by Inman Majors
Missy snatched the pen back and wrote: I said Dimwit and I meant Dimwit. Yes, he’s the troll on the hill.
Penelope responded: Okay, but why is he using the bathroom here?
Missy: Long story. He owns the land the trailer park is on. We rent it from him, then rent out spots to the tenants. His one condition is that he gets to use our bathroom whenever he wants.
Missy filled four entire pages to get the above message down, as she was not just writing swiftly, but also using huge letters. At her current rate of seven words per page, they would soon need another legal pad. Penelope found this wasteful but let it slide. She’d not yet been put in charge of office supplies.
She responded: Doesn’t his trailer have a bathroom?
Yes.
Does it work?
Far as I know.
Then why does he want to use this one?
That’s the question neither of us should think too much about.
Throughout this exchange Missy had been scowling, so much so that Penelope began to smile. Intense people fascinated her. She took the pen and wrote: He asked about Doris.
I’m sure he did.
Mr. Burke called to complain about the grass guy lopping off his irises.
Do I look like I give a good goddam about that old fart’s irises?
Penelope laughed and then the toilet flushed and then Dewitt was standing in the office with them, glancing at the notepad which lay in no-man’s-land between the two women, Missy’s huge letters legible from where he stood if he noticed and could read. Penelope grabbed the notebook and placed it in the top drawer as gently and smoothly as she could while still moving at rapid speed. Dewitt was just standing there, the bathroom door ajar behind him. His cap was now quite askew, so much so that the scrawny Yosemite Sam was not shooting a bird directly at Penelope but out the window, in the direction of Dewitt’s own place.
He nodded to Missy, tipped his grimy cap toward Penelope, then walked out. They both watched out the window as he marched up the dirt road to his trailer. Penelope couldn’t be sure, but he looked to be whistling a merry tune. Likely “Jimmy Crack Corn.”
“So now you’ve met Dimwit,” Missy said after they’d taken a moment to reflect. “Welcome to Rolling Acres Estates.”
“I don’t understand,” Penelope said. “What’s he doing in there if he has his own bathroom?”
“I’ve given this some thought,” said Missy, frowning in a contemplative manner. “A lot of thought, actually. And it seems to me there are two options. He’s either doing what every man takes half an hour to do, even though every woman can do it in like three minutes. Or he’s spanking that greasy little monkey of his like there’s no tomorrow.”
“Surely not.”
“You’ll note,” said Missy, “that the office smells exactly as it did before Dimwit’s arrival. And I have it on good authority from my maintenance man that he eats virtually nothing but Vienna sausages and Beanie-Weenies. So that rules out the nature’s call option in my professional opinion. Which leaves us with the other sad and scary possibility. But let me know if you need me to draw you a picture.”
“No way. Seriously?”
“Afraid so. Grubby self-abuse on the premises.”
“Why do it here and not in his own place?”
Missy gave her a sad smile now, as if breaking the news about Santa to a small child. “There are no women up at Dewitt’s place.”
“OMG!”
“Tell me about it.”
“How often?”
“Every day. But just once a day. We have our standards here at Rolling Acres. I thought I’d be back in time to warn you. He usually comes later in the day for his afternoon delight.”
Penelope smiled at the song reference, gross as it was, but still couldn’t get her head around this development.
“You’re not going to quit, are you?” Missy asked.
“No. I need the job.”
“Thank God. Because he ran Doris off after like two months. The gal before him didn’t even last that long.”
“He’s not dangerous?”
“I don’t think so. I think he’s just a trailer-park whacker. You don’t want to think too much about it when you’re in the office with him. And you definitely—I mean never—want to think about what he might be imagining while he’s in there beating it like a redheaded stepchild.”
Penelope laughed, though Missy had yet to crack a smile.
“Hopefully, we won’t be here too much longer,” Missy said. “If I can get the zoning thing done with our idiot mayor, we’ll be out within the year. We’re tired of paying Dimwit. Plus my dad is pissed that his sweet little girl is being exposed to such debauchery.”
