Query: MY HOUSE

Binxie Durbin

Weichert, Realtors

Larchmont, NY

 

Dear Ms. Durbin,

 

"They haven't done a thing to keep it up."

 

"What a disgrace! No curb appeal."

"That old dump should have been razed back in the 1890s."

 

That's what the neighbors mutter about 42 Terrace Lane. But what they don't know is that the house hides a secret. Behind the crumbling plaster, musty shag carpets, and hideous 1970s wood paneling, 42 Terrace Lane is bursting with potential. Yes, she has crickets in the basement and a poltergeist in the wainscoting, but when a new owner sinks approximately half a million dollars into her, she's going to be gorgeous.

 

A little down on her luck, 42 Terrace Lane is determined to make something of herself. They won't dare call her a "filthy eyesore" anymore. This time, she's going to have shiny granite countertops, not Nu-Econo-Brik. This time, she's going to have a porch that doesn't sag, and a back deck with a brand-new Weber gas grill, and there are going to be really good dinner parties with fine china in her dining room, damn it. If she can just get there before a potential owner's spike heel punches through the rotting wood on the stairs, she's golden.

My Victorian dystopian for adults and several children, MY HOUSE, is complete at 2,467 square feet. It’s like a cross between THE JONES’S HOUSE, MO 'N' JACK'S SPORTS BAR, and FOLSOM PRISON. Please let me know if you care to see any portion of it; I'd be happy to provide access to the front porch or foyer. I am open to suggestions for revision, including tearing off the back half of the house so that a little sunlight might get into the damp corners of the living room.

MY HOUSE is my second dwelling; MY FIRST HOUSE was sold to a nice couple from New Rochelle in 2008. I have other works on the property, including MY GARAGE and MY ROTTING STORAGE SHED WHICH PROBABLY CONTAINS SOME ANIMAL FAECES, which may also interest you.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Three Rejection Letters: Should They Sting and Burn?

For those of us who are writers, it's hard not to take a rejection letter from an agent or editor personally—especially early in the process, when each word of a simple form rejection can feel like bee stings, BBs in the buttocks, or hot acid. And it's difficult indeed to see querying, and the inevitable rejections that come with it, as the subjective process it is.

Let's imagine then, for a moment, that rejection letters were par for the course in other very subjective contexts. Would you still take them personally? Would they still sting and burn? Does rejection stink no matter how it's served? Or are we sometimes wearing puce-tinted glasses? I wonder. Let's see:

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Lugnutz,
Thank you for the opportunity to tour your lovely home at last Sunday's open house. While we admired the billiards room and the wet bar in the master bedroom, we're afraid to say that we just didn't quite fall in love. We're looking for something very specific, you see: A home in which we can raise our pet ferrets in a hutch in the backyard. Upon measurement, your backyard—while filled with fragrant spring flowers and that pleasant tinkling fountain—just doesn't have the correct contours for our needs. We hope that you find a buyer who will bestow upon your house as much love as you have clearly put into it.
Best,
Misty and Hugh Greenteeth

Dear Sadie-Lou,
I enjoyed our blind date on Saturday. You are clearly a personable young lady, with many charms. Among them are your very voluptuous rump and your extremely advantageous bosom. Despite these assets, I just didn't feel the chemistry required to see you a second time. You deserve a man who will want to ravish you at each and every opportunity, and for a reason I cannot fathom (and at times excoriate myself for, for you are a hot number), I am not that man. I wish you the best of luck in finding love elsewhere.
Sincerely,
Bobo Bunface

Dear Freckles, Sassy, Jiminy, and Bobo,
Thanks for the opportunity to consider each one of you to be my new puppy. I enjoyed your boundless enthusiasm and the spittle that flew from your tongues. Unfortunately, I may choose only one puppy whose poop I wish to scoop during endless walks, and that will grow old with me by the fireside. When I saw little Spot—plain and piebald though he was—my heart jumped, for I sensed a kindred spirit. I know your angry little hearts are burning with jealousy and rage now, little pups, but you want an owner who will be true to you through all. Trust me, you will find someone who loves you. Yes, even you, Freckles, with that bum leg and that wandering eye...for perhaps you will try harder to beat the field than any of them.
Yours,
Orphraim Zizzlewat

Funny, I set out to prove a point here. But I'm still feeling a wee bit sad for the Lugnutz couple, Sadie-Lou, and the little Lumpen puppy Freckles. I hope they keep their chins up. I think that they will.

