Chapter NINE
Re-Gift
My friend Lydia and I had been living together in Santa Monica for two years. I was having a hard time learning the lesson of why it’s
not a good idea to live with friends. Along with not drinking and driving, not having sex on the first date, and always carrying a
tampon, this was yet another example of me learning my lessons the hard way.
Lydia has the work ethic of Santa Claus: She prefers to take most of the year off. While my work ethic is not much better, at least I
can blame my lack of motivation on the fact that Oprah and Dr. Phil now air back-to-back.
Lydia was working freelance for a publicity firm that allowed her to go in for a couple of hours a day, or every other day. She
preferred to “work from home,” or what I like to call “work from bed.” She got the job from a publicist friend of hers named
Aubrey, who was a complete and utter basket case.
At around noon on a Wednesday I got an e-mail from Lydia inviting me to Aubrey’s birthday dinner that very night. The e-mail was in
the form of an Evite and was sent to Ivory, Ivory’s roommate Jen, and me. There was one other person on the list—someone I had never
heard of but whose name I didn’t like the sound of. The number of invitees for her “thirtieth birthday bonanza” totaled five. And
the heading read, “Aubrey wants to be with her closest friends for her birthday tonight. Can’t wait to see everyone!” Ivory’s
roommate Jen had met Aubrey once.
Aubrey is the type of girl who insists on telling unbearably long-winded stories that go absolutely nowhere with no point and no punch
line. Not only does she present them as if she’s doing a one-woman show on Broadway, she takes painfully long pauses, leaving the
listener wondering if the story has ended or if she is just making up details as she goes along. The most ridiculous part is that she
tells these tales with the same gusto Richard Simmons would use to gear up for a back handspring. She’ll build up momentum tantamount
to a downhill slalom, only to reveal after a laborious forty-five minute monologue that Mariah Carey likes to take baths with her dog.
In between these painfully long diatribes she somehow also manages to insult the listener.
“Chelsea,” she said upon meeting me for the first time, “I have to be honest, normally I don’t love dark roots on blondes, but it’
s weird how they kind of frame your face. You’re so angular!”
The backhanded compliments are not nearly as annoying as her stories, or the complete and utter disappointment you experience after
getting sucked in to one of these tales expecting a pot of gold, only to get a pile of shit. Ignoring her is the obvious option, but it
doesn’t work. The problem with this tactic is that if you look away or appear disinterested, she’ll simply turn up the volume. She’
ll speak louder and louder until you are paying attention, and if you try to change the subject, she will interrupt you. The simple act
of listening becomes exhausting. “Land the f*cking plane!” you want to scream at her.
Another unappealing quality about Aubrey is that she is always telling you the kind of person she is. “I’m a very loyal friend,” she
’ll tell you in the middle of one of her stories, with the emphasis on I’m. “I’m one of those people who will give someone the
shirt off my back,” she’ll stand up to say, as if she was a rabbi giving a sermon.
It’s been my experience that people who make proclamations about themselves are usually the opposite of what they claim to be. If
someone truly is a loyal friend, then they wouldn’t need to broadcast it; eventually, people will figure it out. Who talks about
themselves like that? I have a lot of good friends and not one of them ever introduced themselves by saying, “I’m a very good friend.
”
The more time I spent around Aubrey, the more I realized that she was simply born in the wrong decade and would have been better off
doing vaudeville in the twenties. I made it very clear to Lydia that she wasn’t allowed to bring Aubrey around anymore.
Unfortunately, Lydia is not a good listener.
I promptly responded no to the Evite, wrote something about having diarrhea later that night, and headed back to bed to rub one out
with my vibrator. A full minute hadn’t gone by before the phone rang, which I ignored. Then my cell phone rang. I looked at the screen
and saw Lydia’s cell phone number. “This is Chelsea,” I said upon answering the phone.
“Chelsea!”
“What?”
“Listen, I don’t want to go to this f*cking dinner either, but she is really upset about turning thirty and she’s not speaking to
anyone in her family, and she really needs us there.”
“What are you talking about, ‘needs us there’? I’m not even friends with her, and I don’t appreciate getting seven hours’ notice
for someone’s birthday dinner,” I told her. “And by the way, the fact that she’s not speaking to anyone in her family is a pretty
good indicator that she is the problem.”
“I know, but she had no plans and I feel terrible. It won’t be bad if we all go.”
“I have pinkeye.”
“No, you do not.”
