FRESH YARN PRESENTS:

Bunny
By Des Jedeikin

PAGE TWO
"It is a wonderful life," I thought, rubbing my hands together under the table like an eight-year-old Mr. Potter, foreclosing on a hardworking family's home. Bedford Falls will be mine! (Evil cackle). All mine! (Longer evil cackle). Only chumps like George Bailey found happiness in family.

By the time we got to the car I had already adjusted to my new situation. If convulsively shrugging every time my mom looked at me counts as moving on. Another bad thing about a young mom is that you spend a lot of time comforting and advising her during your trauma. I was genuinely consoled, however, by the fact that my long held suspicions were confirmed. It is unlikely that two dark-haired, olive skinned people managed to have a strawberry-blonde ghost child.

About ten minutes into our drive home, I got carsick and we had to pull over. I leapt out the door and casually vomited as I strolled by a bed of California poppies, bending down to smell the flowers as if the vomiting was an afterthought. When I got back into the car my mom handed me a butterscotch lifesaver and reminded me to keep pretending that Keith was my real dad since he didn't know about the divorce yet. I didn't mind. I had already been convinced that he was a "bastard" who had "been fucking around" and I was fully on board with my mom in her quest to "screw that fucker." I really needed to move on.

That afternoon I spent my time thinking of all the drama of it, too busy to notice my Chihuahua, Happy, was humping my furry -- I swear to god -- beaver hand puppet again. I became excited thinking about how my life, minus the money and glamour, had all the elements of a soap opera. I considered myself the ingénue, but I was not the Lucy Ewing or Fallon Carrington of my show. I was the beautiful and upwardly mobile tramp, Sammie Jo Dean Carrington or the mousy but determined Valene Ewing. Sure I was from the wrong side of the tracks, but one day I would marry the black sheep of an extremely wealthy, highly respected family, bringing them disgrace with my unrefined ways and my "fuck 'em!" attitude, yet ultimately winning them over with my spunk. But I wasn't that prime-time vixen yet -- I was still living in the back-story.

My next thoughts focused on a more practical fantasy-figuring out who my real father was. I knew my mom's type, so I deduced that he was a musician with a mustache. I eliminated John Oates and Kenny Loggins immediately due to their coloring. I was catching on to genetics fast. For various reasons, mainly being that he was a high school friend of my mom's and his possession of a golden mane, I decided upon Ronnie Van Zant, the deceased lead singer of Lynard Skynard. A practical choice with no awkward meeting later in life, where he is initially attracted to me, thinking I'm some foxy groupie, trying to kiss me, as I push him away, saying "I'm your daughter!" only to watch him stumble away in a drunken haze, leaving me standing in a pile of crushed dreams and a puddle of what I come to realize is my dad's piss. Corpses can't take a leak on you.

I began obsessively reading meaning into all of Lynard Skynard's lyrics. "What's Your Name Little Girl?" Her name is Candy and she's my momma! "I Ain't the One" was all about how my mom got pregnant but he couldn't marry her 'cause he was a free bird and if he stayed things just wouldn't be the same. "Sweet Home Alabama" became my anthem; convincing me to hate Neil Young and making me feel bad that the South lost the Civil War. Somewhere along the way my more practical fantasy veered off into the fantastic. Clearly I held the belief that I was destined for more than the average illegitimate daughters of the world. I was special.

My mom begged to differ. She had one last truth that she felt obligated to unload on me as we shared a pack of Ding Dongs while watching The Young and the Restless together.

"His name is Bunny," my mom said.

"Bunny? Bunny?" I think I repeated this a dozen times, each time at an increasingly louder volume.

"That's just what we all called him," she said reassuringly(!)

And then she showed me a picture of a guy sporting the classic hitchhiker look -- long blonde hair, a handle bar mustache, and a missing front tooth. A poor woman's Ronnie Van Zant. He was standing in front of a beat-up old boat. Not exactly a houseboat, but a boat that he lived in. My fantasies quickly deflated, accompanied by a sad-sack chorus of flatulent trombones.

Luckily, I didn't have time to be disappointed. There were more important things at stake. My mom told me all about her secret plan to pack up all of our belongings while my asshole ex-daddy was at work. Then she asked me if I was her big girl. I knew I was but I didn't feel like admitting it.

I shrugged and asked if we could go to Jack-in-the-Box for dinner.

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