him into his pajamas, read him Goodnight Moon, and then tucked him in. “Good luck with everything,” I told him before I turned out his light.
I walked over to James’s room and knocked on the door. I thought about what it must be like for James to go through life under these conditions, with a mother like Susan. It’s no wonder he was miserable. I thought maybe I could sit down and talk to him about his life, be a shoulder he could cry on, if for no other reason than to prevent him from becoming a dateraper later in life. “Do you want me to bring you your dinner?” I asked through the closed door. Silence.
I was about to ask again, but decided I was the one who needed to eat dinner. All this caretaking had made me forget about my own needs. I went downstairs and looked in the fridge. There were a few containers that had james sr. written on them. I took one out, opened it, and found some chicken. After taking a couple of bites and not being able to identify the exact spice used in preparing it, I shut the container and put it back in the fridge. I went over to the cupboard and found a can of SpaghettiOs.
About an hour later the phone rang right in the middle of a brand-new episode of The Golden Girls. My favorite character was Bea Arthur. I’ve always felt we had similar senses of humor, although I imagined myself having a much better body when I hit seventy, not to mention highlights.
I picked up the phone and Susan was on the other end. “Hi, Chelsea, is everything okay?”
“Yes, everything is fine,” I told her, feeling like I had finally gotten the situation under control, and not wanting to miss any more of The Golden Girls than necessary.
“That’s wonderful, Chelsea. Thank you so much.”
“No problem, Suz,” I told her. “Have fun at the movie.”
The minute I hung up the phone James walked into the room with the entire bucket of frozen yogurt along with the entire bucket of vanilla-chocolate swirl ice cream in his hands. Both were empty. I hadn’t had any experience with sugar mania before, but was intuitive enough to know things were not going well.
He ran in and started jumping up and down on the couch I was sitting on. This was way before Tom Cruise humiliated himself on
“No more monkeys jumping on the bed!” he started screaming.
I was so shocked at first, I pretended he wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary and tried to ignore him. If he was looking for attention, he wasn’t going to get it from me. Then he jumped off the couch, ran into the kitchen, and came back with two oranges, both which he fired in my direction. One hit me right in the forehead, and the other went through the window, breaking the glass.
Once I got hit in the face, I lost my cool. I stood up, but before I could make my move, James pushed me back down onto the couch. Not only was I petrified of what might happen next, I was furious that I would mostly likely have a bruise in the middle of my forehead, with Ash Wednesday months away.
I had to think quickly. I decided the best approach was to not react at all, so I sat there watching him buzz around the room, banging his head into one wall after another. I remained seated, not wanting to run any interference and get manhandled. I knew James would crash, but I didn’t know how long that was going to take, and was praying he would get it under control by the end of the commercial break. The last five minutes of
James was a real live windup toy and I was just hoping his batteries would die soon. I looked at the broken window and wondered what I was going to tell his parents. I didn’t even care. I just wanted to go home. I thought about my sister Sloane and how she would have handled this situation…Sloane would never have
Then James picked up one of the tubs, tossed it on the floor, and eyed me like a piece of meat. I pretended I didn’t notice his death stare, and even tried to fake a yawn as an example of my disinterest in his showcase.
I was successful in faking disinterest until he took the almost-empty ice cream tub and forced it over my head. “Stop it!” I screamed, kicking my legs while my head was getting coated in vanilla- chocolate swirl. He was spinning the tub around my head and I was getting ice cream leftovers in my mouth, eyes, and nose. I felt myself starting to hyperventilate. I couldn’t take another minute, and tried to head-butt my way out the other end of the carton, but without enough wiggle room found it nearly impossible. I had no choice but to find my way between James’s legs and nail him in the balls with my foot.
As James went flying onto the ground, I took off my ice-cream hat, threw it on the floor, and got on top of him like a wrestler, pinning his biceps down with my knees. “Listen, you little fucker, I am going to call the police on your ass, you crazy lunatic bitch! What the hell is the matter with you?”
Tears were streaming down his face. It was a sad moment; even though he had attacked me like an ice-cream ninja, I couldn’t help but feel awful for him.
“I’m sorry I kicked you in your privates,” I told him, awkwardly maintaining my position on top of him. (A position, mind you, that I became much more comfortable with later on in life.) “But you are a mess. What is wrong with you?”
“I’m sorry,” he said softly.
I finally felt like maybe the sugar was passing through his body, and I could tell he was tired from crying. I knew that whenever I threw a temper tantrum, I always felt pretty beat afterward as well. I got up from sitting on his penis.
“I’m going to bed,” he said, and walked upstairs to his bedroom.
I sat on the sofa, staring at the empty container of yogurt, wondering how long I was going to have this headache. James Sr. and Susan walked in moments after I had finished cleaning up.
“How were they?” Susan asked as she walked into the living room.
