Absolutely Normal Chaos (2 page)

Friday, June 15

Lord, what a day. This business about Carl Ray is getting out of hand. When I got up this morning, I noticed that instead of my mom’s usual individual notes for each of us, there was just one note by the telephone that said: “Magggggie or Mary Louuuuuu, call me at work when you get up. Love, your old Mommmmmmm.”

Right away, I knew that if she didn’t leave a list for each of us, it wasn’t because there was nothing
for us to do. I know Mom better than that. It probably meant that there was so much to do, she couldn’t write it all down. And I was right.

She gave me a list of things a mile long, and all because of Carl Ray. Mainly we had to move everything out of Tommy’s room into Dennis and Doug’s room, and bring the spare bed down out of the attic and put it in Tommy’s room, and wash windows, and on and on.

Actually, it was all kind of fun for a while. We like to move things around. But when Dennis and I were bringing down the bed from the attic, we had a slight problem.

The springs for the bed are these old metal heavy ones, and we were having trouble getting them down the stairs of the attic, so we decided to slide them down. I was at the top and Dennis at the bottom, when all of a sudden the springs lunged forward and crashed into the door at the bottom, putting a huge crack in it, and then they fell forward on Dennis, and a piece of spring tore right into his knee and he started howling and the blood was pouring all over.

It was a mess. Maggie was yelling at Dennis to stop screaming and Dennis was screaming at me saying it was my fault and I was screaming at Dennis saying it was not and Dougie was screaming because he hates
blood and Tommy was screaming because everyone else was screaming.

Then Maggie ran over to Mrs. Furtz’s, who was the only neighbor home. I’m sure she wasn’t exactly thrilled about helping us after Dennis smashed eggs on her house, but she came running over in her curlers and bathrobe and told me to wrap up Dennis’s leg while she changed her clothes, and then she would take him to the emergency room. So I put a pillowcase around his leg, trying to remember my first-aid class. I wanted to try a tourniquet, but Dennis wasn’t having any part of it. He just kept saying he was going to throw up. I hate it when people throw up.

Maggie called Mom, who said she would meet Mrs. Furtz and Dennis at the emergency room. I wanted to go too, but Maggie said that Mom said that
she
should go and I should stay here with Tommy. I think Maggie made that up.

Maggie and Dennis were gone forever. I thought Dennis died or something. Well, that does happen sometimes. We read a Robert Frost poem called “Out, Out—” in English class last year about a boy who got his hand cut near off from a buzz saw and he died while his hand was being sewn back on. That was this saddest poem, because at the end of it no one seemed to care about this boy dying. They
just went on with their business.

I have to admit that even though I really like Dennis and would miss him a lot if he died, I kept thinking maybe I would get his new bike. But then I felt so guilty for thinking that, I dragged the mattress down out of the attic by myself and got the whole bed together with only a little help from Dougie, and then I made up the bed and took down the curtains and put them in the wash and cleaned the windows and had just about everything done when Maggie and Dennis strolled in with Mom, who had taken the rest of the day off from work.

Mom hardly even noticed all the work I had done, she was so busy drooling all over Dennis. Dennis was being pathetic. He wasn’t even near dead—just had this huge bandage on his knee. He spent the entire day lying on the couch in the living room, moaning. He got ice cream and ginger ale, and Mom kept going in and feeling his forehead (his
forehead
! It was his knee that got hurt!).

Mom only said two things about Carl Ray’s room. First she said, “Thank you, girls, for setting that up.”

Girls! And Maggie just smiled and said, “It was nothing.” Ha.

And the only other thing Mom said was, “I can’t imagine Carl Ray in the
nursery
!”

It does seem a little funny. The room has yellow
walls (that’s not so bad) and frilly white curtains with yellow bunnies on them (now that’s bad), and a little border around the top of the walls that also has yellow bunnies on it.

I keep wondering what it will be like with Carl Ray here. Whenever I ask Maggie to tell me more about him, though, she acts like it’s no big deal. But I did notice that she put a bottle of her perfume in the bathroom, which is strange because usually she hides it in her drawer so I won’t touch it.

