Honey, That’s What the Panty is For

My mother worked for Haines for years. 

And as I’m sure you’re aware, nothing beats a great pair of L’Eggs.

I grew up with a plethora of free pantyhose.  Not that this mattered to me, of course.  Pantyhose?  Who wore those, anyway?  Well, I do.  Now.  But then?  You might as well have offered me unlimited prune juice.

My mother is the knower of all things hose-related.  How to put them on without twisting one leg into a tourniquet (the toe is the key), how to pull them up over the ribs to avoid waist-line-dig, how to wash them and clean your nails at the same time...

It is spring again, and we are sitting around the table.  The sliding glass door leading out to the deck is open.  Too early for bugs, too late for frostbite, the air comes into the room like a welcomed visitor, someone coming in with coffee cake or a funny friend.

My mother has given one of her nieces, a teenager several years older than me, several pair of nylons.  Surprisingly, she is happy about this.

“You know how to put these on correctly, right?”

Teresa nods.  “My mom told me.”

My mother nods, approving. 

Teresa looks thoughtful.  “Aunt Midge, can I ask you something?”

My mother looks at her, cocks her head to one side.  I’m listening.

Teresa blushes softly.  “Do you wear underwear under nylons?”

My mother smiles.  She loves these questions.  “They used to just be stockings, you know.  You had to wear garters to hold them up.  But now they’re pantyhose, have a cotton crotch and everything.  So no, you don’t have to wear underwear.  That’s what the panty in the hose is for.” 

Teresa looks both incredulous and embarrassed. 

My mother leans across the table, puts her hand over her niece’s.

“Honey,” she says, “you don’t want to wear too many layers down there.”  She leans back, satisfied with her answer.

She rises, heads toward the fridge for the cheese tray.  “Yep,” she says, over her shoulder.  “You gotta let that stuff breathe.”

Medical Advice That Will Blow Your Mind

Pearl will be taking a break from writing for a while in an attempt to get her her head -- and maybe even her life! -- in order.  I will be around, of course (how could I leave you, especially in springtime?), and will assume that you are wishing her the best as she moves out of her home (June 8) and on with a new phase in her life.

She will stop referring to herself in the third person once the fog has lifted..



I come from a long line of people who believe that nothing says “cure-all” like a good bowel movement.

“Mom, I’ve got a headache.”

“Have you pooped?”

We’re full of home-y advice like that. Mustard plasters, vinegar on sun burns, baking soda on bee stings –

You may lose what respect you still have for me, but I’ve got a cousin who claims that his mother used to blow cigarette smoke into his ears to combat earache.

She claims to have learned it from her mother (my grandmother).

As someone who was privy to the fact that grandma would sneak a smoke in the bathroom, standing on the bathtub and blowing it out the fan to avoid detection from grandpa, I can’t help but wonder if this was her way of having a cigarette without having to hide it.

Why blow it out a window all alone in the bathroom when you can sit on the davenport and blow it – in a curative fashion, of course – in a kid’s ear?

I’m just surprised she didn’t have a use for the ashes.

Still, I wonder about the rhythms of the body, the things we think are good for us, the things we know are not.

Me, for example.

“You sound nervous,” Mary says.

“Nah,” I say. “I’ve just had to go to the bathroom for the last hour, hour and-a-half.”

She laughs, a pleasant sound that promises commiseration and, if you’re lucky, lemon bars later.

“I’m not kidding,” I say. “I keep thinking that I’m going to do just this one more thing…” I trail off, switch ears. “You’re lucky you’re at home.”

You can almost hear her shrug over the phone. “Meh,” she says. “The difference is that at home when you finally give in and run to the bathroom you can do that weird little dance all the way there without someone asking you if you’re gonna be okay.”

“I waited until mere moments before disaster a couple weeks ago and then got stopped just short of the bathroom by someone with a spreadsheet question. The roaring panic in my head should’ve been audible, but he didn’t appear to have heard it.”

“Where do you suppose that comes from,” Mary muses. “Were we not allowed breaks as children?”

“Perhaps I’m afraid I’ll miss something,” I suggest.

