The Clayborns
Published: Ink-Filled Journal (print journal)

Darrell has been born again, which means that he has given up bartending, smoking and drugs. He broke up with Calli and is seeking custody of their 5-year-old daughter, Lynette. He met his new girlfriend, Ellen, at a Friday night prayer meeting. Ellen takes over babysitting duties for Lynette while Darrell works the night shift at Fix-It-Right Auto Parts. This means that Marianne, Darrell’s sister who is unmarried and has a steady job as a bookkeeper for a drilling company, no longer picks Lynette up at daycare.

Marianne doesn’t go to church, which in the eyes of her mother puts her in the same “lost” category Darrell was in before he got reborn, even though Marianne doesn’t smoke or use drugs. Marianne does attend AA meetings. She has never been much of a drinker, just a beer once in a while, so she cannot stand up at a meeting and say, “Hello, my name is Marianne and I’m an alcoholic.” Nevertheless, the meetings comfort her and there is no singing.

Singing is one of the reasons that Marianne quit going to church. The music was always in a key that hurt her throat, and Mother nudged her if she wasn’t singing. But the main reason that Marianne quit attending church as soon as she got her own apartment was the misery of the drive home after the pastor asked Mother, “When are we going to see Brother Ned again? Or I saw Ned at the hardware store yesterday and expected him to be in church this morning. Is he sick?” All Mother can do is tell a lie. “He’s got another migraine.”

Dad never went to church because he liked to go to fishing in the summer and hunting in the winter. The lie, though, incited Mother’s tantrums in the car about everything from Marianne’s wardrobe to her choice in music and sometimes included Mother flailing a punch at Marianne when the car was at a stop signal. Darrell and Poppy, Marianne’s perfect younger sister, sat peacefully in the backseat.

Now that Darrell has returned to church, Marianne is the alien in the family and losing Lynette to boot. Lynette who was hydrophobic until Marianne gently taught her to paddle in the baby pool. And afraid of stairs until Marianne said, “You can do it,” and watched Lynette come down the outside stairs of the apartment building one at a time on her own.

Marianne has lost Lynette to Ellen. That same Ellen who told Darrell (who told Marianne) that Marianne is possessed by demons. Same for the pretty waitress at the truck stop where Darrell fuels up on Route 62. Calli is possessed by several demons, according to Ellen. In fact, every woman who has any contact (i.e. influence) with Darrell needs an exorcism according to Ellen, which takes out of her vocabulary the words I’m jealous.

On a Thursday morning, Darrell testifies under oath that Calli is an unfit mother, a drug addict and whore. The judge awards full custody of Lynette to Darrell, and Calli breaks down weeping in the courtroom. Then she goes home and takes 15 Demerol, which causes her to go into a 3-day coma and ends with her being locked in that part of the local hospital assigned to criminals. This is such an embarrassment to the Clayborn family, that no one ever mentions Calli again except in a whispery, sad voice.

Darrell and Ellen get married a week later and move to Ellen’s hometown 40 miles east on the Interstate. Lynette is not told anything about her mother, even when she asks. Darrell gets a new job.

*****

Marianne can only go to Mawmaw’s in the middle of the night because the farm was sold to a stranger by Aunt Fish, executor of “the estate”, about 5 minutes after Mawmaw died. The very day the sale closed, Aunt Fish, Aunt Blanche, Mother, Aunt Geneva, and Uncle Jackson stripped the house like piranha. There wasn’t so much as a nail left in the wall.

Everybody related to Mawmaw by blood got a share of the proceeds of the sale. Marianne’s share was $400, and she used part of the money to buy Mawmaw’s old white pickup truck from the estate. Even though nobody wanted it because it wasn’t running at the time, Aunt Fish said it was only fair that Marianne pay $100. Marianne hired Todd, a boy she knew from high school, to tow it to Jensen Auto Repair where he worked. Todd cleaned the battery cables and tuned it up, and that’s how Marianne ended up with a classic 1968 Chevrolet pickup with 36,000 actual miles on it. Aunt Fish stopped sending her birthday cards.

