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what their bodies were like (so it is a feel-good read!).
    But after I read it
    well, for one thing, I wanted to get my DNA fumigated.
    But I read it partly out of loyalty and partly because the Enquirer called to ask how I felt about my father alluding to the “fact” that my mother was a lesbian in the book. And not that it matters, but my mother is not a lesbian! She’s just a really, really, bad heterosexual.

4
    BOTH HANDS, ONE HEART, TWO MOODS, AND A HEAD
     
    A few years ago my daughter and I visited my father in San Francisco, where he lives because there’s a really big Chinatown there. And the day before, he had just gotten those tiny hearing aids that fit right inside his ears. They’re really, really expensive. Some people say $3,000—others say five—anyway, really expensive. So he’d gotten them the day before, so the night before, he didn’t want to lose them or forget where they were, so he put them in his pill box next to his bed so he’d remember where they were in the morning.
    Yes, that’s right, he ate them.
    So, whenever he couldn’t hear my daughter or myself, we’d yell into his stomach or his ass. Now he subsequently got those hearing aids again, and I had the opportunity to see them. They were the size of a lima bean—a rubber lima bean with an antenna.
    Now look, I adore pills, I’m a huge fan, but these looked like none I’ve ever seen. Now, I don’t know how you are in the morning, I’m not that sharp, but I think I would know if I was eating a rubber lima bean with an antenna! Twice!
    Well, if you have a life like mine, then these experiences gradually accumulate until you become known as “a survivor.” This is a term that I loathe. But, the thing is that when you are a survivor, which fine, I reluctantly agree that I am—and who over 40 isn’t?—when you are a survivor, in order to be a really good one, you have to keep getting in trouble to show off your gift.
    My mother says, “Well, dear, what are the choices? Not surviving?”
    But this is from a woman who when asked for dating advice says, “For what age?”
    My mother, who incidentally lives next door to me, she calls me to this day and says, “Hello, dear, this is your mother, Debbie.” (As opposed to my mother Vladimir or Jean-Jacques.)
    I have a very loud voice. I used to say that my voice was designed to wrest people from dreams. My mother grew up in Texas, on the border of Mexico, but she learned to speak “properly” with the assistance of Lillian Sydney, her vocal coach at MGM. Over time, she was able to gradually but completely lose her accent—unless she got really angry or frustrated with Todd and me—then she’s been known to say, “Carrie Frances—y’all get your butts in here!” But my mom has what I can only describe as a movie star accent. It’s very breathless and elegant—kind of mid-Atlantic. My brother and I frequently talk this way to each other now: “Hello, dear, this is your brother, Todd.”
    A few years back I interviewed my mother for this tragic cable talk show I was doing. This was for the Mother’s Day show.
    Anyway, we’re chatting along pretty gaily for straight people, and then suddenly somewhere in the middle of our little chat my mother casually says, “You know, dear, it’s like that time when I was a little girl and I was kidnapped.”
    Huh?
    “Oh, darling, I told you about all of this, you’ve just forgotten.”
    (This was before my ECT, so there’s no way I’d forget something like that. I doubt that even electroconvulsive therapy could banish a story as creepy as that one.)
    So on she goes with this horrendous story, which I’m sure you’re all dying to hear, like I was. Just desperate to hear each and every horrifically vivid detail of a tale increasingly tinged with darker hues of molestation. Happy Mother’s Day everyone! After my panic subsides somewhat, I hear her saying that when she was eight or maybe younger, her eighteen-year-old neighbor and his friend scooped her up for a little joy ride. I’ll