Relative Merits

Editors' Choice Winner

Julia had always felt that “you can choose your friends, but not your relatives.” So she tried to make nice, attend the gatherings of this really strange clan where her efforts to fit were in vain, and in general grin and bear it. Her brother James devoted his every spare moment to genealogical research with the expectation that he might find dead relatives he liked better than his living ones. James was just one of the relatives whom Julia felt she could live without, but by no means the worst of the lot. So it was with interest that Julia read the announcement for a “relative exchange” in one of the free newspapers she was in the habit of picking up at her local library.

This Third Rail paper was one she hadn’t remembered seeing before. The ad read:

“Relative Exchange: Are you ready to trade in some of your relatives for better, more reliable models? Tired of dealing with Uncle Eddie’s insane children? Obnoxious, overbearing cousins got you down? Now they can be switched out for more copacetic kin. Just $100 per month will buy your listing. Run it as long as you like and change it at will. All relatives acquired through the exchange may be returned should they fail to meet your expectations. Be as honest as possible in your listings. Difficult as it may be to believe, someone out there would consider your relatives, whatever their foibles, a bargain. Someone out there has relatives who would make yours seem like a dream rather than a nightmare. Register now.”

“Hm,” thought Julia. She’d always liked Uncle Eddie, but could do without at least two of his three kids. That she actually had an Uncle Eddie, who had very annoying adult children, hadn’t struck her as the least bit strange as she read the notice. She took a short, eraserless, chewed-on pencil out of her purse and began making notes for an ad in the margin of the paper. She wasn’t seriously thinking of trading in her relatives, she told herself, but just putting together a “what-if” ad.

“Don,” she wrote. Tap, tap, tap went the pencil as she tried to choose just the right words to describe him. “Leslie,” tap, tap, tap. Maybe a cup of coffee would help me think, Julia thought, and repaired to her local Starbucks. Curled up in a leathery armchair next to a cozy though fake fireplace she went back to work with a tall skinny caramel latte in her left hand.

Tap, tap, tap. Julia glanced at the ad again and was struck by a line she hadn’t noticed there before. It said: “It has come to our attention that you may be interested in our multiple-relative listing package.” “That’s odd,” Julia thought, and went back to staring at the names “Don” and “Leslie” as she chewed some more on her pencil. “Might as well just dive in,” she said to herself, and started to write.

“Short, balding towhead with irritating personality. Control freak given to verbally abusive outbursts when attempts to impose his sensibilities on others are thwarted. Extremely intelligent”—I want to be fair, she thought to herself—”and intent on everyone knowing it. Type A personality archetype,” she wrote next to the name Don. Then she turned her attention to Leslie.

“Plump, pretty, disingenuous housewife with airs of grandeur. Much education but little initiative, uses a lively imagination primarily to slander neighbors. Lacks a moral compass. Serial dog owner.”

“Ah, the poor dogs,” frowned Julia. How many had there been? Well, no matter now. A coupon at the bottom of the ad had a space for a credit card number and expiration date. Julia filled it in just in case she should decide to mail the coupon later, failing to note that there was no address to mail it to. For the first time, she noticed a list of “Relatives Available for No-Obligation Trial.”

“Toby,” the first listing read. “45-year-old wanna-be playwright with no visible means of support, usually seeking couches to crash on. Slightly rotund, with curly, auburn, shoulder-length hair and light brown eyes. Generally sunny disposition but somewhat obnoxious when under the influence of weed.”

“Gerry,” the next entry said. “female CPA age 55. Competent and self-reliant, but plagued by strong personality and a tendency to make loud pronouncements at inopportune moments. Has been banned from two churches.”

“Heather. Single mother of three juggles bartending job with fashion design career aspirations and PTA responsibilities. Excellent cook but lackadaisical housekeeper. A good choice for someone who enjoys babysitting.”

