Cop House

by Sam Shelstad

  “I want you to come over, Ruthie,” he said.

  “I can’t do that now.”

  “I want you to come over. We can play body games, Ruthie. Please. Non-sexual, I promise.” He was always talking about body games, which he described as a fully clothed, free-form touching and explorative play experience. He said it was good for the heart.

  “No, John. I’ve got the Halloween contest to work on. It’s coming up.”

  “You’ll come over. I can see you, by the way.”

  He hung up.

  He couldn’t see me, because I was in bed with the curtains shut. But that’s what he did: he’d call me up, ask me to play body games and then he’d tell me that he was watching me. The funny thing is that when I passed him on the street he acted normal. Or quiet. He’d just mind his business, no mention of the calls. He had a brown moustache that looked exactly like his eyebrows—a third eyebrow above his lip.

  And I believed him when he said the games would be non-sexual, good exercise and that even celebrities play them to unwind after the Oscars. But obviously it would be weird if I went over there. I really did have the contest to work on. When he called, I was lying in bed and cutting spiders out of a sheet of black vinyl for the spider cannon.

  Every year my street has a Halloween decoration contest; whoever has the best-looking house wins a bucket of candy from Costco—but really it’s more about the prestige. Last year I didn’t win and the year before that I didn’t win. The year before that, my mom was still alive and she won, and she won every other year since the contest began too. I live in her house. I grew up here. I moved away and then Mom died and now I live here in Etobicoke again.

  This year I’m building a spider cannon and I have all these special tricks planned because I’ve got to win. I have this vision of my house decorated and it looks okay, but then I pull a switch or something and then it’s suddenly amazing. I’m not sure how to do it yet. Maybe there will be orange ribbons hanging from the eavestrough, but when I pull the end of a ribbon all these yarn cobwebs fall down. I don’t know. And then I can shoot off the cannon. At first I thought I’d make the spiders out of paper so they’d float around a little before they hit the ground, but then I decided on vinyl because it would be easier to gather for reloading. But I don’t know. I’ve got two weeks—judging is on Devil’s Night.

  I’ve got to win because Mom would have wanted it that way. She always won, but now that I’m here it’s Amanda P from across the street who takes home the bucket. I grew up with her. We’re both strawberry blondes and we both have freckles. I look like a taller, shabbier version of Amanda P. She’s so pretty. She lives in her mom’s house too except her mom isn’t dead—she’s in a retirement home. Amanda P is married and has been to Florida several times; she really went for it and carved out a nice life for herself. She doesn’t have to work because her husband has a good job at the plastics plant. I hear him yelling all the time, but that’s just blowing off steam from all the plastic he has to deal with. She’s got it pretty good. She can stay home all day and work on her decorations; last year she had a forty-piece orchestra of carved pumpkins playing cardboard instruments. I’m full-time at Town Drugs, so I have to work that much harder when I’m off. I’m only sleeping four hours a night until the contest is over. But it’ll be worth it when I take home the prize for Mom.

  You can only do so much in a day, though, so I finished cutting out a big papa spider and turned off the light. Tomorrow after work I will start thinking about the roof goblins/UFO mobile/“Coffin Express” train, etc. and how I might conceal these contraptions under a veil of mediocrity until judging.

  2

  The next morning, I passed John Seabreeze on the way to the bus stop. He was standing on his lawn staring up into a tree.

  “Morning,” I said. “What’s up there—a cat?”

  “Nothing,” he said. He walked back inside his house.

  At work, Mr. Greismeyer was hungover and in a foul mood. He’s my boss. He had taken the cardigans, food containers, paystubs and American Idol umbrella from my locker and dumped it all in the break-room garbage bin. Said if I wanted a messy locker, he’d show me messy. Said to have some self-respect. Said I needed to at least respect Town Drugs. I’m not sure how he knew my locker combination but you don’t want to mess with Mr. Greismeyer when he’s hungover. One morning, I overcharged someone for a toothbrush and he made me wear a sign around my neck that said, Probationary Employee: Watch Closely. It’s hard to criticize someone like Mr. Greismeyer though. He has his own store and knows all this stuff about business. There was a lot you could learn from a guy like that. Plus, I really believe that everyone is ultimately good, my boss included. Sometimes you have to dig a little to find the good, but it’s in there.

