Austin not Boston Part One

Chris and I departed from Boston with happy hearts, because finally we were going to have a vacation from the dogs. Usually when we go away, I end up wanting to come home a day or two earlier because I miss the dogs, but this time? I had a glorious time without them.

Don’t get me wrong, I love them–but it’s become increasingly difficult to find dogsitters since we moved, and what with all the housing problems we had last year, it had been a while since we got a break from them. Just walking into my Austin hotel room without having to immediately leash up three dogs and take them for a cold walk around the hotel was wonderful.

This trip we left the dogs with Chris’s parents. They were happy to help us out, but probably less happy by the time we returned. Flacko must have thought we were going to move again, because he wailed and whimpered and escaped about 5 times the first night we stayed at the house with them. Luckily, the next night we were in Austin, and the problem was no longer ours.

About all I can say about the trip itself to Austin is that you should never, ever, fly through Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. We landed early in Chicago, but then had to sit on the plane for about 45 minutes before a gate opened up, and by that time we were late. Our connection boarded on time, but we sat on the plane for another half hour because there was a line to take off.

On Thursday, Chris headed off to work at the client’s company, and I met Jessica. She’d mentioned that she was going to borrow her friend Chad’s car, and since I had pictured Chad as a grungy rocker, it came as a surprise when she showed up in a minivan. With several baby car seats in the back.

I jumped in the minivan and Jess explained that she’d borrowed her housemates’ car instead, which relieved me, because I felt it was just wrong for someone in a band called The Transgressors to be driving a minivan.

Jessica greeted me with, “You look exactly the same.”

Since the last time I’d seen her had been nine years ago, I was heartbroken. “I haven’t aged at all?” I asked her hopefully. I didn’t care about looking more sophisticated; after years of being carded for R movies, I was willing to settle for wrinkles or gray hair.

“Um…yeah, sure, you’ve aged!” she lied kindly.

Jessica didn’t lie too well, but I appreciated her effort. We went to her house to change cars, and I met the cats. The many, many cats. There were so many, in fact, and they kept changing positions, that I kept telling everyone that there were five cats in the house before I stopped to count them up by name and realized there were actually six.

Paolo was the youngest cat, and a beautiful solid black. Sadly, he despised me and hissed at me a few times.

“He never hisses at anyone,” Jessica said. “Not even the kids. Maybe he can smell your dogs.”

More likely, he could smell my fear. I’m very allergic to cats, and have never really been exposed to them. I barely understand dogs, and understanding cats was nearly impossible for me. As a matter of fact, the first few times Paolo had hissed at me, I’d thought he was being friendly. Then he tried to eat my hand, and I realized I was wrong.

Jessica’s cats, Aristotle and Sula, were far kinder to me. Sula reclined on the couch, and merely gave me a look up and down and decided I wasn’t worthy of her attention, despite my waving a stick attached to an indeterminate furry thing at her. Aristotle, however, was keen to meet me, and pawed me with his claw when I tried to exit the room.

“How sweet, he doesn’t want me to leave!” I said. “Or, um, he wants to kill me.”

I stepped into the hallway and was immediately accosted by Massimo, Jessica’s housemates’ precocious six-year-old. Supposedly home “sick,” Massimo was bouncing off the walls and was like no other child I had met. He ran up to me.

“Hello!” he cried cheerfully, greeting me with all the aplomb of a TV show game host.

“Massimo, this is my friend Jane,” Jessica told him.

“Hello, Jane!” he said. He beamed at me. “Look at this!” He showed me a purple balloon. “I blew it up myself!”

“Wow,” I said. “With your mouth?” I wasn’t too comfortable with kids, and I wanted to kick myself as soon as I’d finished speaking. With his mouth? Duh, of course with his mouth! Surely they didn’t allow six-year-olds to operate air tanks.

Massimo graciously ignored how stupid I was. “Yes, all by myself and with my mouth. You can have it.”

“Um…” I looked at Jessica for help. “Am I supposed to take it?” I whispered. It was nice of him to offer, but I couldn’t see myself toting a purple balloon around Austin all day.

“Don’t worry about it,” she murmured. “He’ll forget about it in a second. Oh, I want you to meet Nadia and KC…”

“Let’s go see my bedroom!” Massimo cried. He darted down the hallway, gesturing madly for me to follow.

“I think I’m seeing his bedroom!” I called back to Jessica, as I trotted after my guide.

Inside the bedroom, there were two tiny beds, separated by a mattress on the floor.

