The Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club

  “You’re not bringing that thing into my house,” I told them right away.

  “This is Petey. He broke his wing, and we’re taking care of him. See?” Staci said, stretching out the bird’s wing so I could see just how broken it was.

  “Then he needs to be at your house resting,” I said back.

  “Isn’t he pretty?” Casey said, stroking the bird’s head.

  “Nothing is pretty if it carries more vermin and disease than rats,” I informed them. “And that’s what pigeons are: big, fat, flying rats that shit—I mean, poop—on people’s heads. Now take it home, girls, and make sure you wash your hands with gasoline.”

  Reluctantly and saddened, the midgets turned around and headed back down the driveway with Petey. I headed into the kitchen, ecstatic that I had successfully slipped away from a bird unscathed.

  Within moments, I heard screaming from outside. As I listened closer, it was the terrified shrills of the midgets, calling my name over and over. As much as I wanted to ignore their cries for help—as much as I wanted to plead the case of “I’m Not Your Mother, So Go Drag Her Drunk Ass out of Bed”—I opened the side door and voluntarily, although quite hesitantly, surrendered myself to the Midgets’ Lair of the Filthy Pigeon.

  I didn’t want to go outside.

  There was danger outside.

  Simply concerned that the pigeon had turned mad and had plucked out one of the girls’ eyeballs, I rushed outside to the front yard, where both girls were burrowed under the bougainvillea bush.

  “Help us, Laurie, help us!” Casey screamed. “Petey got away, and he’s under the bush! We need to cut it down!”

  “Uh, no, we don’t,” I replied, crouching down until I could see the bird underneath the bush, moving around and spreading his vermin about. “First of all, stop screaming. Now, one of you get on the other side and we’ll flush him out.”

  Staci ran around to the other side, tunneled under her end of the bush, and immediately shrieked, “PETEY! PETEY! PETEY!” which naturally caused the bird to quickly scuttle over toward my direction. Against my better judgment, I caught it.

  “Here,” I said, thrusting Petey at Casey. “Here’s your bird. Now go straight home and keep him there.”

  The girls gathered him up and started home. They weren’t one step out of my driveway when they began screaming again, and I turned around just in time to see Petey, in a desperate waddle, escape out into the street.

  Both girls began to cry hysterically, and their yelling became even more high-pitched when they spotted a car eight blocks away.

  “AHHHH! He’s gonna die! He’s gonna die!” Staci kept yelling. “LAURIE! You have to help us! Oh, NO! He’s gonna die!”

  Suddenly, there I was in the middle of my street, wearing a T-shirt and no bra, and striped pajama bottoms and barefoot, hunched over, chasing and trying to capture a filthy bird that I hated. The more the girls screamed, the faster the bird waddled until I was almost breaking into a jog behind it, my arms outstretched and my boobs flopping around, completely unharnessed.

  For two blocks, I ran after the bird down the middle of the street as he desperately ran for freedom or the next best alternative, the car. I couldn’t blame him. I, too, would have gladly thrown myself in front of a speeding vehicle if my destiny rested in a shoebox located anywhere in that family’s house. Casey and Staci ran slightly behind me, hollering and howling, tears shooting down their faces.

  Finally, I cut the bird off, forced it in the opposite direction and corralled it back into the yard belonging to my most dangerous neighbor, Frank.

  Frank, in a pathetic attempt to deny that Christmas was indeed over, although it was now February, still retained his handcrafted holiday finery in his yard. This included a barrage of plywood Santas, Snoopys, snowmen, and elves with yellow eyes. Frank informed me that he had electrically wired his yard with enough volts to “knock a horse on its ass” in an effort to thwart potential thieves from stealing his decorations. I knew the capture had to be cautious to prevent electrocution, and I spotted Petey hiding between two gargantuan reindeer.

  I made the only safe decision I could.

  “There he is, girls!” I yelled, pointing. “Go get him!”

  They both dove in between Donner and Blitzen, and wrestled Petey as his broken wing sadly flapped in a fluttering panic.

