Call Me Debbie: True Confessions of a Down-to-Earth Diva by Deborah Voigt Page A

all. We were regulars at Shakey’s Pizza, where we’d have seconds and thirds at their all-you-can-eat buffet and wash it down with cheap, warm beer. Ours was a young love of appetites. After years of pent-up desire and denial, John was my portal to all the pleasures of the senses.
    Almost all. After months of making out, I still insisted on saving myself for marriage. It drove John so crazy that one rare night when my parents and brothers were all out of the house, he drove over, parked his car on the street behind ours, and climbed overour neighbor’s fence to get to me. It was very Romeo and Juliet . We always had an incredibly hot time together, but still I refused to “do it.”
    Until the day came when I changed my mind.
    I’d kept in touch with my junior high buddy Sue since I left Illinois, and we updated each other about our various shenanigans with constant letters. She was the first person I consulted about my monumental decision:
    Dear Sue,
    I’m pretty sure I’ve made the decision to DO IT with John. . . .
    WITH ALL THIS drama going on in my life, I didn’t notice what was going on with my mother.
    First, there was the sudden departure of our poodle, Fluffy. We’d brought her with us from Illinois, and she was more mine than anyone’s—she often slept in my bed with me. But she was a mean dog, the kind who’d growl if you nudged her with your foot. And she also was epileptic, and she’d have seizures on occasion. I loved her, but I was never home, and my mother was having a tough time taking care of her.
    One day I came home from school and Fluffy was nowhere to be found. I checked inside my closet, where we kept her bed, but it was gone. I found my mother in the backyard, watering the flowers.
    “Mom, where’s Fluffy? I can’t find her!”
    “Well, honey,” she said, as she kept watch on the water, “I decided Fluffy needed a new home. You kids don’t pay any attention to her, so I found a home for her with a woman and her young daughter out in the country where she can run and have fun. She’s gone to live with this lady.”
    I was stunned. I couldn’t believe she’d gotten rid of the dog without talking to any of us first. I burst into tears, and when mybrothers got home from school, I dropped the bomb: “Mommy gave Fluffy away!” Soon we were all crying, and my mother felt terrible.
    Two weeks later, we got a postcard from Fluffy in the mail, in my mother’s handwriting:
    Dear Debbie, Rob, and Kevin—
    I wanted to let you know that I love my new home. The little girl here is so nice to me. We play all the time and I love running free in the country.
    Love,
    Fluffy
    At some point, my brothers and I came to believe that our mother did Fluffy in ( “done her in!” as Eliza Doolittle would say). I mean, who’d take in an old, sick, mean dog?
    It was all very strange. Something was going on in our house that I couldn’t put my finger on, but it felt like an unhinging. One morning soon after, as Dad left for work he told Mom to have the backyard brush area cut before he returned home. Our yard backed up to a ravine, and beyond our property line a thick row of brush grew wild and messed up the neat edge of our lawn. Dad hated that.
    I was too busy sunbathing on the upper deck to help my mother, who was slaving away (burning a lot of calories!), using shovels, pruners, and other implements of garden torture to uproot that stubborn brush. Rob was trying to help her, but they were getting nowhere fast, and time was ticking away.
    She never explained her thought process to me later, but I can imagine how it must have played out in her mind. She looked at her watch, saw how late it was, and panicked.
    We don’t want him to be angry , she would have thought. She would have looked around desperately, trying to come up with a solutionfor the tight spot she was in, and saw the cans of gasoline in the garage. Suddenly, Mom was inspired with a brilliant idea.
    I’ll burn it off!
    Rob described