Autobiography of a Fat Bride (20 page)

You Make Me Sick

I
t wasn’t the first sneeze that scared me. When I heard my husband sneeze a third, fourth, and fifth time from the living room, I still had no fear. It’s a common occurrence in our house; if you touch anything, move anything, or sit on anything, a sneeze is eminent. Our little dog, who I believe sustained minor brain damage from spending too much time out in the sun when she was a puppy, refuses to come back indoors unless she has completely coated herself with a thick layer of dirt and dead grass. If you try to brush her or pat the dirt off her, it just makes more. As a result, I have enough dust on some bookshelves to plant seeds in.

I wasn’t scared until my husband woke up the next day and shook me awake.

“Honey, I don’t feel so good,” he squeaked out. “My throat feels scratchy.”

Ten minutes later, he came back into the bedroom and leaned over me.

“I think I coughed up my colon,” he whimpered. “What does it look like to you?”

Then he stared at me and muttered the most horrendous words a husband can ever say to his wife.

“You know, I think I’m going to stay home today.”

I will say right now that my husband is the nicest guy on the planet. I knew when I married him that I got the best deal on the market, although I never thought a guy like him would ever settle for a big bag of trouble like me.

But when he gets sick, King Cranky is born, and a wave of panic washes over me when he mentions staying home. I know all about the vows I took when we got married—for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health—but the man I married changes just as soon as he’s unable to breathe out of one nostril. He becomes a walking testament to misery, shuffling around the house with two little wads of tissue compacted in his nose, poking his congested head in my office every couple minutes and asking me questions.

“I heard the phone ring. Is it for me?”

“Is it time for my pill yet?”

“How much longer do you have to work?”

“Where’s the dictionary? I want to look up ‘tuberculosis.’ ”

“I’m lonely.”

“Boy, you type loud. Every time you press a key, it’s like a dagger going into my brain.”

“What are the symptoms for the West Nile virus again?”

“I’m bored.”

“How do you make soup from scratch?”

“If the instructions on the box of oatmeal say it should cook for one minute, how long is that in the microwave?”

With that in mind, and the fact that I had a deadline that day, I jumped out of bed, rushed to the bathroom, and dug like an animal through our medicine chest.

“Here’s some stuff to make you feel better,” I offered to his droopy eyes, his pink nose, his chapped upper lip.

He unscrewed the top of the bottle and popped a pill into his mouth. “What are . . . Derma Caps?” he said weakly, reading the label as he turned the bottle around.

I gasped. “Spit it out!” I snapped, holding my hand out. “Spit it out! That’s medicine for the dog’s dandruff!”

I ran back to the bathroom and dug some more. Stashed in a box I still hadn’t unpacked from our move, I hit gold. There, at the bottom, I found a whole box of a cold remedy you mix with water and then drink. I remember taking that stuff the last time I was sick, and how I passed out and flew into hallucinations before the last mouthful went down.

“This medicine,” I told my husband, plopping the two fizzling tablets in a mug of water, “is better than drinking a whole fifth by yourself.”

He downed it in one swallow. Within fifteen minutes, he was asleep on the couch, twitching and batting at things. It was magic.

I went back to work, but I checked on him every now and then, and was even privy to some of his hallucinations.

“I’m going to make
her
eat Derma Caps,” he mumbled from the couch. “And see if
she
likes it!”

“Hey, all of you sailors, get out of my house! Put your pants on! Where’s my wife?”

“I told you, mister, I’m Nick Barkley and I’m the head of this ranch!”

As soon as I even suspected that he was beginning to regain consciousness, I mixed up another batch of cold stuff and poured it down his throat. I had drugged him so heavily he could have written the White Album all by himself. By nightfall, I had made my deadline successfully, and went into the living room to see how many things I could put up my husband’s nose before he woke up.

I had a nickel in my hand when he shuddered awake, rubbed his eyes, and said, “Honey, you don’t look so good.”

“I had a rough day with the sailors,” I replied. “Choo!”