  I put everything back in my locker neatly and went to set up my till. Norma, the other cashier, was already in place.

  “Morning,” I said.

  “Fuck off, Ruth.”

  Norma didn’t like me but she didn’t like anybody else either. She hated her co-workers and she hated the customers. She regularly told Mr. Greismeyer to fuck off too, but she was his niece and he let it slide.

  It was a long day. The morning was slow and dragged on and then Norma didn’t come back from her lunch break. I had some big afternoon lineups but I kept it moving as well as I could. Then Jan, the other cashier, didn’t show up for her shift and I had to stay until close. I left the store at eight-thirty and Mr. Greismeyer was parked out front. He had the windows down and the radio blaring techno. He saw me coming out.

  “Hey, Ruth!”

  “Hi sir.”

  I walked up to his car and looked in. There was an empty bottle of wine on the passenger seat and a half-full one between his legs. I could smell wine breath and farts.

  “Baby, come join me. Let’s put this morning behind us. You know who this is?”

  “Sir?”

  “This music, you know who it is?”

  “No sir.”

  “I made it. On my computer at home. Pretty good, right? I call it Mr. G’s Sound Explosion but that’s tentative. Come on in, have a drink.” Mr. Greismeyer slapped the horn and opened the passenger door for me.

  “Sorry sir,” I said. “It’s been a twelve-hour day. Jan never showed up, you know. And I’ve got a Halloween contest to work on. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Suit yourself. But I want you in early, got it?”

  “What, why?”

  “Don’t like it? Then come have a drink with me.”

  I left. When I got home around nine I found the word gaybies spray-painted on my garage door, whatever that meant. And someone had dug up my petunias and stuffed them in the mailbox. There are a lot of teenagers in my neighbourhood—my backyard shares a fence with the high school football field. But this new attack was no biggie because I could cover the graffiti with Halloween decorations and the petunias were going to die soon anyway. I went inside, made an egg bagel and pulled out my crafting pail. There was work to do.

  3

  I had trouble sleeping that night despite exhaustion. I turned in around one after constructing two Coffin Express train cars out of cardboard boxes and drawing up plans for a mummy conductor but I couldn’t settle down. First of all, John Seabreeze kept calling. I unplugged the phone at one point and then I heard a scratching at my front door. I looked out my bedroom window and saw a big shadow run into John’s house. Also, I couldn’t stop thinking about those teenagers or whoever spray-painted my garage. Why would they do that? What is gaybies?

  One of the great challenges of the Halloween contest is the constant vandalism on my street. Last year I made a life-sized zombie out of papier mâché and one of my mother’s old pantsuits, and someone ripped the head off and took a shit inside of it. But these kids won’t touch Amanda P’s yard because they’re all scared as hell of her husband who looks like a Neanderthal. Wish I had that kind of security. I mean, there’s John Seabreeze next door but he’s so skinny. Even w
ith three eyebrows, or three moustaches, even with his pressed uniform and aviator shades it’s not enough to command the respect of these hooligans. Although maybe it isn’t fair to call them hooligans. It’s a teenager’s nature to rebel. These kids have it rough what with puberty and bullying and exams. They may act out but there’s a puffy layer of goodness beneath. You can be sure of that.

  So while I was lying in the dark not sleeping—pretty much waiting for my seven o’clock alarm to go off—I thought of the cop house. When I was eight my dad started hitting Mom so Mom and I moved from our quiet street in Etobicoke to a sketchy neighbourhood in the city. I didn’t like that there were people everywhere and I didn’t like the way they looked. They were always shouting at night—I could hear it from my bedroom—and I was scared all the time. Then one day my mom pointed out this house at the end of our street. She said it was a cop house and that I needn’t be afraid because the police were right there and if anything went wrong they would help us out. Mom was telling me that a police officer lived in the house but at the time I thought she meant all the police officers lived there. I pictured them eating meals at a big long table and watching television together. I could see these cops lined up in the upstairs hallway, towels around their waists and holding bars of soap and hair gel, waiting for the shower. And it worked: I stopped being scared. I loved living near the cop house.

