I Love Everybody (and Other Atrocious Lies) (18 page)

And then I snapped my fingers for emphasis.

“Wow,” the kid replied, “you’re the best guest speaker we’ve ever had!”

“Why, thank you,” I replied, and I felt myself smiling again.

An avalanche of questions then came my way as the children begged me to tell them more about hate mail, death threats, people who died at Disneyland, LSD, and if I ever planned on throwing a poisoned steak over the fence of Mr. Winkle’s backyard.

“Maybe not a poisoned steak, but I think I might toss a Hershey’s Kiss or two.” I laughed. “You can’t tell me that little mutt doesn’t at least deserve a case of the squirts after what he’s done to me.”

“Well, that’s all the time we have for Miss Notaro on Career Day,” Ms. Ward told the class, which was met with what sounded like a crowded baseball stadium sighing, “Awwwwwwww!”

It

was

glorious.

“Let’s give her a round of applause for being so nice to come down here to talk to us,” and then the class did just exactly that.

As the kids passed by me on their way out, I heard, “You rock, Miss Notaro!”

“You were better than body glitter, Miss Notaro,” and “My mom says you have a dirty mouth. But I’m going to tell her you aren’t any dirtier than my dad.”

“Wow,” I said to Ms. Ward when the classroom was cleared. “That went well, I think, don’t you? That went so much better than I thought it would.”

“Well, things have a tendency to pick up after profanity is used.” She nodded with a tiny, little wicked grin. “It works better than sugar.”

“Ooooooh, sorry.” I winced.

“The luncheon for the Career Day speakers is in the teachers’ lounge,” Ms. Ward said. “So if you’d like a free sub and a can of generic soda, I’d love to have you come if you promise not to swear at our principal, although there’s a PE teacher who’s fair game.”

“If she pants uncontrollably and the hair on her back has fallen out, you’ve got a deal,” I volunteered.

Actually, after the last ten and only successful minutes of my Career Day talk, I was a little bit excited to go to the luncheon. I mean, really, those kids emitted sounds of grief when my talk was over, and finally, I felt as if I were on par with the other Career Day show-offs and their globes, alpha-hydroxy, cupcakes, and race cars. I could compete after all, even if I worked in an office where a two-pound, shingly fleabag outranked a columnist. I personally hoped that I would be sitting near the serial killer and the bomb-sniffing dog to inform them in general, passing conversation that even though I came empty-handed, relying on only myself and my trade to keep these tots entertained, I nearly brought thirty seventh graders to tears just by saying one word: “good-bye.”

Ms. Ward and I grabbed two seats at one of several tables in the lounge, although the chiropractor and his carcass were nowhere to be seen and the bomb-sniffing dog wasn’t even in a chair. Our table was occupied by a couple of teachers and their speakers, one of whom was a robust, jolly man in suspenders and the other was a woman who was so old that I could see right through her skin.

Just then, the principal stood up and cleared her throat.

“I want to welcome and thank you all for participating in our Career Day program,” she said. “Before we get started with lunch, I would like to take some time for everyone to get acquainted with one another. So if our Career Day speakers would stand up and introduce themselves as we go around each table, we can get an idea of who all of our terrific speakers are.”

So the rounds began; at each of the tables, a Career Day speaker stood up, told everyone his name and his job, and then sat back down. You could tell how impressed everyone else in the room was with each particular speaker’s occupation: People smiled and nodded warmly at the fireman; people became stiff and unsmiling with the dentist, and people just absolutely looked away when confronted with an IRS employee.

Clearly—though unintentionally—we were being judged. It was almost like the Miss America pageant, with each contestant having three seconds to strut his stuff and seduce the crowd, but without waxing, plucking, or liposuction, although from some of the reactions to the baker and the city council member, those extra efforts couldn’t have hurt.

I also noticed that the reaction that each speaker got was not solely based on his occupation and jocularity alone; it also had a great deal to do with who went before you. The architect, on his own, probably would have scored fairly well, but being that he followed the noble, selfless researcher working on a cure for colon cancer, he might as well have been a circus clown.