“Yes, I do, my eyes are all red.”
“That’s because you’re hungover.”
“Listen, I feel bad for her too, but I can’t stomach an entire dinner with her. Those stories are just too boring. Plus, I don’t
have a present for her, and I’m certainly not buying one.”
“Just get her something cheap; it’s not like you have anything to do today,” Lydia said.
That annoyed me. “Listen, you have no idea what I have planned for my day,” I said as I put my vibrator down. “Where are you anyway?
You sound like you’re in a washing machine.”
“I’m in the bathroom, because I didn’t want Aubrey to hear me calling you. She thought you were serious about the diarrhea and I
told her you were just kidding.”
“I was serious about the diarrhea.”
“Chelsea, stop it! You need to do me this favor tonight and come. How many of your stand-up shows have I been to?” This was true.
Lydia was pretty loyal and she would come to show after show of mine and laugh riotously after every punch line despite the fact that
she’d heard it a million times before, even when the jokes were about her.
“Oh, fine! But if my eyes don’t clear up, I may have to wear a patch.”
“Good, I hope you do.”
“I hate you,” I said, and hung up the phone.
I needed a gift. I went into my closet and looked for something I hadn’t worn yet, or maybe something I hadn’t worn in awhile that
looked new. I looked at an old pair of boots and wondered if I could pass them off as vintage. I had never re-gifted before and didn’t
know what the guidelines were. I decided to call Ivory, who, incidentally, had a job that she went to on a daily basis.
“Can you believe this?” I asked her when she picked up the phone.
“No, actually, I can’t. Can Aubrey tell if I’ve viewed the Evite?”
“Yes,” I told her. “And Lydia says we all have to go.”
“I know. She’s instant messaging me right now, saying you’re going.”
“Apparently I am.”
“Well, maybe it will be fun if we all go,” Ivory said.
“No, it won’t be fun. Can you get her a gift from us?” I asked.
“Chelsea, I’m at work, I don’t have time to go out and get her a gift. I’ll probably give her something someone gave me. I barely
know the girl,” she told me.
“That’s what I was thinking too. I have a first-aid kit I’ve never used.”
“I have to go,” she said hurriedly and hung up.
I looked around my apartment at all the possible things I could re-gift and was torn between a picture frame that held a picture of me
and my sisters, and a candle that had only been lit once. My head bobbed back and forth between the candle and the picture frame, the
same way it would if I were watching a tennis match. After what seemed like a long period of time, I finally decided I really liked the
picture frame, and I would just cut the top part of the candle wick off. Lydia walked in the door as I was looking for my pocketknife.
“Well, that was a hard day of work you put in. It’s almost one p.m., you must be exhausted,” I said, rummaging through my fanny
pack.
“Ugh, Aubrey is so annoying. She’s been crying all day, going on and on about turning thirty; it is so f*cking depressing. I had to
get out of there.”
“I’m giving her that candle,” I said, pointing at the candle I had placed on our coffee table right next to an old newspaper I was
planning on wrapping it in.
She walked over to take a closer look at the candle. “It’s already been used.”
“I’m going to cut the wick off,” I told her.
“Then how is she going to light it?”
“Not my problem.”
“Chelsea,” Lydia said, in the same tone my gynecologist used when I told her I would need a month’s supply of morning-after pills.
“I’m sure you can find something else. You can’t give her that.”
“Sure I can,” I said as I went over to my computer to check my e-mail, since that is primarily what takes up my day. I love e-mail
and much prefer it to the telephone. I had two new e-mail messages. The first was from my brother, who sends me daily greeting cards
from a site called gbehh.com. This one had a bunny rabbit holding a piece of paper that read, “You’re a fag!” There was a personal
message from him underneath that said, “Chelsea, I just finished Melvin’s taxes, and according to my calculations, last year our
father raked in a grand total of $7,300.62!” My brother Greg is an accountant and is constantly updating me regarding our father’s
finances and tax evasions. None of my brothers or sisters has any idea how our father supports himself, and my brother Greg thinks it’
s hilarious.
The second e-mail I opened was from my friend Morgan who lives in San Diego. She e-mailed me a picture of her dog. Alone. Morgan is
also the girl who gave Ivory a gold cross for her birthday one year. Contrary to her name, Ivory is the most Jewish person any of us
know. She is constantly using Yiddish phrases, loves food more than anyone I know, and is my only Jewish friend who actually goes to
temple.
