Home Is Burning

by Dan Marshall

  “You two are so strong. Stay strong and keep him strong,” I imagined the judge saying.

  “Thank you, Your Honor. Our lives are complete shit right now, but we’ll do our best to find a way through this mess. No more drinking for Jessica. I’ll see to it,” I imagined myself saying. “Though I might have a drink or two myself,” I might joke, sending the judge and possibly the whole courtroom into fits of laughter.

  “You’re a good man, and a funny son of a bitch,” the judge would say.

  “Hey, my mom’s no bitch,” I’d reply, causing more laughter.

  “You rascals get on out of here. And don’t forget your Golden Medals of Courage,” he’d say as he placed the pure gold medallions around our tired necks.

  That’s not what happened.

  Instead, the tired and matter-of-fact judge ran through the list of petty thieves and recreational drug users that decorated the Utah courtroom. He finally got to Jessica.

  “Jessica Marshall, looks like you had a little too much fun at Lagoon,” he said. Jessica nodded back. “Looks like you’re a minor. Do you have anyone here with you?” he asked. “Anyone here for support?”

  The courtroom was silent for a second. The judge stared at Jessica, Jessica at her feet. I was about to say something like “I’m here. I’m Jessica’s fat, budding alcoholic older brother.” Then, with all the strength in his weak body, my dad rose out of the creaky wheelchair.

  “I’m Jessica’s dad,” he managed to say. All heads turned to him, shocked by his resurrection out of the chair. He stood there like a proud parent, his weak legs barely able to hold him up, watching after his little girl, making sure she knew he still had her back. “I’m here to support her.”

  The judge looked my dad over. “Okay, and are you okay, sir?” he asked.

  “I have Lou Gehrig’s disease, but we’re trying to manage,” my dad said. The judge solemnly nodded back at him and made a few notes.

  Jessica got out of the ticket. She just had to do forty hours of service, which the judge said she could do by helping out at home. We weren’t awarded any Golden Medals of Courage, but Jessica left knowing that her dad was still looking after her. Even if he could barely do it, he stood up for her.

  “The wheelchair really did the trick,” my dad said as he smiled at us. “We really fooled them.” I smiled at my dying dad. He had flashed back to who he was before Lou Gehrig’s disease, if only for a brief moment.

  “Come on, let’s get the fuck out of here,” I said as Jessica and I wheeled our dad out of the courthouse and into the crisp fall air.

  STANA’S CAT HOLOCAUST

  Before the Lou Gehrig’s disease, my dad did a great job of maintaining our house—keeping it looking fresh and modern, making us appear to be a family in its prime. The TVs worked and functional batteries weighed down the remotes. There was always an abundance of beer in the fridge. The yard looked like the cover of a magazine that specialized in beautiful yards that were never littered in dog shit. Lightbulbs were replaced the instant they burned out. There were multiple shampoo and conditioner choices in the showers. Rolls of toilet paper were at least an inch thick. The grill had a never-empty propane tank connected to it and chicken shish kabobs sizzling on top. The garage was swept and didn’t smell like a combination of dog urine and cat urine, with a splash of drunk-Dan urine. There was chalk next to the pool table. No leaves floated in the pool. The tennis court had a net. The cars were washed and had gas in them. There were no spiders in our basement.

  Then the ALS shitstorm hit.

  Suddenly, our house was transformed into a war zone. There were weeds on our dirty tennis court. Dog shit and dandelions marred our yard. HBO worked on only a couple of our TVs. The hot tub smelled like balls and teenager piss. Cobwebs haunted our windowsills and spiders ran our basement like a 1920s speakeasy. Rooms were unevenly lit or just darkened by dead bulbs. Keys on the computer keyboard were missing. The grill functioned as a recycling bin for unfinished 3 a.m. beers instead of the place where meat was made delicious. Two of our three pinball machines no longer worked. The mini-fridge in the basement had more types of mold than beer and wasn’t even plugged in anymore. Door handles jiggled. Locks didn’t lock. Our cars were filled with Del Taco wrappers, Red Bull cans, sunflower seeds, hardened pita bread, banana peels, and glasses lined with week-old orange juice residue. No new pictures went up on the wall. Cat piss yellowed our carpet. Cigarettes and weed were smoked in the backyard. Raccoons danced in our trees and shit on our trampoline.