The Stash-Hole, and Other Things They Left Behind

Now that we are the proud owners of a new house, we have spent many happy hours exploring the nooks and crannies of the old estate to discover ITEMS OF EXTREME VALUE that were unaccountably left behind by the sellers. I have been cataloguing these treasures and I would like to say one important thing. Clearly there is either cash or drugs (or both, or a quantity of valuable JOOLS) hidden in my home and I INTEND TO FIND THEM.

First of all, we know that the previous owners of our house kept things of extreme value around because they had what we now refer to as THE STASH-HOLE.



Over the weekend, while tearing away a particularly hideous railing in the living room faux-foyer, we revealed this secret cubby hidden beneath the top of a built-in bookshelf. Was it filled with Depression-era cash? Jewels? Pot? No! But if you were a drug mule or a gem thief, wouldn't you want a little stash-hole like this for your stash? No doubt the booty had recently been removed. But we are now wise to the game. Armed with my crowbar, I went prowling.

And I found this. Creepy the Squirrel!



Was he really sitting on the circa 1953 Speed Queen washing machine? No silly, I placed him there for the photo op. But look at the blackness of his black, beady eyes. The vacant hopelessness. Drugs, yes? Notice a theme? I searched inside Creepy the Squirrel's orifi but found nothing of interest.

Also discovered in an abandoned fridge in the basement: This fresh bottle of Rheingold Ale. Just as good as on the day it was fermented. Juicy good fun!



In the "Blair Witch" category, this birdcage dangling in the basement shadows, next to what looks like a miniature noose. It used to be in an upstairs bathroom. Now it's down there. Weird! I'm really sorry now that I drank so much of that Rheingold, because things are getting freaky. The bird's various orifi were also free of smack, crack, goofballs and downers. So where was the stash?



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Anyway, I thought for sure I was onto something when I found this "antiseptic." Isn't this for, like, people who shoot up and stuff? To clean their grungy old needles? This was out in the garage. We immediately used it to cleanse a number of minor flesh wounds we had incurred in the search for DRUGS AND CASH.



I went back for another slug of the verdammnt Rheingold (Gott in Himmel!) and noted this potential "stash" area. Meat-Keeper? My arse!

I don't want to talk about what was in the Meat-Keeper. Can you say "38-year-old pork product?" More Rheingold, please!

Great Raids in Carpet Removal

We are officially in our new house, and it feels worlds away from the old one. No longer can I call myself New Ro's own blogger, so I will have to content myself with a new title (to be determined at a future date).

The house we moved into, in Mamaroneck, had acres of the thickest, dustiest, driest shag carpet available to man or beast around the late 60s. The color in the living and dining room was a putrid and virulent green—a color I actually favor when it comes to little cocktail dresses, but not on the floor. In the family room/den, the carpet was rust-colored; coupled with the dark wood paneling and small then-in-vogue windows, the room seemed to suck up all available light and deliver a Stygian black gloom suitable only for decadent key parties. It also features a dry bar and a dropped acoustic tile ceiling. Yeah, baby!

We happen to have about seven of some of the best relatives and friends on the whole darned planet, because they arrived this weekend and tore that carpet up. Every last stitch of it, every tack board, every staple in the floor. From about 8 a.m. until cocktail hour arrived on Saturday, our friends sweated and pried, toted pounds of dusty carpet padding, and rendered the carpet fit for trash removal. One large chunk from the dining room was so hefty that we called it The Beast; it took five people to hoist it out to the garage. The stairs alone took two hours of prying due to all the tacks and nails.

While all this was going on we also managed to fix a broken section of fence, repair a broken toddler bed, sweep the area behind the garage for sharp glass, and tamp down the dumpster in the driveway (one demented soul jumped up and down on the carpets shrieking like an ape—not very wise considering the crevasses between the broken old cabinetry shifting beneath, but rather amusing all the same). Other crew members entertained the children by singing songs, molding Play-Doh into a lifelike plate of spaghetti and meatballs, and dragging around blocks of concrete attached to ropes. And everyone actually got fed.

