It's All Relative (6 page)

In fact, my father and I were similar in this way, though polar opposites in our obsessions. Whereas I would become riveted by women's dresses that would flare dramatically as they sashayed down the aisle or by a beautiful bonnet (I always believed the world was an “Oh, I could write a sonnet about your Easter bonnet!” away from turning into a nonstop musical), my father was distracted by the noisiness of the church's HVAC system, or whether the trusses supporting the soaring roof and steeple were structurally sound. Whenever we would begin to fade away, forget to stand or open our hymnal, my mother would often whisper our names—“James Wade!” or “Ted! Pay attention!”—in a way that sounded like sheets drying on a clothesline in a harsh spring wind. We would snap to attention for a few minutes before I would again catch a glimpse of a pretty orchid and my father would notice a gap in a window frame.

It was after one of our Ash Wednesday tire fires, perhaps our third in a row, that my father finally seemed to realize, as the white-bread Rouses jammed into an IHOP, that his family looked just like the one on
Good Times
.

As my mom excused herself to the bathroom and my brother crammed a mile-high stack of Belgian waffles and whipped cream into his mouth, that's when I decided to test my theory.

“He's doing it on purpose,” I said, wiping my face clean. “ 'Cause we don't go enough.”

His eyes twinkled. “That's an interesting theory,” he said.

My father loved theories. He loved to test them. It's what his career in engineering was all about.

Which is why my dad announced, as we yanked the foil off our TV dinners the next week, my corn embedded in my apple brown Betty, that he had invited the preacher over for dinner the following Tuesday.

As my mother aspirated a kernel, my father winked at me.

Our preacher, a middle-aged man with hair that looked as if it had been made from modeling clay, arrived on a cold February night, carrying a Bible and a long box I know my dad hoped was wine.

“What have we here, Minister?” my dad asked, before pulling out a pillar candle we all instantly knew he had simply “borrowed” from the church.

“Just a little gift,” the minister said. “A token of appreciation. I have to admit, I was just so surprised to receive this dinner invitation from … you know … the
Rouses
. I see you so … 
infrequently
 … Easter, Christmas, Ash Wednesday.”

And it was here, when he said “Ash Wednesday,” that he let out a boisterous belly laugh, a guffaw more devilish than godly.

My father smiled like the Grinch. He knew instantly my theory was right.

Game on
, my dad's eyes seemed to say.

“Wanna help me get this fire started?” my father asked the preacher, laughing. “I always have trouble getting one started. I think I need an expert on fire and brimstone.”

The minister chuckled heartily and slapped my dad on the back.

Now, my dad was an expert fire builder. If
Survivor
had been on back in the day, my dad would have kicked Richard Hatch's big behind. And yet he stood back as the preacher lowered himself in front of our massive stone fireplace, with a hearth big enough to serve a picnic on and a grate large enough to hold a pickup. Within minutes he had built a roaring fire, and also inhaled more smoke than Susan Blakely in
The Towering Inferno
.

“I'm so sorry!” my dad said. “I must have forgotten to open the flue.”

The minister turned and coughed. He looked like Nipsey Russell.

“Could you point me to the bathroom?” he asked.

My father winked at me.

My mom, a very smart woman, already knew what was happening. “Ted!” she whispered, as she did in church. When he walked away, she turned to me. “James Wade!”

But the minister walked out with a freshly washed face, and my mom had no choice but to serve the pot roast, carrots, and potatoes she had carefully prepared.

“I'd be honored if you would say grace,” my mother said to the minister.

But before he could open his mouth, my dad said, “I'll do it!”

“That would be a nice change of pace,” the minister said.

“Good bread, good meat: Good God, let's eat!” my dad said.

My mother gasped and stared at my father as though Linda Blair had rotated her head and puked pea soup on the preacher.

“Does the job, doesn't it?” my father said, nudging the minister.

“Well, it all smells so wonderful,” said the minister, adding something along the lines of, “I just love a slow-cooked pot roast on a cold winter's night.”

