Housebroken

by Laurie Notaro

  So it is true. I drove up to the donation area of the thrift store, and two employees came forward to help me. With the price tags still on them, I handed over the remains of the day. I felt Pop Pop looking down at me, shaking his head. “All of that is so cute,” I could hear him say. “You have a whole backyard to put that stuff in!”

  I got the receipt from one of the Goodwill guys and as I turned, I spotted a Chippendale leg poking out from underneath a pile of stuff that someone else had just dropped off.

  “Oh my god,” I said quickly, and pointed. “What is that?”

  “Get in the car,” my husband demanded and gave me a look that said he had no problem leaving me there.

  I obliged, and started to pull away when I stopped and rolled down the window.

  “One last thing,” I said, and then handed the Goodwill guy a broken piece of tiger-oak framing.

  Two weeks later, Alyssa’s house was empty. She’d moved, along with my stuff from the garage sale. Apparently, I wasn’t offering a layaway plan after all.

  But I am sure, if I look hard enough, I will find my Anthropologie clothes, an Out of Africa VHS tape, and some familiar fabric at a Goodwill store, eventually.

  I guess I knew it was coming. I just couldn’t believe it had actually happened.

  I was speechless.

  Months ago I giggled with my sister when she called me and said, “Guess what? Dad’s on Facebook!”

  It was funny. My father, one of the smartest guys I know, still hadn’t quite gotten the hang of email, and filed his most important ones in his Trash folder so he “knew exactly where they were” because he didn’t realize you could create a folder called “Important Emails I Should Not Keep in the Trash.”

  “He asked me to help him set up his profile,” she said. “So now every time he logs on, he calls me to ask what his password is. But I’m not supposed to tell anyone he’s on Facebook. He says he wants to take it slow.”

  “I agree that process is best,” I said. “So please don’t tell me his profile picture has an obscene amount of cleavage in it.”

  My sister paused. “Well,” she said slowly. “I suppose you could call it man-cleavage. He’s sitting on his favorite Porsche.”

  “Not the re—” I started.

  “Yes, the red one,” she replied.

  I winced.

  I suppose Facebook was the next logical step after my father retired. He spent forty years building a construction-engineering business and had reached the top of his game, and was known as an expert in his field. When he finally decided to take it easy, the man who spent a hundred hours a week working had a lot of time on his hands.

  So he joined the local YMCA and started lifting weights and bringing home stories of the new friends he made there.

  “Such a nice bunch of young guys,” he commented. “They come every day. I started talking to a couple of them, and they’re so friendly. They call me Sarge.”

  “They call you what?” I asked.

  “Sarge,” he replied a little proudly. “I wear my ARMY T-shirt.”

  “But you were never a sergeant when you were in the Army, Dad,” I replied.

  “I parachuted out of a plane,” my father shot back. “I earned it!”

  “The Army didn’t see it that way, Private,” I replied. “But if your little friends want to give you a promotion, that’s fine.”

  “They are nice guys, but some of them disappear and new ones pop up,” my father continued. “But they all come together and leave together. One day I was leaving at the same time, so we all walked out to the parking lot. I figured they all worked together, so I told them to have fun back at the office.”

  I nodded.

  “And then they said they weren’t going back to work,” my dad said with a shrug. “They said they were all going back to rehab.”

  I was quiet for a second.

  “You mean,” I said with a crinkled brow, “you made friends with the halfway house guys?”

  “They’re nice guys,” he said. “Some of them are scruffy, one of them smells, but overall, you know, nice guys.”

  “When they call you Sarge again,” I added, “ask them how they knew you were a cop, just in case they try to ensnare you into being part of their crew.”

  So apparently, along with making friends with parolees, my father also wanted to broaden his social media view, possibly to connect with people on probation or those currently under indictment.

  When I got his friend request, I did what everyone does: moan a little, think, Well, that’s the last time I can use the f-word on here, and, finally, hit “Confirm.” After all, what are you going to do? This is the man who took me to ballet lessons every Saturday, fed and clothed me for twenty years until I moved out, bought me a car, paid for my wedding. I’m going to say no to being his Internet friend?

