Odyssey In A Teacup

by Paula Houseman

  As punishment, I got a five hundred-line imposition from Miss Parker. I had to write ‘I must not use bad language’ (like that was going to stop me). And Sylvia was called in. She was incensed. Clearly, washing my mouth out with soap after the hopscotch incident didn’t make much of a dent. This particular infraction earned me the cold shoulder for a whole week. It was a kind of double-edged sword, though. It was peaceful, but very uncomfortable at the same time. When she nit-picked at least it was out there in the open, which was honest, in a perverse way. But the silent disapproval was hard to take.

  Anyway, it was in no dictionary back in Bluebeard’s time, but when you’ve just glimpsed the hideous fate that probably awaits you, you can say whatever the fuck you want!

  The fair bride and her sisters bolted out of the room after their grisly find, and slammed the door shut. But there was an itty-bitty problem. The little key was bleeding, and she couldn’t get it to stop.

  ‘FUCK!’ she screamed again.

  She tried to wipe it clean. The eldest sister tried scrubbing it. The middle sister tried scorching it. But it just kept bleeding and bleeding.

  ‘FUCK!’

  Eventually, the young bride removed it from the key ring and hid it in her wardrobe, believing all would be well. But it wasn’t; the key still kept bleeding.

  Dusk was approaching, and so was Bluebeard. They heard his horse entering the property. There was no time to evacuate. The young bride hastened her two sisters into her boudoir. ‘Call for our brothers!’ she entreated. As the young woman then prepared to meet her husband, the middle sister pulled off an ear-piercingly loud, two-finger whistle.

  ‘A real bloody lady,’ muttered the child bride under her breath as she scurried down the stairs.

  She greeted Bluebeard in the entrance hall. ‘Welcome home, dear husband.’

  ‘What was that noise?’ he boomed.

  ‘Oh ... that? Just very loud birds, my love. In the dovecote.’

  He seemed satisfied with her answer and kissed her passionately, but he didn’t take it any further. Instead, he asked for his keys back. She needed to stall for time so she rubbed up against him, all the while thinking, Ecch, je veux vomir (Ecch, I wanna toss my cookies). Again, he asked for his keys back. Insisted, this time. She reluctantly handed them over. He noticed the little key was missing and was real pissed (obviously, she had rubbed him up the wrong way). She pretended she had lost the key, but he was no chump. He stormed through the château in a foul mood, and the truth revealed itself in their bedchamber. Blood was seeping from under the door of her armoire and pooling on the floor. Bluebeard ripped open the cupboard door and espied the little key sitting on the top shelf and bleeding all over her finery.

  ‘You defied my orders, you lying bitch!’ He turned on her in a fit of unchecked rage. I think he was secretly pleased, though, because to his mind, her disobedience was just cause to kill her (a means of assuaging his guilt. And God knows guilt can also be a lying bitch).

  ‘Because of your curiosity, you must die like the others!’

  ‘Oh no, dear husband. Curiosity killed the cat, not the bitch!’

  Great. Just what I need, a smart-arse wife! Momentarily astonished by her brazenness, Bluebeard now became even more aggro. He lunged for her and dragged her down the stairs towards the little underground room. Before they crossed the threshold, though, she begged him to allow her ten minutes before bumping her off so she could make her peace with God (obviously, this couldn’t have taken place on a Sunday). Bluebeard reluctantly agreed. The child bride dashed up the stairs and found her sisters. She asked them if they could see their brothers coming. No, they couldn’t.

  ‘Oh fie ... où sont ces idiots quand vous en avez besoin (where are those idiots when you need them)?’ she wailed.

  ‘Wait!’ cried the middle sister. ‘I see dust.’

  ‘Then take it up with la merdeuse qui nettoie cette maison (the housekeeper)!’ screeched the young wife.

  ‘No, no, I mean dust outside. In the distance. Like from galloping horses’ hooves,’ replied the sister excitedly. The bride perked up, but then she heard Bluebeard clomping up the stairs.

  ‘Time’s up, pussycat!’ he bellowed (he wasn’t going to be caught out twice).

