Petunia’s Intervention

Dear Readers!

I have clearly been cursed. Three dinners. One brings smug Robert and an arrestation. The second has vegan lettuce in it that didn’t even come from the supermarket. And then the third. You would suppose third time lucky, right? A happy ending, so to say? Well, it definitely ends my dinners in company of anyone but Gunther, who suddenly seems a good, kind, normal person, and even stopped muttering smugly about Prongles being vegan!

So, apparently a misunderstanding has happened a while ago. I had to put it together from witnesses’ (Gunther’s, mostly) statements and my tweets on my Twitter. I have accidentally said “my designer Paolo” out loud, then I was enquired about what exactly Paolo is designing for me, which are my books, which I obviously couldn’t say, so in panic I dug myself into a (metaphorical) hole and said that I must have taken too many pills from my doctor that were prescribed for my anxiety. Gunther demanded to see the pills, which obviously don’t exist, and I panicked further, claiming that I just ran out. At this point, my phone has rung, and Gunther, who was clearly of the opinion that he has already put me in locked facility and has the rights to my privacy, picked up. It was my sister Petunia, who, once informed reliably (?) about my drug addiction, arrived, while Gunther went to bring me a calming syrup from the pharmacy. With Petunia around I might have over-calmed myself a bit and apparently I not only agreed to be intervened at due to my non-existent addiction, but also invited her for dinner.

I am certain that there is no amount of any syrup that would make me invite Petunia for dinner, so I am rather certain Petunia invited herself, but discovering that she was coming over was bad enough before I found out her children were coming as well. So, I picked my best single-use plastic plates and splashed on the organic microwave dinners. I considered buying wine, but then, since I am such an addict, that would land me even deeper in an addict recovery clinic, so settled for fizzly water and herbal teas.

The time arrives and the doorbell rings exactly to the second. (I have always wondered whether Petunia waits behind the corner staring at her watch, then sprints towards my door, or if she just stands outside counting seconds before pressing the button.) I open, all smiles (well, one, mine) to see Petunia looking sepulchrally evil and her two children looking just sepulchral. I wondered briefly whether this was a good thing, then nearly died and needed some syrup I ran out of, because Petunia gave me this stiff hug – like those stick insects before they bite off the heads of their friends with benefits do, only she didn’t actually bite off my head and we are half-sisters, so you have to use your imagination here.

“So,” she says, “I’ve been chatting with your neighbour a bit.”

I stumble slightly and she holds me tighter in her stick insect arms.

“Ms Vasoline a very nice woman,” Petunia says admiredly and approvingly, which is not the tone she uses when talking about me. “She invited me for a jacuzzi party with cocktails and gays, because they look really good in her jacuzzi, so we could discuss your case in a bit more detail…”

I am practically dead from the anxiety at that moment.

“But first,” she continues, “maybe you could find some manners and invite us in?”

“Please come in,” I mumble, mercifully released from her stick-like claws.

“I am a half-orphan,” Petunia says to Gunther, who rolls his eyes, for which I am silently grateful, whilst admiring his courage. “My mother has died at childbirth. Her birth,” she says about me in the third person, pointing her sticky thumb at me like I am a really ugly vase that mars (marrs?) her interior, even though it is my interior. “Say hello to uncle Gunther and aunt Karen,” she then instructs her children, who are teenagers, and that also doesn’t bode well.

They mumble something illegible.

“Why don’t we sit down,” I say in despair, and almost vocalise “and be over with this as fast as possible,” but I don’t, instead saying “and eat.”

“I’m bored,” says her son, who, as I shall soon discover, I have been “deadnaming” for a long time, since he has now changed his name.

“Can I just look at my phone?” asks Jo’Anne, who has not, which you would think someone called Jo’Anne would, but once you find out what her brother picked, it is more reasonable that she didn’t. Yet.

“I told you,” snarls Petunia, “no screens at the table.”

“We’re not at the table yet,” tries Jo’Anne, and within two seconds they are, before I have a chance to say something inviting. Petunia is quite assertive.

