by Lizz Lund
“Yes, that’s right, you heard me correctly,” Trixie was saying into her cell phone. “FIRE! The address? It’s, uh, next door to Mina’s. 3041 Clovernook Lane.”
While Trixie was on the horn, Bauser and Norman were fumbling with untangling the garden hose that lay disconnected on my front porch. They were just about to turn it on toward the flames when Vito stopped them. “Just a minute, fellas,” Vito said, turning off the water spigot. “You don’t wanna do that when you don’t know what the fire’s made of. Some kinds of fires get made worse if they’re put out by regular water.”
“How’d you know that?” Bauser began. Vito stared at him. Bauser exchanged glances with Norman. They put the hose back down.
Pretty soon, my neighbors were leaning off their various front porches, wondering what the early morning wienie roast was all about. Someone walked over to see if we were okay. Someone else ran over and did the same thing. Another neighbor came over and asked if we should bust Vito’s door down, to rescue him. We introduced him to Vito. A new voice piped up, and said I should be ready to get Vinnie and Marie out of the house, in case we caught fire, too. Or because of fumes. Ethel and I gasped. I didn’t have a carrier for Vinnie, I admitted. Ethel went inside to check on our respective furry and feathered kids. Including Ike.
Another neighbor went back across the street to get me her cat carrier to borrow. “Make sure it can fit a really, really large turkey,” I yelled after her thankfully. She swiveled and gave me a funny look, and then went home.
Ethel came back outside. All our pets – feline, canine, avian – were slumberous. And not because of fume inhalation. Ethel had got the Ratties’ travel gear set up and Marie’s cover and supplies handy. She put a large laundry basket of mine in the foyer. Along with a large, wooden carving board and a roll of duct tape I’d forgotten about.
“What do you want me to do? Wash and fold him?”
“No, stupid. Put him in the laundry basket, and duct tape on the carving board for a top. We can get him to Aunt Muriel’s in about 15 minutes. It wouldn’t be so bad.”
“Oh.”
Herb Nelson’s son, Ned, was visiting for the weekend. He was also a volunteer fireman back home in Des Moines. He was the one who brought over Herb’s emergency kitchen fire extinguisher. (“Don’t you know every kitchen should have one of these? There are some fires you make worse by putting out with water,” he said.) Ned had the flames out in a few minutes just as the fire trucks arrived. And the police.
After some assurances that neither one of our homes would be ablaze again that night, Bauser took Norman and Jim home. Aunt Muriel commiserated with Mrs. Phang about the late night activities and Mrs. Phang’s dopey sister-in-law getting on her nerves. So Aunt Muriel invited her for a last minute sleepover. Mrs. Phang accepted, popped open a cell phone, said something in Vietnamese – the tone of which was familiarly unfriendly – hung up and smiled. The girls were off for their slumber party. Ma pouted. Then Aunt Muriel invited her. Ma packed up her NJ kit bag with what was left of the Absolut and my individual cans of tomato juice and left. Ethel and I furrowed.
“How come they make everything into a party?” Ethel asked. “I mean, even a fire, for Pete’s sakes.” For Pete’s sakes? Either Ethel was moving to Lancaster, or she’d lived with the von Trapp family too long.
“I dunno. It’s better than worrying about it, I guess,” I said.
Ethel sighed. “No, we do that.”
“Well, look at the bright side,” I said, “at least we know where they are.”
Ethel smiled. We had the same childhood memory of the weekend when Ma and Aunt Muriel decided they needed a girls’ night off. This was after Dad had mangled his toes in the lawnmower and Uncle Albert (husband #1) had mistakenly put his fist through the closet door when he was reaching for Auntie’s credit cards. Or was it her throat? Probably both.
Ma and Auntie swore up and down they told us all where they were going. But they hadn’t. Ethel and I wondered. Mostly about dinner. Dad and Uncle Albert worried. Mostly over Dewar’s. Then Dad worried about how he was going to get to the bathroom without Ma; he wasn’t about to lean on two teenage girls. Uncle Albert worried more matter-of-factly and called the New Jersey State Troopers. Which was why Ma and Auntie and Ma’s cousin Patsy got busted and interrogated alongside Englebert Humperdinck in Atlantic City. Apparently they’d decided they were due for a casino romp at Patsy’s suggestion. So they watched the show and got invited back to Englebert’s dressing room ‘for a beverage’. To this day, neither Ethel or I want to know how they achieved this. Ma and Auntie came home very cranky and very unhappy that their one night as late blooming groupies was a bust.
