April 1, 2014
Keep the Books. Burn the Censors.
I knew I was being stared at.
I even knew by whom.
It was the "why" that had me wondering.
"Am I a suspect? Do I have pasta in my teeth? Has my face turned green?" I asked, pulling the last from a recent viewing of Gone With the Wind. I did the best owl turn I could manage, twisting my head and looking at the stoic figure in the corner behind me.
Ducky continued to stare in his measured way that, to me, means he has his psychologist hat on. "I just wish I had seen you and Ray growing up."
Talk about left field! "Well, he was enough older that we didn't fight—except over the TV, maybe. You know he took me to Woodstock—"
"That could explain some things," he murmured.
"And I had driver's ed in school, but when he came home that summer, he thought me some maneuvering tricks." At his puzzled look, I elaborated. "Think The Pacifier. A little bit."
"That definitely explains a few things."
"Hey! I'm not as bad as Ziva!"
"True." He cocked his head. "I'm just wondering what it is in your early relationship that would explain why he's trying to turn Alexandra into the next character in a Steven King novel."
"What the heck do you mean?!"
He strolled out of the kitchen, returning shortly with a file box, which he put on the breakfast table. "He dropped this off when you were at the store this morning. They're books for Lexi."
How sweet. Almost unnecessary, given that she lives at Papyrus, shops with wild abandon when we go to any of the competition, and the three bookcases in her room are all double stacked. I made sure the chicken was frying evenly before I came over to the box. "From your face, I'm curious. Ted Bundy biographies? Lovecraft? Necronomicon?" I popped off the lid and started thumbing through the three dozen or more oversized paperbacks, going more slowly with each book. "I'll kill him."
I grabbed the phone and dialed by memory. Not Ray and Barb—Mom and Dad. "Mother? Mom! Ray is out of the will!"
I could picture her patient look. "What did he do? Sneak in and change the labels on the canned goods?" (That's right, he and his best friend, Jerry, did that in 8th grade.) "Set a dozen alarms between 2AM and 5AM and hide them throughout the house?" (Sophomore year in high school. I thought Daddy was going to kill him twice for that one.) "Send 15 pizzas to you? Prop a bucket of ice water over a half open door? Swap the salt and sugar?"
"He brought over a box of books for Lexi!"
Mother knew Ray well enough that she knew this was not as innocent as it sounded. I could almost hear her squaring her shoulders. "I'm ready. What was it? Helter Skelter? Egyptian Book of the Dead?"
"Calvin and Hobbes! Dennis the Menace! Foxtrot!"
Mother gasped. "You're right. He's out of the will. Or…" You could hear the smile over the phone line. "Don't get mad—"
"—get even?"
"Get one up."
I love my mom.