Cop House

by Sam Shelstad

  I knew it. What do yours say?

  Yeah, mine were pretty much the same. Like, super religious and creepy. And how our “new family direction” is God’s will and that he’s praying for me and my “spirit voyage” every day. You can see this stuff starting to influence Mom too. Last week she said that you and I need to look out for each other because siblings are “spirit pals” riding the same “voyage bus” or something. You should definitely call her after we’re done. Have you been to Tyler’s church?

  No, it’s a virtual church. You go to this website and enter all your personal information. It’s like fifty bucks a month. And then you build a character—Mom’s is a Pegasus, I think—and then all the parishioners log on with their characters every Sunday morning for Tyler’s sermon. Which he, like, types into a chat bar.

  I know. Definitely go check it out after we’re done talking; I’ll send you the link. So creepy. But back to Dad—so after the mailman thing he decided to turn the old shed into this huge doghouse. He took out the sliding doors and put a big piece of wood in their place with a doghouse-style door hole, rounded at the top. Then he drove a stake into the ground and tied a heavy chain to it which leads inside the shed. As if anyone would believe there’s an enormous dog living in there.

  Oh! And you remember his old footbath? For his corns? So he painted that red and put it outside the “doghouse.” Wrote Rex on the side of the footbath, like it’s supposed to be this outlandish food bowl. Seriously, seriously. And listen, if that wasn’t crazy enough, he found a pair of antlers somewhere—like the antlers from a stuffed deer, I guess—and placed them in the footbath so they’d stick out over the edge. The implication being, what? That this giant dog ate an entire deer? I need to get those pictures from Mom.

  I will. God, Christmas is going to be so weird. You’re coming down right? I think Ryan wants to drive so we can probably pick you up in Kingston on the way. Mom wants us to stay at Tyler’s but I think Dad is kind of expecting us to go home.

  So embarrassing, I know.

  But wait, there’s more. So Dad started this Neighbourhood Watch group which sounds great except everyone on his street thinks he’s nuts now because of the dog stuff and so it’s just him and his friend Phil. He’s the one I used to babysit for with the twins? His wife left him too, and Mom says he’s selling these crystals online now.

  I don’t know, they’re supposed to have healing properties. But anyway, it’s just Dad and Phil who have this Neighbourhood Watch thing and apparently they have drills where, like, Dad will break into Phil’s house and Phil will break into Dad’s house to test their security systems. Except Dad gave Phil a concussion one night when Phil was climbing through the kitchen window so I think they stopped doing that. What’s that noise? Are you at a bar?

  Right, the TV…

  No, I’m just giving you a hard time. I remember my second year of university. But I hope you’re not drinking too much, Jane. Mom’s worried, just so you know. I guess she saw this thing on the news about binge drinking in dorm rooms and is convinced it was a sign from God that you’re in trouble. Or maybe she said your “voyage” is in trouble.

  No, I said you were fine, don’t worry. You’re fine, right?

  Oh! You won’t believe this: Dad’s been wearing a ski mask to bed.

  Ski mask, yes. And he has this burlap sack he keeps on his nightstand, so that if someone breaks in he’ll get up and come out of the bedroom with the sack and his mask pulled down and then the intruder will think Dad’s robbing the house too—and then I don’t know. He’ll say something like, “I was here first,” so the other robber will leave. Or maybe Dad thinks he and the robber will work it out so that they split the things they end up stealing and then Dad will only lose half of what he would have lost if he hadn’t tricked the other guy. So he can cut his losses.

  Seriously.

  No, I haven’t talked to Dad in forever but Mom talks to him. She bought him a character in Tyler’s church—says what he really needs is spiritual security—but he won’t use the internet because he’s afraid of hackers.

  Well, call him if you want to but I don’t think it’s so bad if you don’t. I don’t call him because he doesn’t call me and plus last time I did he spent the whole conversation asking about our security system. I was like, “Dad, people don’t even lock their front doors in my neighbourhood,” which really got him going. Right after that he mailed me a jacket. Did you get one, too?

