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Every Crooked Pot: A novel - Softcover

Rosen, Renee

 
9780312365431: Every Crooked Pot: A novel
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0312365438 ISBN 13: 9780312365431
Verlag: St. Martin's Griffin, 2007

Inhaltsangabe

In her heart, Nina Goldman knows that beauty is only skin deep.   But as a teenager growing up in Akron, Ohio – with her larger-than-life father Artie, a colorblind carpet salesman and frustrated musician – the only thing Nina wishes for is …to be beautiful.   Or at least normal.   As if having such an eccentric dad was n’t enough, Nina has another issue to face: the mirror.   Born with a strawberry birthmark over her eye, Nina spends countless hours applying makeup and trying out ridiculous hairstyles designed to hide her eye.   Convinced that her birthmark is the only reason she ’s not popular and can ’t find a boyfriend, Nina must find other ways to survive high school.   With a string of crazy exploits that have her riding in dryers and appearing on T.V., Nina proves she ’ll do just about anything to fit in, and even more in the hope of finding love.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Renée Rosen grew up in Akron, Ohio and now lives in Chicago. She is currently at work on a new novel.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Every Crooked Pot
the saltwater remedies
The day we got pulled over for speeding, I was sitting in the backseat of the family station wagon--Lissy to my left, Mitch to my right, my Keds straddling the hump. My mother was riding shotgun with my father. It was mid-December of 1968 and I was seven years old. We were on our way to Florida for a business trip my father had disguised as our winter vacation. My father wanted out of the carpet business and thought this was his chance for a steady gig, playing clarinet at his friend's nightclub in Miami. It was a long drive down from Akron, and my father was set on making it to Savannah by the end of the day. That's why we got pulled over somewhere in southern Ohio, clocked at eighty-seven on the radar.
Even before the highway patrolman reached the car, my father was out of the driver's seat, walking toward the cop. "Officer," my father said, hands slightly raised, like the cop had him at gunpoint, "thank God you stopped us! I know I was speeding, but you've got to help me--I've got a very sick child in the car!"
Lissy, Mitch, and I looked at one another, confused, wondering who was sick. Then my mother reached back and gave my knee a squeeze, smiling at me with one brow raised.
I twisted around in my seat to get a better angle on the action. And while the flashing light on top of the patrol car went round and round, I tried timing my eye blinks just right, so that each time I opened my eyes, all I would see was red.
My father and the policeman were talking, but you couldn't hear the cop, just my father. "Officer," he said, "with all due respect, in the time it would take me to explain this to you, it could be too late."
The policeman came closer to the car.
"Listen," my father pressed on, walking alongside the cop, "it's very technical. If you really want to know, the orbital mass in her eye has ruptured." Followed by: "The retinal vascularization is swelling up and her festorial glands are coagulating!" My father was on a roll. There was no stopping him.
The cop muttered something into his ticket pad, his tongue working the inside of his cheek, rolling around like he had a jawbreaker in there. My father hadn't shaved that morning or slicked back his hair with Brylcreem. He looked a mess with his hair jetting out in all directions.
"All you have to do is look at her! Look at her eye! My God, the poor thing's hemorrhaging like crazy!"
I wasn't hemorrhaging. I always looked that way. It was my birthmark. The doctors said it was a hemangioma, but everyone else called it my port wine stain or my strawberry mark. To me it looked more like I'd been punched in the eye. The lid was always puffy and there was a big lump growing out of my eyebrow. The white of my eye was always filled with blood and the outside was all red and purple. The doctors told my parents it was because I had too many blood vessels in my eye.
"Officer," my father continued, "I've got a doctor standingby. He's waiting for us at a hospital in Cincinnati--and if I don't get her there soon, she's gonna lose her sight in that eye!"
Lose my sight? I didn't even need glasses.
The officer tugged on his cap and leaned over to look at me. I made sure the cop got a good shot of my eye, and I knew better than to smile. My father was counting on me. I had a job to do. So I made my bottom lip curl under and scrunched my shoulders up close to my ears. My whole face went all sad, like a clown's. Normally, my eye never hurt, but right then it felt like it did. Given another minute, I could have cried.
The officer looked at my mother, offering her a half-nod, like the crossing guard at school giving you the go-ahead. He turned back to my father and the two men exchanged a few words, then shook hands.
My father got back in the station wagon, leaned his head back, closed his eyes, and started to laugh so hard that his shoulders were shaking. Then the cop pulled out ahead of us in his squad car and switched on his red sirens full blast.
"Hang on, gang! Here we go!" My father revved the engine and off we went, following close behind the police car. My father pointed toward the flashing light on the cop car and howled, "Here comes the Goldman express!" He pumped the accelerator as we whipped past another mile marker.
Instead of a speeding ticket, the officer gave us a police escort to the hospital. We ducked inside the sliding glass doors of the emergency room and waited until the cop drove off. Then my father herded us back to the car and hit the gas. Even with the detour, we made it to the Ohio-Kentucky border in record time.