Missy flashed her wicked smile at this. Penelope hoped someday to meet the father. It would be interesting to see the two of them together. But now it was time to get down to brass tacks. “I’m not quitting,” Penelope said, “but I would like to know what my salary is or how much I get paid per hour. And especially when I’m going to get my first paycheck. I don’t know if you remember our discussion at Applebee’s, but I’ve got this sleepwalking uncle with a Neti Pot he uses in the shower, who is coming to stay with us for a month. A month! And now he’s got this sheepdog that barks all night if he starts sleepwalking. If you can’t guarantee me that I’ll make enough to get my own place by June 28th, then I may have to look for other work. I’m sorry to be that blunt but I’m desperate. I absolutely have to have my own place.”
“I hear you,” Missy said when she’d finished her detailed summary of life in the rancher basement. “I’d forgotten about the sleepwalking Neti Pot uncle. And now he has a herding dog? Wow. That’s a new one. Okay, I think I can handle my end of the bargain. I still have to clear the salary with my dad, but that won’t be a problem. I’m thinking seven hundred a week to start out with. And then we’ll see how it goes. You’d have to be here six months to get health care and all that. Paydays are first and the middle of the month, so that would be about a paycheck and a half before you have to start showering with your uncle. If you can sock away a good portion, that should be enough for a down payment, right?”
“I think so,” said Penelope, relief washing over her. “And I’d be getting another July 1, so I can factor that check in too. Thanks a lot. That will work.”
Missy asked three more times if she was really not going to quit. Finally assuaged, she gave Penelope a few other minor chores and her own key to the office, then showed her how to lock up. She was at the door when she said: “I can’t wait for tomorrow, can you? You and the BJ Queen face to face under the chalkboard for the first time. It’ll be like Shootout at the Blowjob Corral with erasers and staplers and those laminated hall passes flying every which way! And you just laying the wood to her!”
25
On the drive home, Penelope decided that her new job was weird, but that she could do anything for six months if it meant getting her own place, including surviving daily visits from the trailer-park whacker. He sure had liked her shoes. Those same shoes had been viciously flung into the backseat as soon as she entered the car, a just punishment for the number they’d done on her feet the previous nine hours. She drove barefoot, which was one of the secret loves of her life. The first thing she’d do when she got home was rummage through the mountains of boxes in the carport to find that pair of wedges. No one wore them anymore, but they were comfortable.
She hadn’t relished Missy’s comment about the showdown with Ms. Dunleavy, but like it or not, tomorrow was the parent/teacher meeting. She might not get to the bottom of the bus-bully stuff, but it was worth a try. And if Theo also was getting picked on at school, that would be worth mentioning if Penelope had to call the boys’ parents.
That she might also discover, once and for all, if Theo’s teacher was also his potential stepmother, well, that would be a bonus. All she needed was one picture in Ms. Dunleavy’s room, just one, of that cute little pup with the white ear, and she’d have ironclad
proof.
But all that was aggravating to think about after successfully completing the first day of a job that didn’t involve peanut baskets or wearing a denim skirt. She’d be getting her own place soon, maybe as early as mid-June after she got that second check. And when she did, she had to do something special for Theo. Maybe she could put a mural in his room, one of Pokémon or Mario Kart or something of that sort.
Or what if the apartment had a pool? A pool would be competitive with a puppy, wouldn’t it? Anyway, she wasn’t just going to throw in the towel in the fun-place-to-live department. She and Theo would have a new life, a new adventure, and she couldn’t wait to get started.
She smiled as she pictured herself lounging in a bathing suit without one million babies in steadily ballooning swim diapers like at the city pool.
Then her car made a noise. A loud screeching noise.