Marianne wonders if she really got all of her inheritance because Aunt Fish is a liar. Uncle Finn isn’t really Angela’s father. Aunt Fish, who was called Susan before she married Ward Finnegan (Uncle Finn) and Mawmaw started calling her Fish, loved a boy named Billy Logan. Billy got drafted into the Army and was going to Vietnam, and he and Aunt Fish-Susan had sex to say goodbye.

Aunt Fish-Susan got pregnant and wrote to Billy at boot camp, saying she was in trouble, but he never wrote back. Aunt Fish-Susan quickly went out on a date with Uncle Finn and had sex with him and told him she was pregnant. They got married right away, and Aunt Fish all along has claimed that Angela was premature.

Marianne knows all this because Billy Logan’s sister, Donna, had gotten a letter from Billy in which he told Donna about the pregnancy and that he didn’t want to marry Susan. After Billy went off to Vietnam where he stepped on a land mine and died, Donna confronted Aunt Fish, demanding that Angela be told that Donna was her aunt. Aunt Fish said, “The entire Logan family is off their heads!” Then she consulted a lawyer who sent out a letter to Donna threatening a slander suit if anymore was said about Angela and Billy. Donna never said anything again, mostly for Angela’s sake, but Angela has red hair and freckles just like all the Logans. Everyone can see that.

Aunt Fish tells Marianne that the man who bought the farm is fixing to bulldoze the house to the ground. This is not a big surprise to Marianne since the new owner never patched that place in the roof that blew off in a storm last spring, so now that whole side of the roof has caved in.

Marianne leaves the pickup truck on the shoulder of County Road 967 and climbs over the padlocked gate. She walks straight up the caleche drive carrying an ax. When she reaches the porch, she starts chopping at the weathered pine boards until the ax strikes through. Then she pulls off a section of pine 3 inches by 3 feet and carries it back down to the truck.

Marianne nails the pine board to the wall of her apartment and she touches it when she leaves the apartment and when she comes home, like it’s some kind of religious artifact. After a month, she screws some hooks into the board and hangs three pictures from it. Her and Mawmaw. Mawmaw and Grandpa. Her and Lynette.

*****

April is the cruel month of the Clayborn family picnic, which is held at Washamaga State Park on Route 17 off the Interstate. Aunt Blanche, who is considered the creative one in the family because she has her own show on access TV, tapes the family picnic every year and airs it on her show.

Darrell brings Ellen and Lynette. Five-year-old Lynette is wearing glasses. Her pigtails are gone and her hair is short and permed. She looks like a character from a comic book. All during the picnic, Ellen complains how much trouble it is to deal with Lynette’s hair. Aunt Blanche is the only one to ask her why she cut it off since it’s so much easier to keep a little girl’s hair in pigtails. Ellen asks someone to pass the potato salad. Marianne wonders if Ellen is ignoring Aunt Blanche because her question makes so much sense or because she knows that Aunt Blanche’s unmarried daughter, Sharlett, is a lawyer who lives in California and got pregnant at a sperm bank.

Aunt Fish steps close to Mother and murmurs that Spunky has arrived with his girlfriend. Spunky is Aunt Geneva’s only child. His girlfriend, Melinda, is five months pregnant, which annoys Mother no end, particularly today since this is something that Ellen will see, and she hisses to Aunt Fish “Where’s Geneva!”

Aunt Geneva sits at the end of a picnic table next to Lynnette who is eating an apple. They both stare at Angela’s twin sons playing soccer with a plastic ball. Lynette is wishing she could play with them, but Ellen has made her wear a fancy dress that hangs almost to her ankles and told her not to get dirty. Gossip, when gossip finally got around to Ellen, was that she put Lynette in that dress hoping she’d get dirty and prove that she is a heathen.

Aunt Geneva watches the boys wishing she was that young and happy. Since she married Uncle Rock, her happiness has only been in tidbits and always tinged with anxiety. She once believed, foolishly, that putting a ring on Rock’s finger would end her insecurity. Rock lost the ring that first week they were married. Geneva found it the next time she turned on the garbage disposal, and Uncle Rock refused to wear it all scarred up like that.