  We had lost the man of the house, and his absence amplified how much he had formerly done for us. Greg and I were left to try to fill in and keep the house up and running. But we were so used to having our dad do everything that we didn’t know how to do anything. For example, once it took me forty-five minutes to change a lightbulb. I thought an old one had broken off in the socket. I had read somewhere that a potato could grip the bulb and spin it out. I started there. The potato didn’t work. Before I knew it I had an apple up there, then a banana, then a cantaloupe, then a Fruit Roll-Up, and then I went back to the potato. It turned out that all I had to do from the get-go was screw in a fresh bulb. In the end, the whole fixture was destroyed and smelled like the produce section of a grocery store.

  To add to the deterioration of our house, there were way more animals running around than we could handle. It was a zoo. In addition to the two golden retrievers, we now had four cats: Brighton, Bailey, Pierre, and Pongo. Brighton had been around our house for years. She must have been fifteen years old. Cats are a reflection of their surroundings, and growing up in our house was chaotic and intense, so Brighton was rather skittish. Plus, she didn’t get along with any of the other cats. Anytime another cat would approach, she’d make that terrifying hissing noise and even take a swipe at them. Bailey was our second-oldest cat. My mom had apparently rescued him from traffic on State Street. Bailey also kept to himself, and didn’t really interact with us or any of the other animals. Tiffany had dumped Pierre and Pongo on us after BCB turned out to be allergic. They were brothers, so they sort of ran the show, ganging up on Brighton and Bailey and taking over the best nap spots. All the cats were territorial, and they were engaged in a rather epic piss battle, leaving stains everywhere and making the majority of our house absolutely reek of cat urine.

  The combination of the loss of the man of the house, Greg’s and my inability to fill his shoes, and the cats’ piss war amounted to our home slipping into total dysfunction and decay. And with the construction in full force, half the house was covered in tarps, dust, and construction gear. It was mayhem.

  * * *

  No one noticed the deterioration of our home more than Stana. Stana had worked for our family for as long as I could remember. She was in her seventies, but tried really hard to look like she was in her fifties. She had a wrinkly face, was about five feet tall, wore glasses, and had dyed blond hair. Her backstory was caked with tragedy. She was born a Jew in Poland just as things were heating up with that asshole Hitler. When the Nazis stormed her family’s house and pulled her parents out, they somehow missed Stana, leaving her alone in their ransacked home. She was two at the time. Neighbors discovered her and raised her.

  My mom, being a cancer survivor, naturally took a liking to Stana. “She’s a survivor like us, and survivors are always good to have around,” my mom once explained. Plus, Stana was short and feisty, like my mom, and hated Mormons more than anything on earth. Well, maybe except for the Nazis.

  Because my mom had a soft spot for Stana (survivor sisters for life!), she didn’t seem to mind that she wasn’t a great cleaning lady. Instead of actually cleaning, Stana seemed more interested in the house gossip. I guess she was looking for a replacement family. So we took her in, and she became a sort of grandma figure in our lives. Fuck, she even attended birthday parties and some holidays. She was a friend first and a cleaning lady second.

  I always liked her because she was funny. Funny goes a long way in my book. She
swore up a storm (“son of a bitch” was her go-to) and would call people out if they were fucking up. I admired her honesty and bluntness, even when it came at my expense. When I visited home after my first semester at Berkeley, Stana took one look at me and said, “Oh, Danny, you is havin’ fat face now.” It hurt my feelings, but it was true. I was havin’ fat face after a semester of eating shit, drinking beer, and never exercising, as college students tend to do.

  Stana had her flaws, though. She, like our real grandma, was a not-so-closet racist. I always thought it was strange to hear a woman who survived the Holocaust discriminate against anyone who wasn’t a Nazi, but she did. For example, though it was only October 2007, preparations for the 2008 Democratic primary elections were kicking into high gear. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were neck and neck. When I asked her whom she liked for president, she said, “Danny, I is no likin’ Obama. No be president.”