Now, you would think that because of the unexpected though delayed spectacular response I got from my class, I really wouldn’t have cared about winning this second round at Career Day, but you would be wrong. I was still flying pretty damn high from my “Miss Notaro Rocks” trip—so high, in fact, that I smiled at the IRS fellow. Frankly, I hadn’t been that happy since I was planning my wedding. The joy I had found when realizing I had found a sucker to marry me was sharply overshadowed when the man I loved announced that he did not want to wear a tuxedo but would rather don a
salwa kamis,
the native dress of Pakistan. Despite my explanation that his comfort was truly not an issue at my wedding and that if my mother had to spend a lifetime looking at a photo in which he was dressed like a genie, her hate would be both endless and relentless, he still wouldn’t agree to wear real pants.

That is, until the jubilant day that my mother told him, “Sure, you go ahead and wear that thing at the wedding, but if you do, you’d better plan on paying for the open bar, because, see, it’s going to take a whole lot of Chardonnay, Bailey’s, and strawberry margaritas for me and my friends to get over the fact that my eldest daughter is marrying a guy who showed up dressed like friggin’ Barbara Eden.”

It took the threat of a bar tab for two hundred people for my then boyfriend to agree to wear pants at his own wedding, but I couldn’t have been happier.

And I hadn’t been again until this moment; here I was, “my-groom-is-wearing-honest-to-God-pants” happy, and there was no way I was going to lose my buzz now. No way. I started to prepare for my turn and sized up the possible first acts at my table: I wasn’t particularly concerned about the old woman, because honestly, what kind of workload could she feasibly handle when her high school classmates were now buried in the Valley of the Kings? I’ve handled tomatoes that were sturdier. At best, I concluded that she was either the bell ringer at a Salvation Army donation bucket or perhaps a crossing guard. Very noble indeed for a woman who probably had photos in which the Grim Reaper appeared by her side, but she was no Mr. Winkle.

No, I suspected that my Mr. Winkle was sitting across from me all bound up in his paisley suspenders and coordinating bow tie. This was my competition, I realized; this was the guy I had to look out for. From his ruddy cheeks and wire-rimmed glasses, I just had a feeling that I would have the good fortune of following Dr. Pediatric Heart Surgeon Specialist Guy who not only saved the lives of babies as a daily job, but spent his weekends and holidays traveling to Third World countries and Arkansas to operate on and cure impoverished infants and then fix a harelip or two with only moments to spare before catching the last helicopter ride back to civilization. He probably had a handwritten thank-you note from Mother Teresa hanging in his office signed, “Hugs, Mama T.”

Damn it, I said under my breath, I just knew it. Frankly, I’d rather follow the cancer research guy than Dr. Baby Saver.

It was almost our table’s turn to testify, and the anticipation was killing me.

“Come on, old lady, come on, old lady!” I chanted in my head as I mentally threw the dice. Then, as if on cue, the principal nodded toward the baby saver, signaling his turn to sassy himself down the catwalk.

He stood up, turning an even brighter flush of red than he already was, and proudly pronounced, “I’m Paul Wyatt, and I own several Burger King franchises in Chandler and Gilbert.”

I almost burst out laughing. Not that owning Burger Kings was funny; I mean, if someone gave me a Burger King I wouldn’t laugh, but I was shocked to see just how wrong I had been. So, so wrong. I breathed a massive sigh of relief and was ready to stand up for my turn when the principal nodded her head toward the human antique.

It took the old lady about a minute to stand up as her body unfurled into the shape of a question mark—a move that required the aid of two supporting teachers, I might add. Toss out the crossing guard, you’d need the posture of an exclamation point for that, or at the very least a semicolon, I smirked to myself silently. This one’s a bell ringer.

Piece of cake. My chances were now good to excellent that I wouldn’t have a very hard act to follow. No—my chances were now excellent to outstanding, that’s what they were. OUTSTANDING.

Simply remarkable.

“My name is Frances Cross,” the elderly lady warbled as she looked around the room and smiled the sweetest, most honest and appalling smile I had ever seen. “And I—”

“—am the one who makes you feel guilty for not dropping a quarter in my bucket after you’ve just bought yourself a big, fat Thanksgiving dinner at Safeway,” a little voice in my head said, followed by peals of imaginary audience laughter. “Ring-a-ding-ding! Ring-a-ding-ding!”

“—and I,” she continued in her wavery, delicate, little old lady voice as we all looked on, “was one of the first female pilots in World War Twooooooo!!!!!!!!!”

Twooooo, twoooooo, twooooo,
I heard echoing all around me.

Oh my God.

