Day 4
I wake up around 11. I take a quick pillow inventory because I'm convinced one of them has crawled into my left ear. I am now officially bunged up snout to tail, highway to byway, and nothing can pass into or out of just about any orifice of my body.
Downstairs, everyone's up, drinking coffee and generally smoking away. My stepfather is in his chair, and Rosie the cat is standing in front of the TV again. She's waiting for the magical red light to appear and dance about the floor and walls. If you've ever had a cat and a laser pointer, you know what I mean.
I am not in the mood to be alive. I'm constipated and stuffed up and my two favourite allergens are swimming around my head for inability to infiltrate the swollen linings of my respiratory system. I slunk back upstairs for nasal spray and Tina precursor (Sudafed). Within the hour, I'm feeling vaguely human again.
I spend the rest of the day in the chair next to Rocco's, drinking water, tea, a couple cups of coffee and eating whatever's lying around. My mother's chatter is directed at Greg and Lou, who are much better at listening than I am. I'm a little saddened to know that they'll be returning home to Florida tomorrow, and not just because they form such a brilliant firewall. Kathy and Bill come round at some point and hang out much of the day as well.
There is some talk about the previous night's precedings, but I avoid it. This is not down to my delusion but to a desire to remain in denial that this sort of rupture occurs - probably too regularly - in my family, and I realise that my gene pool is wired for and doomed forever thus. I grab another cup of coffee and add brandy.
Sometime late in the afternoon, one of my bunged-up orifices opens. Thank god it's the one you're thinking of.
Greg, Lou, Rocco and I sit in the TV room all evening watching the final installment of Lord of the Rings. It takes ages, and I'm happy for something to focus on. By 11:30, I'm upstairs and dead away. Damn this bloody cold.
Day 5
I'm up at 9a.m. I am third to awaken. Greg and Lou are still in bed. My mother's in the kitchen. I hesistate slightly. She'll say good morning, as will I, and then the service inventory begins. There's coffee in the pot it's 50-50 caffeine-decaf pumpkin rolls and monkey bread for snackin' we're going to the Hot Dog Shoppe for lunch at 1 look at the squirrel with no tail do you remember that desk from your brother's old room etc. A protracted weather forecast follows as the sun breaks through the cloud layer, and I grab a coffee and go sit down in the chair next to Rocco's. The morning passes.
We all get showered eventually and a million tiny things happen all the while the computer needs an update download spybot destroyer Kodak picture software USB cable for camera no need bluetooth smoke smoke smoke. My family is obsessed by noise making. My mother's head cannot contain anything as it is all projected outward. Her thought processes, administrative tasks, pressing the soap dispenser - everything is verbalised, and I really do believe she thinks we're listening to all of it. My needs are anticipated before I show any sign of interest in having a need. From a distance, it appears she wants to pamper us. Closer up, she may have a need to control every aspect of the movement and desire of every person and animal inside of her house, as well as within a 20 metre radius. It becomes difficult for me to relax.
Or is it this annoying head cold twisting my psyche in corked-up circles?
About 12:45p.m., we head for the Hot Dog Shoppe, one of the few institutions remaining, and that ever existed, on Warren, Ohio's west side. The plates arrive heaped with the most wonderful heart attack gut rot known to man: I have two frankfurters in white buns topped with chopped raw onions and a chilli sauce. These are called 'chilli dogs' and taste as divine as they did when I was a boy. The chips are made from potatoes shredded and deep fried on the premises. They, too, are exactly the same as they ever were.
In fact, to my memory, nothing at all is different about the Hot Dog Shoppe, and I'm grateful that something constant remains in this economically deprived, depressed and depressing corner of the state.
As we drive back to my mother's after a quick stop at Walgreen's drug store, I scan a solid mile of disused, derelict or destroyed commercial real estate that was mostly always vibrant and glowing when I was a kid. Now, abandoned gas stations look like I-bar skeletons; the McDonald's (you heard right) stands - barely - boarded up and vacant, it's car park full of last night's heavy snowfall, sharing a fate with the Burger King directly over the road (Things are so bad here, apparently, that there are no victors in most commercial rivalries, only losers.); the shopping centre that once held seven or eight stores now houses just three. The remaining blocks appear to close in on them rather than the other way round. A commercial and communal cancer has chewed unmercifully at this end of town. There's no arguing it's dead and will probably never come back. There is more hope for a united, peaceful and prosperous Middle East.
Back at my mother's house, Tiffany, wearing no make up and rightly so, flops down onto the couch next to me. 'I can't wait to get out of this stinking town,' she says. I laugh, although I may cry later.
And tell her I can't blame her one bit.
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