As my mom served the minister, my dad followed up with, “And who can eat pot roast without ketchup?”

The poor preacher didn't stand a chance as my dad handed him an upside-down bottle. “Hit it smack-dab between the five and the seven! That's how to get the goodness out!” my dad commanded.

Smack!

Plop!

Scream!

As planned, the preacher looked as if he had been shot, as if Damien himself had exacted revenge with an iron gate.

“Excuse me, folks,” he said once again, heading to the bathroom.

“Ted Rouse!” my mother whispered.

“An eye for an eye!” my father replied.

“Oh, Ted!” my mother said, strangely excited. “You do know your Bible!”

“Nobody screws with our family,” my dad said.

It was all very Mario Puzo in the Ozarks: Family came first.

We attended a bitterly cold Easter sunrise service a month or so later, and our family was among the first to receive blankets from the minister. My dad wrapped his arm and the blanket around me, happy our theorem had been tested and proven, and it was then I realized I'd just had a religious experience, a higher calling, if you will, a moment in my life that bonded me to my father more than church or watching football or Three Stooges movies.

Nobody screws with our family
, I thought as the sun rose over the little park.

And, though it was frigid, I felt very warm indeed.

A
l Capone's St. Valentine's Day Massacre was significantly less brutal than the one I endured as a child in my rural elementary school, where it was tradition for kids to make their own Valentine's mailboxes and then walk around the room personally delivering cards to each classmate's new P.O. box.

This was serious business to me—one of the few creative outlets I had in the Ozarks—so my creations tended to go to the extreme, blending a childish Charles Eames with a big dollop of Edith Head, not an envied mix in my rural classroom, where boot boxes outnumbered shoe boxes on Valentine's.

Yet I would spend weeks creating bedazzled, glittery mailboxes in roaring reds and pretty pinks, some that were even strung with lights.

My great undoing, however, didn't come until late grade school, when I created a Barbie-themed mailbox, using shocking pink gauze and Barbie's body parts as my foundational decor. I had always wanted a Barbie for Christmas and had never gotten one, so I “borrowed” one from a girl in school—along with her root-beer Lip Smackers—and ended up murdering Barbie. I dressed Barbie's torso à la Cupid with little pink wings and a little pink quiver filled
with little pink bows. I plucked one of her arms off her body to use as a bracket for a homemade banner that stated,
MY HEART OVERFLOWS … LIKE MY MAILBOX
.

But the pièce de résistance was the mailbox flag I created out of Barbie's missing legs, positioning them sideways, like a gymnastic whore, so that one long, glamorous gam could be lifted into a vertical position to show when I had received a card, or lowered to show when my box had just been emptied.

You could even see Barbie's barren plastic goody box all the way from the chalkboard.

My masterpiece was greeted with great fanfare by the friend from whom I had borrowed Barbie. When she saw her beloved doll tortured, dismembered, and hanging from my mailbox, she screamed a scream that still reverberates in my head.

That prompted our class bully, a kid who simply and scarily used an empty Camel cigarette carton to gather his Valentine's loot, to free Barbie and then open my mailbox and announce, “What have we here?”

What he discovered was three valentines that had been given to me by a male classmate with a high-pitched giggle and penchant for dribbling in his Garanimals whenever he got nervous. The “topper” was an exquisite card—a real, adult valentine, not one of those mini, childish cards—that pictured two cupids kissing. In fact, my stalker had even gone to the effort to stencil our names above each cupid's head.

My Valentine's massacre led to a long winter of humiliation, highlighted by the daily ritual of the class bully interlocking the arms of my winter jacket with those of my stalker's on the coatrack in the back of the classroom, a silhouette that, from a distance, made it look as though we were about to embark on a long, romantic walk together through a snowy forest.

The next year I decorated my mailbox in a Speed Racer theme,
but that didn't stanch the bloodletting of future Valentine's massacres.

