Jeneration X: One Reluctant Adult's Attempt to Unarrest Her Arrested Development; Or, Why It's Never Too Late for Her Dumb Ass to Learn Why Froot Loops Are Not for Dinner (8 page)

And that’s when my sweet little girl, back leg bandaged from the blood draw and wobbly from receiving a dose of toxic chemicals, dives right in.

It is
awesome
.

Loki splashes in after her and starts swimming laps and biting at the water. As we watch them paddle around the pool, my heart bubbles over with joy and I’m overcome by the sense of having made the right decision.

This would be a lovely place to end this missive with the
reluctant adult lesson that even if you’re scared, you should do it anyway.

Of course, this is
us
we’re talking about.

We move out of Dick’s place a week later and for the first time, we don’t scour the stove or wipe cabinets ourselves. Instead, we hire a crew to do so. We also have the carpets professionally cleaned and we leave the house in better shape than when we moved in. Because we’ve learned not to trust Dick, we have the photos to prove it, too. We even paid for a home inspection in case we ever had to go to court and needed an impartial third party’s report.

Of course Dick keeps our entire security deposit, claiming he had to replace all the carpeting and repair all the imaginary holes we knocked in the walls.

Of course he does.

He even sends us receipts for alleged damage… from the construction company he just so happens to own. The thing is, once a Dick, always a Dick. So I send Gina and her boyfriend Lee in for a covert operation posing as potential tenants. They schedule an appointment with an apartment broker and they go over the place with a fine-tooth comb. They return with photographic evidence that he did none of the work for which he submitted receipts. Gina even has the broker send her e-mail confirmation that the landlord states the carpet is just fine and there’s no need to replace it.

I not only want to go all HULK SMASH and bash in Dick’s face with my good whacking shovel but I’d also like to engage in a war of social media.

Our real estate attorney advises against both courses of action.

Instead, she sends him what she calls a “liar, liar, pants on fire” letter but ultimately nothing happens because (if my Google
stalking is to be trusted, and I think it is) he’s in a world of financial trouble and his last priority is writing us a check. She says we could sue, but it would cost far more in terms of dollars spent and aggravation and that our best revenge is living well here in our nineteenth, permanent home.

But for me?

I think the best revenge is writing a shaming essay about the situation that will live on in the Library of Congress forever.

I
’m holed up in my office when I hear their rising voices.

I don’t speak Polish, but I do speak
panic
, and from the tone of what they’re saying, there’s trouble afoot.

As I hear the slap of flip-flops barreling down the hallway, I think to myself,
This can’t be good
.

To backtrack, I spend every Friday from eleven to two hiding in my office when our cleaning ladies come. Mind you, this is the new maid service, as we fired the old team for pinching a bunch of stuff, including a video camera. I don’t know if they thought we were famous because of all my framed posters from Barnes & Noble book signing appearances, but if they were looking to cash in on a celebrity sex tape, I’m afraid they were going to be sorely disappointed with all the kitten footage. [
How many times do I have to say this, people? The Internet is FOREVER.
]

Yes, cleaning ladies are an extravagance, but Fletch and I made a deal—as long as I’m working on a project, I’m allowed to outsource our housekeeping. At the moment, my “project” is watching TiVoed episodes of
The Real Housewives of New York
, but that’s on a need-to-know basis.

One of the ladies is calling, “Excuse! Excuse!” which generally means they’re finished, but it’s only eleven fifteen and the house is disgusting. At this point, it occurs to me that neither of the ladies has ever actually said anything to me except for “excuse,” no matter how much I try to engage them in conversation. Fletch told me that once when he was here alone with them, one of the gals held a cell phone to his head and demanded he, “Ask boss,” when he inquired if they could fold a couple of baskets of laundry.

