It Looked Different on the Model (28 page)

Then, in 2003, when my soon-to-be-brother-in-law, Greg, started hanging around, my father introduced The Double, which took the foundation of the kiss and the Psych Hug and added another kiss—that’s right, twins—to the mix. For a short time, he only gave Greg The Double. Being new, Greg had no reason to believe that anything was out of the ordinary in this culture, thinking we just hadn’t assimilated completely yet, since it was clear that his kind wasn’t allowed to park in the garage. Sensing no opposition, my dad then started working it in among the rest of us without a briefing or warning, and on one occasion my husband thought he had fulfilled his departing requirement with the single kiss, only to be caught off guard when my dad went in for The Double and kissed my husband square on the lips.

Everyone saw it; everyone looked away.

The silence in the car on the way home was disturbing.

“I’m sorry,” I finally said weakly. “I thought I told you he
had revised the kiss and was now making double contact. I thought you knew. He’s been doing it to Greg for a while.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” my husband answered staunchly. “I have never kissed your dad on the lips.”

And no one has talked of it since.

After the Five-Mississippi Hug, I stopped. But, you know, I’m a little glad that hugging didn’t really work out for me. As a family of non-lickers, we are decidedly fine the way we are. We are very happy. So what if we can’t get a massage without feeling dirty and shameful? I never had one before the anxious-hand incident, and it turns out I’m not missing out on anything I can’t live without. I know Brandie is clean, but my sister didn’t know where those Yugoslavian hands had been. Who knew what unclean body she was rubbing lotion on just an hour before?

And so what if I was the offspring of a non-licking mother? With one lick, who knew where I would have ended up? I might have been the one coming at someone’s thigh with two hands full of lotion.

Seeing
Nova
actually reinforced what I had suspected: I’d have a boring, nicely balanced life and have a boring, nicely balanced job, and I wouldn’t see any of the things I see on a daily basis that licked people can’t see. The licking mothers, I think, were boring mothers who never wanted to shave their grandsons’ armpits when they hit puberty or emailed their daughters warnings that wearing ponytails was basically putting a handle on your head and nearly guaranteeing an abduction. Their boring offspring would never get banned from the post office because she got snotty about stamps, or banned from a party because she mouthed the words to a song, or became trapped in a shirt in a fancy store because the jelly beans made her arms enormous (not because she’s strong).

I’ll bet we laugh harder at family gatherings, once we determine who the scapegoat is going to be. We have a lot more stuff to talk about than how calm we were that day and how it didn’t even annoy us when the lady in front of us in line at FedEx/Kinko’s picked up her copies and then asked the clerk if they knew someplace close by where she could ship them. I am delighted that no one has ever opened a family dinner at my mother’s house with the phrase “I solved the most fantastic maze today!” Not to mention that I like getting checks and impersonal gift cards for birthdays and Christmas, not subscriptions to the Fig of the Month Club or a book of Sudoku puzzles.

I know I wouldn’t have ended up being me, and my sisters wouldn’t have ended up being them. Could you imagine if I just smeared my face with Mexican-smuggled Retin-A that expired four years ago, and my mother looked across the kitchen table to tell me how great my skin looked, instead of telling me that I just gave myself face-wide melanoma? I would have no choice but to burst into tears immediately and cry, “Why are you so boring? Jesus! Stop licking me!”

I like my family just the way it is, and if I had to pick a Licked Laurie or a Non-Licked Laurie, I’d go with the latter, of course (with the option to have fewer moles and fill in the bald spot). My mother taught me never to buy green beans after a lady with too much boob showing has touched them. That’s valuable advice not all nine-year-olds get. I still use it to this day, only now it applies to hippies and the food they bring to potlucks.

My husband concurs, because a licked person would never agree to crabwalk around the backyard as a form of marital exercise; test the old wives’ tale that earlobes are in exact alignment with your nipples (not on me, over shirt, and ruled
completely false); follow an email from him to meet him in the living room in five minutes for a balancing contest (only then to have him make fun of my choice of balancing position, which he said was “too American” and that it “didn’t even
mean
anything” because I had my leg up, toe pointed forward, my arms up at about forty-five-degree angles, and my fingers were apparently pointing, too. WTF ever. I won); or agree that you should change the name of your canine companion to Doggy McPushy because she believes I am the guest in the bed at night.

“When you say ‘Doggy McPushy’ with a cough drop in your mouth,” my husband just informed me, “it takes on an entirely different meaning.”

“A licker would never get that joke,” I replied.

“I like you just the way you are, but it would be nice if you could leave some jelly beans for someone else,” he said, coming in for a hug, to which I felt forced to immediately throw my hands up and cry,

“
Blueberry!!
”

Thank you to the readers out there for your great letters, your hilarious posts, and your crazy comments, and for keeping in touch with me, but most of all for reading: I can’t do what I do unless you do what you do. Even Steven. You guys never fail to make my day, every day.

Thank you to Jenny Bent, who let me tell the tale of the French dog after many, many years; Pamela Cannon, who expertly poked at this manuscript like a coroner, polished it, and got it ready to take to market; Beth Pearson, who rightfully questioned every suspicious comma; and Brian McLendon and Diana Franco who pushed it like good drugs.

As always, mountains of gratitude to the guy I married, who can make me laugh faster than anybody on the planet and will let me dork out in strange and unpredictable ways without calling a doctor to Frances Farmer me. Who knew I was capable of making a good choice? And thanks to my family and friends: keep doing what you’re doing. I’m still collecting material for the next book, you know.

Additionally, I have copious amounts of humble gratitude for Jody Lucas, who unwittingly shared the story of her friend, Lucy Fisher, with me, which set the stage for
Spooky Little Girl.
I’d also like to thank her for not scolding me as loudly as she could for my resistance to flossing, and for handing over enough free toothpaste, toothbrushes, and teeth picks to make a girl with bleeding gums smile. I hope I did her friend Lucy justice, especially since when we meet, Jody is armed with pointy, sharp metal objects headed for my mouth.

And finally, many thanks to Kelly Kulchak and Kathy White for their support, notes, and for driving me around when it’s 113 degrees in L.A.

Many, many thanks,
Laurie