“Perhaps you need someone to blow smoke in your ear.”

I laugh. This is why I call her.

“Hey,” I say, warming to the subject, “If blowing smoke in the ear is good for earache, where are we gonna have to blow that smoke when I can’t tear myself away from my desk long enough to –”

“Hey,” she says, mock-stern. “We don’t talk like that.”

"No,"I say, smiling. "We don't."

Well It’s Not Like I Signed Up For It

I have friends who aren’t sure, exactly, if they’ve ever seen a cold sore.  This amazes me, as I’m pretty sure that everyone in my family – and we’re counting the cousins as well – is a carrier.

“We’re not even a huggy, kissy family,” I explain to friends. "I mean, babies, yeah.  Babies are open game.  We kiss the dickens out of babies."

“Huh,” they say, looking for an exit.

“Seriously,” I  say.  “I can’t remember ever kissing my parents on the lips.”

This is usually met with some sort of blank stare and then a broad grin.  We are, after all, Midwesterners. 

Kissing on the lips is meant for your wedding night.

I point out, of course, that the cold sore is caused by a virus, that nothing will get rid of it, that it’s not something I picked up whilst working as a carnie, nor was it part of a two-for-one deal with any other crusty-sored display of dubious affections.

This is met with exactly the kind of response one expects amongst the smart-aleck set.

And so it was Easter this last Sunday.  There was ham, there was asparagus, there was a lemon pound cake that I begged my mother for.  And there were stories.

My mother is holding a bottle of water.  The ham was particularly salty, and we are all swollen as ticks.

She regards the bottle.  “Isn’t it funny?  Bottled water?”  She takes a drink.  “You know, there was 14 of us kids growing up.  Mom would keep this big pail of water in the kitchen, and when you wanted a drink, why, there was a big ladle in there.  You’d go in, grab that ladle and drink as much as you could.”  She shakes her head, amused.  “Bottled water,” she says. 

And there’s another mystery solved. 

Why does the family have cold sores?

Well ladle me tell you a story…

Mom Said They Couldn't Take Him Back

You got time for a quick story?

Ahem.

My last official purchase whilst still living at my parents’ house – and the mode by which I left it – was a 1968 Ford Falcon, an old car in great shape.

All it needed was speakers for its intriguing stereo system.

And when I refer to a stereo “system”, let us be clear that the “system” was a radio with a built-in cassette player.

I wasted no time in getting two used speakers at a garage sale.

For two dollars, you just knew they had to be good!

I ran the wires from the radio to the speakers in the back and fell asleep that night with dreams of how I would make this car really cool, maybe dropping the chassis, having my name etched into the glass on the driver’s side window, buying a metal clip with a big feather attached to it for a key chain and similar necessary and perfectly legal things.

When I awoke, however, and went out to drive my new car to my new job, I could not help but notice the number of things that had accumulated in my car overnight.

Sand. Lots of sand. A pair of swim fins. Several empty Budweiser beer cans. A man’s swim trunks. A woman’s bikini top but no bottom.

There was a note on the front seat from my brother. One year younger than I, Kevin has been the figurative elbow in my ribs since they brought him home from the hospital. Attached to the note was a single dollar bill.

“Hey, Squirrel. Nice car. Ha ha. Nice stereo. You should get another set of used, blown speakers and double your sound quality! Ha ha. Here’s a dollar for you. Buy yourself some gas. Ha ha ha. Your loving brother, Kevin.”

My brother.

He's a funny guy.

The Day Pearl Damn-Near Drownded

Late-summer:  I’m 14, and my family and various friends and relatives have packed ice, beer, pop, and varied sandwiches into coolers.  We’ve rented inner-tubes and are stepping into the Rum River to float from one location to another. 

That’s right.  We’re floating down the Rum River.

Why?  No one knows, really.  The adults lash the beer cooler to their inner tubes, the children scatter about as the current takes them, and, barring complications, you have a whole day in the sun, butts bitten by bugs and large curious fish, pleasantly inebriated adults giving you money for treats later.

