Cheryl Wagner – on her sister’s thirtieth birthday.

New Orleans, Louisiana
November 14, 2000

T–

I wish you could have been there. Lori’s 30th was the best party I’ve been to in years, possibly ever – yes even topping the dance party we threw her in the Rec. center with the silver tinsel curtain and her seizure and Lori stretched out on her back clutching a potato chip near the food table for half the night. You know how people look at me like they feel sorry for me when I say I don’t like parties? I’ve decided that it isn’t true. I am not a cynic. I do like parties – but only retarded ones.

You’ll be happy to hear that this year Lori’s annual birthday seizure was a no-show. Instead, for excitement, we had mean geese, bubbles, those bouncy balloon balls you slide over your wrist and punch, and that giddy-over-nothing feeling that some retarded people get and spread around like laughing gas. It’s great. All you have to do is say the word “party,” and you’re having one.

I drove in to Hammond and we went to the town park and laid down bedsheets and set up picnic tables out by the fake lake. Mom wanted to find out if that little train that used to chug around the baseball field was running again, and it turns out the new mayor did fix it, but they only crank it up for Christmas and special occasions – which to him a retarded party is not.

The weather was beautiful, custom-ordered, not Louisiana weather at all – one of those blue wispy cool Berkeley days that we only get here by fluke. Before the party, Mom was loading the Styrofoam chest of iced Cokes into the back of her car.

“Can you believe Lori’s turning 30?” I said, excited.

“Can you believe I’ve put up with her that long?” she answered. And I thought to myself, well, no.

Two of the ladies’ group homes where Mom sometimes gives shots came so they would have a Saturday outing that didn’t have anything to do with bowling or the mall. Whenever any of them see Mom, they start moaning and groaning, lifting their shirts to show her half-assed bruises. So sure enough, first thing, they’re barely out of their vans, and one woman with a smallish head bum-rushed Mom.

“Miss Liz, look at my feet! You want to see my foot now already?”

“Your feet are fine,” Mom said. “Go sit down and let Tucker get you a hot dog.”

Yes, Tucker manned the grill – bless his vegetarian heart. He did Tofu Pups and regular hot dogs and Mom let all the ladies have soda, even the ones whose Meal Plans said not to. As for the birthday girl herself (excuse me, the birthday woman – let us not forget to be “age appropriate” even and especially when she is not), Lori had a fresh short and ugly Sheena Easton hairdo that they give at Supercuts around here and she wore her glue-on glitter earrings. (But you’ll be happy to know I put my foot down about the Macarena T-shirt and made her change it – I might burn it one day soon. Mom still doesn’t understand what about it I don’t find “cute” in the least.) And the haircut, well what can you do? I know the stylists want to improve Lori, but come on. Is putting on the glitz ever really an improvement? Lori is chubby, she is loud, she is cross-eyed and silly and sometimes cruel to animals. She is not Glam. She will never be in Manhattan Transfer.

She is also greedy as ever, but I policed her, so she wasn’t able to hunk her fingers ahead of time into her cake. I bought her flowers and stole her a pink balloon from a car lot on my way out of New Orleans, but she didn’t notice either of them. So not much has changed since you left. See there is something you can count on.

As I said, Lori didn’t fall out on the ground, but beyond that I can’t say that she had “fun” exactly. Mom had fun, I had fun, the ladies and the workers from the group homes and Tucker and Buster had fun. Even the geese who chased some of the ladies and bit Lori’s finger as she was feeding them bread crumbs swarmed our picnic in a flappy happy chaos.

But Lori sat at her picnic table grouchy the whole time and kept saying, “I’m gonna spend the night with Cheryl two week?” She had her broken record turned way up. I tried to get her to draw with the sidewalk chalk and even the autistic lady who keeps her lips pressed tight together scrawled her initials on the ground in green, but not Lori. No go. Lori ate; she presided, grudgingly. Lori swigged her root beer, opened presents she didn’t look at before going on to the next, cast a tired eye here and there. Other than that she just kind of antsed around on her bench looking for me, croaking “Cher-ra, cher-ra, two week, two week?” But maybe she was with us inside that thick skull somewhere, watching us out of the corner of her brain.