  I clicked my acceptance, and we were Facebook Friends. I imagined us “liking” each other’s posts, saying funny things about my mom on IM, and tagging each other on posts about inside jokes we had created when we started our own two-person FB group.

  Instead, I got a phone call.

  “Laurie,” he said. “This is Daddy. Could you take down that thing you wrote about me and the guys at the gym? I don’t think that’s very funny about them comparing ankle bracelets in the locker room. They spot me sometimes, you know.”

  I took it down.

  “Laurie,” another phone call started. “This is Daddy. So what you said on the Internet about me not being a real Sarge? Some people from the gym might see that and start asking questions.”

  I took it down.

  “Laurie,” began another request. “This is Daddy. Listen. I am going on that Zumba cruise with the people from the gym, but I haven’t decided on a roommate yet, and frankly, I don’t want it getting out. You’re going to start a fight between Frank and Bob, and honestly, I don’t need that kind of drama in my life.”

  I took it down.

  The next phone call was from my sister.

  “Um,” she began. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but Dad asked me how he could eliminate you.”

  “What?” I gasped. “Disinherit me? He can’t! I have six hundred dollars in my 401(k). I was planning on his dying for my retirement!”

  “Me, too,” she agreed. “But not disinherit…exactly. He…he…he doesn’t want to be your friend anymore.”

  “Oh my god, I told him I would pay for my own dinner next time!” I said in a huff.

  “No, not in real life,” my sister clarified. “On Facebook.”

  “What?!” I asked incredulously. “I took down everything he asked me to! And that stuff was gold, too. A-plus material. Did you know he’s going on a Zumba cruise?”

  “Yes,” my sister said. “But now Bob is not speaking to him because of Frank.”

  “He’s also taking spinning,” I added. “And I haven’t even touched that yet. Or the yoga.”

  “I know,” she said. “Mom said it’s not very manly.”

  “I could mine that for six jokes, easy,” I scoffed.

  “I know,” my sister said sympathetically.

  “Easy,” I emphasized. “So what did you say? Am I being eliminated?”

  “Nah,” my sister said. “Dad doesn’t even know his password. I told him unfriending isn’t allowed. He’ll never figure it out.”

  “I don’t understand why he wants to unfriend me,” I said, exasperated.

  “He said you post too many pictures of your dog and your food,” she explained. “He said he already knows what your dog looks like, and the photos of meals you had already eaten were disgusting. Like looking at a carcass.”

  “Those were ironic,” I said, almost shouting. “I’m an anti-foodie! It’s supposed to be gross. Get it? Get it? How can you not get it?”

  “He didn’t get it,” my sister said. “Just leave a nice message on his wall tomorrow. It’s his birthday.”

  “I already sent him a case of Devil Dogs,” I complain
ed. “The shipping alone was ten dollars.”

  “Then I can’t help you,” my sister answered, giving up.

  “I thought I was his favorite,” I said sadly.

  “Oh, god no!” my sister replied, and burst out laughing. “I am!”

  The next day, I realized she was right. I needed to buck up and, despite my anger about being almost eliminated, post a happy birthday message on my dad’s wall. So I went to his page, and started to leave a message, but realized that I couldn’t post. Or comment. Or “like.” I couldn’t do anything.

  I was a ghost, clicking into thin air. He had unfriended me.

  I will say that again. My father unfriended me.

  MY FATHER UNFRIENDED ME.

  What was I thinking? The man has built a courthouse, an airport, and most of Arizona State University. Of course he could figure out how to unfriend me!

  I was so stunned at the action that it took more booze than usual to go to sleep that night. Sure, I unfriend people all the time; you have to curate your friend list sometimes, and toss the assholes, snarkers, and trolls. But eliminating me for no reason? That was just bad manners.

  My therapist didn’t even know what to say.

