American Housewife: Stories Read online

  “Trust me,” she says, “the best stuff is by the train tracks!”

  By God, she is right. Ten minutes later, I spot two wooden nubs sticking out of a thatch of sopping matted leaves. Who knows how many decades the rocking horse has been here. From neck to tail, it is buried in the damp ground. Mitzy and I scavenge for empty cans to dig it out. The digging takes almost the entire allotted two hours. The rush and roar of each passing train sends us screaming away from the tracks. We slip on wet leaves every time we run. Mitzy loses two press-on nails.

  With ten minutes to go, she and I carry the beast, which is large enough to take the weight of both of us, up the hill to the Beekman Arms. The other contestants have made it back in plenty of time and are sitting on the porch drinking punch spiked by our sponsor, Captain Morgan, to loosen their tongues. Picnic tables are set with cloth-covered objects, finds waiting to be revealed. F’in Tiny scrolls through his iPhone under a small open tent. Cameramen encircle the property. Producers nab hotel guests wandering through the set and get them to sign appearance waivers.

  The odor of Mitzy and me stops everyone. Think of what a vase of water smells like when you pull out dead daisies. Now imagine that Mitzy and I have shoved our arms into a bathtub of that water, knelt in that water, and run our fingers through our hair with that water. Mitzy is entirely in terry cloth, the clothing equivalent of a sponge. The rocking horse is waterlogged, but it’s held its shape and paint. My arms are breaking from the weight of it. A rhinestone slips down the inside of Mitzy’s sweatpants leg and catches the porch lights. A buzzer sounds. We’ve reached the checkpoint in time. We use all our strength and what’s left of our composure not to drop the rocking horse hard.

  Lithgow breaks the stunned silence with what we all thought we’d have to wait until the end of the series for, and I’m sure the producers thought they would have to coax out of him. He shouts a variation of his catchphrase from Third Rock from the Sun: “It’s GOR-geous!”

  His saying it this early must mean he’s blown away.

  The local appraisers are too. The horse is from the early 1900s and valued at five grand.

  F’in Tiny peruses the remaining entries with the appetite he’d have for warm egg salad. He interviews the tennis player and asks if she worries her stilettos slowed down her team.

  She eyes his head like the yellow fuzz ball that it is.

  Mitzy and I win.

  ————

  At dinner on the glassed-in sun porch, Mario asks me why it’s been so long since I’ve written a book. I cut the head off a butter swan, put the whole thing on a piece of roll, and then put that whole thing into my mouth. I let the butter dissolve. The fresh bread sticks to my teeth. I chew. Hold up a finger. I’ll answer him, I’ll answer him—just let me finish this bite. I keep chewing, hoping that he’ll lose interest and ask Verbena for worm recipes, but Mario, who eats with large parties on a nightly basis, patiently stares at me until his focus draws the attention of everyone at the table. Five cameras crowd for my close-up.

  I say, “I’ve been writing, I just haven’t published.”

  “What’s the difference?” asks the tennis player.

  I say, “It’s hitting a tennis ball against your garage door versus Wimbledon.”

  “You see there!” booms Lithgow. “That’s writing!”

  I want to crawl across the table and kiss him on the lips. I say, “Thank you,” and bask in the genuine warmth of his gaze. This is what a happy person looks like. He’s got his health, family, the respect of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and he’s comfortable enough to go on Dumpster Diving with the Stars. Me, I’m struggling.

  My literary agent, Maxine Jaffe (seventy-something and still one of the biggest in the business), has been gracious enough to keep me on as a client even after she couldn’t get publishers to pony up the most minuscule of advances for my last three novels, the subjects of which she has been less than thrilled about.

  She says, “Doll, you wrote a plantation book when there were two other plantation books on the bestseller list. You wrote a book about kids who turn into cats, when vampires are still—God help us—the only thing anyone wants to read about. You wrote a book about a witch who infects her entire neighborhood with herpes. Herpes, Doll! Trust me, nobody wants to read about that. I’m telling you: three generations of women, that’s what sells. And the three A’s: adultery, abortion, anorexia. Will you trust me, Doll? I’m begging you.”