I hate that I missed it because I’m crazy in love with an Eastern European accent. Some people dig the melodious tones of French or Italian, but me, I’m all about a language that comes out somewhere between spitting and barking. There’s something so refreshingly direct about the Slavic way of speaking; it’s all “it MUST” and “you WILL,” as opposed to our very American “if it’s not too much trouble” and “as long as that’s okay.” When no one’s around, I make Maisy talk in an East German accent.
Maisy need. Maisy need NOW.

I open my office door and find one of the ladies in what can best be described as a state. “Is something wrong? Can I help?” I ask. Whatever the problem is, I can fix it. If someone hurt herself, I can grab our first aid kit, call 911, or do an ER run. If something broke, I can glue it back together. If they simply want to express their disgust at how dirty the floors got while I was away at SxSW and Fletch was in charge of the house, I can invite them to join the club.

Seriously, WTF? Was he hosting a rodeo in here?

The cleaning lady replies to my offer of assistance by saying the one thing without a readily apparent solution.

“The shit is small.”

Beg your pardon?

I repeat to her, “The
shit
is small?” I say it a couple of times while I try to work it all out in my head.

She nods emphatically and points in the direction of the master bedroom at the end of the hallway and enunciates every word. “The shit is
small
.”

As we both rush down the hall, my head races with grim possibilities.

Where did the small shit come from?

Where is the small shit now?

Is the small shit on the duvet? That’s no real biggie because it’s machine washable.

Is the small shit on a linen chair cushion? Um, more problematic because I’m not sure how to launder it. Scrub brush? Dry cleaning?

Oh, God, please tell me there’s no small shit on my prized Persian rug with the delicate swirls of celery and cerulean blue woven through the magenta wool.
[
Fletch ruined our old jute rug after I asked him to clean it. My assumption was that he’d use a Rug Doctor. In all the lousy places we’ve lived and with all the ridiculous neighbors we’ve ever had, nothing has ever been more white trash than when I spotted him standing in the front yard like Cousin “Shitter’s Full” Eddie, squirting the rug with a garden hose.
]

Wait, is this like the time one of our cats barfed in the cleaning lady’s shoe, only a million times more gross?

Did Loki deposit another “I got nervous” bomb?

Or did something go horribly awry in the bathroom due to my cavalier attitude about using an antique banana in Fletch’s smoothie yesterday?

I get to the master bedroom expecting chaos… carnage… destruction, or, at the very least, a diminutive pile of something steaming.

Instead, I find that I’ve laid out the wrong bedding, accidentally setting out a Queen set instead of King and for the better part of five minutes, they’ve been attempting to wrestle them onto the bed.

Oh… I get it.

The
sheet
is small.

I start to laugh; then I apologize profusely, swapping out Queens for Kings. I head back to my office where I spend the next two hours and forty-five minutes watching TV and giggling over the shit being small.

And then it occurs to me… this is probably why our old cleaning ladies stole from us.

Sheet.

T
here’s one truth that I live by:
Hell hath no fury like a middle-aged woman in a fuzzy pink robe, hopped up on a winning combination of allergy medicine,
Alias
reruns, and anger.

Reside in the city long enough and you learn to steel yourself against shit going down because if you don’t, you’re going to be a victim. The second you let your guard down and are all,
“My apartment’s only two blocks from this bar—taking a cab would be silly,”
is the exact second when a gang of miscreants springs out of a darkened alley, steals your new iPhone and Coach bag, and punches you in your bourgeois mouth, ruining a significant investment in dental work.

That’s
what they take if you’re lucky.

So you keep your guard up all the time. And you know what?
Living like this is exhausting and it’s one of the million reasons we’re decamping for the suburbs in three weeks.

But we just wouldn’t be
us
if the city of Chicago didn’t send us off with a parting gift. Thanks, Mayor Daley!

I’m in my office around midnight, finishing up an e-mail before heading to bed. Because the room’s at the very front of the house on the top floor, I have a premiere vantage point for my self-appointed position as the Queen of Neighborhood Patrol. Trust me when I say I’m delighted to turn over my Constant Vigilance™ sash, crown, and scepter to anyone who wants ’em when we leave Logan Square forever.