Wait, I take that back. Lori did participate some. She let me paint her fingernails – but I think only because I was doing everyone else’s. And also because for ten fingers I was her captive. She kept putting her wet-polish hand under my chin to pull my face closer to hers so she could drill me with her eyes and bark, “Two week, two week?”

Also I think Lori may have had fun the night before when Mom told her that the next day was her birthday. She woke up early looking forward to it. And I heard that the next day she was excited about it again and talked it up big at the Workshop. So it seems Lori enjoyed her birthday before and afterwards instead of when it was going on. I know what you’re gonna say: Lori you got to learn to live in the moment, man…dude….

You know who lives in the moment? Who inhabits the moment more than you or I or your meditation-head friends could ever hope to? Carly Sue. (Page-boy haircut, Down’s Syndrome, cute, turning a little blue from her heart lately, family won’t come see her – I think you remember her.) I brought the Sly and the Family Stone Greatest Hits CD for the picnic and Carly Sue whose blood barely circulates danced for over an hour straight! We did the bump. The hold your nose like a Frankie and Annette movie and swim. Then she ground out all this nasty stuff she must have learned on TV at her group home while her House Mother yelled, “Go Car-lee! Go Car-lee!”

After Carly wore me out, Mom was up. The aides shook their heads no, like they didn’t get paid for dancing outside during the day, and Tucker wouldn’t either, said he can’t. But Mom (who, as you know, does a mean Jitterbug) joined in our tinny boombox dance out under the oaks.

Unfortunately though, when solo “modern” dancing, Mom can get a little weird. Like for one thing she decided to make it educational.

“Comb your hair,” Mom called, pantomiming it, bending her knees in time to Everybody Is a Star.

And Carly Sue would follow her, air-hairbrushing, plus adding an extra ass shake.

“Wash your face, wash your face,” Mom sang, scrubbing her face with an imaginary washcloth – and Carly did.

“Brush your teeth,” I hollered, exhausted on my blanket, with somebody’s sticky hands in my hair. “Use your mouthwash!”

So Tanio, there you have it. Super party, sucky society. Was Lori there with us at all, really, as she ripped open gift after gift and threw them on the table without really looking at them? I like to think so. As much or as little as she has been for the past thirty years.

And now I need to go clean my compost of a kitchen but first a word to our sponsors: LORI MADE IT TO THIRTY! To her obstetrician who left the delivery room in a shamed hurry and later told Mom to ship Lori to the State School before she ruined all our lives and that Lori probably wouldn’t live that long anyway – you’re DEAD and Lori’s not! Shame on you. To all the people who give us dirty looks like they’re going to choke on their angel hair when I take Lori with me to a coffee house or a cafe – we have fun and you don’t! We are not scared to be ugly. We painted our fingernails orange and got it on our skin and liked it that way! To the hushed, prim Catholics who don’t like their Amens loud and garbled and sung from the belly – up yours! If there’s a Heaven, Lori’s there and you’re not. To all the sweet black church ladies who have welcomed us into their church and their songs and their arms and their god, thank you, thank you – but please stop making Lori color those Jesus pictures and taping them to her bedroom door. She’s already saved.

To Lori, who talks to me when she’s watching Wheel of Fortune and giggles and curses me even when I’m not there, congratulations, birthday girl. Everyone had a happy birthday for you and we’ll do it again next year and next year. I have a petting zoo idea. To Tana, your number’s up, friend. Time to live in the moment. Reach deep into those Silicon Valley pockets and go buy a Flintstones puzzle with big pieces. Somebody’s still running out to meet the mailman.

See you soon,

Cheryl