I Still Have It. . . I Just Can't Remember Where I Put It (18 page)

“You should have decided to do this before you moved in. It would have been much easier,” the stereo expert explained, stating something so obvious even our goldfish rolled her eyes. “Do you still have this color paint?” he asked, pointing to the gash he had made on the wall.

“Sure,” my husband answered, not taking into account that it wasn’t paint but Venetian plaster that had taken approximately ten days of layering and five layers of scraping.

“I’ll have to cut some holes in the bathrooms and the television room,” he commented, dollar signs appearing in his pupils.

“Not the television room! Nothing will ever again be drilled in the television room,” I cried out. (Please refer to “Television Envy” to comprehend the intensity of my response.)

“Rita, you don’t understand. This will increase the resale value of our apartment.”

“Are we moving and you haven’t told me?”

“I’m just thinking ahead,” my husband replied. “People like powerful stereo systems. They have big parties and they like to play music.”

“Who are we going to sell the apartment to? P. Diddy?”

The stereo expert turned to me.

“You’re making a mistake. You’ll look back and wish you had speakers in the television room.”

“I don’t look back. I’m like a shark—I only look forward.”

By reverting to that old familiar female tactic, crying, I got my way and holes were eventually drilled in every room in the house except the television room. Holes were also added to our balconies so our upstairs and downstairs neighbors could enjoy our choice of music as well. I wondered how our stereo system would affect their resale value.

A week later, the stereo components in place, the speakers inserted into the holes, and paint carefully applied to mask the wounds perpetrated on the walls, my husband summoned me, our baby, and our dog into the living room.

“Listen to this,” he crowed.

He twisted a knob on the wall and out burst a track from
The Best of Van Halen.
The sofa began to vibrate, the dog ran out of the room, the baby burst into tears, and the phone rang almost immediately. The music ceased, courtesy of the phone interrupter.

“It works,” my husband exclaimed, picking up the receiver. “My phone interrupter works.”

“No, no,” he said into the receiver. “We’re all right…No, the building isn’t exploding…No, we won’t have it that loud again. My wife just wanted to test the system. Sorry about that. You have a nice nap.”

“Who was that?”

“Our upstairs neighbor. Plastic Lady. She bothers me too. I don’t tell her to get breasts that match.”

“Well, at least we know the phone interrupter works and we can play music, but maybe just not as loud,” I said reassuringly, attempting to make the best of the situation.

“That’s negating the whole stereo experience,” he said.

“We’ll always have the resale value,” I added.

“Not without the speakers in the television room.” Tears appeared in the corners of his eyes.

“All right, you can have the speakers in the television room,” I acquiesced, walking out of the room.

The speakers were installed in the television room, begging the question of why anyone would sit in the television room and listen to the stereo. Isn’t hindsight annoying?

We haven’t used the updated stereo system recently, but we do turn it on from time to time just to make sure it works. And if Mr. Diddy ever wants to move to Las Vegas, do we have an apartment for him!

My husband won’t let me sunbathe topless. He says he’s afraid I might poke someone’s knee out.

Shake, Rattle, and Rebuild

T
HERE HAVE BEEN FEW THINGS MORE FRIGHTENING
in my life than the 1994 California earthquake. I’d been through tremors before and thought they were kind of exciting. They consisted of a gentle roll followed by a startled look followed by the question “Was that an earthquake?”

Because tremors had been our only earthquake experience, we had no qualms about buying a four-story house perched on the top of a hill. Then at about four in the morning, while we were sleeping soundly in our newly purchased bed in our newly purchased house, a jolt tossed us both up into the air. The whole house swayed violently. I still remember opening my eyes, seeing the wood beams on our cathedral ceiling, and thinking,
This is how I’m going to die.

Some people wake up and their brain begins functioning immediately. I am not one of those people. I need a cup of coffee and ten minutes of staring into space to enter the world in which we are all trying to live.

Martin is good in a major crisis; when our world is crumbling around us, he keeps his cool and thinks logically. I’m good in a minor crisis; if I run out of sugar when I’m making a cake, I can go to the supermarket and buy some more.