In college I remained closeted and tragically drunk, stringing along endless girls, dragging them to Valentine's dances—them in red formals that longed to be hiked up, and me flirting with death by imbibing a punch bowl full of red Kool-Aid and Everclear.

As a result, I hid from Valentine's—from love—throughout my twenties like a turncoat Cupid in holiday Witness Protection.

And then, at thirty-one, I met Gary.

And I fell in love.

Cupid actually should have been fashioned after Gary: a winged man with a big swoop of hair and a tragic weakness for buying anything from Target that was red, dipped in chocolate, or came in the shape of a heart.

The first Valentine's after Gary had moved in with me, I walked into my house after work and found it glowing, awash in red, like it was on fire.

“I did a seasonal switch,” he explained.

A “seasonal switch,” I came to learn, applied not only to every season but also to every holiday. Thus a seasonal switch included an all-out home overhaul.

For example, when late September rolled around, fall took full hold, with dinnerware in bright summer colors changed out for a more autumnal palette; mums were installed, pumpkins and gourds were artfully arranged on the front porch, and cotton sheets with beach umbrellas were switched out for flannel featuring oak trees and brightly colored sugar maples.

A Valentine's switch-out came complete with heart-shaped candles, red lamp shades and heart night-lights, glasses featuring Sweethearts candy, dish towels decorated with chocolate candies, and pottery that resembled open candy boxes.

Gary baked heart-shaped cookies, dyeing the dough red with
food coloring and then icing them pink. He made red velvet cake. He wore red sweaters and turtlenecks and socks.

Basically, I was banging Cupid.

And yet I knew nada about the most romantic of all holidays.

My Capone-esque massacres of the past made me flinch whenever I thought of Valentine's, and so as I approached my very first Valentine's Day in love, I made the tragic error of turning to my married, straight fraternity brothers from college for romantic gift advice.

“Okay, dude, here's the inside scoop,” one my best friends, who was recently married, explained to me over beers. “I never buy my wife chocolates, because she will eat them and then accuse me of making her fat. I never buy her perfume, because it won't be the right scent for winter, or it will conflict with her pheromones, or she'll be allergic to the floral undertones, or something stupid like that. I never buy her clothes, because I'll get her an eight, and she'll be all, ‘What makes you think I wear an eight? Do you think I'm that big? Are you even attracted to me?'

“So what I always do is take her to her favorite restaurant, and I always give her a sexy gift, like panties or lingerie. In a small. And she loves it. And I love it. It's a win-win.”

I left our brotherly beer bash buzzed but emboldened, not realizing that I had just been given quality advice, actually shown something great, yet something that I would completely misinterpret, which I always do, much like when I see a Coen brothers movie.

I immediately made reservations at Gary's favorite restaurant in the city, a very romantic spot in a historic brick building that served just a few nightly chef specials. I wrapped Gary's gift in shiny, expensive paper, topped it with a giant red velvet bow, and dropped it off before our dinner at the restaurant so it could be “specially delivered.”

I did, however, due to Gary's love of chocolate, go against my friend's advice and buy him a two-pound milk-chocolate rabbit in a
foil suit and bow tie, sporting a rather mischievous grin, which I hid under the bed as a surprise after we got home and got busy.

The evening unfolded beautifully. The restaurant was romantic, the food was fabulous, and when the waiter brought over the dessert cart, he had already positioned my gift, as instructed, in the middle of the tarts and brulées.

Gary gasped.

“You are
soooo
romantic!” he gushed. “You are … 
perfect
!”

“Can I stay and watch?” the cute, gay, very young waiter asked, impressed, wondering, I'm sure, if I might have a clone.

Or, at the very least, be interested in a three-way.

I looked around the restaurant. People had stopped eating and were staring, transfixed, women nudging their husbands in that irritated manner that seemed to imply, “Thanks for the wrist corsage, you jackass. Leave it to the gays to always do it right!”

Everyone was watching, wondering what amazing gift this amazing man had purchased for his sweetheart.

A ring?

An island getaway?