  “Why not? Obama’s super cool and he likes basketball.”

  “Danny, it is because he is black. No black president. This is, how you say, ridiculous,” she explained in her adorable broken English.

  I didn’t know what to make of that, so I said, “Well, I like him. He’s really smart and is a welcome change from that dipshit George W. Bush.”

  “There is no way this man is president. Black people no get good jobs,” she retorted as she swept our hardwood floors, not recognizing that maybe she didn’t have the best job.

  Stana, though she thought she was really smart, couldn’t read or write in English. One year, she gave my mom a birthday card that had on the front the words “I give you my deepest sympathies in this your time of mourning.” So she was an illiterate, unrepentantly racist Holocaust survivor, but we still loved her like one of our own.

  Though Stana wasn’t great at it, she tried her best to make our home look orderly and warm. While the dying-parents mess was happening, Stana was trying to figure out how she could put a stop to the decline of our house. She noticed the obscene amounts of cat piss popping up all over the place and started blaming the cats for everything.

  Construction in the basement had finished, so I moved from the dining room down into the basement. One Monday morning, Stana darted into my basement room—one of the cat-piss hot spots.

  “Danny, you is up?” Stana yelled through my door as I lay in bed, still in my boxers, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, trying to figure out what to do with my morning wood.

  “Yeah, I am now.”

  “You is come with me. I is showin’ you what son of a bitch kitties doing,” she said, pulling me out of bed.

  “Did they piss again?” I said.

  “I showin’ you,” Stana said.

  “I bet they pissed again,” I said, now awake.

  Stana guided me to a corner of the living room where a fresh batch of cat piss had been pissed. “See, Danny. Son of a bitch kitties goin’ pee all over here,” she said.

  I shook my head in disbelief and asked if I could go check on my dying father. Stana continued to stare at the piss, shaking her head and muttering “son of a bitch” under her breath.

  Her loathing of the cats grew so fervent that she eventually started describing ways in which she would brutally murder them.

  “Danny, I is takin’ kitty in backyard and hittin’ with hammer on head.”

  “Danny, I is takin’ kitty and leavin’ in middle of traffic.”

  “Danny, I is takin’ kitty and runnin’ over with my car.”

  “Danny, I is buyin’ gun and shootin’ kitty.”

  “Danny, I is throwin’ towel over kitty head and squeeze until no more kitty.”

  She would have acted on any of these ideas had it not been for my mom’s love of animals and unwillingness to take on any more death and tragedy. Mom had a particular love for Brighton. Brighton mainly hung out on my mom’s bed, nestling up to her after brutal rounds of chemo. “She’s my chemo kitty, and she’s not going anywhere,” Mom said. When she had the energy to do so, she would plead with Stana to stop complaining.

  “Stana, please. We’re dealing with so much right now. We can’t worry about getting rid of the cats,” my mom said.

  “But Debi, kitty is ruinin’ home. This is no home for kitty. Daddy is no healthy and kitty is makin’ pee-pee all over bedroom,” Stana said.

  “I know, Stana, but I can’t stand losing anything else right now. Not even the cats,” said my mom.

  “Stana take care of. I is takin’ kitty in backyard and hittin’ with hammer on head,” said Stana as she made a little hammering motion with her hands.

  “Not today, Stana, please. I really need to lie down. I just had three hours of chemotherapy,” said my tired mom as she headed off to bed to get some postchemo rest.

  Stana subtly announced her dedication to ridding our home of piss-easy cats when she showed up one morning with a large animal cage. She set it in the garage and woke me up.

  “Danny, I is bringin’ cage for kitty. You is catchin’ and puttin’ in cage and Stana is takin’ kitty far, far away,” she said excitedly.

  “It’s six in the morning, Stana. Can I go back to bed?” I said, not able to match her enthusiasm.

  “Okay, but when you is wakin’, I is showin’ you kitty pee in Mommy’s room and we is catchin’ son of a bitch kitty,” she said.