Holy shit.

Sure. Of course. Well,
naturally.
It only made sense that when it was my turn, the doctor turned out to be a french fry hocker and the antiquity turned out to be nothing less than a NATIONAL TREASURE.

The laugh track inside my head stopped, replaced with thunderous applause, and I didn’t understand until I looked up.

Looked up and saw the entire room not only beating their hands together for Frances Cross, War Hero, Feminist Leader, Archetypal Patriot, person who could donate herself to the Smithsonian
and they would take her,
but I saw the room get much, much taller. The room got the kind of tall when everyone else is giving Ms. Frances Cross, American Monument,
the lady you thought was a bell ringer,
a standing ovation and you are still sitting down because you are an absolute dip shit.

It was, indeed, simply remarkable.

There was only one thing I could do. I stood up, grabbed my purse, thanked God for not having any props to gather up, and made a move for it.

“Where are you going?” Ms. Ward said as she reached for my arm. “What are you doing?”

“Gonna get myself a bee outfit,” I said simply, and headed for the door as rumbles of applause continued to hail from the skies.

Swimming with the Fishes

D
o you really want to wear that?” I said to Jamie as she came out of the bathroom of our hotel room. “I think it’s too dressy. We’re only going to Golden Gate Park.”

“I would like to look nice for the Japanese Tea Garden,” she replied, very matter-of-factly. “It’s a very formal garden, and I’ve been wanting to go there since I was a kid. I want to dress appropriately.”

“But we’re on vacation,” I said, motioning to her pleated wool skirt, her thick, cable-knit crew-neck sweater layered over a T-shirt, and a string of treasured pearls her parents had given her when she graduated from college. “You look like you’re about to be knighted, or run for president of the Junior League. Put on some jeans. You’ll be happy you did.”

“You may be happy visiting the VERY FORMAL tea garden dressed as a mechanic,” she replied, motioning to my overalls, “but you never know when you might run into a foreign Japanese dignitary, because I read in
Sunset
magazine that a lot of them visit this place. I don’t want them to think that I’m the stereotypical crass American.”

“You know, I really wouldn’t worry about that if I were you,” I volleyed. “The first President Bush fixed it for all of us because after yakking in the lap of the prime minister of Japan during a dinner, I’ll bet a pair of overalls on an American girl wouldn’t even get him to turn his head, unless I suppose I lunged at his fly while making a retching sound.”

“Just how many days in a row have you worn those things, Gomer Pyle?” Jamie asked. “I checked your suitcase. You brought those, five T-shirts, and a toothbrush. You know, if Gap knew you were planning on wearing them every single day from solstice to solstice, they would have laminated them so we could have at least hosed you down.”

“I am comfortable,” I said adamantly. “I can move around, I have room to spare, and I just don’t want another episode of the Spontaneous Corduroy Combustion, that’s all.”

“I’m sorry,” Jamie immediately apologized as she lowered her head.

It was a sad day when that happened. Sad, sad day. Even thinking of it now almost kills me. I was on a weekend trip visiting Jamie in Marina del Rey, and I had packed economically so that I wouldn’t have to check any bags on the flight over. That meant in my tiny little suitcase—which essentially can’t be any bigger than a tampon box if you want to keep it with you—I had to pack economically. You could manage to squeeze a wider variety of wardrobe in your pack for climbing Mount Everest than you can in the dimensions of a suitcase the airlines deem as carry-on. I was basically able to bring a couple of pairs of underwear, a T-shirt or two, my pajamas, a stick of deodorant, and a little ball of dental floss because fitting in my toothbrush was nearly impossible. Now, this is where my favorite pair of brown corduroy pants came to the rescue, because they matched everything. Everything. And not only did they match everything, but those pants loved me so much that they expanded with me, and kept fitting me even when I got too fat for any of my other clothes. Plus, denying all rules of physics, they made my butt look deceptively smaller, almost like an optical illusion or fun- house mirror. My brown cords were my savior, my precious pet, my pride and joy. I loved them. I
loved
them. And because they matched everything so well, all I had to do was toss a couple of shirts next to the ball of dental floss and I had enough clothes for several days. I was a genius!

