Monday, February 16, 2015

The Price of Things



      “How much do you think I paid for these bananas?” She asks, holding them up.
“A dollar,” I say, definitively.
She loses her breath for a moment, surprised at my lowball guess.
“A dollar fifty,” she nods. “How much do you pay for your trash bags?” 
“I have no idea.”
We hate her trash bags. They are clear and flimsy. She knots the bag at the top of the bin, a knot that, when I try to replicate, is impossible because there isn’t enough material. I leave it loose.
When she moves in, I count twelve cans of Comet, six large jugs of Arm and Hammer detergent, six bottles of Woolite, roll upon roll of paper towels. She drove up every weekend for awhile, filling her car with junk, saying it was saving her thousands in moving costs. We helped her unload once. Umbrellas, party trays, large serving bowls, weights, glass shelves, chunks of extruded foam. She places something of hers in every part of the house, marking her territory, even though there are two of us and one of her. She is one woman with fifteen mugs, two sets of silverware, thirty-seven glasses. She fills the back room with the kind of furniture you buy for a dollhouse, tiny and Victorian. Two large rugs cover the marble floor.
“You want to know how much these rugs are?” she asks me. "Fifteen thousand each.”
“I tried to sell it,” she says, nodding her head towards the furniture. Her hair is short and dyed black. It is straight during the day, curly when she wakes up. “But you know how much I could get for it?” 
“Half what you paid for?” 
“Not even.”
“Why do you have this stuff?”
“For my guests,” she says. “I need them for my guests. They require these things...a certain...formality.” 
It starts with the water filtration system and suddenly there is a barrage of service calls. The magnets on the shower door need to be replaced. The ceiling light in the dining area too. It crackles and smokes when left on for more than a minute. The electrician is coming. There is a smell in the den. She thinks the culprit is our light. She holds her hand up to the bulb, feeling for heat. 
“There’s no smell,” says S. And when she insists that there is, he starts yelling very loudly at her in his native tongue. 
The latch on the sliding glass door is not popping out. And the doors are too heavy to top it off. The bathtub is not draining. The toilet in the bathroom is running. The shower drips. Each closet has a lightbulb with a chain dangling from it and a bauble at the end. In one of the closets, it’s just a shoelace. In the others, the chains are different. So are the baubles at the end. One is a round, white plastic ball. Another is a wooden piece. When I notice this, I can’t stand the discrepancy. Just like I can’t stand the 27 different finishes in the house, the green marble in the foyer, the linoleum in the closet with a marble pattern, the buttery marble in the large room, the Pergo in the den, the ceramic tile in the bathrooms, the old, scratched and stained linoleum in the kitchen. She calls someone about the screens. I see nothing wrong with the screens. 
All of a sudden the heat is running at 72. There is a dish rack where there was none. And large, absorbent pads taking up all the counter space. She puts some succulents in giant, crystal vases and fills up the alcove behind the sink, pushing my small, modern vases out of the way. A toaster oven appears on one side. An off-white microwave on the the other. An automatic can opener. A ceramic jar with fruit on it, full of tea bags. A container holding two wooden utensils. She came from San Diego. San Diego is the place for me, she said. But it’s too expensive. 
We divide up the kitchen. You take those drawers. We take these drawers. We leave. We come back. She has taken three of our five drawers. I fight back, reclaiming two.
“I have to ask, whose idea was it to dismantle my fort?” She asks me when I am doing dishes one night.
“It got hot,” I say calmly. You were gone for weeks, I thought. The dogs would have been uncomfortable in that fort. It’s true, though. We woke up one morning to gusts of wind, hot air pushing its way through the canyon. 
“It’s El Nino,” said S.
“What’s El Nino?” 
“I don’t know. Something to do with the ocean.”
“What’s La Nina?”
“I have no idea.”
“How does the internet work?” I asked, starting to smile.
“I have no fucking idea,” he said, “How things work.”
“Jesus, we don’t know anything.”
“Was it your intention to leave the door open?” she asks one morning, as I am on my way to the kitchen. “I woke up this morning and the window was wide open.”
“Noooo,” I say, shaking my head, stopping in my tracks. “There’s no way.”
“I swear to God. I swear on my mother’s grave.”
“I’ll try to be more aware.”
A few days later, she stands squarely beside me as I am washing dishes again. 
“You left the gate open,” she said.
“I was going to close it. I just took out the trash.” I don’t bother looking up this time. There’s no point.
One day, she calls S. when he is far away on business. 
“Something is stressing me out. A. keeps leaving all the windows and doors open. I came home yesterday and the side door was wide open.”
“You know what?” said S. “We’re just gonna move out.”
I can’t remember if I left it wide open or not. I let her dogs out to pee. A friend was with me. I was sure I closed it. Maybe I didn’t. Maybe I closed it but didn’t lock it. Who knows. The next morning I stay in my bedroom and make phone calls. When she is in her room, I go outside to check the weather, unlocking the front door, first the deadbolt, then the knob. I could use a sweatshirt. I go back to my room and shut the door to change. I hear her emerge from her room. I stand very still and listen. I hear the clink of the lock. And I wonder what she is afraid of.
She tells me the price of everything.
“You know how much this house is?” I shake my head. “$5,000. I am negative every month.” 
When I come home one evening, I find her sitting cross-legged on the couch, our couch, watching TV, the gas fire flickering quietly in the corner. Before I know it we have both decided that the best way to die is liquid morphine. She says she wants to do it in Holland. Or Oregon, because it is legal there, because you can die with dignity. She is adamant. 
“Do you plan on getting sick?” I ask. She shakes her head but says,”You never know.” 
She is suddenly talking about where she is from. “They used to go around to the villages. Kohmeini would wear a white robe. That’s what people wear when they die. They wrap them in a white robe and put them in the ground. He would come with a large key and say this is the key to heaven. If you fight for Islam, you will go to heaven. Only thirty percent of the country was literate. So seventy percent of the people were illiterate. It worked. They fought.” 
“I would live and die in this house,” she says. “If it weren’t for the neighbors on either side.” She gestures sharply to the left and then the right. “I would live in Armenia but they do not have a well-established medical system.”
She talks about her brother and says she hates him, he’s an asshole. She talks about her father and says she hates him, he’s an idiot. She talks about S., and says he is not a nice person. When I tell her he is nice to me she says, “Well, good for you.” She talks about the neighbors, she curses them every day. Time passes. Her guests never arrive.

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