  Amy Madeline writes about smart put-upon overweight women who sit in front of black-and-white movies on TV and eat ice cream straight out of the carton. Sometimes, they pour Froot Loops and milk into the half-empty carton. They have overbearing skinny mothers and wonderful drunk grandmothers. They have Spanx accidents. They learn that when they finally love themselves, men will too. Amy Madeline’s books are hilarious and touching and I love that I get to read her first drafts before her initial print runs of 100,000.

  Maxine says, “All these years with Amy Madeline at your side, I’d think her ideas would rub off on you.”

  That’s the problem: once my best friend puts something in her books, I feel like I’m stealing if I put the same thing in mine. So far that rules out book clubs, cat lovers, art lovers, grandmas-gone-wild, cancer, child pageants, and murderous housewives. I can’t write a book in e-mail format. I can’t write a book in second person.

  I’ve spent the last ten years coming up with the bizarre, while my real life has grown more and more stereotypical. I greet my husband at the door with cheese dip. I watch him take off his suit and hear about his day. We watch Jeopardy! and I win. We have supper. He goes to clean up the kitchen and I wave off his help. Write what I know, who wants to read that? If only our apartment was haunted or I was the tiniest bit possessed by the devil.

  ————

  The next morning, there is a school bus waiting to take us to our new challenge, the Annual Tivoli Yard Sale. After cameramen take their seats for a loading shot, Mitzy and I are the first contestants to board. As winners of the last challenge, we have our choice of seats. I look to Mitzy to decide. She’s closer in age to public high school than I am, and probably sat in the most popular spot.

  But Mitzy isn’t moving past the rubber threshold of the accordion door. The smell of pleather seats, slit and juiced with ninth-grade-boy Red Man dip spit is transporting her back in time to when she was not the centerfold of attention. And now I remember: cheerleaders don’t become Playboy bunnies. Knock-kneed, brace-faced, flat-chested, brunette band geeks become bunnies because they want everyone to know that after hocking their trombones for rhinoplasty, they are just as beautiful as the girl who dates the quarterback.

  F’in Tiny is in the front seat usually reserved for teachers, chaperones, and mentally handicapped kids. He says, “Mitzy, one foot in front of the other. Chop, chop! Maybe if you swallow your gum, you can walk.”

  Oh man, she swallows it.

  Behind me, the Scientologists are getting restless, and I feel a twenty-million-dollar-a-movie hand on my back. I coax Mitzy up the bus stairs and into the belly of the sense-memory beast. She stumbles forward, glancing over her shoulder for approval. I nod for her to sit three rows back, but don’t follow her.

  I realize that I am at an age where I don’t care about who I sit by or what the person I don’t sit by thinks of me or what anybody else thinks of me either. I am the author of three unpublished novels. Failure. Failure. And one to grow on. My worst nightmare has repeated itself every few years. And you know what? Life goes on with or without your book in print. Life will go on if I don’t sit by Mitzy. I am genuinely fond of her, but for this challenge we are Dumpster diving on our own. I need every advantage I can get. I want to be the first one off this bus. I want to win.

  I plop down next to F’in Tiny, who pops up when my weight hits the cushion. He pops up so high that his head goes out of frame and a producer makes us reenact the moment. Oh. Great. I do care what people think. I feel terrible as I
snub Mitzy in slow motion this time. I ease down next to F’in Tiny, who’s braced himself as if I am a high-dive donkey and his seat is a kiddie pool.

  Everyone else piles onto the bus and streams past Mitzy, who studiously presses at her replacement press-on nails. I’m relieved when John Lithgow asks if he can sit next to her. As the bus pulls onto the road, I expect he’ll soon have us singing rounds of “She’ll Be Coming ’Round the Mountain When She Comes!”

  Directly behind me are the Scientologists. The wife taps my shoulder. She says, “Nice move, girl. Good seat. You got gump.”

  “Gump?” I ask.

  “Yeah, girl, gump. Gumption. We’ve been watching you. We’re impressed.”

