Maloney's Predicament (Part One)

"Can I borrow a crowbar?" my friend Maloney asked when he called me on the phone.
     "What for?" I asked him.
     It's not that I didn't want to lend him a crowbar, it was that it sounded like work, and, once I lent him the crowbar, he might ask me to give him a hand, too. I'm old-school. People should solve their own problems.
     Unless I'm the one who needs help.
     "I need it to get rid of some dead weight," he said, and then, without any encouragement from me, he began his tale of woe, "We were grilling some steaks for my daughter's birthday this past Saturday and made the mistake of telling my wife's mom."
     The daughter he was talking about was his youngest, Abby. His wife's name is Gail. If you remember, Maloney's elderly mother-in-law moved in with him and his family, and then, just as quickly, moved out. She enjoyed the same foods and snacks as Maloney, so, when my buddy was in the mood for something, it was usually already eaten.
     "We were going to grill at five," he continued. "She got here at two.

     "Part of the reason she moved out was because we wouldn't let her drive. She's in her 80's and can't see, but she still wants to drive. Let her try that back in Mexico and see what happens."
     A small town in Mexico is where his mother-in-law was born and raised. I would tell you the name of it, but you wouldn't even be able to find it on Google Maps.
     "Anyway," Maloney said, "she doesn't like to drive when the sun goes down because her vision is especially bad at night. So we grill, and then we eat, and then it's six, and then it's seven. The sun's starting to go down, but she's making no effort to go home. It gets later and later, and darker and darker. Personally, even after it's dark, I keep hoping she's still going to leave. If she can't see when she drives at night, well, that's the problem of all the other drivers who've made the mistake of driving on the same road as her. I keep hoping, but I can see the writing on the wall. She's fed, it's dark, and she's not going anywhere. She'd rather inconvenience the world than be inconvenienced herself."
     Hmm... you'd think she was related to my Dad.

     "What is it about in-laws?" Maloney asked me. "Gail was planning on having a garage sale this morning, so earlier in the week she had invited her sister who had a lot of junk she wanted to sell. Gail was telling her about our plans for Abby, felt guilty, so she said, 'Why don't you and your family join us?'

     "They've never met a free meal they didn't like, so now I'm supposed to grill for them, too. Only, her sister got sick. She called Gail and told her that she and her husband wouldn't be able to come over for the garage sale. She's been sick. She has a fever, her throat hurts, and she just hasn't been well. It sounded to Gail like she was saying she wasn't going to come by for the garage sale, but was still planning on coming by for the steaks. So Gail asked her, 'You're not still planning on coming by later, are you?'

     "Her sister said, 'Well, I was hoping I'd feel better.'

     "And then Gail said, 'If you get the baby sick, I will shoot you dead.'

     "So her sister said, 'Well, I wouldn't want to get anybody sick.'

     "So they didn't show up for the garage sale or the steaks. We probably won't hear from them for a while, because they're thin-skinned and easily offended."
     I can testify to that, because I've met them. Why is it that the people who are so insensitive about the feelings of others are so sensitive about their own feelings? Only God, and Bill Clinton, know for sure.
     The baby he was talking about belongs to his middle daughter. A beautiful baby girl (and I'm not just saying that because Maloney owes me money) who's only about twelve weeks old.
     Maloney paused to take a breath, and then went on with his complaining... I mean, story.

     "But what gets me is that she was planning on coming over at all, knowing she was sick. Knowing that the baby had been in the hospital for five days when she caught bronchialitis and a respiratory infection. And it's not just her. People, nowadays, don't seem to care that they're sick. They go out anyway. Even in church, people will go and cough through the whole service. It doesn't occur to them to get up and leave. Maybe sit somewhere where there aren't any people. No, they want to sit in the middle of as many people as they can. When the priest tells us to shake each others hands, I pretend I'm busy picking my nose."
     I laugh.
     "Good joke, Maloney," I tell him. At least, I'm hoping it was a joke.

     "Gail and I were talking about it," Maloney continued, "and she told me that before her sister was sick, her husband was sick. Too sick to go to work, but that night they're out partying with friends, watching a football game or some such nonsense. She saw the pictures on Facebook.

     "'I thought you're husband is sick,' Gail asked her.

     "'He is,' she answered.

     "They're good people otherwise. When we moved from our last house to this one, they came by to pick up our old refrigerator that they bought from us. The husband had a flatbed hooked up to his truck, and while they were rolling the fridge up on it using a dolly, the movers called to tell us that they weren't going to be able to move us that day, but could do it the next. Well, Gail got real upset, but her sister and her husband said they and their kids would help us move. They already had the flatbed there. And that's exactly what they did. We moved all of our stuff from our old house to our new house.

     "So they're not bad people. Lord knows, I wouldn't have helped them move. 'I've got to see a man about a horse,' I would have told them. But they think nothing of going someplace where a new baby is and possibly getting the baby sick."
     I remember when Maloney moved to his new house. For some reason my phone wasn't working that weekend.

     "Which brings me back to my mother-in-law," Maloney sighed, coming back to his main gripe after his long detour. "It doesn't occur to her to leave while there's still daylight. It's not like we had a mariachi band playing or anything. For a second, I thought she was Hillary Clinton because she just didn't want to go away.

     "'Isn't your mom going home?' I asked Gail, knowing what the answer was, but asking anyway.

     "'She can't drive when it's dark!' Gail scolded me.

     "I wanted to ask why not, because everybody's got to die sometime, but didn't. So her mom ended up spending the night. And guess where she's sleeping?

     "In Lizzy's and the baby's room!"
     Lizzy is Maloney's middle daughter who still lives at home. She made the mistake of getting pregnant by some guy who's idea of dealing with an unwanted pregnancy is changing his phone number.

     "I asked Gail, 'Why's she sleeping in Lizzy's room?'

     "'Well, where else is she going to sleep?' she told me.

     "The plan was she would sleep in the same bed with Lizzy, and hopefully her snoring wouldn't wake the baby up. I thought a better plan would be she'd sleep in Boswell's room, and Boswell could sleep on the living room couch. He could do without choking his chicken for one night."
     Boswell is Maloney's step-son. I don't know anything about his chicken-choking habits.

     "God forbid it should occur to Boswell to offer his room to his grandmother," Maloney groused, "and God forbid it should occur to his grandmother to offer to sleep on the living room couch. C'mon, she was born in Mexico. Sleeping on a couch is what the rich people of her village used to do, and she certainly wasn't rich. She was so poor she couldn't even afford to change her mind."
     I laughed, even though I had heard that joke before. When Maloney finds a good joke, he sticks with it.

     "So poor Lizzy would have to fuss with two babies instead of one.

     "So I told Lizzy, 'Why don't you and the baby sleep in our bedroom, and I'll sleep on the couch and your mother will sleep with Abby.'

     "At first my daughter said no, that it was okay, but the baby was being kind of fussy--heck, she probably didn't want her grandmother sleeping there either--so Lizzy finally agreed, and from the living room couch is where I'm calling you from. My faithful dog by my side."
     "What about your mother-in-law?"
     "Her? She still hasn't left."

 

 

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