The Crawling Place

My Nefarious plan was about to work.

Michelle texted at 11:49pm, “We need your help tomorrow if you are available.”

A little backstory:

Michelle had faked her own death to serve me divorce papers at the funeral, but we had 3 kids in common, so I moved three blocks away. It was kinda funny to go to the local bar and come tripping over to my old house and see through the windows who might still be alive. I paid for the girls’ cellphones, yet they never answered or returned my texts.

Even if a husband/father can be replaced by episodes of The Last Rose, even if they hire gardeners and learn to push the trashcans onto a handcart – there will always be a man’s place at the BBQ pit or perhaps the mechanic's stand (if you remember to keep YouTube blocked by the nanny filters).

It was too late to wake Michelle to explain how I was needed.

I was needed.

UNE POINTE.

It was very important to tell Dominick, my ex-wife ordered therapist, how I had successfully gotten the girls to ask for help after a year. They were almost autonomous with their boyfriends fixing the garage door, their mother buying herself flowers from Coscto's Bloomers Club, and they even had Max McCloud (the ultimate Shakespearean actor) leading the family in food prayers by use of the internet.

Fuck.

My own dog couldn’t remember that I smelled like old socks. He came to the fence and barked like I was a stranger, only 3 Irish Coffees down, my blood was probably a .10 in thickness changed from its old self. “Ahh…ha,” It’s because someone else used to do my laundry. Those were good times, when we shared the laundry together.

Now, a proper man must hire a host of Fluff-N-Fold staff when he loses a wife to divorce or gangrene. It is very joyous if the Fluff-n-fold people have their own van and perhaps an 8-cylinder vacuum to just float the dirty laundry down the stairs. Seems silly to pay these people for dipping and carrying laundry further than my AI Samsung Commercial Strength rotating robot cyclotron. They have to save me the three feet of lift from my bedroom door to the washing machine

If someone says, “It’s all about the folding,” then I would retort, “No one cares if my undergarments are wrinkled, Good Sir.”

I don’t need to spend ten hours a week folding undershirts, which can be stuffed into a drawer. Collared shirts need to be ironed anyway (or just buy a new one which is pleated) and most of the jeans and work pants don’t care if you have moths and vermin because they look so much cooler with the little patches of missing material.

So Fluff-N-Fold staffers better come with a vacuum. The slacks go with the suit to get Martinized (that’s French Laundry for you readers in Frenchland). They come with a new hangar and plastic that won’t let them get a speck of dirt, even if the house falls over in a hurricane. The main problem with a missing family is laundry.

Yes, I had considered trading BBQ services for laundry.

We didn’t have to worry about dishes because I got one of those super quiet Bosch jobbies, or I can break plates in the fireplace like a Greek. Most of the dishes are now paper products, which are good to throw in the fire and lower the winter cost of the heating bill.

Four hours before, I could call Michelle and get my Christmas News, “How can I help?” (I love that question. To be useful. To be needed and wanted and court them off in a corner because a fella has some expertise.)

I began to make a small list of things besides BBQ and Mechanics in which they would need me.

TAXES

SPIDER REMOVAL

LARGE DOG DEFECATION REMOVAL

Umm…

I mixed coffee with scotch so I didn’t fall asleep.

CRAWLING UNDER THE HOUSE TO CHECK FOR LEAKS

No. Hmm…

Then I began to get scared. What if Scarlett had a brain cramp over which college to choose and had began to hit her head on the side of the bed? What would I do?

What if Sydney was pregnant and her mother was going to talk me into driving her up to Canada for an abortion, but I hadn’t gotten my Real ID yet and wasn’t really in the mindset for aborting new babies but Michelle had to work tomorrow and couldn’t do it herself?

What if Frances had watched too many of those Gretta-the-Environmentalist Rallies on television and had been abducted by neo-nazis who didn’t believe in protest rallies without a Fuhrer and they had inadvertitantly kidnapped my daughter and were demanding a great barter to get her back? Like… maybe a tank or a rocket launcher?

What if Caspian-the-dog had contracted rabies while chasing one of those raccoons who are always taking the garbage? They run across the street and get in a big fight with their sister-wives, and then the whole neighborhood can hear them fight all the time, but don’t call the police. What if Caspy was dying but had to be shot from ten feet away because he really needed to bite something and pass on the rabies but I couldn't hug my own dog kid and had to watch him suffer?