“Fine, they were fine,” I said, standing in front of the broken window.
“There were no problems?”
“Nope,” I told her.
“Really?”
“Yes, they were perfect.”
I thought about the benefits of telling her the truth about what had happened, but knew that with all the details, I could have spent another four hours in that house, and, truth be told, I wanted to go home and wash my hair.
James Sr. grabbed my jacket and we both headed outside to the car. He was very sweet and told me how nice it was to have dinner without any kids. He seemed like a submissive type of guy who was being tortured on a daily basis by his family. His life was not his own, and I knew he would be the perfect prototype for my first husband. As we headed down the dirt road leading to my parents’ house, he said, “I really can’t tell you how grateful I am for you babysitting,” he said. “We never really get a chance to go out.”
“No problem,” I told him. “My pleasure.”
“By the way,” I added. “James Junior threw an orange through the living room window and it’s broken, and then he took an empty tub of ice cream and crowned me with it until I had to wrestle him to the floor.” I left out the kicking-him-in-the-nuts part, because I didn’t want any of the blame in this scenario.
James Sr. didn’t respond to what I said immediately, and when he did, he said, “I had a feeling things got hairy when I saw the back of your hair matted to your head. I suppose you would never want to babysit for us again, huh?” It was clear to me that James Sr. needed to leave his wife, but was one of those men who would never have the guts. Instead, he would rather suffer 90 percent of the time in anticipation of the small capsules of grown-up time he could have with her. And even though that had been one of the worst nights of my life, I wasn’t going to be the one responsible for denying him his only morsel of happiness.
“I have a sister named Sloane who is older than me and has much more experience with emotional illness. I think you’ll like her. And I think she’ll really get a kick out of James Junior. The only problem is that she charges $15 an hour.”
“That’ll be fine,” James Sr. told me.
“And she carries Mace,” I added.
CHAPTER THREE
It was exactly one week after my twenty-first birthday when I got my first DUI. I haven’t gotten another one since, but I’m not ruling anything out.
My friend Lydia and I were on our way home from a night of heavy drinking and were midway through the second chorus of Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” when she punched me in the shoulder and slurred, “I think you’re getting pulled over.”
“Huh?” I asked as I hurriedly readjusted my rearview mirror, which I had been using in place of a compact. I lowered the volume on the radio and turned my head around for confirmation of what looked eerily similar to glaring red lights. Lydia was right. I was getting pulled over. “Fuck.”
I’ve always had a fear of police officers, especially when their sirens are blaring and they’re behind me. “Don’t say anything,” I ordered as I quickly slammed on the brakes and drove over the curb and into a stop sign.
Lydia slurs when she’s sober, never mind after seven vodkas with cranberry juice. She also has a tendency to offend people who can help us. Earlier that evening we had gone to a seventies revival bar in Westwood where the bouncer wouldn’t let us in unless we were on the list. “I’ll handle this,” she said, right before she laid into him. “What, do you think you’re special because you’re a bouncer? Puh-lease. You’re not an authority figure. You know you’re just fat and stupid, right? Now, can we come in or what?”
“Pretend you’re sleeping,” I barked at her as I saw two police officers get out of the patrol car.
“You weren’t doing anything. Tell them you want proof!”
“I’m serious, Lydia, shut up. Do not say a word, and close your eyes! Go to sleep.”
A burly officer in his late thirties approached my side of the car while his partner tapped a flashlight on Lydia’s window, motioning for her to roll it down as he shined the flashlight in her face.
Lydia had to open the door because the window didn’t roll down. For my twenty-first birthday a week earlier, my father had shipped me a 1985 two-door Yugo with one working window. The year was 1996 and, as luck would have it, the window that worked was on the driver side, in the backseat. Forgetting my window didn’t roll down, I had tried on several occasions to throw a cigarette out of it, only to repeatedly slam my left hand into the glass. I had started physical therapy a few weeks prior in order to get some of the strength back in my hand, but was having trouble making a full recovery because, as the therapist said, my injury was “highly unusual.”
“Hi, sir,” I said to the policeman as I opened my door. “Sorry, my windows don’t roll down.” I was trying to keep one eye on my cop and one eye on Lydia, knowing that any chance I had of getting out of this situation was going to depend entirely on my performance.
“License and registration” was his hello to me.
“Sure,” I slurred as I stood up, leaning one hand on my door. As I rifled through my purse for my license, I said to him as articulately as I could, “Can you ask me why I pulled you over?”
The officer smirked at his partner, who was asking Lydia to remain seated in the car, and then looked back at me. “I’m going to need you to step away from your vehicle, ma’am.”
“Ma’am?” I asked, trying to figure out how old I actually was since I had been lying about my age for some time in order to get into bars. I couldn’t remember if I was legally or illegally drunk.
“Where are you coming from, Miss…Handler?”