  By “we” the Scientologist wife means her and her husband. I’ve seen them interviewed on TV and they always refer to themselves as a unit. She didn’t support Hillary Clinton, they did. He didn’t choose to make the move from comedies to action/drama and biopics, they did. They chose to have twins through fertility treatments, and then they chose to battle her postpartum depression without drugs or psychotherapy. They chose to send her off to a yurt for two months. When she came home, they got her a supporting role in a movie in which she bared her stretch marks under overhead lighting. The part earned her a Golden Globe nomination. And then they decided that she would stay at home with the kids. For the last fifteen years, she hasn’t done more than cameos in his blockbusters. So, I’m guessing—now that the twins are practically grown—she’s done her time and they are here for her comeback.

  I ask, “Which one of you is the collector?”

  The actor opens his mouth, but his wife puts her hand on his arm. She stops him. From saying what? Another we? What’s wrong with we? We is their thing. Aren’t they on Dumpster Diving with the Stars to get we a TV series starring we as a mortician with great arms in a man’s world?

  She tells him, “Take it easy, baby.”

  He chuckles what I’m guessing is his marriage chuckle. All we marrieds have a marriage chuckle. A marriage chuckle is a fake laugh you bring out when your spouse does something dumb that you have to pretend is charming. My marriage chuckle is for when my husband tells our new friends that he doesn’t believe in brunch. The Scientologist husband’s must be for when his wife preempts his dumb thing.

  Speaking of dumb things, F’in Tiny has perked up. He’s on his knees, arms draped over the back of our seat, leaning deep into the Scientologists’ personal space. He asks the wife, “Are you concerned that if your husband exposes his love for antiquing, his fans will no longer see him as a leading man?”

  Camera lights burn down upon us. Only one cameraman has stayed at the back of the bus to film Verbena, who is hanging her head out a window, flying her freak flag of long brown hair, and pumping her arm to get semi-truck drivers to honk their horns. John Lithgow looks like he’s giving good fatherly advice to Mitzy (this could be the moment when she decides to go to community college), but the producers don’t care. F’in Tiny is off his iPhone and onto something. And, by God, they will capture it.

  Cardinal Reality Rule #3: Strain relationships. Ask uncomfortable questions. Put one member in physical danger. Split ’em. Viewers like to see other couples more miserable than themselves.

  The Scientologist wife knows this, and she is not having it. She says, “Weren’t you an actor once, Elvin? You love antiquing. You’re on the show.”

  “I’m the host.”

  “There’s a difference?”

  F’in Tiny says, “Antiquing is one thing, parading a wife around to stay number one at the box office is quite another.”

  The Scientologist wife says, “The secret to why our marriage works is that everybody helps everybody. We’re a team. At home and on this show.”

  “But this isn’t a team show,” says F’in Tiny.

  He’s right. This is not The Amazing Race. For the rest of filming, the Scientologists will have to compete against each other. It’s not something I would ever do with my husband, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned in life it’s that people do things I don’t.

  F’in Tiny prods. “Teamwork. Really? Teamwork is your big secret?”

  I know what F’in Tiny is inferring because whenever he is interviewed reporters infer the same thing about him. They ask about his string of chiseled male personal trainers. They say, “Because you were a fat kid. Really? Because you were a fat kid is why you are so body conscious now?”

  The Scientologist actor looks to his wife for an answer.

  She is stoic. She maintains eye contact with F’in Tiny. She doesn’t blink. Her stare dares him to ask his inane question again. On TV, this will read as confident, but up close I can see that she is frozen because she is scared.

  I say, “The secret to our marriage is separate bathrooms.”

  The Scientologists laugh, real laughter because they’ve both been holding their breath. F’in Tiny cuts me a look. I’ve broken his spell. He turns and slumps in his seat. He pulls out his iPhone and thumb-flicks the screen. The cameramen know all is lost and retreat.

  As I face forward, I get a twenty-million-dollar squeeze on the shoulder.

  ————

  When our bus rolls into a church parking lot in Tivoli, New York, a cameraman slips out the emergency exit and comes around to the front of the bus to set up a shot of our mass exodus. Through the windows, about a quarter mile in the distance, I see that residents have chalked off squares of pavement along Main Street and piled card tables high with boxes and trunks hauled down from their attics. I reapply my lipstick, snap my purse shut, and smooth my starched skirt. This is supposed to be a less down-and-dirty event.

