Jackie Rose - Marrying Up

In addition to the possibility of seeing my mystery man, I am also hoping the party will give me a chance to talk to my brother about his job. Cole works at a car-parts factory in a depressed little rust-belt town northeast of the city.

“If I’d known there was going to be so much food, I would have stayed home,” George complains sullenly as we settle into lawnchairs as far removed from the mayhem as possible. “I’ve resolved to lose ten pounds by Thanksgiving or else.”

“Or else what?”

“Or else I’m blaming you.”

“Auntie Holly! Auntie Holly!” My niece Savannah comes squealing around the corner and jumps onto my lap. “Save me! AAAAHHH!!! Don’t let them get MEEEEEE!!!” Two boys I don’t know and one of the twins—Harrison, I think—are close on her tail, brandishing neon plastic weapons of some sort.

“Stop right there,” I demand. “What are those?”

“Thuper Thoakers!” Harrison growls.

“What?”

“Super Soakers,” George explains. “They’re water guns.”

“Oh, don’t even think it…” I tell them as I try to pry Savannah’s sticky fingers from around my neck.

“She said we were worm barf,” one of the boys explains matter-of-factly. “And now she must die.”

With that, they all open fire. Savannah takes off shrieking, but we’re already soaked.

“Fuck,” George says as she stands up to shake herself off. “I think it’s lemonade.”

I try to use the hose to wash off, but there’s no water.

“We turned it off this time,” Olivia, my sister-in-law, explains as she dashes by with a tray of hamburgers. “They kept spraying into the house last time.”

“Great.” As I go inside to wash up, I can’t help but notice that Cole and Olivia’s house might benefit from a spray or two. The decor, courtesy of their three small kids and two large dogs, is suburban eclectic: broken plastic toys in primary colors, couch-pillow forts, Elmo paraphernalia as far as the eye can see and fur-covered wall-to-wall carpeting, which thanks to a little foresight on Olivia’s part, is roughly the same shade as the dogs. At four-year-old hand level, black splotches of what might once have been grape juice provide a lovely focal point for the room.

When I finally make my way outside again, George is talking to my parents. Well, just my mother really, because my dad doesn’t talk so much. He just sort of stands there next to my mom thinking about other things. Or maybe he’s just standing there not thinking anything. It’s impossible to tell.

“George just mentioned you took the week off?” Mom says while trying to untangle the chains from the three pairs of glasses dangling around her neck. “Do anything fun?”

I glare at George. “Nope.”

“That’s too bad. Did you have any cake, dear?”

“Yes.”

“And did you see the kids?” she asks, looking past me toward the sandbox where Madison is hitting another little girl in the face with a plastic shovel.

“What kids?”

“Well, we’re going to go on over and say hi to the birthday girl. C’mon, Larry.” She makes a beeline for the sandbox and my dad shuffles off behind her.

We lie around in the sun for a while drinking beer, waiting for the entertainment to arrive. Alas, my furry purple hunk of burning love is a no-show, or maybe this particular group of kids has just seen enough of Barney for one summer, and so we are left with an adolescent acne-scarred magician. The kids, of course, are more interested in trying to steal his wallet than any of the handkerchief tricks he’s performing.

George, who’s been scanning the scene of frenzied, foaming six-year-olds and their wasted Stepford parents with as much interest as she can muster, turns to me languidly and slurs, “I don’t think I want kids.”

“Oh, come on—don’t base your maternal future on one six-year-old’s party.”

She waves me off. “I just don’t think I’m the breeding type. It’s too much responsibility, raising a kid.”

The thought of remaining childless by choice seems odd to me. “But what will you leave behind? It’s our duty as human beings to make sure our genetic material continues its evolutionary march toward perfection.”

“Big deal. There are plenty of others willing to carry that torch.”

“I suppose.”

“And you could choose to be single too,” she adds. “Imagine the freedom. To actually try to stay single forever.”

“That’s warped.”

“Think about it, Holly—it sure would take the pressure off. Men do it all the time. And it’s not like either of us will have to deal with any backlash from our parents or anything like that….”

George’s mothers, while perhaps overly involved in their daughter’s life, would never dream of pressuring her into couplehood or marriage. The possibility that a woman’s happiness or self-esteem might be dependent on anyone with a penis was simply beyond their sphere of comprehension. And my parents are more like spectators in my world, instead of active participants. They’re pretty old (I was a fortieth birthday surprise package for my mom) and besides, their urge for grandkids has already been filled eight times over by my brothers. So my mother isn’t all that interested in my social life, while my dad is so obsessed with model trains that he’s hardly come up from the basement since he retired and probably wouldn’t notice if I brought Marilyn Manson home for dinner.

“…although, since I am so truly fabulous it would be a crime…no, a sin—a sin of omission!—to deprive the world of my offspring. Hey, I know! Maybe I could just be an egg donor instead!”

George always gets a little cocky and grrl-powerish when she’s drunk, and the Perlman-MacNeill family values come flooding through, unrestrained by her usual mild-mannered self-deprecation.

“Sounds great,” I tell her.

“They pay you, like, a couple thousand bucks a shot for that, you know. And it would be a real mitzvah, helping an infertile couple get pregnant….”

The thought of George in stirrups with some mad gynecologist harvesting her eggs was a little far-fetched. “This from somebody who’s afraid of tampons.”

“Yeah, but I still use them,” she giggles, propping herself up on a plump elbow. “I’m sorry, but if you really think about it, the idea is just totally gross. Admit it!”

After debating internal vs. external feminine hygiene products for a good twenty minutes, I’m ready to go bug my brother for a job. By the time I make my way over to the patio, Cole is a bit drunk and bleary-eyed himself, and his face is smudged and sweaty from standing over their old barbecue all afternoon.

“Aw, come on, Holly. You don’t want to work with me. You’re a writer, not a drill-press operator…aw, shit…would ya look at that? Mackenzie! Mackenzie!”

Three little girls turn their heads.

“But Cole—”

“Mackenzie go inside if you have to go potty! Sorry Holly, what did you say? Goddamit, like the dogs don’t do enough damage to the grass….” Fluffy glances over at him from his spot in the shade and growls. Cole shakes his head and tosses him a hot dog that has been charred beyond recognition.

“Look, the truth is my job is totally dead-end, anyway. I’ve got to make better money so that I can save up and then take a year off to write a book.” Not a bad plan. I’d come up with it during a Roseanne rerun—one of the episodes after the Connors win the lottery and we find out that Roseanne the writer had been imagining the windfall all along (a dreadful ending to a perfectly good sitcom, but inspirational for my purposes nonetheless). Since I couldn’t count on winning the lottery, I needed to find a way to make good money fast.