Housebroken

by Laurie Notaro

  October 12

  Rains. The Pile is flattened, leaves still falling. Leaves now joined by others they haven’t seen since they budded. Those straggler leaves are inviting other leaves from trees not in my yard. Renegade leaves blowing down the street also seem to stop by to join the leaf party in front yard. Shaggy leaves missing stems or tips seem to be joining the congregation. I suspect homeless leaves; other yards must be full.

  October 18

  The Pile regains shape, big enough to bury a teenager under. The shortest lawn crew guy is unaccounted for. I am concerned for him, but not really enough to go poking through rotten leaves that could have slugs on them. That should be left to his boss.

  October 19

  STORM! A tornado of leaves whips across the yard bringing twigs, lichen, and more leaves in a tumbling display of chaos. The Pile sits still; whatever touches it sticks, unable to release itself from the hulking, gluey, decomposing hill of once vibrant foliage. It smells of earth and must. I check calendar for city leaf pickup date in my neighborhood.

  November 30 to December 6.

  I gasp in horror and shake my head in denial.

  The Pile is up to my knees.

  October 23

  Someone parks on The Pile. Wheels spin for fifteen minutes to try and get vehicle to move. I spy behind curtain in front room while girl with pink hair who has an appointment at the nail salon around the corner learns a valuable life lesson. As in “Park your shitty Toyota Tercel elsewhere.” I grin as her wheel wells fill with flipped-up clumps of decay and her anger is expressed as she pushes harder and harder on the gas pedal. I am giddy with joy; The Pile has her trapped. May she go back and tell her nail salon sistren to avoid The Pile; it made her late for spray tan session! Finally, after gouging troughs in The Pile with her bald tires, she shoots off the slick of leaves like she’s on a pair of skis and narrowly misses hitting an oncoming Subaru Forester. She shall not return to my side of the street.

  October 25

  The yard guys return, and reshape and tend The Pile into the glorious mass that it is. No one on this street has a pile this size; it is alone in its striking height and width. It can now accommodate a family of four, and is now far past my knees. Of the yard guys, there is still no sign of the little one.

  October 26

  Mailman attempts to cross The Pile as wagon trains tried to cross the Sierra Nevada in winter. He is ill equipped, and despite his cape and costume of blue, he is bogged down in the middle, and has to stop and catch his breath before attempting the final leg of his foolishness.

  You cannot beat The Pile.

  House always wins.

  October 27

  CRISIS! CRISIS!

  At 2:40 in the afternoon, I rush out of the house in an attempt to make it to FedEx to ship photographs to New York overnight. The cutoff to ship is 3:00 P.M.: I have twenty minutes to make it. I am convinced I can do it until I see The Pile, dissected and torn apart in several large chunks in front of my driveway that, unless I quickly trade my Prius in for a monster truck, I cannot get over. Time is ticking as I stare at The Pile, torn in massive clumps that have been dragged under a very low car (I suspect my neighbor’s maid, who drives an El Camino) to their new resting place. I have no tools. I have no time to get tools. I use what is at my disposal, which are my feet. In my cowboy boots, I begin kicking at the satellite piles to get them out of the way, but the leaves are wet and heavy and compressed, and I sense a massive knee injury racing my way, due to arrive in approximately two minutes. But I keep kicking. And kicking. And provide a soundtrack to my efforts that is saltier than anything ever unfurled on a dock. I swear vengeance. I demean their ancestors. I curse their progeny. I wonder, so that all my neighbors can hear, how daft do you need to be to park on a pile of leaves as tall as a first-grader? As big as most European cars?

  I hear shuffling behind me, and I ignore it, sure it is a cop called to come and silence the insane woman swearing and kicking at leaves in the middle of the street. “Need a hand?” is what I hear, and it is my thirty-year-old neighbor, Ed, who has a back not yet destroyed by sciatica or bulging disks. In his hand is a shovel.

  I nearly collapse with relief. Together, we kick and shovel the clumps of errant leaves back to the mother pile. We are both sweaty, angry, and set on developing a lookout plan from both sides of the street to prevent this atrocity from happening again, and I have two minutes to get to FedEx.

  Only because I am filled with rage and fueled by fury do I make it literally in the nick of time. And on the way home, I see a solution. I see it everywhere, because most of our little town in under construction.

  I make a note of where the construction cones are located and their proximity to street corners to enable a speedy getaway in the darkness of night.

  When I tell my husband of my plan, he threatens to call the police on me himself, or my doctor. My choice.

  I explain that it is only a seasonal theft, and I will return the cones from whence they came when the leaf pickup has been completed, and we are out of danger.

  He does not share my logic.

  I make a promise not to steal traffic cones.

  October 28, 2:00 A.M.

  I wake abruptly with a brilliant idea and run downstairs to my computer.

  YES, AMAZON SELLS TRAFFIC CONES.

  But I need them now. I cannot wait two days for Prime shipping.

  I have another brilliant idea.

