Nightmare on our street
OUR HOUSE doesn’t need a father. It needs a therapist who’s good with a pipe wrench, bald spots on the lawn and exorcisms. That would be the ideal person to run this house. We are brimming with drips, tics, poltergeists, odd auras and crude double-entendres. On weekends, I don’t know whether to grab the pliers or the lithium.
“Good morning very much,” says the toddler, padding into the kitchen in his mother’s slippers.
“Good morning very much to you,” I answer.
He laughs, though there is little to laugh at here. On TV, a “Sesame Street” character is warning, “Never take directions from a two-headed banana,” something I’ve been preaching for years, though it takes a national forum like “Sesame Street” for it finally to be heard. (Let me just say, you know you have issues around the house when “Sesame Street” comes across like a news show.)
Minutes later, someone is screaming that she can’t find her bra. Another person says, unsolicited, that sometimes he eats just because he is bored, which would set off alarm bells in any parent’s head, except this kid has the body fat of a parking meter. “Go ahead, eat,” I say. “You never know -- you might develop a muscle.”
On the porch are the Halloween decorations, which to some people may seem redundant. Why decorate a place that is already so obviously haunted. Our little home has spirits in the pipes and curses in the rafters. For instance, when you hit the button on the garage door it hiccups, then closes only if you jab at it with your thumb a second time. It reminds me of a squirrel crossing the road. You know how they hesitate in the middle, just to give the approaching car a chance to crush them? It’s spooky, is what it is.
“Are we putting up the decorations today?” the little girl asks.
“Yes,” I say.
“I help,” says the toddler.
“Of course you will,” I say.
Being 2, the toddler has a different definition of “help” than many of us. His definition of helping would be to empty all the decorations from the box, then hide half of them in that area behind the couch where he stashes things people really need, like corn chips, car keys and last year’s tax returns.
The other half of the Halloween stuff he will store in the bathtub that is still wet from his big brother’s shower, which lasted two hours and 45 minutes this morning. I guess he was shaving his legs or something. Anyway, when the toddler says he’ll “help,” you’re always eager to learn just how.
“What are you doing?” asks their mother.
“Halloweening the house,” I say.
“And the bathtub,” says the little girl.
“That’s supposed to be a surprise,” I remind her.
“Great,” says my wife.
Half my buddies are off to see the greatest Notre Dame game of all time, and here I am Halloweening the house, which you would think would please my wife but seldom does. She claims that we often decorate for Halloween a little too early (one year in March), so that the fake spider web becomes so saturated with real flies, moths, spiders, ladybugs, leaves, beer caps and cigar wrappers that it becomes an eyesore, even worse than the way our house normally looks. I insist that for $1.39 a bag, you may as well get as much out of the fake spider web as possible, and wouldn’t it look kind of interesting on the Christmas tree.
In any case, this year we’ve indulged her, holding off on the decorating till two weekends before the holiday. I warn her that patience and restraint are not my strong points and that it’s been quite a sacrifice, requiring much soul-searching, something to which I’m not particularly suited.
“I’m grateful,” she says.
“And beautiful too,” I say, the words thick in my throat, like a good Bordeaux.
“Has anybody seen my bra?” yells a shrill voice from inside, probably some sort of poltergeist. “Anybody!”
“I’m thirsty I hope,” whispers the toddler, gently.
I can’t remember: Did Amityville start like this? Was there a bathroom faucet they couldn’t seem to fix and kids screaming for undergarments all the time?
Did everybody speak in non sequiturs and the gin disappear faster than you could really explain? Did pigs fly and checks bounce? Did the parents seem, like, 10 years older than they actually were?
Who cares. I have a porch to decorate.
So, season’s greetings. Very much.
Chris Erskine can be reached at chris.erskine@latimes.com.