In avoidance of the conversation, I hide in the kitchen, leaving poor Gunther to defend our metaphorical castle from the siege from the inside at my table. I forget how the microwave works and nearly put the setting “oven” with the plastic boxes inside, which would force me to insist it’s fusion cuisine of the world representing pollution. Which, as I soon find out (I’m sorry to keep you in cliffhanging like this, dear Readers, but such is chronology!) I should have probably done.

“I don’t like this,” says Jo’Anne before she finds out what’s on the plate. (Vegan meatballs with vegan potatoes and vegan carrots and peas, which she – or rather Petunia – specifically requested, as in vegan, so not specifically enough.) “Is this potato? I have gluten allergy.”

“Can I go to the bathroom?” asks her brother and the great reveal comes.

“As long as your phone stays here,” says Petunia quite icily, “Jacquobbe.”

I sort of clog verbally at this, but Gunther lets out a snort that he tries to pretend is a fart, but Petunia knows one end of Gunther from the other. Now she and Jacquobbe – emphasis on the silent é at the very end, I probably have it wrong still, then – are glaring daggers at him. To his credit, Gunther does not cry and run away, which I probably would. I wish I had more syrup.

“I am allergic to cucumber,” says Jacquobbe, even though it’s pickled. (The cucumber.)

Petunia sighs. “He is in the process of self-discovery,” she informs me. “Is this liver?”

It’s what you deserve, I think silently to myself, and liver is exactly what she deserves.

“You’ve never been a good cook,” Petunia verdicts, “which you might have been if our mother, who died at childbirth because of you, has been around to teach you. I, myself, had to learn from scratch, back in the days when in order to boil the kettle you needed to use a ‘match’ to light the ‘gas’ which was a very dangerous…” (Here I tune her out and get on with my spaghetti bolognese, as Gunther attacks his tacos with unprecedented enthusiasm.)

“I’m bored,” says Jacquobbe. “Do you know about Threats?” he asks me and I sort of choke a bit.

“They’re really good,” says Jo’Anne, showing a bit of animation for the first time, “way better than Twitter. Twitter is all Nazis and old people who don’t know how to use Threats.”

(I spend the rest of the evening wondering whether they work under cover for the Colombian Maffia and/or the police, before finding out that Threats is a new website by Mr Zuckster who has invented online surveillance and face recognition with his previous ventures that brought him billions of dollars, European euros, and other valuables.)

“But we are here,” intones Petunia, and her children immediately shut up and stare at me like I am a tourist attraction or an ePhone, preferably, “to discuss your treatment.”

I say nothing, because I am aware that whatever I say will be used against me. From experience.

“I have looked at clinics,” she continues, and then I say something that will be used against me, and then she replies, and the children pull out their ePhones and when Petunia realises we are being filmed for Threats, she immediately becomes a lovely person and so do I. Wanting to put on a mask. Because Threats sounds exactly like something Colombian Maffia would build to find me by the medium of Jacquobbe and his cucumber allergy, or potatoes with gluten in them and with a tiny microphone Jo’Anne placed in it inconspicuously.

Petunia starts talking about her latest reads in a tone so flat that I read it immediately. I nod approvingly. The last thing Petunia wants is to be informed that she is the new Internet viral with her book reviews. “It’s by the famous author,” she says, and I freeze metaphorically, afraid to death that she had discovered my true secret, as she pauses dramatically, “who is called” (she says things in Scandinavian) “which, obviously, I read in original language.” She casts a boring glare at her disappointed children. Who keep holding their ePhones just in case, clearly, and I realise it is Petunia who is besieged. I know how Internet works. The demand to put away the phones? Threats viral. Yelling? Threats viral. But then, Petunia sort of relaxes, to which the children react with visible nerves and so would I, except she is looking at them.

“Do you remember, Jo’Anne,” she says, “when you were in the second grade and your little dress split at the back when you were called to solve the maths problem, and your whole class laughed?”