  At the same time he barged into the room, though, the women’s brothers charged up the stairs on horseback, and just as Bluebeard was about to grab his missus, the boys skewered him with their swords. A Bluebeard shashlik.

  The End.

  My friends were still laughing when I finished the story, and then Ralph said, ‘Yes. Bluebeard, all right. The charming predator who targets the naïve.’

  ‘Then I guess I’m like the naïve bride who convinces herself his beard isn’t that blue because she’s had no experience of that kind of person.’ And with a mouth like mine, I’m probably a reincarnation of her.

  ‘Most of us start off that way. We all want our dream home, and they prey on that desire. And, they actually appear to care,’ said Vette.

  ‘Yep. They’re pond scum. Just keep your wits about you,’ warned Maxi.

  ‘I will. Thanks. So ... you two are the canny sisters, right?’ I looked from Maxi to Vette. They both nodded.

  ‘And who are you? The brother who’s gonna save me?’

  In a way, Ralph was already doing that. Telling the story helped me glimpse the bigger picture. He just smiled.

  The four of us then scanned the property listings in the paper. Some places looked interesting, but one in particular stood out, both the picture and the description of it—a four-bedroom California bungalow in Lockleys. There was a payphone in the corner of the café so I tried calling the agent to find out more about the house, but there was no answer. I’d have to wait until Monday to call back.

  We chatted about what had been happening in their lives and just before we parted, they reiterated the underhanded sales strategies the agent might use and forewarned me of the unethical practice of gazumping.

  Early Monday morning as I was just about to leave for work, Ralph rang me.

  ‘I want to come with you.’

  ‘To work?’

  ‘No. When you go see the house. I don’t have any assignments this week. Call me back when you’ve got a viewing time.’

  ‘Sure ... brother.’

  Reuben couldn’t come but this was even better. If need be, I knew that if anyone could give a con man a run for his money, it was Ralph. I called the agency when I got to work. The agent, Milton Ferret, was happy to meet me at the house before lunch. I’d only recently started a job as a receptionist at a medical practice and didn’t want to ask for time off (I doubted I’d get it, anyway). My working hours were eight-thirty until four-thirty, so I asked Milton Ferret if I could meet him at the house at five. He said that wasn’t possible and suggested we meet the next day, or the day after, or the day after that. Before lunch. When I told him that five o’clock was the earliest I could get there during the week, he decided it was best to leave it until Saturday. Before lunch. I pleaded with him to meet with me that afternoon just in case someone who could do before lunch that week saw the house, liked it and put a deposit on it. Not that that would mean much. If, as Ralph had originally thought, Cronus the nutjob god does pull some strings in the realtor’s psyche, and a willingness to cut off their father’s balls and eat their offspring are prerequisites for being a realtor, then gazumping is not going to niggle at their conscience, because they don’t actually have one. But it would mean I’d have to offer a lot more for the agent to pull the rug out from under someone else. Still, my desperation must have been a sweetener for Milton Ferret. It was like handing him the edge on a platter in terms of any potential negotiation. He agreed to meet me at five.

  Although begging didn’t exactly enhance my position, Ralph was impressed that I had caught on so quickly. I picked him up after work and we pulled up across the road from the house a few minutes before five. Both Ralph and I were immediately impressed. The façade was as appealing
in reality as it was in the picture. And waiting to greet us at the front door, Milton Ferret also looked appealing.

  A composed, impeccably groomed man, he was wearing an expensive charcoal pinstriped suit, crisp white shirt, and a light grey silk tie. Holding a stack of official looking papers in his left hand, Milton appeared very businesslike. Although he was clean-shaven, his very dense, blue-tinged five o’clock shadow was quite obvious even from several feet away.

  Aha! Bluebeard, I thought. I could tell Ralph was thinking the same thing (because I noticed him deliberately rubbing his chin when I stole a glance at him). But Milton immediately disarmed me with his dazzling smile (with even white teeth resembling two rows of perfectly aligned Tic Tacs, the man was a walking promotion for Colgate toothpaste). And any qualms that I might have had about his motives were swept away as his naked, piercing cornflower-blue eyes bore into mine, and he shook my hand, holding it for just a little too long. Married or not, I found it a heady experience to be noticed that way by such a good-looking man (especially one wearing Brut aftershave—my favourite).