I have to assume, looking back, that sunscreen had yet to be invented, because what came two days after the Rum River Float was always the Peeling of Dad’s Legs, appendages that only saw the sun on this one day out of the year.  My sister and I sat at his feet, applying vinegar and competing to see who could coax the largest sheet of skin from his distressed shins.

It was a hard, mean existence.

And yet, it was a tradition.

The Rum is a rather shallow, slow-moving river; but that year, there had been a heavy rain the night before our trip.  The river was undoubtedly higher – and faster – than usual.

Not that this would stop us.

The adults lashed their tubes together, the “beer tube” in the center, the kids divided into various contingencies primarily based on age, and we set off. 

Did I mention that the river was a little high?

We managed to keep the tubes in the center of the river for most of the day, but eventually one loses track of such things, and I found myself drifting towards the bank – and perhaps for the first time truly noticed how many trees were in the water, how many of them had fallen over, their limbs reaching into the water.

I find myself pushed into a toppled tree. 

The water swirls, irritated with my blunder; and I am flipped over, caught under branches who promise to never let me go.

The inner tube is now around my waist.  Upside down, I find I can’t get out of it.  The tree branches hold me under, scratch at my face and my arms as I fight.  I am stuck in the branches, and it occurs to me, as my lungs start to burn and things began to go black, that I am going to die in the river. 

I am pulled up and out by my hair.  It is my father.  The inner tube pops to the surface, I pop to the surface, and I take a hysterical and searing lung-full of air.

My eyes open to my friend Tammy bobbing violently in her tube, one hand clutching a Diet Rite , the other gripping the end of my Dad’s t-shirt. 

“You almost drownded!” She looks excited about this.

There would be time later for reflection. 

“Jesus Martha, Pearl!” Dad shouts, “Get swimming!  We don’t return that inner tube and they’ll charge us $15!”

The other kids get a big kick out of it, of course, as I launch myself down the swollen river in pursuit of the inner tube that had just conspired to kill me, and I secretly vow, in the way that only a teenage girl can, that I will have nothing to do with the upcoming Peeling of Dad’s Legs. 

He can just peel those things himself.

And that was The Day Pearl Damn-Near Drownded. 

You're Gonna Want to Work on Yer Spiel

Originally posted in 2010, this is for my father, who, along with family and friends, celebrates his 75th birthday this weekend.

Happy birthday, Dad.  


My father, as perhaps has already been mentioned, was a salesman, and a good one at that. He had a talent for conversation, for appealing to the common denominator in any group. He was not shy about using this talent.

“How’d you kids like to make 50 cents?”

And no matter how many times I heard that phrase, I always fell for it.

“Let’s see how fast you kids can wash the car. Get it done in under 15 minutes and there’s a small DQ cone in it for you.”

Neighborhood kids would follow him to the shed for a rag and a bucket, squeal-y with the anticipation of working their tiny collective butts off for a 30-cent cone.

My father worked as soon as he was old enough to consider working, and he sought to instill in us the same burning desire to toil as soon as we were old enough to hear about it. Like my mother’s belief in the medicinal properties of the Hot Wet Washrag, my father believed in the healing power of work, in the self-affirmation of a steady paycheck.

“I had a paper route when I was a boy. Did you kids know that? Did I ever tell you about the route I had when I was a boy?”

“Yes, Dad.”

I applied for my first job in fourth grade by filling out a form in the back of a comic book. There, next to advertisements for x-ray specs and garlic chewing gum, was the opportunity to earn extra money. I was, of course, hired immediately and went door-to-door selling candles, greeting cards, little porcelain salt and pepper figurines of angels, windmills, and mushrooms.

My father is sitting at the kitchen table when my first catalogs come in the mail. He pats the chair next to him, then holds his hand out. I hand him the catalogs.

He flips through one.

“See? You’re thinkin’. You’re thinkin’,” he says, tapping the side of his nose. “You’re in a trailer park, you got all these doors right next to each other. Boom, boom, boom, you’re up and down the streets in five, six hours.”

He pauses, lights a cigarette.

“Let me hear your patter,” he says.

