Wormhole
Wednesday I almost bought the farm. Thursday the Housekeeper started in on voodoo (how'd she know my daughter's inhabited by a demon?). Friday I blew out my knee watching "Antiques Roadshow."
It's been one fuck of a week.
Pat Robertson is inhabiting the Housekeeper. I know, I know, I should can her ass, but she scares the bejesus out of me. I think she's capable of throwing a hex. She runs a mean vacuum, I'll give her that. But she's sucking the vibe out of the air around here. The dog gives her wide berth. Always believe what a dog says.
You want voodoo? I'll give you voodoo: It's possible my daughter saved my life. Except for that little matter of the resident demon, which gives me pause. And actually, a pause is at the center of this cautionary tale, a pause which occurred when I braked to answer my cell phone Wednesday evening. I was in my car, in the parking lot, about to leave work.
You have to understand about me and my cell phone. I'm still barely able to use the thing, it scares the bejesus out of me. I get panicky when it rings and stop what I'm doing.
"Hel-lo?" I said into the phone when I figured out how to turn it on. It's so fucking small you can store it in your nostril.
"Dickles," said a voice. It sounded like my daughter, but I couldn't be sure.
You have to understand about my daughter and Dill Pickle Chips. She's wonky for them. Obsessed with them. Can't get enough of them. And they have to be Lay's, they can't be Old Dutch. Once she had me do an experiment where I blindfolded her (one can only dream...) and proceeded to test both brands. She chose the Lay's and I was forced to eat the Old Dutch. I've never tasted anything quite so...unfoodlike.
The "Dickles" thing happened last fall when my daughter was sick. I tiptoed into the TV room where she'd been holed up for a few months, told her I was going to the store, did she want me to get her some Dickle Chips? That's what I said, it just came out. I corrected myself, but it was too late. Another nonsense word entered our private lexicon, alongside lowchee and farlow and oken doken, to name a few.
So when the sudden request for Dickles came over the airwaves Wednesday evening, I sat in the dark in my unmoving car for, what, two seconds? three? Long enough to answer my cell phone and, BTW, alter the time/space continuum. Then I pulled out of the parking lot.
Halfway home, it happened. This is the voodoo part:
I was driving up 21st Avenue East, a through-street, when, at the intersection of 21st and 1st Street, I noticed a car traveling toward me along 1st Street. Not traveling exactly, speeding. Make that racing. Make that tear-assing up from the gates of hell. Not only that, 1st Street is a one-way, and this car was driving...the WRONG WAY. Before I had a chance to react, the car flew through the STOP sign, shot out across the intersection ten feet from my front bumper, and disappeared into the night on its way to some other destiny.
It's true what they say. About accidents. Time slows. Stretches out. Pauses. Two seconds? three? felt like hours. A weekend. A lifetime.
When my brain finally registered what had just happened, I started to shake. Because this was about what had not happened. Technically, there hadn't been an accident -- I hadn't been broadsided on the driver's side by some escaped lunatic, I wasn't upside down under a streetlight suspended between this world and the next. Still, somewhere, that reality existed. I could feel it. Like an alternative ending. I drove home wondering if maybe there had actually been an accident, which I'd somehow side-stepped, like maybe I'd gone through a wormhole or something and come out in some parallel universe.
Which pretty much describes where my daughter lives. Same block, same house, whole different universe. When I got home I went up to the TV room.
"I forgot the Dickles," I said.
"Like, whatever," said the demon.
"I think you might've saved my...life," I said. I almost said saved my ass. But I'm as capable of a good parental decision as the next jerk-off.
"Like, what?" said my daughter, so I told her.
Okay, okay, any number of things slowed me down Wednesday evening. But my money's on that phone call. I want to believe it was my daughter. She wants to believe it. If for no other reason than to exact a reward payment. Besides, it made for a great bedtime story, and kept the demon at bay for a few precious hours. Which felt like seconds, but still.
Then Thursday it's the Housekeeper and her Funda-mental-illness, Friday I recline motionless in a recliner and blow out my knee, Saturday the demon returns from sabbatical, and it's business as usual. The parallel universe theory starts looking less credible. Although for awhile there, it felt like somewhere I wanted to be. Somewhere...lighter. Safer. Where the air is less...heavy. A place like dreaming. Where your house is never in need of cleaning, and mothers and daughters speak endlessly perfect nonsense, and everybody listens to dogs.
posted by six spruce @ 1:05 PM
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