The sound and the fury

I'm recovering from another duty visit to my folks' place, or the House of Dread, as I call it. Whenever I go by, which is about once every week and a half, I'm treated to a bad remake of a Fellini film. As the oldest child, I feel a certain obligation to make sure the triune of elders are doing okay. But once I've been there for about 15 minutes I'm eyeballing the clock, begging Chronos to speed it up a little.

My grandmother is always eager to see me, though she often calls me by my youngest sister's name. She orders Sport to play the piano, and he runs through his repertoire in no time. Meanwhile, my mother is reciting her usual litany of family-oriented news, with a dash of church news for added spice. She finishes with the chilling details of the death of a former San Antonio congregation member. "Pancreatic cancer," she whispers, shaking her head. Dad, stoic and silent, whisks SO away into the study to remove the cookies embedded in the computer. LegoGuy escapes into the magic fingers massage chair, ignoring the nervous energy in the room.

At one point a clock starts to chime. It's the battery-operated Seiko. Mesmerized by its garish tackiness, I watch as the face drops down to reveal a little figure made of red plastic. It starts a manic jig to the tune of "I could have danced all night." At this point my mother puts on her latest CD, purchased from Dollar General. "Fifties classics!"

She can barely contain her excitement, and turns to Sport. "Don't you just love this song?" she asks as "Purple People Eater" starts to play. Now, he's never heard that song in his life, but he nods politely.

The clock treats us to a concert of four additional songs: theme from "Phantom of the Opera", "Tonight", "The sound of music," and "Memory". All the while my mother is talking non-stop, asking questions and then moving on to another subject when I try to answer. After awhile, my responses grow monosyllabic. It's all I can do to keep from screaming.

What terrible thing did I do in some past life? How the hell I ended up in this family, I can't say. I'd like to believe I'm learning a lesson in patience and tolerance, but by the time our hour is up, I'm ready to kill somebody. Most likely myself.

I finally escape from the musical assault and wander down the hall to find SO. As I enter the study, I'm afraid I'll find more than I bargain for. Surely there's a corpse lying on the guest bed in full repose, swathed in a bridal gown. Faulkner may have written stories about creepy Southern families, but he didn't grow up with mine. We'd have provided additional material for his novels, I'm convinced.

Luckily, SO is just finishing with the computer clean-up. We gather our things and head out the door. When we get home, I'm headed right to the garden to pull weeds in an effort to calm my sound-induced fury. My mother is still talking to us from the front stoop, dressed in her lavendar babydoll pajamas. I wave like I can hear what she's saying, rolling down the window, catching her final words as they fall from her mouth and scoot across the lawn toward the car.

"I loooooooooove yoooooooooou!"