by Kelly Harms
It’s an idea I want to run by Geoff right this second, in the hopes that he’ll pick it up in here a little. So I sit on the couch and stare at him until he wakes up. Nothing happens. Apparently my piercing stare is not that piercing. When staring doesn’t work I start bouncing on the couch a little. He keeps sleeping so I lean over and get my face down right in his, planning to scare the shit out of him when he opens his eyes, but when I’m within sniffing distance I get a big whiff of booze. Crap. I move away slightly, but before I do I take another big snootful of the smell and think hard. It isn’t tequila, thank crap. Tequila is rare, but it’s also scary. This smell on his breath today is Jack Daniel’s, which I can totally handle. In fact, I could go for a Jack and Coke myself. I leave Geoff to sleep and go fix myself a drink.
In the kitchen the sink is full of damn near every dish we have, all covered with a layer of crusty grime that almost puts me off my drink. But I look in the cabinets and there are still three or four clean coffee mugs, the sturdy homemade kind that his last girlfriend made for him on her potter’s wheel. On the bottom of each there is a heart with her and Geoff’s initials in it. I take one down and pour in a finger or three of Jack and then ice, and then half a can of Coke over the top. I give it all a good swirl with the paring knife, which is mostly clean. By the time I’m done the announcement is about to start.
And here, things get tricky. There is only one TV in this apartment, and it’s right next to the sleeping body of my landlord boyfriend who is stinking drunk. I have to turn it on—the TV, not the boyfriend—because I have to see the announcement. If I miss it, I won’t know if I won for sure until the library opens tomorrow morning at 10:00 a.m. and I can go use the computers there to look on the HSHN website. Waiting overnight would make me crazy. And surely the HSH people will be expecting the winner to be watching tonight and provide instructions on how to claim the prize. What if I miss that?
I’ve got to turn on the TV. I’ll just lean over, turn it on, and then right away dial down the volume to next to nothing and stand really close to the TV so I can hear what they’re saying. Geoff will sleep right through. I pull up a beanbag right in front of the screen and plop down with my drink. Then I lean over and push the power button on the TV and watch the flash of light grow into a picture, all while trying to hit the volume down button as many times a second as humanly possible.
It doesn’t work. It might have worked if we’d had a nicer TV, but this one, with it’s missing remote and sticky console buttons, simply can’t react in the time necessary for this endeavor. The sound blares on and it’s set loud enough for Deaf Geoff to hear his favorite show: South Park. The noise that my drunken landlord boyfriend wakes up to is a giant cartoon fart, ripping its way across the apartment and startling him so much that it takes him several blinks to figure out exactly where he is. By the time he is sitting up I’ve got the sound off and the channel switched to the giveaway. I turn around and smile innocently, bat my eyelashes a little. “Sorry.”
“Turn off the fucking TV,” Geoff tells me.
“Okay,” I say, then turn back to face the TV, where the opening scenes show a beautiful view of the coast of Maine from a boat or maybe a helicopter just off shore. Does the house come with a helicopter, I wonder?
Behind me, I hear Geoff get up. My hands clench around the drink. I will be watching this show. I have to watch this show.
“Hey, bitch,” Geoff says. He is moving toward me. I know because I hear the detritus that covers the floor part like the Red Sea as he stumbles my way. On screen they are zooming in on the house. I’m starting to get nervous.
Geoff’s leg connects with the coffee table and he shouts, “FUCK.” I am trying hard to keep my eyes glued to the screen and focus on the show, but it’s hard when I know he’ll soon be standing right behind me. I check the clock. It will be five or ten minutes until they announce the winner. I know I can hold him off that long.
Now he is right behind me. I’m sitting cross-legged on the beanbag chair pretending I don’t care about his existence and he’s right behind me, standing up, and he grabs my head with his big hand and says again, “BITCH.” I’m pretty sure he means me.
Then he closes his hand over my head and gets a big fistful of hair. “I said TURN OFF THE TV.” I ignore him. I know how pissed this makes him, and I don’t care.
