Cheeseburger Subversive Read online

  My sister Charlotte was (and still is) three years younger than me, and was therefore granted the age-old youngest sibling’s privilege of looting the first stocking. After she carefully examined each treat and trinket contained therein in a slow, deliberate way that nearly caused me to explode into conniptions of anticipation, I was finally allowed to look into the contents of my own stocking. I always got great stuff like Oh Henry bars, toy cars, and a whole book full of Lifesavers candies. My dad’s stocking, on the other hand, always contained boring stuff like Bic razors, socks, and shampoo. I resolved right then and there to never become a dad.

  Mom always insisted on pilfering her own stocking last. It nearly always contained a bottle of aspirin, with a little tag attached, which read, “For later, when The Cousins arrive.” This little gift from Old Saint Nick never failed to amuse Mom and Dad. We all sat in a tight little family circle and laughed about this strange gift.

  As the saying goes, however, all good things must come to an end. Our Christmas morning bliss was traditionally shattered with one simple line from our mother:

  “Okay, kids,” she would say, trying to mask the message of doom behind a cheery voice, “it’s time to get ready for The Cousins!”

  Sometimes Dad would whisper to us, under his breath, “Remember to hide any new toys that you don’t want broken!”

  Often Mom would hear him, and she would pretend to scold, “Arthur! What a thing to say about your blood relatives!”

  By the time I was seven-years-old, I had become a great fan of vampire comic books (which I had to read over at my friend Mickey’s because Mom and Dad were convinced that there was a verifiable link between comic books and illiteracy). If vampire comic books had taught me anything, it was that anything involving blood was to be avoided and feared; the annual invasion of our moderately peaceful household by our “blood relatives” had convinced me beyond a shadow of a doubt that those vampire books were absolutely correct.

  After inhaling a quick breakfast, our household went into red alert mode — Mom did the dishes and gave the kitchen and bathroom floors a quick waxing while Dad brought in wood for the fireplace. My sister and I were invariably assigned to clean-your-room-and-stay-out-of-the-way duty.

  While our parents whisked around like housekeeping elves, I set to work stockpiling our new Christmas toys under Dad’s workbench in the basement where they would hopefully not be found by our Yuletide invaders. My sister assumed her annual duty which was to sit and monitor the upstairs window for early signs of the impending invasion. As soon as she heard the unmistakable rumble of one of Uncle Bob’s botched do-it-yourself-for-less muffler jobs, she would shriek, “They’re here! They’re here!”

  As she called out these words, my sister’s voice, which was quiet and subdued on every other day of the year, had the startling effect of an air-raid siren. At her call we would all drop whatever we were doing and line up together at the back door, wearing smiles in the face of adversity.

  At this point in the story, I could recount to you any one of a startling number of Yuletide disasters instigated by my tornado-like cousins. I could tell you about the year that one of them lit the Christmas tree on fire by accidentally spilling Christmas brandy on one of the branches and then accidentally holding a lit Christmas candle under the same branch for several minutes.

  I could tell you about the time one of the older cousins challenged his brother to an eggnog-drinking contest, which resulted in some gravity-defying projectile vomiting and a unique stench which lingered for weeks after the holiday was over.

  I could tell hundreds of stories like these, but just so things don’t get too grisly for you, I will concentrate on one Christmas Day in particular. I was nine-years-old at the time but I can still recall the day with perfect clarity as if it were a newsreel playing inside my head.

  They crash through the door and we brace ourselves. Their definition of talking is what we conservatively define as screaming. The extraordinary volume is compounded tenfold by the fact that they all “talk” at once.

  They thunder into the kitchen. They have accidentally forgotten to remove their boots and they cut a quick path of mucky destruction across Mom’s freshly waxed floor.

  “Oh, my!” giggles my aunt as Mom scurries for a mop. “Look at the mess we’ve made of your lovely floor!”

  A couple of the older kids take this as a cue to remove their boots; the younger ones do not bother. They figure the damage is already done.

