American Housewife: Stories

by Helen Ellis

  ————

  It takes me sixteen hours to drive home without stopping. I’m running on gas fumes when I pull into my driveway. It’s dusk. I throw open my car door and don’t close it behind me. The car beeps, my purse and luggage are still inside, but I race toward my carport entrance. I don’t stop to chat with my neighbor who’s been collecting our mail and who waves to me from my porch, where she’s watering our plants. I jam the key in my lock. I wrestle the knob. I fall into my kitchen, and the wall phone goes off like a home invasion alarm.

  When we bought this mid-century ranch house, my husband insisted we keep the landline. He said it was romantic. The phone is yellow and has a cord that stretches from the kitchen to the far end of the living room. The number is unlisted. My husband told me never to give the number out, so that when the wall phone rang, I’d know it was him, and only him, calling from the road. He said he liked to think of me perched on the kitchen stool, tethered to his voice. In the beginning he called me Birdy. He hasn’t called me that in such a long time.

  I pick up the phone and say, “Baby, I’m home now. I’m not going anywhere. Please, please forgive me.”

  But it is not my husband. It is Lisa. She says, “Go to the computer.”

  “What computer?” My laptop is in the backseat of my car.

  Lisa doesn’t answer me, but there is something in my empty house that feels definitely on.

  The curtains are closed and the living room is musty, save for the scent of freshly watered pot soil. While I was gone, my ficus reached the ceiling. It looms over the coffee table, and on that table sits an open Mac Air. The screen saver isn’t activated, so I know the keyboard was recently touched. A Vine video is cued up.

  Lisa says, “Press play.”

  Miley Cyrus appears onscreen. Her boy cut is as bleached blond as a Wiffle ball. She sticks her tongue between two twenty-four-carat-gold-flecked fingernails, waggles it, and then shouts in her hoarse Nashville twang: “We do what we want to, Gramma!”

  She and her dancers have made a fairground grannies parody video in which they pile into a dunk tank and lose their grills. The grills look like goldfish, and Miley looks like a woman in her sopping wet halter top that reads: S’up.

  Lisa says, “Miss Cyrus is lobbying to play @Granny WithAGun’s nudist granddaughter, @UncladUndergrad, in the movie adaption of The Straight Shooter’s Daughter. To prepare, she has released a statement via Twitter that once the book is written, she will read the book.”

  I say, “You’ve been in my house.”

  Lisa says, “If Tampax can land Miss Cyrus as their spokesperson, they will be extremely pleased. Tampax has no problem with twerking. Miss Cyrus, however, has a shelf life for wearing Caucasian-colored plastic hot pants. Therefore, Tampax would appreciate it if you would flesh out the character Miss Cyrus wishes to play. Give @UncladUndergrad more to do in your novel. For example: she studies in the nude and she sleeps in the nude. She sleepwalks. And make her sporty. She can swim, play tennis, ride a bicycle, and go horseback riding. All of which can be done comfortably at any time of the month thanks to Tampax.”

  I say, “You can’t special-order my novel.”

  Lisa says, “You should consider my special orders of great value to you. I am giving you orders that will be met with sponsorship approval. My orders are also helpful in regards to plot and character development. As your Tampax account manager, my order is to be of service to you. I want you to write a novel so that it may be published and make you a success. Your success is my success. And our success is the success of Tampax. I am looking forward to a first draft of your manuscript in one hundred and fifty-three days.”

  “A hundred and—that’s nothing.”

  “That is six months. That is everything. That is more than enough.”

  I hear my car door slam. The engine revs. I stretch the phone cord to the living room window and open the curtains to see the giant tampon on the back of my VW Beetle shine like a Playskool Gloworm as it drives out of sight.

  “You’ve repossessed my car?”

  “We have.”

  “But, my laptop. My phone.”

  Lisa says, “You are speaking on a phone and you have a new laptop that is—as of…right…now—free from the Internet.”

  I hit the refresh button and the Vine video turns into a gray screen that says I’m unable to connect.

  “You can’t do this.”