“Was it Tom Jones, or Englebert Humperdinck?” Ethel asked. “I always get them confused.”
“Englebert Humperdinck,” I said.
“How’d you remember that?”
“Dad kept yelling about ‘the Dink’ until Christmas that year.”
“Oh.”
“You think that’s why they split up?”
“No. Maybe. I dunno.”
“You think that’s why we found Dad’s presents on the curb?”
I sighed. “Maybe.”
“I always thought it was because we didn’t leave the Manhattans out for Santie Claus that year, like usual. I figured Santie got mad.”
Vito and Trixie and K. came up behind us. “Hey, Toots, we, uh… moved a few things over to your house, for safe keeping.” Vito winked.
“Huh?” I asked.
“Umm… some supplies and such.”
Trixie stared at me, and then nodded back to Vito’s house and the multiple entering and exiting policemen. “For SAFEKEEPING,” K. shouted understandingly.
“OH!” I nodded and whirled right around into Archie Daley.
Archie Daley had hoisted his girth up my front path. He was an even less cheerful or convivial Fire Marshal after midnight. “Oh, you again,” he huffed.
“I live here,” I said.
“Huh. Where’s the owner?” he asked, nodding his head toward Vito’s charbroiled front porch.
“Right here, sir,” Vito piped up dutifully.
“Well, looks like you’ve got a theme here,” Daley said.
“Huh?”
“A theme. With your neighbor.” He nodded at me. “You work for EEJIT, right?” Daley asked.
I nodded miserably. “Yes.”
“That’s the place that got torched with dog poop.” We all nodded mutely. “And it looks like your porch got put ablaze here with some fecal flambé.” I looked at Vito. Vito looked at me. “Burning poop,” Daley clarified, shaking his head.
“Doggie poop?” Trixie asked.
“Probably.” He shrugged and leaned over to Vito’s porch and sniffed. “It’s pretty stinky.”
A car pulled up quick and parked at the bottom of my driveway. Appletree hopped out wearing 101 Dalmatians jammies topped off with his police officer’s cap, and huffed up my driveway and toward my front porch. I glanced at Trixie and hoped she wouldn’t rearrange her cleavage in front of mixed company again. Trixie’s fingers twitched, but she held firm. Her self-control was probably helped by Appletree’s being mostly out of uniform.
“Archie. Mina. Vito. Trix,” Appletree said. I introduced Ethel. “Heard the address on the radio, thought I should look in,” he explained.
“Hey, that’s real nice of you officer,” Vito beamed back at him. “It being pretty late and you’re being off duty and all. But it looks like I’m okay here. We was all getting ready to head in, anyway.” He stretched and faked a yawn.
“We were?” K. asked. Vito pinched him. K. yelped. Clearly he was hoping that the all night party was going to be an all night party.
“There’s been an awful lot of burning poop getting thrown around lately,” Daley said.
“Hey, yeah, you know, you’ve got a point about that,” Appletree dully realized. We looked at each other and then quic
kly away to avoid any further eye contact. An ancient black Hyundai hatchback pulled up short and parked at the bottom of my drive, double-parking Appletree’s car.
A guy who looked an awful lot like he might be a reporter got out. Vito shook his head. Then a WLOL-TV van pulled up, and double-parked next to the reporter’s Hyundai. Then came another, which parked on the opposite side of the traffic island, and got immediately flanked by two WLOL-TV SUVs. The cul-de-sac was starting to look like a matchbox car line up made by a media happy 4-year-old.
Before we knew it, lights from a TV camera were blinding us, and a bleach blonde anchorwoman was saying something she obviously thought was profound whilst occupying most of Vito’s and my conjoined driveways. I looked over at Vito. Or, rather, where Vito had been: he was gone.
“Vito?” I whispered. Trixie poked me, and I looked over at Vito’s front door, where two firemen and a policeman were being helped out of Vito’s house by Vito’s very own paws.
