You Better Not Cry: Stories for Christmas by Augusten Burroughs Read Free Book Online Page B

scribbled
Monkey?
in the corner. “I have to revise this,” I told him. “I’ll have a fresh copy for you in the morning.”
    “Margaret!” my father shouted. “Stop your damn daydreaming.”
    My mother startled and looked up from the salt and pepper shakers, seeing me for the first time. “Hey there,” she said, smiling warmly. “Do you have a fever?”
    “No, Margaret, he doesn’t have a damn
fever.
He’s been standing here for well over five minutes with his little Christmas list. How you could not see that is beyond my understanding.”
    My mother reached for her pack of cigarettes and pulled one out. She placed it into her mouth and then turned toward my father and extended her face. She closed her eyes like she was expecting a kiss.
    My father lit her cigarette.
    “Listen, you bastard,” she began, blowing the smoke right in his face. “I do not need to be attacked by you today. I am on a new medication and it makes me feel very cotton-blooded.”
    “It’s cotton-headed, you madwoman, the expression is cotton-
headed
. Now, I was just telling little Augusten here about my pet chimp. I’m not sure he believes I even had one.”
    My mother turned and looked at me. “Oh, your father had a chimpanzee all right. It
hated
him. Now, it may not be as exotic as a captive primate, but one year my daddy gave me a goat for Christmas.”
    “Oh, not this damn story again,” my father said.
    My mother didn’t even look at him. She just kind of talked over her shoulder at him, her eyes on the ceiling. “John. Gordon. Robison. The day I can have those words carved onto a headstone will be the happiest of my life.” Then she looked back at me. “It was a scruffy, scrappy little billy goat and I absolutely adored it!”
    “Wait, you got a goat for Christmas? But you didn’t live on a farm.”
    “Of course I didn’t live on a
farm,
” my mother said, bringing her hand protectively to her neck. She laughed at the absurdity of the notion, as though I had asked her if her first boyfriend had been a rooster. “Daddy owned pecan orchards. Oh, just acres and acres of the most beautiful orchards you ever saw in your life. That’s why your grandmother, Amah, sends a box of pecans up here each year for Christmas and I make pie.”
    My mother’s pecan pie. My mouth began to water and I needed to spit. “You aren’t going to make that pie again, are you?” I asked, trying to make it sound casual.
    My mother was not fooled. “
Once.
I used salt instead of sugar just once.”
    My father said, “N-now, I think it was more than once. I think maybe it was once or twice. Because I distinctly remember the year your friend from Portland flew out here, the unattractive girl with the facial hair. The artist?”
    My mother glared at him. “Are you referring to Nadia?”
    My father broke out into a smile and then he laughed. “Why yes! That’s exactly the one. Nadia. What an unfortunate appearance that young woman has.”
    “You are aware that Nadia ended up marrying Clark Hayes, the head of the mathematics department out there at the University of California, aren’t you?” my mother asked. “We met Clark, John. Don’t you remember? Nice young man. About ten years younger than you? Surely, you remember. You both talked about your freshman students.”
    She rose from the table and went to the sink, turning the faucet on. She stuck her cigarette under the stream of water to extinguish it and then she dropped the wet butt into the trash can. “Yes, nice Mr. Hayes. Half your age and head of the department.”
    She stretched, placing her hands on her lower back. “Well, I need a nap. My body has not adjusted to these pills.”
    “Wait,” I shouted.
    Inspiration had struck.
    In my fussiest little boy voice I complained, “This isn’t
fair.
You got a goat and you got a monkey. And last year you gave me a bunch of stupid
crackers
?”
    My mother couldn’t help herself, she smiled victoriously and shot my father a