Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs

said.
    “Well,” my mother said heavily, “it’s her husband, Ed, too. He’s not at all supportive of Fern’s relationship with me. And that just creates additional stress. Fern refuses to leave her family. Even though they’re all old enough to take care of themselves. I mean, her youngest daughter is almost your age.”
    “Well, Deirdre, I hope you work it out.” My mother had told me not to call her Mom, to call her by her first name instead. She liked to think of us more as friends than as mother and son. It was healthier and more mature, she claimed.
    “Thank you,” she said. “I hope so too.” Then she brightened. “Did I tell you that I had a poem accepted by Yankee Magazine ?”
     
    Life with the Finches wasn’t all parades.
    I’d been in the spare bedroom listening to Donna Summer and indulging my obsession with my hair by conditioning it with KMS Repair when I’d first become aware of the argument. The shouting was muffled and distant, coming from the other side of the house, but I could clearly make out certain words rising above “Faster and Faster to Nowhere.”
    “Cunt!” This came from Natalie.
    Then, “ Fucking cunt!” from Hope.
    At once, I picked the needle up off the record and headed out of my room. I would need to sneak down the hallway and then lurk. If I’d heard this fight over Donna Summer—it was not to be missed.
    Fights were the essence of 67 Perry Street. We were a vineyard and fights were our special reserve.
    “No, Hope. It’s not about you. You think every fucking thing is about you because you’re so pathetic and have no life of your own.”
    “Goddamn it, Natalie. Why are you so hostile? What did I do to you? Why do you hate me so much?”
    Natalie laughed nastily. “Pure projection. You’re the one who hates me but you won’t admit it, you repressed bitch.”
    “I don’t hate you, Natalie,” Hope screamed with hatred.
    “Denial,” Natalie snapped back.
    My vocabulary had increased dramatically over the past year. Projection, denial, repression, passive-aggressive, Lithium, Melaril .
    In addition to calling each other standard names like bitch and whore , the Finches incorporated Freud’s stages of psychosexual development into their arsenal of invectives.
    “You’re so oral . You’ll never make it to genital ! The most you can ever hope for is to reach anal , you immature, frigid old maid,” Natalie yelled.
    “Stop antagonizing me,” Hope shouted. “Just stop transferring all this anger onto me.”
    “Your avoidance tactics are not going to work, Miss Hope,” Natalie warned. “I’m not going to let you just slink away from me. You hate me and you have to confront me.”
    I glanced over at the grand piano and thought of happier times. Just last week, a chronic schizophrenic patient of the doctor’s named Sue had played show tunes while Natalie, Hope and I stood around the piano singing. “ There’s no business like show business, like no business I know . . .” Sue would play for as long as we wanted her to, provided we didn’t use her name. She insisted on being called “Dr. F.”
    “You need to talk to Dad, Natalie. Something’s wrong with you. I’m telling you this because I’m your sister and I love you. You’ve got to see Dad. Please make an appointment.”
    I heard Natalie stomping and for a moment, I worried she would come into the living room where I was sitting. She would see me and know that I’d been eavesdropping and then somehow pull me into the middle of this thing. But the stomping wasn’t because Natalie was coming into this room. It was because Natalie had wrestled her sister onto the sofa.
    “Okay, you bitch, say it.”
    “Get off of me,” Hope said, and I could hear she was having a hard time breathing. Natalie was a big girl.
    “Admit it!”
    “Natalie, get up. I can’t breathe.”
    “Then you’re gonna die.”
    There was a thick silence and then a strangled-sounding Hope. “Alright, alright, I hate