The Idiot Girl and the Flaming Tantrum of Death

by Laurie Notaro

  And with the memories of the Christmas flight and the two weeks I spent in bed crackling, I did not feel one bit bad, weird, or overreactive as I looked at the woman sitting next to me as she open-mouthed coughed on me one last time, then reached into my purse and prepared to snap that bird-flu mask over my head. Not one bit.

  But before I could get the mask securely over my face, I was hit with something silent but deadly and oh so potent, heavily spiced with yesterday’s broccoli and sauerkraut, something that I was sure came shooting from the octogenarian sitting next to Typhoid Mary, rising up in a toxic attempt to smother and kill us all.

  Oh God, I thought as I held my breath. Someone help me. I’ve seen that Discovery Health Channel show, too.

  Love Thy Neighbor

  If the envelope had been delivered to the wrong address, I would have torn into it with glee. But it’s never a happy event to get a letter from the police department delivered to the right address.

  Yours.

  Standing next to the mailbox off my front porch in the middle of summer, I held the envelope in my hands and wondered as a wave of dread washed over me. No one ever gets a nice, happy letter from the police department unless it begins with the words “Good news! The charges against you have been dropped!”

  And then I breathed a sigh of relief.

  How stupid am I? I laughed. Duh. I knew exactly what the letter was, because I had gotten several of them before. It had to be a notice that I was being fined because the alarm on my security system had gone off without reason. Much like the last time I was charged $150 because the alarm had sounded when a thief tried to kick in my back door, failed because of the dead bolt, ran away when the alarm went off, and was gone before the police got there three hours later. In the rule book of the Phoenix Police Department, apparently, if the hoodlum fails to gain access to your home and flees the scene but leaves a calling card of a split doorjamb, a footprint on both your back door and the door to your storage shed, you owe the city of Phoenix a nice little nondeductible donation/early Christmas gift. In the time it took the police to respond to the alarm that someone was breaking in to my house AND WAS BREAKING IN NOW, the thief could have entered my house, surprised me on the potty, tackled me as I tried to shuffle to safety but fell because of the pants around my ankles, hit me over the head with the Bigfoot mug my husband gave me for my birthday, then skinned me like big game with the paring knife in my Henckels set (which he was going to steal anyway), wore my skin like a dress around the house, watched Death to Smoochy on DVD, and farted into my couch cushions before he realized how boring my house was and left because it turned out that the $2.84 in coins he found scattered all over the hallway floor from my pants pockets was actually sufficient to buy a value combo meal and a shake at Jack in the Box.

  And, just after he left, that would be the moment when the police show up and make a note to fine me $150 for a false alarm.

  Great, I thought with a heavy sigh as I tore into the envelope; I didn’t even know I had been almost robbed again. I unfolded the letter and then gasped like I had just seen a parent naked.

  “COMMUNITY NOTIFICATION,” the letter announced in bold, all-capital letters, then went on to inform me that a notification must be made when certain sex offenders are released from Arizona State Prison and that one of them had recently moved into the neighborhood.

  Well, I said to myself as I tried to diminish my fear in any way possible. Surely, this guy, Kenny Ray Swain, whose picture was presented in grainy black and white, showing his devil-like eyebrows, his beady, glaring, pigeony eyes, and his tight, wide lips that curled in a snarl like a sinister comma, didn’t do anything too bad. Maybe he’s just one of those guys who courted a seventeen-year-old in a trailer park and she fibbed about her age, right? It could be something like that. Or maybe he was just doing some heavy breathing into a phone receiver late at night, or maybe he was simply stealing panties from clotheslines and dryers in Laundromats. It could be something like that, right? Right? It probably isn’t anything serious at all; nothing like being convicted of one count of sexual assault, one count of sexual abuse, three counts of kidnapping, one count of unlawful imprisonment, and “other crimes.” It couldn’t be anything in which during the offense, Kenny Ray Swain forced his way into an apartment, beat three guys up so badly they couldn’t help the woman who was also in the apartment, who Kenny Ray Swain then raped.

