The Manny Diaries, Part Nine: Conspiracy Theories

Perseverate: To repeat something insistently or redundantly; to repeat a response after the cessation of the original stimulus.

Conspiracy theory: An explanatory proposition that accuses two or more persons, a group, or an organization of having caused or covered up, through secret planning and deliberate action, an illegal or harmful event or situation.

Put two things together, and what do you get? The Manny, that's what. 

For three weeks now, he's been blessedly sober. At least he appears to be, and there's no hint of fumes on the breath or the eggy, bloodshot eye. He snacks on pounds of chocolate and pretzels in bed, by his own admission, and says that there's no way he's a drunk because "alcoholics drink, and I'm not drinking! See?"

He perseverates on various things. Someone hacked his files and stole all his contacts. Something in the universe is out to get him. The post office is up to no good and is out to destroy his career. Why does something named "Grumpy Cat" have a career and he doesn't and couldn't he do the same if people were not out to get him? Goody Longbottom down the way gave him the evil eye and soured the milk in the cartons and the cows' udders. No amount of logic and humor can address these fears, and they are brought up every single day, numerous times per day, unless I can avoid him through stealth and speed. 

"I don't know, Miss Jennifer. It just seems that an evil force is out to get me. I have been betrayed. I did so much for so many people. And they betrayed me. My feeling is that there's something suspicious going on, for them all to betray me at once."

"Maybe they noticed you were a blathering drunk and they were afraid to do business with you?"

"Ah, no, not possible! My customers are all idiot drunks themselves! Most of them, anyway. No one minds if you're a drunk with lots of money. People just mind if you're a drunk without money and out of luck."

He might have a point there, with that last one.

He natters and blathers and perseverates so much and so persistently that I fear I will go mad, and will tear at the curtains with my teeth and kick him in the throat and stand on my head going "yah, yah, yah!" until he runs and hides in the attic.

Oh, speaking of the attic. I had an acquaintance come visit yesterday and she wanted to check out our attic, because we always say it's cool and has lots of potential and space. I kind of warned her that there was a man living up there but I am not sure she was prepared. We wandered into his space and he was sitting there among some orange peels, surrounded by dirty laundry, on a carpet black with filth (crap-daddle, that is one of my old carpets and I hadn't had the nerve to walk in there for quite a while, but now that I saw it I can't un-see it. Aw jeez, can it even be saved? No, it cannot.) My acquaintance hemmed and hawed and made some polite throaty noises but I could see she was jarred. Why does Jennifer have a troglodyte living in her attic? She seemed like a normal woman, but now I am convinced otherwise. And, the creature sitting there in the dirt has a pornstache!

[Manny shaved recently. And he has a pornstache now. And short hair.]

I can cook a mean pork butt.

He has outlasted the two days of sobriety once predicted by my friend, and he has not nipped at the sauce. But I confess that we are waiting for that fine day when his conspiracy theories will coalesce into a singular notion: If only I had a cocky-tail, perhaps everything in the world would right itself?

Haven't you ever thought the same, those of you who have had a whiff or two of the bottle? And when that day happens, what will become of him? 

Meanwhile, he tends our new tomato plants and braises the chicken thighs and mashes the avocados into a guacamole of which I can't pretend I'm not jealous, even though I was once considered the Guac Queen in our household. And I watch our boys attack Manny with their small, ineffectual limbs, because clearly he's fun to try to climb aboard, as big and rangy as he is. They are like mosquitos to him; he plucks one up and puts him gently aside just as the next boy launches himself. He laughs. He seems happy. He is good with them. I swear it. 

Something rotten this way comes.

He says he is happy, but for, you know, that problem. The betrayal. The conspiracy. Everyone is against him. He's trying to get a handle on it, wrap his mind around it, move forward. And he's really worried about the Korean grocery in town, because the veggies there are wilted and why would anyone sell wilted veggies and are they about to go out of business and if he had recommended them to someone they would think he was full of shit, just plumb full of shit, and that would give him a bad reputation for recommending bad grocery stores, and some of the veggies in that store sink in right under your thumb because they are so filled with rot, and there's something wrong going on in this world and why won't anyone wake up and see it? 

