Free Glitter and Glue by Kelly Corrigan

DEVELOPMENT , it says in bold letters across the bottom of every page. In the winter, there’s something called Snow Moot. In the spring, Mudbash. What if he wants to show me his photos from Snow Moot ’91? What if he asks me to be his date for Mudbash ’92?
    Back in my room, where it’s dark enough to pass for midnight, I use a wood pole to push up the plywood that covers the skylight, wincing as I wiggle the board loose. Eventually, it sticks in place, letting the light fill the room. I stand back, thinking there must be a better way, something safer and more permanent … magnets, hinges, a hook. I add this to a list of Improvements to the Tanners that I’ve started in my journal.
    Hem Milly’s nightgown
    Clean living room walls
    Spot-clean velvet armchairs
    Secure skylight cover
    Forget Evan
    By which I mean
Don’t get sucked in. Fix what you can and get back out there to the distant shores
.

 

    The weekend is here, and thank God for that. I’ve been going crazy, padding around in the blue hush of the Tanners. It’s like living in a school library, the way we all tiptoe around, keeping conversation to a minimum. All week, I kept thinking of my brothers barreling through the back door, finding my mom and me in silence at the kitchen table, and saying, “Whoa, who died?”
    At the pub, everyone’s talking about Euro Disney, which opened this week.
    “I reckon that’s America’s biggest export—the big mouse,” our bartender says, tilting a pint glass under the tap. A guy with a shabby goatee drops the line that everyone’s quoting, that Euro Disney is “a cultural Chernobyl,” and I can tell by his tone that he thinks Americans are common philistines. “It’s basically intellectual pollution,” Goatee Boy says, looking at Tracy and me, waiting for a response.
    A jolt of patriotism kicks in, and I can’t
let it lie
, as my mother would advise. “I read in the paper that they hired like twelve thousand people,” I say. “And, seriously, how evil can it be? It’s roller coasters and cotton candy.”
    “Like Australia’s Wonderland!” the bartender jumps in, guiding us back to conviviality. Tracy orders two more beers—Budweisers this time—and we move to a communal table where we can roll our eyes and meet better people.
    “To Donald Duck,” I say, raising my glass to hers.
    “Cheers!”
    In no time, we meet some boys, better boys, boys who agree that America and Australia are basically in-laws now that Tom Cruise married Nicole Kidman. We teach them to play Thumper, our favorite drinking game from college. People love making up signs and doing the motions and having to drain their beer every time they screw up. There’s a lot of flirting, all harmless. Around one A.M. , Tracy and I peel off and head back to the Tanners’.
    Inching our way up the hill, we share the last cigarette, declaring it a Mega Night. In the unlit driveway, we walk quietly past Pop’s window and into a mesh of fresh spiderwebs. We’re covered in threads. We reach around for branches to break up the elaborate, invisible screen that secures the Tanner driveway at night. It’s been years since I went to a Haunted House but the correlation is immediate.
    While we brush our teeth, Tracy says, “Don’t you hate it when people take digs at America?”
    “Bugs the crap out of me,” I say through a mouthful of toothpaste. “I don’t even care if some of it’s true.” I spit toothpaste foam into the running water.
    Before this year, I’d barely considered what it meant to be an American, other than my mother’s dictate that good Americans buy U.S. products made on U.S. soil by U.S. workers. (For the bulk of my childhood, she piloted a wood-paneled Chevy wagon, flinging dirty looks at anyone behind the wheel of a Toyota or a Honda.
Honestly, who do they think gets their money and what do they think they’re doing with it?
)
    Around Main Line Philadelphia, my association with my mother felt unfavorable,