  Kenny Ray Swain, it was clear, was not just a regular, ordinary, selling-porn-thru-the-mail or stealing-ladies’-undies brand of sex offender, but an Ed Gein variety of sex offender because in that one night of horror, Kenny Ray Swain was a lone wolf. He did all of that by himself, and was ranked at class three, which the asterisk placed along side of his title noted was a “high risk to the community.”

  Well, no shit.

  In addition, the letter read, “Citizen abuse of this information to threaten, intimidate, or harass sex offenders will not be tolerated.”

  I already had my head between my knees and was fumbling for my inhaler when I looked at the letter again and realized that I hadn’t even seen the most important part, which was listed at the bottom. Kenny Ray Swain’s current address was on the same street as my house was. His house number was 1201. Mine was 1218.

  In fact, it was the brick house.

  On the corner.

  Three houses down from me.

  I had to put the letter down. I couldn’t read any more. If I picked up the letter again I was afraid it was going to say, “Turn around slowly. He’s behind you and it’s too bad you don’t have three male friends over, because Kenny Ray is in the mood for a PARTY.”

  I didn’t know what to do first—scream, pack my bags, or beg my doctor for testosterone shots to complete my canvas of dark, Magnum P.I. facial hair. I wasn’t necessarily afraid to be in my house—after the would-be $150 false-alarm phantom burglar, we installed wrought-iron security doors on every entrance, adding to the wrought-iron security bars we had bolted to every window (completing our “It’s a ’Hood Thing” theme) years ago after another burglar broke in while the house was being restored and before we moved in, stealing a radial arm saw, a stereo, and my bathroom sink, then pooping outside on the patio, leaving it alongside the shirt he took off and wiped his ass with. I would trade almost all of the insurance money I got just to see the look on his face when the urge hit him and he realized our bathroom not only didn’t have a toilet but also was missing toilet paper and a floor.

  One thing I knew I wasn’t going to do was call my mother for comfort. “Oh, so there’s a pervert living on your street, huh?” I was sure she’d say. “Well, in your neighborhood, big surprise, now there’s that one plus the four you don’t know about that have been watching you walk around in your bra for ten years. I’m telling you, every house with filthy windows has a pervert inside. Animals. Dirty minds have dirty windows. Everyone knows that. But I wouldn’t worry about the Super Rapist if I were you, especially if he gets a good look at you from behind. I’d say you were probably pretty far down on his list.”

  As I looked at that letter in my hand, my fear rapidly gave way to unbridled anger. I was furious. Didn’t we have enough to deal with on our street without adding a rapist to the soup? Come on, my inner whiner cried, we just got down to eleven remaining feral cats across the street; the family who liked to throw parties every weekend and knew a mariachi band, turning their backyard into a live Sábado Gigante set, finally moved away; and Auggie, our local Gang Activity and Event Coordinator, recently violated his parole and went back to the clink. Things were looking up! Why do we get the rapist? Can’t another neighborhood take him, just to give us a break? I wonder if we can broker a deal with another neighborhood, I thought. Maybe the people over in Garfield would be willing to trade for him. I’d be willing to swap half a dozen hookers and a bum who pees in the open for Kenny Ray. And a meth lab. We could do a meth lab. Not a big one; I was talking kitchen sink/bathtub sort of operation, but yeah, I thought, nodding to
myself, we could do a meth lab. I’d be willing to trade for that.

  Because one little rapist, no matter how tiny, can ruin a whole neighborhood, and I mean the whole thing. Their damage is concentrated, and it can go a long way, like anthrax or Ann Coulter. I just didn’t get it. How did he end up on my street? How did he end up three houses away from me, just like that? How did he move in without anybody knowing anything until this letter arrived? How did someone help him move a rapist’s couch into his new rapist living room without immediately running into the street and yelling, “Hey, everybody, you might want to stock up on some pepper spray and whistles, because you’ve got a live one here!”

  I wondered if I had passed him on the street, stood in back of him in line at Safeway, or sat at the table next to his as we both ate chile rellenos at Tacos de Juarez. How would I even know? It wasn’t like he was extending the courtesy of wearing a T-shirt that said YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD SEX OFFENDER on it or even a little rubber bracelet with CLASS THREE AND ROAMING FREE embossed on it.