“My what?”

“Your patter. Your spiel. Your opening line when they open the door.”

I hadn’t considered my patter.

He slaps his left hand on the kitchen table.

“See?” he says. “You lost me. You lost me and I’m closin’ the door.” He leans forward in his chair, ready to slam an imaginary door.

I put my arm out. “Wait!” I pause. “OK.” I say. “Knock, knock.”

“Who’s there?” my father says.

“Hi. My name is Pearl and I’m 10 years old and I’m selling candles and cards and cute little salt and pepper shakers because I want to buy a bike. Would you like to see a catalog?”

My father sits back, taps his cigarette into an ashtray shaped like an outhouse.

“OK. Not bad. Not bad. But hand them the catalog, don’t ask them if they want to see it. You asking gives them the chance to say no. And when you hand it to them, have it open to the candles. Women love candles.”

He pauses.

“And how old are you again?”

“Ten.”

“Really?”

He looks at me, frowning, perhaps looking for signs of deception. He seems perplexed. “Tell ‘em you’re nine.”

“Why?”

“Nine sounds better.”

“Why?”

“It just does. Trust me.”

He pauses again.

“Oh, and don’t tell them it’s for a bike. Bikes are iffy. Tell ‘em you’re going to band camp or something. People always want to send kids away for a couple weeks.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

“You’re welcome, Pearl. Knock 'em dead.”

The Marks They Left On Each Other

It's a departure.  Sorry -- I didn't mean to.  :-)

She is dizzy with panic.  Her hand on the phone on the kitchen wall, her palms are slick with the sweat borne of fear.

She has been calling everyone she can think of since Saturday morning. 

He hadn’t come home Friday, had simply left a message on the answering machine:  Going out after work.  Talk to you later.

And since then, she’d made a nuisance of herself, first among friends, then relatives, into a downward spiral of increasingly frantic calls to her mother, to the police, and, finally, to the hospitals.

There are a lot of police departments and hospitals between Minnesota and Wisconsin.

She starts cooking dinner late that Sunday afternoon, but the seasoned chops never make it to the oven.  She strips the corn on the cob, but can’t bring herself to cook it.  Adrenaline runs through her veins; and every now and then her muscles jump, as if she’s been startled.

Off in the distance, a small yellow sports car shoots toward the house, takes a right at the county road just a half-mile away.

Her chest pounds with such ferocity that she places a hand on it, the better to keep her heart from breaking through.

She runs out the kitchen door, onto the deck.  The sun is just setting, and it casts a warm, amber light over the simple summer day.

The car rolls into the parking lot.  He steps out, lopes easily up the flight of steps to their second-floor duplex, long hair and long limbs.

The smile on his face breaks her heart.

“What’s going on?” he grins.

A rage washes over her.  She picks up the hockey stick leaning against the side of the house, shakes it at him.

“What’s going on?”  She bursts into tears, swings wildly.  “Where have you been since Friday?”

He sneers at her, so young, so beautiful.  “What are you, my mother?”

She sees spots before her eyes.  She lifts the hockey stick and swings with all her might, connects solidly with his upper arm.

“OW!” he shouts.  “What the hell are you doing?”

“What am I doing?” she screams.  “What am I doing?”  She swings again, hits him.

“OW!” he screams.  “Back off!”

He opens the door, moves from the diffused light of a failing summer day to the blue-and-white cheer of a country kitchen.  She throws the hockey stick down, follows him, tears running down her face.

“Where have you been?  Where have you been?”

He opens the oven.  “No pork chops?”

Her lips quiver uncontrollably, her chin weak.  “Where have you been?” she whispers.

He whirls on her.  “You’re my girlfriend, Pearl, not my mother.”  He walks to the table, sits down, stares at her.  The room falls silent.  “I was with friends – guy friends.  We were just drinking.”

She turns away.

He was just drinking.

And just like that, she knows this to be true.

He was just drinking.

Suddenly she is dizzy.  She starts to laugh.

She walks to the fridge, pulls out a bottle of wine given to them almost a year ago.

Neither one of them drink wine.

