It was a worthwhile question that was bound to be raised sooner or later. I’d noticed that her story had ended in mid-sentence, but that aside, who was I to offer criticism to anyone, especially in regard to writing? I’d meant to give the issue some serious thought, but there had been shirts to iron and name tags to make and, between one thing and another, I managed to put it out of my mind.
The woman repeated the question, her voice breaking. “Just who… in the stinking hell do you think … you are?”
“Can I give you an answer tomorrow?” I asked.
“No,” she barked. “I want to know now. Who do you think you are?”
Judging from their expressions, I could see that the other side of the class was entertaining the same question. Doubt was spreading through the room like the cold germs seen in one of those slow-motion close-ups of a sneeze. I envisioned myself burning on a pyre of dream sequences, and then the answer came to me.
“Who am I?” I asked. “I am the only one who is paid to be in this room.” This was nothing I’d necessarily want to embroider on a pillow, but still, once the answer left my mouth, I embraced it as a perfectly acceptable teaching philosophy. My previous doubts and fears evaporated, as now I knew that I could excuse anything. The new Mr. Sedaris would never again back down or apologize. From here on out, I’d order my students to open and close the door and let that remind me that I was in charge. We could do whatever I wanted because I was a certified professional — it practically said so right there on my paycheck. My voice deepened as I stood to straighten my tie. “All right then,” I said. “Does anyone else have a stupid question for Mr. Sedaris?”
The returning student once again raised her hand. “It’s a personal question, I know, but exactly how much is the school paying you to be in this room?”
I answered honestly, and then, for the first time since the beginning of the school year, my students came together as one. I can’t recall which side started it, I remember only that the laughter was so loud, so violent and prolonged that Mr. Sedaris had to run and close the door so that the real teachers could conduct their business in peace.
Big Boy
IT WAS EASTER SUNDAY IN CHICAGO, and my sister Amy and I were attending an afternoon dinner at the home of our friend John. The weather was nice, and he’d set up a table in the backyard so that we might sit in the sun. Everyone had taken their places, when I excused myself to visit the bathroom, and there, in the toilet, was the absolute biggest turd I have ever seen in my life — no toilet paper or anything, just this long and coiled specimen, as thick as a burrito.
I flushed the toilet, and the big turd trembled. It shifted position, but that was it. This thing wasn’t going anywhere. I thought briefly of leaving it behind for someone else to take care of, but it was too late for that. Too late, because before getting up from the table, I’d stupidly told everyone where I was going. “I’ll be back in a minute,” I’d said. “I’m just going to run to the bathroom.” My whereabouts were public knowledge. I should have said I was going to make a phone call. I’d planned to urinate and maybe run a little water over my face, but now I had this to deal with.
The tank refilled, and I made a silent promise. The deal was that if this thing would go away, I’d repay the world by performing some unexpected act of kindness. I flushed the toilet a second time, and the big turd spun a lazy circle. “Go on,” I whispered. “Scoot! Shoo!” I turned away, ready to perform my good deed, but when I looked back down, there it was, bobbing to the surface in a fresh pool of water.
Just then someone knocked on the door, and I started to panic.
“Just a minute.”
At an early age my mother sat me down and explained that everyone has bowel movements. “Everyone,” she’d said. “Even the president and his wife.” She’d mentioned our neighbors, the priest, and several of the actors we saw each week on television. I’d gotten the overall picture, but natural or not, there was no way I was going to take responsibility for this one.
“Just a minute.”
I seriously considered lifting this turd out of the toilet and tossing it out the window. It honestly crossed my mind, but John lived on the ground floor and a dozen people were seated at a picnic table ten feet away. They’d see the window open and notice something dropping to the ground. And these were people who would surely gather round and investigate. Then there I’d be with my unspeakably filthy hands, trying to explain that it wasn’t mine. But why bother throwing it out the window if it wasn’t mine? No one would have believed me except the person who had left it in the first place, and chances were pretty slim that the freak in question would suddenly step forward and own up to it. I was trapped.
“I’ll be out in a second!”
I scrambled for a plunger and used the handle to break the turd into manageable pieces, all the while thinking that it wasn’t fair, that this was technically not my job. Another flush and it still didn’t go down. Come on, pal. Let’s move it. While waiting for the tank to refill, I thought maybe I should wash my hair. It wasn’t dirty, but I needed some excuse to cover the amount of time I was spending in the bathroom. Quick, I thought. Do something. By now the other guests were probably thinking I was the type of person who uses dinner parties as an opportunity to defecate and catch up on my reading.
“Here I come. I’m just washing up.”
One more flush and it was all over. The thing was gone and out of my life. I opened the door, to find my friend Janet, who said, “Well, it’s about time.” And I was left thinking that the person who’d abandoned the huge turd had no problem with it, so why did I? Why the big deal? Had it been left there to teach me a lesson? Had a lesson been learned? Did it have anything to do with Easter? I resolved to put it all behind me, and then I stepped outside to begin examining the suspects.
