Let's Pretend This Never Happened (42 page)

Eventually they fixed everything and I was very relieved, until they told me that when they cut a hole in the wall a bunch of dead scorpions fell out. I’m never going to sleep again. Probably because of the combination of fear, concussion, and tuberculosis.

Victor is out of town and I keep hearing weird noises in and out of the house. Rationally, I realize it’s probably just the house settling, but
I’m pretty sure we’re all going to die here, and
I suspect we need an exorcist. In the last six months we’ve had scorpions, mold, murdered pets, and possible chupacabras in the walls. I suspect the house was built on an Indian graveyard. I wonder how much an exorcism costs, and whether it’s more expensive if I’m not Catholic. Is there a coupon code I can use? This is probably exactly the sort of thing they teach you in catechism.

The Internet recommended “smudging,” a Native American practice of burning sage in order to purify things, and so I burned a bowl of dried sage and I walked around the house with it, chanting biblical phrases I’d heard in
The Exorcist
, and wafting the sage smoke around. I also told the spirits that I wanted them to leave, but perhaps they should go check out Hawaii, because I heard it was awesome. Then I did some Gregorian-style chants, but I didn’t know the lyrics so instead I just substituted the words
“You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.”
Suddenly there was a deafening screeching, and I screamed and thanked God that Hailey was spending the night with my in-laws, because I suspected the walls would start dripping with blood next, but then I realized that the noise was just the fire alarm going off. It was pretty much the same thing that happened in our last house, except that this time it was caused by angry spirits rather than me catching towels on fire.

I called my mom to ask her how to turn off fire alarms, but it was so loud she could barely hear me. You sound silly when you tell someone that you’re burning sage inside your house to appease the Indian burial ground that might be under your house, but you sound
fucking ridiculous
when you’re screaming the exact same thing over the sound of fire alarms. I tried to explain that a poltergeist was the only logical conclusion in light of all the crap that had happened lately. She said that it was more likely a series of tragic but common events that just coincidentally hit at the same time. I countered that it didn’t seem “common” to have to protect your dead dog by going after a vulture with a machete. My mom said, “Don’t be ridiculous.
Where would a vulture get a machete?” Not because she was stupid, mind you . . . simply because she didn’t see this emergency as important enough for me to start using sloppy sentence construction.

Then my mom pointed out that Native Americans revered vultures, so if there
was
an Indian graveyard under my house I’d probably really pissed them off, and she suggested I make an offering to the vultures, and I totally would have if Victor hadn’t given all of our hamburgers to the foxen. She told me how to disconnect the fire alarms, but it seemed very complicated, so I just nodded until she stopped talking and then got a broom and hit it like a piñata until it stopped, which was a relief for me (and probably for our neighbors, considering it was eleven o’clock at night).

The next day Victor came home and saw the wires hanging from the shattered fire alarm, and I admitted that I’d tried to smoke out the ghosts and that I suspected the alarms were a sign that the spirits were appeased. He stared at me and told me that it was more likely a sign that the smoke detector was working properly until I murdered it after intentionally filling the house with smoke. It sounded much worse when Victor broke it out like that.

This afternoon I sauntered into Victor’s office and said smugly, “So,
apparently
my
‘craazy’
plan for setting off the fire alarm to appease the ghosts worked, because guess who just found the dead bodies I’ve been searching for?
ME, MOTHERFUCKER. I found the dead bodies
.” Then I held up my hand for the inevitable high five, but instead he just hit the mute button on his office phone and dropped his head into his hands. Which was disappointing for both of us. And,
granted
, this probably would have been better received if I’d realized he was on an important conference call at the time, but really, it’s not my fault Victor doesn’t know how to use a mute button properly.

Victor finally looked up, and then he told me to put my hand down, because he was not going to high-five me for digging up dead bodies, and that was when I started to think that Victor was a very strange man, because
why in the hell would I dig up dead bodies?
I explained that what I meant was that I’d finally stumbled on the lost cemetery I’d been searching for since we’d first moved in, and that the graves were so old that the bodies would no longer be a threat during the zombie apocalypse. He didn’t seem as relieved as I was, so I decided to be relieved for both of us.

Our extremely quiet neighbors.

Then I told him that I wanted to buy the land the cemetery was on so that we could purposely
not
build over it, and that way if we
were
accidentally living in a house built over graves, this would sort of make it all cosmically even. Victor was unconvinced, but I put an offer in on the land, which was promptly declined, because it was apparently owned by the family of the people buried there, and they weren’t interested in selling their dead relatives. Which was awesome, because I didn’t have to spend money on land that I wouldn’t build anything on anyway, plus I got karmic credit for trying. Victor said that’s not how karma works, but then a few seconds later he mentioned that he’d found something that morning that he assumed was mine and pulled out the missing cigar box that contained the ten-year-old joint. I screamed, “OH, HELL, YEAH.
I have been looking everywhere for this!
” and Victor glared at me and I said, “. . . to throw out, I mean. I’m getting rid of this right now.” He still glared at me rather harshly for having a ten-year-old joint in a cigar box, and so I said,
“‘From you, Dad.
I LEARN IT FROM WATCHING YOU
,’” and he just looked at me quizzically, because he apparently didn’t watch a lot of TV in the eighties.

The whole week had been a relief, and I felt that things were finally starting to look up. I took the cigar box containing the ancient joint and walked outside with it thoughtfully. I considered throwing it away, but after a moment I changed my mind and lit it, leaving it to smolder in the same glass pot I’d used to burn the sage in. I hoped that this would be the final, perfect peace-pipe offering to the vulture-loving Native Americans who may or may not have been throwing scorpions at us.

As the final ember burned out, I thought about our new life here. We’d lost our beloved dog, but had rescued a mischievous kitten who seemed gifted at finding scorpions. We’d struggled to fend off hordes of insects, but we’d adopted a pack of foxen, and had spent many nights watching dozens of deer walk noiselessly past our porch. We’d left old friends behind and made new ones along the way. We’d found a quiet happiness as we watched Hailey dance through the meadow, a flaming sunset stretching forever around our new home. Without even knowing it we’d followed in the footsteps of Laura Ingalls and found a bit of the simple but hard-fought contentment she’d written of a hundred years ago. I took a deep breath and thought,
“I’m home.”

Then Victor walked outside and said, “Why do I smell pot?
Are you smoking a ten-year-old joint? WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?
” He may have ruined a bit of the romance of the moment, but I suppose he created one that was more fitting for us, and I laughed and assured him that the Indians were the only ones smoking out in the backyard. He didn’t understand, but I didn’t bother to explain, both because I felt it would be impossible to describe this Native American version of pouring out a forty-ounce for your fallen homies without making it sound ridiculous, and also because I suspected I might have gotten a small contact high. Either way, I smiled gently and patted the chair beside me as Victor paused and then
settled down on the porch with me to watch the hummingbirds buzz around the wild morning glories as we listened to the wind and understood why no one would ever want to leave here . . . even if given the chance to go to Hawaii.

Home. The view makes up for the scorpions. Sort of.

1.
Actual title from MSNBC: “Escaped Spider Monkey Roaming San Antonio: ‘W. C. Fields’ Escaped from Primate Reserve After Storms Damaged His Pen.”

And That’s Why You Should Learn to Pick Your Battles

This morning I had a fight with Victor about towels. I can’t tell you the details, because it wasn’t interesting enough to document at the time, but it was basically me telling Victor I needed to buy new bath towels, and Victor insisting that I NOT buy towels because I
“just bought new towels.”
Then I pointed out that the last towels I’d bought were hot-pink beach towels, and he was all, “EXACTLY,” and then I hit my head against the wall for an hour.