  The thing that got me the most is that it just wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right that one man could make hundreds, if not thousands, of people live in absolute terror and not have been elected into public office by popular vote. Why can’t he go live with his own kind, I wanted to know, in a gated trailer park community with all of the other rapists and classes of predators and deviants, where they can finally know what it’s like to live with one of their own among them, where they’re the ones afraid to take the trash out at night or even walk a dog? Where the safety of their daily lives gets to be altered and threatened because a neighbor who counts kidnapping and sexual assault as hobbies. They could call it “Attack Acres” or “Offender Heights” or even “Asshole Land.” I didn’t care what they called it, but I wanted Kenny Ray Swain to move there; I wanted him to get off my street and let my neighborhood go back to being the nice little shithole it was before this letter landed in my mailbox.

  When my husband came home that night, I didn’t say anything, I just stood there and handed him the letter.

  “What’s this?” he asked, and he sighed. “Why am I looking at this? Oh no. Oooooohhhh no. If you have another pen pal that you’ve neglected to tell me about, the answer is no, he can’t crash here while he goes on work release doing the night shift at Waffle House. There are two perfectly good halfway houses within a two-block radius of here that would be happy to have him and those crazy Charlie Manson eyes. And that’s final.”

  “Oh, it’s too late for that, my friend,” I cried as I shook the letter at him. “It’s too late to ask for permission. He’s already here. Look at the address. And why I told you that I tried to lend my comfort and support to a lonely, grammatically challenged soldier in Desert Storm who failed to reply after I told him I wore bike shorts under skirts is a mistake I will never make again, and it does not mean I will lick a stamp for just anybody! I was writing to a patriot, not a convict, although it’s not my fault that both commonly misunderstand the function and nature of preventative undergarments.”

  “Oh my God,” my husband said with a gasp, reading further. “He beat three men into unconsciousness? Alone? What is this, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Rapist? Does he fly and run across treetops? How long are his nails? What do you think his record for man beating is? Do we need four guys in the house at all times? Do we need five? You know, I could start a band and we could practice here.”

  “Yeah, I’d feel really safe knowing that there were five guys in grandpa sweaters and horn-rimmed glasses arguing about whether it’s ‘nah-nah-nah’ or ‘nah-nah-neh’ in my living room, just waiting to beat a rapist with a programmable drum machine and a sound-effect pedal,” I replied. “You could use a guitar as a weapon, but which one of your friends with their pasty Grover arms would be strong enough to swing it? What I’m most pissed about is how the city raised our property taxes because we finally replaced the broken front window, but no one felt the need to let us know that the Night Stalker would be in the area until he’s moved in and is getting his prison mail forwarded to a house I can see from the same window.”

  “This is an outrage,” my husband declared, balling the letter up in his hand and shaking it. “I am outraged.”

  “There’s nothing we can do about it,” I complained. “It’s not like we can walk over there and tell him to move on, because we’re not allowed to harass him; citizen abuse will not be tolerated. There is no committee we can go to. We are entirely powerless here. We can live in fear of him, but don’t even think about saying anything to him. How do you even approach a convicted rapist? ‘Hi, my name is Laurie, I live three houses down. Please don’t defile me’? My God, I need to pamper myself right now. I want a Milky Way Midnight bar, some raspberry sorbet, and six rolls of Charmin Ultra Soft. I’m going to the store.”

  “Wait!” my husband said as he grabbed my arm. “You can’t go to the store alone. I can’t let you go out there by yourself. It’s too dangerous now.”

  I felt the blood rush to my ears as I got even angrier. Where was I, Saudi Arabia? Kenny Ray Swain moves onto my street and now I can’t leave the house without a male escort? Ever? I can’t ever go outside? I wanted nothing more than to march over there and pepper spray him just because, even if it was 110 degrees out, which made it even more like Saudi Arabia.

