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2002-01-05 | 3:18 p.m.

Just got home from a birthday skating party for Rojo's half-sister Starlah. My niece, Bambi, has four sons, ages 1-5, by a scoundrel named Oddy, who is also the father of Starlah and a sixth child I've never met. Not that anyone's keeping count, but that makes six children under the age of 9 by three different women. Duff and I call him the Sperminator.

About halfway through the party, Oddy showed up. I'm tempted to say he was skulking around, but that's probably overstating things. He just seemed sort of half arrogant, half tentative, which is not surprising under the circumstances. I didn't hear anyone say hello to him, though it's possible someone did. (I certainly didn't, as he is famously rude.) By the time I noticed him, he was walking over to our side of the table, where the boys were, and kneeling down beside Sean, who is 2. Bambi's gaze met mine and I raised my eyebrows. "Sean doesn't even know who he is," she whispered to me in a neutral voice. Then she fixed her gaze somewhere in the middle distance. I sat down on the picnic bench and kept crossing, then deliberately uncrossing my arms, so as not to looked pissed off and defensive. I didn't feel pissed off and defensive. I felt sort of triumphant, really.

Since they stopped living together last year (they were effectively broken up before that, but I can't pinpoint a date; they were supposedly broken up at the time the twins--Colin and Anthony--were conceived), Bambi hasn't invited Oddy, much less his noxious mother and grandmother, to any of her kids' parties---which is fortunate because no one on this side can stand them. They're just extremely negative people. I'll tell you about it in a minute. You should understand that Bambi used to be way more accommodating than she is now. She isn't really mean about it, but she schedules the parties on Saturday afternoons, like most people do, when he has to work.

Starlah's mother, Roxanne, apparently still goes through the motions, though. Maybe she has to, since she went to court to force Oddy to pay child support for Starlah. But it's also true that Roxanne still carries a torch for Oddy. Bambi told me that when Roxanne goes out she often turns up at places he is known to frequent. Roxanne also tried to get him back when Bambi and Oddy first got together, which is not all that surprising when you consider that Starlah was only nine months old at the time. Poor thing. I know she must have low self-esteem, if she has any. I think it's very wrong to call someone ugly, and I won't do it now, but she has what you might call an unfortunate feature set. Now that I've gotten to know her a little better I don't notice it so much, of course, but the first time I saw her I felt a little shock wave run through me. Nor does she have any friends to speak of. Bambi insists they aren't friends, but only spend time together so the kids will know each other. At least Starlah is cute.

I did take a couple of pictures of Oddy with the boys while I had the chance, remembering how hard it was for Bambi to grow up not knowing what her father looked like (Diane had ripped him out of every picture in her photo albums). Bambi didn't say anything to me, but I could tell she was glad I was doing it because she called out to the boys to get them to look at the camera.

The party was over fast and the skating rink staff hustled us out of there before the kids had finished their cake. Oddy lingered around for a moment or two as we loaded the kids into the van, then walked back to the heavily primered and rust-eaten 280Z he was driving---one of many in his collection of shitmobiles---and fired it up. As we pulled out of the parking lot I heard a strange noise, as if we had run over a pipe or something, and I asked Bambi what it was. "Oh, that's just the piece of crap he's driving," she said, jerking her head toward Oddy's car. I couldn't see his face, but as he passed us I could see the orange balloon he had tied to his wrist, like the kids had. Then he gunned his engine and the little car zoomed ahead of us, shaking with the effort and puffing large clouds of white smoke out the back end. He must have untied the string on his wrist, because the orange party balloon slipped out the window and wafted away.

"Symbolic," I said.

We got to talking about Oddy and his ilk and Bambi told me the latest indignity. The grandmother, Barb, whom I believe literally has a barbed tongue, and the great-grandmother now insist that Colin is an albino. See, they're black and Bambi's white and Colin is light-skinned enough to pass for white---maybe---which is of course very far from being albino. Barb invited herself over to Bambi's house (Bambi tried to choose a neutral meeting place but Barb would have none of it) and she was playing with the babies on the floor when she declared him an albino. Bambi said, "Are you out of your freaking mind?" and Barb said, "Do you even know what an albino is?" and Bambi said, "Yes! Do YOU??" and she pointed out that albinos do NOT have black hair and brown eyes and then Barb said she had to leave about two minutes later.

The other story she told me she had told me before, but I had forgotten it. When my girls were little Barb and her mother would always ask about them. One day, Bambi told them I had put them into daycare two days a week. And they said, "Yeah, welfare makes you do that." And Bambi was like, "What? Annabel's not on welfare." And they argued with her, insisting that I WAS on welfare! They never would give in. She didn't tell me about it for a long time because she thought it might make me mad or upset, but I thought it was hilarious. I do get mad about some of the stuff they say, because it is almost always mean-spirited and sometimes even dangerous. Especially their ideas about child-rearing.

But that can wait for another day.

Cool! Bambi just came by and gave me the black wool coat that Oddy gave her for Christmas. It's way too big for her---and frankly, way too big for me too, but I don't care. I will get the sleeves taken in and then I'm all set. She said he must have gotten a good deal because he gave the same coat to Roxanne and his grandmother.

I was surprised to hear he had gotten her a gift. I asked her if she got one for him and she said she had given him a shirt from the boys. She was careful to note that it was an eight-dollar shirt. In the old days, she spent hundreds on him, loved him beyond all reason, and he took her for granted and insulted her her and ignored her. Worst of all, he wasn't always good with the boys, and I think that was the deciding factor. Once she had dumped him for good, he started thinking about presents, trips, good times. Said he wanted to try again. Some people just don't get it.

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