The Great Leap Forward
WHEN I FIRST MOVED TO NEW YORK, I shared a reasonably priced two-bedroom apartment half a block from the Hudson River. I had no job at the time and was living off the cruel joke I referred to as my savings. In the evenings, lacking anything better to do, I used to head east and stare into the windows of the handsome, single-family town houses, wondering what went on in those well-appointed rooms. What would it be like to have not only your own apartment but an entire building in which you could do whatever you wanted? I’d watch a white-haired man slipping out of his back brace and ask myself what he’d done to deserve such a privileged life. Had I been able to swap places with him, I would have done so immediately.
I’d never devoted much time to envy while living in Chicago, but there it had been possible to rent a good-size apartment and still have enough money left over for a movie or a decent cut of meat. To be broke in New York was to feel a constant, needling sense of failure, as you were regularly confronted by people who had not only more but much, much more. My daily budget was a quickly spent twelve dollars, and every extravagance called for a corresponding sacrifice. If I bought a hot dog on the street, I’d have to make up that money by eating eggs for dinner or walking fifty blocks to the library rather than taking the subway. The newspaper was fished out of trash cans, section by section, and I was always on the lookout for a good chicken-back recipe. Across town, over in the East Village, the graffiti was calling for the rich to be eaten, imprisoned, or taxed out of existence. Though it sometimes seemed like a nice idea, I hoped the revolution would not take place during my lifetime. I didn’t want the rich to go away until I could at least briefly join their ranks. The money was tempting. I just didn’t know how to get it.
I was nearing the end of a brief seasonal job when I noticed that my favorite town house had been put up for sale. “A Federal Gem,” the papers would have called it. Four stories tall, the building stood on a quiet, tree-lined block enclosing a private garden. As far as I was concerned, the house belonged to me. I’d spent a lot of time spying into the walnut-paneled second-floor study and imagining myself dusting the bookcases. It would take a lot of work to keep the
place clean, but I was willing to make the sacrifice.
A few months after being put on the market, the building was sold and painted hot pink with tangerine trim. The combination of colors gave the house a raw, jittery feeling. Stare at the facade for more than a minute, and the doors and windows appeared to tremble, as if suffering the effects of a powerful amphetamine.
Because I had always noticed this house, I found it remarkable when, through the recommendation of a casual acquaintance, the new owner hired me to work three days a week as her personal assistant. Valencia was a striking, tightly wound Colombian woman with a closetful of short skirts and a singular talent for appalling her neighbors. After painting the walnut-paneled library a screeching canary yellow, she strung a clothesline across the nineteenth-century wrought-iron balcony the former owner had brought up from New Orleans.
“Show me where there is a law who says I cannot dry my clothes in sunshine,” she said, crumpling up one of the several anonymous letters of complaint. “Maybe these people should just mind to their own business for one time in their life and leave me alone, my God.”
It was rumored that Valencia was some sort of heiress and had paid for the million-dollar house in cash, much the same way a normal person might buy a belt or an electric skillet. Money seemed to embarrass her, and though she was obviously quite well off, she preferred to pretend otherwise. The house was furnished with broken tables and chairs she’d picked up off the street, and every service was haggled over. If a cabdriver charged her four dollars, she’d wrangle him down to three. Should someone demand the previously agreed-upon price, he or she was accused of trying to fleece a poor immigrant woman with a small, struggling business and a child to feed. Worn out by the bickering, a surprising number of people eventually caved in. Often these were cash-strapped independent merchants and laborers, and I was always surprised by the joy she took in saving a few dollars at their expense.
Valencia’s business was a small publishing company she ran from her garishly painted fourth-floor study. It was more a hobby than a moneymaker, but the work satisfied her dual interests in art and in a certain, listlike style of writing. In her first year of operation she had produced two volumes of poetry, written by men known mainly for their violent tempers. Once or twice a week an order would come in, and it was my job to fill it. There were occasional errands to run or letters to Xerox, but for the most part all I did was sit at my desk and mentally redecorate the house. A go-getter might have dreamt up clever ways of promoting the two unpopular titles, but I have no mind for business and considered staying awake to be enough of an accomplishment.
Around the first of the month, when the bills came due for the phone, gas, and electricity, Valencia would have me go through the books and make a list of everyone who owed her money. She’d notice, for example, that a bookstore in London had an overdue account of seventeen dollars. “Seventeen dollars! I want you to call them now and tell them to send it to me.”
I’d point out that the long-distance call would cost more than the money she was owed, but she didn’t seem to care, saying that it was the principle that bothered her. “Call them now before they have their tea.”
I’d then pick up the phone and pretend to dial. There was no way I could get heavy-handed and demand that an English person send me money, even if he owed it to me personally. Holding the receiver up to my mouth, I’d look out across the garden and into the orderly homes of Valencia’s neighbors. Uniformed maids entered rooms carrying tea services on silver trays. Men and women sat on chairs with four legs and stared at their walls without the benefit of sunglasses. What worried me was the thought that I actually belonged in Valencia’s house, that of all the homes in New York, my place was here with the Barefoot Contessa. “London’s not answering,” I’d say. “I think today is a British national holiday.”
“Well, then, I think it would be good for you to call that store in Michigans who owe us the twelve dollars and fifty cents.”