I know the quake only lasted about seven seconds, but it felt like an hour. Our bedroom, located on the top floor of our four-story home, incurred the most sway. To understand what I’m talking about, hold a long blade of grass in the air and wave it from side to side. We were the two people positioned on the tip of the grass.

“I’ll get a flashlight,” Martin announced as we were still being flipped by the force of the earth like onions in a pan. Earthquake virgins, we had not positioned the flashlight at the side of the bed, where everyone had told us to keep it, but in a drawer located in the closet. The door had separated from the closet and was blocking the entrance. (An earthquake tells you exactly how many nails a builder has used to hold your house together. Our builder turned out to be a minimalist.)

Martin doesn’t wear pajamas, so he had a very special incentive to get into the closet because that is where his robe lived. In the back recesses of my mind I remembered the advice to stand in a doorway. I stood in the doorway, effectively blocking Martin’s path to the closet. Another rumble shook me to one side, and my husband climbed over me and the severed door and quickly located his robe and flashlight.

“We’re still alive. We’re still alive,” I kept mumbling as we headed for the stairs. I saw the chandelier above the stairwell swaying like we were on the
Titanic.
We’d bought a house and we were on a ship.

We bolted out of the front door and joined our sleepy, shocked neighbors standing in the middle of the road.

Since we had only moved in a few weeks before, we had not really had a chance to get to know anyone, but we now knew our neighbor across the street rather well because she was naked.

“I didn’t have a chance to grab any clothes,” she explained as she attempted and failed to cover herself strategically.

Just then a man ran out of the house carrying a blanket. Our neighbor gratefully clutched the wrap to her body.

“Are you all right?” I asked the woman.

“I’m fine, and I wanted to tell you I really liked
Peter’s Friends.
”(
Peter’s Friends
was a movie Martin and I had recently written.)

“Thank you,” I replied.

We were definitely in Hollywood. We’d all just shared a near-death experience, and my naked neighbor was flattering me about our movie.

I noticed a smell of booze permeating the air. It turns out that in an earthquake not only do you find out how many nails a builder has used to put your house together, you also find out how much alcohol your neighbors’ houses contain. There was wine to the left of us and hard liquor to the right. I inhaled sharply. I needed a drink.

Martin and I had just splurged on our dream house. All of our available cash had been put up as a down payment and we had assumed a massive mortgage. Tears filled my eyes as I witnessed the cracked walls and the French doors lying on the ground of our front patio.

“Well, we bought a new house and now we own a fixe-rupper,” Martin commented.

The earthquake had happened not even ten minutes before and Martin had made the first joke.

The good news for us was that our house was still standing. The inspector assured us that the foundation to our house was intact and the damage was merely cosmetic. Our naked neighbor’s house had to be torn down and totally rebuilt.

The damage our house sustained was, however, substantial. The kitchen looked like a Greek wedding; every glass had been thrown into the center island and had smashed. The refrigerator doors had flown off and the fridge’s contents were slathered across the floor. Imagine if Jackson Pollock had painted with mayonnaise, eggs, and milk.

Upstairs, the cabinets had been tossed across the bathroom, and in the bedroom the brand-new television was facedown on the floor, surrounded by Martin’s extensive book collection.

“It’ll be OK,” Martin comforted. “We have earthquake insurance.”

We did. Our earthquake insurance covered the contents of our refrigerator. We were reimbursed eighty-five dollars.

The earthquake was over, but the aftershocks continued. Every time we had the cracks in the walls replastered, the earth would rejiggle and the cracks would open up again like burst surgical stitches. Eventually we decided that our handyman had made enough money out of us and it was cheaper to consider the cracks as deliberate. They also served as a reminder of what could happen.

Fifteen years later, even though we no longer live in Los Angeles, Martin and I still sleep with flashlights and robes on either side of our bed. In case of emergency, we want to be able to see where we’re going. And if we end up standing outside at four in the morning, we’d prefer not to be naked.

