job and moved in last month.”
“She quit her job and moved across country to be with you,” I say. “Does she know there’s no chance the marriage will last more than two years?”
“Eleanor, c’mon. That’s a little hard on your father. Your mother and I were together seven years.”
“Longer than me and Louis,” I say bitterly.
My father perks up. “Oh! That reminds me. You’re not going to believe this, but while Nance and I were on our honeymoon, we ran into Louis.”
“In Hawaii?” He never took me to Hawaii.
“No, no. That’s just where we got married. We honeymooned in Venice.”
“Venice?” He never took me to Venice.
“Most romantic city in the world. Me and Louis were trying to hire the same gondolier. Small world, huh? Anyway, he’s doing great. Got a huge bonus for some deal in Iowa. Gave him a corner office, too. He and his new wife were celebrating. Lovely girl. Have you met her?”
I can’t respond, due to the red-hot poker that has been shoved into my left temple.
“Charming girl. Pretty. Reminded me of you. Except not so…you know.”
“No, I don’t know. Not so what?”
He laughs weakly. “Oh, nothing.”
I take a deep breath. “Dad, I need money.”
Silence.
“Dad?”
“Louis said you took three thousand out of the household account. He thought that was very fair.”
“Three thousand?” I thought it was four. So I didn’t misplace $1,300. Only $300. I’m oddly relieved: misplacing $300 is easy.
“That’s what he said. Oh, and he asked about his stamp collection. Apparently got mixed in with your things.”
“I don’t want to talk about Louis. I want to talk about me. I’m running out of money. I don’t have a job. I just rented an apartment and I need a car.”
“Honey, I’d love to help. But you know how strapped I am.”
“You managed to scrape up the cash for Hawaii and Venice,” I shrill. “And to pay four alimony checks a month.”
“And that,” he says, “is why I’m strapped.”
Chapter 10
The next morning, in what she undoubtedly intends to be retail therapy, Maya and I go shopping. Housewares, remember? Our first stop is Indigo, a shop on State Street, past the Arlington Theater. It has gorgeous, gorgeous, just delicious Asian and Asian-esque couches, tables, fabrics, lamps, chairs, rugs. Maya checks price tags and drags me outside.
We try Living, Ambience, Home and Garden, and Eddie Bauer, and I am dragged from each. Maya finally snaps and grabs the car keys. An hour-and-a-half later, in Burbank of all places, I see the light.
Love Maya. Love IKEA.
I used to think it was the Wal-Mart of home furnishing stores. But there are endless rows of lovely things I always knew could be made at a reasonable price. And everything has these lovely foreign names like Hemnes and Beddinge. Four hours, and Maya had to bribe me away with Swedish meatballs at the cafeteria.
Best part: Their computers were down, so it was a snap to get an IKEA card with a fifteen-hundred-dollar limit, using my other (useless) credit cards to secure it. I was slightly over though, and had to put back assorted lamps, an IKEA teddy bear and one of the welcome mats. And the Persian-rug mouse-pad. Maya reminded me that I don’t even own a computer. Well, I’ll never own one at this rate, will I? Still, I returned the mouse-pad.
“The toilet is in the kitchen,” Maya mentions helpfully, as if I hadn’t noticed. I couldn’t convince her not to come in. So I’m putting away purchases, and she’s giggling at the trolley. “That takes ‘efficiency unit’ to a whole new level!”
I scowl and tell her to go away (but remember to pick me up tomorrow before she goes to work, so I can have the car, and to change her message to mention my new phone number, and to tell Perfect Brad that I’ll need help carrying the new IKEA chair inside when they deliver it).
I can’t tell if she’s listening, because she’s busy being fascinated by my three-utility stove/fridge/kitchen sink unit.
“Does it work?” she asks.
“Of course,” I say, though I’ve never actually turned it on. I open the refrigerator door. Feels cold. Turn on the tap—water runs out. Click on a burner. Smoke issues forth.
“Well,” she says. “That should keep the mosquitoes away.”
“A fourth utility to the thing,” I say. “It’s like magic.”
We finish unpacking, and Maya, who hasn’t quite stopped giggling, has to go to work. I stop her on the way out. “Tell me the truth. Do you think it’s like living in a trailer?”
“No, not at all.” She closes the door behind her, and calls out: “A trailer would be nicer!”
I think of something to yell back two minutes later, but by then I’m alone. I bustle around the trolley, making it mine and trying to ignore the growing sense of isolation and the encroaching dusk. I assemble my new bureau, and then disassemble the bits that don’t fit, then reassemble it and it’s perfect! I glow with satisfaction at being so handy and self-sufficient, and I look up and it’s pitch-black outside.
I meekly open the door, and the lovely tea-garden has been transformed into a horrible, brackish swamp. I lock the door. Close the curtains. Grab one of my IKEA knives, just in case. And curl up in my new comforter, pretending to leaf through Marie Claire.
The wind scratches tree limbs against the trolley, and I manage not to shriek. I often feel I’m in a movie; tonight, it’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Santa Barbara Years. I turn on all the lights, then realize this just makes the trolley a beacon in the darkness. Moths and rapists will be swarming around shortly. I turn the lights off. It’s worse.
I watch a rerun of Bewitched on the little TV Maya loaned me. Turn the sound up all the way. Not loud enough, as a gust of wind sends the branches into a terrifying crescendo, and something slams against the trolley.
I think it was a slam. It definitely wasn’t a tree branch. It could have been a knock. Schoolmarm Petrie seems the sort who’d make one sharp rap on the door, like the smack of a ruler down on an errant pupil’s knuckles.
I crack the door and peek out. Nothing but menacing swampland. And something brown at the bottom of the steps.
It’s a dead squirrel.
I clutch my throat in horror, like some prim Victorian lady who accidentally wandered into the Vagina Monologues, and debate the various merits of fainting and screaming.
A motion sensor light illuminates the