By five p.m. all that carpet was gone, revealing pristine hardwood floors beneath. One team member swabbed the floors with Murphy's Oil Soap and we retired for cocktails and take-out food. As we sat on our new front porch, nary a shopping cart nor a speeding car came into view. And this was good.

What kinds of friends do this sort of thing? Some might say: The insane kind. I say: The rarest and best.

I Hear My Neighborhood Singing

Lo, the shopping cart gleams on the uncut grass, ferocious in its splendor. The tin of discarded ketchup: a psalm to the morn, like the throaty red of the songbird.

What three stood here, talking of the depth of being, of life, of mortality, of the arduous journeys of the souls of men? And then, with casual jollity, tossed their butts to the earth, where they lie quiescent and blameless?




The rusted fence, so artfully askew, is corroded as much as is my property value, which decays amid the entropy of all things.











A front porch no place for a treadmill? Nay, nay! Strike such outdated assumptions from your credo, for treading manfully on a porch brings the freshening air and the songs of vehicular traffic. O, joy! O, brisk winds off Route 95!

Stop! I say, stop! Stop your petty judgments, for this is Art, and not to be trod upon by any narrow-minded philistine.

My husband conjured up a rainbow, and it delivers fresh hope to the north. We shall follow.

Shuffles, We Hardly Knew Ye

OK, I lied, I have another blog post in me. Barely.

It looks like we have a buyer for our home, although contracts are not yet signed. And of course I have mixed feelings about the whole prospect of moving an entire family of five and all their accoutrement, especially since I don't know where we're moving. We do have three cars, so we figure that's three separate rooms for each of us. The boys can share the Jetta and thoroughly trash it with their crumbs and detritus, and the baby gets the Passat. We'll bunk down in the SUV.

The truth is, saying goodbye to Shuffles and her ilk will be sweet sorrow. The house is a good, solid place, and we're leaving it better than we found it. Good karma in that, right? There's a fine fat blueberry bush in the backyard about to bear fruit, and our wild raspberry patch has just delivered its first crop (the second arrives in late summer, too late for us to enjoy it). We'll also miss the harvest of the cherry tomatoes, peppers, and cukes—someone else will be feasting on those. And lo, the great chestnut tree. That tree is a beauty. I think I'll miss the rampant plonking of chestnuts atop car roofs this fall most of all; my boys collect them like treasure and line them up along the front yard. Pockets turned out at end of day, in autumn, always reveal a hoarded chestnut or two.

Even the insistent thrum of the trucks beyond the fence has become familiar. Three hoochies stuffed into tube tops just strolled down our street, enjoying the night air, and a bonehead driving too fast the wrong way up our one-way street can always be anticipated. (As my # 1 son says, "You always have to look both ways when crossing a street because there might be an idiot going the wrong way.")

Today on my walk with the infant, I spotted a shopping cart leaning up against a rusty fence. Right down the block, I saw where the city has torn up lovely old bluestone sidewalk slates and replaced them with concrete. The slates are lying there abandoned. Some thuggish types were tossing a ball in the street. It may well be that this neighborhood will "turn around" in a few years and the houses will shoot up in value, but some of the people who live here probably don't care for those pioneering Brooklynites who thought they would forge a path into the wilderness. They don't care about "turn arounds." That's just for snobs like us. They just want a place to live.

Then, of course, you get the opinion of the outsider. My good pal just arrived from Billyburg on Friday and sat on our porch. "This is delightful," she pronounced. "What a great place. What a great house!" And indeed, it is. We'll miss it (provided that the contract gets signed.) I'll miss my boys running around the house in sweeping circles, through kitchen, music room, living room. "Say boo when I run past!" they command. And we do, hiding in the few corners and snatching at their unwary legs as they shriek. Not too long ago, the elder boy dragged the younger--just learning to run--each clasping one end of an uncoiled Slinky. The younger would get left behind and then--sproing!!--would stagger to catch up as the Slinky hauled him forward. They run, their legs get longer, and they are lean and strong.