My aunt Sylvie is getting a neck lift, a breast lift, and a knee lift. Her surgeon is having a special: “All You Can Lift.”

Who Don’t You Trust?

A
S
I
’VE GROWN OLDER
, I
’VE REALIZED THAT
I
’VE
learned as much from my father’s bad behavior as I did from his good. It always bothered me that he had no friends. In order to have friends, an essential trust in human nature must exist. I think my father would have happily stayed in his mother’s womb forever because no one could get in to steal anything.

I remember as an adolescent having to turn on all the lights and turn up the radio volume when we left the house so we wouldn’t be robbed, and having to keep the lights and television on low when we were home so we wouldn’t be killed.

Once I came home from shopping with my friends an hour early. I rang the doorbell repeatedly but there was no answer. I knew my father was home, so I called through the locked window, “Dad, open the door.” Nothing. I went next door and called him. He answered the phone.

“Dad, it’s me.”

“Don’t come near the house,” he warned. “There’s a crazy lady ringing the doorbell and shouting, ‘Dad, open the door.’”

“Yes, that would be me.”

“It’s only three o’clock. You said you’d be home at four.”

“It’s still me, even if it’s three o’clock. You have to make the adjustment.”

My father was overly suspicious of everyone and everything. He stopped eating in his favorite cafeteria because he didn’t like the way the turkey carver looked at him when he held the knife. He retained a post office box because he didn’t want the mailman to know where he lived.

I remember one phone conversation during which my father informed me that his new neighbor was a prostitute.

“What makes you think that?” I asked.

“Every weekend there’s a different car parked in her driveway and they stay for a few hours and then they leave,” he replied.

“She’s not a prostitute. She has friends.”

“She lets them into the house?”

“Yes, some people actually let other people into their homes,” I informed him.

“That’s just crazy.”

After my stepmother died, my father would not even let a cleaning person into the house. He had a vague memory of a lawyer he knew being accused of sexual misconduct by a housekeeper, and so he would never be alone with a woman in any situation without witnesses. Even when staying in a hotel, the maid would not be allowed in to clean his room for his entire stay.

I’d say, “Dad, put the Do Not Disturb sign up when you’re in and let her clean when you go out. Why is that not acceptable?”

“I don’t want anybody stealing anything either.”

“I’ve stayed in hotel rooms for years and the housekeepers have never taken anything.”

“I’m not saying it’s them. I’ve seen what happens. The maids leave the doors open. They block the doorway with the cart and anyone can move it while they’re cleaning the bathroom and come in and rob you blind.”

“What is it that you have to steal that’s so valuable? Socks? Underwear?”

“You’re joking, but they’re of very good quality.”

“Then put them in the safe.”

That was only the tip of my father’s paranoia. The bartender was slipping mickeys into his martinis (he’d had too much to drink and fallen asleep in the lounge). The man across the street was running a drug cartel (he was moving in). After an argument with my stepmother he threw away his mouthwash, suspecting she had tampered with it (she had loosened the cap on the bottle for him because she knew he was incapable).

Bizarrely, the same man who rampantly mistrusted innocent people placed complete trust in a person who was ripping him off. A painter quoted him $7,000 to fix a small portion of his roof. Without getting a second opinion, my father paid it. The same workman pointed out that the entire roof needed to be resealed for another $11,000 and my father didn’t blink. I don’t know what else this man spotted that needed thousands of dollars’ worth of attention because my father stopped telling me once I threatened to intervene and question the painter as to exactly the nature of the work he was performing.

“This guy Hank, he’s a hell of a painter,” my father would insist. “He’s a hell of a nice guy too. He brings me coffee every morning from 7-Eleven. Nobody’s ever brought me coffee before.”

I decided to let it go and let my father make his own mistakes. It was his money and I guess even a man as reclusive as my father occasionally needs a friend. After Hank ran out of fake home improvements he asked for money for a hernia operation. Then Hank disappeared, but my father remembered him fondly.