Dead End Gene Pool Read Online Free Page B

summoned a birthday hostess image of the Merry Widow: she was wearing her signature black stretch pants, Beatle booties, and favorite swirly Pucci blouse. Her skin was as toasty golden brown as a pretzel, her shoulder-length lemon-colored hair side-parted like a starlet’s, and she held out a layer cake of heroic color and proportion, and questionable flavor. She was fond of maple or tutti-frutti cake mixes, which she enhanced according to whim, with whatever was on hand, like adding to the batter tinfoil-wrapped charms that you broke your new molars on. She wasn’t great with presents either. She was the kind of person who told you on the gift card outside exactly what was on the inside. However, she made up for it with her contagious enthusiasm. And her decorations and games were truly inspired. No insipid Pin the Tail on the Donkey for us; it was a real donkey and a real horse tail that you had to slap on the animal’s butt with masking tape. Or, in the case of my brother’s most recent birthday party, a thumbtack, which caused the donkey to place his hind feet on the ribs of Brian O’Donahue and send him flying backwards into the library bookcase.
    She really was the best. All the kids in my class were so jealous of me.
    Overwhelmed, I began to cry, which put me close to drowning in my mayday position.
    “Twenty-three . . . Hey, look down there on the ground! They’ve put Crazy Foam all over the place!” my brother squealed. He was having a blast.
    “Shut up, dumbbell,” I hissed, and bit his elbow for good measure.

    I stared at him with self-indulgent hatred as the airplane droned steadfastly in its orbit over Queens. Will was only a year and a half older than me, but my grandparents treated him like he was off to college. This past Christmas, instead of a pony, which was what I’d begged for, Santa had brought me an Hermès scarf printed with Lipizzaner horses, a fawn-colored cashmere Hermès cardigan with velvet appliquéd horse heads, and a topaz bracelet in a velvet box from Tiffany’s. Nothing you crow about to your second-grade classmates when school reconvenes. My brother, in addition to a television, an electric typewriter, Davy Crockett pajamas, a four-lane slot-car racetrack, and Rock’em Sock’em Robots, had gotten the pony. After all the presents had been unwrapped, I had raged at my mother, who was making a rare Yuletide appearance on a stopover between Palm Springs and Tenerife. We were in one of the guest bedrooms of my grandparents’ apartment in New York. My mother was in a pink striped bikini, stretched out on the carpet in a contorted pose beneath a couple of carefully positioned sunlamps.
    “Why does stupid Will get a pony when I’m the one who takes all the riding lessons?” I’d sobbed from the bed where once again I had flung myself.
    My mother had done her best to comfort me. She totally got the horse-love thing. Speaking in a monotone without moving, so that her eye protectors wouldn’t shift, she said, “I’m sorry, Toots, I know how you feel, but your grandparents gave him the horse. Don’t look at me.”
    “Why didn’t you stop them? You should have told them he hates horses!”
    “Oh, get over it. They decided he should have a horse. End of story.” She was done comforting. “And listen, if I were you, I’d get over potato chips too. Oink, oink.”
    I put my hands up to my chipmunk cheeks. As if she could see this, my mother smoothed her own hands over her nutmegcolored, flat-as-a-cow-pie abdomen. She flexed her painted toes a few times to ease the strain of the peculiar tanning position she was in.
    “Hey. Sometimes that’s just how the cookie crumbles.”
    I got up to leave. I had a mind to go finish the bag of Cheetos I’d hidden in the help’s pantry.
    “I know where your stash is, Toots,” she said as I was doing my best Indian walk out the door. “And hey, tell Adolph, or Albert—whatever the new butler’s name is—tell him to bring Mummy another