December 15, 2008
Dispatches from the Sucking Void
So the latest news is that my mom is depressed. She’ll be sitting around the house and just bursts into tears. During her latest phone call, she informed me of this and mentioned how she went to see a new doctor at the recommendation of a co-worker. The doctor a) bumped up her dose of Prozac, and b) told her to see a counselor.
The next day, the same co-worker told her that she could always come over and talk to them if she needed to let it out. I immediately told her that that was a terrible idea and to NOT DO THAT, because people at her job are weirdly treacherous and there’s always the lurking issue of small-town gossip.
Apparently Wal-Mart is cutting corners to save some profit, since exploiting child labor in third-world countries doesn’t bring those profits into dear old Bentonville, AR like they used to when Pappy Walton was still sucking his last breath of air on the ventilator as his family hovered around him like a pack of slavering jackoff dogs waiting for the kill.
So their latest version of “cutting corners”, other than paying women less than they do men and giving their employees the shittiest benefits possible short of shooting you in the head as you lay dying from an impacted molar, is slyly adding and subtracting hours during the work week, so most employees end up with 38 hours at the end of the week rather than 40. How charming.
She then went on to tell me that she’d have to pay out the $80 fee that they charged at the doctor’s office, and that she had to borrow $100 from my step-grandfather just to pay bills. “Oh, and your stepdad’s out of work again and probably won’t have anything until the start of the year.” Happy holidays.
Of course, not even a month ago she was talking about how my stepdad had work coming out of his ears, how they just got a new car, how everything was just going fine. Now this. It’s feast or famine with these guys, and I don’t understand it.
So she went on to mention that my stepdad was probably going to apply for a job doing night stock at the new Brookshire’s Grocery that was set to open up in town.
“Good.”, I said, “It’s about time that he applied for something steady. I don’t understand why he never did this in the first place.”
“Well, there just aren’t any jobs.”
“Funny, there were plenty of jobs several years ago when he decided just to hang out at home drinking while you worked all the time.”
She made an odd faint noise that was obviously rooted in displeasure, but I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. It was the lipstick-on-a-pig thing all over again. I know that she cares for him and vice-versa, and they sort of keep each other sane in the way that rats bind together and float as a seething mass in water just to keep from drowning, but there are only so many excuses I’m willing to endure from them anymore. I love them both deeply, but they’re constantly bumming me out.
It’s like the roles have been reversed and I’m the pompous, scolding parent all the way in another city, griping at my kids for screwing up yet again. While talking to her, I almost feel like this is a half-hearted request for money. Like I’m going to pull a Congress and give my parents a bailout. I laugh inside while wanting to punch something as the conversation grows more awkward.
I keep telling myself that I knew this was coming, because I could feel it like a buzzing in my chest. It never fails. This time of year brings out the best and worst in people, and always the worst in my family. My mom immediately gets depressed (again) and tries to basically tell me – without explicitly telling me – that I won’t get dick this year, and that’s if they can scrape together the money for a card.
And you know what? I’m fine with that. I’m used to that. I’m not some insolent bratty bastard of a child howling at my parents for not giving me gifts, because I know that life sucks in that place. It’s hard, and it’s kind of why I hate going back there to visit because I have to see just how much further down the ladder they’ve slipped. But I do it, because it gives me perspective, and at the end of the day I do really love my family despite all the dysfunction and the occasional Republicanism and the weirdness and the substance abuse and the horrible financial planning.
However, when they come to me with the Tiny Tim act, I immediately tune out. At least have the balls to tell me that you’re broke and that I can put on a Santa hat and go take a flying fuck at a rolling donut for Christmas. At least then it wouldn’t make me mad when you start telling me about how you got a new car but then you’re broke again.
Staring at the wall is only working for so long, and while I’m oddly Zen after my cheat meal last night, I’m glad that she didn’t call me when I was in the first week of my current PSMF diet. I would have screamed Slayer lyrics into the phone, eaten it, and taken pictures of me shitting it out just to mail it to them with the words “THIS IS WHAT YOU MAKE ME DO TO MYSELF” written in my own fecal matter and blood on a piece of white printer paper. She finally asks me how everything is with Odessa and I.
While reciting the rote lines that I give everyone who asks me how I’m doing, I look up to watch the cats hungrily stare at a crow perched on the wire outside our bedroom window. The food chain hindered by nothing more than a screen and a wire grate. I think about how I’ve gotten so used to rattling this off to co-workers that it comes as second nature, like pulling a string on a talking doll and hearing it yammer away until you get sick of it and throw the wretched thing in the dumpster. I wonder if anyone ever pays attention in the first place to realize that I keep telling them the same thing over and over just to see the day that someone calls me on it. At least then I’ll know they’re not pretending to care.
I end up gently cutting the call short because I’m really not in the mood to hear more doomsaying. It feels like we’re just walking circles around each other conversation-wise. I’ve had all I can take of it for now, and the more it goes on, the angrier I get. I tell her that I love them…that we love them, and I really mean it.
I hang up.
I lay in bed and absentmindedly stare at the comforter for a bit. It’s actually not that comforting.
Posted by Jake at December 15, 2008 10:07 PM
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