Fathermucker by Greg Olear Page B

has his McCain/Palin sign on his lawn, although that ill-matched tandem flamed out almost a year ago—will neglect to cut his grass in a timely fashion, probably because it’s difficult to navigate his John Deere tractor around the ancient BMW carcass rusting on his lawn, and I have a powerful urge to get my own mower going and cut it myself. I feel the same way about Haven’s hair. It’s all I can do not to drag him to the bathroom right now and shave his head with one of Jess’s Lady Schicks.
    â€œHaven, I said no mouth !”
    As I said before, the difference between Gloria Hynek and the rest of the moms (and dads; fuck, I just referred to myself as a mom; maybe I should sample one of Chris’s microbrews, after all) is that Gloria only has the one child. If she had two kids, or three, like Cynthia Pardo, she wouldn’t give a shit about one of them chewing on some hair. Although if she had more kids, she would keep Haven’s hair short, because short hair is easier to maintain and harder for ticks and lice to hide in.
    Jess returns, bearing a platter of Stop & Shop cookies (which, incidentally, are baked on the premises and quite tasty) and my cup of coffee. Thanking her, I take the cup and three chocolate chips. She then offers the platter to Gloria, who waves it off.
    â€œThey look delicious,” she says, “but I can’t.” When no one asks her why she can’t, she supplies the reason herself. “Isagenix.”
    â€œIsa-who?”
    â€œIsagenix. The cleanse? Sounds crazy, I know, but it totally works. I’ve lost four pounds, and I’ve never felt better.”
    Gloria is short and curvy, with fair skin, strawberry blonde hair, pendulous breasts and a booty that would “spring” Sir Mix-a-Lot. Even at her slenderest—at age twenty-five, the magical and well-chronicled year she spent in Portland, dabbling in a raw foods diet and sleeping with both of her housemates—she wasn’t slender, but she gained twenty-seven pounds when she was pregnant with Haven, twenty-seven pounds she’s been unable to shed in the intervening three-plus years. It’s not from lack of trying; she’s gone on every fad diet, and attempted every fad exercise, known to man—South Beach and Crossfit, Zone and yoga, Weight Watchers and “willPower & grace,” Atkins and hooping—but the excess poundage remains intractable. Never mind that she looks great, that she wears the weight well (despite what the kingmakers in Hollywood believe, most straight guys prefer curvy women; whenever a Lindsay Lohan or a Kate Winslet starves away her God-given boobs and butt, rendering her figure as flat and uninteresting as Justin Bieber’s, men the world over rend their garments). She’s forever beating herself up for being beefier than her old friend Jess Holby, next to whom skeletons appear plump.
    â€œIsn’t that the starvation diet?” Jess wrinkles her nose. “Ruth told me about that.”
    â€œNot starvation.” Gloria produces a barrette from her pocket and puts it in her son’s hair, unobstructing his line of sight but making him look even more like a girl. “I mean, fasting is part of it, but it’s all about, you know, purifying the body. You should see the stuff that comes out of your body. Disgusting.”
    â€œWhere is Ruth?” I ask, not wanting the conversation to veer into the scatological, which with Gloria, it would. Gloria is the Queen of TMI. She’ll tell you anything about herself, no matter how private. This can be amusing when she’s discussing clit piercings and Oregonian three-ways, but when the subject is odd chunks of green matter in the stool, it’s best to change the subject. “Is she coming?”
    â€œShe can’t,” Jess says. “Sarah has a stomach bug.”
    â€œBummer.”
    â€œShe thinks she got food poisoning from that batch of yogurt she tried