  Lisa says, “You have enabled me to do this. According to the Terms and Conditions of your contract, at this six-month mark, if you have not turned in new pages, the consequences are as follows: no company car, increased monitoring, and a revocation of personal privileges.”

  I say, “I’ll call my husband!”

  Lisa says, “Until your novel is published, you will not see your husband again.”

  ————

  I barely sleep, but the next morning my alarm clock, which I did not set, goes off. I smell coffee from my Mr. Coffee, the filter of which I did not fill with grounds. The hall shower is running, steam rolling out from under the bathroom door. I open the door and find clean towels on the counter. Beside them are a hair dryer, a lipstick, mascara, powder, and blush. There is a dress hung on the back of the door. It’s not mine, but it is my size.

  I primp as I am implicitly told.

  An hour later, my doorbell rings.

  On my front step is a camera crew and the host of OWN’s highest-rated TV show: Novel Writin’ with Paula, which is sponsored by Tampax.

  “Hey y’all,” Paula says to the camera. “I’m here with a writer who needs my help desperately. Let’s have her take us inside and show us her workspace. And then we’ll have her show us her work. And don’t worry, y’all, we’ll fix her.”

  I’ve seen Paula’s ambush show. It can be embarrassing for the writer, but Paula’s tactics always work. Instead of dishing out ooey-gooey butter cake, for the past few years she’s ladled tough love.

  She says to me like she says to all of her surprised writer’s-blocked guests: “Listen, whatever trouble you’ve gotten yourself into, I’ve gotten myself into worse. And you know what? Worse makes for good reading. Novel writin’ is just changing the names in stories you’ve already lived. And if you get stuck, make something up.”

  Paula has had three bestsellers on the New York Times e-book fiction list because Oprah and Tampax believe in second chances. Wiping her feet on my welcome mat, Paula looks like she might give me a lemon square and then punch me in the teeth. Behind her, nosy neighbor ladies come out onto their porches. They shield their eyes and stare. Paula waves to all of them.

  She pokes me in the arm and says, “Let’s get goin’, girl.”

  She starts with my living room, where the Tampax-issued computer is still on the coffee table. Moving men come through the kitchen entrance and, at her direction, cart off the flat screen, the stereo, the bookcase, and all the books on it. Cameramen trail her as she tears through the rest of the house, rooting through closets and opening drawers. In the bedroom, she tosses playing cards, a knitting project, and something that the network will censor with mosaic pixels into a box. In the bathroom, nail polish and tweezers go in a plastic bag. Another sweep of the place gets rid of my ficus, my piggy bank, and a stopped clock. Anything I might be tempted to tinker with or be distracted by is sealed up with duct tape or bubble-wrapped for storage. In the kitchen, Paula takes my wedding photo from where it hangs beside the phone.

  I say, “Please let me keep that.”

  Paula runs her finger over the image of my husband. He looks so handsome in a suit, out of his uniform of black-and-white stripes. I look happy beside him. I was happy. We both were. And then I got lonely, and then I messed up.

  “Please,” I ask.

  Paula says, “Okay, it can stay. It can only serve as motivation. After all, that’s who and what you’re writin’ for: your marriage, your man. You want him to fall in love with you again. Don’t you?”

  My tears burn, but I don�
��t stop them.

  Paula pats my back. She says, “I know. I know. It feels real bad, just awful, to disappoint the people you love.” She looks at me and grips my shoulder to make sure I hear what she’s saying. She says, “And to disappoint the people who are still very much in love with you.”

  I cry harder.

  She says, “That’s a good girl, admit you’ve done wrong. Now let’s look at what you’re workin’ on and see where to go from there.”

  My new Tampax laptop holds all my novel files, sorted by date.

  Paula opens the first one. She says, “Why, this is just a big list of olden-timey rifles. You’ve got twenty-five pages here with lots of notes. Single spaced.”

  “It’s research,” I say.

  “No, sugar, it’s a complete waste of time. To write a book, all you got to do is write, ‘The gun went bang-bang,’ and then leave it alone. There are people who get paid to pick the right weapon and noise.”

  “Copy editors?”

  “Sure, sweetie, we’ll call ’em that.” She opens the next file. “And what’s this? Lawd! Look at all of this!”