In the late afternoon we would often be visited by one or more of the failed Beat poets who always, very coincidentally, seemed to find themselves in the neighborhood. They were known for their famous friendships rather than the work they had produced, but that was enough for Valencia, who collected these men much the same way that her neighbors collected Regency tea caddies or Staffordshire hounds. Occasionally these poets would show up drunk, carrying found objects onto which they had scrawled cryptic messages. “Look what I did,” they’d say. “Want to buy it?” Such works decorated the house, and I was often scolded for accidentally throwing away Robert’s Styrofoam cup or Douglas’s very special paint stick. Valencia was incredibly generous to these deadbeats. She memorized their poetry and excused their bad behavior. She poured them drinks and forced them to eat, but had she been as poor as she normally pretended to be, I doubt they would have wanted anything to do with her. In their presence she was charming and attentive, but they seemed to need more than just her friendship. Watching her in their company, I could understand why wealthy people usually had other wealthy people for friends. It was one thing to be disliked, but I imagine it must really smart to find yourself repeatedly taken advantage of.
My career as a personal assistant hit rock bottom one summer morning when Valencia greeted me with a flyer she’d taken from the window of an exotic-bird shop located on the corner. Beneath a fuzzy Xeroxed photo of what appeared to be a chicken was a description of a missing African grey parrot that had flown out of the store when a customer opened the door. It was noted that the bird answered to the name of Cheeky and that a $750 reward had been offered for its return.
“So there it is,” Valencia said. “We will find this Cheeky bird, split the money, and then we will be rich!”
The chances of finding the parrot struck me as fairly slim. It had already enjoyed two days of freedom, and even on foot it would have easily made Brooklyn long ago. I went to work filling a book order, annoyed that Valencia took such great pleasure in pretending to be poor. Finding the bird would have been nice, sure, but it was silly to act as though she needed that money to survive. Somewhere along the way she’d got the idea that broke people led richer lives than everybody else, that they were nobler or more intelligent. In an effort to keep me noble, she was paying me less than she’d paid her previous assistant. Half my paychecks bounced, and she refused to reimburse me for my penalty charges, claiming that it was my bank’s fault, not hers.
I was stuffing a book into an envelope when Valencia hissed, “Psst. David, look! Outside! I think I see the seven-hundred-and-fifty-dollar bird.”
I looked through the open window, where, standing on the branch of a ginkgo tree, a male pigeon was examining his misshapen foot.
“Call him into the house,” Valencia whispered. “Tell him you have some good bread for him to eat, and he will come.”
I told her it was just a pigeon, but she denied it, holding up the smudgy Xerox as proof. “Call him by the name of Cheeky. Grab him with your hands, and we will split the money.”
I thought once more of my bounced paychecks and realized that had this been the actual parrot, she would have found some way to renege on the deal and change the split from the promised fifty-fifty. I could clearly see her saying that she had been the first one to spot the bird and that she deserved more because it had been captured on her property. In the past I had put up with her tantrums and said nothing when she’d yelled at me in front of the deadbeats, but this was asking too much. Although I could humor her by courting the bird, I knew that I definitely could not call him Cheeky. It was just too embarrassing.
“What are you waiting for?” she asked. “Hurry, before it’s too late.”
I lowered my voice and produced a series of gentle kissing noises. I promised food and comfort, but the pigeon had no interest in entering the house. He stared past me, as if judging the broken furniture and brightly painted walls, and then he flew away.
“How could you let him fly like that?” Valencia screamed
. “We could have made important money, but instead, you were so stupid with those noises you preferred. Really, how could you!”
She threw herself on the bed she kept parked in the corner and sulked for a while before picking up the chipped telephone and calling someone in her native land. I’d studied Spanish in high school but had no idea whom she was calling or what they were talking about. Her tone of voice suggested that she was possibly begging someone for a heart or kidney, something urgent. The pleading was followed by an extended period of screaming that ultimately gave way to more begging. Such calls were common, and though she sometimes wept, she never mentioned the conversation after slamming down the receiver.
Valencia had been on the phone for maybe ten minutes when the Spanish stopped and she switched to English. “David! He’s back. It’s the seven-hundred-and-fifty-dollar bird, and this time he wants to come into the house. Get him. Get Cheeky!”
It was another pigeon, this one with two healthy feet and a noticeably shorter attention span. He flew away, and again I was screamed at.
“You are competent at nothing. I cannot believe this situation I am having with you. What good is a person who cannot even catch a bird?”
The scene repeated itself through the course of the week and marked the beginning of the end for Valencia and me. She started calling early on my scheduled days, saying that she wouldn’t be needing any help. I knew that she had recently bought a computer and was paying a college student to teach her how to use it. The student was cheerful and efficient and enjoyed Beat poetry. If asked to, she could have capably wrangled seventeen dollars from the English or caught a pigeon with her bare hands. The name Cheeky would have come easily to her, so it made sense to phase me out. I should have handed in my resignation, but as lousy and low-paying as the job was, I didn’t want to have to look for another one. And so I stayed and waited to be fired.
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