  “We got him!” they both yelled as they jumped up.

  “Good job!” I nodded. “Now take him home, quickly. Run. And if you ever bring another animal to my house again, I’m calling the foster care people.”

  I didn’t see the girls again for a week. Then the doorbell rang; it had to be the midgets.

  When I opened the door, they both looked sad, their faces long and their eyes drooping.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked them. “Is Petey okay?”

  “My dad said he got better and flew away,” Casey said.

  And I bet you guys had “chicken” for dinner sometime this week, I thought.

  “We’re moving today,” Staci said. “We’re leaving at lunchtime for our new apartment.”

  “We wanted to say good-bye and give you a hug,” Casey said. “We’re going to miss you.”

  If I had been premenstrual, I probably would have cried. I did feel bad, though, and I wondered what the hell was going to happen to these kids, but I already knew. Each of them was probably going to have four or more kids by different fathers by the time they were twenty, just because they didn’t know that their lives could have been any different. There was nothing I could do about it, anyway.

  “My mom has a magazine with your picture in it,” Staci said. “And we’re going to keep it so we can look at you.”

  “Really?” I laughed.

  “Yeah, and I decided something,” Casey said. “I think I want to be a writer someday. Just like you.”

  What the hell is this? I thought. Am I trapped in some Hallmark Hall of Fame movie? Who wrote the script for this? Danielle Steel? If God wanted to put a lump in my throat, why didn’t he just hit me in the neck with a softball or a brick instead of making little kids do his dirty work?

  I had no choice but to let them in the house, where I proceeded to give them everything they asked for, even though I wasn’t dead yet. I had to get a grocery bag because they wanted so much stuff, including a dusty old seashell, smelly soaps, a can of tomato soup, and a stick of margarine.

  “Thank you,” Casey said. “But we have to go now.”

  “We have to get ready for the new apartment,” Staci added.

  “Well, remember one thing,” I told them. “When you guys get to be twelve, and your mom asks you what you want for your birthday, you tell her you want—now, can you remember what I’m going to tell you?”

  They both nodded.

  “You tell her you want Norplant. Okay?”

  “What’s Norplant?” they asked.

  “It’s insurance,” I answered.

  With their bags of my household possessions slung over their shoulders, they left for home. In three months, I knew, they wouldn’t even remember who I was.

  I wish I was that lucky. To remember them, all I have to do is look down the street into their front yard to see the burlap couch and the dryer their fourth dad had left behind.

  Waiting for

  the Bug Man

  We were waiting for the bug man.

  Again.

  This was his second visit to our flea-infested home, since whatever it was that he’d sprayed around the first time possessed the killing power of an aromatherapy candle.

  But we still liked Fred, our bug man. He was a simple fellow, short, squat, with skin color that indicated he was one quick, vigorous motion away from a stroke and teeth that looked like Indian corn.

  Our first introduction to Fred was delayed by seven hours, since he didn’t arrive for our 9:00 A.M. appointment until the sun had officially set. I had completely given up on him, taken off my bra, and was picking at my face when I heard a knock at t
he door. His forehead was an oilfield bubbling with sweat. Salty puddles gathered at the points where his thick trifocal lenses rested on his cheeks in cracked, dry, brown eyeglass frames. His face took on the appearance of a genetically enhanced strawberry, except for those corn teeth, and he was breathing as if he had just left a porno theater.

  “Would you like something to drink?” I asked, trying to be kind. “I have iced tea, water, or I could make you some Kool-Aid.”

  “Yep, sure,” Fred speed-stuttered. “Need somethin’ cold.”

  “Okay,” I said, opening the cupboard and reaching for a glass. “I’m out of ice, but everything’s been in the refrigerator. Is that okay?”

  “No,” Fred said quickly. “I need something cold, I’d better have something cold, I shouldn’t drink nothin’ hot.”

  “Oh, it’s cold,” I assured him. “I just don’t have any ice.”