I understand if people want to e-mail pictures of their babies by themselves, but there is no way I’m going to join Kodak’s photo
gallery to look at a picture of someone’s pet standing by itself in front of Niagara Falls. This is not the first time this has
happened to me, and I was actually pleased because I had gathered the materials necessary to respond appropriately. I clicked reply and
sent Morgan a picture of my cleaning lady. Standing next to the toilet, alone. I attached a message that read, “Not interested? Me
neither.”
“I’m not letting you give Aubrey that candle, Chelsea,” Lydia said as she put the candle back on the shelf where I found it.
“Well, I’ve spent the last hour trying to find something and I refuse to spend money on a present. Can’t we just buy her dinner?”
“Look in that closet, you have tons of shit in there. I’m sure you can find something,” she said, pointing to our hall closet the
same way someone would yell “Sit” to a dog.
“I’m giving all that stuff to Fantasia,” I told her.
“Who is Fantasia?” Lydia asked me.
“Um, I don’t know, maybe the cleaning lady we’ve had for two years?” I reminded her.
“Her name is Florencia, Chelsea.”
I stared at her, wondering if this was true. Florencia did have a familiar ring to it. But I could have sworn Florencia was a name from
my past.
“Well, whatever,” I said. “She’s been calling me Yelsea since she started working here and I go along with it. Every time I call
her I have to say, ‘Hi, Fantasia, this is Yelsea.’”
I was looking through the closet when I found the present that Ivory bought me for my twenty-sixth birthday. Ivory had gone on and on
about this present for months leading up to my birthday. “Chelsea, I can’t wait to give you this gift!” she kept telling me over and
over again. “I know you so well, this is the perfect Chelsea gift.” With all the hype she gave it, you would have thought she had
bought me a vibrator that could also make tacos.
After three months of enticing me with the “most amazing gift one person could buy another person,” she gave me a board game called
Rehab. Not only do I make it a personal rule to never play organized games, if an occasion presents itself where I am forced to play
one, I prefer it not to take place on a giant piece of paper. It’s called a board game because it’s supposed to be on a board. This
game came with a giant piece of paper the consistency of loose-leaf that had different rehabilitation facilities spread over it, much
in the same vein as Monopoly. It came with some wooden pieces that I actually burned one night when we ran out of firewood.
“I’ve got it!” I yelled to Lydia as I pulled out the Rehab game. Next, I opened up the Yahtzee box that was on top of the closet,
stole three of the dice, and put them in the little plastic Rehab bags, along with a couple of the wooden pieces that were partially
scorched.
Lydia walked over to the closet. “Oh my God, I forgot about that game. I actually played that one night.”
“You did?” I asked. “With who?”
“I don’t know. I can’t remember.”
“Were you alone?”
“I may have been,” she said as she opened the refrigerator and took out a bottle of Chardonnay.
Luckily, the box the game came in looked like it could have been new. I wrapped it up in the newspaper I had set aside. Then I took a
black Sharpie marker and wrote “To: Aubrey, From: Chelsea” directly on top of the newspaper.
“Wait, Chelsea.” Lydia laughed. “Ivory is coming tonight! She’ll see the game and realize what you did.”
“Oh, who cares?” I exclaimed, exhausted from the day’s shenanigans. I needed to burn off some steam. I walked into my bedroom and
dropped to do a set of push-ups. After the third, I got up and walked back into the kitchen, where Lydia was sorting through our bills
with a confused look on her face. She did this every month, questioning one bill after another, wondering aloud why we would be charged
for electricity two consecutive months in a row.
“That’s usually how things work, Lydia.”
“No, it doesn’t make any sense. Last month we were charged $47.32, and this month we were charged $75.45.”
I then inspected the bill and explained to her that we never paid last month’s bill, and that was the reason for the increase.
“Still, it doesn’t make any sense,” she said, confused.
“It makes perfect sense,” I told her. “If someone’s pulling the wool over our eyes, I’m pretty sure it’s not Southern California
Edison. This isn’t Erin Brockovich, Lydia. We’re talking about tens of dollars.”
Lydia is five years older than me and never has any money. In the entire time I lived with her, she never paid her rent on time. She’s
the type of person who says, “I’m really broke right now,” and then takes off to Vegas for the weekend.
“Well, I’m really broke right now, so I hope this dinner isn’t expensive,” she said.
“Yeah, so do the rest of us, Lydia. No one wants to go. And why would anyone want to have a birthday dinner with a bunch of friends
who are complaining about going? It’s sad, is what it is.”