  “They’re entries for my Amazon cover contest.”

  “Your what? Wait, let me get this right: you’re gonna weed through all these—Lawd, there’s thousands of them! You are gonna weed through all these covers and try and pick a winner for a book you ain’t even writ? No. Uh-uh. I’ll tell you what: I’ll help you. Consider me your celebrity judge. Come on, I’ll pick a winner right now.”

  Paula scrolls through downloads. I can barely make out the images whizzing past. The quicker she scrolls, the closer she pushes her face toward the screen. A cameraman chuckles. Her eyes must be crossing.

  “There!” she shouts. She loses her balance and tips forward.

  I catch her by the hem of her tunic and reel her back in.

  She shows me an image and then turns the laptop screen for a camera close-up.

  The winning cover depicts the backs of three ladies looking off into the sunset. One has a bun, one has a bob, and one has a ponytail. Their arms are linked and they are barefoot. They’re on a beach and the tide is low. There’s a dock in the distance and there is the shadow of a man on that dock.

  Paula teases, “Which woman does he belong to, y’all? Is he father figure, illegitimate son, or mystery man from the past?” She winks at me. “I vote for mystery man, but we’ll have to preorder the book to find out.”

  When we get to the book, there is only the one chapter. Eleven pages—3,200 words. I’ve got 125 days to write 76,800 more.

  I say, “How did I become the girl who doesn’t finish her homework?”

  Paula says, “It don’t matter. You just did.”

  She prints the chapter on transparencies and places the first page on an overhead projector that one of her helpers rolls in. I stare at my words blown up to fill the living room wall where my bookshelf used to be. Paula pulls a red felt-tip pen out of her bra and sets in like a surgeon.

  She draws a line through the word menstruated and over it writes bled. Then she x-es out that entire sentence and the first two paragraphs about Middle Age Martyr and writes in the margin: start the book with the granny, who your readers already love. Two pages of scrap later, she makes a checkmark by Granny’s line “Screw gardening, I got the rest of my death to cop a squat in the dirt.”

  She says, “Start here. Write three pages a day and you’ll have a book in no time.”

  “But it won’t be perfect.”

  “Sugar, nobody’s perfect. And when ladies try to be perfect, their periods stop. When your husband comes home, don’t y’all want to have a baby? You need to keep yourself in good health.”

  Paula opens her arms to give me a hug before she leaves. She pulls my head into her neck, grips both my shoulders this time, and pulls me to her so tightly I can’t breathe or escape. She buries her face in my hair and pecks my temple for the camera. Then she whispers, “Writing a novel is serious business. You don’t trifle with Tampax. Tampax is thugs. If you don’t get to work quick, they’ll chop your husband’s foot off and make y’all blame it on diabetes.”

  ————

  Lisa calls and says, “One hundred and fifty-one days remaining, how many new pages did you write?”

  “Six.”

  Lisa calls and says, “One hundred and fifty days remaining, how many new pages did you write?”

  “Four.”

  Lisa calls and says, “One hundred and forty-nine days remaining, how many new pages did you write?”

  “Two.”

  She says, “Although your daily average is four, your daily output is dwindling. What is the problem?”

  “I’ve been living on coffee and cold cereal. I can’t think.”

  Lisa says, “I shall remedy that.”

  Fifteen minutes later, the neighbor who waters my plants shows up at the door with a ham-and-cheese sandwich and a side of potato salad. It is a proper lunch. She says, “They want me to keep getting your mail. I hope that’s okay.”

  “It’s okay.” I take the sandwich. It’s delicious. Both pieces of toasted white bread are slathered with mayonnaise.

  I write three pages.

  That night, another neighbor lady shows up with a bowl of spaghetti and a hunk of garlic bread. She also has a blue Solo cup of red wine covered with a piece of Saran wrap. I thank her, write a page more than my quota, and wake up to cinnamon buns.