  “No, no,” he said as he shook his head. “Better stick with something cold.”

  Okay, I thought, realizing right away that my experience with Fred was just a spontaneous freak encounter. Fred apparently had his problems—he indeed had some issues on his plate—but far be it from me to provoke a weird, stuttering stranger in my living room who happened to be holding a big tank full of poison.

  So I showed Fred where we were having our flea problems, and he began pulling the trigger to his canister. I retreated to my bedroom when I got a long-distance phone call from friends on vacation that I needed to pick up from the airport the next day.

  As I was taking down their flight information, I felt a tap on my shoulder, and as I turned around, I saw my boyfriend and Fred standing behind me next to the bed.

  “Honey,” my boyfriend told me, “Fred needs to use the phone.”

  “Right now?” I mouthed. “I’m on long distance.”

  “He says it’s an emergency,” he explained.

  Okay, I thought, maybe my flea problem is so extensive that Fred needs to call for backup, or maybe he’s spilled something toxic in my house and needs to call a biohazard SWAT team. I ended my call and handed him the phone.

  He dialed. “Hello,” I heard him say. “It’s Fred.”

  Silence.

  “Fred. Fred the exterminator. I’m running a little late. I wanted to call and let you know. Okay. Bye.”

  My boyfriend and I looked at each other.

  “That’s an emergency?” I asked.

  “It must have been his ten o’clock appointment,” he replied.

  Fred hung up the phone, finished spraying around the house, and then left without even saying good-bye. Just jumped in his truck and drove away.

  But the fleas didn’t.

  As soon as he walked out the door, complete familial colonies of fleas that had been in temporary hiding sprang out of the living room carpet and bit our ankles, executing bitter revenge, and it didn’t stop there. I’ve never been bitten in such private places by anything that didn’t at least pay for dinner first.

  A week later I couldn’t take it anymore, and I had to call Fred to come back. I scheduled the appointment, again, for 9:00 A.M.

  We didn’t expect him to be on time, we really didn’t. We decided to spend the day waiting for Fred and watching TV trash talk shows.

  The doorbell didn’t ring until Oprah was on, which made Fred a typical seven hours late. It was OK. I kept my bra on and left my face alone. I was ready for him this time.

  I opened the door, and Fred was oozing bodily fluids.

  “Come on in, Fred,” I motioned. “I have ice for you.”

  I poured Fred a big glass of iced tea with four Sweet’n Lows, and as he gulped it down, I could tell that there was something different about him. His teeth were still brown, but I could see all of the nubs he still had. He was smiling. Fred had taken to us.

  He was amazed that we were still having flea problems and ran out to his truck to get a special canister of potent insecticide that would “actually kill them this time,” he said. I could hear the gust of powerful spraying as he pointed it at the couch.

  When Fred was done in the living room, he came into the kitchen and stopped in his tracks when he saw our dog.

  “You know,” he said to my boyfriend, “it ain’t legal, but my son asked me to spray his dog when he had flea problems.”

  I thought he was joking. “Oh, we don’t need to spray her,” I laughed. “We’re just going to burn the fleas off of her with a blowtorch after we dip her in gasoline.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you,” he informed us, his eyes steadily glued on our whining Labrador, who was obviously sensing Fred’s dishonorable intentions. “After I sprayed that dog with a good coat of Diazinon, the flea problems were gone.”

  “That’s because a dog needs to have skin before it can have fleas,” my boyfriend said in disbelief.

  “All right then. Suit yourself. I guess I’ll spray in here,” Fred said, and my boyfriend and I decided to go elsewhere in the house to leave the man to his work. We brought our dog with us, just in case.

  We went back into the bedroom and smoked until Fred started on the hallway and bedrooms. It seemed to be taking a while, but we didn’t want to rush him, so I flipped through a magazine, my boyfriend picked up a book, and we smoked some more. I had gone through the entire magazine, and Fred still hadn’t finished in the kitchen.