  YES, HOME DEPOT SELLS TRAFFIC CONES.

  And yes, my closest Home Depot has them in stock.

  I get dressed.

  October 28

  While I understand it is always too early to deal with the first customer of the day, I am nevertheless shocked when the man in the orange apron does not know where to find traffic cones. Together, we search every aisle until he simply vanishes on the screw aisle just as I’m getting to the part where Ed comes to rescue me with his shovel. On the next aisle, I find a nice older lady who does know where the traffic cones are and leads me right to them. However, when I turn around to demonstrate how I had to kick the leaves, there is no one there. I wonder if she was ever real.

  An hour later, I have placed the bright orange cones—with my address written prominently in black Sharpie—to guard and protect The Pile until the holy day comes when they are scooped up to leaf heaven.

  October 30

  A cone is stolen.

  I return to Home Depot.

  Cashier begins talking to another cashier when I get to the part that demands an answer when I declare, “WHO would steal a cone with MY address on it?”

  November 1

  It is possible that there are only twenty-nine more days until leaf pickup arrives. The lawn guys are here and amass a mountain of leaves as high as an American car with an NRA sticker on the back window.

  November 5

  There is not a leaf left on a tree anywhere on my street, but still, they come. Every morning there are more leaves on the lawn. I’m beginning to think that others are abandoning their leaves here, unable to deal with the responsibility and the commitment of having trees and their consequences.

  November 7

  I find a leaf in my underwear.

  November 8

  The lawn guys are here. They have stopped trying to reach the top of The Pile with the leaves and just add them to the base, which is now spreading into the traffic portion of the street.

  I dare anyone to say anything to me.

  November 9

  I chase away a woman driving a Tahoe and her baby in the backseat who believe they can conquer the mountain.

  I run out into the yard and catch her just as she is about to run over a cone. I walk in front of her, my hand raised in the international sign for “STOP.”

  She leans out her window and asks if something is wrong.

  “There is a temporary suspension of parking here,” I say. “The cones symbolize that.”

  She says she doesn’t see a sign.

  �
�This is your sign,” I say, and pick up a cone. “You almost just ran over it. It was nine ninety-nine.”

  “That’s not a sign,” she replies. “That’s a cone.”

  “There are no signs on police barricades,” I retort. “Are you going to run through those?”

  She rolls her eyes at me and backs up, makes a U-turn, and parks on the other side of the street before she and her baby march off to get her nails done. When she is safely around the corner, I pelt the side of her car with a handful of leaves.

  Whore.

  November 11

  Some agent of the devil has not only driven through the corner of The Pile, but has taken one cone with it and shot the other cone into my neighbor’s yard. The carnage is spread across the street in a grisly arc. If I were an expert at tire tracks, I would say that they were those of a Tahoe. They certainly match the ones I found on Google.

  In defiance, I leave them there as a reminder of foolery.

  I return to Home Depot, and buy a replacement cone plus a backup.

  November 15

  The lawn guys are here. They have brought all of the leaves from the one-hundred-foot-tall Oregon ash tree in the backyard into the front. The Pile now stretches in front of my entire front yard, creating a ridge and a screen of privacy that I particularly like. When the yard crew departs, I cross in front of the living room windows in my tights. I find three leaves inside the front door. I put my skirt back on.

  Sometimes, when I wake up in the middle of the night, I hear the blower. It is far away, but I can hear it.

  November 20

  My sister mocks me when she asks me, in a phone conversation, what is new and I mention that in ten more days, The Pile might be gone.

  “You are posting far too much about The Pile on Facebook,” she warns me. “And on Twitter. You have thirty-four pictures on Instagram of its various stages of gestation. Nobody cares about The Pile. Even I stopped ‘liking’ the posts about The Pile. The picture of the squirrel on it was cute until you mentioned that you threw rocks at it.”

  “You don’t even know what you’re talking about,” I reply. “We grew up in Arizona. The only things that collected en masse were tumbleweeds. You’ve never seen a real tree in your entire life, let alone had to deal with them.”

  “I’ve seen a tree,” she shot back. “I’ve seen a tree!”

  “Can you tell me the difference between a maple and an oak?” I asked her. “Which ones have acorns? Which ones have little wingy-spinny things fly off of them? Which ones peel? Because there’s a tree that peels, you know. Just like if you spend fifteen minutes outside in Phoenix without sleeves and sunblock on.”

  “If I could ‘unlike’ this conversation right now, I would,” she said. “Please stop talking about The Pile. Big deal about a couple of leaves.”

  “A couple of leaves?” I screamed. “A couple? I have a hundred-year-old sycamore tree in my front yard. I also have a willow that is sixty feet tall. Not to mention the monster Oregon ash in the backyard that you like to put your hammock under when it’s still beautiful and in bloom. You’re not here when the tree starts to get naked. You don’t know what the story’s like now, sister. I’m living in a season, I’ll have you know. I have about four hundred pounds of wet, rotting leaves in front of my house, and if someone parks on those leaves or blocks access to The Pile when the city comes to take them away, I am stuck with them. STUCK. There are no second chances here. I got one shot at this, baby. And I am taking it.”