When they see our older neighbor, they scream a welcome like he's their very own granddad. And run to him, asking to help carry trowels or swab down his truck. They have a "rock garden" behind the garage with trucks and buckets filled with supplies, including leaves and dirt and clippings from the hedge. Wearing their little French Foreign Legion style sunhats, they work back their with the assiduous nature of those who expect to earn a large paycheck for their labors. Sometimes they pinch a half-ripe raspberry or dig too close to the pansies.

It's their world, and it's a fine one. They'll remember nothing but good of this place.

Realist Hate Obsession

Time for a confession: The real reason this blog has been so sporadic lately is not due to the Incorrigible Suckling Infant alone. It is due to my fervent obsession with real estate. Yes, as soon as the Infant is attached, I begin scanning the listings. Just suppose a beautiful 1895 Victorian charmer has popped up in the last 22 minutes, since his last feeding! Just suppose I missed it and someone else snapped it up!

Unfortunately, most of what I find are squat, dismal 1968 ranches. Although 1968 was a good year for spawning Party Ponies, it was a bad year for architecture. Such dwellings routinely tout the virtues of the neighborhood and the Corian countertops, but coming home to your shitbox every night is not assuaged by the wet bar in the basement. Honestly, when did architects look with pride upon a design that looks like a cheap shoebox with windows cut out of it? If I wanted to live in a child's diorama version of a house I'd drop some acid and start fashioning clothespin dolls and thread-bobbin furniture for company.

What's even scarier is the Incredibly Bad Taste of so many people who put their homes on the market. A giant, leering portrait of the family children, hovering above a glass-topped dining room table in a mirrored dining room, should be hidden in the attic, or burnt. One particular house that we are mighty fond of, despite some of the most godawful carpets made by disgruntled machines, is absolutely riddled from top to bottom with Easter Bunny paraphernalia. Eggs, stuffed rabbits, the lot. Why, of all things, would one choose the Easter Bunny as a design theme? The one consolation is that the Bunny + carpets + acoustic ceiling tile may have scared off any competitive buyers.

When we bought our own home, it had stucco ceilings. We paid someone to hoist himself up there on a ladder and scrape off all that miserable stucco. And every night when we lie in bed, we praise Jesus that we are not staring up at stalactites that were someone's good idea of a design theme in the 70s. "Who likes stucco ceilings?" I sneered, as the fellow was scraping away. "I like stucco," he said, rather sadly. Good god!

We like our own house an awful lot. At least the prior owners had the decency to leave the crown moldings intact. (Who decides to remove crown moldings? "Yeah, just tear that useless stuff off--we'll pay for the disposal fees.") So what if our location includes a certain individual named Shuffles? So what if people leave hanks of hair and pantyhose on the street? It's all good. But we're selling it anyway.

The Jets and the Sharks

Rather than leave matters to fate, we have decided to take prophylactic action when it comes to the sale of our home. To that end, we have hired a troupe of out-of-work actors to stage a few discreet arguments on our street--just to add some color and verve to the neighborhood, without going over the top. But rather than have them trade fisticuffs like common urban offal, we've instructed them to get into heated discussions about literature, politics, and the theatre.

Fights around here are classy matters indeed! Sometimes the actors stand around sipping sherry, debating the merits of Ayn Rand and dissecting modern poetry. They know an awful lot about turn-of-the-century architecture and make extensive and audible commentary, such as, "Look at that Gambrel roof--what a beaut!" and "This house is as solid as when she was built, and they built 'em right in those days!" We pay them handsomely.

But lest the prospective buyers become too suspicious at the apparent lack of physical altercations in the neighborhood, a dose of Broadway may be just what the East End is missing. We don't want anyone saying, "It's just too durned quiet around here. Suspiciously quiet!"

Just this very weekend, the actors (after much sweat and rehearsal) staged a full-fledged theatrical production of West Side Story on our lawn, with Shuffles cast in the role of Maria. (Hence the grocery bagger you've noticed at Stop 'n' Shop who keeps insisting that "she feels pretty.") As the Jets and the Sharks dueled in a complex, choreographed ballet, realtors and clients streamed in to view our home. The dancing and the general excitement resulted in unprecedented showings!