If you ever read this blog, Manny, know that I acted alone. No conspiracy. 

The Manny Diaries, Part Eight: Back in the House

It's not over....

For all we knew, the Manny had been living comfortably on a pig farm for the last several weeks, enjoying the company of his new porcine brothers, reveling in the fresh air, and enjoying a snort of bourbon whenever and how often he liked.

Bliss!

So we were pretty dismayed to get a phone call from him on March 11th, in which his opening conversational gambit was: "I'm cold. I'm homeless! And I'm scared."

He was clearly drunk. He claimed he was sitting atop a grate in NYC with all his bags and baggage and was freezing to death. Interestingly, that day was a balmy high of 66 degrees with a low of 45, but "It's below zero out here!" he stuttered.

"Dude, what happened at the pig farm? Why did you leave?"

"Oooh, their son was really annoying. I couldn't tolerate him! He was crazy!"

Some information was clearly missing. Perhaps he had gotten too cozy with one of their pigs in the sty and they sent him on his way? Either way, he was sitting on the streets of NYC.

"You drinking?" we asked.

"Me? Nah! I've been sober for 15 days, at least." Except it came out a bit like: "I'sh been stober for fiteen days at leash!"

"And your choice to quit drinking was motivated by...?"

"I just didn't need it. Can take or leave it. Why bother?"

He didn't listen much to reason, including the suggestion that he check in at an AA meeting.

"Why would I do that?" he said. "I don't drink!" Except it came out a bit like: "I dunnn drinkuh!"

After a while, he hung up. We were worried about him, but what could we do? It wasn't like he'd even proposed a solution to us. He hadn't even asked to come back.

Then, a couple of nights ago, we got a voicemail at 1:30 a.m. "Dude, I'm homeless," it said. "I am homeless. And scared. And you fucked me. You screwed me."

I didn't really like that message. So when he called the next day we were prepared for the worst. But this time he was sober. Completely, rock-solid sober. He said that he had hit bottom and was prepared to do whatever it took to get help. He was terrified. He sounded like a scared little boy who had thrown a rock through a window.

What would you do? Really? Here is what we did. We drafted up a list of ironclad rules and told him to come back and take a shower and start attending a program for drunks and show us the chips they hand out at AA and blah-de-blah and, oh, by the way, pack up your stuff and get the fuck out ASAP or we will do it for you. The point was, Obey the Rules or Ye Shall Be Homeless Again.

Last night I was lying in bed and at around midnight I heard the front door open and he came in, huffling and shuffling. I hid beyond our bedroom door as he thumped and mumbled up the stairs on his way to the attic. I peered through the crack into the light but I couldn't see him as he passed. When he was gone I darted to the bathroom and back, on bounding fleet feet like a kid afraid of the dark.

I didn't see him today at all. And I didn't hear from him either, except for that one time he entered the upstairs bathroom and released a series of loud farts.

 I told the story today, in brief, to a friend who has some knowledge of alcoholics. "He's sober right now," I said. "And we've given him lots of warnings and all that. And he said he hit rock bottom. So, we expect things to get weird but maybe he'll make it this time, maybe—?"

As we were speaking she held up two fingers.

"Is that the peace symbol?" I wondered, briefly. "Is she wishing me peace for being a good egg for taking in this poor soul again?"

Then she leaned over and said: "I give him two days. Two."

The Manny Diaries, Part Two: A Drunk By Any Other Name

Two days before Thanksgiving 2013, Manny announced that he'd been invited to a friend's house in the city to join them for the family meal. He hemmed and hawed, wondering if he should go. The drunken debacle from earlier in the week was still bothering me keenly.

"I'll betcher they just want to take advantage of my cooking skills," he said. "People take advantage in this world, don't you know? It's a terrible world. Someone oughta do something about this terrible world."

"No doubt, you talented sot!" said I. "You are a culinary genius. Go, go, and spread your gifts."

"I dunno. It's kinda cold. And I'm an OLD man. I get pains in my hip, and here. And here." He gestured to various places. I feared he might be about to expose stuff.

