Just One of the Guys

“I have a loose tooth!” she announces, opening her mouth. Before I can protest, before I can even get a sound out, her chubby finger shoves a front tooth way, way back to reveal a gaping, crimson crater. A string of blood trickles down, threading through the other teeth. My stomach drops to my knees and all the breath seems to leave my lungs.

“Thee?” Livvy asks, still revealing the pit. A little blood-tinged spittle lands on my hand. “Thee it? It’th tho looth!”

“Don’t…I…honey…” My vision is graying, my hands clammy and cold. I take a staggering step back, bumping into my father, who steadies me.

“Livvy! You know Auntie doesn’t like blood! Show Uncle Mark instead.”

I blink, then shake my head in disgust. “Thanks, Dad.” I sigh.

“My poor little weenie,” he says, patting my shoulder.

The familiar mixture of irritation and self-disgust rolls over me. In a family of alpha-male hero types, not only am I the only girl (and single, and childless), I am also the only wuss. Just in case I didn’t feel different enough. Despite my strapping stature, my ability to run marathons and hike the Appalachian Trail, there’s a chink in my armor, and its name is blood. And gore. The twins, Blood and Gore. I am the only O’Neill who missed the “I’ll save you” gene.

As members of the Eaton Falls Fire Department, Dad, Mark and Matt (and Trevor, for that matter) have saved dozens, possibly hundreds, of lives in one way or another, whether it’s carrying someone out of a burning building or doing CPR or pulling them out of the river or just installing a free smoke detector. Lucky is a member of the New York State Police bomb squad. Jack is a helicopter paramedic, now with a private company in Albany. He was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for a dramatic rescue during his tour in Afghanistan, for crying out loud.

Even my mother, who is five foot two and weighs one hundred and eight pounds, gave birth to five children, none of us under nine pounds, without a drop of painkiller of any kind.

But somehow, I have the embarrassing tendency to faint at the sight of blood. When Elaina invited me to witness Dylan’s birth, I nearly peed myself. Once, at the bris of a friend’s son in New Jersey, I hyperventilated and staggered into the hors d’oeuvres table, ruining two hundred dollars’ worth of deviled eggs, smoked salmon and matzo balls. When we had to dissect a frog in high school, I passed out, hit my head on the lab counter, came to, saw my blood and fainted again.

But I’m taking steps on that front. Though I won’t tell my family about this until it’s over, I recently enrolled in a course to become an EMT. An emergency medical technician. Me. Surely, I like to imagine, buried beneath my layers of weenie-ness and a massive case of the heebie-jeebies, there lurk the genetics that let my brothers enjoy their adrenaline-soaked lives. Plus, maybe there’ll be a cute guy in the class.

“Who wants to play Wild Wild Wolves?” I ask my nieces.

“I do!” shriek Claire, Anne, Livvy and Sophie.

“Who wants to be the hurt bunny?”

“Me! Me!”

I get down on the floor and begin snarling. “Grr! Oh, man, it’s been a hard winter, and I’m so, so hungry! Oh, look! A poor wounded bunny rabbit!” The girls scream with joy and try to crawl away, dragging their legs behind them. I pounce, drag and chew, their screams of joy piercing the air.

“So how’s everything else with my little girl?” my father asks as I gnaw on his grandchildren. His black hair, heavily laced with silver, is mussed. “Did you start work yet?”

“Just the meet and greet. Grr! Gotcha! Delicious! And you’re the only man on earth who refers to me as little,” I answer. “I’m starting Monday, actually.”

“Can’t wait to see your byline.” He winks.

“Hey, Chastity.” I turn to see Trevor leaning in the doorway, smiling, and my knees tingle shamefully.

“How are you, Trev?” I ask briskly.

“Great. How are you?” He smiles in conspiratorial knowledge—ah, yes, the Scorpion Bowls—and my stomach tugs in embarrassment.

“So what’s new at the firehouse these days, guys?” I ask both my dad and Trevor, while still chewing on Claire’s chubby little foot.

“Oh, the usual,” Dad answers. “Fifty pounds of shit—”

“In a five-pound bag,” Trevor finishes amiably.

