All About Lulu

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Book: All About Lulu Read Online Free PDF
Author: Jonathan Evison
Tags: Fiction, Coming of Age
my gratitude?
    Can you see all that Lulu gave me?
    Shortly after the main event—the general gift exchange, which saw the twins wrestling in a wilderness of wrapping paper while Big Bill continually bellowed “settle down”—we were instructed by Big Bill (who I can only assume was instructed by Willow) to select three of our own gifts to give to Friends Outside.
    “Well, if they’re our friends why don’t we let ’em inside,” said Doug. “That’ll be my gift.”
    In the car, Doug cried at the prospect of giving up his Super Jock.
    He threatened to break the kicking leg so they wouldn’t want it.
    “Don’t you dare,” said Big Bill.
    But within fi ve minutes the leg was broken anyway when Ross tried to wrest the helmeted hero out of Doug’s grip.
    Friends Outside was not far from the airport. It was a big two-story wood house in a stucco neighborhood, with chipping paint and a sagging porch. Every three minutes or so the shutters rattled on their hinges as airliners thundered overhead. There was a sick willow tree out front, a giant, long past the weeping stage, which only served to make the house darker.
    A hard little woman who looked nothing like Mother Hubbard greeted us on the porch. She led us inside through the foyer to a huge living room, where eight or nine kids of various ages and colors were lounging on ancient sofas or seated on the fl oor around a game of
    Monopoly. A huge old television was on in the corner. The picture was squiggly. A few of the older kids looked up when we entered.
    “These people have been thoughtful enough to bring gifts,” the woman announced.
    I’ll never forget the terrible awkwardness of my new family bunched together in the middle of that living room like a wagon train, dispensing gifts. How desperately I wanted to run from that place: the sad crepe paper ornamentation, the joyless light, those old dusty couches. Everything about the place spoke of strained circum stances, of our casserole days.
    Lulu surrendered every gift she received, including the yellow toe socks. I’m not proud of the fact that this gesture wounded me, that behind my lame smile I was gritting my teeth as she presented my socks to a black girl in pink barrettes roughly her own age. I knew better, but I couldn’t help myself, because no conceivable cir cum stance, not even the threat of physical violence, could have compelled me to part with my transistor radio.
    On the drive back home, Lulu pressed her face to the tinted window. She didn’t say a word about it, nor should she have. I should have known how hard it was for her to give up those things. But in spite of all I’d lost in my short life, I still knew nothing of sacri fi ce.
     

 

     
     

    Big Bill Down Under
     
     
    My father was no emissary of American sophistication, a fact that became painfully clear within eight minutes of our arrival in Sydney, Australia, for the 1980 Mr. Olympia. I realize it’s not a unique or un-usual condition to be embarrassed by your father, but when, at every photo op, your father persists in peeling off his T-shirt and setting his hairless pectorals to dancing like a chorus line for gathering crowds, embarrassment threatens to become a lingering condition.
    Big Bill was optimistic going into Sydney, and he had every reason to be. His back was ripped. His lower-body de fi nition was better than ever, and while his proportions may have been slightly off (maybe a little top-heavy, though that’s debatable), he looked better than in ’79, when he fi nished fourth. His biggest improvement had nothing to do with musculature, but with his posing, which had come light-years under the tutelage of Willow. Having endured seven strictly enforced years of ballet growing up in Vermont, Willow managed to thoroughly transform Big Bill. In the past, he had simply lumbered onto the stage and bungled through a rapid succession of herky-jerky contortions, beaming like a jack-o’-lantern in heat.
    But Willow infused
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