The Winter of Our Disconnect by Susan Maushart Read Free Book Online Page A

it would be a good excuse to buy a massive ice chest—I’d always wanted one with wheels, the kind that looks big enough to store human remains—and to shop for meals like a single person, i.e., spontaneously and one day at a time.
    “Let us not be upset and overwhelmed in that terrible rapid and whirlpool called a dinner ,” Thoreau exhorted. I was down with that.
    Coping without air-conditioning in the blast-furnace heat of the Western Australian summer was a less sanguine prospect. This, I knew, we would definitely yearn for ... exactly as we did every other year. It’s true. Despite temperatures that stay in the nineties all summer and frequently soar above 100, most West Aussies still live without climate control, and we were among them. It wasn’t so bad in the port city of Fremantle, where we live, and where, even on the hottest days, the Fremantle Doctor—the famous sea breeze off the Indian Ocean—comes to the rescue by early afternoon. Giving up our ceiling fans would be tough though—especially for Sussy, who prefers to sleep in a stiff breeze in all weathers, like a wolf cub.
    If worse came to worst, I reflected, we could always fill up the big clawfoot tub with cold water and soak ourselves like navy beans. We used to do this when the kids were littler and more biddable—and when it gets really hot and no one’s looking, I still do. It’s not the most dignified way to chill out, but once you break through the pain barrier and cross over to feeling like human luncheon meat, it’s way cool. Bill talked about reviving his favorite childhood cool-down strategy and making an “ice baby”: a dishtowel packed with ice cubes and fastened with a rubber band, which one takes to bed and hugs like a new teddy bear, or a transitional husband.
    The only thing I really worried about was my hair (a topic on which Thoreau provided not the slightest scrap of inspiration, incidentally). Although I’d tried to downplay it all their lives, the truth is, Anni and Sussy had a genetic predisposition to hair-related OCD. I had codependency issues with my straightener too—especially since I’d stopped coloring my hair. Anne Kreamer’s book Going Gray had been one of the highlights of my literary year, and I’d become a complete convert to the cause. So far, the experience had been reasonably positive. I looked less heritage-listed than I’d feared—more Susan Sontag than Bob Hawke. I’d recently had bangs cut and found that with daily straightening, it looked borderline chic. Without daily straightening, alas, it looked borderline freak: wavy and cowlicked, like the warden of a women’s prison on the late movie.
    It’s funny the things you cling to when you whittle down life to its barest essentials. Thoreau found he absolutely could not live without a volume of Homer in the original Greek. For me, it was really, really straight bangs.

    January 3, 2009
     
    THE LAST NIGHT, 10:17 p.m. As I write these words, a mere two hours from the start of Operation Hellhole, a full-scale media binge is under way. The girls are stalking a newfound hottie through the many mansions of MySpace, goddaughter Maddi (here on holiday) is taking nourishment from her Sidekick in gulps, and Bill sits becalmed and, I fear, benumbed before his computer game. It’s that hi-def gladiator one again: enormous men with tiny heads, slavegirls in push-up bras. There’s a whole lot of smiting going on.
    A bit of grumbling on the way home from Gracetown today, but it’s hard to fight properly after two weeks of holiday. On arriving home, Anni found the strength for one final (or so I hope) tantrum. “What you’re asking us to do is not fair. You’re not even asking. You’re just telling!”
    I “acknowledged concerns” because I thought it was a good mediation strategy, but also because she’s right. She announced dramatically that she would “have to move to Dad’s—but I resent it!” All sparked by my refusal to delay The Experiment