“Oh no,” my husband gasped. “You’re getting sick!”

“I am not!” I protested. “Choo! Choo! Choo!”

“I can’t handle this,” he replied, handing me a tissue. “You get so cranky when you’re sick!”

“I do not!” I said angrily, patting my nose with the Kleenex. “Will you quit looking at me! Move over, hog! I want to lie down there!”

“Can I get you anything?” he asked kindly.

“Shut your pie hole!” I screeched. “Choo! You made me sick! Your voice goes through me like daggers! Get me some soup! But I want it from scratch!”

“I’ve got something a little better,” he said, getting up from the couch, and in no less than five seconds, I heard the familiar sounds of
Plop! Plop! Fizz! Fizz!
coming from the kitchen.

Big Black Bastard

S
omething smelled. Something smelled bad.

It was there when I was watching TV, when I was working, when I was cooking, and when I woke up.

It seemed nearly to have a life of its own; it came and went at will, becoming overpowering at one moment and a second later, it would just disappear. After watching an episode of
Sightings,
I became terrified that I had opened a portal to another dimension in my house as a result of a sad and clumsy attempt to dabble in voodoo the last time I was fired. After downing the nearly crystallized remains of a Mudslide-mix bottle I found in a cabinet, I became convinced that I should retaliate in an attack of unprecedented horror. This seemed like an especially good idea since I had recently received a souvenir voodoo doll from my friend Jamie, who had just vacationed in New Orleans.

As I pondered the most obvious inflictions—the breaking of an arm, the loss of sexual competence, the procurement of massive, floppy man-breasts with nipples the size of coasters—I decided on a horror far superior to those afflictions, well, except for the man-boobs curse because I couldn’t figure out how to express that action through the doll. Instead, I decided to stick a pin through the doll’s head while chanting the most malignant song ever known to man, so it would run through my ex-boss’s head in a never-ending loop for all eternity and slowly drive him mad.

“Oh, Mickey, you’re so fine, you’re so fine you blow my mind, hey Mickey! hey Mickey!” I sang as I got ready to push the pin into the doll’s head, but as I commenced the first clapping solo, the pin tragically shot from my hand and vanished somewhere on the floor below. After searching for another, all I found was a bobby pin and a chopstick, and after several attempts with both objects, I gave up and just crank-called the asshole instead.

Still, I was afraid that my drunken foray into the shadowy world of sorcery had acted as some kind of welcome mat for a wandering incubus or homeless devil-imp when the foul stench began making appearances. After exploring all other options (lack of personal hygiene, misplaced rotting food, leprosy), I had no other explanation for the smell.

I was showing my husband where I had found demonic proof—a definite cold spot in the living room—when he looked at me with wide eyes.

“YES! With my psychic antennae, I’m sensing that you’re dangerously close to the gates of hell!” my husband said, and then suddenly gasped and pointed to the ceiling. “Oh. Sorry, it’s just a vent!”

“How was I supposed to know that you turned the cooler on!” I protested as I pushed away our cat, Barnaby, who had mistaken my leg for the arm of the couch and was trying to claw the meat from my bones. The cat, none too pleased with the apparent rejection, retaliated with a scratchy and full-mouthed “meow.”

It took approximately two seconds for my husband and me to be hit by the wave of smelly horror that festered in our lungs with the pain of a thousand bee stings.

“It’s Barnaby!” we both gasped as we looked at the cat, who had stink lines and waves of stench emanating from his smelly kitty mouth.

I had first tried to brush his teeth years ago, an event that didn’t go very well and subsequently caused one of my ex-boyfriends to comment while holding my hand, “I can tell you’ve seen some hard times, sister, but I think it’s really sexy that you found the will to stay alive. Did you use a piece of glass? Because those scars are totally gnarly.”

In the course of his life, a very long and tumultuous twelve years, Barnaby has managed to destroy every new piece of furniture I’ve ever purchased by either urinating on it or slicing it open like a cadaver with his devil claws. As we all know, cat pee is the most dangerous liquid substance on earth.

