Read Online We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler - Free Book Online
Authors: Karen Joy Fowler
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halfheartedly. He
would come home from campus and look in the cupboards. I remember dinners of peanut
butter on saltines, cans of tomato soup for starters and cans of clam chowder for
mains. Every meal a passive-aggressive cri de coeur.
Grandma Donna began coming over every day to watch me, but, in Bloomington in 1979,
watching me didn’t mean I could never be out of her sight. I was allowed the roam
of the neighborhood, just as I’d been allowed the roam of the farmhouse property,
only now it was the street I had to be warned about instead of the creek. Crossing
the street without a grown-up was forbidden, but I could usually scare up one of those
if needed. I met most of the neighbors by holding their hands and looking both ways.
I remember Mr. Bechler asking if I was maybe in training for the talking Olympics.
I was gold-medal material, he said.
There weren’t many children on the block and none anywhere close to my age. The Andersens
had a baby girl named Eloise. A ten-year-old boy named Wayne lived two houses down;
a high-school boy lived on the corner across the street. There was no one I could
reasonably be expected to play with.
Instead I got acquainted with the neighborhood animals. My favorite was the Bechlers’
dog Snippet, a liver-and-white spaniel with a pink nose. The Bechlers kept her tethered
in their yard, because, given half a chance, she ran off and she’d already been hit
by a car at least once that they knew of. I spent hours with Snippet, her head on
my leg or my foot, her ears cocked, listening to every word I said. When the Bechlers
realized this, they put a chair out for me, a little chair that they’d gotten back
when the grandchildren were young. It had a cushion on the seat shaped like a heart.
I also spent a lot of time alone, or alone with Mary (remember Mary? Imaginary friend
no one liked?), which was not something I’d ever done much of before. I didn’t care
for it.
Grandma Donna would change the beds and do the laundry, but only if our father wasn’t
there; she couldn’t stand to be in the same room with him. If Lowell was angry that
Fern had been sent out of our lives, Grandma Donna was angry that she’d ever been
let in. I’m sure she’d deny this, say that she’d always loved Fern, but even at five
I knew better. I’d heard too often about my first birthday, how Fern had dumped out
Grandma Donna’s handbag and eaten the last photograph ever taken of Grandpa Dan, a
Polaroid that Grandma Donna kept in her purse to look at whenever she was feeling
low.
If there’d been a second photo, I probably would have eaten one too, Lowell said,
as I followed Fern’s lead in most things. And Lowell also said that Dad had found
it very telling that Grandma left her bag, filled as it apparently was with poisonous
objects, where Fern could reach it, but I could not.
Our father had planned to name Fern and me after our grandmothers, one of us Donna
and one of us Fredericka, a coin toss to see which was which, but both grandmothers
insisted that I be the one with their name. Dad, who’d meant it as something nice,
maybe even compensatory, was annoyed when it turned into an argument. He’d probably
expected this of Grandma Donna, but not of his own mother. A hole was about to open,
a rupture in the space-time continuum of the Cooke family, until our mother stepped
in to plug it, saying that I would be Rosemary and Fern would be Fern, because she
was the mother and that was the way she wanted it. I learned of the earlier plan only
because Grandma Donna once referenced it in an argument as further evidence of Dad’s
peculiarity.
Personally, I’m glad it came to nothing. I suppose it’s because she is my grandmother
that Donna seems like a grandmother’s name. And Fredericka? A Rose by any other, if
you say so. But I can’t believe that being called Fredericka my whole life wouldn’t
have taken a
would come home from campus and look in the cupboards. I remember dinners of peanut
butter on saltines, cans of tomato soup for starters and cans of clam chowder for
mains. Every meal a passive-aggressive cri de coeur.
Grandma Donna began coming over every day to watch me, but, in Bloomington in 1979,
watching me didn’t mean I could never be out of her sight. I was allowed the roam
of the neighborhood, just as I’d been allowed the roam of the farmhouse property,
only now it was the street I had to be warned about instead of the creek. Crossing
the street without a grown-up was forbidden, but I could usually scare up one of those
if needed. I met most of the neighbors by holding their hands and looking both ways.
I remember Mr. Bechler asking if I was maybe in training for the talking Olympics.
I was gold-medal material, he said.
There weren’t many children on the block and none anywhere close to my age. The Andersens
had a baby girl named Eloise. A ten-year-old boy named Wayne lived two houses down;
a high-school boy lived on the corner across the street. There was no one I could
reasonably be expected to play with.
Instead I got acquainted with the neighborhood animals. My favorite was the Bechlers’
dog Snippet, a liver-and-white spaniel with a pink nose. The Bechlers kept her tethered
in their yard, because, given half a chance, she ran off and she’d already been hit
by a car at least once that they knew of. I spent hours with Snippet, her head on
my leg or my foot, her ears cocked, listening to every word I said. When the Bechlers
realized this, they put a chair out for me, a little chair that they’d gotten back
when the grandchildren were young. It had a cushion on the seat shaped like a heart.
I also spent a lot of time alone, or alone with Mary (remember Mary? Imaginary friend
no one liked?), which was not something I’d ever done much of before. I didn’t care
for it.
Grandma Donna would change the beds and do the laundry, but only if our father wasn’t
there; she couldn’t stand to be in the same room with him. If Lowell was angry that
Fern had been sent out of our lives, Grandma Donna was angry that she’d ever been
let in. I’m sure she’d deny this, say that she’d always loved Fern, but even at five
I knew better. I’d heard too often about my first birthday, how Fern had dumped out
Grandma Donna’s handbag and eaten the last photograph ever taken of Grandpa Dan, a
Polaroid that Grandma Donna kept in her purse to look at whenever she was feeling
low.
If there’d been a second photo, I probably would have eaten one too, Lowell said,
as I followed Fern’s lead in most things. And Lowell also said that Dad had found
it very telling that Grandma left her bag, filled as it apparently was with poisonous
objects, where Fern could reach it, but I could not.
Our father had planned to name Fern and me after our grandmothers, one of us Donna
and one of us Fredericka, a coin toss to see which was which, but both grandmothers
insisted that I be the one with their name. Dad, who’d meant it as something nice,
maybe even compensatory, was annoyed when it turned into an argument. He’d probably
expected this of Grandma Donna, but not of his own mother. A hole was about to open,
a rupture in the space-time continuum of the Cooke family, until our mother stepped
in to plug it, saying that I would be Rosemary and Fern would be Fern, because she
was the mother and that was the way she wanted it. I learned of the earlier plan only
because Grandma Donna once referenced it in an argument as further evidence of Dad’s
peculiarity.
Personally, I’m glad it came to nothing. I suppose it’s because she is my grandmother
that Donna seems like a grandmother’s name. And Fredericka? A Rose by any other, if
you say so. But I can’t believe that being called Fredericka my whole life wouldn’t
have taken a
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