  Though initially I had no problem with the cats, Stana slowly convinced me to hate them as much as she did. I found myself flipping them off anytime I saw one. I would occasionally catch one and shit-talk it for five to ten minutes. “You better watch yourself, you fucking cat. We’re on to your pissing. Next time I catch you in the act I’m going to take you in the backyard and hit you over the head with a hammer, and then there is no more kitty.” The cat would usually mistake the aggression for affection and begin rubbing its head against my face with a solid purr.

  When people brought dinner over, I found myself escorting them around the house, showing them all the places the son of a bitch cats had urinated. “And look at this corner. The cats pissed all over it. Those fucking sons of bitches,” I would exclaim.

  “So, you’re putting in an elevator?” they’d ask, trying to change the subject.

  “Yeah. It’s so my dad can get around the house. Don’t know why he’d want to, though, since most of it is covered in cat piss,” I’d say as I was escorting them to another corner of the house. “Look at this area behind the couch. Those sons of bitches.”

  “Um, okay. So where do you want me to put this lasagna?” they’d ask.

  To me, the cats started to symbolize more than just a yellow marking on the carpet. They started to represent selfishness. Here my siblings and I were moving my dad’s arms, wiping his ass, speaking for him, reading to him, showering him, and these lazy cats were running amuck in our house—pissing, sleeping, killing birds, playing with the curtain strings: everything we wanted to be doing ourselves, instead of the aforementioned Daddy Duties. Fuck those cats. Fuck those cats hard.

  My siblings agreed with Stana and me. The cats were a big, disgusting problem. Chelsea was fixated on the fact that the cats were here because of BCB’s allergy.

  “It’s just bullshit that Big Cock Brian can’t be around cats, so we have to deal with them, ya know,” said Chelsea as she licked the salt off a pretzel.

  Greg didn’t like all the fur everywhere. “Living with this many animals is just sort of gross. We’ve got to get rid of them,” he said.

  We asked Tiffany to take them back since Brian had moved to Maine, but she still refused. “Guys, Brian can’t be around cats when he’s in town. He’s fucking allergic. Just fucking deal with it.”

  Greg and I decided we needed my dad on our side if we were ever going to get rid of these cats, especially since my mom was no help. We convinced him that the cats were way worse than Lou Gehrig’s disease. It got to the point where we would say, “What should we do with the cats?” and he would say, “Kill ’em.”

  Stana had Greg and me so riled up one morning
that we pledged that today would be the last day our house would be subject to cat piss. We were to wait for my Humane Society–loving, yogurt-eating, hippie-bitch mom to leave for chemo, and then we were going to catch those cats come hell or high water. Stana was going to lead the charge.

  It was as though we were going to war. The only problem was that Greg and I were scared that the cats would catch on to our scheme and collectively decide to claw out our eyeballs. To curb our fears, I rounded up some old racquetball goggles for us. We teamed those with construction gloves I found among all the tools and gear, plus three layers of sweaters. We felt good and protected against the cats’ piss-stained claws.

  Stana didn’t wear anything special. Just her regular cleaning uniform. She decided that all she needed was a large sheet to throw over the cats and then, “We is takin’ son of a bitch kitty and puttin’ in cage.”

  My mom left for chemo and we started our hunt. We were able to chase Brighton into my parent’s bedroom. Once she was cornered, Greg and I thought it best to focus on this son of a bitch kitty while Stana patrolled the halls for additional cats. Greg and I were terrified and having trouble seeing out of the foggy racquetball glasses, but we were determined to get this cat. Brighton had cleverly placed herself beneath my mom and dad’s king-size bed, where she sat poised to claw the lord out of our eyeballs. Greg was on one side. I was on the other. Stana entered.

  “Me is no findin’ other kitty. We is focus on this son of a bitch,” she said as if she had been on the evil side of World War II instead of the tragic side.

  Stana suggested that Greg and I lift the bed while she waited with her sheet. We lifted the entire bed. We couldn’t see the action unfold and only heard Stana yell, “Son of a bitch, shithead kitty!” followed by the sound of a swooshing sheet and a struggling cat. We dropped the bed and looked over. She had Brighton wrapped up in the sheet. Poor Brighton struggled and made a meowing noise that sounded like “help.”