Ramona Ausubel - A Guide to Being Born - Stories

Leonard Senior waited for a chance to snow.

LEONARD SENIOR and his teenage twins ate dinner together, but tonight, like most of the cool nights of December, it was a brief affair. Leonard Senior boiled the water and heated up the cheese mix while Leonard Junior poured the salad into a bowl. Then Junior watched the macaroni while Kerralyn set the table. “Don’t make much for me,” she said, “I have a date.”

“Tonight? A school night? Wouldn’t you rather go out on a weekend?” her father asked, his disciplinary sword undrawn.

“No, sir,” she answered. “This very night is when I’m going out. It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, buddy. I’m not the kind of girl to get the Friday date, but I rate for midweek.”

He said, “But I think you are perfect.”

Kerralyn told her father she appreciated that and she would do her best to work her way up to weekends. “Baby steps,” she told him. “I’ll try for Thursdays this year. Maybe Mom has some advice.” She smirked, looking at the urn on the mantel.

Her brother did not say that her date was ugly and stupid. He did not say that if he was lucky he would get a Monday date, Monday afternoon probably, everyone home in time for their sorry family dinner. He sat down at the table, where they each dipped their fork into the large metal bowl in the center of the table and ate directly off it. They had never stopped setting the table with plates, but they hadn’t used them in years. Every night, Kerralyn set them out, and then when they finished eating, she piled them up and replaced them in the cabinet.

“Well, we’re coming right up to the big day,” Leonard Senior said.

“You got your stocking all ready, Dad?” Kerralyn teased. “You got your list for Santy?”

“Your mother would be so disappointed in us,” Leonard Senior said, looking at the urn surrounded by a pine sprig and two candles in silver holders.

“She probably is disappointed in us,” Leonard Junior corrected. “Right this minute.”

ON WEEKNIGHTS, people did not pass by often. Leonard Senior paced, his thumb always poised, the whole block and beyond lit up by his very own house. Santa rode his sleigh across the rooftop, an abbreviated two reindeer pulling it along. There was a dancing gift box that went up and down and a snowman who waved. Inside his one store-bought item—a giant inflatable snow globe a good seven feet tall—Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus were always out in the cold, always covered in a dusting of white flakes. Mary and Joseph sat up and the powder gathered on their heads, making little white cones out of them, but Jesus, lying flat on his holy back, had the stuff all over his face. The undersides of his body were newborn pink, but his smile and eyes were deep in a layer of plastic flakes.

A couple in shorts and sweatshirts rounded the corner. Leonard Senior cleared his throat and made several circles with his thumb to prepare it.

“You folks hear the weather report today?” he called out. The couple looked at him, confused. “They called for snow!” he yelled. “Right here in Southern California!” The man released his arm from the hook of his girlfriend’s elbow, a move that seemed to signal his readiness to defend them both against this information. Just as the woman began to say, “Where did you hear that?” a jet of artificial precipitation shot out of Leonard’s house and fell down on all of them, melting on their sleeves. For one short and glorious moment, a few feet of sky was filled with snow, and Leonard Senior squinted so hard his eyes were nearly closed. He imagined that when he turned his head down, the ground would be covered and he would have to go inside and change out of his sandals and into a pair of real winter boots.

“What do you know!” Leonard Senior laughed. “They were right!” The couple smiled generously and touched the dampened speckles on their arms. “Wow,” they said, clearly without meaning it, “isn’t that something.”

Upstairs, Kerralyn and Junior watched from chairs by the window, their feet in tubs of warm sudsy water, a rainbow of nail polish bottles lined up on the sill. “Those poor motherfuckers are never going anywhere now,” Kerralyn said, scuffing the dead and useless skin off her heel. Junior filed down the nails on his left hand so short that the hidden edge was revealed, a tender arc of nerves.

“I’m getting in the bath. You should time Dad and see how long he keeps those people,” Kerralyn said.

“What about your toenails?”

“Reggie is picking me up at eight. No time.”

“Reggie is a shit ass,” Junior said.

LEONARD JUNIOR, alone in the window with his feet pruned and pale, ignored the perfect view down at his father’s bald head and looked instead at the phone next to him. He took Bess’s number out of his pocket. He compared her script to the even shapes of the numbers on the phone. He mapped out the movements he would make if he were to dial.

Bess was a lady who worked at the candle store at the mall. Things with Bess had gotten to the next level, flirting-wise. She was older and so free of all the high school associations. Junior wanted to take her to every place he had ever been. He put the paper down and picked up the receiver, listened to the question mark of the dial tone.

“Oh, hi, Leonard.”

They talked about Bess’s roommates, two women each with one baby, and about her shitty electric bill and her shitty gas bill and her shitty landlord. Junior tried to be sympathetic.

“They should give you a raise,” he said.

“Hell yeah, they should.”

“Plus I think you are very skilled. I mean, like, what’s the difference between the Fall Spice Apple, the Apple Pie and the Cozy Winter Apple?”

“That’s easy. The Fall Spice has nutmeg and clove, and the Pie has some kind of crust smell, I’m not sure how they do that, and the Cozy Winter pretty much just has a different label from the Fall Spice but the same smell, so I’d say you should choose based on your décor. Like if your room is more red or orange toned, I’d go with the Spice, whereas if you’ve got more white or sparkle themes, you’re better off with the Cozy Winter.” Junior splashed his feet in the pan of water and beamed. Here it was Wednesday, and if he pulled at its edges, he could almost consider this a long-distance date, their two voices running together like water.

“See that?” he praised her. “You have a real gift.”

“For candle smell at least,” she admitted, modestly.

They talked about people who annoyed them and things they wished they could afford. Then Bess said, “All right, Leonard. Tell me about my boobies. What are they like?”

“Oh,” Junior said. “Well,” Junior said. “Your boobies,” he started, “are like Fall Spice apples.”

“Hmm.” There was disappointment in her voice.

“They are like round and juicy Fall Spice apples,” Junior tried.

“Juicy, huh? Do you want to suck on them?”

“Sure, I’d like to suck on them. I bet they’d be delicious.”

“I bet they would too.”

Junior did not actually bet they would be delicious. He bet that they would taste like skin, though this did not stop him from wanting to try them out.

“Pretend that you are,” Bess said, and Junior looked for something on his own body that resembled a breast. He settled on his left knee and sucked it and licked it right into the phone, transmitting slurping noises into her ear.

“You are one hot papa, Leonard,” Bess said through some moaning.

“And you are one hot mama,” Junior added, but this turned out to be a bad thing to say, because once it was out there, the word mama , he felt his own mother, dead and ghostly, descend down on him from wherever she normally was. He felt her perch on his shoulders and put her ear to the phone, listening for every exact dirty word that came out of his mouth. She probably did not like Bess or think that she was the kind of girl Junior ought to call up in the first place, and when Bess said, “I’m going to take off my shirt now and you should too,” Junior felt his mother’s breath on his forehead, and he hung up the phone.