  Milton was a loquacious character and I hung on his every word, drinking in his gorgeousness. Still, there was something amiss (blue stubble aside). I couldn’t put my finger on it at first, but then it came to me. It wasn’t that Milton didn’t look like a real estate agent; he didn’t look like a real person.

  Milton reminded me of a Ken doll, with his taut, tanned, shiny face, chiselled features, and slicked back, brunette moulded hair. I wondered if, like Ken, Milton also had moulded genitals. I knew all these intimate details about Ken dolls, not just because of what Ralph had said to Gwen about boys’ dangly bits when we were kids, but because Maxi, Vette and I had played Barbies together and I got to witness Ken naked. Maxi and Vette both had a Ken doll, but Sylvia forbade me from having one. I was only allowed a Barbie and a Skipper. She never told me why but I knew she was disgusted by parents who allowed their daughter’s boyfriends to sleep over and let them have sex under their roof. Sylvia was probably afraid that if I had a Ken doll, he would be tempted to bone Barbie (under her roof).

  Milton spoke over the top of my errant thoughts.

  ‘Enough from me for now. Let me show you around this magnificent offering.’

  Ralph and I followed Milton from one room to another. Ralph was quiet, while I oohed and aahed. But as with Milton, there was something about this house that didn’t feel right. Still, as he brought us back to the entrance hall, I was ready to gush about the place, even offer a deposit to secure it while I organised a time to bring Reuben to look at it.

  ‘So what do you think?’ Milton asked, grinning broadly.

  I started to answer when Ralph interjected. ‘Where is the manhole?’

  ‘What?’ Milton gave Ralph a blank, glassy-eyed look (like a Ken doll).

  Ralph was more specific. ‘Can we please have entrée into the subfloor space?’

  Oh ... Ralph!

  Milton’s composure crumbled, his charm evaporated. ‘No!’

  ‘Why? Do you have something to hide?’

  ‘Of course not! It’s just an insane request!’

  ‘Well, it’s not like human remains have never been discovered under a house. Therefore, I think it’s a very reasonable request.’

  Jesus! Ralph had gone too far.

  Milton glared at Ralph, then at me. Again, his eyes bore into me, but this time, with a look that could kill. I hadn’t said or done anything! As usual, though, I was guilty by association. Milton’s face turned red; he was livid. But with the deep blue tinge of his five o’clock shadow, the overall hue inclined to purple. He now looked like a purple Smurf, the angry little fella that bites everyone on the arse and yells, ‘G’nap, g’nap!’

  Well, Milton didn’t bite us on the arse; he threw us out on it, yelling, ‘G’t out, g’t out, both of you!’ as he showed us the door.

  Without saying a word, Ralph and I walked back to the car and climbed in. I felt humiliated; Ralph looked smug. There was a growing tension between us as I sat there trying to digest what had just happened. Was I bothered that Milton had looked at me with disgust, when moments earlier he had eyed me appreciatively? Was I bothered that my illusions about Milton were shattered, and angry with Ralph for his part in this? Was I bothered that Ralph put the kibosh on any chance Reuben and I had of buying that house, or even getting to see any more houses that Milton would be listing and that might appeal? Was I bothered that Milton might actually have moulded genitals? I turned on Ralph.

  ‘You obviously still have issues with real estate agents and want to get back at them, but I don’t appreciate you doing it on my time and my opportunities!’

  ‘I’m sorry, Ruthie. Honestly, that wasn’t my intention.’ When I didn’t respond, he continued. ‘The walls had a strong smell of paint.’

  ‘Huh? So what? That’s a smell of freshness and newness,’ I said huffily.

  ‘No. That reeks of a cover up. Did you notice the walls in the bedrooms?’ Milton had whizzed through the bedrooms so I didn’t take in a lot of detail.

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘They’re like Milton’s face.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Didn’t you notice that in two of the bedrooms, the walls around the windows have a five o’clock shadow?’

  ‘What are you talking about? I saw the one in the main bedroom and it looked stippled, like the walls in the house I grew up in!’

