What Happens in Suburbia… (Red Dress Ink Novels)

by Wendy Markham

  “If you get a garbage bag,” I tell Jack with a sigh, “I’ll dump this old food in.”

  “That would be a great idea,” Jack says, “if we had an empty garbage bag. We should’ve thought to bring some with us.”

  Yeah, and we should’ve thought to stay put where we were.

  But it’s too late for should’ves now, isn’t it?

  Eyeing a Saran-wrapped platter, I realize there’s a label or something stuck to it. I lean closer and see that it’s not a label, it’s a note.

  Dear Tracey and Jack: Here is a little something for your first night in the new house. Enjoy, and congratulations! Love, Hank and Marge

  “Oh my God, Jack, look! This isn’t old food…it’s new food!”

  It appears that those old coots, God bless ’em, have left us an entire meal: sandwiches and salads and pastries. There’s even a bag of plastic utensils, plates and napkins.

  Jack and I fill plates and sit cross-legged on the living-room floor, chowing down in the light of a single bulb from a shadeless lamp.

  “You know what?” I ask Jack around a mouthful of egg salad. “I feel better.”

  “Not so homesick anymore?”

  I pause a moment, and I listen.

  No sirens. No honking horns. Not a sound from above but the gentle spring rain pattering on the roof.

  Our roof.

  “How can I be homesick,” I ask Jack, reaching across our two plates and putting my arms around his neck, “when I’m home?”

  Jack smiles and kisses my forehead. “I’m glad to hear you say—”

  He breaks off as suddenly a weird light beams into the room, flashing through the window, which has no blinds or shades or curtains.

  “What is that?” I ask.

  Of course I am immediately thinking of alien abductions, a possibility I never worried about in the city.

  Seriously, where’s a UFO going to land in Manhattan?

  But there’s plenty of space here in the suburbs, and fewer people to hear a victim’s screams. For all I know, I’m about to be beamed up to a flying saucer on my very first night in the suburbs, which would really suck, but the way things are going, would you really be surprised?

  “It’s a car.” Jack has gotten up and gone over to the window. “My mother’s car.”

  Another set of lights beam into the room.

  “And here comes Bob and Kathleen,” Jack adds.

  “What? They’re here? All of them? The twins?”

  He nods.

  Frankly, I’d much rather be abducted by aliens.

  “Why didn’t you tell me they were coming?” I ask, getting to my feet and trying to dust off the seat of my ragged jeans, which by now are covered in grime, nicely matching my snot-soaked tee.

  “Are you kidding me? I didn’t know they were coming!”

  “Knock-knock!” Wilma is calling cheerfully through the screen door.

  I usually hate when people say “knock-knock.”

  But I adore Wilma, so I call back cheerfully, “Come on in!” even though the last thing I feel like doing right now is entertaining company.

  This is, after all, part of the reason we moved to the suburbs, right? To be closer to family.

  And here they all are, streaming through the door and weaving their way around the boxes: Wilma, carrying a huge bouquet of flowers; Bob, still wearing a suit from work; Kathleen, wearing a frail and exhausted pallor; and the devilment twins, who hug us hello at Wilma’s prompting, then ask if they can watch something called The Last Mimzy on TV.

  “The cable won’t be hooked up until next week,” I tell them.

  “But we have to see the rest of The Last Mimzy! Mom said we could watch it here!”

  “I’m sorry, guys,” I say before I remember that Kathleen doesn’t like anyone calling them guys.

  They’re girls, she’s always correcting people, to which I want to say, You should take what you can get. They could be called so much worse.

  The wretched little beasts—see?—glare at me in unison, then promptly disappear into another room as if they own the place.

  “Well, this place is just charming!” Wilma declares, looking around, and at the moment, it is so not charming that I’m not sure if I want to hug her or Cher-slap her.

  “What happened to your couch?” Bob, who is already walking around like an inspector, naturally zeros in on that.

  “Tracey let the movers saw off the leg to get it out the door,” Jack says, and I am sure I want to Cher-slap him.

  “I didn’t let them,” I protest. “They just did it.”