  F’in Tiny climbs over me with a tight straddle to reach the aisle. The engine idles as he dons a new hat for this segment. The Indiana Jones fedora is too large, and the brim tips over one eye without any assistance. He holds his whip like a jump rope.

  He says, “For this challenge you will have FIFTY minutes and FIFTY dollars to scour this small AMERICAN YARD SALE. The WINNER’s find will have the BIGGEST difference between what you pay for it and market value. And, as always on Dumpster Diving with the Stars, you do not have to spend anything. The MORE you save, the MORE your find will be worth. Currently, THE PLAYBOY BUNNY and THE WRITER are tied for the lead. ARE. YOU. READY? Dumpster divers?”

  Now we know what to do.

  Mario drums his Crocs on the floor and we shout, “Yes!”

  John Lithgow shouts, “Tally-ho!” He’s got his arm around Mitzy’s shoulders and gives her a squeeze. He’s rooting for her. He’s rooting for all of us.

  If only I’d sat by Mitzy, maybe I too would feel his arm around my shoulders. But I sat in the front because I wanted a head start.

  “On your mark.” F’in Tiny raises a stopwatch. “Get set.”

  The bus driver cranks open the accordion door. The bus rocks with our eagerness. Contestants rock in their seats.

  To add to our anxiety, F’in Tiny stands firm, blocking the aisle. He takes a deliberately long breath. Holds it. Then stage-whispers, “Go!”

  Contestants and cameramen surge forward.

  F’in Tiny hops out of their way, but back into my seat blocking only my escape. He smirks. He’ll teach me not to butt into his interview.

  I vault over the seat barrier.

  The Scientologist shrieks like one of his fans when I drop down in front of him, cutting him off at the door.

  Ha HA! I’m the first one on land.

  The dew smells good. I am running, running, running! But I slip. I fall flat-out, grass-burning my knees and the undersides of my wrists. I recover! I’m on my feet, charging the sale, maintaining my lead, clutching my purse like a football, fueled by the humiliation that when I fell my skirt flipped over my head revealing what the cameras will not lie about: beige cotton underpants with a waistband as thick and wide as a ruler.

  The Scientologist and his wife easily overtake me, but Berkshire Theatre fans slow Lithgow, and the tennis player gets her
heels stuck in the lawn. Mario and Verbena chug ahead and blend into the crowd. When I finish eating Mitzy’s dust, I catch up to find her lingering at the entrance to Main Street. She is stalled at the mouth of the yard sale just like she was when she was boarding the bus.

  It’s the smell and sight of books that have her in their clutches this time. Books are everywhere: hardbacks, paperbacks, mass market, trade; books with leather binding, embossed gold-leaf titles; it’s a maze of spines. The bookshelves that the books are sitting on are for sale. One card table has a heap of paper grocery sacks with a sign that reads: “Pack a bag for a buck!”

  Mitzy says, “Bitzy’s the reader.”

  I nudge her forward into the thicket of yard sellers. For every yard seller, there are forty shoppers. While there are plenty of knickknacks (ashtrays, marble fruit, Grecian lady lamps), they are buffered by books. It’s hard to know where to dive in. Once again, Mitzy has clamped on to my hand. I wriggle free to point out an antique car and bike area at the far end of the market. Surely she knows from auto shows. I lock my eyes on a row of overpriced Nancy Drews. I try to get my gump up to barter, but Mitzy’s still a shadow.

  She says, “Bitzy took three books to the hospital for her recovery. They’re supposed to be funny, but I don’t feel her laughing. When she laughs, I get the hiccups.”

  F’in Tiny says, “Wouldn’t we all like to see that!”

  I swear he must have tunneled here.

  Mitzy asks him, “Have you heard from Hef? Is Bitzy okay?”

  F’in Tiny brandishes his stopwatch. “The show, honey. The show.”

  Mitzy shouldn’t be asking about her sister on camera. F’in Tiny is not going to answer her. Unless World War III breaks out and Bitzy’s been elected commander in chief, Mitzy and the rest of us signed contracts to Dumpster dive in the dark. She’s slowing our segment.