He cares. He pulls the chunk of hair he’s got in his fists and pulls hard. I feel myself being lifted up out of my seat by my hair. It hurts like hell. I scramble my legs underneath me and get purchase so I can lift myself up and take the pressure off my scalp. When I’m fully standing I turn around and face Geoff and see the rage in his face. I should back down, but I hate to be bullied. Besides, it’s just Jack Daniel’s on his breath. If it were tequila, I’d be more careful.
“Go back to sleep,” I tell him as forcefully as I can. Then I put my hand over his wrist and try to wrest his fist out of my hair so I can get back to my show.
He doesn’t move, but his grip gets tighter. “Seriously, Geoff,” I try again, hating the pleading tone in my voice. “The show’s almost over, and at the next commercial I’ll order some pizza for dinner.” Pizza, right? Who can be angry when tempted by pizza?
He releases my hair. Yes! But then he moves his hands to my shoulders and grabs me tight. “I was sleeping,” he hisses out at me, his foul breath making my face pinch up involuntarily. “You didn’t see me on the couch, right over there, sleeping?”
“Nope,” I say. “I didn’t even notice. Sorry!” I try to sit back down. Behind me, very, very softly, I hear the announcer introduce Carson Jansen-Smit and wish like hell I was looking at his pretty face instead of Geoff’s grimacing one.
“You noticed,” he accurately guesses. “You must have been trying to wake me up.”
“Why would I want to do a thing like that? Go back to sleep, asshole.” I don’t know why I say that, except that I mean it.
“I’m the asshole?” he asks. “I was just trying to get a little rest around here.” He moves around me, and I can tell he has every intention of turning off the TV.
“Don’t you turn that off,” I tell him. I step away from the beanbag chair and angle myself in front of the power button.
“Or what? Are you going to beat me up?” He shoves me out of the way and turns off the TV. The dream house shrinks to nothing. I elbow him right in the side and turn the TV back on.
“I was watching that!” I scream. Now I’m getting kind of pissed. What will happen if I miss the announcement? Will they give the house to someone else, if I don’t call a certain number on the screen within a certain time frame, just like on those radio show giveaways that I hear all day long at work?
“Too fucking bad.” He tells me. He’s going for the off switch again. I push him harder. He pushes me back. On the screen they’re panning over the kitchen, which is so shiny and yellow and bright. The appliances are space-aged. They zoom in on the TV fridge, and the sight of it all shiny and new gives me a boost. Soon I will be able to watch whatever I want, whenever I want, even if I want to watch it on a refrigerator.
“You better sit down right now, you stupid shithead,” I tell Geoff. “I’m not afraid of you just because you spent the day drinking and now you think you’re some big man.”
Geoff wheels around and hits me in the shoulder and I stumble back a little. It hurts but I’m not even thinking about it. I’m thinking about that house in Maine and how sweet living there is going to be. How I’m going to take off so fast and start a new life there, where no one knows anything about me. I wrestle my shoulders away from him, turn my face back to the TV even as he manhandles me.
It’s making him crazy that I’m not crying or fighting back. He grabs my arm hard and spins me around so my back is to the TV. “You listen to me when I talk, bitch.” Then he slaps my face. Open-handed. What a pussy he is. I tell him so, but in my mouth I taste blood.
They’re about to announce the winner. Behind me I can hear them discussing t
he drawing rules and talk about the certified public accountants that are there to make sure the selection is on the up and up. I feel dizzy. My nose is bleeding. I just want this asshole out of my face so I can watch the show. He’s yelling at me now and I can’t even hear the TV anymore. I look at the mug I’ve been holding all this time, the Jack and Coke in the hard pottery mug with the heart carved in the bottom. He’s going to hit me again if I don’t turn off the TV and apologize right now, he’s saying. He’s going to hit me until I am sorry. I’m going to miss the announcement.
“You hear me? Apologize to me right now!” he’s shouting. I hear faintly a drumroll on the TV.