“I sleep here, and Teo sleeps here,” Massimo said.

“Teo’s his twin,” Jessica said. “Their sister, Allegra, sleeps between them because she likes to be near them.”

Massimo moved back to the kitchen, where he disappeared. I chatted with Nadia and KC, but Massimo soon appeared, waving a piece of paper in the air.

“This is for you,” he said, thrusting the paper in my hands.

I’d read once that the best way to treat pictures drawn by kids was to ask them about it. You were supposed to say, “Tell me about the picture,” so the kid wouldn’t suspect you had no idea what he’d drawn. But in my nervousness, I goofed and pointed at the most recognizable figure on the sheet.

“Who’s this?” I asked. Duh!! The picture said “Massimo” across the top in large, sprawling letters. Obviously it was a picture of himself.

“That’s Teo,” he said. Ooops, I guess the “Massimo” was his signature, and not a label.

Clearly familiar with his art, Jessica said, “And he’s holding his water bottle.”

“That’s right, and it’s filled with strawberry drink and this is a tree.”

“Where’s your sister?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he shrugged. “Wait, I know!” He darted out of sight again, presumably to where the drawing table was.

When he returned, I expected to see Allegra drawn into the picture, but instead there was a bicycle in the corner.

“This is his bike, and he’s going to ride it after he finishes his strawberry drink, and this is his helmet.” Suddenly, Massimo became forty years old. “You have to wear a helmet when you ride a bike, you know,” he lectured me.

Jessica and I left soon after for lunch, where I learned that Texans have a puzzling habit of sticking jalopeno peppers in just about everything. Much in the way that my mother cooks (”Oh, this is vegetarian, no meat in it, well, maybe some pork, and a bit of beef, but really, it’s vegetarian”), the Texans seemed to feel that a sprinkling of jalopeno was understood to be in every dish despite not showing up in the description. My noodles were delicious, however, and by carefully picking out the peppers and avoiding most of the broth, I managed to finish most of it.

Jessica drove me around town, and we checked out her condo-to-be which looks like it will be pretty cool. Being me, I immediately started calculating how much of a profit she would make when the whole thing was done and she sold it, but then realized that maybe I should let her move in first before I talked about selling it.

We also went for bubble tea which was so delicious that I dragged Chris back there the day we left Austin. Yum, yum…I wish I could open a bubble tea place around here, but the price of real estate alone would kill me.

Eventually we went back to her room where I checked out her awesome box diorama thingies and Artist Trading Cards which got me excited about making my own.

We walked past the living room at some point, where Massimo and his sister were watching TV quietly. Allegra was, however, mostly naked, save for a green pair of underpants hanging around her nether regions.

Jessica didn’t seem to find anything unusual about the living room scene, but I couldn’t stop myself. Maybe it was impolite to bring it up in public, but I had to. “Jessica,” I whispered, “that little girl is naked!”

Jessica looked briefly puzzled. “Oh yeah,” she said. “It’s hard to keep clothes on kids. They just come home and strip.”

My mouth fell open, but more was to come. Later when I wanted to use the bathroom, Jessica directed me to the back bathroom. “I think the front one’s out of paper,” she started to say, as she pushed open the bathroom door. “Whoops!”

Allegra was sitting on the toilet, looking ridiculously tiny. Her green panties were around her ankles, and truthfully, we seemed to be more embarrassed than she was. “Yeah? So I’m on the pot,” her expression said. “Gimme a coupla minutes and I’ll be out of your way.”

Jessica apologized to her, and went in to fetch some toilet paper for the other bathroom. I heard Allegra say, “It’s over here” and heard what sounded like an Allegra jumping off the toilet, showing Jessica where the toilet paper was, and then wandering back to the seat. I didn’t look, but that’s what it sounded like.

Massimo later, and inexplicably, showed me a photograph of some kids. “It’s a birthday party.” He whipped it in front of my face, then took it away before I could really look at it.

“Oh, whose birthday?” I asked.

He looked at me as if I were stupid. “Mine and Teo’s. We have the same birthday because we’re twins. Twins come from the same egg inside, and then they go” - he made a wide gesture with his hands, indicating some massive explosion - “and then you have twins.”

I went back to find Jessica. “I’ve been learning how twins are made,” I told her. “I think these kids are smarter than me, and I’m a little bit scared.”

Posted by: ssjane | March 9, 2004 | 3:53 pm
Posted in: This Life