The Big Seven Seven

Mom and I were at Perkins. There was a jazz band playing near the flapjack pavilion, horns beblapping and bass bumthumping.

Mom gave me a narrow look. "Are you growing a beard? Please don't tell me you are. It's makes you look evil."

"Truth in advertising, Mom."

BLAP.

Mom shouted over the diatonic minor. "Karen didn't call me for my birthday!"

"WHAT."

"KAREN DIDN'T CALL ME ON MY BIRTHDAY! Can you hear me?" Mom pitched her voice as we were washed in a diminished triad of boogie-woogie. "No text! No nothing! Can you believe that? Not a word! That's the thanks I get for all the things I've done for her over the years. Not to mention her birthdays. But that's it. I won't ever talk to her again. I've had it. And if she calls, I won't answer. I don't care. She's rude. She's the rudest person I've ever met."

"I dig it. But you've been saying that for years. You keep saying you're going to cut Karen out of your life, and then you never do."

"This time I am! And then Missy wanted to get together for my birthday. She wanted to get all the girls together, including Karen, of course. But I told them I was driving to Montrose with you."

"Wow. They really don't know you, Mom. When is the last time you've even been in the mountains?"

"A few years ago I went with Medora, to hand her off to someone in Steamboat Springs."

"Okay, let me rephrase that. When is the last time you've been in the mountains without being paid?"

Polytonal chromatic rhythm bopped all over Mom's face as she thought. At last she said, "1979, I think. When I took you and your brothers to Estes Park." Sad horn.

"And yet you love Montrose. In the fictional sense."

"Do you know how I spent my birthday?" An oboe moaned with suspense. "I was on the floor of my bathroom mopping up toilet water."

"One of your better birthdays, then."

"My toilet backs up every time I flush. And the floor is bad because I used a steam cleaner in there once and ripped up some of the tiles. I know I shouldn't have done it, but now there are holes in the floor, and turd water too."

I looked at my omelet. "Maybe I'll get a box."

"So there I was on my birthday mopping up water and the tiles are falling off the wall, too. But I've been taping them up."

"Taping them up. Uh, don't tell me you're using scotch tape?"

"Yes! But what else am I supposed to do? I got some Gorilla glue, but I haven't used it yet. So I use scotch tape and the tiles stay up, at least for a while before water gets the tape soft and unsticky."

"A bathroom isn't a Christmas gift," I said as a saxophone slid chromatically. "Though maybe Freud would have some thoughts on that."

"What?"

"So to sum up, you have turd water, holes in your floor, and tiles falling off. How's the bag of dog food doing that keeps your faucet turned off?"

"Oh, that's my phone."

She saw who was calling, and her eyes got big.

It's Karen, she mouthed.

I mouthed back: Karen is PURE EVIL. You're never talking to her a--

"Karen? Oh, honey! What a dear you are! Thank you for calling. I was about to call you as soon as I got back from Montrose." Mom winked at me. "Tee hee, how thoughtful of you! Yes, let's get together and be together forever! Hee hee ha ha...!"

The drummer hit the hi-hat at just the right moment. Jazz knows all.