  My aunt is busy explaining that they have brought a bottle of liquor in lieu of a gift for my father, since they were absolutely horrified to discover at the last moment that the very, very, very expensive sweater they bought for him was accidentally seven sizes too large. So instead, they brought a forty-ounce bottle of rum. My father, incidentally, does not drink rum — but, coincidentally, it happens to be my aunt’s favourite.

  My mother nods complacently, knowing well that my aunt will have personally consumed the contents of the bottle before the last gift is unwrapped. This way she will “not feel so well” when it comes time to do the dishes. Sudden illnesses during cleanup time has become something of a holiday tradition with The Cousins.

  While the two oldest cousins, Billy and Bart, pass the time by poking each other’s eyes with their fingers, cousin Bruce, who is (chronologically) the same age as I am, waddles up to where I have been cowering behind my father. At first I fear that he has been watching his older brothers, and that his finger is going to find its way into my eye. I am relieved when all he does is talk.

  “Whadja git fer Chrissmas, Dak?” he snorts. (He quite literally snorts — his nose is running like a broken dam).

  “D’ja git any good toys? Got anything we kin play with?”

  I recall Dad’s annual advice, and respond appropriately.

  “Uh, no, mostly clothes, actually. Just got stuff I needed this year, like some gloves, and a pair of jeans, and a scarf . . . ”

  Bruce is uninterested in gloves and jeans and scarves, perhaps because they cannot be smashed by dropping them down the stairs. From his pocket he produces a large toy car which is made of what appears to be indestructible space-age metal. Even the wheels are made of metal! Perhaps old Santa was aware of Bruce’s propensity for accidentally destroying things . . .

  Despite the apparent sturdiness of the toy, I have faith in cousin Bruce’s abilities. The toy car will be completely dismembered before the day is over.

  “Listen, Dak,” he snorts again, “my car makes real race car noises when you drive it!”

  He frantically rubs the car’s metal wheels back and forth across the surface of the kitchen table. The car succeeds in making a feeble whirring noise; it also leaves behind a series of deep parallel gouges in the tabletop.

  “Why don’t you all come into the living room and sit down?” says Dad cheerfully — pretending not to notice that Bruce is busy accelerating the forces of erosion upon the kitchen table. None of The Cousins seem to hear Dad, though. They are too busy poking, hollering, and destroying.

  The two youngest cousins, Adrienne and Amelia, are whining to their mother. Whining happens to be their favourite pastime, and, indeed, they have become seasoned veterans over the years. I have noticed that they are able to extract practically anything they want from their mother with this incessant and vociferous fussing. I have heard my dad say to my mom that Adrienne and Amelia will someday grow up to be professional government lobbyists.

  “Mamma! Mamma! We’re hungry! We’re starving! Oh, Mamma, we’re dying of starvation! Pleeeee-eeeee-eeease!”

  After a few minutes of intense, uninterrupted screeching, my aunt reaches into her purse and produces two candy bars to shut them up until one of them thinks of something else that they are suffering without.

  All of this happens within the first five minutes of their visit.

  Feebly, my dad tries again.

  “Hey, everybody!” he calls out with as much holiday spirit as he can muster, “how about w
e all get together in the living room!”

  His words fall on deaf ears of course, because The Cousins’ fickle attention has turned to the poking match between Billy and Bruce, which has now escalated into a full-scale, fist-swinging brawl. They are on the floor, and have rolled into the backroom, hitting and kicking and screaming and crying. Most of the kicks and punches fail to reach their intended targets, and as a result, a hanging plant suddenly ceases to hang, our cat’s food dish is emptied of food, and the coat tree falls, leaving Mom’s dress-up coat sprawled in a murky pool of boot-slush.

  Uncle Bob, who thinks of himself as the United Nations Security Council of The Cousins’ family world, is quick to react to the crisis. He rolls up his sleeves and grabs the boys by their collars, one in each hand.

  “So, you wanna fight, ‘n wreck everybody’s Christmas, eh? Well, if you wanna fight, fight outside!”

  Wearing the face of a madman, Uncle Bob kicks open the back door and hurls Billy and Bart into the snow and locks the door. The two of them lie where they land, half-buried in a snowdrift, tears freezing on their faces, steaming wet socks dangling awkwardly from their toes. It does not occur to Uncle Bob that the two boys are probably already quite humiliated, because he hollers something else, which I can hardly believe:

  “You two aren’t comin’ in until you kiss an’ make up! And it’s gotta be on the lips!”