Aunt Geneva looks at the children and wishes Spunky was still that young too. Too young to get a girl pregnant and point the finger at the kind of mother she must be to raise a boy like that. Spunky put that loud muffler on the Camaro that Rock gave him last year when the football team went all the way to the State Championship (and lost). He never hangs up his clothes and Aunt Geneva is afraid to go in his room ever since she found that magazine that made her shudder. Uncle Rock takes Spunky’s clothes to the dry cleaner with his own.

Spunky is generally rude to her, and Aunt Geneva asked him not to come to the family reunion. Spunky laughed. Uncle Rock laughed too. The two males rode to the reunion in the Camaro and stopped to pick up Spunky’s girlfriend, which gave Aunt Geneva time to load three suitcases and a shoebox into the trunk of her car. Inside the shoebox is 20 years of savings – 60 Kreugerands and $46,810 in cash.

At first she saved the cash to surprise Uncle Rock with a new wedding ring, but after she’d saved over $1,000 which was plenty, she just never got around to going to the jewelry store. Six years ago, when Uncle Rock came back from a hunting trip with a condom in his suitcase, Aunt Geneva started buying her clothes at garage sales, taking tuna fish sandwiches to work for lunch, and cutting her own hair. Saving became an obsession.

Six weeks before the family picnic, Aunt Geneva turned in her retirement papers for her job as administrative assistant with the State Trooper’s office. Yesterday, they gave her a going away party with a cake. She left work an hour early to get to the lawyer’s office and sign the divorce papers so that Uncle Rock would get served on Monday.

Aunt Geneva can hear Darrell introduce Ellen to Uncle Rock and Spunky. She can hear Spunky introduce his pregnant girlfriend and then to say to Ellen, “That’s my mother over there.” Aunt Geneva does not turn to wave, she simply opens up her pocketbook, takes out her car keys, and walks to her car. No one sees her hands shaking as she starts the engine.

Aunt Geneva, whose only grist for the family gossip mill has been how badly she dresses for someone who has a civil service job, will now provide episodes of stories. For months, Uncle Rock will beg her to return from Oregon even after he’s been seen in Watkins Steakhouse with Rhonda Sherwood. Doesn’t she want to see her grandchild? And where in the world did she get the down payment for that duplex in Portland?

Uncle Rock notices Aunt Geneva drive away, but thinks she’s just gone home, and he’s glad because he won’t have to see her frowning face when he takes two cases of beer out of the trunk of the Camaro. Mother frowns in proxy for Aunt Geneva, but that doesn’t stop Dad from popping one open.

All the uncles help themselves, except Uncle Jackson who brought his own bottle of chardonnay. Uncle Jackson never married and is considered the sensitive Clayborn. Sensitive enough to amass a fortune buying and selling French antiques.

Marianne is the only female to grab a beer, which draws a glare from Mother. Poppy drinks after work at the Bar Exam on 6th Street near the courthouse, hoping to snag herself a lawyer husband, but wouldn’t dare tarnish her reputation with Mother by having a cold one in front of the family. To further the irony, Poppy works at the Acme Microbrewery as production manager. Along with proudly pointing out the salary and benefits of Poppy’s job, which includes a very large annual bonus, Mother declares, “She doesn’t drink the stuff.”

Ellen fills three plates with barbecued meat, corn on the cob, potato salad, beans, and cole slaw then suggests blessing the food with prayer. Angela is so surprised, she squeezes the mustard container too hard and splats mustard on Uncle Rock’s pant leg. Uncle Rock, who was star linebacker in high school, is built like an overstuffed chair with huge legs that make it convenient to spill anything on him. He is the type of man who smiles with condescending amusement when anyone annoys him. He smiles that way at Angela.

Aunt Fish is annoyed at Rock for giving her daughter that look, and she asks him if his prostate medication is giving him any trouble.. He quietly makes a pun, “ I’m hard as a rock.” This infuriates her and she stomps away.

