There's a (Slight) Chance I Might Be Going to Hell - v4 (3 page)

Spaulding’s residents were so enamored with their town and the factory that built it—which had quickly become the biggest sewer-pipe manufacturer in the country, having addressed the country’s flushing needs through two world wars and the first moon walk. (It was just a matter of time, Malcolm Spaulding predicted, before Spaulding Sewer Pipe would have the first sewer-pipe outpost in space and would be addressing the issue of sanitation minus gravity.) Every year an elaborate celebration was staged to rejoice in the factory’s success. The Spaulding Festival was the favorite and most anticipated event of the year. It was a joyous affair, and to the delight of his employees and their families, Malcolm Spaulding distributed generous prizes to the one who made it through the Sewer Pipe Maze first, the one who stayed afloat the longest in the pipe-rolling contest, and the baker of the best pie baked in a sewer-pipe cap. Children bobbed for apples in an upturned sewer pipe and could dunk their principal in another sewer pipe with a determined, well-planned throw of a ball. Everyone, year after year, had a glorious time.

Nothing of much consequence had happened to change the Spaulding way of life and the speed at which it was lived. The factory went on making pipes; the pipe college went on producing graduates who went on to work at the factory. Things continued in Spaulding just like they always did, except for a brief period during the hot summer months when several buildings—including the sewer-pipe factory—caught fire and burned to the ground. A police investigation later revealed that sewer-pipe rivals had tried to edge in by destroying their main competitor.

The people of Spaulding quietly and solemnly waited until the rubble stopped smoking, then they cleared away the remnants of what was lost and went immediately to the business of building it all right back, exactly as it was before.

Spaulding was Spaulding, and no amount of fire could burn that away.

But the truth was that Spaulding
had
changed. In the time that it took to rebuild, the Spaulding Sewer Pipe factory had lost its place as the largest of its kind. Competitors, particularly the one that was highly suspected of setting the fires, were more than eager to fill the orders the factory could not, and a majority of the business was lost.

And that was how Spaulding, Washington, a sewer-pipe town, became Spaulding, Washington, a university town. The Spaulding Polytechnic Institute of Sewer Pipe Husbandry became Spaulding University, the rebuilt factory building was transformed into dormitories, and new businesses popped up all over town like pimples on the forehead of puberty. The football team won the Rain Bowl, the Fern Bowl, and the Sasquatch Bowl. It became the fastest-growing university in the state.

Spaulding had bloomed again.

And then the hippies came.

In the time of war, the draft was instituted, and a portion of young men from all over the country who couldn’t secure a single deferment, let alone four or five, fled to Canada. When the war was over and it was safe to come back, they crossed the border again, drove eighty miles in their VW vans, and then just stopped, unloaded vast quantities of vegetable dyes, yogurt, incense, and bongs, and set up grow lights.

They were friendly enough people, they tended masterful gardens, and although their customer-service skills were somewhat slow, they always had smiles on their faces. Over the years, the hippie folk grew their plants, beat their drums, spun their circles, and simply wove themselves into the community, evident as at least one house on each street became a canvas for a blue sky with clouds or a stretching rainbow. The schools filled up with children named Freedom, Tree, Solstice, and Merlin, with an overabundance of both Jerrys and Garcias. Career orientations changed as well, with resident rosters now including such occupations as birth artist, master composter, unicyclist, and the not-nearly-as-uncommon-as-you-would-think title of wizard.

And Spaulding, unlike many small former factory towns, stayed clean. Littering was prohibited, recycling was adopted. Fast-food establishments were rare in Spaulding; organic bakeries, bookstores, coffeehouses, lined every street downtown. People rode bikes instead of driving cars when they could, and some of the hippies actually put on shoes and started running. Spaulding was still a charming place, only a little bit more healthy. The university offered degrees in environmentalism, eco-criticism, and folklore studies.

The university football team won the Hemp Bowl.

And today, if on a visit to Spaulding you were to find yourself the only person in the movie theater, and another moviegoer walked in, that person would come and sit next to you without a second thought, and might even lean over and ask to share your popcorn. Your new acquaintance might also mention that you should try it with nutritional yeast sprinkled on top instead of butter and salt. It tastes nutty, your neighbor would say, and it won’t clog your arteries or turn them to cement.