  Later I found out it was just Officer Kearn in there—who I think lost his badge for Tasering his wife—and we eventually moved back to the suburbs but the idea of the cop house stuck with me. Whenever I feel unsafe I just imagine all these police officers living together in a little house and I calm right down.

  So that’s what I did. I thought about the cop house, relaxed a little and eventually I fell asleep. I may have even dreamt about the cop house but maybe I was just thinking about it and I’m confusing the thinking with the dreaming.

  4

  I had a busy afternoon at the drugstore and Mr. Greismeyer was hungover again. He kept knocking over my candy bar display and calling me a dipshit but Jan showed up for her shift and I got to go home at four-thirty.

  I began work on the mummy conductor. I wrapped toilet paper around a big teddy bear, made him a conductor’s hat out of felt and then started on the light display for the roof. I wanted it to say boo in white lights, but then I’d turn on a different set of orange lights and the letters would become the eyes of these elaborate jack-o’-lanterns with speech bubbles coming from their mouths that said boo in smaller letters. And then I’d turn on another set of red lights and the little letters from the speech bubbles would be smaller jack-o’-lantern eyes and so on but I only had enough lights and nails for one boo. I was untangling the lights in my bed when I smelled smoke.

  I looked out the window, saw the smoke coming from my front yard and ran downstairs and onto the porch. It was the Coffin Express. Through the flames I saw a pair of bicycles peel around the corner at the end of the street and disappear. I ran over to the side of the garage, turned on the faucet and doused the fire with Mom’s hose. Last stop for the Coffin Express! I almost said this little joke out loud to lighten the mood but John Seabreeze was staring at me from his window and I went back inside.

  I returned to untangling the lights for the roof because you can’t let little setbacks get in your way. Gotta keep moving. But then I started feeling angry and I broke one of the little plastic light casings in my fist. I decided to make an egg bagel.

  I ate in front of the TV and at first I was excited because Martha Stewart was on. She’s just so good. But it turned out to be a commercial and then it went back to the news which I can’t watch. Too depressing. Especially world news which is always conflict and crying mothers and animals covered in black goop—but local news can give me anxiety too. I changed it to the weather channel and ate my egg bagel in peace.

  After eating, I returned to the lights and started having doubts. Like, why bother untangling these lights? Why bother entering the contest at all? Would my life improve dramatically if I won the bucket? No it would not. I would still work at the drugstore and live amongst teenage arsonists and be lonely all the time. My pillow would still smell like tears every morning, if tears left a smell.

  But you can’t think like that. That kind of thinking gets you nowhere so I untangled the lights and got out the ladder. I spent two hours up on the roof arranging the lights and I had to put a flashlight in my mouth because it was dark but I did it. The lights spelled out boo and it looked amazing. Even without the secret jack-o’-lantern eyes and everything. Because once you give up on something like a little contest then you start questioning everything else in your life. Why bother going to work today? Why bother putting on antiperspirant? Why get out of bed at all? And that’s pathetic. We need these contests—things to really strive for—to keep us going and so I resolved to win the Costco bucket no matter what. Let the teenagers set fire to my actual house. I’ll use it to my advantage and make my theme Partially Burned-Down Home with Ghost Firemen.

  “Look out, Amanda P,” I said in the direction of Amanda P’s house. “Your old pal Ruth is on the warpath.”

  5

  The next day I had so much positive energy I didn’t mind that someone threw up on the floor by the Gatorade and I had to clean it. It didn’t even bother me that Mr. Greismeyer ate the sandwich I brought and then made me spend my lunch break vacuuming his car. I almost lost it when I saw a kid bike by the window wearing my felt conductor’s hat but I reminded myself that it didn’t matter. That it was just a hat and that he was just a kid. He might grow up to be a famous doctor and help cure diseases. Deep down he was probably a little angel and there was no need for me to get upset so I didn’t. I was focused on the contest; I had so many ideas.

