This Is a Book (31 page)

When people said, “Why does your grandma have a mustache?”
we’d say, “Because she’s Italian.” And when they said, “And why the top hat?” we started to realize that there was something wrong with Grandma.

There I was, hanging from the side of the mountain with Eric dangling below me. I knew that if I cut the line he would die, but if I didn’t we would both die. I thought for a long moment and decided that I would try, with all of my might, to pull him up. I wasn’t sure if I had enough strength left, but he was my friend and it was do or die. I took a deep breath and then, after quickly securing a verbal promise from him for a couple of hundred thousand dollars, I pulled him up to safety. Afterward, I knew Eric was grateful that I had saved his life, even if he was too proud to tell me.

And suddenly everything made sense. I knew what I had to do. I needed to quit my job. But before I could do that I needed to get a job to quit. Ideally, one that would suddenly make everything make sense when I quit it.

“Dad,” we pleaded, “can we keep him?”

He smiled and said, “Keep him? Hell, we’re going to eat him.”

I was talking to this guy at a party and he said, “ ‘Can’t’ is not part of my vocabulary.”

I said, “Wow. You’re not going to believe this, but something impossible just happened.”

“What’s that?”

“You just exceeded your vocabulary, at the beginning of that sentence you said there.”

Then someone got punched. I think it might have been me.

I used to have this poster on my bedroom wall that said, “I am me. I can do anything.” Sometimes I would look at it and think, “Poster, you are in for a rude awakening.”

I hadn’t been home since the summer the synchronized swimming team drowned. It was tragic, but beautiful. Apparently, one of them got a cramp.

Someone was in the house. I was terrified. I stood still. I knew in these situations that the best thing to do was to get out of there. You’re not supposed to try and fight. But at the same time, I really wanted to take the stereo. Plus, judging from the pictures of the home owner I saw on his desk, he seemed pretty small.

We started to see less and less of each other. And that’s when I knew it was quicksand.

It was just after I turned twenty that my parents told me I was not adopted.

We used to take some of the smaller animals the taxidermist had stuffed and put them back into the woods. This would lead the other animals in the woods to think those animals had “attitudes.” You’d see a forest squirrel go up to one of the stuffed ones and try to be friendly. The stuffed one would just stare off into space. Then to see the look on the other squirrel’s face… it was great.
Years later, the taxidermist ed. We found out he was buried. I always thought that was a wasted opportunity.

Winter became Spring and Spring became Summer. Then Summer became Fall and Fall turned to Autumn. By the time Autumn turned to Winter I realized that there had been a synonym in the seasons.