  Well, it was just a normal spring jacket but he sewed the letters DEA onto it. There was a note in the package instructing me to hang it over the back of a chair in my kitchen, so that if anyone broke in they’d see it and think they were in this drug enforcement guy’s house and run off shitting their pants. Do we even have a DEA in Canada? Ryan wore the jacket for Halloween last week with sunglasses and a phone cord going from his collar to his ear. I was Stevie Nicks. What did you end up doing?

  That sounds like fun, Janie. But you’re not drinking too much, are you? Because I remember when I was…

  I know, I know. Mom and I are just worried. But obviously she’s the more paranoid one and I’m only making sure that you’re okay.

  I know, I know. But anyway, we’ll have to talk about Christmas. It’s so weird how only a few years ago we were this somewhat normal family, you know? And now Mom is living with another man and is part of this online cult and Dad’s wearing a balaclava to bed. I remember when we were kids and I thought Mom and Dad were these godlike people. Now it’s like I’m the parent.

  Like we’re the parents, I mean.

  Yeah, so I was thinking maybe we could stay in a hotel for Christmas. I don’t really want to stay at Tyler’s because obviously that would be weird—did you know he drives around on a moped? And who knows what Dad will try and pull if we go home. Or, like, if his friend Phil will try and break in while we’re sleeping. We’ll just get a hotel and tell them it’s because we didn’t want to pick favourites or something, I don’t know. What’s all that shouting in the background? Jane, are you at a bar?

  I believe you, it just sounds like you’re at a bar is all. Maybe turn the TV down. Anyway, I should go. Ryan’s home. We’ll talk about the hotel thing later and make sure you call Mom.

  No, I won’t tell her. But does that mean you are at a bar? You can tell me, I don’t care.

  Fine, sorry.

  Okay, I gotta go.

  Okay.

  Call Mom.

  Okay, bye.

  The Fiddler Murders

  I got the idea from this know-it-all from work named Cathy. I sit beside her at the call centre because she’s my age and the least sketchy person there. She wears nice skirts and blouses to work and gets her hair done once a month. You make do with what you’re given. One weekend, Cathy went on a trip to Niagara-on-the-Lake with her husband and told me everything about it when she returned. They’d gone on a wine tour with bicycles and ate all this great food. They saw a musical, Fiddler on the Roof, and even dressed up for it. She talked about her trip all day. She rarely shuts her mouth.

  When I left work at five, Cathy’s story slipped my mind and I put my attention toward other things. There was dinner to prepare, for example. When I went to bed that night, though, I thought about Niagara-on-the-Lake. It sounded so nice. I liked how the town was on-the-lake. I wanted to ride bicycles and visit vineyards and put the bottles right in the bike basket. I wanted to see Fiddler on the Roof—I wanted to dress up. For the next few days it was all I thought about.

  I brought the idea up at dinner one night. Orin, my husband, was complaining about his allergies and I interrupted him.

  “Niagara,” I said.

  “Niagara,” Orin said. “Is that like Claritin?”

  “No, the town. Niagara-on-the-Lake. I think we should go there.”

  “We don’t have any money. And don’t interrupt me, it’s rude. I’m saying we need to take all the plants out of the house. Just please put them on the back deck or I’ll throw them in the garbage. I
t’s got to be your damn plants that are driving me nuts and I need my eight hours, Laura.”

  “It’s not the plants. But anyway, Cathy…”

  “How do you know it’s not the plants? Are you my doctor? No, you’re not.”

  “I want to go to Niagara-on-the-Lake.”

  “Forget it.”

  I couldn’t forget it, though. I imagined Cathy enjoying her vacation and I wanted to enjoy one too. Of course, I couldn’t tell Cathy I was going on the same trip because she’d say I was stealing her idea. She’s that kind of person. If I missed work to go, I’d have to tell her I was sick and watching movies at home with Orin. She probably wouldn’t listen to me anyway.

  Eventually, Orin said we could go. I had to ask him while he was drunk to get the answer I wanted. He came home from a meeting one night all puffy and loud and kept trying to pull me into the bedroom. I opened a bottle of wine, sat him down at the kitchen table and started selling him the trip.