“Chelsea, she has no friends.”
“Another red flag,” I reminded her.
“Okay,” she said, lighting a cigarette. “That’s it, you’re right. Let’s have a better attitude.”
“Uh-huh,” I said, looking at her sideways. “I’m going for a run.”
“Fine, but dinner’s at seven-thirty,” she said as she poured herself a glass of the cheap wine she had opened.
“I think I’ll be able to make it back in the next six hours,” I said, looking at my watch.
“It’s only one thirty?”
“Yes, what time did you think it was?”
She put her glass of wine in the fridge along with the newly opened bottle. “I can’t have a drink at one-thirty.”
Lydia was a complete mess. The older she got, the more of a disaster she became.
When I got back from my run, Lydia was on the phone with our telephone company asking why we were being charged for a fax line if we
hadn’t actually received any faxes that month. Along with her electric company conspiracy, she was also under the impression that we
were living at Kinkos and faxes should be free.
I grabbed a bottle of water and headed to the shower. After watching Oprah and Dr. Phil, it was time to do something productive. I had
been seeing a therapist for nearly three weeks and was getting the sinking feeling that she was no closer to prescribing me medication
than when we first met.
When I told her that Vicodin was to me what cocaine and horse tranquilizers were to Amy Winehouse, and that without it I would not be
able to continue performing at such a high level, she tried to explain to me that Vicodin was a pain medication and it wasn’t for the
depression I was claiming to suffer from.
Not to be outdone, I gently but firmly explained to her that the depression I was suffering from was causing a very large pain in my
head. It was back and forth with this woman, and I was exhausted. It didn’t take me long to realize this was money that could be
better spent. I grabbed the yellow pages, skipped right past the list of psychiatrists, and started jotting down names of psychics.
At around 6 p.m., Lydia came into my room to say that Jen and Ivory would be meeting us there. “Great!” I exclaimed. “I’m looking
forward to it!…Where is this dinner, again?” I asked her.
“Cobras and Matadors, on Beverly.”
“Do they have a full bar?” I asked sternly. I vaguely remembered that Cobras and Matadors only served beer and wine and I am strongly
opposed to such limitations. I prefer vodka and I generally like it in mass quantities.
She scrunched up her face. “Sorry.”
I shook my head, brushed by her quickly, and walked into the kitchen. I took my flask out of the cupboard and my Ketel One out of the
freezer. Now I would not only have to bring my own lemon juice that I routinely carry with me everywhere to mix with my vodka, but I
would also have to supply my own vodka. In addition to being at someone’s birthday party whose last name I didn’t even know, I would
also be bartending.
“Do you think they’ll have ice?” I asked Lydia. “Or should we empty a couple of ice trays into a beach cooler?”
“I have to stop by the Gap and get her a present,” Lydia informed me. “They have that sale rack, so I’m sure I can find something
cheap.”
We stopped on our way to the restaurant and I waited in the car while Lydia shopped for a total of seven minutes. She came back with
two tank tops and a box.
“How much were those?” I asked, wondering how I would feel if I got two tank tops as a thirtieth birthday present.
“Two ninety-nine each.”
“That was nice,” I said.
We walked into Cobras & Matadors and were led to a rectangular table. We were the first ones there, so Lydia sat in the seat directly
across from me.
The next person to arrive was her friend I had never heard of. Her name was Six. Like the number. I could tell by her outfit that this
girl was going to be trouble. She was wearing a plaid miniskirt with black tights and open-toed, high-heeled, red patent-leather
sandals. Her present was in a red gift bag tied together with a black ribbon. These were obviously her theme colors.
“Are these the gifts?” she asked as I finally looked up from her shoes. She was pointing at the present that I had placed in the
middle of the table with an unsure look on her face. Her hair was black and in a ponytail that was placed about two inches away from
her forehead. Her shirt had nothing to do with the rest of her outfit. It was a pink button-down sweater that belonged on Katie Couric.
Her lipstick was whore red, and outlined with black lip liner, or what could have very well been eyeliner. She didn’t have a stitch of
makeup anywhere else on her face and she was wearing black hoop earrings that must have been made out of limestone, because her lobes
looked like they were going to detach from the rest of her ear at any moment. In addition to this, she was blowing bubbles with what I
could only assume was a giant gumball.
