When I got home last
Posted by: Liz | From: December 03, 2003
When I got home last night, I was greeted with an odd menthol smell and J, who warned me that there’d been a small accident. Apparently, he had been brushing his teeth and went to finish it off with a full-on, head back, Listerine gargle. He flipped his head forward to spit and, before he could stop himself, noticed curious little Max sitting in the sink. We had a very unhappy, sticky little mint cat running around the rest of the evening.Thanksgiving weekend was good times. J, Krista, and I ended up not being able to rent a car and were forced on the bus with one million other families all headed to Pennsylvania for the day. I was dreading the traffic, but lucky for us the highways were free and clear. The real annoyance of the day turned out to be line jumpers at the bus stops. Ooooo I hate me some line jumpers. Everyone was experiencing an elevated level of panic attributed to needing to get somewhere for a holiday, then conversely, needing to get back home. Which means people turned into ruthless line jumpers. A whole huge family jumped the line for the departing bus at Penn Station. On the way home, we got in line for the NY bus and waited nervously as the little line grew longer and then more mass-like as people began to “wander” towards the front of the line.
A woman came up behind us and looked like she, too was going to line jump, but we engaged her in some anti-line jumping talk and she quickly joined our side. That is until the bus finally showed up and parked way up by us. The line quickly dissolved as people turned around and made their way to the doors. I moved past the lady who was behind us in the line so I could meet up with Krista. That’s when I felt a huge THWAK to the back of my neck. I looked back to see the lady smiling demurely, “Oops, sorry.” Krista saw the whole thing and said it was decidedly an on-purpose assault. This made me furious for many reasons, the top three including: 1. She was a thwarted line jumper herself 2. She was behind us in line 3. You don’t fucking hit people you don’t know over trivial things. Thanksgiving people!
Anyway, we avoided Christmas shopping and went up to Chappequa to visit my cousin and her family in her new home. It’s a little weird seeing them there because it’s such a stark change from the Tribeca apartment, which they had spent two years perfecting. In that apartment, which was combed over by a decorator, spangled with modern art, and polished clean every week everything felt like it was in the right place and you got a feeling of who their family was, what their tastes were, and what they were all about. In the new place, there are still remnants of the old occupants: shiny brass fixtures, god awful curtains, wallpaper with leaves, heavy glass lighting fixtures, all mixed in with their stuff, which has taken on a different personality as it was spread through the big house. They’re still getting settled and say the people there are friendly, but strange. Everyone brought them welcoming treats, but no one came inside to visit. One woman dismissively shoved Twix brownies in my cousins’s hands and managed to make it down the driveway before my cousin called after her to ask her name. When night came, she pulled out a little stretch of linen with duct tape lining one side, and placed it over the bare windows. She said that here, where they are more isolated, she feels the need to protect their privacy—a need that she ironically didn’t feel in the city, surrounded by countless, faceless buildings , streets, and windows.
That’s what you get when I don’t write for a while.
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