What if the three cats had gotten together to force out the dog? Who really was trying to get along with them all -- all those little girls kept bringing home more and more kittens each year. These kittens competed for the attention given to the turtle in the aquarium and the lizards. Frances had to start growing her own catnip because Pet's Mart raised their prices, and they already visited every week for live crickets…

Dogs weren’t allowed in my housing complex unless I admitted that I had emotions and needed a qualified Behavioral Healthist. A dog species of therapist had worked for thousands of years while ice men were freezing on the tundra, and felt the cold glaciers surround them in the uncomfortable silence and numb. In the beginning, there were great feelings and God made dog so that man would never have to walk alone.

“Tomorrow” when the text was written meant a Wednesday. Most tragedies happen on Monday and Friday because kids forget to bring their lunches to school and they will starve in just a few hours despite natural consequences. Laptop computers are forgotten and must be driven to one of three campuses. There are exploitive fake-friends who try to lure my children to their homes to play video games and eat sugary drugs and complain that everyone looks terrible in the new hosiery fashions.

WORST! What if Michelle came home and found one of our kids neckin with a boy on the sectional sofa couch she wanted to stay holy until our departure unto heaven? I mean she actually put a grandma styled slip-cover on that couch and refused any greasy food to come near but who doesn’t eat pizza while watching a movie? What if Michelle snapped – I mean snapped his neck – and was she really sleeping soundly at 2 in the morning with some strange kid’s dead body going cold? Seems like she would have buried it … oh, the digging of dogs… she would have used the floorboards and pried up the floor in the corner knowing that NO ONE likes to go under a house except a cat who knows its going to die and wants to be alone.

That was it. Michelle wanted me to drag a dead body down to the crawl space and put him deep in the corner with some lye or something heavy like concrete on top of the plastic used for disposal packaging. Dorothy Fuentes of Sacramento had 26 dead bodies filling her crawl space before anyone complained because a pipe had finally burst and she had to call a plumber.

Ok. I could get some sleep and think about fogging for spiders.

4:12 AM.

I tried to sleep and relax because I was needed. But the problems of hiding a dead kid in the crawl space was becoming very problematic. Dorothea Fuentes didn’t have neighbors with Ring Video Cameras all networked to the FBI. I mean these kids don’t just walk over to a girl’s house anymore to go necking, they actually drive over and their family car would be registered with the government and if they were wealthy, it would have GPS. How can a father protect his family if he can’t even hide a body?

San Diego.

Way back in 2008 or whatever, an inventor from San Diego had a really bad son who did really bad stuff to his step-daughter. This dad took the rap even though the evidence was circumstantial and included the testimony, “I knew something was not right because he hadn’t wrapped up his garden hose.” A Detective testified that he was able to get a search-warrant because an excessively clean man had forgotten to wind up his garden hose?

Come on...

So this inventor with 125 medical patents is rotting in a stage IV prison with everyone thinking he is a kiddie monster. And the fact is we need more people to invent medical devices to save lives no matter what the inventor did.or failed to stop. (It’s the one rationale that haunts me at night).

So I have to get awake in three hours because the temperature is nearly sixty degrees and dead teenagers start to stink after four or five hours even if the dog is put out back and the cats are shooed away. I didn’t think Michelle was going to remember to put icepacks on the body, even with the plastic slip covers, because she always dreamed about preserving and protecting that couch. I had said it was way too big to fit in a small house and would require an elephant to get through the door but she countered “It’s a sectional! You lift it in sections.”

What if she cut up the kid in sections? Dang it.

I had been yelling for years that they should not pack boxes or bags that they could not move themselves. These girls always pack over a hundred lbs. of books in every box whenever we traveled and they thought that their father/husband/moving-mutt wouldn't get a perforated hernia. How very mindful and kind. So I taught them to divvy up their cargo and never pack more than they could carry themselves.

They don’t have chainsaws.

Wait.

The chainsaws are still out of bar oil. There’s no way they can get them started, moving the chain through bone, and not have a problem without the fill of bar oil to keep the chain saw moving.

F’k-n. “Chop Saw.”

I can’t believe we call a miter saw a _chop saw_ and they all know how to plug it in, put the boy's left arm over the table and bring down the ten-inch blade. It even has a built-in face guard so they wouldn’t be scared of blood or cross-contaminations (my girls are very hygienic, even in body disposal). They were going to cut up this problem with the CHOP saw and probably put him in the Hefty Yard bags because The Hefty Company had been running commercials that they only use ocean trash to make their bags. Frances-the-Environmentalist was going to get very excited. I could see her clapping her hands and offering to find more bodies in all the visions in my mind.