Boy, this Heather sounds like she really has it together, thought Julia, absently tapping her pencil stub on the listing. She suddenly became aware of a small child tugging on her skirt. The child’s face—and the hand on her skirt—were covered with a gloppy brown mess that looked like chocolate pudding. Nevertheless the child had a disarming smile. Two other young children nearby also smiled at Julia, one sweetly and the other in a slightly disturbing way.

Julia barely had time to take all this in before a thin platinum blonde woman with nose, lip and eyebrow piercings, carrying a large portfolio and garment bag, rushed past with a wave, saying, “You’re a gem, Julia. I’ll try to be back by five.”

The chocolaty child was called Jenny, and needed to be taken to the bathroom. The older two were called Tom and Carrie (”like the girl in the movie,” Julia was assured by the one with the disturbing smile) and were hungry. Without thinking, Julia handed some money to Tom and Carrie as she headed for the restroom with Jenny in tow.

Before leaving the restroom Julia tried to clean up Jenny’s face and hands as well as the stains on her own skirt, which was now very wet from her efforts with hand soap and water. She arrived back at her armchair with Jenny, to find Tom and Carrie fighting over a chocolate chip scone and Tom dripping with milk that Carrie claimed had “exploded all over him from nowhere” and Tom claimed had been thrown by Carrie.

With no time to think about how she had ended up with these three, Julia grabbed some napkins and started blotting milk up from the chair. The cafe’s manager approached her, gently suggesting that she might want to take the children elsewhere. “Damn,” thought Julia, as she headed out the door with the kids, more or less on autopilot, “this was my favorite hangout, and now I can’t come back.”

They passed the next couple of hours at the zoo, without incident as long as you didn’t count the escaped Capuchin monkey and the garter snakes in the cafeteria—these kids seemed to do nothing but eat and fight. The kids then led Julia to their apartment where she turned the television on and awaited Heather’s return. Five o’clock came, then six, then seven. Heather found a box of Kraft macaroni and cheese in the cupboard and was just serving it when Heather dashed in to change for work—she was on the 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. shift.

Heather told Julia to just make sure the kids were asleep before leaving and then ran out the door herself, lobbing a “don’t know what I’d do withoutcha” over her shoulder. Julia didn’t leave immediately once the children had been read to and had each had a glass of water and were finally asleep. She felt really badly about leaving them all alone, although their mother did not seem to have a problem with that.

Thinking “this really isn’t working out as well as I’d hoped,” Julia reached into her bag for the Third Rail to find out how to return failed relatives, and realized to her horror that she must have left the paper with the ad at Starbucks. It was beginning to dawn on her that this was no ordinary newspaper and that she might not be able to find another copy at the library next day. She tiptoed out of the apartment and found a cab to take her back to Starbucks. But by now it was nearly midnight and the cafe had closed at 11.

Julia had heard about dumpster diving but had never dreamed she would ever engage in such a practice herself. Yet now she found herself gingerly swinging one stilettoed foot and then the other over the side of the 1500-cubic-foot trash container in back of the store, trying to keep her skirt from riding up unbecomingly, though there was no one else about to see her. She feared there might be rats and imagined pairs of beady little eyes staring at her from the bin’s corners, though none were there. Thankfully, the paper seemed almost to float up into her hand once she was inside the dumpster. She stumbled out, losing one shoe but not daring to return and look for it, and hobbled home with the Third Rail clutched to her chest.

Upon reaching her apartment Julia kicked off her remaining shoe thankfully and fell into the couch, dropping the Third Rail on the coffee table. After spending some time wiggling her toes and flexing her ankles and arches, Julia clambered to a standing position and limped over to the bookcase, which held a small collection of liquors, and poured herself a brandy. She collapsed back onto the couch and started channel surfing. She finally drifted off to sleep with the unfinished brandy beside her and awoke next morning to the TV, which had stayed on all night.

The lead story on the morning news concerned a near riot that had occurred at the New Windsor Zoo the previous day when a monkey and several snakes had unaccountably gotten loose.