  “Because of your dog and a picture of the last bite of a chili dog?” she asked. “Even though that sounds gross.”

  “It’s ironic,” I stressed again.

  “Well, how does that make you feel?” she asked me.

  “Hungry,” I admitted.

  “No, I mean your father discarding you,” she explained.

  “It makes me feel like posting that he is eating dark chocolate and almonds in hopes of outliving my mother,” I said. “And tagging her on it.”

  “Is that a good solution?” she asked.

  “No,” I replied. “But what if I put it up for a second and took it down? I do that when I’m mad at my husband sometimes. I don’t know how many times I have to say, ‘I cook dinner. You clean up,’ and then he leaves it all in the kitchen and I’m stuck cooking and cleaning. So I wrote on Facebook that from now on, I am charging him the market rate for every meal plus twenty percent gratuity if he thinks he’s living in a goddamned hotel. So I wrote that, and posted it, and then I got an IM and forgot that I posted it. And called him a shitface. His mom saw it.”

  “Remember when we talked about adding flour to the fire as opposed to jet fuel?” she asked nicely.

  “My dad unfriended me,” I stressed. “It’s like taking me to an orphanage at the age of fifty. And I have to drive because he can’t see at night. In front of everyone I know!”

  I stood on the sidelines when my sister posted that she was taking a short break on a bench during an early morning jog and my dad commented, “That’s my girl!” (My comment: “Oh, look. Dad hasn’t unfriended you yet.”) I watched as my sister posted pictures of her and my dad at Easter and he “liked” them. (My comment: “I feel I have to mention this again. My dad, same as Lisa’s dad, UNFRIENDED me.”) And a picture of her getting an award at work. (My comment: “Remember when Dad unfriended me?”)

  There was no resolution, and even though we never really talked about it, the unfriending sat between us like a fart no one claimed. I just learned to live with it.

  And as I was finishing this piece, writing the words “My dad unfriended me,” a chime went off on my computer that I recognized as a Facebook chime. A distraction!!

  There was a friend request pending; actually, there were three. One was a “mutual friend” with my friend Cecelia; another was a friend of my friend Melanie. And in the third profile picture was a guy sitting on top of a red Porsche with a lot of man-cleavage.

  If there is one thing you ever need to know about me, it’s that I once made raisins in my office by accident. And that they tasted good.

  I never have been, and never will be, a tidy person.

  And I’m not sorry.

  First of all, I hate the word. Tidy. TIDY.

  I’d much prefer “straighten,” “clean up,” and “organize” to “tidy.”

  Let me tell you about Tidy. She’s smug, self-important, and frankly, just an asshole. Tidy wears her underwear too tight and has a lisp. Tidy looks down on everyone around her. Tidy is a vegan and that will be the first thing you know about her. She wears sweater sets and won’t get a dog because she’s afraid of it shedding. On her.

  Tidy also makes more money than I do, has never cringed when her boss asks her to drive him to lunch because he read somewhere that it’s something managers should do to undermine their employees, and has never lost grapes in her office.

  I’ve never been her.

  I was already a wreck by the third grade when my mother told me to clean my room until I could see the carpet. I did, and shoveled everything into the closet. The next day, when I came home from school and opened the closet doors, everything was gone. My mother had dragged it all to the trash can in the alley.

  And I mean everything.

  The glue, wood, and tools for the pieces of the dollhouse I was building; the pens, paper, and paints I was using to create the illustrations I was making for my first book cover; my ice skates that I took the blades off of to resemble Little House on the Prairie boots that I would wear with a long gingham dress to make me really feel the part as I wrote a play about pioneers on the Oregon Trail; and all seven of the books I was reading at the same time. All of it, dumped.

  I sobbed as I retrieved what I could from the garbage and said goodbye to what I couldn’t reach.

  When my mother saw me bleary-eyed and red-faced, clutching the ice skates to my chest, white-knuckled, she said simply, “Cleaning your room doesn’t mean moving the mess from the floor into the closet. What if you had to hide in there if Nazis came to get you? Do you think Anne Frank was messy? Because I can tell you right now that she was not. She lived for two years in a closet! And wrote a book!”