Unfortunately for me, Jamie and I headed to our favorite Mexican restaurant straight from the airport, where a large dollop of refried beans plopped right down on my leg, which sometimes happens with anxious eaters such as myself. I tried to wipe it off, but only succeeded in spreading the dollop into a large smear, simultaneously grinding the beans into the fabric of the cords as well. So, later that night, I changed into my pajamas, tossed my beloved brown cords into the industrial capacity washer and dryer in the laundry room of Jamie’s apartment building, and they were good as new and ready for another day of wearing.

Oh, sure.

The next morning, I showered and got dressed, sliding into my brown cords, which, frankly, seemed a little tighter than usual, and looked even tighter. I was sure it was the industrial dryer that had made them shrink a little smaller than they normally did.

No problem, I thought, and looked around the bathroom to make sure that I had enough room for some deep knee bends, which, I’ve always found, can give you a little wiggle room if you do them right and stretch out your pants when you’re in danger of popping up in a fashion magazine photo entitled “Big Mistake!” or “Think Again!” with your eyes blacked out.

And that’s why I needed knee bends, my arms stretched out in front of me, bend one, nice and deep to get the maximum stretch potential, bend two, a little deeper just to get the ass compartment a little baggy, and right when I was in midbend on bend three, I heard it. A large, popped-bubble of sound, POP!!! like the crack of a baseball bat, loud and strong and quick. There I was, my knees bent, my ears ringing, and then I saw that millions of tiny, minute particles of brown fuzz had completely invaded the air around me, what looked like tiny brown flies were now silently floating slowly toward the ground as I automatically began swatting and blowing at them.

“WHAT WAS THAT?” I heard Jamie yell from the other side of the bathroom door. “Are you all right? That sounded like a rifle! You’re okay, aren’t you? Say something!”

“No, no, I’m okay,” I said, finally standing up so I could open the bathroom door, and that’s when I understood.

“Oh . . . my . . . God,” I said slowly, not even remotely believing what I was seeing with my own eyes.

“Oh, Jesus, are you shot? Are you shot?” Jamie cried. “Open the door!”

“Oh . . . my . . . God,” I repeated as the bathroom door swung open so Jamie could see.

She gasped and covered her mouth. “Oh . . . my . . . God! What happened?” she breathed.

“My pants exploded,” I said as I shook my head. “My pants just . . . detonated. They . . . kind of . . .
blew up.
”

And then I showed Jamie how, just at mid-inner-thigh level, my pants had been pushed to the brink, and how, just at the inner seam, the pressure of my knee bends had cut through the fabric with the precision of a laser beam at a complete 360 degrees, slicing the pant leg off as if it were horizontally chopped by a guillotine. Not vertically, but horizontally, that’s how much my gargantuan double-wide ass should NOT have been in those pants. They tore
against the grain.
The inner seam was still miraculously held together by several threads, although the remainder of the fabric that once bound the leg to the rest of my pants was now reduced to a brown thread cloud, some still floating in the air, some settling finally on the floor.

“Oh!” Jamie gasped again, covering her mouth. “Knee bends!!”

“Knee bends,” I confirmed, aghast and nodding.

“It’s amazing,” my best friend offered. “It’s as if they were cut by a knife. Right across. I’ve never seen anything like it! Or, for that matter, like that little brown haze behind you! Wow, look at that. It’s the soul of your pants leaving its earthly prison.”

“I thought those were flies,” I confessed. “I was swatting at them, like a monkey. It turns out that my pants were not growing with me as I originally thought. It appears that my Chub Rub had simply worn away nearly all of the material of the inner thighs, giving me more room as they disintegrated further and further. Until, apparently, they could take no more. And they finally died of exhaustion.”

“This is jaw-dropping,” she marveled. “Those things were held together by nothing but dust mites! I’ve never seen the leg of a pair of pants simply shoot off before.”

“It’s just a miracle that this didn’t happen in public, as I was trying on shoes or bending down to get taco shells at Safeway,” I added. “But at least if I was home, I’d have something else to wear. Now I have nothing. Nothing!”

“You can wear something of mine until we buy you new pants,” Jamie said, trying to solve the problem.

“You’re a pear. I’m an apple,” I reminded her. “This will never work.”

“Even though you and Donald Duck are both apples, one of you still has to wear something on the bottom when you go outside,” she proclaimed as she went to her closet and handed me a pair of pants with an elastic waistband, then added, “Please be gentle.”

“Donald Duck always looked like a pear to me,” I protested as I went back to the bathroom, peeled off my dead brown cords, and slipped on Jamie’s pants.