She twists the cap off of it.

“What are you doing?” he says.

“What’s it look like I’m doing?” she says. 

“Don’t,” he says. 

She throws the cap in the sink.  “Yeah, but I wanna be like YOU.”

She raises the bottle, takes several hasty drinks.

“Stop it,” he says, sharply.  “You suck at drinking.”

“Why should I?  You drink.”

He stands, walks toward her.  “Give me the bottle.”

She raises the bottle again, holds her left arm out.  Stay away.  She turns away from him, spins to keep her back to him.

She drinks.  And drinks and drinks and drinks and –

He grabs the bottle, now almost three-quarters gone, pushes her away.  She stumbles toward the fridge, knocks into it.

He pours the last of the bottle into the sink.

 “You could’ve called,” she whispers.

He looks into her eyes, looks away.

“Where were you?”

“At my cousin’s.”

Tears roll down her face.  “I called your cousin.  She said you weren’t there.”

He looks at her and swallows.

“No.”  She shakes her head.  “She lied?  I’ve been sick with worry, and she lied?”  She leans against the fridge, slides down the front of it into a splayed-leg seat on the kitchen floor.  “I couldn’t sleep.  I couldn’t eat.  I thought you were –“

She chokes.

She looks up at him.  “I thought you were dead.  I called everywhere.  I wanted to make dinner tonight, you know?  For us?  For our Sunday dinner?”

He nods, his eyes filling with tears.

“But I coulden.  I coulden do it ‘cause if you were dead, then the police would come while I was settin the table.  They would tell me, oh, that guy you love?  He’s dead.  Sorry.”  Her words grew heavier, simpler.  “And then for the res’ o’ my life, I could never ever eat pork chops again.  I would never eat another ear of corn, because that’s what I was cookin’ the day he died.”

He drops to his knees, his arms out and she presses into him.  “I love you,” he says.  “You know how much I love you.  I’m so sorry.  I’m not dead.  See?  I’m not dead.”

She pushes her face into his neck, sobs his name.  “But I thought you were.  You coulda been, and I wouldn’t have known ‘til the police came during my Sunday dinner!”

He puts a finger under her chin.  She looks into his eyes.  “I didn’t know,” he says.  “I didn’t know.”

She belches suddenly, leans away from him.  “I’m gonna be sick.  Oh, God.” 

She pushes away from the floor, pushes away from him, veers into the oven, then the kitchen table. 

“Here,” he says, laughing.  “I’ll help you.”

He puts his arms around her, helps her to the bathroom, where she collapses in front of the toilet.

"I luh you," she says.

"I know you do.  I love you, too."

“Don’t looka me,” she says.

He sits on the edge of the tub.  “I won’t,” he says.

We Were One Number Away from Hazelden

I wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of my father talking. 

“No, no,” he says.  “You’re doing the right thing.”

I rise from bed, pad down the long hallway between the bedrooms and the living room.  On the other end of the trailer, my father is standing in the kitchen.  Back to me, elbows on the counter, the phone is cradled between his ear and shoulder.  He is staring out the window at the front, staring out into the dark, silent street.

I rub my eyes.  

There is a sad overtone to this time of night.  A person could suddenly realize that he is the only person on the planet.

“Absolutely,” he says.  “All of us, man.”  My dad goes into the fridge, pulls out a beer.

He covers the mouthpiece of the phone as he pops the tab on the can.

“The thing is,” he says, “is that we are never alone.  The help is there.  But yeah, it’s asking, right?  The salvation lies in the asking.”

He takes a long drink, sets the can down quietly.

“I agree 100%,” he says.  “And all I’m asking is that you stop hurting yourself, can you do that?  Just for tonight?” 

There is silence.

“Look,” he says, “Can you do me a favor?  You got somewhere to lie down?  Yeah, take the phone with you.  Just lie down.”  There is silence.  “No, I’m still here.”

I close my eyes, sway softly in the darkness.

“You’re right.  We’re alone.  All of us, alone – until we reach out.  You reached out, and I’m proud of you.”