  “You went out and bought them the saw,” Jack points out, which makes me wonder if he might not be harboring a teensy little bit of resentment after all.

  “They told me to get them a saw!” I snap. “We were paying them by the hour. And I couldn’t get ahold of you. What was I supposed to do?”

  Jack shrugs. “Nothing. I’m just saying.”

  As if sensing we’re both worn a little thin, Wilma says, “We probably shouldn’t have stopped in, but we just couldn’t resist. These are for you, Tracey.” She thrusts the flowers into my arms.

  “Oh…uh, thank you!”

  Don’t get me wrong, ordinarily I love flowers.

  But ordinarily, I can reach right under the sink, pull out a no-frills florist vase, fill it with water and voilà: instant centerpiece.

  Not only do we not have a table for the centerpiece, but Jack deemed vases nonessential, and all of ours are now, presumably, en route to a landfill somewhere.

  “I don’t know what I was thinking,” Wilma says, reading my mind. “I should have brought something to put those in.”

  “Oh, no, it’s fine,” I tell her. “I’ll just set them here…” On the counter, to die a slow, wilting death in their cellophane wrapper.

  Talk about depressing.

  “Do you want a tour of the house?” asks Jack.

  “That’s why we’re here.” Bob opens a closet door and pokes his head in.

  “And to help you with the unpacking,” Wilma adds.

  At that, Kathleen all but throws the back of her hand limply against her forehead and swoons. “Well, it’s late and we have the girls, and Bob is still dressed from work, so I’m not sure how much unpacking we can do…”

  “It’s okay,” I say, trying to block out the image of the girls manhandling my wedding china. Meanwhile, Bob is tap-tap-tapping on the inner closet wall and mumbling something uncomplimentary. “We’ll be fine on our own.”

  “Yeah, and we’re not in any rush,” Jack says. “I have a feeling it’s going to take weeks before we’re settled in.”

  “Weeks? Try years,” Bob says, bouncing a little on a creaky floorboard, like he’s testing it. “We still have boxes we haven’t unpacked. Listen, you’re going to want to do something about this floor.”

  “Yeah, we’re going to refinish it at some point,” Jack tells him.

  “Refinish it? Try replacing it. You see the way that board is coming up over there? It’s warped. The whole thing is going to blow.”

  I stare at the floorboard, trying to picture it blowing. What does that mean, exactly? Someone steps on it, and it turns to splinters?

  “I don’t like the wiring, either,” Bob announces.

  Which begs the question, when, exactly, did you inspect the wiring, Bob?

  “I hate to say it—” Bob sighs “—but you crazy kids might have gotten more than you bargained for with this place.”

  “Bob!” my mother-in-law scolds him. “I love the new house. It has great potential.”

  “I don’t mean anything bad, Wilma. I just feel like they’re in way over their heads. Yeah, the place has great potential, but right now it’s a death trap, and the infrastructure is for shit.”

  “Don’t talk that way in front of the girls,” Kathleen scolds him automatically, then asks, “Where are the girls?”

  Everyone shrugs.

  “Girls! Girls!” Kathleen is immediately fran
tic. “Where are you?”

  No reply.

  “Oh my God!” Kathleen clutches Bob’s arm, as if she’s convinced the death trap of doom has devoured her little darlings. “Do something! Find them!”

  “Girls!” Bob hurries into the next room, with the rest of us at his heels, except Kathleen, who has presumably collapsed from the stress. “Where are you?”

  They’re not in the next room.

  I’ll tell you where they are: they’re upstairs, playing dress-up with a garbage bag full of my work clothes.

  “That is just too cute!” Wilma exclaims as Ashley parades around wearing my one good silk blouse wrapped around her head like a turban. “Who are you supposed to be? An adorable little swami? Look, she’s an adorable little swami!”

  Naturally, Ashley, who has no idea what a swami is—God only knows what she was supposed to be, but it wasn’t that—goes into her interpretation of an adorable-little-swami routine. Which involves gymnastics and off-key singing and makes no sense whatsoever.