“Porkchop,” Dad says, “what’s this about you wanting a boyfriend?”

My jaw clenches, but I’m saved by my niece, who crashes into my father’s knees. “Grampa, can you eat us again?” Sophie begs. “Can you pretend to be asleep, and then we’ll play with your hair and then you can open your eyes and say you’re hungry for children and pretend to eat us? Please? Please?”

“Not now, honey. Grampa wants to eat real food.”

“Should have stopped somewhere first, Dad,” Jack calls. I wave to him.

“I won’t have you kids insulting your mother’s cooking. It’s perfectly wonderful,” Dad states loudly. “Of course, I stopped at McDonald’s, so…” he adds much more quietly.

Trevor wanders off to get a beer, so I am saved further humiliation as my father picks up the thread of our earlier conversation. “Anyway, Chastity, why do you want to start dating? Don’t you know what schmucks men are?”

I finish chewing on Graham, who’s the most recent wounded bunny, and stand up. “You need to get over that weird Irish idea that it’s my destiny to wipe the drool off your chin, Dad. And, yes, of course I know what schmucks men are. Look around! You gave me four brothers.”

He smiles proudly.

“I’m a normal person, Dad,” I say with a sigh. “Of course I want to get married and have some kids. Don’t you want more grandchildren?”

“I have too many grandchildren already,” he answers. “I think I may have to start eating more!” With that, he pounces on Dylan, who bursts into tears.

“Dad! Come on! I told you he doesn’t like that!” Mark yells, scooping his son into his arms. “Don’t cry, buddy. Grampa was just being an idiot.”

He pushes past Elaina without so much as a glance. She hisses at his back, then cuts her eyes to me. “Come over later. I’m so fricking mad I could spit acid.”

“Sounds like fun,” I answer. “Eight o’clock?”

“Dinner!” Mom barks.

We file into the dining room—Mom, Dad, Jack, Sarah, Lucky, Tara, Elaina, Matt, Trevor and me jammed around the table. Mark, in order to avoid Elaina, announces with great martyrish resignation that he’ll eat in the kitchen and supervise the kids.

Mom leans over and snatches the cover off the platter, unveiling her creation. Calling it dinner would be inaccurate and somehow cruel.

Jack stares at it despondently. “That pot roast will come out of me the same way it goes in,” he announces. “Stringy, gray and tough. And with a great deal of effort.”

“John Michael O’Neill! Shame on you!” Mom sputters as the rest of us try unsuccessfully to hide our laughter.

“Thanks for sharing, Jack,” Sarah says with resigned amusement.

“That was really gross, buddy,” Lucky says. “True, but gross. If it comes out, that is. Last time we ate here, I was bound up for a week. Lamb stew that made my legs hurt. I think I actually bled when—”

“Luke!” Mom barks. Lucky ducks just in time to miss her halfhearted slap.

While I understand that Irish cuisine is very popular right now, Mom’s Irish cooking is more in the potato-famine style. Large hunk of poor quality beef—boil it. Huge pot of grayish potatoes, bought in twenty pounds sacks and stored indefinitely in the cellar—boil them. Carrots? Boil. Turnips? Boil. Green beans. Boil. Gravy? Burn.

“Mmm,” I say brightly. “Thanks, Mom.”

“Kiss-ass,” Matt mumbles next to me.

“Bite me,” I mumble back.

We pretend to eat, shoving food around furtively, occasionally risking a bite of something when we can’t avoid it. I try slipping some meat to Buttercup, who just stares at me dolefully from her pink-rimmed eyes, then lets her head flop back on the floor with a hopeless thump. From the kitchen, we can hear Mark refereeing the kids. “Dylan, stop throwing, buddy. Annie, that’s not cute, hon. Put it back in your mouth. I know, but Grandma made it. Here, Graham, I’ll hold that for you.” He’s trying very hard to sound saintlike. Elaina pretends not to notice. I can’t really blame her.

“Well, this is as good a time as any,” Mom says, putting her fork down. “Listen up, people. I’ve decided to start dating.”

The rest of us freeze, then, as one, look at Dad—except for Elaina, who continues to cut her green beans into tiny molecules that she doesn’t eat.