  And then suddenly, it hit me, much as if Kenny Ray were to sneak up behind me and clobber me with something big and dull and skull-shattering. It was 110 degrees out. At night. Who was I kidding with all of this “going outside” business? I hated going outside. I loathed going to the store, fighting traffic, and dealing with the crush of humanity that existed just beyond the other side of my front door. Hadn’t one of my all-time favorite reveries been to become a cranky hermit, live unperturbed in my house, and have things brought to me like a monarch or tribal lord? At the very least until the end of the summer, because, really, if Auggie, who was merely a gang cruise director, couldn’t control himself without screwing up and returning to his maximum-security gated community, what were the honest chances of a class-three felon on the same street not breaking his parole and going straight back to making tattoos with a shard of glass and a ballpoint pen on the bottom bunk before fall came?

  Now you might just say to yourself, Oh, look, isn’t that cute and optimistic, God gave Laurie a lemon and now she’s making lemonade, but the truth of the matter is that God didn’t give me a lemon, he planted the Lex Luthor of all rapists three frigging houses away from me, and figuring out just how to survive now in my house wasn’t exactly mixing a pitcher of Country Time. It was more like chewing on the lemon rind and then attempting to swallow it under the threat of a whirling dervish of a deviant predator who could come calling for his obligatory cup of sugar at any moment. This, coupled with the fact that the only times I have lamented not having children are on days it was too hot to go out and get the mail, run to Sunshine Mart to pick up a candy bar, or fetch myself a refreshingly cold beverage without having to leave the comfort range of the oscillating fan, forced me to arrive at a very rancorous, yet delightful, conclusion. Kenny Ray Swain, for the time being, actually solved some long-standing issues.

  “This is so unfair,” I whined, stomping my foot. “All I wanted was a Milky Way and some sorbet. This has been a horrible, frightening day, and I just wanted a moment to forget it all. And now I can’t even go out! I might as well throw on a burqua. My life as I know it is over.”

  “Don’t worry,” my husband said, lifting the car keys from his pocket. “A Milky Way Midnight? Raspberry sorbet? And Charmin, is that what you said?”

  “The extra-soft Charmin,” I replied, slowly and sadly nodding. “Blue package. The pink package is so rough it’s like planks of wood. The Dairy Queen in Apache Junction has softer toilet paper than that. Oh, no, and I forgot we’re out of milk, too, and I feel a pudding crisis coming on. And we’re down to one egg, which is not good, because I may need the solace and comfort of French toast for dinner. Do you see how my who
le life just fell apart? My whole life, just because I’m a woman, and just because of one selfish rapist! I can’t even get myself an egg!”

  “I’ll take care of it,” my husband assured me. “I’ll be right back. Don’t answer the door. And here’s the phone in case you need to call the police, but I’ll be back before the requisite three hours it takes them to show up, so understand that 911 is just a formality, in case they slap us with another false-alarm fine. Are we up-to-date on the life insurance policy?”

  I nodded demurely, then watched as my husband left the house, made sure he’d locked the door, began sweating immediately, then proceeded to get into his barbecue of a car and kill thousands of his own brain cells as they boiled to death inside his skull like a pot of macaroni on a stove.

  I, in turn, grabbed a Snapple, still wishing I had offspring or a nicely trained monkey to fetch it for me, plopped my hiney down into the cushions of the sofa with a pop! as I opened my diet raspberry iced tea and made sure I was directly in the path of the fan.

  Now, much to my amazement, my husband kept up his knight-in-shining-armor routine for a week and a half, maybe two, and I have to say I could not blame him when the errand-boy life got a little stale. I sent him out almost every single night, sometimes twice if I was especially thirsty and the only thing that could save my life was a cherry limeade from Sonic (with two cherries in it. Two. I’m a prisoner in my own home, so I ask you, is two cherries one too many to ask?), while I stretched out on the couch and made him do my bidding because he was the gender that Kenny Ray only beat into unconsciousness. It was devilry. I know it. But resisting was futile. It was kind of like having a butler, but one that you could wear pajamas in front of and pinch if he made you a little mad. I was a little resentful, however, when he stood by the window for the first time and mentioned blithely, “There goes the ice cream man, and it looks like he’s having a sale on those cookie bars you like so much. Sure wish I had some shoes on…like you do,” or pointed out that Maria Elena, artisan of the most exquisite tamales anywhere in the world and one of my main reasons for still living in that house, had hit up everyone on the block but us with her stolen grocery cart and five-gallon bucket.