Small towns are sometimes like that; familiarity runs high, while regard for personal space is low, if nonexistent.

It was with the fragrance of growing onions floating in the warm summer air that Maye, Charlie, and their dog, Mickey, arrived with an eighteen-wheeler full of boxes and an idea about creating their life in a brand-new place.

It was, however, going to take a little more than that.

Maye held her breath as they pulled into the driveway of the new house for the first time.

They had been on the road for three days, driving through the desert of Arizona, the urban landscape of Los Angeles, the farmland of central California, and the mountains and lush valleys of Oregon. Now they were home.

At least Maye hoped they were.

Charlie didn’t say anything as he sat in the car, looking at the new house. Maye didn’t know what to make of his silence; in one moment, her stomach dropped to her feet thinking that Charlie hated the cottagelike look of it (it did look rather like a place two Germanic children would happen upon in the woods and nearly become a kiddie potpie), then, in the next moment, she thought the house was so perfect that there was no way he could do anything but love it.

It was Maye’s responsibility to find them a place to live, so she flew up to Washington every other weekend. Courtesy of her patient Realtor, Patty, she had seen a wide variety of Spaulding abodes, including a farmhouse painted like a rainbow, which was what the owner’s children (Ocean, four, and Wind, six) had chosen, and a 1920s bungalow that was adorned in the colors of an iris—purple siding, chartreuse windows, dark green eaves, lavender door.

“The owner loves color,” Patty tried to explain.

“Yes, she does,” Maye said, nodding. “Brooke Shields lived in a house that looked like this in
Pretty Baby
.”

“The inside is lovely,” Patty coaxed. “The seller, Louise, is an old friend of mine.”

Taking the cue and not wanting to offend her any more than she already had by essentially calling her friend’s home a whorehouse, Maye followed Patty up the sidewalk until they were standing on the Technicolor bungalow’s wide, generous porch. Patty rang the doorbell, and a friendly woman in her forties answered it and invited them in.

It was almost the perfect house. The Mission-style built-in oak china cabinet hadn’t been slathered with paint, and neither had the columns and the bookcases that flanked the entrance to the dining room. It was in those bookcases that Maye noticed something strange: each shelf held a row of crowns, some elegant and sparkly, some plastic and cheap, and one that rather resembled a Burger King crown found in a kid’s meal. What an odd hobby, Maye thought; it puts some of Michael Jackson’s to shame. There must have been thirty or forty of them, shimmering and gleaming in the light. What on earth is a grown woman doing with forty crowns that aren’t in her mouth? Maye wondered. Not to be cruel, but Louise was no beauty queen, and unless she was living out an unrealized homecoming fantasy à la
Carrie
, the whole thing was a bit puzzling.

The two-bedroom iris house, it turned out, was too small, and Maye bit her tongue as hard as she could and did not ask Patty if they had just visited the home of Spaulding’s tooth fairy when they got back to the car. Offending her Realtor and the only person she knew in town would not be a smart maneuver, no matter how funny Maye thought her joke was.

As Patty unlocked the door, Maye just smiled, forced her little comment back down her throat, and got in.

Three minutes later, Maye gasped when Patty pulled the car to a stop in front of an absolutely perfect house.

It was an adorable English cottage, Cotswold style, with a half-timber and stucco façade and a hipped roof with curves along the peak lines and corners. A massive tapered chimney—complete with a little ash door—sat alongside the rounded front entry. It was as perfect through the front door as it was on the outside. It reminded Maye so much of her house in Phoenix; the layout and proportions were almost exactly the same, the living and dining rooms were painted the same colors, the rug in front of the fireplace was identical to the one Maye had in her own living room fifteen hundred miles away. She had only gotten as far as the kitchen when she turned to Patty and told her that she was so sure Charlie would absolutely love it, she was ready to make an offer.

Patty winced and paused for a moment. “There’s something you need to know about this house,” she said cautiously, as if she was trying to prepare Maye for something wholly dreadful and nefarious, and put her hand on Maye’s arm gently.