  ‘No, Ruthie,’ said Ralph softly. ‘They’re not stippled. They’re covered in spores.’

  This gave me pause for thought. Ralph was right. I’d seen this when I was near the window, but hadn’t thought anything of it. Apart from the fact that any painter worth his salt would have removed the spores, not showcased them, I’d been so bedazzled by Milton the man himself, and his ‘magnificent offering’, I’d sacrificed my powers of discernment. So I didn’t recognise the rising damp for what it was (and its smell was camouflaged by fresh paint). But rising damp, pond scum—same family.

  Even as I understood this, though, the desire for the fairy tale was coursing through my veins and I guessed it always would. Cultivating my bullshit detector was probably the best recourse.

  Ralph interrupted my thoughts. ‘Do you think what I asked for was a bit over the top?’

  I stared ahead for about ten seconds before replying. ‘I think it was remiss of you not to ask for entrée into the roof cavity as well.’

  We both laughed. I shared my comical thoughts with him about Milton’s appearance, and then asked, ‘Why do you suppose he was so reluctant to meet at five?’

  ‘End of the day, you’re tired. Not really on the ball, which by your estimation, he’s missing.’ Again, we laughed. ‘And it’s hard to maintain a façade when you’re a bit worn out. He was probably worried he’d let slip and show his true colours. Which he did.’

  As we turned to look at the magnificent offering once more, I clapped eyes on spivvy Milton. How could this person look at himself in the mirror every day? Oh, easy. Vampire—no reflection. He was about to get into his snazzy Mercedes Convertible parked in front of the neighbouring house. He stood there scowling at me; I stared him down. Milton averted his eyes, nervously unbuttoned his coat and fumbled in his pants pocket for his car keys. Just then, a sudden gust of wind blew his papers out of his hand and scattered them all over the road. We watched as he bent down and frantically gathered them up.

  ‘He must be a real person,’ Ralph observed. ‘A Ken doll’s range of movement is so much more limited.’

  ‘Er ... I dunno. His tie’s flapping around, but his hair hasn’t budged. I still can’t help wondering if his crotch is moulded.’

  ‘There’s a sure-fire way of finding out. Want me to go kick him in it?’

  Ralph didn’t, and I never found out. But after another six months of house hunting and dealing with lowlifes, bullshit artists, weasels, and scumbags dressed in big-shouldered designer suits, Reuben and I found the perfect place—a 1960s, three-bedr
oom, red-brick colonial style house in Fulham Gardens. It had a simple rectangular layout. Lots of white-trim paned, double hung windows made it light and airy inside. It had a decent size expanse of lawn in the front, and a huge backyard. We made an offer, it was accepted and we put a deposit down. Yet five days later, it was still being advertised in the paper.

  A month before this, we had put a deposit on another place that we really liked and we were gazumped. I wasn’t going to let that happen again. This time, I bypassed the agent and went to see the vendor (I was already acquainted with her, as she was a patient of one of the doctors I worked for). She said she was surprised that the agent was still showing the house. I was infuriated, told her we were genuine buyers and were just waiting for the contracts to be drawn up. She said she’d call the agent and ask him to stop bringing through interested parties, and I also called him. I told him if he gazumped us, I’d report him to the Real Estate Institute, pull out all stops to get his licence revoked, personally sue the pants off him, and with my winnings, I’d pay in full for a waterfront mansion, and put in a swimming pool and tennis court with the loose change. I didn’t know whether any of this was do-able, but he backed down—Bluebeard trying to exploit the gullible, but cowering in the face of the initiated.

  Three months later, when Reuben and I were having our first dinner in the new house, he asked me, ‘What about kids?’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘We’ve got two spare bedrooms that need to be filled.’

  For Reuben, the next logical step in my formulaic existence was to start a family.

  ‘I don’t want to.’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN:

  KIDDIE LITTER

  Reuben and I argued plenty about this. It wasn’t that I didn’t want kids; I just didn’t feel ready. And Reuben wasn’t the only one I fought with. Sylvia was at me to go forth and multiply. To make matters worse, Myron, who married nine months after me, already had children—one-year-old twin boys, Rory and Robbie. Anyway, the idea of having children scared me. I talked to Ralph about it.