"Does this happen often around here?" asked one client.

"Every day!" affirmed one of the actors playing a Jet, as he leapt from our front porch and began to Mambo fiercely with a female relative of a Shark.

Unfortunately, while the performance was underway some of the "real" residents of our neighborhood came out and stared, mouths agape, as if this sort of activity did not happen every day.

"Is dat guy wearing toights?" said one of the locals.

"Yeah, he must be one of them homersexuals!" shrieked an old, toothless fellow who hasn't left his front porch in 50 years.

After the locals beat the actors with bats and bricks and the helicopters began circling, the scene became less than appealing. We have now instructed a new group of actors to choose something less riot-inciting, such as No, No, Nanette or Thoroughly Modern Millie. Something with short skirts and a zippy sense of style! Shuffles will no doubt be practicing for her audition in the fruit aisle.

15 Surefire Ways to Sell Your Home

1. Dogs humping on front lawn, preferably when one dog is actually being raped/molested/touched inappropriately against its will
2. Pile of vomit on sidewalk before stoop
3. Missing child poster stapled to tree
4. Bleached skeleton emerging from chimney
5. Rodent carcasses (plural) on front lawn
6. Gun trained on home from neighbor's window
7. Frank Gehry "look" in home not designed by Frank Gehry
8. Drunken old slut soliciting business from a lawn chair in the front
9. Two posters of Mussolini: One in master bedroom and the other in the basement workroom [We viewed a house in which this was the case]
10. Pile of stained undershirts and panties slowly burning in the street
11. Large portrait of devil above fireplace
12. Rabid prairie dog colony in back yard
13. Clown paintings, framed psalms, and a gynecological table in the basement
14. That weird albino kid from Deliverance, stationed on the front porch
15. House slowly sinking into large pit

The Attack of the Cones

Prior to the Open House for our home this past Sunday, I took the boys down the street for some good old-fashioned trash picking. As everyone knows, an empty box of Trojan-Enz lying on the sidewalk in front of one's home knocks a good 10 grand off the price, and this just could not be allowed. I brought yellow rubber gloves with me for the most offensive items. Each person got a plastic bag. It was like an Easter egg hunt, except amusingly different!

Here was some of our take:
Candy wrappers, assorted sizes
Cigarette boxes and butts
Assorted plastic bits
Three pieces roofing shingle
One Snapple bottle
One Taco Bell wrapper
Trojan-Enz box, empty
One pair ladies' pantyhose (black)
One large, matted clump of ladies' hair (black)
(I wonder if the latter two were related? They lay on the street in close proximity to each other.)
One large orange traffic cone

I didn't know what to do with the cone, as it was too large to stuff in the garbage can, so I promptly hucked it over the back fence of our property into the parking lot of the Post Marine supply store. (Well, what else was I to do?) I considered the matter finished, but apparently the traffic cones of Westchester did not.

They began to follow me.

On our way to Route 95 later, I glanced into the Post Marine lot to see a whole mess of orange cones: as many as 6 or 7 sat in the lot (the one I had thrown lay on its side right next to our fence, but seemingly at home among its brethren). Had they all gathered here to investigate? Some of the cones stared at us menacingly. They had seen what I had done to their kin and they didn't like it.

On the way up to Mahopac later, we spotted whole herds of the things sitting on their haunches by the roadside, staring at us malevolently. They were clearly breeding, and they had vengeance on their minds.

Once we got up in the country we continued to see them. Lone wolves (some battered and covered with reflective tape) sat here and there on seemingly bucolic country lanes. Their presence was disconcerting. We continued to see them lurking in unexpected spots.

I expect them to come for us shortly. They do not take lightly to ill-treatment of one of their own. We'll pull aside the bedroom curtain tomorrow morning and they'll be there, waiting in a row on the street before our home. Perhaps some of them will be clad in the discarded finery of street garbage: one bewigged with a matted clump of hair, another swathed in grubby pantyhose. God, no! They will be there. And they will begin to shuffle slowly, inexorably in our direction.