Jo’Anne’s face turns green and Jacquobbe’s phone turns into Jo’Anne’s direction.

“Oh, my little Jay Jay,” Petunia continues. “I remember you so vividly when you played with your little pee pee and insisted you were playing doctor with yourself.”

“Mother!” Jay Jay (I am taking mental notes) ejaculates, which is a word I felt worthy of using here, as I have a diploma from creative writing class, and I understand the power of language. “This is not table discussion!”

“Oh,” Petunia says lightly, “I am simply reminiscing for the benefit of us all. We have all been young one day in the past and thus made mistakes. Some of us have outgrown them,” she says, verbally pointing at herself, “some haven’t,” here she glances in my direction, “but forgiveness is such a nice thing to do. You never did it again, right?”

Purple Jacquobbe weakly confirms he indeed never doctored himself ever again, which Jo’Anne vigorously films for Threats. He covers his face with a fork, which is not very successful. Petunia, of course, turns to Jo’Anne next. “And your sister still sleeps with her cute plushie. What is his name again, Jo’Anne?”

The ePhones disappear, never to be seen again. Petunia acts like a normal person made of sticks and actually eats some of her steamed spinach without another mention of anything Threat-worthy. After an agonising hour she announces it is time to go. Her delights of kids spring up from their chairs, their plates polished clean despite all the allergies they have developed (Aldi Organic meals seem to work even on teenagers).

“Thank you for having us,” she says with the enthusiasm of someone who eats steamed spinach non-ironically. “I will come soon for our little chat. Alone.”

“Of course,” I say. “I’ll call you very soon.”

We have this thing where you have your private language. This translates to Petunia saying, “I hate Threats and ePhones almost as much as I hate you,” to which I actually respond “the sentiment is shared, and since I never call you and you know very well that next time you’re getting a lasagne with triple cheese, because I just stopped being afraid of you and also I’m almost certain even my cheap Sansunk phone can use Threats, or at least pretend to” which means I am free to roam into the labyrinths of my non-existent drug addictions.

I look through the window to see Petunia starting a chat with Vasoline, Jacquobbe and Jo’Anne pulling out their ePhones, and Petunia immediately waving goodbye and leaving.

Threats seem useful.

Gunther and I drink the non-organic wine, sit next to each other, and watch Keeping Up Appearances on the BBC on the Internet where you can watch everything except the things you actually want to watch. There is quiet harmony between us and I am starting to recall the first months of our marriage. Lassie, freed from the spare bedroom, because Petunia is allergic to dog fur, completes our little Petunia-and-Threats-free family.

“Any more Prongles?” Gunther asks simultaneously in unison with Onslow and we laugh, except I know he means it seriously, so I see myself out with Lassie and take her for a very, very long walk, slightly stumbling from the wine, but in a nice way. On my way, I stumble onto my designer Paolo and relate the story in synopsis not to keep him too long. Paolo, who is on his way home, looks weirdly like he is not in the hurry.

“Is something wrong, dear?” I ask with my natural concern, since I am not a nosy person.

Paolo’s sigh comes all the way from his toenails, which is actually a disturbing visual, but I am currently working on a grim dark novel and I am easing you into the disturbances that are coming soon. “Andreas is making cauliflower meatballs,” he intones. “Without meat, of course.”

“Paolo,” I accidentally say, because I have some wine inside me, “how do you survive that?”

He opens his manbag and silently shows me a small bottle of vodka and a packet of what, after some deliberation with myself, I identify as beef jerky.

“Don’t tell him,” Paolo begs and I assure him that I won’t, but I make a mistake of asking next about my hardcover cover edition of the Omnibus which is leatherbound but the leather is actually paper, because I am scared of PATE (an animal organisation throwing paint at leatherbound books) and Andreas (who would throw organic rocks at me for killing cows to bound my leatherbound hardcover cover books) and Paolo suddenly rushes home.

Maybe I should get some rest in a locked facility after all?