“I don’t understand—” I began.
“What, David?” my wife wanted to know, her voice alive with fury. “Tell me what it is you don’t understand. Because I’d really like to know.”
“I don’t understand what’s happening,” I told her, and hearing myself say this, I remembered Clay watching the TV in the bar of the Mexican restaurant and saying essentially the same thing: What’s happening to us?
“It’s in our house, David.”
“What is?”
“He’s not putting it in the hot tub anymore. He’s putting it in our house.”
“Who is?”
“I won’t go back there. Ever. I can’t.”
“Okay, Ellie,” I told her. “Okay, I understand.”
* * *
—
Except I didn’t. Not really.
Standing there in the front yard of the house that had been our home for so long, I didn’t understand anything, including what came next. Should I turn my back on that big mound of shit-infested adobe, drive out to the Schuulmans’, and do my best to comfort my wife, whom I loved and who was—or so it seemed to me—becoming more untethered by the hour? Or should I swallow my dread, man up, go back inside, and figure out what on Earth had happened there? It occurred to me that whichever I did, it was likely to be for the wrong reasons.
The smell was nauseating, but somehow not as bad as it had been when I first entered, probably because opening the door had let out some of the stench. First things first, I told myself. Open the place up, starting with the sliding door to the patio, then all the windows, including the ones on the second floor, where I hadn’t been yet. Get some crosscurrents going. Allow the flies that wanted out to escape. These flies were not, I now saw, the tiny, nimble ones that dart off when you approach. Rather they were enormous, slow, iridescent green and monumentally stupid, the interior linemen of the insect world. It was like they’d been drinking mescal. My approach, fly swatter in hand, did not impress them. When swatted they left thick streaks of yellow on the screens and windows. Only after I’d killed a couple hundred did it occur to me to wonder how they’d gotten into the house in the first place. Even if you assumed that somewhere in the house there was a pile of fresh shit large enough to attract so many flies, wouldn’t they all be on the outside of the screens, trying to get in? And where was it? Wouldn’t such a massive pile of shit be easy to locate? Stranger still, why did every room in the house smell equally foul? Wouldn’t the stench be strongest near its source?
Bingo. You want answers? Ask the right questions.
* * *
—
An hour later it was the same officer, Nuñez, who showed up. Did the Tucson Police Department have a special fecal crimes unit? When I waved to her from the roof, she came over and stood at the base of my aluminum ladder. “Most people wait until the sun goes down to change their cooler pads,” she observed.
“Have a look at those,” I suggested, because the ones I’d just removed were lying on the gravel right next to her. “Or just give a sniff.”
The odor wasn’t quite as robust as it had been earlier, but Officer Nuñez wrinkled her nose and took a step back. “So,” she said, when I climbed down and we shook hands, “what exactly are you saying happened here?”
“Come inside,” I said. “I want to show you something.”
After I’d finished killing the last of the flies, upstairs and down, I swept them into a pile on the tile floor. There were enough to fill a basketball. Officer Nuñez was impressed, I could tell. I expected her to find fault with my conjecture—that when we were in San Diego, whoever was tormenting us had climbed up onto our roof, removed the outer metal grates of the swamp cooler, and smeared the interior straw pads with shit—but she didn’t. By the time we returned from California, the temperatures here had cooled. Today was the first day we’d needed the cooler.
“And in the meantime, there was a hatch.”
I nodded. “Turning on the cooler sucked both the stench and the flies down into the house.”
“Ingenious.”
I was about to thank her when I realized she wasn’t referring to my deduction.
“Somebody really doesn’t like you,” she said again.
Later in the evening, there was a knock on the door. On the front step stood our elderly neighbor, Robert. Officer Nuñez had been to see him. “Sorry to hear about your problem,” he said, sniffing the air and wincing. Apparently over time you can get used to anything, no matter how foul, because I could no longer smell it. “There was somebody up on your roof while you were away. I thought at the time that it was strange. You always change your own cooler pads.”
“Did you get a look at him?”
“Not a good one. Skinny guy. Tall. Twenties.”
“Did he look like a university student?”
“What do they look like?”
“Fair question.”
“He drove an old panel truck, if that helps. Fifties vintage? I noticed because I had one of those myself once and you don’t see them on the road much anymore. Anyhow, I told all this to the Mexican cop.”
“I’m pretty sure she’s American.”
“Whatever. How’s that good-looking wife of yours taking it?”
“She’s all for selling the house and moving to California.”
He shrugged. “Houses around here sell quick. If I were you, I’d talk to the people on the other side of you. What’s their name?”
“Gordon.” The husband was an electrician. Had his own company. The wife apparently handled the bookkeeping.
“Their house is identical to yours and they’ve only been in it a year. Find out how much they paid and you’ll have a pretty good idea of how much your place is worth.” He made a face. “I’d wait ’til the smell’s gone before putting it on the market, though. At least if you want to sell to white people.”