  Wilma is riveted, applauding throughout and singing along with the unintelligible lyrics, and I want to shake her.

  “You have to do that for the talent show!” Bob declares when the clueless swami is wrapping things up with a cartwheel that snags my good blouse on a loose nail head sticking out of the floorboard.

  Rrrrrrriiiiiiiipppp.

  “Uh-oh,” Jack says, and looks at me. “Was that yours?”

  Before I can answer, Ashley lands on her feet with a little bounce and reports, “It was in the rag bag.”

  “Do you have another one so we can both be little swamis in the talent show?” Beatrice demands.

  “Sorry, Bea, I’m fresh out,” I say, trying not to let my eyes bulge too much as I watch Ashley examine the tear in my blouse.

  Beatrice’s face screws up as if she’s going to cry, and Bob hurriedly assures her that he’ll take her out ASAP and buy her a nice new rag to wear on her head in the talent show.

  “Are you coming to see us in the talent show?” Ashley wants to know.

  “Of course they are,” Wilma tells her. “Aunt Tracey and Uncle Jack will be able to come to all your performances now that they’re living up here. Isn’t this going to be fun?”

  “Good times,” I murmur, wondering why I ever thought Jack’s family was sane compared to mine.

  All our relatives are raving lunatics. Every last one of them.

  Including Wilma, who has just pulled a pitch pipe out of her pocket and is asking the girls to sing the swami song lyrics again, louder and with feeling.

  Back in the kitchen, Kathleen is weak with relief at the sight of her babies, unharmed. To Bob, she says, “I told you we shouldn’t go anywhere without Sam to keep an eye on the girls.”

  “Next time, we’ll bring Sam,” he agrees.

  Or—here’s an idea—leave the dueling swamis at home, I want to suggest. How about that? Or—here’s a better one—don’t drop in again until we’ve redone the entire house.

  Jack gives them all a tour while I try to make headway in the kitchen, looking for the coffeemaker, Maxwell House, filters and cups for tomorrow morning. I don’t find any of those things, but I do come across a single earring—which may or may not be one whose partner I packed somewhere else—Jack’s long-missing jockstrap and a framed photo of us when we first started dating.

  Droplets of moisture got under the glass and melded the photo to it, and it started to tear when I tried to peel it off once. Too bad, because it’s a great picture.

  We look so young and happy and carefree in it.

  Now we’re just a couple of old-coots-to-be with a mortgage and an hour-in-each-direction daily commute to jobs we may or may not have for much longer.

  I stare at the picture and Barbra Streisand sings in my head, “Can it be that it was all so simple then,” and I swear to God, I’m about to start bawling into Jack’s jockstrap.

  But then I hear footsteps on the stairs. I shove the picture in a drawer before Jack and the in-laws come trooping back into the kitchen, fresh from their tour.

  “You really have to fix the loose towel bar in the bathroom before it falls on someone’s head and kills them,” Bob is saying to Jack.

  “Like who? A dwarf?” Jack asks, and I get the impression he’s wishing the towel bar—or, say, boulder—would fall on Bob’s head.

  “Tracey…are you crying?” Wilma asks, looking closely at me.

  “No! It’s just the dust, I’ve been putting stuff away…”

  “You look exhausted,” she says kindly. “Why don’t you two call it a night and come sleep at my house on the pullout. You don’t even have beds set up here.”

  She’s right. There’s a mattress and box spring and slats and headboard, none of which are in the same room or even on the same floor. I’m sure we packed the sheets and pillows somewhere. Unless we didn’t, and threw them away.

  Mental Note: you are delirious.

  “Come home with me,” Wilma says, “and tomorrow, we’ll get the whole family to come back and help you make short work of these boxes.”

  At that, Kathleen suddenly remembers they have an extraordinarily busy day tomorrow.

  I don’t believe it for a minute, but I’m more than happy to see her hustle Bob and the twins out the door with a promise to call us about buying tickets to some community-theater production the twins are in. Not the talent show. The talent show is something else, as is the variety show they’re in next month.