My father jumps up on the counter.  The phone, after all, won’t reach to a chair.

I press my back to the wall.

“You promise?” he says.  “You just fell off the wagon, that’s all.  You promise to come in in the morning?”

The trailer is absolutely still.

“No, thank you, man.”

There is a pause.

“Yep.  I’m going to stay here until you fall asleep. ”

The cat walks by, winds his way around my ankles.  I bend down, scratch between his war-torn ears.

“Don’t worry,” my dad says.  “Everything’s going to be all right.”

* Hazelden

Have You Considered Having Them Removed?

I like to kid about past cases of calling in to work “with an eye problem” – which, of course, meant that I couldn’t see myself going to work that day – but the truth is that I was raised by people who did not believe in doctors.

Doctors? What do you want to see a doctor for?

Doctors were for when you couldn’t stop the bleeding. Otherwise? You’ll be fine! Nothing a little work won’t cure.

“Pearl! Your father’s trying to kill me!”

I remember that day, the day my parents put a wood-burning stove into the basement, the heavy cast iron pipes running from the stove out through the walls to the garage and then out and up the roof.

What do you mean, pay someone else to do it? When they have two arms and two legs apiece? Don’t be silly!

Of course it’s silly to pay someone to do the work that you yourself can do – until your mother yells for you, as mine did, claiming that ol’ Paul was trying to kill her.

He wasn’t really trying to kill her. She just couldn’t keep that pipe up in the air while he attached the whatzit to the doohickey.

I helped her to the kitchen, where she sat on the counter with her foot in the sink, the tap running cold as the blood swirled down the drain.

“Ooooh ,” she moaned. “Your father’s trying to kill me!” Mom regained her strength just long enough to yell out “Dammit all, Paul!” before lapsing into the moaning again, studiously avoiding the sight of her own blood.

My mother cannot abide two things: children with runny noses and her own blood.

Your blood? Oh, she was fine with that – might even make her laugh in that frightening yet adorable way she has when she is nervous – but her own blood makes her gag.

“We should probably take you to a doctor,” I said. I showed promise, even as a teenager, of knowing which end was up.

“What? Why?”

“That’s a lot of blood you’re losing there,” I said. “I’ll bet that could take some stitches.”

“Stitches, schmitches,” she said. Mom is nothing if not logical. “Ack. I’m fine,” she said dismissively. “Kevin can help with the rest of that lousy stove.”

He did. Kevin helped with the rest of that lousy stove and Dad went to the store that night and bought Mom a pint of mint-and-chocolate-chip ice cream, the kind of treat that passed in our house as an extravagance, an apology, and a declaration of love.

And she shared it.

And so it is with agitation that I tell you that both of my hands, aching from the Carpal Tunnel Syndrome I have both inherited and worked my way towards, have threatened to secede from the Union.  Wrapped in ice, stabilized by Velcro-ed guards, shielded from manual labor, none of these things are interesting, amusing, or have any market value.

All of these things, as my Grandma would say, stick in my craw.

I'm being brave, I'm trying not to complain, and I am studiously avoiding the growing stack of dishes in my kitchen.

And while I know it’s no one’s fault,  I’m kind of hoping that somewhere there will be a bowl of mint-and-chocolate-chip ice cream in it for me.

It’s simple; but then again, sometimes, so am I.

I Still Can’t Listen to That Piece of Music

My book "The Second Book of Pearl:  The Cats" becomes available today.  Why not buy a couple?!  Tales of mystery, of cats with dental problems and gambling addictions, tales of love, hope, and gin and tonics.  And cheap?!  So cheap!  Eight American dollars buys you a bit of real estate just inside my head.  Join me in my head, won't you?  Where it's all warm and comfy?  See the PayPal link to the right, there, or send me an e-mail and we'll get you a book. 

My mother was against us kids watching things that would cause us nightmares; and while I was truly terrified by the concept of the walking dead -- and even the faces one sometimes saw in wood paneling -- I continued to clamor to be frightened.

“For cryin’ out loud, Paul, don’t let the kids watch that crap!”