I’ve tried to combat the damage and called several upholstery cleaners to remove the smell. The first place I called quoted me $100 to start, but also mentioned that it would depend on the size of the couch and the size of the animal.

“Excuse me?” I questioned. “What do you mean the size of the animal? It’s a cat. A HOUSE CAT, not a panther.”

Once, in a curious moment, I totaled the damage at nearly five thousand dollars in assorted demolished love seats, chairs, couches, pillows, and, naturally, my clothes. As a result, I’ve had to resort to the old Notaro family tradition of covering nearly every stick of furniture with plastic in the form of tarps, old shower curtains, and Hefty garbage bags. If I could find a Glade air freshener in the scent of “Meatball,” it would be just like walking into Grandma Notaro’s house.

Barnaby, however, has a great life, and I know he’s very happy. He is currently dating my husband’s shoe, a Birkenstock named “Left One,” and we often catch him during conjugal visits with her. He’s never gone hungry, has toys to play with, and as the Great Fearless Hunter has the death of nearly a dozen paper towels and one cricket attributed to his name.

I was sure that because of Barnaby’s advanced age, our friendship would be quickly coming to a close, so imagine my shock when a friend informed me that her cat had just turned twenty. Eight more years of bearing tinkle and bloodshed was more than I could stand, but I was powerless.

That is, until the stench of Barnaby’s jowls polluted the airspace around me, and I suddenly had a thought. When I was in high school, my friend Doug took his cat named Fluffy to the vet to get her teeth cleaned. Fluffy, as it happened, simply never came back.

“We should get Barnaby’s teeth cleaned,” I suddenly said through my pinched nose and covered mouth to my husband, who nodded in agreement.

“Sometimes,” I added in a loud whisper, “when they’re under anesthesia, they just . . .
slip away.
”

Now, for all of you who are getting ready to write me a hate letter on Hello Kitty stationery about how mean I am and you really hope God strikes me barren, let’s imagine this: You show me your favorite piece of furniture, and we’ll have Barnaby relieve himself on it, repeatedly. Then we’ll let you play with Barnaby, and I’ll even give you a lift to the emergency room to get your skin graft.

As I got Barnaby ready for his vet appointment several days later, I lowered him into his carryall, patted his head, and smiled sweetly.

“Be a good boy,” I reminded him as he tried to slash the flesh on my hand into skin ribbons. “Now don’t bite anyone, because I don’t have insurance to cover that. Don’t pee, and if you see a bright, white light, run toward it. There’s Whiskas and Pounce in the light, Barnaby! Run into the light as fast as you can!”

In one last giant effort before my husband placed the carryall in the car, Barnaby bared his teeth and hissed at me, shooting hot air from the sewer that was his mouth.

When I went to pick him up at the end of the day, I was ready to hear the tragic news. I had practiced looking up at the sky as I thought of something really sad, like if chocolate Twizzlers were suddenly discontinued, so my eyes would get watery. I practiced quickly covering my mouth and saying, “Oh my God! Not Barnaby! Why, Lord, why?!!!!!”

The receptionist greeted me kindly, and took a deep breath. “It was more complicated than we thought,” she said. “He really didn’t like us, and it was very difficult to administer the anesthesia.”

That was my cue. I looked up at the ceiling, thought of a world without the chewy satisfaction of a chocolate Twizzler, and felt my tear ducts begin to swell.

“It didn’t go exactly as planned,” she continued. “And the doctor tried very, very hard to save his—”

My hand flew to my mouth. “Oh my God!” I squeaked. “Not Barnaby! Why, Lord, why?!!!”

The receptionist gave me a puzzled look. “Tried very, very hard to save his TEETH,” she interrupted, “but he had to pull a bunch of them. That will be two hundred eighty-seven dollars and fifty cents, please, cash, check, or credit card.”

I just stared at her as a tear quickly slid down my cheek.