“What are you talking about?” Dad asks.

My parents got divorced about a year ago. It wasn’t traumatic or angry—more like a game they play with each other. While Dad now has an apartment downtown, things have remained pretty much the same. If the furnace goes out, Mom calls Dad. If the car needs fixing, Mom calls Dad. They eat together a couple of times a week, go to all the grandkid events together, and I’m guessing they still sleep together, though this is not something on which I wish to dwell.

“Dating, Mike. We’re divorced, remember? For a year now. As I said to you on eighteen thousand occasions, I want certain things. Since you have refused to give them to me, I’m moving on.”

So begins their traditional argument. “More wine, anyone?” I ask.

“Yes, please,” comes the chorus.

My parents love each other, but it doesn’t seem like they can live happily together. It’s not easy to be a firefighter’s wife. Every time Dad was late coming home, Mom would slap on the TV and sit, grim-faced, in front of the local channel, waiting to hear news of a fire. And if there was a fire, she’d twist her wedding ring and snap at us kids until Dad came home, sooty and tired and buzzed on adrenaline.

In addition to the terror of losing one’s spouse to a horrible death, there’s the reality of being married to a firefighter. Sure, it’s a heroic job. Yes, the spouses are so proud. You bet, those guys are great. But how many Christmases and Thanksgivings and games and school recitals and concerts and lessons and swim meets and dinners took place without Dad? Dozens. Hundreds. Even when he was home, the scanner was on, or Dad was talking on the phone to one of the guys, or going to a union meeting or organizing a training class. On the rare weekend when Dad didn’t work, he’d be so antsy by the time Sunday afternoon rolled around that he’d go to the firehouse just to check in.

Then, two years ago, Benny Grzowski, relatively new to the department, fell off the roof of a burning building while cutting a ventilation hole and died. He was twenty-five.

There is no event more somber and spectacular than a firefighter’s funeral. The O’Neill clan was there in full, stone-faced (except for me; I was bawling). When we got to the cemetery, we all filed past the headstone, already carved with Benny’s name and years and the traditional inscription. Husband. Father. Firefighter. I remember Mom looking at the headstone after the service. “You’d have to reverse the order for your father,” she muttered, turning away. “Don’t ever marry a man who loves his work more than he loves you, Chastity.”

It was after Benny’s death that Mom started pressuring Dad to retire. She wanted to go on cruises, play bridge, join the Eaton Falls Senior Club, which sponsors trips to the racetrack and casinos, the outlets and Niagara Falls. She asked, waited, demanded, waited, ordered, waited and finally filed for divorce. I guess she thought he’d cave once she divorced him, but she just waited some more.

Looks like the waiting is over. She stares impassively at my father and takes a bite of her stringy meat.

“This is ridiculous!” Dad pronounces. “You’re not dating anyone!”

“Really? Watch me, old man,” she hisses, then turns to me. “Chastity, I heard you telling Tara that you want to meet someone.”

“Thank you, Mom! Okay! Can we change the subject?” I exclaim, my face burning.

“I think we should go in on this together,” she announces brightly. “Double date.”

“Jesus,” I mutter. Matt smirks, and I shoot him the finger.

“You’re not dating,” Dad repeats. “You’re just doing this to piss me off, and it’s working. Enough.”

Mom continues unfazed. “We can register at eHarmony, go to singles dances—”

“You’re not dating!”

“—speed dating. It’ll be fun! Mike, you get no say on this, so shut it.”

Dad’s face is bright red. “You’re. Not. Dating.”

“Mom.” Lucky, the peacekeeping, bomb-detonating middle child, gives it a shot. “Mom, can’t you give Dad another chance?”

“I’ve given your father four ‘another chances,’” she says, glaring at Lucky. “He loves that firehouse more than he loves me.”

“That’s just stupid,” my father barks, wadding up his napkin.

“Yes, it is stupid!” my mother snaps. “That’s my point entirely!”

“You’re an idiot, woman! We’re not discussing this! You’re not dating!” He storms out, stepping over my dog, and slams the back door. A second later, we hear his car start.

Sarah and Tara are staring at each other. As if on cue, they both turn to my mother. “We brought dessert!” they chorus.