My father noticed the nonplussed look on my face and leaned in further, like he was telling us a secret he didn’t want the squirrel to overhear. “This,” he whispered, “is no ordinary squirrel. This,” he said with a dramatic pause, “is a magic squirrel.”
My sister and I stared at each other, thinking the same thing: “This,” we thought to ourselves, “is our father clearly thinking we are idiots.” Lisa and I were both well versed in our dad’s storytelling abilities, and we knew that he was not a man to be trusted. Just last week he’d woken us up and asked whether we wanted to go to the movies. Of course we wanted to go to the movies. Money was always tight, so seeing a movie was one of those rare glimpses into the lives of the wealthy few who could splurge on such luxuries as matinees and central heating. These people in the audience, I felt sure, were the same people who could afford real winter shoes instead of bread sacks stuffed with newspapers.
Lisa and me in the front yard in our (barely visible) bread-sack shoes.
When Lisa and I were practically bouncing off the walls from the sheer excitement of seeing a movie, he’d send us off to call both movie theaters in the nearby town and have us write down every showing so we could decide what to see. We’d listen to the recording of the movies over and over to get it all down, and after thirty minutes of intense labor we’d compiled the list, and multiple reasons why The Muppet Movie was the only logical choice. Then my father would merrily agree and we would all cheer, and he would bend down and say, “So. Do you have any money?” My sister and I looked at each other. Of course we didn’t have any money. We were wearing bread-sack shoes. “Well,” said my father, with a big grin spreading across his face, “I don’t have any money either. But it sure was fun when we thought we were going, huh?”
Some people might read this and think that my father was a sadistic asshole, but he was not. He honestly thought that the time that Lisa and I spent planning a movie date that would never happen would be a great break from what we would have been doing had he not brought it up (i.e., hot-wiring the neighbor’s tractor, or playing with the family shovel). I wonder if one day my father will get as much of a kick out of this concept when Lisa and I call to tell him we’re going to pick him up from the retirement home for Christmas, but then never actually show up. “But it sure was exciting when you thought you were coming home, though, right?” we’ll cheerfully ask him on New Year’s Eve. “Seriously, though, we’ll totally be there to pick you up tomorrow. No enemas and heart meds for you! We’re going to the circus! It’s gonna be great! You should totally trust us!” He totally shouldn’t trust us.
These were the very things running through my mind on the night my dad woke us up with the “magical” squirrel. My father seemed to sense I was plotting a nursing-home/circus-related revenge, and his eyebrows knit together as he attempted to gain back our trust. “Seriously, this is a magic squirrel,” he said. “Look. I’ll prove it to you.” He looked into the box. “Hey, little squirrel. What’s my oldest daughter’s name?” The squirrel looked at my father, then at us . . . and damned if that squirrel didn’t stretch up and whisper right into my father’s ear.
“He said, ‘Jenny,’” my dad stated quite smugly.
It was impressive, but both my sister and I were quick to point out that we didn’t actually hear the squirrel say my name, and that it was more likely that the squirrel was just looking for food in my father’s ear hair. My father sighed, clearly disappointed in his cynical children, or the ear hair comment. “Fine,” he said gruffly, giving us a frustrated huff and looking back into the cracker box. “Little squirrel . . . what is two plus three?”
And this amazing, magical, wonderful squirrel raised his squirrely little paw. Five. Fucking. Times.
Immediately I realized that this magical squirrel would be my ticket out of this tiny West Texas town. I would parlay this squirrel into money, toys, and appearances on The Tonight Show. I would call him Stanley, and I would hire a Cuban seamstress named Juanita to make tiny leisure suits for him. Just as I was considering whether Stanley would look more dashing in a fedora or a beret, my father smiled broadly and ripped open the box that was hiding the little squirrel.