It was obvious that Lydia and I would need to avoid making eye contact with each other for the rest of the evening. Lydia and I have
the maturity level of ten-year-old boys when we drink, and Six’s arrival combined with the gifts we were about to give Aubrey was a
surefire sign we were bound for one of our laughing fits that usually only results in two things: us looking like complete a*sholes, or
me having to change my underwear.
“So how do you know Aubrey?” I asked Six, trying not to stare at the whale’s spout on top of her head.
“We actually just met a couple of days ago,” Six told me.
“Oh, how unusual,” I said, glaring in Lydia’s direction. “And where did you two meet?”
“It was the funniest thing,” she told me. “We were both in Trader Joe’s looking for a good multivitamin. Can you imagine?”
It was time for a drink. I leaned into my purse and got out my supplies. “Would you like a cocktail?” I asked Six. “They only serve
beer and wine here.”
“Oh, um, no, that’s okay, I’ll probably just have some wine, but thank you. Last time I had vodka, I got sick.”
“Last time Lydia had vodka, she had sex,” I said, referring to the previous weekend, when Lydia hooked up with a stranger. She woke
up in the morning and scrambled out of bed to find out what part of town she was in, only to discover that the guy she hooked up with
lived in our building.
Aubrey walked in next, and Jen and Ivory were soon to follow. I got up to give Aubrey a hug, but only after Lydia kicked me under the
table. There were three seats on each side of the table. Ivory and Jen were waiting to see which seat Aubrey was going to take. “I
want to be in the middle, it’s my birthday,” she announced as she moved to sit down next to Lydia and motioned for Ivory to sit down
on her other side. Jen took the seat next to Six directly across from Ivory. “This is Six,” I said to Jen and Ivory. “She and Aubrey
met last week at Trader Joe’s.”
Ivory looked over at Six, looked at me, opened her menu, and then held it up to cover her face. Ivory was more mature than Lydia and
me. She would never laugh directly in front of someone’s face; she would wait until they left the room. She also would never judge
someone based on their car, job, or drug habit. She is very open-minded and embraces all different cultures. For example, she is close
friends with a gray-haired, black drug dealer named Roger, who she will stay up with for entire weekends straight, wandering from one
crack-house to another watching him snort cocaine. It doesn’t seem to bother her that Roger is in his fifties or that he carries a
revolver.
Jen’s a little more laid-back than Ivory, Lydia, or me. She’s always around, but usually isn’t the one who makes a scene. She’s had
the same job for five years as a manager of an art gallery and has never had a serious boyfriend, nor does she have the interest. She’
s quite self-sufficient and a little more dignified than the rest of us, except for the one time Ivory and I couldn’t find her at a
party, only to discover her on our way out of the parking garage, having sex in a station wagon.
The waitress came over to take our drink orders and tell us about the specials. “It’s my birthday,” Aubrey declared as she stood up
and motioned for everyone else to stay seated. Aubrey has a twang not unlike Drew Barrymore when she speaks, but much more
condescending. Although she looks nothing like Drew Barrymore, people tell her all the time that she reminds them of Drew Barrymore and
she always acts appalled, knowing full well she loves any comparison to a celebrity.
“I want everyone to know that dinner is on me tonight, because I’m about to come into an inheritance. I’m paying for everyone.”
“Absolutely not,” Six chimed in. “Not one of us here is going to let you pay for your own birthday dinner. It’s simply unheard of!
”
“Yeah,” I said under my breath, as I poured some more vodka into my glass under the table.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Aubrey,” Ivory jumped in. “It’s your birthday.”
“You’re right,” she said as she sat back down. “This whole inheritance thing is really turning into a drag. I mean, you’d think an
inheritance would be something to celebrate…” She obviously wanted someone to ask about her inheritance, and that someone was going
to be me.
“Tell us everything; what is it? What is going on?” I said with complete zeal.
“Well,” she started, “my parents are millionaires,”—the first of many loud coughs from Lydia was heard at this point—“and as you
all know, my brothers and sisters have been fighting over the estate for years.” This was the first I had ever heard of this and knew
there was no way Ivory or Jen had heard any of this either. I also knew that there was no way her parents were millionaires, because
anyone whose parents are millionaires doesn’t go around advertising it. I was zooming in on each of my friends with a hard glare, but
none of the girls would look in my direction.
“I’m sorry,” I interrupted. “Your parents are still alive, right?”
“Yes, they are, but it’s all very com-pli-cated,” she said slowly, as if the whole concept of an estate would be way too much
overload for a brain as small as mine.