  “Go see what he’s doing,” I said to my boyfriend. “Maybe he finally inhaled too much and has gassed himself or swallowed a loose corn tooth and choked to death.”

  He got up and quietly went down the hall, then turned around and came right back.

  “He’s all right,” he said.

  “Is he done spraying?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “You don’t know?” I pressed.

  “He’s sitting down,” he explained. “He’s watching Oprah.”

  “He’s watching TV? Fred is watching TV? Do you think he’s retarded?” I whispered. “Because I think he’s retarded. That man is retarded.”

  “He’s not retarded,” he insisted. “He can’t be. He drives a truck.”

  “Oh, yeah,” I nodded.

  So we waited until Oprah was over, Fred finally finished spraying, and he left without saying a word. Just got in his truck and drove off.

  It wasn’t over. I knew I was going to have to call him as soon as the fleas came back in an hour. That is, until I looked at the canister sitting on the kitchen counter, full of the potent spray stuff that Fred had just left us for absolutely free.

  I gasped. I was so excited. The stuff was straight from the manufacturer, which meant no dilution, no sparse spraying. It meant no more fleas. No more bites. No more itching. No more scabs, only cancer!

  I cried I was so happy. It made my heart jump every time I thought about it. A flea-free life sounded so beautiful. I planned to spray everything on my next day off. It felt like Christmas.

  Until the next day when the doorbell rang.

  It was Fred. He looked sad.

  “Hi, Fred,” I said as I opened the door. “You’re late! Oprah was over fifteen minutes ago!”

  “I lost my bug spray,” he said lifelessly. “Did I leave it here?”

  “NO,” I said, trying to be a good actress.

  “I’m pretty sure I left it in your kitchen,” he added. “You didn’t see it?”

  “NO,” I expounded.

  “I really need it,” he expressed. “I need to find it. Will you call me if you find it?”

  “Yes,” I said, without offering him anything to drink.

  I shut the door. I flew back to the bedroom, where my boyfriend was waiting, after he’d hidden the canister under the bathroom sink.

  “I can’t keep the bug spray, can I?” I said sadly.

  “Who are you kidding?” he replied. “I know you already made plans to meet Jeff and Jamie by the Skin Pit when you get to hell.”

  “Fine, I’ll give it back,” I pouted. “But not before I’ve had my crack at it.”
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  I took the canister from below the sink and headed into the living room, aimed and pulled the trigger, keeping my finger firm and determined until I had sprayed enough that I was gagging and had to open every window in the house for ventilation.

  Only when the gagging cloud had dissipated and cleared did I find my way to the phone to call Fred’s exterminating company. I left a message saying that my boyfriend had found the canister, but had mistakenly identified it as hair spray—though the doctors were hopeful that some of his sight might return with transplants.

  I did not feel good about telling on myself.

  I did not feel that my conscience was clear.

  I felt that I needed to spray some more.

  I sprayed until my boyfriend yelled that I should at least leave something in the can for Fred, even if it was just a rattle, and that I was going to kill all of us with that stuff.

  Well, he was right, at least partially. I did kill some of us, and for that, I’m glad.

  I haven’t been bitten by a flea since.

  I Have a Note

  from My Mom . . .

  On my diet that I started in 1977, I was starving and nothing was happening.

  So when my friends Jeff and Jamie began mentioning that they were going to sign up for the fitness center at a local community college, I listened.

  After all, I figured, the reason I never joined a gym was because of what was at the gym: big, bushy-haired blond girls with eighteen-inch waists and five-thousand-dollar bustlines. Thick-necked jocks wearing neon tank tops who grunted when they lifted things that were heavier than my house. People who had two high-fashion wardrobes, one for regular life and one for their gym life, clothes that they washed after they sweat in them.

  I certainly couldn’t deal with that. It would be just like high school, I imagined. Girls with perfect bodies lolling about the locker room, whispering that my bra had a Sears label hanging out of it and that my panties could double for a parachute, before they lined up for an impromptu Vegas-style kick dance, singing, “Who wears short shorts?”