The Last Best Hope

Our home has been on the market for exactly three weeks tomorrow, and everyone loves it. They love it, I say! Unfortunately, they do not seem to love the neighborhood. They do not love the Hispanic family of approximately 8-18 people who live a few houses down, nor do they admire Shuffles (bag lady extraordinaire!), nor do they favor the unintelligible little woman with the small dog, nor do they want to have a dinner party and invite the timid-looking Chinese family who still has a big fat light-up snowman sitting on their porch by the Ides of April. My beloved neighbors, shunned.

So this past week, someone is on the way to our house to look at it--to possibly even BUY it--and on the way out of our neighborhood I see it. A dreaded shopping cart of the CVS variety, parked idly in front of someone's shitbox of a house (a house built 100 years ago that was once beautiful until dopeass proles got their meaty hands on it and removed the front porch, vinyl-sided it, and vanquished every ounce of original charm and character). I dunno about you, but when I see shopping carts sitting about in a neighborhood, I think, "I'd rather not live in that neighborhood." Except that I do live here already. Um.

Almost nine months pregnant as I am, I slam on the brakes and park the car, hop out, and deliver the shopping cart unto the house before which it is parked. (Oh, yeah: Before I do that, I pause to fill it with flaming turds. I thought that would be a nice added touch. The cart sails through the front window of the house and deposits the burning poo on the owner's carpet. It's crazy good fun! Burn, poo, burn!)

So the person who came to see our house that day turns out to be someone so wealthy and good-hearted that she is looking to buy a house for her housekeeper. No, that was not a typo. A real house! Maybe our house. Our house, which represents our entire livelihood, is being considered as a gift. Hey, I'd like to work for that lady! I will be a chore-girl who can answer her door, iron her clothes, or buff her pet iguana.

There may be one problem: The housekeeper may not be fond of neighborhoods in which stray shopping carts, occasionally filled with flaming doo-doo, roll haphazardly down the street. "Thank you for the free and wonderful house!" she may exclaim. "But I spotted an abandoned shopping cart. Forget it. I do not want such a house in such a dreadful place. Nor do I wish 'Shuffles' to be my neighbor. No, I do not."

At the end of the world where the clowns weep

I once read a poem with this title, written by an angst-ridden eighth-grader who had been unlucky in love, and I always thought it rather apropos...to just about anything. (The poem was written in a series of 8 or 10 long stanzas, finally ending with the clowns weeping and tearing at their garments in an apoplexy of teenage misery.)

The poem's sentiment could have been fitting, for example, on the other day when my Good and Kind husband said something along the lines of "Honey...I don't mean to upset you, but those pants just aren't flattering to your rear end." Whatever could he mean? I took a look over my shoulder and saw something I didn't wish to see. "Good God!" I cried out. "This cannot be." (Of course, Revered Son # 3, currently residing within, is entirely to blame for this state of affairs.) "I wish to run," I said. "Run away from my own rearview. But wherever I go, it shall follow me." Here, I could have added "Nay, to the very end of the world...where the clowns weep!"

This weekend, we went house-hunting. It's an odd experience. One begins with a sense of joie de vivre and boundless curiosity. But after seeing two or three homes, the sickly miasma of other people's lives begins to descend. It seems that very few people who are selling their homes--at least within the price range I am looking--have entertained guests or even left their homes in the last several years for more than a quick deli run. The piles of clutter blocking rooms and doorways, gentle yet odoriferous dogs scattered around like so many throw rugs, and creepy oniony smells all attest to the fact that these people do not really want to sell their homes--not really. They are as much a part of the house as the crusty patina of grease on the kitchen counter, or the crooked stairwell with the missing rail, and they will be pried loose only with enormous offers of money (which are not forthcoming).

After seeing five homes, I was left with a sense of unease, like I'd trespassed and seen a bit too much. Memories of the homes filtered through my day and permeated the novel I was reading, such that all the fictional scenes within houses took place within those houses. Two of the homes were empty, and those were a bit easier, although I've managed to invent sordid and weird histories for them without the assistance of props. In two others we visited, the owners were there puttering about amidst a lifetime of clutter. But one home...that one was haunted by clowns.