Mother carries her Bible to work with her everyday, always gives the blessing at the family picnic and is not going to be outdone by Ellen when it comes to religion, suggests. She says, “Let’s wait until everyone has a full plate before saying the blessing,” then turns to Marianne and seethes in a whisper, “Lynette’s hair looks ridiculous.”

Ellen puts a big blob of relish on Lynette’s hotdog. Everyone knows Lynette hates relish or anything vinegary, but Ellen forgot, and too bad because Lynette will be demanded to clear her plate until she sobs, chokes on her food, and throws up. Darrell, Ellen, and Lynette are the first to leave the picnic.

*****

In the beginning, Aunt Blanche’s access television show was called Like Martha because she worships Martha Stewart. It has been on the air for three years and gone along pretty well except for a few little glitches.

One Halloween, Aunt Blanche showed her guests how to bob for apples in a tub and her wig fell off into the water. Then there was the episode where she showed everyone how to make their own foundation bracelets with thick rubber bands that you can get for free at the post office. She told her viewers to “Just write the name of your favorite foundation on the rubber band with a pen and you can sell them to your friends for a dollar.” After that episode, seven nonprofit organizations called the station complaining. There was also an episode about tanning gels that didn’t go so well. There is no oven at the station, so on cooking episodes, Aunt Blanche has to bring the food already prepared and pop it out of a microwave oven that isn’t even plugged in.

A few weeks into her second year, a production company from Los Angeles contacted Aunt Blanche about purchasing her parody show. Aunt Blanche turned them down stating, “It’s not nice to make fun of people.” After that she changed the format of her show and renamed it Here’s Blanche. Now, she invites guests to talk about celebrities they like, experiences they’ve had at local restaurants, and diets.

Marianne is surprised when Aunt Blanche asks her to be on the show. She doesn’t know much about celebrities and only eats out once a week, always at the Pancake Diner. She never goes on a diet, but she feel that she should because since the picnic she has been eating full bags of potato chips with dip and a pint of ice cream for supper, and as soon as the news comes on, she orders pizza. Marianne has gained 13 pounds.

Aunt Blanche explains that her fall programs are focusing on makeovers. “These makeovers don’t include anything crazy like a haircut. These are culture makeovers to help us understand people from other lands,” Aunt Blanche says. “Last week I dressed Annette McIntyre in a berka.” Marianne’s cultural makeover includes an embroidered polyester Mexican dress and huaraches.

Monday night they shoot the before look, Marianne’s regular jeans and t-shirt. She turns 360 degrees in front of the camera. On Tuesday morning, with camera rolling, Aunt Blanche braids Marianne’s hair in two braids, then applies foundation, blush, eyeliner, mascara, lip liner, and lipstick to her face.

Marianne goes behind a screen to change clothes. They do the after look, and again Marianne does a 360-degree turn for the camera. This time with fake applause and whistles. Aunt Blanche asks Marianne, “How do you feel?” Marianne replies, “I feel like going to Mexico.”

“Oh! You should!” Aunt Blanche declares. “We should all go to Mexico. That’s all for today.”

Marianne wears the dress and makeup to work even though it makes her feel a bit like a clown. The UPS guy flirts with her and asks if she ever goes out for a drink after work. Marianne is not attracted to the UPS guy.

*****

Sharlett announces that she is getting married at home in September and her 8-month-old daughter will be flower girl in the wedding. Turns out, there was no sperm bank. Sharlett had her child by a married lawyer who is now divorced and is marrying her.

At first, Mother refuses to attend the wedding because she can’t support that kind of immorality. Aunt Fish asks her, “Don’t you want to see this spectacle?” Well, when you put it that way.

Ellen also refuses to attend at first, but the wedding and reception are being held at Uncle Jackson’s house. Darrell definitely wants to attend because Uncle Jackson has a 5,000 square foot stucco house built around a courtyard with swimming pool. And no children.

Darrell tells Ellen, “We have to support Sharlett for finally doing the right thing.”