“The current owners are…” she continued in a whisper, “…
Republicans
.”

Maye smiled. “It’s okay,” she whispered back. “As soon as we move in, we’ll make our gay friends get married here.”

But minutes after pulling into the driveway of her new house with her husband and dog, Maye’s vision for her celebratory housewarming party had taken a downward turn. Her husband was staring at the house expressionless and motionless, almost like he was in shock.

“Charlie!” Maye finally said, desperate for a reaction. “Charlie, please say something!”

“This is our house?” her husband said, looking at her suspiciously.

Maye nodded.

“Are you sure?” he asked her in a very serious tone. “If this is a joke, it’s not very funny.”

“What’s the matter?” Maye said, her heart sinking even further. “You hate it. You hate it. I’m sorry. I thought I was doing the right thing. There just wasn’t much to choose from, Charlie, unless you wanted to live in an iris. It seemed right at the time. I’m sorry. You saw the pictures I took, you said you liked it….”

“I
do
like it,” he replied. “But what’s the catch?”

“I don’t understand,” she said. “What catch?”

“Everyone on this street mows their lawns,” Charlie nearly yelled, pointing to the neighbor’s immaculate front yard. “I mean, these people have
lawns
. There are no cars resting on cinder blocks parked on them. I haven’t seen a couch on a front porch yet, and a herd of feral cats hasn’t descended on our car to pee on it yet. Where’s Crack Park? I don’t see a crack park! Where will our neighbors get their drugs? Where will our neighbors
sell
their drugs? And where’s the halfway house? Every street in our last neighborhood had one!”

Maye smiled broadly and shook her head. “There’s no crack park, Charlie,” she said, laughing. “There is a park a couple of blocks away, but it has a playground and a soccer field. Our neighbor over there is a psychologist and an artist. The one across the street is a librarian. The neighbor over there was a diplomat in Belgium. We live in a different place now. We don’t live in the hood any longer.”

“I won’t have to pick up needles and bullet casings in the street anymore?” he asked, floored.

“Nope,” Maye assured him. “And I’ll never have to call the cops on a hooker wearing nothing but a see-through shirt standing on the corner trying to drum up some business while the schoolkids are making their way home in the afternoon.”

Charlie paused for a moment and looked at Maye again. “Are you sure this is our house?” he asked.

“Let’s go inside, I’m dying for you to see it,” she suggested, fumbling for the keys in her purse.

“Come on, Mickey!” Charlie said as he followed, and the dog bounded into the front seat and out of the car.

Maye opened the front door. The house had the eerie quiet of a place that had just been left, the same kind of quiet that floated through the rooms of their house in Phoenix only several days earlier before they left and locked the door for the last time.

“What do you think?” she asked as the sun streamed in, dust particles swirling and suspended in air.

“It’s great,” Charlie said, smiling. “Just like you said.”

“Did you see the French doors to the dining room? And look at the moldings. That’s all original. And there’s fir in the hallway. And penny tile in the bathroom. And a dishwasher, Charlie,
there is a dishwasher
.”

“Well, show me around!” he said, laughing as he grabbed her by the shoulders.

“I just want to call somebody!” she said gleefully as she opened the French doors to the dining room. “I want our friends to come over and see it! I’m so happy you like it. Who should we call? We’ll call and get a pizza and have some people over.”

“Sure. Call everybody. If they leave their houses now, they’ll get here by next Wednesday.” Charlie looked at her. For a tiny, microscopic second she had forgotten that she now lived in a town where she didn’t know anybody except for her Realtor. Her friends were in Phoenix. She was in Spaulding.

“Well,” she concluded. “Who says
we
can’t have a pizza party, just us? We love pizza and Mickey loves the crust.”

“You’ll have friends soon,” Charlie reassured her. “It takes time in a new place. Please do not get all weird because you’ve lived in Spaulding for forty-five seconds and you don’t have a best friend yet. This is a whole new life. Nothing will be the same, but it will end up just as great and it will be fun getting there. We have this whole town to discover. And if you don’t have a friend by your birthday, I’ll buy you one.”