The owners were not at home. The place was strangely dark, with all the curtains drawn. It could have had grandeur at one point, but it had long forgotten whatever noble origins it might have had in the early 1900s. From the ground level to the third story, every available inch of wall was covered with a painting or print in a cheaply-made wooden frame. These came in three themes: 1. Prayers 2. Scary clowns 3. Portraits of family members. Of the themes, the Scary Clowns theme was by far the most prevalent. I never saw such a collection of awful clowns: On violet, star-spattered backgrounds; leering over fences; juggling colored balls; puffing their big red lips out with disdain. One section of the stairway seemed to be the unholy "black hole" of clown paintings, nearly sucking the viewer in with the sheer density of toothy and hatted clowns, all goggle-eyed and lecherous. Who could have sought out such a vile collection? The religious overtones of the house made it all the more bizarre. Big red ties, floppy hats, and Jesus dangling from the crucifix--the eclectic decorator's dream!

This was not all. In the basement of the home, which was no charmer to begin with, we noticed a door marked "Medical Office." What was behind that door, my friends? Well, if you guessed a fully equipped medical suite featuring a less-than-brand-new gynecological examining table dead smack in the center of the room, you have just arrived at The End of the World Where the Clowns Weep. I think the stirrups might have been a bit rusty, but I confess I didn't get too close.

The doctor's desk was in the corner, with another framed prayer leaning on it. Her medical certification was displayed. At the end of the room was a sink with antiseptic soap for washing up. The rest of the room, save the examining table itself, was completely devoted to clutter of all kinds--boxes, papers, medical devices. The light in the room was yellow and decayed, and the walls were of that dark, paneled wood popular sometime in the 60s and 70s. A shade was drawn over the window, and that too was a cracked yellow color, so that whatever light came through seemed sickened and outdated.

I imagined someone buying the house and everything packed up or sold at a tag sale (one gynecological table--cheap!). Worse, I imagined patients coming in through the side door from the driveway, down to the basement. Past the printouts of psalms and the pop-eyed clowns to their medical doctor's office, deep below three stories of a family's accumulated memories and dross. Entering a strange, undersea world.

The Houses Have Eyes

Yesterday, I had cause to visit a neighborhood not far from my own to deliver some wayward mail that occasionally gets misdirected to our address. It was on my way to the grocery store anyway, and I figured I'd do the residents a good turn since all of the three siblings that share the house have a disablity of one kind or another. Indeed, they are quite likeable people. But they are also very strange people.

This is the kind of neighborhood that seems fairly sweet and sleepy upon arrival, but soon certain things pop to the attention. One, there are peculiar mixed-breed dogs either tied up in yards or wandering about, looking like they were drawn by a four-year-old child. Occasionally, there are peculiar humans, also seemingly the work of a young artist with a tendency toward rotund, rather than straight, stick figures. Their heads shoot up as soon as you park your car, and their expressions are not what I would deem friendly. If you were in the South, you would definitely be hearing creepy fiddle music. But, this is Westchester, NY, so the fiddles are stashed away. Then there are the ominous eyes that peer at you from behind curtains that are quickly twitched back into place as soon as you turn around.

I tweren't scared, but the place was unsettling. I got to the house where I needed to deliver my mail and spotted K, tooling around in his driveway in a wheelchair and so hopped up on steroids he could barely stop talking to take a puff from his ever-present cigarette. Then out stepped P, his sister, who invited me inside for the "grand tour." Recently recovered from a bout of "the cancer," P was looking pretty healthy, especially compared to her brother. A third sibling--whose mail I was delivering--was not at home. "That idiot," said P when I asked after him. "He's an idiot." (This brother actually happens to be "slow," so calling him an idiot did seem a bit uncharitable.)

The grand tour of the house made me feel pretty sad. It was dark with the shutters drawn throughout. There was a tiny railroad kitchen, stacked high with detritus; a smoky and stained bedroom for K, another for the "idiot brother," a living room that did not invite laughter and conversation, and a simply awful enclosed "front porch" that was darker than a tomb and about as wide as a cat's hips. "We like to spend lots of time here hanging on the porch!" said P, brightly. But...it's...not a porch. It's dark! There's no...light. "We like our porch, too," I offered. How poor, wheelchair-bound K even maneuvered around this place--filled with old, sticky furniture--was beyond me. P was embarrassed to show me the bathroom because of the color of the tile, but since the entire home was wood-paneled and covered with ugly vinyl-like tiles from stem to stern the bathroom's perky green tiles seemed like a nice break.