“Are you kidding me? Look at that paunch, he is SO APPLE,” she declared. “The Country Bears, those are pears; Eeyore, pear, Piglet, pear, but Winnie-the-Pooh and Donald Duck are of your kind, Johnny Apple Seat.”

From there, we went to the Gap and I bought myself a nice big pair of farmer overalls with enough room to squeeze in an additional person in case I got that fat. And I have worn those overalls pretty much every day ever since, partially out of laziness, but mostly out of fear.

And I was reminding Jamie of precisely that in our hotel room after she cruelly called me Gomer Pyle.

“Listen,” I said firmly. “Have you ever had your clothes explode while they were ON YOU? You don’t know what it’s like. The shock. The horror. The guilt. I mean, I DID THAT. I did that. I abused my pants to the point of
murder.
I can never have that happen again, do you see? Especially not on vacation when I have no other clothes. I just can’t risk it. I can’t.”

“Well, that’s true, I’ve never had my pants erupt on me, but I did hear the sonic boom it caused, remember? I thought we were being home invaded,” Jamie said. “I’m sorry I called you Gomer Pyle. But I want to go to the gardens looking nice. So don’t make fun of me. Okay?”

“Okay,” I relented, and then whispered under my breath, “Aunt Bea.”

We had an anxiety-filled taxi ride in which the cabbie, a relative newcomer to this country, had clearly watched too many reruns of
Starsky & Hutch
and/or
Dukes of Hazzard
on TNN and was applying excessive amounts of the things he was learning to his everyday life, such as attempting to fly in an automobile and driving on parts of the sidewalk people were already walking on. It was a white-knuckler of a trip, and as Jamie handed Njrjtishnmemim his tip, she gave him some to spare: “Just because I’d like to be buried in these clothes,” she said with a pointed finger, “doesn’t mean I want to die in them.”

As we walked up to the entrance of the Japanese Tea Garden, it did look grand, indeed. Everything was manicured and perfect, breathtakingly beautiful. We paid our admission fee and entered the first portion of the garden, where we were met by a big sign that informed us immediately to
USE CAUTION
! We kind of shrugged, as neither of us sensed that we were in imminent danger, and continued up the path for several feet where there was a large, decorative wooden wheel about fifteen feet in height. The wheel did not turn, as it was stationary, and clearly was not intended for park guest interaction. It was just there to look at. Curiously, however, there was a woman on the top of it, who had
somehow
apparently scrambled up the side like a cat or a lizard, all in her three-inch heels, what looked like very expensive pants, a glittery halter top, and toting her Louis Vuitton satchel, rivaling Jamie for best dressed. Now, however, it appeared that she was stuck, as she stood at the top of the wheel and looked down while she shook her head at her husband or boyfriend, who was speaking to her very quietly, yet very firmly, in Japanese and motioning toward the ground.

“What is she doing up there?” I asked, trying to figure out how she even managed to scale the sides of it.

“Apparently not USING CAUTION.” Jamie laughed. “Which she has obviously thrown to the wind! Cool. She’s gonna fall, she’s gonna get hurt, and we’ll have something to laugh about
all day
!”

“If only she had used caution,” I added with a giggle, “she could have avoided being the main attraction at the Tea Garden. They have some pretty good entertainment here for not even having monkeys!”

After standing and watching the lady continually shake her head and do nothing else for about five minutes, things got a little boring so we continued a little way down the path, where we were met again with another sign that emphasized,
USE CAUTION
!

“You know, is there a wall of fire, free-roaming crocodiles, or a lava pit that I’m missing here?” Jamie mentioned sarcastically. “I mean, we’re on a path! The most dangerous thing that could happen is that I step in a freshly chewed wad of Bubble Yum.”

“Yeah, as long as we’re not scrambling up a giant wooden wheel like a squirrel in stilettos, I think we’ll be okay,” I added. “But just in case, Jamie, use caution!!”

“Hey!” she replied. “Don’t distract me! I’m using my caution!”

We crossed a minuscule, minimalist concrete bridge—basically just a slab of rock—that spanned a tiny stream opening into a larger pond, a reflecting pool of sorts, where people were gathered watching the koi swim aimlessly about. It brought us directly behind the wooden wheel and the cat lady, who by now had captured the attention of people other than her husband.