Outside of Lexington, we'd started playing that license plate game where you try to get all the states. Mitch and I shouted out every plate we saw, even those states we'd already nailed. We could tell we were getting on Lissy's nerves, so we kept doing itjust to make her cover her ears and lean as far away from us as she could. She was three years older than Mitch, six years older than me. She was a teenager now, which meant she was done playing with us.
For a long stretch, ours was the only car on the road. No license plates to be found. We were bored, with nothing to look at other than faded barns, weather-split with Mail Pouch slogans blanched out on the sides. Mitch kept kicking the back of my mother's seat, asking how much longer.
"Not too much," she said, keeping her eyes on the road, like she was the one driving.
My father was slouched in his seat, his shoulder pressed to the window, one wrist draped over the steering wheel, fingers free for snapping. "Do You Know the Way to San Jose?" was coming over the radio, accompanied by the squeaks from the Styrofoam cooler, which was sandwiched in between the suitcases. My father was singing along with all his heart, going, "I've got lots of friends in San Jose/ Wo oh oh oh ..."

When we got to the Holiday Inn that night, my father was in the adjoining room. He was lying on the bed with his right foot dangling off the edge, smoking his pipe as he read the Savannah phone book. That was what he did in every hotel room on every road trip we ever took: He read the Yellow Pages. He said you never knew what you might find.
Mitch and I were in the other room, fighting over my Etch-a-Sketch. He was holding it high above my head, making me jump for it.
"Give it back!" I said, slapping at his arms.
"Uh-uh-uh! Somebody's gonna get hurt." My mother stood watching us from the doorway of our connecting rooms. She was cleaning out the cooler, the lid tucked under her arm as she threw out half-eaten sandwiches and a bag of crumpled chips.
I kept slapping Mitch on the arm until he got mad, dropped the Etch-a-Sketch, and shoved me onto the bed. He leaped on top of me, sat on my stomach, pinning my arms back with his shins while his fingers played typewriter on my chest, hunting and pecking. "ChChChChChChCh--CHING!" He hit my cheek like it was the carriage return.
I wiggled out from under him, got back up, and charged toward him. He grabbed both my arms and turned my hands on me. "Why do you keep hitting yourself, Nina?" he said, whacking me in the head with my own fists. "Why do you keep hitting yourself? Huh? Huh!"
My mother came to my rescue. "Will the two of you just settle down and get ready for bed. We have another full day tomorrow."
"Tell what's-her-name to get out of the bathroom," Mitch said, now bouncing his Super Ball off the headboard.
"Mitchell, will you please--Lissy?" My mother rapped at the bathroom door with the Styrofoam lid. "C'mon now--you're holding everybody up."
Two seconds later, Lissy opened...

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Verlag
St. Martin's Griffin
Erscheinungsdatum
2007
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0312365438
ISBN 13 
9780312365431
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
240
Kontakt zum Hersteller
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