Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea Read Online Free PDF Page B

pacifier out of his mouth and was eating James’s leftover ice cream, and I wondered if he was still breast-feeding.
    After Kyle was done I told him it was bedtime. It was only 7 p.m., but I needed some time alone to prepare myself in case Hannibal Lecter came back downstairs. I changed Kyle’s diaper, helped him into his pajamas, read him Goodnight Moon , and then tucked him in. “Good luck with everything,” I told him before I turned out his light.
    I walked over to James’s room and knocked on the door. I thought about what it must be like for James to go through life under these conditions, with a mother like Susan. It’s no wonder he was miserable. I thought maybe I could sit down and talk to him about his life, be a shoulder he could cry on, if for no other reason than to prevent him from becoming a dateraper later in life. “Do you want me to bring you your dinner?” I asked through the closed door. Silence.
    I was about to ask again, but decided I was the one who needed to eat dinner. All this caretaking had made me forget about my own needs. I went downstairs and looked in the fridge. There were a few containers that had james sr. written on them. I took one out, opened it, and found some chicken. After taking a couple of bites and not being able to identify the exact spice used in preparing it, I shut the container and put it back in the fridge. I went over to the cupboard and found a can of SpaghettiOs.
    About an hour later the phone rang right in the middle of a brand-new episode of The Golden Girls . My favorite character was Bea Arthur. I’ve always felt we had similar senses of humor, although I imagined myself having a much better body when I hit seventy, not to mention highlights.
    I picked up the phone and Susan was on the other end. “Hi, Chelsea, is everything okay?”
    “Yes, everything is fine,” I told her, feeling like I had finally gotten the situation under control, and not wanting to miss any more of The Golden Girls than necessary.
    “That’s wonderful, Chelsea. Thank you so much.”
    “No problem, Suz,” I told her. “Have fun at the movie.”
    The minute I hung up the phone James walked into the room with the entire bucket of frozen yogurt along with the entire bucket of vanilla-chocolate swirl ice cream in his hands. Both were empty. I hadn’t had any experience with sugar mania before, but was intuitive enough to know things were not going well.
    He ran in and started jumping up and down on the couch I was sitting on. This was way before Tom Cruise humiliated himself on Oprah , and I had no idea then that James’s behavior was not only a result of liking sugar, but most likely a direct link to Scientology.
    “No more monkeys jumping on the bed!” he started screaming.
    I was so shocked at first, I pretended he wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary and tried to ignore him. If he was looking for attention, he wasn’t going to get it from me. Then he jumped off the couch, ran into the kitchen, and came back with two oranges, both which he fired in my direction. One hit me right in the forehead, and the other went through the window, breaking the glass.
    Once I got hit in the face, I lost my cool. I stood up, but before I could make my move, James pushed me back down onto the couch. Not only was I petrified of what might happen next, I was furious that I would mostly likely have a bruise in the middle of my forehead, with Ash Wednesday months away.
    I had to think quickly. I decided the best approach was to not react at all, so I sat there watching him buzz around the room, banging his head into one wall after another. I remained seated, not wanting to run any interference and get manhandled. I knew James would crash, but I didn’t know how long that was going to take, and was praying he would get it under control by the end of the commercial break. The last five minutes of The Golden Girls were right around the corner, and the episode’s plot line was clearly leading