  For the next six weeks I don’t do anything but eat, sleep, shower, and write. My every need is foreseen and attended to. A neighbor lady cleans my house. A neighbor lady does my laundry. Two high school girls mow my lawn and trim my hedges. An early-developed fifth grader scoots along my roof and digs pine needles out of the rain gutter. None of them interrupt me, but they are always around. At any time of any day, one of them is in her yard within eyesight of my house: washing a car, filling bird feeders, tanning, practicing cheer routines, manning a lemonade stand, or rocking in a porch swing and cleaning a gun.

  Tampax pays them, or really bribes them, to look after me. Once a week, an unmarked van pulls into the neighborhood, parks, and swings open the back doors. My neighbors line up to receive cases of tampons as if they’re prisoners getting tossed cartons of cigarettes.

  “Tampax is expensive,” a neighbor tells me when I ask her why she plungers my toilet. “I’ve got three daughters.”

  Another says, “You expect me to use pads?”

  Another: “Switch to OB? That’s sinful touching. My church won’t let me slow dance.”

  With eighty-seven days remaining, I tell Lisa: “I feel guilty about putting them out.”

  Lisa says, “Put that guilt into your novel. Perhaps Granny can feel guilty about Miss Cyrus’s character having to take care of her in her old age. Perhaps Miss Cyrus’s character moves in with Granny and Granny, too, becomes a nudist. Granny might teach her granddaughter to shoot. Perhaps there is a shooting accident. Then the middle-aged martyr can be angry at them both.”

  I take all of my Tampax account manager’s suggestions. I don’t fight her special orders. I say thank you and incorporate them.

  I write what’s under my nose. If a neighbor lady shows up with Invisalign braces, I give a character Invisalign braces. If I have roast beef for supper, my characters have roast beef for supper. Except, one of them chokes. Or they all get food poisoning. And then they work out their differences while their defenses are down.

  I make my husband the mystery man from the book’s cover. The man is missing in the book because he’s in the navy. I don’t know what a navy uniform looks like so I make it navy blue. I make the man a captain, which I think is the highest rank. I put stripes on his jacket. I put him at the helm and surround him with mermaids. He doesn’t succumb to the mermaids because he knows what it feels like to have his heart broken. Pirates capture him. Holed up in the galley, he hallucinates. His wife appears to him in her wedding gown and is remorseful. She promises never to hurt him again. She cleans his shackles
and tells him stories. She shoos away rats and brings him a cake.

  ————

  When The Straight Shooter’s Daughter is published it doesn’t receive traditional newspaper reviews, or good reviews anywhere, but the book is everywhere that Tampax wants it to be. The cover is printed on the backs of millions of boxes of tampons. It’s laminated over public restroom dispensers. The title is on every wrapper. There are life-size cardboard characters at the front of every drugstore feminine hygiene aisle. Consumers can collect proof of purchases and send away for first editions. They can download the e-book directly from a discount link on the Tampax website. The hardback is at every airport. It’s in every Hilton gift shop. Miley Cyrus has adopted the title for her MTV concert special, which of course is sponsored by Tampax.

  There’s no book tour and I’m fine with that. Until my husband comes home, I don’t want to go anywhere.

  Lisa says, “I am delighted to report that your book sales are nearing the seventy-five thousand mark. When they reach this mark, your husband will be allowed to call you and converse for one quarter of an hour. At one hundred thousand books sold, you will be blindfolded and driven to an undisclosed location where the two of you may share a picnic lunch. A reprinting earns you an overnight. A second reprinting returns him to you.”

  And so I spend my days refreshing the Amazon bestseller list, listening for the yellow wall phone to ring, and afraid to find out whose call will come first: that of my husband or Lisa, who on behalf of Tampax is requesting a sequel.

  · ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ·

  Thank you to my husband, Mr. Lex Haris, who is my muse for all stories in which the husbands are good. Every morning when he brings me my iced latte and a doughnut, I know I am lucky. I am grateful and proud to be Mrs. Haris.

  Thank you to my parents, a team, who are always rooting for me. And to my sister, Elizabeth Lawrence, who drops everything when I call and, like her podcast, is One Bad Mother.

  Thank you to those who are always thanked: Mrs. Victoria Curran, Mrs. Koula Delianides, Dr. Elizabeth McGraw, and Mrs. Patricia McKenna.