  Billy and Bart look at each other in disbelief, as do my mother and my father, and my sister and myself. The other three cousins simply proceed with their ordinary business of creating noise and wrecking valuables. They are no longer interested in Billy and Bart; they have seen this sort of thing plenty of times.

  “Go on, boys,” yells Uncle Bob, with what sounds like malicious satisfaction, “kiss ‘n make up!”

  Faced with this gruesome prospect, Billy tugs off one of his sopping socks, and slaps Bart in the face with it, thus starting a violent chain reaction which sends both boys rolling across the snow-padded yard in a writhing, kicking, punching, swearing mass.

  Uncle Bob turns away from the door grinning.

  “Hah! Glad I’m not raisin’ no sissies!” he barks, slapping my dad on the back a little more heartily than necessary and glancing over at me with an expression that suggests that my father is raising a sissy.

  “Our father only raised real men, eh, brother?” He pounds my father on the back again, and for just the briefest moment, Dad forgets to look holiday happy.

  “He also managed to raise at least one asshole,” he mumbles to himself. Then, in the name of Christmas spirit, Dad manages to regain a false expression of cheer.

  “Let’s all go to the living room, okay?”

  This time it is more a demand than a request, and everybody follows. Mom, fearing that the boys might freeze solid before the fight is over, discreetly unlocks the back door as she leaves the kitchen.

  We all troop into the living room. Luckily, Mom has filled every available table and bench with trays of cookies, cakes, tarts, sausages and cheese, pickles, and her holiday specialty, chocolate crepes. The food distracts cousin Bruce long enough that he momentarily forgets about wrecking anything in the living room with his scrape-o-matic toy car.

  My aunt drops two bags of discount-brand potato chips onto one of the tables and announces that she has added her share to the pile of Christmas goodies. She says this just before Grandma enters the room — possibly so Grandma will think my aunt actually baked some of the goodies.

  Grandma nestles herself into the sofa and says, “What? Did you bring the chips?”

  I like my Grandma. She’s a smart cookie. In the confusion, I hadn’t even noticed her until now.

  “How was your trip with The Cousins, Grandma?” I ask innocently, already knowing the true answer.

  “It has made me glad that I never ran away to join the circus when I was a little girl. Circus life isn’t for Grandma.”

  Amelia and Adrienne each take a bite out of the two biggest chocolate crepes, holding them in such a way that most of the chocolate filling is destined to leak all over their clothing.

  “Ohhh! Mama! I don’t like these! They’re yucky! They’re yucky! Ohhhhh!”

  “Ewwww! I got it on me! Ewwww! Oh, yuck!”

  “Well, don’t eat ‘em, then. Put ‘em on the table!”

  The girls do as they are told and slap the crepes down onto the one spot on the table which is not protected by a tray or festive doily. Perhaps they have subconsciously decided that if Bruce is not going to do his job of wrecking valuables, then they will have to do it for him. Chocolate sauce leaks out all over the table and drips onto the carpet.

  My aunt has only been seated for a second or two when she springs up and loudly asks if she can make anyone a drink, which means that she is ready to start emptying that bottle of rum into herself. Since it isn’t even noon yet, Mom and Dad decline. My uncle agrees to a drink, as he usually does, and instructs his wife to search our cupboards for “the good stuff.” Dad usually hides “the good stuff” since it has a tendency to suddenly evaporate during this particular day each year.

  This year, though, Dad has hidden it in the garage, and my aunt is unable to sniff it out. Thus, my uncle is forced to settle for a specially purchased bottle of “the cheap stuff,” which is empty by the time they leave. A week later, though, we notice that somebody has broken the seal on the souvenir bottle of Jamaican White Rum that Mom and Dad brought back from their honeymoon. By some freak twist of physics, the rum has somehow been changed into tap water!