  “You can ride horses there,” I said.

  “I’ve always wanted to ride a horse,” he said. “When I was a kid I went to summer camp and they had horses but I never got to ride one.”

  “Well here’s your chance.”

  “One of the horses at the camp came down with a neurological disease and acted crazy. They wouldn’t let us kids ride any of the horses in case the others had the disease too. We went over to the stables to see them one day and this one horse was scraping his face against a tree. There was blood all over his face. I was ten years old.”

  “And it won’t be that much money. We can drive there and stay some place cheap. Cathy’s hotel was right on the water and they got a really good deal, she said.” I made that part up, but it was probably true. There was always some kind of deal on the internet, I figured.

  “On the last day of camp the horse tried to jump the fence and his legs got all tangled up in the wires. They had to shoot it. We all heard the shot while we were in the mess hall eating spaghetti.”

  “So it’s settled.”

  We left the following weekend. It should have been a four-hour drive from Windsor but Orin had to stop every twenty minutes, or so it seemed. He didn’t have a bowel movement that day, which was an unusual thing. Orin had a bowel movement every morning at nine a.m. for the past thirty years, he claimed. And now, nothing.

  “I will not be constipated on this trip, Laura,” he said.

  We stopped near Chatham, London, Woodstock, Brantford, Hamilton and St. Catharines. Orin would go into the washroom and I’d sit in the car and wait for ten or fifteen minutes. It became a predictable pattern that when Orin came out of a washroom and walked towards the car, he’d put up his hands and shake his head so I’d know he’d failed in there.

  “Maybe I need to eat some fruit,” he’d say once he was back in the car. Or, “What about figs?” Or, “Maybe I need to lie down in the back seat and massage my stomach for a while.”

  “What about we just drive to Niagara already?” I said, at one of the stops.

  “What about I take us back home?”

  I kept my mouth shut.

  We were mostly silent for the rest of the drive. I flipped on the radio at one point and Orin flipped it right back off. I didn’t press him. I wanted to get to Niagara-on-the-Lake before it got dark.

  I looked out my window and watched the landscape barely change. It was all fields and strip malls. I saw a billboard advertising “knuckle spray,” whatever that was. I probably read it wrong.

  When we approached the Niagara region, however, there were ridges and hills and rivers. It was beautiful. We drove over a bridge that felt like it was the Golden Gate it was so big. I’d never been on the Golden Gate and knew it was probably ten or twenty times the size as whatever bridge we were on, but still. I was excited. I did a little dance in my seat.

  “For Christ’s sake, Laura,” Orin said. “I’m driving. You’re gonna break the seat.”

  It was dark by the time we reached Niagara-on-the-Lake. Our hotel was decent, but it smelled slightly of rotten bananas. The kid behind the desk was asleep in his chair—we had to wake him up to get our room key. The first thing Orin wanted to do when we got to our room was use the bathroom. Despite the frequent rest stops, my husband hadn’t had his bowel movement yet.

  There was a Jacuzzi tub in our room with a piece of paper taped to it: Do not use. The bathroom had sliding windows above the Jacuzzi which opened into our room. Like, you could sit in the tub with the windows open and see the bed or watch TV while you bathed—if the tub actually worked, you could. These sliding windows wouldn’t close properly, though, and Orin said he couldn’t shit with me in the room so I had to wait in the hall.

  I sat out there for ten minutes or so wondering if Cathy had had these tub windows which wouldn’t quite close. Or if she had to wait in a hallway for her husband to use the toilet. Orin came out of the room to get me with his hands up, shaking his head.

  “I can’t go if you’re just out here waiting for me,” he said. “You need to be doing something. Not just waiting around.”

  “What should I do?” I said.

  “For Christ’s sake, I don’t know. But don’t stand out here waiting around. It makes me nervous. I will not be constipated the whole trip.”