“Thanks lots, fellas. I’ll sure remember yous all when you’re selling barbecue sauces next fall, ha ha,” he said, and closed and locked the door behind him.
The blinding light got hotter and more intense, as the WLOL anchor woman invited herself up to my porch and thrust herself and her microphone in our faces. “And these – these must be the neighbors of, ummm…”
“Vito!” cried K. happily, only too glad to be the center of attention. Trixie pinched him.
“Tell me, did your neighbor’s porch also get set on fire by a flaming bag of feces?” the anchor woman asked with therapist-like intensity, shoving the microphone at me. My head hurt.
“Umm, well, you know, I don’t know. He likes kielbasa…”
After a few more non-sequitors, the anchor woman groaned and drew an invisible line across her throat to the cameraman. “What’s going on here? Don’t you people even know that your neighbor’s house was on fire?”
“Ummm…”
“And who’s this? A slumber party reject?” she asked, pointing toward Appletree.
Appletree puffed up and readjusted his cap. “There’s a fine for double-parking in this neighborhood,” he said simply, and started walking toward the squadron of TV vehicles.
“Hey!” the anchorwoman called, trailing after him with her cameraman trotting behind.
I yawned. Ethel and K. and Trixie yawned back. “C’mon, K.,” Trixie said. “Let’s go back to the big city.” K. nodded and looked wistfully after the TV van driving away from my neighborhood – taking with it his 15 minutes of fame – and made his way to his curbside car. Ethel and I shrugged, and went inside for what we hoped would feel a lot longer than a midsummer night’s nap.
I closed and locked the doors. I turned up the AC and hoped it would take some of the smoked dog poop smells out of the house.
The phone rang. “Sorry I had to run out on yous, Toots,” Vito’s voice apologized. “I had some other, uh… priorities what come up.”
“Sure,” I yawned back.
“And don’t worry about the stuff in the basement. I’ll get that off your hands real soon.”
“Uh huh. Okay.”
I hung up and yawned again. I looked in the living room. Ike and the Ratties had slept through it all, the bums. So had Vinnie, who lay splayed out on his back in the middle of the living room floor, his legs sprawled wide open and his belly rising softly up and down in the AC breeze, his right paw hooked over his nose.
I heard water running upstairs and figured Ethel had found some jammies and a spare toothbrush. I went into the kitchen for a glass of water, looked at the clock and winced: it was 3:00 a.m. I looked at the basement stairs and sighed: Vinnie’s litter box. I wanted to put it off – but realized I hadn’t cleaned it since early that morning. And I really didn’t want him exploring alternative options. So I down to the basement I trudged.
I got halfway downstairs and stopped. The room was stacked from floor to ceiling with boxes. Great columns and piles of medical sample boxes lined the entire room. I sighed, weaved through the maze in search of Vinnie’s litter pan, cleaned it, and repositioned it to the bottom of the stairs. I figured at least this way he wouldn’t get clobbered by an avalanche of boxes during a private moment.
When I finally got back upstairs, Ethel was in my bed laying on my side. I got in my jammies, washed up, and poked her. “Slide, Clyde,” I ordered in a loving sisterly fashion. Ethel mumbled something I was pretty sure I didn’t want to hear and moved over. “I need the side near the alarm clock. I still have to go to work tomorrow morning. I mean this morning,” I explained.
“I wanted the side nearest the bathroom. I don’t feel so good,” she sniffed back. We looked at each other and switched sides again. “Do you think you have anything for a rumbly tumbly?” Ethel asked quietly.
I thought about the pharmaceutical factory in my basement. “It’s a possibility,” I said.
“Good,” she said as she got out of bed and went into the bathroom and whoopsed. So much for gourmet pizza dessert buffets. Or sleep.
After Ethel whoopsed again I investigated my own medicinal arsenal, because I was afraid of the stockpile falling on me in the basement. “Okay, we’ve got Tagament, Pepto-Bismol, Rolaids, Mylanta, Maalox, ummm… some Zantac and something that looks like a mini Tums,” I said, holding out the tummy wares to my pukish sister. Ethel peered at the stash I’d put on the bed next to her. She picked up the mini Tums.
