The Potty Mouth at the Table (24 page)

W
hen she comes home, her dogs are waiting; they have missed her. Her head is wrapped in a plaid wool scarf that looks exquisite, shielding the cut from the sun. The swelling has gone down and it already looks better. Flowers fill the dining room and living room and friends stop by, bringing their children. The house is full of babies. Kartz wants to hold all of them.

The noise is happy.

I
n the week that follows, there are appointments: appointments with oncologists, neurologists, appointments at the university, where she is an art professor, and repeated trips to the lawyer. There are much-needed ventures to T.J.Maxx, Kartz’s favorite place. She buys more scarves, hats, and a shimmery sequined cocktail dress that she puts on as soon as she gets home. It is silver and brings out the color of her eyes. She wraps laces of chains, silver and gold, as well as rosaries, around her neck and wrists. She pulls on her black leather clunky boots. She emerges from her bedroom
in this fierce sparkly concoction and announces that this is her battle dress.

During a trip to an imports store, she threads an inexpensive beaded necklace around her hand and tells the teenage cashier that she is taking it, calling out “Something borrowed, something blue!” as she leaves the store.

“Don’t even ask me to take you to a bank,” I inform her. “I don’t want to end up with a red laser dot in the middle of my forehead.”

“I did not shoplift,” she insists. “I told the guy I was taking it and when I was cured, I would bring it back.”

“Of course he didn’t say anything!” I say. “You think a high school senior is going to mess with a shoplifter who’s already got a zipper stamped into the side of her head? Even I’m afraid of you on one side!”

Maria spends most of her time on the phone, calling the University of California, Irvine, and the City of Hope in Los Angeles, trying to get Kartz into a trial study for brain cancer. It is understood that Kartz cannot stay in Oregon; she can’t stay at home. She’ll need constant care for a while, and Maria has the summers off from her job as a nurse at an elementary school.

Gamma knife therapy is an option at UC Irvine, but chemo and radiation are definitive. Gamma knife, we hear, has great results on most patients. We cheer and clap when
we find out she’s been accepted into the trial but that she barely skated in because the diagnosis is terminal.

Finally, we think. Terminal is finally good for something. It’s good for gamma knife therapy studies and stealing shit from World Market.

S
he is still wearing her battle dress a week later, and we find escaped sequins all over the house. The dress is beginning to fall apart, but it is of no consequence. It’s just the way it is. We find them on the dogs, in the couch, sprinkled in the kitchen. Shiny, minute pieces that Kartz leaves behind her, reminding us, reminding us that she is here.

T
hey leave for California in a rented van that is so weighed down that Frank isn’t sure he’ll be able to make a turn in it. It is full of things deemed essential: a collection of pure white, immaculate towels; an enormous box of boots with three-inch heels that make Kartz feel taller; at least four heavy winter coats and three suitcases of sweaters; a king-size dog bed and photo albums. Figuring out what to take isn’t hard. It is deciding what to leave behind that is impossible.

When I point out that she’s not going to need sweaters in Southern California, that she won’t wear coats, and that
she should pack sensible shoes instead of her Coach boots, the only response I get is a suggestion from my friend, who can’t remember my name and turns her head, now staple-free and with only a scarred ravine, that maybe I shouldn’t say anything else and just let her pack what she wants.

And she is right. This is not the time for anything to make sense.

H
alf a year later, only the top of her head has hair, in a spiky salt-and-pepper strip. Radiation has left the sides a little fuzzy, but it looks good. Kartz opens the door to the house she left in the spring, and Massimo jumps on me and nearly knocks me down. She looks healthy. She looks great. She looks like herself. The gamma knife therapy has been a success; a wonderful, lucky success. Radiation is done, but there are still the aftereffects and the partial loss of vision in one of her pale blue eyes. Her memory is spotty, and there are still times when she looks at me for a moment and I know to say, “Laurie.” Chemo is ongoing, and will be for a year. But the MRI is clean, no tumors, no traces of the spiderweb; it is clean.

Kartz is back home for a week, moving some of her stuff into storage before a friend rents her house for several months. It’s also a test to see how well she does on her
own, if it’s possible that she might be able to live the life she left before the big white ball showed up on her doctor’s computer screen. Tonight, we are having a slumber party—me, Kartz, and Massimo. We put on our jammies and climb into a big, antique bed and turn on
True Blood,
a television show that she has rediscovered lately. With the constant scene changes and cast of shape-shifters, vampires, panthers, fairies, and now the werewolves, it’s hard for her to keep up with the ridiculousness of what’s going on at any given moment.