  I went down to the lobby and looked at the pamphlets. Most of them were for attractions in Niagara Falls, which Cathy said were overpriced. I found a pamphlet for a bicycle tour. There were pictures of couples cycling down country roads with wine bottles in their bike baskets. A woman in one of the photos looked a little like Cathy—they both had blonde pixie cuts and long, elegant faces—and I could picture the guy in the photo being Cathy’s husband, whom I’d never met. I fantasized about going on the bicycle tour the next day and how maybe someone would take our picture and put it in a pamphlet. I’d get Orin to wear the nice shirt he’d brought for Fiddler just in case. I’d wear my blue dress. I’d keep my chin up if there was a photographer shooting us so you couldn’t see my neck fat in the photo.

  I picked out a few other pamphlets and read through them: there was a day spa, a tea room, a paranormal museum, a newspaper museum, the horse stables and the theatre house where Cathy and her husband had gone. I put the pamphlets in order from must-see to maybe-if-there’s-time. I drummed my fingers on the pamphlet stand. Half an hour passed without Orin. I went back upstairs to find he had fallen asleep on the bed.

  Cathy texted me while I was lying in the dark playing Tetris on my phone.

  Hope yr feeling ok Laura

  I replied that I was still pretty sick but Orin and I were at home watching a movie.

  What movie? she wrote back.

  I thought for a minute.

  Miss congeniality

  Oooo what channel? Im so bored

  Actually its a dvd

  Can I borrow when yr back at work?

  Sure

  So now I’d have to go and buy it.

  I went back to Tetris and played until my eyes ached. I closed them and waited for sleep.

  “You need to get up, Laura,” a voice said. I opened my eyes and there was Orin hovering over me. A pale light shone through the curtains.

  “What’s…”

  “You need to get up. I think I can go now but I can’t go with you in the room. Quick, before it goes away.”

  “You didn’t go last night?”

  “No. Hurry up, before it goes away. And don’t just stand in the hallway. Go outside or something.”

  I stood up, pulled on a sweater and went down to the lobby.

  A woman was behind the reception desk this time and the banana smell was gone. She was talking to an old man with keys on his belt and they both wore serious expressions. They were leaning over a newspaper that was spread out on the desk. I went over to the pamphlet stand and listened in.

  “So sad,” the woman said. “Did you know them?”

  “No. I saw the guy around though. Last week at the bank. Funny, Mary and I were supposed to go see it
tomorrow. It would’ve been the last show of the run, but I guess they’re shutting down. Obviously.”

  “I know. So sad.”

  I could have just asked them what had happened but I felt too embarrassed to talk to anyone the way I was dressed. I looked around the lobby for another newspaper but couldn’t find one. Then I noticed the Niagara Advance box out on the street.

  I stepped outside and read the headline through the plastic window on the door: Fiddler on the Roof director and star found dead in car. I didn’t have my wallet with me to buy a copy so I just stood there and read what I could through the window. Apparently, the woman directing the musical that Orin and I were planning to see that night, as well as the guy who played the role of Tevye, were shot in the actor’s car outside of the theatre after last night’s performance. There were no suspects so far. That’s all I could read.

  The thing I’d been looking forward to the most, the musical, had been pulled from the menu. I cursed my luck. Of course, I felt terrible for the poor people who had been murdered but I just wanted to see a nice performance.

  Two cop cars drove by. I went back inside the hotel.

  Upstairs, Orin was lying on the bed and rubbing his stomach.

  “Did you go yet?” I said.

  “What do you think?”

  “Hey, you’ll never guess what happened. Last…”

  “Did I take a shit?”

  “What?”

  “Did I take a shit? Is that what you’re about to tell me? Unless you’re going to tell me I took a shit, I don’t care.”

  “That doesn’t make sense, Orin.”

  We dressed and left to find breakfast.

  We found a place nearby but Orin wouldn’t touch his eggs. He said they looked too yellow. Then he asked our server if she could turn the music down—admittedly, it was a little much—and she did but her mood changed after that. She didn’t look at us when she came by our table to refill the water glasses. Orin refused to leave her a tip when we left but I snuck a five under my plate while he wasn’t looking.