It sounded like a whole lot of metal things rubbing against one another without the luxury of lubrication. Her heart jumped. It was an awful clatter. And then came a hiss like R2D2 taking an ax to his titanium tummy—and smoke billowing from the hood. Panicked, she glanced toward the oil light, which was the same steady yellow it had been for the last week when by all rights it should have been a scalding hot red.
Engulfed in smoke, she eased two wheels onto the narrow shoulder, then into some people’s yard. She was trying to make it another hundred yards to the front of a subdivision, where there’d be more room, when the car just died. Like it had given up all hope. She’d seen horses do this in the desert while watching the Western Channel with George. She looked to see if she was still in Drive, then put the car in Park. She got out, still barefoot. Oil refinery schmutz continued to leak from under the hood. Her car was dead.
26
She’d walked the mile home barefoot, and what damage the heels hadn’t done, the rocky pavement had. Her dogs were barking something fierce. She could have called someone for a ride but was too mad to do it. She needed to blow off some steam and had a masochistic urge to punish herself for counting apartment chickens before they were hatched. For most of the day she’d felt like Schrödinger’s cat, both living with her mother and already in her own apartment, but now the top had been lifted and the cat revealed dead. She should have known better.
In the carport now, furiously throwing boxes around, looking for the one containing shoes that didn’t treat her feet like a mouthy POW, she didn’t hear her mother walk up until she spoke.
“Well, George called Skeeter down at Hillsboro Auto. They’ll get a tow truck out there right away, and he hopes to have a look at it sometime tomorrow.”
Penelope nodded but didn’t turn around. She continued pushing boxes here and there, boxes that were beginning to look more and more at home in the carport. Soon birds would be nesting among them, and when it got cold they’d be a handy spot for small mammals looking to hibernate. Perhaps she should build a few little alleyways to make their routes less cumbersome as they prepared their dens for Father Winter.
“George said once they get the car up on the rack he’ll go down there himself and see what Skeeter has to say,” her mother continued. “He’s afraid it might be a blown head gasket, honey. And that’s an expensive one. How many miles does that car have on it?”
“A lot,” Penelope said, roughhousing boxes, the harsh sliding sound pleasingly hard on her ears. She hoped her mother would leave, but she stayed glued to the spot.
“You know,” she said, “you might be better off getting a new car instead of sinking a lot more money into one that will just keep breaking down on you.”
Penelope turned and looked at her mother in a way that said more effectively than words: no shit.
“I know, honey, I know. You’ve had a little setback. But you’ll be back on your feet before you know it. Tough times don’t last, but tough people do.”
Penelope went back to bullying boxes. She wasn’t even paying much attention to what was marked. At this point, she just liked knocking them around.
“You can stay here as long as you need. And listen, no argument about it, I’m calling June right after supper and telling her that we’ll have to postpone their visit. It’s not a big deal.”
Penelope stopped with the boxes.
“No,” she said, “you’re not going to do that. You’ve talked about this trip forever. And you’ve already got tickets to the beer festival for Doozy. And the country jamboree down in Lynchburg. George has been looking forward to that for nine months. The Oak Ridge Boys, Alabama, it’s all his favorites. Don’t call Aunt June. I’ll be fine. I’ll get earplugs and shower shoes. It’s not a big deal. Mom, seriously. I’m going to be really mad if you call.”
Her mother wanted to argue but didn’t. She was looking forward to Aunt June’s visit even more than George.
“Okay, if you insist, but I don’t see how you can manage Doozy and Yapper both down in that basement.”
“Mom, I can do anything for a month. It’s all right.”
“Can I just tell you how it burns me up that James already has a new place? And after crying like the Sisters of the Poor in your arbitration. George is beside himself, he’s so angry. He never did cotton to James, you know. Not in the least.”
“I know, Mom. And I appreciate the support you guys have given me. I’ll be fine. Seriously. Stop worrying.”
“George said you could drive Daisy for as long as you need. It’ll get you to and from work, so that won’t be a problem.”
“Thanks Mom. Y’all have been too kind.”
Her mother waved this off, then went back in, letting the screen door slam in her wake.