“But if they’re still alive, can’t they decide which children get what?” I asked.
“Yeah,” said Ivory matter-of-factly. “You shouldn’t be arguing about this with your brothers or sisters.” Then she tried to change
the subject. “Do you girls all want to split stuff for dinner?”
“Yes!” Lydia jumped in. I was enjoying this and I wanted to hear more. I wanted to know if Aubrey suffered from full-blown
hallucinations or if she consciously made these tall tales up in order to get attention. I’ve been known to lie compulsively too, but
only when I’m so intoxicated that I have trouble remembering the difference between fact and fiction.
“My brothers and sisters are all really jealous of me because my parents have left me the most out of everyone,” she said, loudly
enough to quell Jen and Ivory, who were discussing the menu. She upped the volume another couple of decibels and said, “My brothers
and sisters think I don’t need the money because of my screenplay, but the fact of the matter is (long, dramatic pause)…I probably
won’t see that money for months.”
I couldn’t wait to see who was going to bite the bullet and ask her about that one. Everyone except for Six pretended like they were
looking at their menus. Ivory is very good at tuning things out and was doing just that. Lydia was coughing into her lap, and I was
smiling so hard my cheeks started to shake.
“I know, I know, it’s all so dramatic,” Aubrey said with a wave of her hand in response to no one.
“I can’t believe you wrote a screenplay,” Six exclaimed. “I’m an actress!”
“Really?” I asked. “Do you have, like, a monologue or anything we could see?” Ivory works in television. Ivory pretended not to
hear me and continued looking at the menu. “Ivory,” I said loudly, “Six is an actress.”
“Anyway!” Aubrey was now screaming, for fear the topic of conversation would move on to someone else. “It’s the difference between
like three million and ten million dollars, so I want to make sure I get my fair share!”
“Let’s open presents!” Ivory exclaimed.
“Okay, okay, okay,” Aubrey responded grudgingly, as if we had been begging her to open presents for the past three hours.
The waitress walked over and we all ordered. “Let’s not forget a piece of cake at the end for the birthday girl,” I told her. Ivory
looked in my direction with an unsettlingly calm gaze on her face. “Open mine first,” she said to Aubrey, still staring at me
pointedly while handing Aubrey a small box.
“Seriously, you guys, you did not have to get me anything.”
“Oh, bollocks!” Six interjected.
“I’m sorry, are you British?” Ivory asked her.
“No, but I just got back from England and I love, love, loved it!”
Aubrey finished unwrapping Ivory’s present to discover the very same cross that Ivory had gotten from our friend Morgan months
earlier.
“Oh my God, this is beautiful! I absolutely love it,” Aubrey said as she leaned forward so that Ivory could help her clasp it in the
back. Ivory looked at me with a huge smile on her face, and Jen was wiping her mouth with a napkin—before we had been served any food.
Lydia was slurping down her third glass of wine and was too preoccupied with Six’s ponytail to realize what was happening. It was
amusing to me that Ivory thought she had pulled one over on Aubrey and that we were all pawns in her little game of re-gifting. Little
did she know who would be getting the last laugh tonight.
Six took her present off the pile next. Aubrey opened it to find a basket of lotion and bath oils. Lotion and bath oils are the most
impersonal gift you can buy someone, which is why it’s perfect that when she opened Jen’s present next, it was another basket of
lotion and bath oils. This was getting good. “Oh, how funny!” Six exclaimed, clapping her hands together.
She reached for my present, but I knew patience was a virtue and that soon I was going to have my moment in the sun. “Open Lydia’s
first,” I told Aubrey as I watched Ivory continue to ride her wave.
“What are you laughing at?” Aubrey asked Lydia, who was now starting to laugh more and more uncontrollably. This was all too much for
her. When Lydia laughs hysterically, it’s infectious. It is also not long before she starts snorting. I was trying to avoid losing it
completely and kept averting my eyes from Lydia to Ivory, who had assumed Lydia was still laughing at Ivory’s clever gift to Aubrey.
Ivory was looking at me proudly, like she had given us all a night to remember.
“Let’s take a picture!” shouted Aubrey, as she pulled out her camera.
I took this opportunity to walk over behind Ivory’s chair and whisper, “You are hilarious, so funny!” and then leaned in, put one
arm around Ivory and the other around Aubrey, and smiled like I had just gotten a B12 shot.
I sat back down on my side of the table and Aubrey opened Lydia’s gift from the Gap.
