My Cousin

I should probably share more about this.

The essential problem we have is that my cousin and I could not be more perfect opposites if we had been designed that way. I am a night person; she is a day person. Most emphatically a day person. I have skin so pale you can see all the veins right through it; she has a dark tan. My hair is so straight and flat that if I am not careful the tips of my ears poke through it; she has a headful of wild curls. If I were an outside observer, I would refuse to believe the two of us were related.

Sharing a house was a terrible, terrible thing. You see, I'm not really a fan of the sun at all, or heat, or summer in general, so when left to myself I go running at sunrise, come home, sleep through the hottest, brightest part of the day, do yardwork or take a walk once the terrible yellow hurtball is below tree level, then stay up all night working on the inside of the coast house, studying, or stargazing. My cousin is a fan of lying in the sun all day and playing our grandparents' phonograph at top volume. Seeing us do yardwork together was an education, I'm sure. Since I was up against my will anyway, I sat on the patio scratching unenthusiastically at weeds and moss and trying to stay in the shade while my cousin rampaged around me, trailing thorny vines out behind her for twenty feet. Then there were the "peaceful" evenings, with me attempting to study Latin at the kitchen table while my cousin divided her time between talking at me and talking at her cellphone (it will not surprise you to learn that she comes in one volume, and that volume is Loud.)

I did go to the beach and the lake with her. I'm proud to say that on these occasions I managed to drive her nuts right back. I refuse to go to either the beach or the lake during the day, because I have to spend half an hour carefully applying sunblock just so that I can get burned anyway, and also because I refused to shave my legs just to go swimming, and no one can see your leg rug in the dark, if there were anyone there to see it. And it was my car, dammit, so if she wanted a ride she was going when I said we were going (the beach is easy enough to walk to, so it wasn't like I was being unfair.) Plus, in the dark it is easier to give the impression of listening to someone when you are really floating on your back with your ears underwater, admiring the Summer Triangle (that's one good thing about her, once you get her talking she doesn't need any input from you to continue and you can ignore the one-sided conversation relatively easily.)

There was also the spider thing. Spiders don't bother me. Normally, they sit in their webs and you sit in your chair and you can ignore each other, unless it's a wolf spider, in which case they are easily stomped on, or unless it lays eggs in my bed, in which case war is declared. Plus, having spent more time in that house than anyone else, I learned relatively quickly that if you try to get rid of all the spiders, they'll all be back within a week anyway. I really don't have the energy to commit mass spider murder every week, so I just ignore them. She is afraid of spiders and apparently could not. So, every few minutes she would shriek at top volume, stuff some poor spider in a jar, carry the thing outside (slamming the door, of course) and dump it. It grew old after about the third repetition.

There was also the various miscellany - "Why don't we take these enormous electric recliners over to the senior center and donate them?" (Because I have a sedan, you twat.) "Why don't we give the kitchen a yellow accent wall, they're so in style in NYC?" (Because the kitchen floor is a blue-gray, the opposite wall is panelled in dark wood, every other wall in the house is white, and accent walls will be back out of style in about 30 seconds?) There was the scraping of bikes against doors I just painted, the spilling of something horrible down inside a stove burner, the running of cardboard-soled shoes through the washer so that I got to spend a lovely afternoon picking cardboard shreds back out of it, the suggestion that we dip the antique mandolin in bleach to clean it, and all manner of similar things until I'm pretty sure that if I beat her repeatedly over the head with a bicycle pump and threw her in the cesspool no jury would convict me.

The very best part? Last week she sent out an e-mail telling us all what a wonderful vacation she had and how the two of us bonded so well. A clear indication that she is living in a universe perpendicular to the one the rest of us inhabit.