Then Penelope dove back into the boxes. She was still barefoot, and every now and then she smashed a big toe in the tumult, but she didn’t care. Eventually, she came to a box marked STUFF. She would have smiled at this normally, noting her tendency to get less and less particular about order and organization the longer she was forced to do a boring task, but didn’t today. She should have gone into the house for scissors but punched a fist through the layers of duct tape instead, before ripping the top off with one violent pull.
Riffling through, she came across a pair of tennis shoes and sandals and a Jim Morrison T-shirt she’d forgotten she had. These she tossed onto the cement floor as things that she could wear over the summer.
And now she’d found those wedges, or at least one of them. She yanked it out and flung it over her shoulder with the pile. She was scraping the bottom of the box, rummaging through clothes and the occasional necklace or alarm clock, crap she should have thrown away a long time ago. There it was, the other wedge. It was entangled in something, something silky and smooth. What? Hadn’t she gotten all of her underwear out? Surely she had, or she wouldn’t be stuck wearing that old pair that was always on the roam beneath her denim skirt.
No, the silky thing in her hand was too big for panties. Maybe it was a lightweight nightgown. She could use one of those when she was sweating away down in her basement inferno.
Feeling that finally something had gone her way, she gave the remaining shoe and the missing delicate a good tug, and out they came.
She stood up now, flinging the shoe on the pile as she did. What she held in her hand was indeed silky as a nightgown, but the garment was not one that had ever draped her body. It had, on the other hand, hovered over her and occasionally beneath her.
It was not a nightgown. And it was not a proper robe as worn by Albus Dumbledore. It was a kimono, a silky bit of nothing, meant, in some Eastern corners of the world, for a man.
The robe in question was yellow.
Theo chose this exact moment to take a break from his three-hour Pokémon battle and join his mother in the carport. He approached Penelope looking dazed of eye. And then his nose began to twitch and his whole face grew alert. He’d had many a story read to him in the yellow shorty. Likely it conjured pleasant memories of Thomas the Train and the comforting warmth of bedwetting.
Panicked, Penelope
scooped up all the things on the floor and piled them atop the object of Theo’s eye in a fairly obvious attempt at subterfuge.
“What’s that?” Theo said.
“Just some of my things,” Penelope answered, scooting past Theo and into the kitchen, la di dah, la di dah.
“Yeah, but what’s that yellow thing? It looks familiar.”
“I have a bunch of my things here, Theo. I’m sure most of it looks familiar.”
Theo seemed to remember that his mother had recently walked home from an abandoned car and decided now was not the time to push her, though Penelope could tell he wanted to. The yellow kimono had totemic powers. Of this, she was now certain. Theo had inherited an olfactory system from his father, likely birthed eons ago in a Scottish bog, that was stimulated by women named Penelope when in the presence of poly-blended male nighties.
She walked to the sink, grabbed a trash bag, and jammed everything in, away from prying eyes. She never could tell what Theo knew or didn’t know about adult matters between her and James. Would he remember, for instance, any details from the week the robe had mysteriously disappeared and associate that week with parental discord?
James had definitely moped with a special intensity afterwards—like a triple mope. Maybe quadruple. But was he so bereft he’d say something to Theo? Something like: Yes, son, I’m just a little down today. You see, my yellow robe has gone missing and that robe means a lot to your old man.
Yes, of course he would. He was always telling Theo things he didn’t need to. It was the whole adults have urges/spermatozoa/Origin of Species talk all over again.
Maybe she should tell Theo—right now—something like: You see honey, women have urges too, and those urges can be stymied quite harshly if their husband is wearing a robe better suited for a Japanese grandmother.
Theo, with that sweet little nine-year-old-boy attention span of his, let it drop. Perhaps the plastic trash bag interfered with his olfactory sense or blocked his subconscious powers of association. Perhaps, through some intuitive osmosis, he’d heard her interior monologue about women’s urges and taken the hint.