Reality Boy

Suddenly I don’t want to be in the backseat with crafty Snow White, but I’m covered in all the things she’s given me. A shoe box full of baseball cards. A pair of in-line roller skates. A little ball for my hamster to run around in. And it’s hot back here. And the puppy is thirsty—he makes that thirsty breathing noise with his tongue out. Snow White looks at me and smiles, but I don’t trust her anymore. She knows too much.

I am driving again.

I look in my rearview mirror and see there is no one in my backseat. I glance around the car and there is no inflatable hammer, no puppy. I am not driving to Disney World. The road is made of tarmacadam. I am Gerald. I am Gerald and there is no way I can ever be anyone but Gerald.

EPISODE 2, PRESHOW MEETING

A YEAR AFTER Nanny left us alone, Mom wrote another letter.

I couldn’t stop myself from crapping on stuff all the time because it was the only method of communication that worked to remind them that I was still alive and still angry. Nanny hadn’t fixed us. She hadn’t fixed Tasha, who now, at age eleven, had started to hump pillows on the couch while we were all in the room. Dad would just leave. Lisi would go to her room and read. Mom just turned the volume up on the TV and pretended that humping couch pillows was normal—that her daughter making those weird, erotic faces while watching a Kraft Macaroni and Cheese commercial was totally okay. I was too young to understand any of it.

But just old enough to get yelled at for picking my nose.

So, the rules were: I couldn’t pick my nose, but my sex-fiend sister could hump stuff in plain view of the entire family with no problems.

And so crapping became how I got my point across. We are not okay. Fake Nanny messed us up worse. Mom isn’t doing anything different. Maybe if other people saw it and she had to clean up dressing rooms at the mall or drive home barefoot from her friend’s house because I dropped one in her sneaker, she would have to make so many excuses and apologies that she would get the message. But she didn’t get the message.

She wrote the letter, and Nanny agreed to come back.

The ratings had been good, the producers said. Network Nanny had competed with the other established nanny shows on TV and won. Elizabeth Harriet Smallpiece had finally found her fame in being a nanny who wasn’t really a nanny. She was so good, they let Real Nanny go, which was a bummer because I was pretty sure Real Nanny had Tasha figured out.

They negotiated for more money. I overheard Mom and Dad’s conversation about the whole thing. Dad sighed a lot. Mom talked about the one thing that really worried her.

“I think we should get the kitchen redone,” Mom said. “It’s so outdated.”

“We can’t afford that.”

“But we’re getting money for the show and all,” she said. “And the kitchen is getting old.”

“It’s only fifteen years old. What’s wrong with it? Everything works,” Dad argued.

“But what will people think when it’s on TV? They’ll think we don’t care and that we don’t take care of our house,” she said. “They’ll judge.”

Dad made a grunting noise in his throat but didn’t say anything else.

We had two months until filming. Mom had some guy come and measure the place up and he had a kitchen installed in less than six weeks. He was a cool guy, too. Talked to me like I was normal. Let me help him and gave me my own little screw gun so I could play with offcut pieces of wood. I didn’t crap in his toolbox once.

And then Nanny came back—first for the initial visit, which was mostly reintroductions. I tried to find her purse so I could crap in it on the first day, but she put it up high on the new fridge and I didn’t have a chance to get it. I planned on doing that at least once, though.

But then the weirdest thing happened.

She pulled me aside.

“Gerald, I know things are very unfair for you he-ah,” she said. “I’m going to try to get your mother to see that this time ’round.”

I didn’t trust her, but I nodded even though no one was telling me to nod, because there were no cameras yet.

“Did you hear me?” she asked. Her hair was even bigger now, as if it was inflating to keep up with her idea of herself.

“Yes.”

“And what do you think?” she asked.

“I think that’s good,” I said.

“So you’ll help me sort things out, then, will you? And be good?”

I nodded.

“Where’s Real Nanny?” I asked.

She looked a little hurt but then smiled. “She’s taught me everything I need to know. I’m flying solo this time ’round. So you’ll be good, yeah?”

“Sure. I’ll be good,” I said.

Nanny didn’t say much to anyone else before she left. The producer and director had talked to Mom and Dad and said they’d be back the next day for the usual setup. I looked forward to it.

After Nanny left, Mom and Dad sat the three of us down and promised us that we would go to Disney World if we could show TV viewers that we were cured. All four of them looked at me when they said this. Lisi and Dad smiled and did encouraging things. Mom and Tasha frowned and squinted at me.

Afterward, while I was brushing my teeth, Tasha came into my bathroom and slammed me up against the wall with her hand around my throat. As I swallowed a mouthful of toothpaste out of fear, she said, “I’ve wanted to go to Disney World my whole life. Everyone else in my class has gone. So if you mess this up for me, I’ll kill you.”

I couldn’t sleep that night. I was too full of thoughts about my promise to Nanny-Big-Hair and about how Tasha was going to kill me. These two facts duked it out in my head for hours. And then I realized I didn’t want to go to Disney World, because Tasha was going to Disney World.

So at two in the morning, I got up and sneaked into her room and got her Barbie Princess Cinderella’s Carriage and laid a turd in it. In the morning, without a word to me or anyone else, Mom put the horse and carriage and turd in the trash. Before the camera crew arrived at nine in the morning, she went to Toys“R”Us to replace it.

I AM HUGGING the ketchup. To everyone else, I am simply filling the condiment containers. But in Gersday in my head, I am hugging the enormous industrial bottle of ketchup that is really the anonymous hockey lady who cares about me. I need her in my life. I want to find her at the next hockey game and ask her if I can come over for dinner. No one at her house would say I swing the other way just because I don’t like to eat my breakfast to the sound track of my sister getting laid. No one would try to cut off my air supply. They probably don’t care about the inch of moisturizer at the bottom of the bottle.

nly I don’t want to be in the backseat with crafty Snow White, but I’m covered in all the things she’s given me. A shoe box full of baseball cards. A pair of in-line roller skates. A little ball for my hamster to run around in. And it’s hot back here. And the puppy is thirsty—he makes that thirsty breathing noise with his tongue out. Snow White looks at me and smiles, but I don’t trust her anymore. She knows too much.