Over twenty guests arrive from LA, which says a lot for the strength of Sharlett’s personality since the nearest major airport is a 2-hour drive. Sharlett wears an ivory-colored silk and lace dress and holds her daughter and a bouquet of white star lilies in her arms during the ceremony which lasts 5 minutes. The groom appears to be drunk. Aunt Blanche tapes the wedding for her program.

Sharlett wants to get on with drinking, so she rushes through tradition and throws her bouquet from the altar to Angela, which is embarrassing because Angela’s husband makes a snorting sound. Angela gives the bouquet to Lynette, which infuriates Ellen who grabs it and hands it to Darrell who hands it to Uncle Jackson who says, “I’ll just put these in some water.”

In the kitchen, Uncle Jackson finds Marianne pouring herself a rum and ginger ale and tells her, “These are for you.” Marianne looks at the flowers, then rushes to the guest bathroom. She spends five minutes sobbing on the toilet, then wipes her face on a monogrammed yellow hand towel, staining it with mascara. When she calms down, she folds the towel so the stain doesn’t show and heads back to the kitchen for her drink.

Uncle Jackson has gone to encourage the guests to begin eating and drinking, and Marianne is alone when Mother comes into the kitchen and says, “I’m going to lie down in Jackson’s room.”

As soon as Mother leaves, one of the guests from LA enters the kitchen. He and Marianne stand in awkward silence as the guest mixes a drink. Then he breaks the tension by asking, “What’s an attractive woman like you doing in here alone?” Marianne is wearing the polyester Mexican dress and thinks how stupid that sounds. When she doesn’t respond, he notices the flowers and says, “Oh, you caught the bouquet so you’re next.” Marianne bites her cheeks to keep from crying and responds in a shrug, thinking how phony people from LA are.

A band starts to play and within 30 seconds Mother comes into the kitchen and says, “Where’s your father, it’s time to leave.” Music outside of church makes Mother very anxious because it could lead to dancing. Marianne notices that Mother’s eyes are glazed over. She smiles, thinking that Mother didn’t go into Uncle Jackson’s room to lie down with a headache. Mother was looking for Uncle Jackson’s sleeping pills and apparently she found them.

*****

At Christmas, the Clayborn family pretends they are right out of a Dickens’ novel. The big family dinner rotates from aunt to aunt, skipping Uncle Jackson who once served escargot and fois gras and never got on the rotation list again. This Christmas is at Mother and Dad’s. Gift giving is in the morning, and the rest of the Clayborns will come over at 4 p.m. for the meal.

Poppy gives Marianne a sweater that is 2 sizes too small for her now that she has gained so much weight. Poppy deliberately leaves the tag on it so that Marianne can see it was an instant closeout costing $.28. Mother gives her a box of chocolates, and Ellen and Darrell give her a Bible with her name on it in gold letters.

Marianne gives them all the same thing. A pound of different varieties of gourmet coffee. Except for Lynette. Marianne gives Lynette a Cinderella doll. Lynette unwraps it and immediately breaks into a smile, but then she looks worried and asks Ellen, “Can I keep it?” Ellen is silent. Lynette tells Marianne in a sad voice, “Fairy tales are evil.”

Marianne turns to Ellen shouting, “You are such a bitch!” Suddenly there’s a buzz in the room. Ellen stiffens and tells Darrell, “We’re leaving!” Darrell looks confused. Dad goes to the bathroom. Mother starts picking up the gift wrappings, not knowing whether to shout at Marianne or applaud. Poppy says to Marianne, “You always ruin Christmas.” Marianne slaps Poppy hard and pushes her away. Then everyone knows what to do. Blame Marianne.

Marianne leaves and drives out to Mawmaw’s where she confirms that the house has been leveled and every part of it removed except for the cement porch stairs that give her a creepy feeling. Then she goes to an AA meeting. When she gets home, she orders a pizza delivered and eats it while drinking two bottles of Mexican beer as she watches wrestling on cable TV.

*****

The day after Christmas, Marianne gets a card from Aunt Geneva. In it are a money order for $1,000 and a note reading: Buy yourself something nice. Marianne cashes the money order and buys a Kreugerand. She puts the rest of the cash in a shoe box in the back of her closet.