  Grandma, when she thinks that nobody is looking, reaches behind her ear and turns off her hearing aid. If anyone looks in her direction, she will smile sweetly and nod. This results in the delivery of a number of weakly mixed drinks, courtesy of my aunt, as well as hushed comments from my uncle implying that Grandma might be “losing her marbles”. I know better than my uncle does, though, and I find myself wishing that I, too, had a volume control on my hearing. Like I said, Grandma is pretty smart.

  Amelia and Adrienne finally stop whining about the chocolate crepes, but they are scarcely able to draw another breath before they have found more ammunition for their flame-thrower mouths.

  “Presents!” they screech. “We wanna open our presents!”

  They begin to chant, like rowdy spectators at a football game.

  “Pre-sents! Pre-sents!”

  Cousin Bruce has re-discovered his toy car and is attempting to start an electrical fire by “driving” it back and forth over the electrical cord leading to the Christmas tree lights. Luckily, he is distracted by the girls’ shouting, and decides to join in. Grandma sits and smiles placidly, and Mom and Dad grin absently, like shock victims.

  My uncle suddenly feels philosophical, and decides to share a little of his wisdom with his shouting children.

  “Ya know, kids, if you wanna get anything outta this crazy world we live in, ya gotta scream a lot louder than that. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, so they say.”

  Naturally, Amelia, Adrienne, and Bruce start screeching like industrial turbines, loud enough to summon Bart and Billy, who saunter into the room dripping wet. They join in the shouting, which actually causes the Christmas tree to shake. My dad decides to put a stop to it before ornaments start falling from the tree and bouncing on the floor. (I say bouncing rather than shattering because after the ornament fight between Billy and Bart the previous year, Mom and Dad decided that although plastic was less attractive than glass, it was also less dangerous).

  “Okay!” Dad hollers, while still trying to maintain a festive holiday tone of voice. “Okay! We’ll open the presents now!”

  “Yaaaaaaaaaaaay!” comes the thundering response from the five cousins. Surprisingly, only one ornament falls.

  The din fades to “talking”, and the overwhelmed, achy sensation in my head subsides long enough for me to notice that a thick stream of blood is trickling from Billy’s left nostril; apparently, Bart won the fight. His other nostril is equally saturated, bu
t with a glob of mucus, much like his younger brother Bruce had displayed earlier. Perhaps the ability to manufacture gallons of nose goop is a genetic trait that Bruce and Billy share.

  Bruce, who is normally as observant as a moss-covered boulder, immediately notices Billy’s nose and shrieks, “Hey! Look, everybody! Billy’s nose is spouting the Christmas colours — red and green!”

  All of the kids laugh riotously at this — even I laugh. Give me a break — I’m nine-years-old, okay? To me, boogers are still a source of entertainment.

  Still laughing, we all tear into our presents.

  I have been given a sweatshirt which unlike in previous years, actually fits me. I am overjoyed, and I thank my aunt and uncle profusely. Then, in a taunting tone of voice, Bruce informs me that the sweatshirt was actually one of his Christmas presents, but it turned out to be too small for him so it was re-wrapped and given to me.

  “I guess you’re jus’ not as big ‘n strong as me, huh?” Bruce sputters.

  In the interests of riot prevention, I decide to concede this point rather than punching Bruce in his big ‘n strong nose. I find myself wondering whether Bruce would actually notice the difference if his brain suddenly fell out on the floor.

  My parents have put careful consideration into the gifts they have wrapped for The Cousins. For the younger ones, Mom and Dad have purchased toys that conform to the following specifications: None of them can be easily broken, none of them can be used as life-threatening weapons, and none of them make noise. Since the two oldest cousins have evolved to the point where they are capable of turning any solid object into a dangerous weapon, my parents have given them cash; the worst damage they can inflict upon each other with a twenty dollar bill is maybe a paper cut or two.

  The Cousins soon toss aside the toys, which are judged too boring since they bear no resemblance to missiles or guns. Thus, they begin their annual stampede around our house, each on his or her own special seek-and-destroy mission. Within minutes, the two eldest boys have dismembered one of Charlotte’s dolls. Fortunately, it was a decoy placed by my crafty little sister; her new doll remained safely hidden in the basement.