Do any of these kids even realize how long it takes plastic to dissolve in a landfill? Worst, how can anyone believe a visiting kid had an accident if they used my miter saw to dismantle his head, arms, and torso? These women aren’t really thinking through their crimes and that’s why I have always suggested we watched testosterone driven movies together, as a family. Dexter had a boat but we don’t keep a boat. The Contra Costa Diet was about disposing of people by cannibalism but I can’t even get these girls to eat pepperoni on pizza.

They should have asked their dad/husband before creating a corpse problem.

I mumble in my sleep, ‘not my problem’ but I knew it was my problem. A good Dad will do anything it takes to keep his family safe. If he does not, if he will not --who else should?

*

So Michelle comes over and is all shaking me awake at 6:52 am, oblivious to our boundaries and the way the front door was locked but she knows how to come around to the side. She knows that I don’t pay for the alarm anymore because video only shows what happens _after_ the crime. Usually I set up my tiger traps and electrocution devices for burglars but I was too tired last night thinking about what my girls needed.

She has coffee.

Which is totally messed up because it features oats and brown sugar, nearly a full meal, and she wants that we should stay focussed over something very important.

I am reminded about the time after we held congress for the first time, feverish teens without an instruction manual or facial-gags and rope. She said we had to talk about something _very_ serious a few days later and it seemed like she was going to say something about gonorrhea or herpes or genital rot. But she just put her hand on my shoulder and I knew it was over, “I have to tell you something... I used to be a virgin.”

Yeah.

So that was the moral duplexity I had had ringing in my ears at 6:56 in the morning with coffee so steaming hot that it curled the nose hairs. She wanted to talk about something LIFE CHANGING (like maybe hiding a kid's body in the crawl space at my house instead of hers). Again, we would have to find the vehicle he brought over, make sure the federal police thought he was pre-suicidal or had a drug fixation – the back story was going to take many long nights to conceive. It was better to be inventive in nudity, and I had already considered that Michelle might become … amicable, or maybe even desireful, with our planning a zeitgeist murder mystery together.

True Crime stories are good to watch or create for the cuddles.

“Tommy,” she looked so longingly in my eyes that I thought we were little kids again, planning our first homestead in Los Angeles. I had lost a spare tire driving down on Interstate 5 and have felt guilty for all these years that the big tire might have wiped out an entire family in a station wagon (because large tires on a fast highway are very dangerous against low grounded station wagons).

Michelle waited for me to sip the coffee. After thirty years, she knew that certain parts of the creative juices did not flow unless it was the second cup.

That’s why I was oddly curious when she put her hand over my cup and pushed it down and looked deep into my eyes and whispered, “Your old enough to talk about life insurance now.”

You’re old enough to think about life insurance now.

You’re old enough to really see the math on life insurance now.

You’re old enough to see your value on paper as a future expenditure and how your remains will be a burden to others.

Um…

I didn’t have words come directly to my lips.

She seductively said “shhh… “

Like a DON’T SPEAK moment and brought a scone to my lips. Scones are always moistureless like dead bodies -- Like sea biscuits which must be brought by sailors to cross great oceans, break teeth, capture land belonging to natives, and they name this land in the honor of their favorite royal. Everything goes back to the tribe. Your life must be about more than your little honorariums and your GREATEST DAD IN THE WORLD gift mug, which has a crack on the side and really needs a weekend of bleach.

I was too asleep to understand but asked sheepishly, “You don’t _need_ me?”

Michelle massaged the bumps on my throat below the lips so that action might cause a reverse gag reflex and I would be forced to digest the scone though all of my moisture was welting in the eyes.

“My friend says that men of your… caliber… ought to leave something, for others, behind.” She smiles. Not pausing on the words ‘my friend’ too long, but running the sentence together like it was as ripe as a ‘Merry Christmas’ or a “how you do'in?".

Dominic-the-ex-wife-ordered-therapist would have asked me to identify that feeling… using his Feeling Wheel. It’s actually a wheel with colors designed for the college bound 5 year old and includes such emotional words as __snubbed, ___used, and __after-raped.

Michelle petted the lids of my eyes just like she mothered the lizards. The cats had to be self-evacuated every three months because the only veterinarian in town charged 300 dollars per visit. It wasn’t like she was doing real work with eye-crusties in the morning because the ducts were full of intolerable shame. They were droplets of despair, the hoarse vibrato of a necro-cavern at the throat with no bingy vinegar to make that pain wash down like a pill.

The mother of my children fixes my hair with her fingers and states, “He says if you wanna quit smoking for six months, the rates won't hurt that much.”

And they can run off to Corfu Island together

And they can fly to the islands together...

After she gets the check.

Michelle always wanted to visit Corfu Island with a bikini and a bottomless supply of Kumquat liqueur.

I understood.

My help was needed.

And I was way too available to decline.