Carnival
Sometimes a trigger of one sort or another will bring back a slew of memories and your mind will be flooded with dates and times and smells and sweet little thoughts of a long lost love. Yesterday as it began to snow for the first time this season and our street grew silent, a lonely figure walked silently up the sidewalk. I did not witness the walk, I was upstairs working, but I am told she made quite the striking figure, taller than average, her blonde hair gleaming in what little sunshine made it through the snow coming down and wearing a bright red jacket with Ole Miss in large blue letters on the back.
She knocked on my door and my dog did not bark. Why should she, she is not paid to bark, really when it comes down to it, she is not paid to do anything, that much she has made very clear. I of course, in my court filings, made it just as clear that I was not paid a single cent to pick up anyone else’s poop. That too is crystal clear and until the Supreme Court rules, we have the current standoff.
Again the mystery woman knocked hard on my door and my dog, a devout lesbian of Australian heritage slept over a heating grate as if the purr of the air was much more important than the possibility of an axe wielding assailant at the door. The beautiful young woman at the door did not have an axe, but how was my stupid dog supposed to know that since she laid sleeping and twitching and dog dream mumbling on the heating grate?
She knocked again and this time, I was dressed and down the stairs and ready to answer the door and who should all of a sudden show an interest at the front door? Why none other than my trustworthy and equally morally bankrupt dog. I told her to back off, there was no pizza being delivered at eleven in the morning. I opened the door and the young, beautiful woman smiled at me, a smile that was at once was familiar and yet completely unknown. I looked at her and the smile became something more, a little more snarky, a little less ingratiating.
“Do I know you,” I asked, bewildered.
“I don’t think we’ve me, my name is Pineapple Becky,” she said. The name meant nothing to me. “Maybe you know my mom, Carnival Becky?”
Oh, Carnival Becky I wanted to say. Instead, I said, “come in, you must be freezing,” because quite honestly, I was not sure who Carnival Becky was and she really looked like she might be freezing and since the lazy lesbian Australian dog had removed her bloated body from the heating vent, the downstairs had begun to defrost.
“You look confused,” she said, as she began to remove her red jacket. “Carnival Becky, who worked in the mid-80’s for a circus in upstate New York.”
“A juggler, I believe.” I said, finally starting to remember.
“No, an accountant, she still is actually.”
“Right.” I said, still not able to recall anything.
“Good, so you remember.” She said, again with that subtle snarky look that I had noticed in her fading smile at the door just moments earlier.
“Possibly. What is this about?” I asked.
“Well, duh, you’re my dad.”
Ah, this again I thought. There was a time I seemed to only date circus people, but that would have been right about the time that… Well, that was enough evidence for me. I invited Pineapple Becky to have a coffee with me and we sat at the dining room table for a spell and caught up, as it were.
First things first. I asked her how she got such a funky name.
“Well, as you may have heard, my great grandmother invented the Pineapple Upside Down Cake, and that has been something that our family has been very proud of for a very long time, but no one really has anyway of expressing it. My mom got that tattoo, but that was about it, then when I was born, and you were gone, she figured, why not.”
“Sure, why not? And your mom, how did she get a name like Carnival Becky?”
“You almost married her, why didn’t you ask her?”
“I may have, I forget things like that.”
“Grandpa Prick Johnson thought that his entire family was cursed only because of their rotten choice of names. So he was intent on finding new names that could never be considered offensive. When mom was born there was a carnival in town and Grandpa Prick was enamored with the clowns and if momma had been a boy you can almost bet that old fool would have named him Clown Becky.”
“Strange family.”
“Aren’t they all.”
With that my lesbian Australian dog commenced to chew at her nether regions with such abandon and precision that it was both mesmerizing and disgusting at the same time. I rolled my eyes and walked into the kitchen to get some more coffee. When I returned, I asked if there were any ulterior motive behind this meeting.
“Nope, not really. Just thought it was about time. Figured I should check you out, make sure your healthy. Do you have any other children?”
“Lots.”
“Lots?”
“Many. They come and go. Right now, Shamus is counterfeiting Justin Bieber concert tickets in Reykjavik. So, while he is my son, if he were to, say, get arrested, I have no idea who he is, if you catch my drift.”
“I think I do. Any daughters?”
“A few, but they don’t like me and I don’t really appreciate most of the things they say about me on Facebook, that too is part of a legal entanglement, so I should probably leave it at that.”
“Wow.”
“I know, complicated, right?”
“No, fucked up. I thought, you know, growing up with a mother named Carnival, in a house on four wheels, moving from one shitty city to another, taking classes by a crappy internet connection and sending in tests by Federal Express, I thought my life was weird. I would sometimes lay on the top of our Winnebago in the summer and think, I should go live with my dad, he is probably stable and cool and fun.”
“Oh, that’s not true at all.”
“No shit.”
“The dog is OK though.”
“Barely. How long will she keep licking herself like that?”
“Until I hit her with a stick.”
“Do you have a stick?”
“I do.”
“Could you hand it to me?”
“Yes. I will. Oh, and welcome to the family.”
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