Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris Read Free Book Online Page B

himself, and enjoyed describing what they might have looked like had he not intervened. “What I’ve done,” he’d say, “is put the barbecue pit right here in the kitchen, where it’ll be closer to the refrigerator.” The guests would congratulate him on his ingenuity, and then he would lead them into the breakfast nook. I hadn’t been in too many houses but understood that ours was very nice. The living-room window overlooked the backyard and, beyond that, a deep forest. In the winter deer came and tiptoed around the bird feeder, ignoring the meat scraps my sisters and I had neatly arranged for their dining pleasure. Even without the snow, the view was impressive, but Aunt Monie seemed not to notice it. The only thing she commented on was the living-room sofa, which was gold and seemed to amuse her. “My goodness,” she said to my four-year-old sister, Gretchen. “Did you choose this yourself?” Her smile was brief and amateurish, like something she was studying but had not yet mastered. The mouth turned up at the corners, but her eyes failed to follow. Rather than sparkling, they remained flat and impassive, like old dimes.
“All right then,” she said. “Let’s see what we’ve got.” She received my sisters and me, each in turn, and handed us an unwrapped present from an exotic shopping bag at her feet. The bag was from a Cleveland department store, a store that for many years had been hers, or at least partially. Her first husband had owned it, and when he died she had married a tool-and-die manufacturer who eventually sold his business to Black and Decker. He, too, had passed away, and she had inherited everything.
My gift was a marionette. Not the cheap kind with a blurred plastic face, but a wooden one, each fine joint attached by hook to a black string. “This is Pinocchio,” Aunt Monie said. “His nose is long from telling lies. Is that something you like to do from time to time, tell little lies?” I started to answer, and she turned to my sister Lisa. “And who have we here?” It was like visiting Santa, or rather, like having him visit you. She gave us each an expensive gift, and then she went to the bathroom to powder her nose. With most people this was just an expression, but when she returned, her face was matted, as if with flour, and she smelled strongly of roses. My mother asked her to stay for lunch, and Aunt Monie explained that it was impossible. “What with Hank,” she said, “the long drive, I just couldn’t.” Hank, we figured, was the chauffeur, who raced to open the car door the moment we stepped out of the house. Our great-aunt settled into the backseat and covered her lap with a fur blanket. “You can close the door now,” she said, and we stood in the driveway, my marionette waving a tangled good-bye.
I hoped Aunt Monie might become a fixture, but she never visited again. A few times a year, most often on a Sunday afternoon, she would phone the house and ask for my mother. The two of them would talk for fifteen minutes or so, but it never seemed joyful, the way it did when my regular aunt called. Rather than laughing and using her free hand to roll her hair, my mother would compress a length of phone cord, holding it in her fist like a stack of coins. “Aunt Mildred!” she’d say. “How perfectly nice to hear from you.” Lean in to listen and she’d use her bare foot to push you away. “Nothing. I was just sitting here, looking out at the bird feeder. You like birds, don’t you? . . . No? Well, to tell you the truth, neither do I. Lou thinks they’re interesting but . . . exactly. Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile.”
It was like seeing her naked.
When I went to camp in Greece it was Aunt Monie who bought my ticket. It seems unlikely that she would have called specifically asking how she might brighten my life, so I imagine that my mother must have mentioned it, the way you do when you’re hoping the other person might offer a hand. “Lisa’s