that … well … your brother was coming over to visit us this weekend,” mom said. “He'd like us to meet his latest … uh … lady friend.”
Jamie scowled – a dichotomy of conflicting thoughts had suddenly invaded her mind, neither the slightest bit comforting or welcome.
First was the shocking realization her family was wrong. Jamie didn't have an older brother. He had an older sister – the insufferably chirpy, bubbly blonde Ashley: prom queen, cheerleader, and beautiful, popular, bubbleheaded princess of high school. Life was a cakewalk for her, while he struggled along as a greasy, acne-scarred nerd boy …
Except I'm not a boy, thought Jamie. She stared down at the firm, muliebral breasts clearly present beneath her reddish pink, cambric blouse. Jamie was a grown woman … a married woman … with the beginning of a promising career as a high school teacher looming before her. Why this sudden, vivid hallucination of being a geeky, teenage boy with a giggly, airhead of a sister? There was no Ashley, she reminded herself. Jamie's older brother was Alan. And rather than being a fashionable, attractive, well-liked girl, Alan was a pathetic loser. He drank too much, smoked too much, gambled too much … the whole family suspected he did drugs. He couldn't hold down a job and spent his days grifting, playing embarrassingly obvious con games on friends and family members alike in order to swindle people out of just enough money for Alan to dig himself out of the latest trouble he'd landed in. Other than when he needed money, Alan only came only to introduce everyone to his latest floozie. They were always desperate looking, slatternly hussies – tarted-up alley cats lacking manners, grace, and style. Every few months, Alan would bring around his latest minx: makeup plastered across her face, skirt hiked to within an inch of her crotch, and boobs straining to burst out of her top judging from the impossibly taut declivity of her décolletage. Each and every one of them would be solemnly declared the love-of-his-life by a bedraggled and sloppily intoxicated Alan Smith.
So that was why Jamie was scowling. Where had that disorienting phantasmagoria about Alan being a ditzy cheerleader come from?
Jamie shook her head to clear her thoughts.
“Well … maybe this new girlfriend of Alan's will be different,” she finally said to her parents. “If you'd like to extend an invitation to Alan and his latest 'friend,' they're both more than welcome to come for dinner as well. Hutch and I would really love a chance to show off our host and hostess skills.”
“We'll be there, kitten!” winked dad.
“You're sure about this, sweetie?” asked mom dubiously. “I know what your brother can be like and … we can deal with him here.”
“Nonsense, mom,” Jamie retorted, forcing what she hoped was a carefree, easygoing nonchalance into her tone of voice. “I'd really, really love to play hostess to the whole family this weekend. Please, do come – and make sure to invite Alan and his girlfriend also.”