  For one, I decided to rebuild the Coffin Express because it would definitely impress the judges and we had lots of diaper boxes in the back of the store I could use. I also came up with this genius plan to put a kind of lever underneath the candy bowl on my porch so when trick-or-treaters reached in they’d push the bowl down on the lever and a fake arm would come out from underneath the table and touch their legs. My creativity levels were through the roof.

  Jan didn’t show up for her shift and I had to stay until close again. I was still beaming though. So much so that when I left the store and heard techno blaring from Mr. Greismeyer’s car in the parking lot I decided to join him for a quick drink. He was always so nice in the evening. When you catch a normally grumpy person in a good mood it’s important to soak them up and show them how much you appreciate their positive side. Then they’ll try to be in a good mood more often. It’s true.

  “That’s a girl, Ruthie,” he said, pouring wine into a Pepsi can for me. “You know, I always thought you had it in you.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Greismeyer.”

  “Goddamn right it’s time you joined me in here. In my car bar. Goddamn it’s nice to sit down and have a drink like this.”

  “It’s very nice.”

  We sat listening to the techno for a while which wasn’t really that bad.

  “You know, if I wasn’t a married man,” he said, peeling at the label on his wine bottle, “I’d be all over a girl like you. Goddamn right. You’ve got some baby fat on you, for sure. But I love it. All the right places, you know?”

  “Thanks.” I meant this too. Perhaps what he’d said was borderline inappropriate but he was essentially just complimenting me. There’s always room in the world for compliments.

  “But don’t get any ideas in your head now alright? I’ve got a wife waiting for me at home. She’s insane.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “That’s right. Now get the hell out of my car before I do something that’s out of line.”

  I left. I missed the last bus and had to walk home but I had a nice buzz and the stars were out. I mean, I only drank half a Pepsi of wine but I really felt like I was buzzing. I stopped to pet a cat that was lying in the middle of the sidewalk and it licked my
hand. My hand smelled like milk. A few minutes later I found a piece of pink chalk in someone’s driveway. I wrote gaybies on the curb and ran away. I laughed to myself. I felt so young.

  And then I got home. The lights I had hung were pulled from the roof and thrown into the street. My living room window was broken too and when I went inside I found a rock with a note tied to it. The note said, boo yerself bitch.

  I screamed.

  6

  When I was done screaming I realized the phone was ringing and answered it. John Seabreeze, of course.

  “I heard you,” he said.

  “I’m sorry, John. I’ll be quiet now.”

  “No, that’s not…”

  “It’s these kids. These darn kids, these fucking kids.” I was crying and talking at the same time. Maybe it was the wine. Or maybe it was the awful things that were happening but either way I was crying.

  “You sound tense. If you want to come over, we could…”

  “If you say anything about body games, I swear to God, John. Jesus.”

  “But just so you know, you’d calm right down. Worries out the window. Jennifer Aniston? That’s how she got over Brad.”

  “Hey, did you see who did it? You were home, right? Did you see anything?”

  “No.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Sorry.”

  “I’ll tell you something. You catch these kids for me and I’ll come right over. Body games all night, whatever you want. Catch these kids and I’m in.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  He hung up.

  I got the broom and swept up the glass from the window. I threw out the note and the rock and retrieved my boo lights from the street. It looked like most of the lights were broken but I put them in the closet and not the garbage because maybe they’d be useful for something else. Like Medusa hair? Is she a Halloween thing?

  I went to make an egg bagel but I was out of both eggs and bagels so I had the last swig of milk and went to bed. There was plenty of work to do still but my eyes kept closing. That’s why you shouldn’t drink alcohol during contest season: lesson learned. Stay sharp. While I was turning off the hall light I looked out the window and saw John Seabreeze standing on his porch in the dark.