“Fuck you,” I tell him. Then I spit in his face. Now he’s really mad. But it doesn’t matter. Because before he gets a chance to deliver another hit, I haul back my hand with the mug in it and bring it down hard on his head, crack, and watch the Jack and Coke go everywhere and a tiny stream of blood trickle down his head and watch his lights go right out and see him sink down on the floor. I hear his pained scream and then the sound of him hitting the ground but I’m turning away already. My eyes are back on the television, where Carson Jansen-Smit is holding a piece of paper, an envelope with the name of the winner on it.
Carson is beaming like an idiot. “The winner of the grand prize, the fully furnished dream house in Christmas Cove, Maine, worth more than one million dollars, is…”
He pauses and I chant my name in my head. Say my name, Carson Jansen-Smit, you gorgeous moron you.
The drumroll stops. They zoom in on Carson’s face. His lips form the words. “The winner is … Janine Brown of Cedar Falls, Iowa!” Confetti goes flying all around his head and a banner drops down in front of the house that reads CONGRATULATIONS JANINE and I blink my eyes hard and then start to shake and cry and scream all at once, and then I start to do a little jig right in front of the TV, careful even in my jubilation not to stomp on poor Geoff lying there unconscious and bloody on the floor.
“OH MY GOD!” I scream and start waving my fists in the air even though it makes my shoulder burn like hell to move it. “OH MY GOD!!!” I say again. I’m bleeding a little on my shirt but it doesn’t matter. I’m very, very happy, and not happy for Janine “Janey” Brown, the bridal seamstress who lives across town and is right this moment staring openmouthed at her aunt Midge’s flat-screen TV with a mouthful of salmon in danger of plopping right out onto the floor in front of her. I have—as of this moment—never met that Janine Brown of Cedar Falls, Iowa. I don’t know she exists. She is not why I am happy.
I am happy because her name is my name too.
JANEY
“I wish I could just sit people down and give them something to eat; then I know they would understand.”
—ALICE WATERS, Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook
After they read my name off on TV, things happen very, very fast. First there is a brief period of time where I freeze in the exact position I was in when they read my name (fork halfway back to the plate after a huge bite) and stare for a while like a total idiot while trying not to panic. This is followed by a wild celebratory dance by Aunt Midge that I feel fairly sure will cost her a hip. Then a bunch of people come to the front door holding balloons and video cameras.
My first instinct is to hide. This is my first instinct in any situation that involves people I have never met, or balloons, or cameras. I have a crippling case of what Aunt Midge calls Stranger Danger, the kind of paralyzing shyness usually found in preteen boys with acne and a collection of twelve-sided dice. There are hives, and there is stuttering, and, sometimes, there is sudden and extreme nausea. I’m sure shrinks have another name for this, but to find out, I would have to talk to one, which I cannot do, so there we are.
This particular scenario is especially acute. After all, I never entered this contest and I’m pretty sure this is some sort of terrible mistake, and I don’t want the house anyway. But as Aunt Midge is marching to the door she stage-whispers to me that she’d entered my name online a couple of dozen times alongside her own—for extra insurance, she told me. I’m not entirely sure when she got so handy on the computer, but I am beginning to see the danger in teaching old people to use the Internet.
She throws open the door and a film crew rushes in and they make me pretend to hear the news for the first time over and over and over again until they get every angle possible of me gasping. A complete stranger smears my flushed complexion with makeup, pulls my long wavy hair into a neat strawberry blond ponytail, applies dark mascara to emphasize my light blue eyes. I break out in a flop sweat. My jaw hurts from all the exaggerating dropping it has to do, but I’m not required to speak, and the crew seems pleased with the final result. I have plenty of real surprise available to keep it convincing, seeing as I’ve just won a million-dollar house I don’t want in a contest I never entered.