“This isn’t a mini Tums. It’s a button.”
“Well, suck on it.”
“Sure. You try.”
“I’m not nauseous.”
“It’s your button. You suck on it.”
“Okay, I’ll suck on the damn button if you just take something and stop puking!” I half-shouted.
Ethel glared at me, grabbed the bottle of Maalox and took a swig. I sucked my button but forgot and swallowed. Ethel fumped back down on the pillows. Then she put a leg outside the bed and onto the floor.
“Whirly beds?” I asked.
“I think I have a fever. I’m burning up. Is your air conditioning on? And working?”
I sighed and padded back downstairs and checked. It was a cool crisp 70 degrees on a balmy 101 degree night.
“Can you turn the air conditioning up a bit?” Ethel called down. I sighed and lowered the temperature setting to 65, then went back upstairs and covered Marie’s cage and shut the vent in her room. I found my winter bathrobe and my heavy socks and lay back down in bed next to Ethel in the dark. I was going to ask her if she felt any better when I heard her snoring. I sighed one last time and closed my eyes for what I hoped would be an almost whole two and a half hours sleep.
CHAPTER 7
(Wednesday morning)
I hate it that I dream in smells. Most people dream in color – but not me. My dreams are like smell-a-vision. A turkey fryer fried turkeys feverishly in my garage (try saying that fast!). I kept running up and down Mt. Driveway carrying trays and trays and trays of food. The more full trays I carried down the driveway the more empty trays I returned into the envelope slot in the door at the back of my garage. Sort of a pet door for hors d’oeuvres trays. This apparently had some kind of exponential effect. It was a lot like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice but with canapés. Every time I thought I had delivered enough full trays to the waiting vans below, more drove up and honked horns. At the same time, I was taking one turkey out of the fryer and immediately replacing it with another.
That was when I smelt burning kielbasa. I turned and saw Ma and Aunt Muriel and K. applauding my efforts on Vito’s front lawn. Another van drove up. This one was Ike and the Ratties. But he didn’t have the Ratties exactly. Ike had stuck them in the middle of a deli tray each as garnish centerpieces. The trays were the size of sleds. The Ratties were bound with grape vines and gagged with plum tomatoes in their mouths.
A taxi drove up and Ethel got tossed out on the curb. She looked like she was pregnant with a baby elephant. But she kept yellin
g at me to get her Ratties away from ‘That Man’. That was when Ike tossed the antipasto Ratties onto the lawn while Ma, Auntie and K. applauded in lunatic unison.
I awoke to Ethel tossing her cookies. Again.
“Do you remember Dad’s aftershave?” she asked after she’d rinsed her mouth for the 73rd time with a forgotten bottle of Lavoris I kept under the sink for special cookie tossing occasions.
“Umm, no…”
Ethel took another swig of Lavoris and spit. “I think it was something called, ‘That Man’.”
“Mmmphfmph.”
“You know what?”
“Mmmphfmph?”
“I remember really disliking that cologne.”
“Mmmphfmph…”
“And the name.”
“Mmmphfmph.”
“You know what else?”
“Mmmphfmph?”
“I think I’m a little pregnant.”
I sat bolt upright and pinched myself. Ow. Yup, definitely awake. “Are you sure? And what do you mean ‘a little’?”
“I don’t know,” Ethel sniffed. “I kind of lost count. I think a missed a few periods.”
“How few?”
“Maybe like four?”
I mentally smacked Ethel on her forehead. “So, what do you think it is,” I sighed, “a Hansel or a Gretel?”
Ethel sniffed a little. “I don’t know. And I’m not having Ratties. I mean Yorkies. But if I have them – it – Ike will make me give up the Ratties. I mean the Yorkies. I mean Hansel and Gretel.” She was well on the road to wailing now.
“Huh?” I asked.
“Ike said we could get Hansel and Gretel when it looked like we couldn’t have kids,” Ethel sniffed. Ike said we could? Apparently my sister’s relationship with Baron von Trapp was a lot less Sound of Music-like than I’d imagined. “Ike doesn’t approve of the dogs and kids together thing,” she explained weepily.
I thought of a zillion Kodak commercials with kids and puppies and thought another zillion unprintable thoughts about Ike.