Ashley Fontainne - Marriage Made Me Do It - An addictive dark comedy you will devour in one sitting

Fuck. I got knocked up at 20 because of a freaking sinus infection.

Demerit!

No, wait, I wouldn’t count that one. It was the manufacturer’s fault—they should have written that part in big, GIANT print, rather than using letters so small one could only read with a microscope.

Carl continued his studies and obtained a master’s degree in education and was now a tenured professor at the local college. Me? I gave up the dream of going back to school, following the guidelines of the invisible handbook passed on to me by my mother. I was a “stay-at-home Mom” (better known as Drunk Wino ). I tried to follow the rules, but sometimes missed the mark. No one could ever label me an overachiever!

Rule Number Two altered a bit during the Nineties—inflation and such—and the required number of children went from 3.2 to 2.5 (unless you were a devout Catholic and preferred to birth an entire baseball team). I failed Rule Number Two and only popped out one child—a daughter— who decided I was the Wicked Witch of the West, minus a broom, when she hit puberty. Hormones turned my sweet child into a raging alien life force. Thank goodness Carol planned to attend college in a few weeks or our home would be a demilitarized zone.

God, I really miss Carol being little. My daughter is a replicated copy of me. Carol had dark, thick black hair; alabaster skin; long legs and full lips, and thankfully, a rack smaller than mine. Carol had been an inquisitive child, full of life, a sweet laugh, and boundless energy. A tiny shadow stuck to my side, mimicking everything I did. That lasted until Carol hit the age of 5 then poof! My clone rebelled, running in the opposite direction of my life. I sensed the disturbance in the force, so instead of attempting to indoctrinate Carol’s mind with the rules, I simply hoped she’d follow them later in life, after watching me from a distance.

Wrong.

Carol Claire Davenport put as much distance as possible between my world and the one in which she desired to live. Headstrong, and determined to succeed in life without a man’s help, paying her own way through life, and—gasp!—hiring help to perform such trivial tasks as cleaning or cooking, Carol bucked tradition every chance she had, including phases of punk haircuts, head-to-toe black clothing and makeup (for a while, it felt like Morticia Addams lived in our house) and refusing to clean her room. My little straight-A student and lovely mixture of introvert and extrovert wanted nothing to do with my “old school ways” as she liked to refer to how I lived my life. Carol idolized her aunt Rachel’s free-spirited approach to life, and jumped at every chance to spend time with Rach when she was in town.

Had I wanted another brat—er—offspring—I was shit out of luck. My ovaries opted to shrivel up and die not long after Carol was born. Maybe my body had the ability to see into the future and knew I couldn’t handle raising another bundle of flesh I’d give up my life for only to have him or her turn on me the second puberty hit. Yeah, that was it. Thank God for omniscient reproductive organs! There is a clause in the Handbook noting bodily failure in Rule Number Two, which kept me from accruing a demerit.

Score!

I took after my mother’s side of the genetic pool. Jet-black hair, long legs, and boobs the size of ripe watermelons. Everyone else adored my full chest, but not me. Carrying all the weight around—every freaking day—was painful. Running track was dangerous. I had to wear three sports bras just to corral the heavy flesh so I didn’t bust an eye socket. By the time I was 25, back problems surfaced, along with my preferred method of numbing the pain: Drinking wine. That little lesson landed on my doorstep, courtesy of Mom and Grandma. I watched them down wine like it was fresh mountain water all my life. Of course, they preceded the wine with handfuls of pills—Valium for Grandma and Xanax for Mom—a tradition I didn’t follow.

Other women flocked to their nearest plastic surgeon to get implants to look like me, which I found rather amusing. Why, oh why in the world did they do it? Personally, I think it should be required pre-surgical treatment to strap two, 10 lb weights on their chests for at least a full month. Get the entire “heavy breast experience” prior to undergoing the knife. Just one month of being forced to sleep on their backs, trying to find a bra that fits, enduring catcalls, and never having a man look you in the eye while speaking—ever again—would deter most. Give them a real taste of what to expect, before having some cocaine-addicted surgeon slice into their milk dispensers so they could then afford the newest Mercedes to drive around town.

Rule Number Eight: One must always drive a vehicle that is better than the ones owned by friends and neighbors.

(This is not a guideline it’s a hard-core edict! See Rule Number Nine about houses, too).

Then again, maybe the wretched experience with strap-on boobs wouldn’t matter. The media had ingrained its warped perception of beauty since the dawn of the big screen and TV. Boys were indoctrinated with ridiculous, impossible body types as their ideals, and young girls learned to be ashamed they weren’t “perfect” every single time they looked in a magazine, watched a movie, or plopped in front of the boob tube. Ah! Lightbulb alert! Boob tube—an appropriate name! And who paid for this mind-altering phenomenon? Not the men. They reaped the benefits of unhappy girls who went under the knife.

Pathetic.

I sought out, and found, a surgeon to reduce my oversized chest, much to the dismay of my husband, Carl (yet another young boy whose views of beauty were warped by media-generated garbage). For the first time since puberty dumped too many hormones into my breasts, I could walk around without a bra on and it didn’t look like two baby hippos were fighting under my shirt. Hallelujah! After going from cup size Holy Shit Those Are Huge down to Gee, I’m No Longer Carrying Fucking Watermelons On My Chest—Just Nice Oranges , I continued my relationship with wine. Why the hell not? Several glasses of Moscato each night kept me from acting out my sick, knife-wielding fantasies on those who’d pissed me off one way or another.

Though I wore the persona of a normal, well-adjusted person for others to see, inside my mind had always been a different story. Even when young, I learned to fake the smile and serene demeanor when faced with adversity, only unleashing my real emotions inside. Rather than slit the throat of my fourth grade teacher for dressing me down in front of the entire class over what she perceived as a “less than stellar” book report, I remained quiet. After school that day, I went home and took out my anger on one of Rebecca’s favorite dolls.

Adhering to the strict set of proper and correct rules for living, I refrained from punching in the throat—or worse—rude cashiers, snarky friends, impatient waitresses or any shorttempered individuals within my hearing range. Instead, I satisfied my dark, demented thoughts of retribution by simply envisioning my reactions.

Ol’ middle sis Rebecca didn’t have the same worries, for her body had been dipped in the pool of mishmash genes from my father’s side of the family. Shorter legs, smaller breasts, dingy brown hair, and an attitude the size of Texas. Oh, and Dad’s horrible eyesight. When she found out she needed to start wearing glasses—the kind as thick as Coke bottles—Rebecca Denise Rayburn flew into the biggest, ugliest, snot-filled tantrum of all time.

It was hysterical. I laughed so hard while she bawled and squalled like a newborn kitten, Dad grounded me for a week. Those seven days of banishment to my room had been worth the few minutes of hilarity at Rebecca’s expense.