Ali in Wonderland: And Other Tall Tales Read Online Free PDF Page B

and straw hats named Jody, Darcy, and Liz. Down the hill from our house was the Eel River Beach Club. It was named for the begrimed canal of backwash between the club and the ocean, which housed slimy eels that boys threw rocks at or tried to catch in the janitor’s bucket. The only prerequisite for being a member of the club was you had to live in the town. If you lived kinda near, that was okay too. The club consisted of a cracked saltwater pool, one tennis court with grass growing through the tar, and a snack shack with a cook who was always out of supplies. We would spend the whole day there, dozing on our Marimekko beach towels on the hot cement, perfecting our knee flips in the saltwater pool, and slurping melting Creamsicles. The highlight, when it was really hot, was when we would pop tar bubbles on the paved parking lot.
    The nights were peaceful; with the window open you could hear the crashing of the ocean waves, which lulled me to sleep—until that summer when the movie Jaws came out. After that, my windows were permanently sealed shut; I was too young, and the film traumatized me for life. My brother and his long-haired stoner friends took me opening night. These are the sorts of mishaps that occur when your mother is away changing bedpans. After the movie we all went to the beach, where I was catatonic, held hostage to their fake shark attacks in the moonlit ocean. I didn’t take a bath for two years and still won’t swim in water above the waist, and that includes swimming pools and koi ponds. Sissy missed the Jaws phenomenon that summer, but considering she was ripped apart by the teeth of great white surgical instruments, it was a blessing.
    I used to lie on my single bed during those summer days for hours. When you’re young, your mind isn’t bogged down by questions about discovering your true self, preventing cancer, and liquidating assets; you can obsess about when you’ll sprout breasts for weeks on end. My only fleeting concerns (aside from my sharkophobia) were for Sissy and for my mother, who slept in a hospital chair for weeks. There’s a scene in the movie Terms of Endearment that was pulled from that summer. In the scene Debra Winger is dying and in great pain, and her mother, played by Shirley MacLaine, runs to the nurses’ station, screaming, “Give my daughter the shot!” For me it’s like watching a home movie.
    M y mother decided that when my sister was released from the hospital, we would all stay in a rented house up in Marion, near Buzzard’s Bay. Sissy was going to be encased in a full body cast for six months, and Marion was breezy and temperate. My mother rented an ambulance to transport Sissy up there. At the time I assumed this was so that in the event of a postsurgical complication, the medical technician would be on hand. But in hindsight, I think my mother just didn’t want to have to stop at red lights.
    The Marion rental was a small white clapboard house with windowpanes of original glass that distorted the landscape and faces that passed by. Sissy spent most of the day horizontal. The body cast extended from her chin to below her pelvis. Fiona and I would break up the monotony of her day by taking extra-long Q-tips, dipping them in rubbing alcohol, and digging under the plaster to relieve itches. Fiona was young enough that a piece of string could occupy her for hours. Sissy was despondent with boredom.
    One afternoon Sissy was particularly agitated. She was crying and banging her cast against the wall molding and narrow doorways, much like a toddler trying to walk with a bucket on his head. Fiona was busy still playing with string, and I was on my twenty-sixth pastel drawing of a clamshell. Sissy stomped into the kitchen. “I can’t live like this anymore! I’m running away!”
    My mother stopped snapping peas. “Okay, okay, simmer down . . . you want some ginger ale?” The comfort elixir in our house.
    Sissy’s fist hit the side of the refrigerator. “NO!