* * *
—
What I should’ve done after Robert was gone was call Ellie. Back when all this started, she’d imagined a guy climbing over our wall and defecating into our hot tub, which had been frightening enough. But now she believed this same person had broken into our home, which meant whoever he was, he was not just malicious but also deranged and quite possibly dangerous. Worse, his intrusions appeared to be escalating. Next week, or the week after, when she stepped out of the shower, would her foot land on a steaming turd in the middle of the bath mat? This fear of intrusion was one I could now allay by explaining that Robert, our bigoted neighbor, had seen a man on our roof when we were in San Diego. That was creepy, sure, but at least nobody had broken into our home. Whoever had done this was a prankster, a swine, but probably not an existential threat. Officer Nuñez was right; what he’d done with our swamp cooler was ingenious, but more than likely he’d shot his wad. Which meant that Ellie’s freak-out was an overreaction.
But instead of calling her and beginning the process of restoring her reason, I went to bed that night nursing something like a grudge, not against our tormentor but rather against my wife, who had treated me as if I were somehow…what? At fault? Complicitous? Granted, my habit of making light of things she took seriously was a legitimate complaint. For years she’d been telling me that in her dreams I often laughed at her. She wasn’t the only one with a grievance, however. While she was freaking out, I’d had to deal with both the stench she’d fled and also kill several kilos worth of nasty, foul, green iridescent flies. I’d controlled my gag reflex and done what needed doing. My reward? My wife had treated me as if I were part of the stench she was fleeing. Even if I managed to convince her that our home had not been invaded, would that change anything? I’d still be the villain. She didn’t want to talk to me? Fine. I was in no mood to talk to her, either.
Alas, reptilian thoughts like these are always eager to break containment, to slither into adjacent s
ectors of the brain and there locate some kindness or decency to coil around and squeeze the life out of. Unable to sleep, my thoughts on a loop, snippets of the day’s dialogue began to merge like they do in movie montages: That good-looking wife of yours… Somebody really doesn’t like you. What if I had things backward? Thanks to Clay, I’d been imagining a former student with some kind of grudge against me, but I wasn’t the only one who lived here. Okay, sure, Ellie and I were both in our sixties, but as Robert had pointed out earlier in the evening, my wife was an attractive woman. (Of course he’d been watching that night we’d used the tub sans bathing suits.) Just last week in San Diego, when we were coming out of a restaurant, a man our age had drunkenly appraised Ellie and clapped me on the shoulder. “You,” he’d enthused, “are one lucky man.” Hadn’t it always pleased me to suspect that my wife had so many admirers? Wasn’t it possible that she’d met a man who promised never to laugh at her when she was being serious? And now she couldn’t get rid of him? Wouldn’t that explain why she was so anxious to cull our possessions, sell the house, and move to California?
Even as I indulged this scenario born of grievance, I knew it was ridiculous. For it to be true, Ellie would have to be a stranger, someone I didn’t know, and she wasn’t. Why was the possibility—that she had a secret life—somehow exciting to contemplate? Was it because in the end we are creatures of paradox, always striving to be seen and admired, even as we jealously guard our privacy? Here I am. Look at me. Aren’t I beautiful? No, you can’t see my tax returns.
* * *
—
I happened to be looking out the front window one afternoon the following month—November again, a full year since we discovered that first floater in the tub—when a police cruiser pulled up out front and, sure enough, Officer Nuñez got out. She took note of the SOLD sign in the front yard right away. Our neighbor had been right; the house had gotten snapped up right away. “Say it ain’t so,” she said when I met her at the front door. “You’re letting the bastard run you off?”
“I’m afraid so,” I sighed. “One of us is already gone.”
I’d tried to reason with her, but to Ellie’s mind the house and everything in it was contaminated. It was like the container of cottage cheese you find in the back of the fridge, its contents thick with mold. You don’t just scrape off the top layer. You pitch it. Unless I was mistaken, this metaphor was being applied not just to our house but also to our marriage. And not just ours. Ellie had been right—she let me know without actually saying the words I told you so—about our daughter’s marriage. We’d no sooner returned to Tucson than Jack had moved in with the woman he’d been seeing. Alison had known about her when we were visiting and was waiting for him to make up his mind. Now he had. As had Ellie. She’d returned to our contaminated house only long enough to pack a bag and then had flown to San Diego.
Now, with the closing only two weeks off, I’d all but begged Ellie to return, but she refused. The necessary documents could be signed electronically. If she came back, I’d try to persuade her, and she was all done being persuaded, at least by me. Wasn’t I the very person who’d tried to convince her the house didn’t stink? How very different our instincts had been. While I was throwing open windows, exterminating flies, climbing up onto the roof, and changing cooler pads, Ellie had decided none of that mattered. What did matter right then was Alison and Jack Jr. I’d imagined that she’d become unhinged by dread, but now I knew better. Oh, her freak-out had been real enough. But I’d been wrong to conclude that fear had untethered her from reality. She’d just slipped the knot that tethered her to my own. How long had she wanted to do that, I wondered? Did the desire predate the election and that first turd in the tub? Was it born years earlier, the first time I laughed at her in a dream? Or had she just gradually grown weary of my glass-half-full optimism in the face of growing evidence that the glass was not only empty but cracked and maybe even dangerous to drink from. Better to face words like precancerous head-on, and how could she do that in the company of a man whose default position was to insist that everything would be fine in the end?