Almost an hour later, when the filming is finished, a producer with long yellow-blond hair and stupid-looking shoes takes me and Aunt Midge back to the TV room and sits us down on the plastic-covered davenport for an interview. She asks me if I am related to anyone who works for the Home Sweet Home Network, and I say no, and she says she’ll be checking into that, and I think to myself, go right ahead, you’re looking at my one and only living relation right here, and she can’t drive, so I don’t see her working at a television network in California too successfully. Instead I say, “Sure, I understand.” I stutter on the words.
Then she launches into a lot of personal questions. Am I married? Have I ever been married? Do I have any kids? Do I have any money to pay for the taxes on the house? And so forth. I get through “Are you married?” (no) without any trouble, but on the next one I pretty much shut down, just like always. There is some muttering about Ned, trying to explain how I had once been engaged, but that something had gone very wrong, and how I didn’t ever plan on getting engaged again, and how I was perfectly happy on my own, thank you, and not every woman gets her own perfect life partner, and the quiet loneliness isn’t that bad when you get used to it. But I say all this without using any actual verbs or nouns. The producer stares at me with a look on her face that translates loosely to “What the hell is she talking about?” until finally Aunt Midge steps in for me in her usual way.
“She’s never been married,” she says authoritatively. “As if it’s any of your business.”
The producer balks a little. I imagine her toes curling a little inside her pointy shoes. “I’m sorry, Ms.…” she glances down at her notes, “Mrs. Richardson. I know it seems very personal, but I’m asking these questions of Janine because our lawyers will need to know the answers before they can transfer the deed to the house. They’ll also be interviewing you independently, so you’ll have to go through this a few more times. We just can’t take any legal risks with a million-dollar sweepstakes, you understand.”
Like a mama bear lashing out, Aunt Midge clearly doesn’t understand the nuances here, but I do. The Home Sweet Home Network wants to make sure I don’t owe any child support or alimony or millions in back taxes or something unsavory like that. And, I’m sure, they want to figure out how much good reality TV they might be able to get out of me now that I’ve won. Answer: not much. After a few more nosy questions and my incoherent replies, I can tell that the producer is pretty disappointed on that front. Anyone can see I am not star material. It would take a lot more than a free fancy house I don’t need to get me to talk on camera.
Finally the inquisition is over and the producer, clearly deflated, says to me, “Maybe our best bet is to do a sort of montage of you excitedly walking through the house after you’re all moved in. It will be useful for next year’s sweepstakes, but doesn’t involve much actual talking into the camera. How does that sound?”
I look at her all buttoned up in her smart pantsuit and think, If I were the sort of person to hug strangers, I would hug her. I forgive her the shoes. “That sounds good,” I manage, ignoring Aunt Midge’s look of disappointment. Let her go on TV in front of the
world. I will do the montage.
“Great. So I know you must still be in shock from this exciting news,” she pauses and I summon up my best excited face, knowing it probably looks more like a grimace, “but I’ve got to ask. Are you interested in living in the house?”
“As opposed to what?” asks Aunt Midge. I was wondering the same thing, only without the power of speech.
The producer clasps her fingers together, “Well, some years our winners decide to sell the house right away, because of the tax burden such an expensive property can bring. And other winners use it as an income property and stay where they are. Picking up and moving across the country can be impossible for many people, with jobs and family to think of.”
“Oh,” said Aunt Midge. “No. I’m retired, no kids to speak of. It’s not at all impossible for us.”
It is at this moment that I realize that in Aunt Midge’s mind, she is actually the one who won this house, and I am merely the name on the deed. After all, she entered the contest, and she wants the house, not me. Maybe I should be irked by this, but instead I’m flooded with a sense of relief. Now I have an out. I can let her move there, while I stay in my little place and keep working at Wedding Belles Too and absolutely nothing has to change. Yes! It’s the perfect plan. Soon the TV cameras will be gone and my life will go back to normal. I’ll miss Aunt Midge, but visiting her will finally be a use for all the vacation days I’ve been stockpiling.
“That’s great news,” says the producer to Aunt Midge, and I agree wholeheartedly. Off she goes to Maine, and with my best wishes. I will hold down the fort in Iowa. My shoulders relax for the first time since they read my name on TV.
