The McGillicuddy Book of Personal Records Read Free Page A

a friend today.” She put a hand to his forehead. “How can you get sunstroke in an air-conditioned movie theater?” Her look of concern suddenly changed to one of suspicion. “Lee,” said Gertrude, eyes narrowed, “ please , tell me you weren’t doing another one of your fool marathon records again …”
    Lee knew his mother wasn’t going to like this. He remembered the day she finally put her foot down and tried to squash his record-breaking stunts. It had been a rainy afternoon when she’d come home from work to find him in the kitchen on his pogo stick. He happened to be two hours and eighteen minutes into a record of non-stop bouncing and the linoleum still had the dents to prove it. There had been no need for his mother to say a word. He could translate the angry smoke signals that had poured from her red ears that day: Verboten . No more records. The end. And now here he was with sunstroke.
    Lee looked up now at his mother’s broad shoulders. There was a reason she’d been hired as a security bouncer at the Country and Western. Aside from her size, she had a presence that let you know at once that she wasn’t about to put up with any monkey business. Lee had heard stories of grown men who had been known to cower past her and out the club door after merely receiving one of her “I think it’s about time you were heading home” looks. Lee knew she had a soft side, but not everyone did.
    â€œYour lipstick’s on crooked,” said Lee, hoping to buy a little time. Gertrude always wore a bold swipe of lipstick the same color as her bright red neckerchief.
    â€œNever mind that,” said his mother. “Didn’t I make it a bun dantly clear to you that …”
    But Lee was gone. He just made it to the bathroom in time. Rhonda squeezed her eyes shut and wrinkled her nose as she heard him retch.
    Gertrude sighed, went to the kitchen for a cool cloth to put on Lee’s forehead, and met him at the bathroom door. “Come on, kiddo,” she said, gently leading him down the narrow hall to his bedroom.
    Agnes grabbed a plate of homemade gingersnaps, and she and Rhonda tailed Gertrude (well … more accurately, Agnes tailed Gert, and Rhonda tailed the plate of cookies) and squeezed in the door before Gert could shut it.
    By this time, Lee was moderately confident that the danger of barfing in front of them had passed. He looked at the trio at the foot of his bed and imagined he was viewing them through the lens of a video camera—zoom in for a close-up of their faces, zoom back out for a full frontal view of three goofy people framed against his bedroom wall like some kind of wacky portrait—okay, hold it; now freeze that frame. If he weren’t feeling so crappy, he’d be tempted to laugh at this bizarre picture of extremes: Rhonda, as short as he was tall, Agnes as thin as his mother was wide. It was as if they were made of silly putty and some kid had come along and stretched them this way and that for his own crazy amusement. It seemed to Lee that life was all about extremes. At school, for example. Kids were either very cool, or way uncool. They either came from nauseatingly normal families, or totally weird ones. Sometimes Lee wished he could just be Joe Average—dive right into the mainstream and coast along the current with everybody else. More often, though, the thought of being “ordinary” seemed like the worst life sentence in the world.
    Agnes plumped his pillow, then sat on the edge of his bed and offered him a cookie. Aggie was every bit as strict as his mom, but she didn’t mind letting her affection gush out in a way that would have embarrassed his mother.
    â€œYou sure you don’t mind, Agnes?” said Gertrude. “Because I can book off work if you’d rather—”
    â€œâ€™Course I don’t mind,” chirped Agnes. “Sonny’ll be just fine here with