Anyhow, her mind was clearly made up, so I’d hired some movers, put our still-unculled possessions in storage, and moved into a furnished one-bedroom near the university. Either she would end up missing me, or she wouldn’t, and in the meantime I would have to find a way to fill my days. Back when I retired, I thought maybe I’d write a book, the one that teaching, committee work, and paper grading had kept me from for decades. I’d even sketched an outline and made some notes before putting the project aside. Was it too late to begin again? Would I just be killing time? Waiting for Ellie to call and say, Come to San Diego? Our daughter needs you? Jack Jr. needs you? I need you? It could happen, I told myself. And yet: Man, man, man, Ellie’s complaint, uttered at the apex of her frustration, still echoed in my brain. If the election had taught American women anything, it was that they needed to stick together. What stood between them and justice was male. It was named Donald and Mitch and Roy and Harvey, and my wife seemed to have concluded that my own name could be added to that list.
Nor, apparently, was I the only one mulling all this over, because one night, Clay, clearly shaken, called to say that Nathan was in the university hospital after attempting suicide. He’d been on antidepressants for as long as we’d known him, but for some reason he’d stopped taking them and, well, this was the result. According to Betsy he would live—at least long enough for her to kill him, selfish bastard that he was.
He was asleep when I arrived at the hospital, but he woke when I used the remote to turn off the ceiling-mounted TV. The sound had been muted, but the orange man shared a split screen with the two heavy-chested women who were accusing him of covering up sexual relationships. After Nathan and I shook hands and I pulled up a chair, I said, “So what’s all this about?”
He didn’t answer for so long that I wondered if he meant not to. Finally, he said, “I really don’t know. Lately I’ve just felt…out of gas.”
“You might’ve called me.”
“What?” he said, managing a weak grin. “You own a gas station?”
“We’re friends.”
He shrugged. “I heard you had your own problems.”
“I could’ve told you mine and you could’ve told me yours.”
“How would that have made either of us feel better?”
“How would it have made us feel worse?”
I’d meant the question to be rhetorical, but Nathan looked like he knew the answer and was about to share it. Before he could, though, the TV somehow turned itself back on, including the volume. “What the hell?” I said.
This time Nathan’s grin was more genuine. Nodding at the president, he said, “He prefers that on.”
Using the remote, I clicked the OFF button and again the screen went black, only to come back on again a few seconds later, and when it did, I got up and unplugged the fucking thing from the wall. “If it comes on again, I give up.”
“I think you may have just explained what happened to me,” Nathan offered when I sat back down. “Suddenly it was all too much. I gave up.”
“I don’t think we’re supposed to, though,” I told him. “Both our religious traditions are pretty explicit on the subject of despair.”
“True, but they’re less helpful about what we’re supposed to do in its face.”
I nodded. “My father used to say, ‘Try something. If it doesn’t work, try something else.’ ”
“A philosopher, your old man.”
“No, a plumber.”
“See? All these years we’ve been hanging around with the wrong people. You want wisdom, consult a man who unclogs drains for a living.”
It hadn’t been wisdom so much as a warning, actually. He’d tried marriage and fatherhood, and when these hadn’t worked out, he’d tried something else. It was shortly after he split that
I’d become an altar boy, no doubt an attempt to fill the void created by his absence.
“Clay tells me you found out who was shitting in your hot tub.”
“You guys are friends again?”
Nathan nodded. “He said he was sorry. I said I was sorry. Everybody’s sorry. What a sorry crew we all turned out to be.” When I didn’t say anything to that, he shifted gears. “But I want to hear about your shitter. I have this weird feeling it might cheer me up.”
So I told him how Officer Nuñez had finally figured out that it had to be a case of mistaken identity. It’d been the Gordons, who lived next door, who’d pissed somebody off, not Ellie or me. Apparently a distant relative, jealous that the Gordons could afford to buy a house in the District, had come to them demanding a loan, which they’d refused. A shouting and shoving match had ensued, and he told them they’d rue the day they turned him away. The guy lived somewhere on the Arizona/New Mexico border, but before returning home he hired some brazen young guy he knew to climb over their back wall and shit in their tub. He was given the name of the street they lived on and a description of their house, which of course was also a description of ours, right down to the hot tubs on our patios. After the kid had done this several times over a period of months, the scorned relative got his girlfriend to call the Gordons and ask them if they liked the presents he was leaving them. They’d cheekily said yes, please send more, which had precipitated the attack on the swamp cooler. “Malign intention coupled with incompetence,” Nathan chortled. “Always a winning combination. Did they apologize at least?”
I nodded. The same day our realtor affixed the SOLD sign to the post in our front yard, there came a knock on the door. Mrs. Gordon stood on the step. We’d been introduced when they moved in, and since then we’d waved when we happened to be pulling into or out of our driveways at the same time, but otherwise they’d kept to themselves and so did we. “I want to apologize for our cousin,” she said now. “The awful things he did. He’s a horrible person.”
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