It happened to me.
Stij and I went up to Sedona for another gander at those
wild red rocks, and left my brother-in-law, Marius, in charge.
I left said brother-in-law extensive instructions about
trash day, plant watering (both indoor and out), garden and flower watering
outside, care of the four pets who live outside (rabbits and turtles), a full
refrigerator (beer included), the use of my computer, a paid-up Netflix instant
streaming account, and the remote.
What could go wrong?
I’m so silly sometimes.
What we came back to, after a week of resting up,
reading, hiking, and lots of good food, fairly closely resembled Hieronymus Bosch’s
concept of hell.
Let’s start with the front door. We rang the bell and expected to be admitted
by B-I-L.
We weren’t.
We rang again.
Nothing.
Cursing, I put down every bag I had carefully balanced
so that I could get all my crap back into the house in a single trip, fumbled
for my keys, and finally found them at the bottom of my handbag. They were covered in some sort of a sticky
substance that was so full of cat hair that it looked like some deranged knitter
had created a cozy for them. I do not
have a cat. Nobody I know has a cat.
I cursed again, scraped the keys off, and unlocked the
door.
Now, please understand that I am no Martha Stewart when
it comes to housekeeping. My house will
always be cluttered.
But this…
“It looks like Marius bought us some unique throw rugs,”
I remarked. There were passed-out bodies
littering the floor. We quietly stepped
over them because if they woke up it would require talking to them before we
killed them.
We made our way to the kitchen to find the refrigerator
completely empty—even the vegetable crispers had tooth marks—and the door
missing. The floor was such a mess, it
looked like a Jackson Pollack painting.
I didn’t even want to think about what all those stains were.
Then there was the odor coming from the living
room. It smelled like a mouthful of
rotten teeth on a three-week-old cadaver.
From the remnants of the dishes covering every available surface, the take-out
Mexican food was probably behind “Team Flatulance.” I opened every openable window and the front and
back doors. At the back door, I I
glanced out at my garden and…
“Holy…oh, holy…oh, my god, oh, crap!”
My beautiful garden had been dug up and there were
three tombstones in it!
“Funny, isn’t it?
I thought you’d get a laugh out of it,” came Marius’ voice behind us.
“Which one of those is yours, bro?” Stij inquired.
“Why?”
“I want to be sure I put you under the right one.”
“Oh, get a load of this!” I cried.
The dog and the iguana were drunk and sleeping it off in
the corner.
“Pissshitcorruptionsnotfourhundredassholestiedinaknot! Rah, rah Lizard shit! Fuuuuuuuuuucccccckkkkk!”
“Oh, Stij, hear that?
Marius taught Renfield some new words!” Renfield is my African Grey
parrot, who, up to this point, did not say anything worse than, ‘Darn it!’
I made a quick tour of the rest of the house while Stij
was sharpening up the kitchen knives. Main
Bathroom—the tub was filled with Doritos and there was steaming chili in the
sink. Master Bathroom—where a freezer
unit, removed from my chest freezer, was running. The floor was covered with ice and there were
several pairs of skates in the shower stall. Freezer—warm, dripping, and the
spoiling food contributing to the general miasma. Master bedroom—a big pile of poop was nestled
in the center of the quilt it took me four years to make. Guest room—couldn’t get the door open, and by
this time, didn’t care why. Garage—now contained
a 20 gallon fish tank with a lid on top and a really pissed-off looking cobra
inside. I was afraid to look in the
closets.
I returned to the living room, where Stij had his
brother pushed up against the wall and was screaming at him in Quebecois.
Marius saw me over Stij’s shoulder and pointed. Stij immediately calmed down, probably not wanting
me to see a full-on, pushed-to-the- point-of-no-return Stij. That Stij can melt
a window with a mere look.
“About that crap in the middle of the bed…” Marius
began, and was quickly cut off due to Stij’s arm compressing his windpipe.
“Crap in the middle of the bed?” Stij echoed.
“Yeah, babe, and not crap as in ‘stuff.’ We’re talking actual gift from the colon
here,” I clarified.
“IN THE MIDDLE
OF THE BED?”
Marius was turning purple and could only gurgle.
“Ease up, sweety,” I said. “I would very much like to hear how our runt-of-the-litter
Boston terrier managed to scale the heights of our bed without a great deal of
help and leave behind a poop equal to his body mass.”
“Oh, it wasn’t your dog. It was Bobby.
He gets a little confused when he does Meth.”
Stij released Marius.
“Bobby, right. First to go.”
“Now wait a minute, Stij…”
“Point him out, or you’ll substitute for him.”
Marius pointed.
Stij picked him up and heaved him out the door, where
he slid down the driveway, and knocked over three garbage cans before coming to
rest.
“A strike! Nice
throw, hon,” I said.
Stij, however, was in no mood for levity. “What else to I need to know about?”
“Uh, Rockefeller Center in the master bath, dinner in
the main bath, 200 pounds of rotten food, and a new friend for you in the
garage—don’t go out there without armor.
“Holy Christ on a pogo stick!”
“Makes my cooking mishaps look pretty tame, doesn’t it?”
At any rate, we sobered up the iguana and the dog,
piled all the unconscious strangers, like cordwood, by the trash cans at the
end of the driveway and bundled Marius into the quilt with the big pile of poop
and pushed him out the door, and then
took a breath—a very shallow breath—and
surveyed the wreckage.
“I think this house is cursed,” Stij said. I’ve rebuilt it twice when you and your
cooking burned it down, and now I’m going to have to do major remodeling just
to make it habitable again. All told, I
figure I’ve already sunk at least a million into a $180,000 house. This place won’t let me live.”
“So what do you want to do?”
“Get me the matches.”
“Then what?”
“Then I’ll go to a psychiatric hospital to treat the
nervous breakdown that I’m going to have in the next ten or fifteen seconds. It will be nice. I’ll relax, catch up on my reading, finally be
able to sleep at night. You’ll visit
once a week and smuggle me in a reuben from the deli downtown. Yes, I think that’s definitely the way to go.”
And now, dear readers, I’m living in the tool shed
right next to the blackened crater that used to be our house. It’s a little cramped with the parrot, the dog
and the iguana, but the cobra out front keeps the inquisitive away.
And it’s only for another year or two. The doctors tell me that Stij is making
remarkable progress.