A friend was there tearing out K's carpet because K so often lurched about and spilled food on it from his wheelchair. He nodded curtly at me as he carried out a giant sack containing about 1,253 cigarette butts and other detritus.

"Want to see my room? It's pretty cozy," P said. Where could it be? The whole house was no bigger than a breadbox. Ah, the basement! We went down the stairs into a low-ceilinged and yes, wood-paneled area. The bed was piled high with clothes and the place smelled musty and depressing. There was a large pile of Cheez Doodles (the puffed kind) spilling out on her sheets in a strange, orange tableau. "And there's my potty!" said P, pointing to one of those portable toilet seats that the disabled sometimes use, with arm rests--and no plumbing whatsoever. Only a bucket of some kind.

At this point I was about to get mad. When people suffer through a bout of "the cancer," they shouldn't have to use a potty with a bucket under it, for gosh sakes. They should have a proper potty with a flush mechanism! But who is going to pay for P's plumbing, or move her to a bigger house with a nice, sunny front porch where she can sip cool lemonade and watch the world go by, lazy and content, flush with Cheez Doodles?

So we went back upstairs, where she started to fix lunch for K and the friend who was helping to tear out the dreadful old carpet. She cut some nondescript, pinkish-grey meat off a loafy-shaped thing and slapped it on some buns, tearing off the extra fat with her fingernails and leaving it in a little, pink pile on the mustard-colored countertop. The men chomped into those things--yum! yum! I was deeply afraid that she would offer me some, but she didn't. She did offer me a drink, but I said no thanks. I'm afraid some deep-seated nausea kicked in and I didn't even want to drink a can of Dr. Pepper out of that fridge. There were also tons of wild animal figurines from K's room that had been cleaned and left to dry haphazardly all over the kitchen. A falcon in the dish rack. A wild deer and a bear perched on the bread loaf. All with beady, black eyes and wild wings and claws and fangs.

The funny thing is, the reason that I have these people's mail in the first place is that they used to live in our house. For 45 years, the three sibings (plus another) shared the place with their parents and an ancient great-granny who took up one of the only three bedrooms. At one point, the kids were stacked in one of the bedrooms in neat rows, like sardines. There were so many mattresses in the room that the floor was just one, big mattress. Another year, their parents moved into the dining room to accommodate another elderly relative. That must have been the year that they boarded up the beautiful 1905 leaded glass window in that room--for privacy.

They loved this house. When they sold it to us, they cried. Their initials are etched into the basement stairway and they used to jump from the landing on the stairs to the floor, just like my two boys do now. When they lived here, they had the same ugly old furniture but they had a proper front porch, with sun, and big windows, and hardwood floors (that they covered with hideous tile that we had to tear up, but let's not get into that.) Eventually, after the parents died, they had to sell it, partially because K couldn't get up the stairs into the house nor up the stairs to his bedroom anymore. They owned the house outright after all those years, so it makes me wonder:

What have they done with all the money?

And I also wonder at times, mostly in the middle of the night: What's in the water? Sure, I haven't seen the fourth sibling since the closing and I can't remember her at all, but something tells me that she's not the pinnacle of health, either. It's just a guess. I just don't picture her as a veggie-eating marathon runner.

I think about moving a lot, but I know when our For Sale sign does go up K and P will be the first to hear about it. (They knew when we redid the bathroom, planted the sod, and tore up the patio that K put down at age 16. They see it all. The houses here have eyes, too.) They'll be concerned about who is coming, and who is going to take care of the old house.

After my visit to deliver the mail, they asked me to come back, please, anytime, and bring my kids! Like I said, these are the nicest people in the world, so I wouldn't mind paying them a visit or two down the road. I just keep thinking of that little pile of pink meat strips on that old countertop, and the guys sitting there with the dust motes floating in the one, narrow ray of sunlight that's coming in through the window. Then I glance out at my own front porch, and remember that they grew up clattering across it, and clambering up the stairs after school, and watching the snow fall out the big front window.