  But it didn’t work. I never got any more organized, I never became any more well-kept or orderly.

  I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out why my sisters are both very neat and I am not. My mother keeps a house more immaculate than a space station, and my Nana vacuumed every day, although I never once saw her vacuum cleaner.

  You can make an unannounced stopover at any of their houses and it would be all right. They’d even let you in. They might feed you cake. But you’re not coming into my house if you don’t give me twenty-four hours’ notice and make a reservation first. And you sure as shit aren’t getting cake, because that isn’t enough time for me to clean my kitchen and make it.

  So I asked my mother why she thought I was messy when the rest of our family isn’t.

  “Well, I’ll tell you, but you’re not going to like it,” she said. “Are you ready?”

  “Yes,” I replied.

  “It’s not because you’re a creative genius,” she informed me. “It’s because you’re lazy. You were neat as a little girl. You put your toys away.”

  “Like at what age?” I asked.

  “Two,” she said.

  “I clearly had no outside interests then,” I replied. “I don’t see how that is a fair assessment. My days were pretty wide open when I was two. The only things I had to do were poop, eat, and sleep. Every two-year-old has time to clean up!”

  So I asked my husband—who was a neat person when we got married, but has since been turned—the same question.

  “I know you want me to say you’re a creative genius,” he said. “I can’t tell you why you are messy, because I don’t know. But maybe it’s just better if I show you.”

  Then he got up, took two steps, looked at a piece of mail, started to open it, then saw the issue of Vanity Fair that had just been delivered, walked over to it as the letter fluttered to the floor, opened the magazine, then looked up, walked to the TV and changed the channel, then put on a hat that was next to the television, and then went upstairs, never to return.

  I waited five minutes before I called out to him.

  “I’M
WORKING!” he screamed down at me.

  “You’re still doing the impression, aren’t you?” I asked.

  He came back downstairs and just shrugged, raising his eyebrows.

  “You know, Einstein’s office was a wreck, so was Mark Twain’s, and Steve Jobs’s was a disaster,” I retorted.

  “Well,” my husband said. “Make me an iPad, then.”

  “So what is your answer?” I asked.

  He sighed. “I think you’re like a dog. You live in the moment, and when something looks attractive, you go toward it. When something bores you, you leave it for something more exciting, even if that means letting a pound of clay, thirty-two bottles of paint, and fourteen paintbrushes dry out because you needed to make strawberry jam.”

  “The strawberries were going to turn,” I said in my defense. “It was now or never for them. The witch doll I was painting could wait. She wasn’t going to grow mold. But then I went back and put all of my paintbrushes in water so they wouldn’t dry out.”

  “And they are still at the kitchen sink in that cup a month later,” he said.

  “Yes, but I didn’t let them dry out,” I insisted.

  “When are you going to clean them?” he asked.

  “When I have time,” I answered.

  “You have time now,” he said.

  “No I don’t,” I said. “I have an eBay auction in three minutes for dollhouse windows and then I need to finish the collar for the dress I’m sewing.”

  “So maybe tomorrow?” he asked.

  I winced. “I dunno. I have a piece to write for the new book, and then I have to make cheese. And I need to secretly place a copy of a story from The New York Times about how chickens attract rodents in our neighbor’s mailbox without being seen. Tomorrow’s kinda booked. Oh, yeah. And then I have to go to the thrift store to find a pot big enough to dye my green dress gray because I got bleach on it the last time you made me clean. Yeah. No way the brushes are going to happen tomorrow.”

  “What about the next day?” he asked.

  I sighed. “I have a therapy appointment, then I have to make a diorama for my book cover. Get it? And I am going to have to hit every Safeway in town until I find one that has five cases of Canada Dry Ten because it’s buy two get three free, and I am NOT mixing and matching with 7UP Ten because 7UP Ten completely sucks and I am never making that mistake again.”