I nearly packed his bags for him.

"Go, go, my friend! You'll have a simply wonderful time!" I said, helping him out the door with a well-placed boot.

He was never heard from again.

(This isn't quite accurate, but for a while it was. And it sure sounded dramatic.)

After he trundled off with his roll-aboard into the city, I had a rare and startling meltdown during which I leaned against a kitchen cabinet and screamed at the top of my lungs: "Get him out get him out get him out of my house now I want him out now! I want that barking mad ass-clown madman out of my house!"

Manny received a text. It said something along the lines of, "Sorry old chap, we've had a bit of a blow-out, and you'll need to seek alternate housing arrangements." He didn't respond, so another text went out: "Of course, we understand that you'll need time to find another place to live. Let's discuss when you return."

He didn't reply to that either. We tried calling him. It said his phone wasn't in service. None of his numbers were in service, even his work phone. We knew his friends in the city by weird nickname only: Tom the Cattle King, Johnny the Tax Auditor, Chicken-Fried Sadie, and so on, so it was impossible to contact any of them. Manny had completely vanished. Three weeks passed, and we wondered if we should file a missing person's report or check the morgue.

I finally tracked him down via a scrap of paper I found in his attic room, which contained the website of a friend. I emailed her, describing our situation and our friend "John Doe" and asking if he was okay.

He was, she replied. His phone had been stolen and he'd had trouble getting a new one, as both times he'd shown up at the AT&T store the police had quickly been summoned by frightened employees complaining, no doubt, about a boisterous drunk with a potato-shaped head that reminded them eerily of Bill Murray.

However, there was one small problem. Who the hell was "John Doe"? The man who was staying at her apartment had been known to her for the past 20 years as "Richard Roe," not "John Doe."

And, apparently, I'd blown his cover and his entire fake personality with one thoughtless email.

A Man in My Attic and a Rodent in My Ceiling

This past weekend we heard a scuttling and skittering inside the kitchen ceiling, occasionally rattling the lightbulbs in their sockets. The sound travelled, moving from the area right above the kitchen table, to behind the cheesy Nu-Econo Brik facade, then settling above the various cupboards. There was a lot of scrabbling. Something was alive in our ceiling.

"That's a big cricket!" said my five-year-old.

"It's a RAT," said my 10-year-old.

"It sounds like the Shawshank Redemption in there," I said.

"That's a RACCOON," said the man who lives in my attic, turning to me with dark, beady eyes that were alight with the scientific realization that he'd just stumbled upon. "And you know that raccoons are bad-ass motherfuckers. They have these little hands, like real little HANDS, and they just...jump at you without warning! They jump at your neck! And they clutch and bite. They have rabies. Oh, did I say motherfuckers? Fuck! I'm sorry about that."

Raccoons are real bad, whether you are drunk or stoned or sober as a judge. It doesn't matter! They'll tear you to bits!

"Whud you just say?" said the 8-year-old. He turned to me with glittering eyes and a wide-as-shit smile. "Did he say the F word?"

"Yeah, lil' what's-yer-name," said the man from the attic, huffing a mouthy breathful of bourbon at us. It was noon. "You. You. The Middle One. You're a real smart lil' shit. OH! I did it again." And he slapped his hand to his mouth and opened his eyes wide like a girl caught with her skirts blown up over a grate.

Why do I have a drunken, perhaps mentally unstable, 63-year-old man living in my attic? Well, he's not there at the moment, to be honest. He left on Saturday evening to go live on a pig farm.

Maybe I ought to back up a bit.

OK. So this fall, our friend wanted to move back east from California and he needed a place to land for a while. We needed a bit of backup childcare, so we agreed to make an arrangement. He'd stay here and work on selling his vast modern art collection, pick up the boys from school, cook the occasional meal, and so on. We'll call him "the Manny." Or Manny for short. We weren't thinking too clearly but, hey, we were willing to give anything a shot. Our long-term marvelous nanny had moved back to England in October and we were eager for an alternate childcare solution that didn't break the bank.

