When you are engulfed in flames - By David Sedaris Page 0,49

kitchen witch. One by one, my sisters and I left home, and the backyard became a dumping ground. Snakes nested beneath broken bicycles and piles of unused building supplies, but on return visits we would each screw up our courage and step onto the patio for an audience with Mr. Toadstool. “You and that lawn ornament,” my mom would say. “Honest to God, you’d think you’d been raised in a trailer.”

Standing in her living room, surrounded by her art collection, our mother frequently warned us that death brought out the worst in people. “You kids might think you’re close, but just wait until your father and I are gone, and you’re left to divide up our property. Then you’ll see what savages you really are.”

My sisters and I had always imagined that when the time came we would calmly move through the house, putting our names on this or that. Lisa would get the dessert plates; Amy, the mixer; and so on, without dissent. It was distressing, then, to discover that the one thing we all want is that toadstool. It’s a symbol of the people our parents used to be, and, more than anything in the house itself, it looks like art to us.

When my father dies, I envision a mad dash through the front door, past the Hibel and the Bradlingtons, past Cracked Man and Mr. Balloon Man, and into Indian territory, where we’ll push one another down the stairs, six connoisseurs, all with gray hair, charging toward a concrete toadstool.

Memento Mori

For the past fifteen years or so, I’ve made it a habit to carry a small notebook in my front pocket. The model I currently favor is called the Europa, and I pull it out an average of ten times a day, jotting down grocery lists, observations, and little thoughts on how to make money, or torment people. The last page is always reserved for phone numbers, and the second to last I use for gift ideas. These are not things I might give to other people, but things that they might give to me: a shoehorn, for instance — always wanted one. The same goes for a pencil case, which, on the low end, probably costs no more than a doughnut.

I’ve also got ideas in the five-hundred-to-two-thousand-dollar range, though those tend to be more specific. This nineteenth-century portrait of a dog, for example. I’m not what you’d call a dog person, far from it, but this particular one — a whippet, I think — had alarmingly big nipples, huge, like bolts screwed halfway into her belly. More interesting was that she seemed aware of it. You could see it in her eyes as she turned to face the painter. “Oh, not now,” she appeared to be saying. “Have you no decency?”

I saw the portrait at the Portobello Road market in London, and though I petitioned hard for months, nobody bought it for me. I even tried initiating a pool and offered to throw in a few hundred dollars of my own money, but still no one bit. In the end I gave the money to Hugh and had him buy it. Then I had him wrap it up and offer it to me.

“What’s this for?” I asked.

And, following the script, he said, “Do I need a reason to give you a present?”

Then I said, “Awwwww.”

It never works the other way around, though. Ask Hugh what he wants for Christmas or his birthday, and he’ll answer, “You tell me.”

“Well, isn’t there something you’ve had your eye on?”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

Hugh thinks that lists are the easy way out and says that if I really knew him I wouldn’t have to ask what he wanted. It’s not enough to search the shops; I have to search his soul as well. He turns gift-giving into a test, which I don’t think is fair at all. Were I the type to run out at the last minute, he might have a valid complaint, but I start my shopping months in advance. Plus I pay attention. If, say, in the middle of the summer, Hugh should mention that he’d like an electric fan, I’ll buy it that very day and hide it in my gift cupboard. Come Christmas morning, he’ll open his present and frown at it for a while, before I say, “Don’t you remember? You said you were burning up and would give anything for a little relief.”

That’s just a practical gift, though, a stocking stuffer. His main present is