anecdote bouquet

Locked-room Mystery

The day before I left, I called the landlord to come fix my shower stall. I have a fine old clawfoot tub, with a chrome apparatus that brackets into the wall and ceiling to support a shower head and curtain. The ceiling bracket came out about a week ago, and he hadn't got to it yet. I've been showering with the curtain sloughed about my feet like a discarded wedding-dress hung on a tree waiting for the bride who will never return -- she's swum away in her knickers.

I am a bit neurotic about authority figures, and accordingly, after I called the landlord, and after I went over to the ex co-con's house to drop off my Winter Fable (of which more at another juncture), I cleaned up the house. If you can hack back through that syntax, I did all the dishes and scrubbed the toilet so that my landlord, when he showed up, would see that I am a Good Tenant.

Then I locked the door (both locks), put the chain on, and went to bed. I am also a bit neurotic about doors. (I don't like to stand in front of one when it's being opened. Does anyone else have that? I feel all uncomfortable.

All night I dreamed of people breaking into my house. Doors kept opening and shutting in not-quite nightmares and nervous half-sleep.

I got up far too early the day of my departure and went into the bathroom to scour off the grime of sleep. I pottered about with soap and sink for awhile, then looked up. There was my shower stall. In perfect repair.

A moment of vertigo. Were my dreams true? Had my landlord come in, in the middle of the night, and fixed my shower stall? (I know people this sort of thing has happened to. Stories, anyone?)

I went out and looked at my door. It was locked, and the chain was on. Now, even if my landlord had been able to unlock both my locks without my noticing, and even if he had been able to pop the chain out of its course somehow from outside, he could hardly have chained the door back up behind him when he left, unless he went out of the window.

Pause for reflection.

( The solution is obvious... )

Earlier that day...

It was madly warm, that fateful day in Victoria when my landlord inadvertently revealed his powers of teleportation to me. It was mid-December, edging towards Late December, when all shadowy things play freely in the long blue afternoons, and you are liable to dissolve completely into mist if you aren't careful. The night before we had a reckless drive through Beacon Hill Park, which ought promptly to be renamed Beaconless since there are no damned street lights in it. And you remember the fog, friends. It was like hurtling constantly towards a wall that moves back a few inches each time you're about to crash. It was brilliant for walking, and crossing through the anelectric park on foot must have been an entry to dreams and damp misty fears. It was all right for me as a passenger, but grumpy bastard had the worst of it.

Wasn't there a car ad for a while that told you, "On the road of life, there are two kinds of people -- drivers and passengers"? With the clear implication that you wanted to be a driver?

I don't see what's wrong with being a passenger. You get to go all the same places, and you don't have to drive.

Anyway, I wasn't telling you about the fog, but the fog sets up the sun the next day. That same g.b. and I went down to the water in the morning. It was my exact favorite kind of day -- sunny, with a strong playful wind.

I don't think I could describe the sea to you properly, to give you the sense of how brilliant it was -- all I can think of to match the color is that green density of glass turned on its side -- and that doesn't do it at all. G.B. painted a little picture of it that captured it better -- but I don't have it to show 'round --

There is a blown circuit-breaker, so I'll have to break off there and go along on the mass shopping expedition.

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endless shopping trip

We've now filled up the upstairs fridge, the downstairs fridge, and the deep freeze, and have moved on to storing perishables out on the porch in a cooler. With ice packs.

I'm not going to talk about wastage and resource depletion and capitalism and the richest 1% etc. We're all just going to quietly think it together.

I think for my mother it's more a gentle pathology about taking care of family and providing for them. And pre-empting complaints that something is missing, veiled as off-hand comments. The art of passive aggression reaches its zenith among my kith. For example:

I'm making an omelette for lunch. I crack the eggs. I gather the eggshells. My grandmother stations herself next to the garbage can. I carry the shells to said garbage can. I can see my grandmother watching me. She watches. She waits. Silently. As soon as I have put the eggshells into the garbage, and not a moment before, she says
"Oh dear."
"Yes?"
"Oh dear."
"Do they go somewhere else?"
"Oh dear. Those were supposed to go in the compost."
"Fortunately," I say cheerfully, "They can come out again. That is the magic of garbage cans." And I fish them out again. I know for a fact that neither parent cares at all what happens to the eggshells. I am the one who made them start a compost in the first place, back when I was self-righteous instead of just irritable.

From this, we can deduce: a) I myself am a prime contributor to waste and b) I am unreasonably maddened by things my grandmother does.

I would be upstairs watching TV with the assembled, but they're watching Oprah interview Barbara Walters, and it's just one step too recursive for me.

{rf}