Our viewing of “crap”, more often than not, was the result of one or more of us slinking into the living room, down the flight of hardwood stairs around midnight on a Saturday, where we sat quietly on the floor until our dad noticed us.  “Horror Incorporated” ran from midnight to 2:00, a show hosted by a vampire that crept out of a creeking coffin and hosted movies like “The Werewolf” and “The Blob” and other shows that made us hide under blankets.

“Nothing wrong with a good flick, Mumma,” he’d say, shooing us back upstairs.

I was the only one in elementary school who used the word “flick”.

It was the early 70s, as I recall, and my parents were having a cocktail party.  Deviled eggs, pretty purees piped onto Ritz crackers, liquor that flowed like wine.  From my room upstairs, I can hear them tell stories, hooting with laughter, the music sliding up the steps and into my room.

I creep down, sit on the first floor landing, and listen in. 

“… so I says to him ‘wrecked him?  Damn near killed him!'”  The dining room and the kitchen, just out of view, roars. 

“Paul?  Paul!”

My mother has spotted me. 

My mother, dressed in early 70s finery, looks hip and ever-so-slightly blurry. 

“Pearl, you need – hic! – you need to – hic!”  She gives up, turns toward the kitchen. 

My father materializes.  “I got it, I got it,” he says. 

He looks at me sideways.

“I don’t want to go to bed,” I say. 

My father looks around, puts a hand on my shoulder.  “If I let you stay down here, do you promise to be quiet and not bother anyone?  Do you promise to go back up when I tell you to?”

I nod vigorously. 

I am guided to the sofa, its high, curved back to the swinging doors that lead into the kitchen.  I lay down, and he drapes a crocheted afghan over me, an orange and brown creation of my mother’s. 

“Don’t make any noise,” he says on his way back to the party. 

And the dining room double-doors swing open, swing closed with a whump-whump-whump.

In the dark, the glow of the stereo – a piece of furniture roughly the size of a twin bed – casts a flickering light on the walls.  The picture window in front of the couch looks out onto a good three feet of snow; and the naked shadow of trees in the front yard scratch at the sky with hard, gaunt limbs.

I wiggle down under the blanket, pull the blanket up around my ears – and the radio plays something that sends chills up my spine.

Tubular Bells.

It is the theme song for The Exorcist. 

Two a.m. is not the time for me to be thinking about this movie.  Just released, it's been the topic of much school discussion.

A ridiculously superstitious child, I start chanting Hail Marys in my head, a prayer guaranteed by a friend in the last town we lived in to ward off all manner of fright.  

The mix of music and the drunken laughter spill, coldly, from the back of the house.  Vampires, werewolves, the devil...  The trees bend and reach, the snow swirls against the window pane as the wind whistles through the tiny gap at the bottom of the front door. Hail Mary, full of grace – 

“Hey.” My dad sits down at the foot of the sofa. 

My heart leaps into my throat.

“Hey,” I say.

He sets his beer can on the end table. “You know what this is?  This song?”

“Sure,” I say. 

“It’s the theme to the Exorcist.  You know about that movie?”

“Yeah. Hey, Dad, you hear about that cat that found its way back from Montana?“

“Supposed to be a really scary movie, based on a true story.”  He pulls a cigarette from his breast pocket, flips open his Zippo.  His face glows as he inhales.  “Demonic possession,” he says, blowing smoke toward the ceiling.  “Can you beat that?”

“The cat lost a lot of weight but it’s going to be okay.”

“It’s perfectly normal to have questions,” he says. 

The theme song to my next nightmare slides up my back, bites the back of my neck.  “Sure,” I say.  “I just don’t feel like asking any questions right now.”

He claps a hand on my knee, squeezes.  Outside of the music, the room goes quiet.

“’Cause if you wanted to talk about possession—“

“Dad!  No!  I don’t want to talk about the devil!”

Laughter spills out of the kitchen. 

“I’m just saying,” he laughs, “that if you ever wanted to talk about demons or anything—“

I sit up.  “Dad,” I say, “I think I should go to bed now.”

My father stands, smiling.  “Let me get your mother,” he says.