  The twins have more upcoming performances than Céline Dion, and we are clearly expected to attend all of them.

  “So, what do you say?” Wilma asks, left alone with us. “Should we leave now, and come back in the morning? I can organize your cupboards for you. I love organizing things.”

  I look at Jack, hoping he’s thinking what I’m thinking.

  Wilma means well, but I want to organize my own cupboards.

  And I want to sleep in my own bed in my own house.

  Wilma jangles her car keys expectantly.

  Jack shakes his head slightly.

  I shake mine, just as slightly, back at him.

  “Thanks for the offer, Wilma,” I say, “but this is the first night in our new house, so we’ll stay.”

  Jack smiles at me.

  I smile back.

  His mother leaves us with hugs and congratulations and a promise to come back tomorrow to help. Then we’re alone together in our own little house, standing in our own cozy living room…surrounded by utter shambles.

  Jack has his arm around me and I lean my head against his chest.

  “Well?” he says.

  “Well, what?”

  “What the hell is a mimzy?” he asks, and I crack up.

  Then I say, “We forgot to tell your mother about your promotion.”

  “We’ll have plenty of time for that.” Jack yawns. “So do you still feel like this is home?”

  I think of the photo in the drawer, and Barbra.

  Can it be that it was all so simple then?

  Looking back, I remember when my mother had me convinced Jack was a smooth operator, and the fights we had every time somebody else that wasn’t us got married, and the Christmas when he gave me a Chia Pet instead of an engagement ring, and the time he told me, at Pre-Cana, that he loved me for my hair.

  It was never simple.

  It will never be simple.

  “I feel like this can be home,” I tell Jack, “eventually. I think we’re going to love it here. Eventually. I think—” I try to stifle another loud yawn.

  “You’re beat. So am I. Come on, let’s go put our bed together and christen our new bedroom.”

  “Let’s go put our bed together and go to bed. And sleep,” I add pointedly, seeing the hopeful glint in Jack’s eye. “I’m bone tired.”

  We head for the stairs. “Got any idea where we packed the CDs?” Jack asks on the way.

  “CDs? Why?”

  “I was thinking a little U2 might be good background m
usic while we put the bed together.”

  “Ha. Nice try. I have no idea where the CDs are. But I’m sure we’ll find them eventually.”

  Just as I’m sure everything is going to be okay here in suburbia…

  Eventually.

  The next morning as Jack and I are tearing through boxes and bags trying to find our toothbrushes, we hear an actual knock—as opposed to a vocal “knock-knock”—at the door.

  “Who do you think it is?” I ask Jack, who has bed head, razor stubble, morning breath, and is wearing only boxer shorts.

  “How am I supposed to know?” he asks crankily.

  (My ordinarily good-natured, easygoing Jack doesn’t do well without his morning coffee. We’ve located everything but the filters, so we’re caffeine deprived until one of us gets brushed, washed, dressed and down to the local Starbucks. Hopefully there is a local Starbucks. There has to be, right? Right? Don’t scare me like that.)

  More knocking.

  “Hurry—you have to get the door,” Jack tells me.

  “Me? I can’t answer it like this! Look at me!”

  “I am looking at you. You’re wearing sweats. I’m wearing underwear. Guess who wins?”

  Guess who loses is more like it, and the answer, of course, is me.

  I make my way down the stairs, nearly tripping a few times over stuff that’s strewn in my path. We really have to get organized with the unpacking. Good thing we have a long holiday weekend stretching ahead of us. By Tuesday morning, I’m sure the house will be in order and this nightmare of rain-soaked cardboard and damp Hefty bags will be behind us.

  Whoever’s at the door is still knocking, somewhat impatiently.

  Turns out—and I can’t believe I never noticed this until now—there is no window on the front door; it’s just solid wood.

  Geez, where’s a good old-fashioned peephole when you need one?

  In the city, that’s where—hopefully, along with all the ax murderers and home invaders.

  Here in suburbia, people apparently open their doors blindly and take their chances.

  Mental Note: add front door with peephole—or better yet, glass windowpane—to shopping list.