“That’s sweet,” Aubrey said condescendingly to Lydia. “I know you’re on a budget.”
This was the only time of the night Lydia stopped laughing. I could see her mind scrambling to say something, but surprisingly, she was
able to stop herself. The last present was mine. Ivory leaned in with Aubrey, who was squinting to read my writing on the gift.
“Oh, how dear,” Aubrey said with a grimace on her face. “I haven’t seen newspaper wrapping since the sixties.”
“How do you know about the sixties if you’re only turning thirty?” I asked her inquisitively.
“Ha, ha, ha, somebody is paying attention,” she said with a wink in my direction.
Did this mean she was lying about her age? Aubrey was exactly the type of person who would lie about her age.
She was unwrapping my gift with her head cocked to the side when Ivory’s head also cocked to the side. It brought back memories of the
synchronized swimming team I had never been part of.
Aubrey pulled the Rehab game out and held it up. Ivory was still unsure of what was taking place and looking at the game the same way
you would look at someone you met ten years ago.
“Wait a second! That’s the same game I bought you for your birthday,” she said, perfectly oblivious.
“Yes,” I said, with my teeth closed and eyes wide. “The exact same.”
“But where did you get it?” she asked, genuinely perplexed. “I found it at some store in the Valley.”
My expression remained the same as I responded, “In my apartment!”
Aubrey was too horrified by her gift to be paying attention to all the commotion at the table. Lydia’s composure had long since
vanished and she was now vacillating between snorting and violently shaking. Jen has a quieter laugh but had her head in her hands with
her shoulders bouncing up and down. I had my drink in between my legs and was trying to redirect the urine that was seeping its way out
of my vagina. Six had no idea what was going on, and it was taking Ivory even longer to connect the dots.
“Did somebody already play this?” Aubrey asked as she emptied the mismatched pieces in their little plastic bags that were no longer
sealed. That’s when Ivory’s mouth opened.
I tasted blood in my mouth from biting my lip so hard, but had to retain composure. What if blood just starts spilling out of my mouth?
I thought. I thought of the scene in Million Dollar Baby where Hilary Swank chews up her own tongue trying to kill herself and
envisioned Clint Eastwood coming over to my table and telling me I was his “Baklava” or whatever the hell he called her in that
movie.
“What is so funny?” Aubrey asked, looking at Lydia, who was face-to-face with the wall next to her, slapping her hands against it.
Any normal person at this point would be completely disgusted by our behavior. Not Aubrey. She was so wrapped up in her own bubble of
delusion that the next thing out of her mouth after seeing each one of us laughing hysterically was, “Who wants to make a toast?”
Before anyone responded, Aubrey interrupted herself and stood up.
“I just want to say (long, dramatic pause)…that without any blood relatives at the table, I want everyone here to know that this has
been the single most meaningful birthday of my life. I am the type of person that will remember this for the rest of my life (another
long, dramatic pause, this time with tears)…I want you to know that when I get my inheritance, and my family, who have caused me
nothing but pain…”
“We’re your family now,” Ivory interrupted, and got up to give Aubrey a hug.
I stood up. “Oh, Chelsea, that’s sweet, you want to go next?” Aubrey asked.
“No, I just need to use the bathroom.” I grabbed my things and went to the bathroom. After I was done, I headed straight out the back
door, around the front of the restaurant, got in my car, and drove home.
The next morning around 9 a.m. I was checking my e-mail when Lydia walked through the door looking haggard. “Thanks a lot for leaving
last night, a*shole. I had to sleep over at Aubrey’s house with that girl Six. Aubrey ended up crying all night long and telling us it
wasn’t even her birthday. And then she tried to get us all to take a bath together.”
“What?”
“Yeah, Ivory and Jen were so pissed. They both got up and made toasts. Then three hours later we ended up at Formosa, where she
reveals that she’s actually thirty-six and has no brothers and sisters. They both said they were going to the bathroom and left me
there. Ivory took the game back. She said she’d rather give it away to an orphan.”
“I can’t believe that, what a lunatic!” I said.
“I know. Can you imagine lying about having brothers and sisters? She’s a sociopath who—”
“No,” I interrupted. “I can’t believe Ivory thinks Rehab is an appropriate game for an orphan.”
“I’m going to bed,” she said, and walked into her room.
I sat at my computer, elated. It turned out that there was someone out there who was even more mentally unstable than me. And that
special someone’s name was Aubrey.