Everybody seems so excited about Carl Ray coming. Even Mom, which surprises me, because I thought she didn’t want him to come. I keep wondering how we’re all going to manage getting in and out of the bathroom. That will make eight of us who have to share it. With seven of us now, there’s already a problem. There is another one downstairs, but it only has a toilet and a sink.

Mom told me and Maggie that we have to wear our bathrobes now. I wonder if Carl Ray will wear a bathrobe.

Saturday, June 16

Well. Carl Ray has arrived.

It’s almost midnight and Maggie is out with her boyfriend, Kenny, and boy, is Dad mad. She hasn’t
even
seen
Carl Ray. That’s not why Dad is mad: He’s mad because Maggie and Kenny left at noon and they were going to the beach and they didn’t say what time they’d be back. She’s in real trouble, I think. Everyone else went to bed, but Dad is downstairs waiting.

Well, about Carl Ray. What a disappointment
he
is. I was expecting something quite, quite different. We waited around all morning looking out the windows. Around noon Dad came back from Alesci’s. He does the grocery shopping on Saturdays, and afterward he stops at Alesci’s, which is an Italian deli, and he buys a bunch of ham and two loaves of hotttttt, freshhhhhh bread, and as soon as he gets home and we put away the groceries, we always dive into the hot bread and ham and make these enormous sandwiches. It’s the best part of Saturdays, usually.

Just as we finished putting the groceries away and seconds before we were going to start cutting up that great bread, Dougie comes into the kitchen yelling, “Carl Ray! Carl Ray! There’s a guy at the door who says he’s Carl Ray!” What timing.

Carl Ray is tall and skinny, about as skinny as a person can be and still be alive. He has the blondest hair, almost white, and it sticks out in places like at the top of his head and by his ears where it is cut
kind of short. He is real pale and has a million freckles all over his face and his arms, which were the only parts of him sticking out, but I bet he has those freckles everywhere. He has tiny little eyes and a tiny nose; in fact, his whole head looks like a miniature of a real person’s head. So there is this tiny little head perched on top of this tall, thinnnnnn body, and off this body hang two longgggg, thin, freckled arms, and two longgggg, thin legs, and two long, thin hands and two longgggg, thin feet. What a guy.

Carl Ray has hardly talked at all yet, and Mom thinks it is because he is nervous. He keeps looking down at your feet and never looks into your face.

After we got him out of the living room and into the kitchen, Mom told us kids to wait and not hog the ham and bread until Carl Ray had a chance to get his. I can see it all now: Carl Ray is going to take over. He’s the only one with his own room and he’s the only one who ever got to grab six slices of ham and four slices of bread before anyone else could even touch it.

After lunch, Mom showed Carl Ray to his room and drooled all over, apologizing for the bunnies and stuff. He didn’t say one word, just looked around and put his suitcase down. Mom said he might like to rest awhile (probably because he ate such a
HUGE lunch), and he nodded and closed his door. Then Mom told us all to be quiet until he got up. Brother.

So all afternoon everybody tiptoed around, but he didn’t even come out of his room until he smelled dinner cooking. Just as we put everything on the table, he appeared. He kind of sneaks up on you.

Mom told Carl Ray to sit at the end of the table, opposite Dad. That’s a “special” seat that we all take turns sitting in. I don’t know why it is special; it just is.

For being a skinny person, he sure eats a lot. He had four pieces of chicken, three helpings of mashed potatoes, about a ton of green beans, three glasses of milk, and two helpings of cake. Mom kept looking at the chicken, as if she could make more pieces appear by staring hard enough. And when Dennis went to take his second piece, she gave him a dirty look, and said, “Wait a bit; we have com-pa-ny.”

After dinner, we all sat around watching TV. Carl Ray sat in my dad’s favorite chair, the one none of us is ever allowed to sit in when Dad is in the room. During the whole night, Carl Ray never said one single word, even though sometimes Mom or Dad would say something to him. He just nods or shakes his head; sometimes he grunts a little.

When everybody started going to bed, Mom said,
“Now let Carl Ray get in the bathroom first,” so we all waited around while he went into his room and shut his door. We waited and waited and waited. Finally, Dougie went over and peeked under the door and whispered that the light was out! Doesn’t Carl Ray even wash up or brush his teeth before he goes to bed?

