Free Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea by Chelsea Handler Page B

nipples. Now picture the suspenders attached to a pair of sweatpants. This vision is what first led me to coin the term “camel balls.”
    My father came back inside and headed straight for Charley. “Hold up, Dad,” Sloane interceded. “You need to go wash your hands. Pronto.”
    He looked at my sister as if she had asked him for heroin. My mother then took the spray water bottle she was using to iron and sprayed my father in the face. “Melvin, you know you have to wash your hands when the babies are here.”
    My mother likes to pretend that she’s on top of the hygiene factor because my brothers and sisters are always dropping their kids off with her, but the truth of the matter is, my mother isn’t washing her hands all that much either. My mother is European and likes to remind us of that every time any of us ask her when she took her last shower.
    My father returned from the bathroom holding up his hands to show us the water dripping. “All clean.” Then he came back and sat on the couch across from Charley, chanting her name but not pronouncing the letter r , so it sounded like “Chahley.” He does this slowly but loudly about fifteen times in a row at random intervals throughout the day while my sister sits with her eyes closed.
    The phone rang and my mother looked around, startled, as if a helicopter had just landed on our roof. “Telephone!” my father yelled out. Not only can neither one of them ever find the actual phone, but on the rare occasion when they succeed, the battery is almost sure to be dead, or the answering machine has already picked up. I’ve never had a phone conversation with either one of my parents when the answering machine didn’t pick up or I didn’t hear static. “Where is the goddamned phone, Sylvia?” my father asked her.
    “Look in between the cushions,” my mother said, as she ran around the room like she was trying to catch a mosquito. “Here it is,” she said, as she picked up at the same time as the answering machine. “Hold on,” she told the person as I got up and unplugged the answering machine. “It’s for you, Melvin; it’s the manager at Shop Rite.”
    “Aha. This is Melvin…. Yes, sir…. Okay then. Very good.” Click. The dial tone is the only indication to any caller (myself included) that the phone call is over. “All right, everything’s all set. You have a book signing Monday morning at the Shop Rite,” he said, looking in my direction. My sister started to perk up—she found this new development very amusing. Her eyes were still closed, but a large smile had emerged on her face and her shoulders were shaking.
    “Now, how are we gonna get the books?” he asked.
    “First of all, Dad, I’m not doing a book signing at a grocery store. Second, we can’t just have the publisher overnight us books; it takes a couple of days,” I told him.
    “Well then, call Amazon,” he said.
    “You can’t call Amazon, Dad, you have to order them online and it’s not like they just hot-air balloon them over. Furthermore, I’m not signing books at a grocery store. Who’s even going to show up?” I asked him.
    “I’ll print up flyers,” he said, which caused my sister to spit up a little bit.
    “Print up flyers?” Sloane asked him. “You can barely use the telephone.”
    “Where am I going to sign the books, anyway?” I asked. “In the produce section?”
    “Really, Melvin, I don’t know if that’s really Chelsea’s audience,” my mother chimed in.
    “What about the car wash?”
    “No,” I said.
    “How about the deli?”
    “No.”
    “I sold three at the Starbucks the other day.”
    “To who?” my sister asked.
    “To customers, Sloane! Who do you think? I told them my daughter is a bestselling author and she’s a graduate from Livingston High School and they should buy the book. I’ve been a salesman for forty-some odd years. You don’t think I know how to move a couple of books?”
    “Well, if you’re such a good salesman,