It started out pretty well. Manny proved himself to be an exceptional—nay, a gifted—cook. The man has a natural way with food and it's a true passion of his. He buys fresh food and turns it into genius creations. I think it's a calling that he might have missed thus far. Food was his art. He even dreamed about it.

It troubled me just a little bit that he couldn't remember my three sons' names after a week and that he preferred to refer to them as "the children of the corn." He also wondered whether, instead of "time outs," we ought to try "duct tape and dark closets."

I was horrified, but he grinned like a Lumpen Jack o'lantern.

"Kidding. Aw, I would die for those boys. Die for them."

His jokes were hardly appropriate and he had no linguistic filter, but I pretty much knew that he would, indeed, lay down his life if it came to it. But try explaining that to a local pal who wonders, "Who is that homeless man who shambles your boys to school? Is he some relative or what? Why does he look like crazy Bill Murray in Caddyshack but with long, dank hair? Is he, like, a Vietnam vet?"

Yes, he is, and you do not want to know what he saw while in service.

"I don't wike you," said the five-year-old to him one day, rudely.

"Willya listen to that shit!" he responded. "Lil' sons o' bitches. Man, I do love 'em, though! I really love 'em!"

But he also had other loves. Liquid loves.

When he first arrived he informed us that he no longer drank alcohol and that, when he quit months prior, he “shat his pants regularly, sweated his guts out, and had horrible shakes.” But, he’d be delighted to have a beer just tonight, thanks! One beer turned to two. Two turned to a bottle of wine. A bottle of wine turned to a bottle of vodka. Things started to go down the slippery slope.

One Monday afternoon, I received a phone call from him. He was about four blocks away and claimed that the “food was too heavy to carry home.” He sounded…off. Weird. He said his legs hurt. He was slurring and mumbling. I decided to leave my 10-year-old in charge and drive the few short blocks to acquire him. There he was, sitting by the side of the road, surrounded by deflated shopping bags, looking every inch a demented homeless man. I opened the car door and he started like I had shot him. I beckoned him in. He finally made his shambling way into the car, and, once he was in, I realized he stank of booze.

“Have you been drinking?” I asked.

“Oh no, I been taking some Vitamin B-12!” he said. “It messes you up real bad.”

Uh-huh.

Then he said: “A lot of these housewives around here got real fat asses. But you got a fine one. Oops, don’t tell your husband I said that.”

Right.

Once we arrived back at the house he asked me to unpack the groceries. He lurched around, hurling pork chops hither and thither as he attempted to get them into the pan. All the while he was guffawing and babbling, and the boys kept coming into the kitchen to see what the ruckus was about while they were supposed to be doing their homework.

I had to go and check email. (All this was happening during my workday.) While at my computer, I heard a suspicious “unscrewing and gurgling noise.” Our guest had poured himself a “cockytail,” as he called it, and was now lurching about the house yelling happy obscenities and hurling stuffed animals at the boys. I came in to arrest the chaos and was struck in the eye by a beady-eyed turtle puppet.

The boys got more and more excitable, as boys do. I smelled pork chops grilling. This could not be my childcare situation!

My eldest boy ran up and Manny said, “What’s the fuck is up with this little monkey?” My boy raised his eyebrows at me in a questioning manner that said "Who the fuck have you hired as our nanny, mother?"at which point Manny smacked him atop the head with a flat palm. Gently enough, but enough to register a small ticking time bomb in my brain: This situation must end, and end quickly.

The next thing I knew, my 5-year-old was wailing that Manny had smacked him on the buttocks with a plastic scimitar.

“I did not do that!” Manny protested.

“I saw you do it,” squealed the 8-year-old.

“Tattletale!” said Manny. And he lunged, guffawing and exhaling clouds of alcohol, at the boys, who squealed merrily and escaped. They thought it was a lot of good fun, actually. Fortunately.

I did something I never do on a weekday. I begged my boys to quietly watch television, while I furiously texted my husband. 

Next chapter: Manny goes into the city, and vanishes from the radar.

Postscript: The kitchen rodent has now been heard in the second-floor ceiling.