It’s one o’clock and Maggie isn’t home. I bet Dad is still waiting in the living room. I sure wouldn’t want to be her tonight.

Sunday, June 17

Carl Ray is going to drive me cra-zeeee. And so is Maggie. Lord.

First, Maggie. She got home at two
A.M.
I know, because she came into the room crying and throwing her shoes around and she turned the light on, and needless to say, I wasn’t sleeping through that. When I asked her what was wrong, she said, “Ohhh! Everything.”

I said, “Like what?”

“Everything. Kenny. Dad. Ohhhh. I’m so mad.”

She
was mad? “Why are
you
mad?”

She glared at me. “Because I told Kenny we had to call and he kept saying, ‘Yeah, yeah,’ and because Dad never lets me have any fun, and because now he says I’m grounded for at least two weeks and next
Saturday is only the biggest party I’ll ever be invited to, and because Dad told Kenny not to show his face around here until he could be a gentleman, and because Kenny probably will never speak to me again.”

Then she threw herself down on her bed and started pounding her pillow and sobbing. I hate it when she does that. It looks like a movie. I told her Carl Ray had arrived.

“So what?” she said.

“Don’t you want to hear about him?”

“No!” She was pounding the pillow again. This morning she stayed in bed until noon, and then she was in the bathroom for about two hours, and when she came downstairs finally, her eyes were all puffy and she wasn’t talking to
anybody
.

Whenever Dad came into the room, she would go storming out. Finally, Dad told her if she didn’t quit her “theatrics,” he was going to ground her for a month, for starters. That made her shape up a little. She’s still pretty mopey, and every time the phone rings she jumps for it, but at least she’s talking to people a little bit.

For instance, she’s the only one who seems to be able to talk to Carl Ray and get some words out of him. I heard her asking him some questions and he actually answered her with words. It went something like this:

“So I hear you’re going to look for a job? Is that right, Carl Ray?”

“Yup.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Where are you going to look?”

Long pause by Carl Ray. Then, “Don’t rightly know.”

“What sort of work are you interested in?”

Long pause by Carl Ray. “Don’t rightly know.”

“What are you good at?” That’s Maggie all right. She just keeps picking away and picking away like a vulture or something.

I was glad that I didn’t have to try to make conversation with him. It’s painful. Besides, I was already mad at him for spoiling my day. I was supposed to go over to Beth Ann’s at eleven and we were going to go and hang around the pool, but Mom said I had to wait until Carl Ray got up so I could make up his bed and stuff. I said, “What? Why do I have to make up his bed?”

“Because you’re responsible for the upstairs and you know you can’t leave until it’s clean.”

“But why can’t he make up his own bed, like everyone else?”

We have this hugely complicated chore system at our house. Every year we have a big meeting where we’re supposed to swap jobs. It begins all nice and
civilized, but ends in a shouting match: “Dennis always gets the easy jobs!”—“I do not!”—“I’ll trade you vacuuming for dusting!”—“No way!”—“That’s not fair!” You get the picture?

We’re all supposed to make our own beds, but my main chore is to vacuum and dust the upstairs. I had to clean the bathrooms last year (eck!), but Dennis has that wonderful job now.

Back to Carl Ray. I said, again, “Why can’t Carl Ray at least make up his own bed, like everyone else?”

“Because Carl Ray is our guest, Mary Lou.”

That drove me crazy. Whenever I’m going to spend the night at someone’s house, my mom tells me that I must be very considerate and always make my bed up neatly as soon as I get up. When I reminded her of this, she said, “Well, his mother might not have told him that. If he’s still here in two weeks, he’ll make his own bed.”

“But if I don’t go now, Beth Ann might not wait—”

“Now don’t you argue with me. If you’re going to argue, then you can stay home all day.”

Boy, are people touchy lately. So I waited and waited. I even tried making noise upstairs, like turning on my radio.

Mom said, “Turn that off! You might wake Carl Ray.” (
Exactly
.)

I waited a little longer and decided to go ahead
and do the vacuuming in the other bedrooms and the hallway, so all I would have left to do would be Carl Ray’s room.

Mom came flying up the stairs after me and flipped off the switch and said, “I
told
you to keep quiet up here!”