I’m just switching off my computer when I hear a few weirdly muffled thumps and a light clattering of metal, followed by a familiar clang.

The familiar clang is that of my front gate closing.

I roll my chair over to the window a couple of feet away and notice one person standing outside my gate while another ascends my front steps. In my head I’m all, “Hey, who’s come to visit?” until a split second later my city-brain takes over and I realize that no one should be there, what with this being midnight at a single-family property with a perpetually locked gate.

I don’t recognize these people. My friends not only have day jobs, but also the courtesy to phone before dropping by, and I quickly deduce the two people looming around the front of my house aren’t here on a social call.

Also? I’m pretty sure none of my friends take crystal meth.

Politely as I can, I open my window in order to inform them that I shan’t be receiving any visitors today.

“HEY, TWEAKERS! THIS IS PRIVATE PROPERTY. GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!”

To which the dreadlocked white guy [
Oh, honey, Counting Crows called. They want Adam Duritz’s look back.
] replies, “Mind your own fucking business. We’re allowed to be here.”

From my perch in the window, I assure them they are
not
, in fact, allowed to be here and go off on an entire tangent about the notion of private property. I explain how my concept of ownership is influenced by the capitalist school of thought and how I don’t subscribe to their clearly more Marxist views of said concept, although really, Marx was more about the people owning the
means
of production and not so much about that which is considered “social wealth,” such as Coach bags, iPhones, a mouthful of veneers, and any sort of high-end electronics that might be stuffed in the large, empty sacks they’re carrying.

To which he responds, “Fuck you.”

Seriously? A brilliant monologue like that and the snappiest of rejoinders he can muster is instructing me to sex my-self up?

You, sir, are neither a gentleman nor a scholar.

I inform them of my plans to call the local constabulary and the woman, who is Stevie Nicks’s younger, druggier doppelganger, again suggests I go spend some quality time with myself in an intimate manner while her partner informs me of his plans to come inside to “fuck you up.”

Oh.

Really.

As I’ve reached the limits of my own negotiating capabilities, I’m left with no choice but to call in the big guns.

No, not those. [
Until it’s legal to shoot someone for being an asshole, my weapon of choice is a shovel.
] I mean Fletch.

He’s on the other side of the second floor in the bedroom. He hears me squawking,
“Perimeter breach! Perimeter breach!”
as I thunder down the hallway. He assumes I’m on a bad Ambien trip, perhaps cut with a side of crazy, but I assure him that other than Claritin, I’m entirely sober. I brief him on the sitch and he takes off up the street after them while I call 911. His goal isn’t to confront them as much as maintain visual contact and direct the police to them.

After dialing, I, too, take to the street, fancying myself a high-kicking, martial-arts-knowing, wig-flipping CIA operative like the divine Miss Jennifer Garner starring as Sydney Bristow. But she must practice more often because I’m able to jog all of fifteen feet before I get a stitch in my side.

Fortunately, Fletch can run more than half a block before collapsing in a heap of pastel terry cloth, sock monkey slippers, and a mud mask, so he manages to catch up to the perps. Because I’m still spitting distance from my house sucking air and hugging my knees, Fletch has to fill me in on what happens next.

Quick caveat? It’s possible he caught up to them not because he’s a paragon of physical fitness. The more likely explanation is that the miscreants are all weighed down in the kind of layered hippie clothing last seen praying for a miracle at a Grateful Dead show, so they aren’t exactly truckin’.

As Fletch walks up behind them, he says, “My wife tells me you decided to pay us a visit.”

The couple becomes visibly agitated and Stevie Nicks asks, “Um, who’s your wife?”

To which he replies, “The woman I married.”

That’s the extent of Sergeant Fletcher’s interrogation before the police arrive. [
For as many complaints as I’ve had with the CPD’s response time, I must give them kudos for arriving in a flash in this instance.
]