And the truth is, I hate this show. It’s complicated and silly and, much of the time, kind of stupid. But right now, when the only issue is to remember why one werewolf is eating another, it seems remarkably simple, as Kartz raises the remote one more time and rewinds it all again.

S
o may thanks, so little time because I am already beyond my deadline, as usual.

First and foremost, a kiss, a peck, and a juicy thank you goes out to the readers, the readers, the readers. I love spending most of my days with you guys, running stuff by you, and waiting for the next moment in which you will make me laugh like the lady who shops at Safeway in a bathrobe and wears a blonde wig like a hat. I love you all.

To Tricia Boczkowski (I spelled that right on the first try. FIRST TRY!) for being the fine, delightful, and hilarious editor that she is. I’m lucky to fall into your lap, sister. Very lucky and I know it. Thank you to the tireless Jenny Bent as always; Bruce Tracy, Amy Silverman, Claire Lawton,
Phoenix New Times,
Lore Carrillo, and anyone else I beg, borrow, or steal from.

Thanks to the cop who pulled me over for driving a half mile over the speed limit just so I would have to pay a fine; for all of the many, many assholes on Yelp; the cabdriver who mooned me with his huge, dirty buttocks; the poet who had a really shitty attitude; the poor little boy I tried to abduct; the people who I threw up in front of; the person who rummaged through my fake trash to find a donut; to the people who did not invite me to their parties; and the scallywags at
Antiques Roadshow
. I couldn’t have written this book without you, and I hope I never see any of you again.

Many thanks to Kelly Kulchak and Kathy White, neither of which is a devil or an angel, but both of whom sit on either shoulder and insist that I can do it. If either of you need vast quantities of fat for butt or check plumping, know that I am your donor.

Thanks to my family, my husband, and my dog, Maeby, for making me get out of bed every morning and plop down at the computer. Hopefully, by publication time, you’ll be speaking to me again for a short period of time until you read this book. I’m sorry, you are too funny to ignore. It’s your own fault.

Awesomely,

Laurie

1. Ten books into your writing career, what have you learned about writing or how best to make readers laugh? Is there anything you do differently now?

With each passing book, I have more interaction and communication with readers, particularly online and with social media—and I think that is so important. I love knowing what makes them laugh, what they relate to, and whether something strikes a chord or not. When approaching a subject or a story, I have this wonderful resource, and the readers never, ever disappoint me.

2. Would you say that you’re prone to finding yourself in situations that make for funny stories, or that it’s your perspective on everyday incidents that makes them
funny? In other words, could you say a little about the source of your humor?

I have never thought that I was someone whom funny things happen to, because these occurrences aren’t specific to me. I think these sorts of things happen to everybody, you just need to be keyed in to see them—and in many cases, appreciate them—for the brushes of tragedy that they are. For example, I offered some great pants that I can’t fit into anymore to someone I know, but after she tried them on, she declined, saying, “Well, they don’t fit—unless I gained a bunch of weight.” Seriously. What are you supposed to say to that, “Well, maybe one day you’ll be as fat as I was when I thought I was skinny”?

3. As you’ve gotten older the content of your books has shifted. How conscious are you of that shift? Do you roll your eyes at your younger self or look at her fondly?

Oh, I not only roll my eyes but I shiver so hard I’m afraid my skin might fall off in one humiliated heap. Thank God I was raised Catholic, and although I’m a fallen Cath now, I take a bath in my sin every day and I wisely refrained from spouting some of the most questionable material I could have written about. Some of those pieces were written twenty years ago. I dare anyone to not be horrified of their 1992 selves. I dare them.

4. Do you write with your audience in mind, or tell a story like you’re trying to make a certain person laugh? How conscious are you of your reader—male or female, young or old, etc.?

I have to make myself laugh first, and then if I do that, I feel comfortable passing it on for public consumption. As a writer, you know when you do work that is awesome, and you know when you are sucking, so I try not to suck. But I don’t have a particular reader in mind when working; I think it’s more of a reader’s mindset than it is an age or gender. Your life experiences will dictate if you will understand why it is funny when I accidentally racially profile a youngster and try to buy him with a bottle of water or not.