  “Did you just call me baby?” she asked.

  “I gotta go,” I said quickly. “Someone is acting suspicious around my cones.”

  November 24

  I saw the earthmover six streets away.

  Six streets away.

  November 26

  Today might have been Thanksgiving.

  November 28

  When I washed my hair today, three leaves fell out that I didn’t know were there. One of them had a slug on it.

  November 30

  Nothing.

  December 1

  I heard the earthmover stop in front of my house, but it was just a semi delivering a new dishwasher to my neighbor. I kept my cool. I kept it. I only yelled at the delivery guys to hurry up twice.

  December 2

  Utter silence.

  December 3

  Out of milk since the first, and the only things we have left to eat in the house are freezer-burned egg rolls and Cream of Wheat.

  I’m fine with that.

  December 4

  The unthinkable has happened. I’m out of Belgian chocolate toffee creamer for my coffee. I can live without cookies and soda and dinner, but I cannot live without coffee, and I can’t drink my coffee without Belgian chocolate toffee creamer. I can literally see Safeway from my deck, and if I were truly a thinking person, I would have had a zip line installed years ago. I calculate, second by second, how long it will take me to drive the twenty feet to Safeway, get my creamer, and get back: nine minutes, thirteen seconds, and that’s if I can find a parking space in the first or second row, and if the mummy in front of me isn’t writing a check or paying for her Ensure with dimes.

  What are the chances that the leaf pickup will arrive after I leave and be gone before I come back? Slim, I decide. Slim. But not slim enough that I shouldn’t do some recon first, and that involves driving the car around a three-block area to see if the earthmover is in the vicinity. If it is, I will go back home. If it’s not, I’m off to get creamer. I decide to take the chance. I decide I will risk it.

  So I get my stuff and I lock the front door, and as soon as I turn around, there she is. There she is. Pink hair. Toyota Tercel.

  I don’t even finish turning the key in the lock before I am marching over toward her and her car, pointing at her and yelling, “No. No. No,” because she has returned to get her nails done again and parked not on The Pile, because it’s way too big, but just close enough to it that the earthmover will not have any room to come in and scoop the leaves up.

  “Absolutely not,” I say as she gets out of her car with a smirk on her face. “Absolutely not.”

  She doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even look at me, but gets out of her car and closes the door.

  “You are going to move that car,” I say. “What do you think this is? What do you think these cones are for? Is this a carnival? Do I look like I’m selling tickets to you?”

  She looks at me, cocks her little pink head to one side, and says, “You can’t tell me where to park. I can park anywhere I want. I have two hours before I even get a ticket.”

  I nod at her. Then I nod some more. I bite the inside of my lip and my ears go cold. My fingers turn to ice, my neck is freezing. I feel myself start to tremble.

  “No,” I say. “No, I can’t tell you where to park. But I can suggest to you that if you do not move your car elsewhere, if you insist on leaving your car right in that very spot, not only will you come back here with a whole different strain of nail fungus than you already have, but your car”—and I point to it—“will be under that.” And then I point to The Pile.

  “And if you don’t think I am batshit crazy enough to do it,” I said, and pulled out my cellphone, “then you can ask my doctor.”

  She stood there for a moment, then whipped around and opened her car door, but before she got in shouted, “You are nuts!”

  “Get out of here before I make you wear this!!” I said as I picked up a cone and waved it at her like a torch.

  I had just put the cone back down when I heard the rumble, felt the ground shake.

  Then I heard it.

  Beep. Beep. Beep.

  It was like hearing angels sing.

  I turned around and there it was, coming straight toward me, right for The Pile. The earthmover.

  It was leaf pickup day at last.

  I picked up my cones and hugged them to my chest. I waved to the driver, who did not return my wave. But I didn’t care.

  We had done it. />
  The dump truck was right behind him, and as the first scooper went in and lifted a section of The Pile that was so dense and compact that not one single leaf fluttered off, I knew I had done it.

  It took them three minutes to remove The Pile, and when they had cleared my driveway, I went to the store and got Belgian chocolate toffee creamer, milk, and whatever else I wanted.

  When I got home, I was still smiling, especially when I saw the spot in front of my house where The Pile had been. I could no longer wear tights in the living room, but I hardly cared.

  I had just gotten to my front door when Sara, my new neighbor, walked over with her hands in the air.

  “I missed it?” she cried. “I missed it! What do I do with all of these leaves now?” she asked.

  I shook my head and sighed. “You’re going to have to wait for the next pickup in a month,” I informed her sadly.

  “Some jerk parked on my pile,” she said, and as I looked over to Sara’s curb, there was the Toyota Tercel, sitting on Sara’s leaves as if it were about to lay a big turd egg.

  “I’m going to leave them a nasty note,” Sara proclaimed.