Read If You Were Here Online

Authors: Jen Lancaster

Tags: #Chicago, #Humorous, #Family Life, #General, #Suburbs, #Women Authors, #Illinois, #Fiction, #Remodeling, #Dwellings

If You Were Here (33 page)

I’ve been leaving HGTV on nonstop because I’m hoping he picks up some tips by osmosis. So far no luck.
“Anyway, I’m in the kitchen unloading all kinds of yogurt and cheese and lunch meat into the new fridge, and I hear Agent Jack Bauer meow. I check and don’t see him anywhere, so I just assume he’s in one of the empty cardboard appliance boxes. Later, I feed the kittens dinner and he’s nowhere to be seen, but I can hear him.”
“Is he fine? Don’t tell me any more of this story unless you can confirm he’s fine.” I forget sometimes that Ann Marie has a soft spot for cats. In related news, Ann Marie prosecuted a guy who now holds the state’s longest sentence ever given for animal cruelty.
“Agent Bauer is in fine shape, no worries. But I went all over the kitchen looking for him and it’s like he was a ghost, all sounds and no sight. Then I heard the tiniest little thud in the wall and I put the pieces together.”
“No.”
“
Yes
. Mac sealed the cat in the goddamned wall.”
“What did you do?”
I can’t stop clenching my fists as I relate this story. “We had to cut a cat-shaped hole out of the wall just like you see on cartoons! Fortunately, Agent Bauer was completely undaunted and we’re learning that drywall’s pretty simple to fix once it’s hung. A little joint compound, a little sanding, dry overnight, and voilà! Good as new.”
“For what it’s worth, I’m sure Mac meant no ill will.”
“Of course he didn’t! He felt awful, and he spent the whole night hugging Agent Bauer and giving him extra treats. But that level of carelessness just—” But before I can finish my sentence, the phone goes dead. I tap the switch hook a couple of times but nothing happens. Damn it.
We’ve had a few connectivity problems—of course we have—and I’ve become an expert on how to fix them. I get up from my desk and trek down to the network area in the panic room. What I have to do is recycle the router, which is a fancy way of saying unplug and then replug it.
Once I reach the networking area, this whole task shouldn’t take more than a minute. I get to the panic room and heave open the heavy metal door. I quietly fume that while this room helped sell Mac on this house, he hasn’t done much with it except to stow the most basic of disaster supplies and some of his second-tier tools. Should the unthinkable happen, we’re good for two days, tops.
While I wait for the router to complete a cycle, Charlie pops into the room. “Mac sent me down for a different wrench.” I have to suppress a giggle—Mac treats his tools like his children, and I’m sure Charlie’s banging the pipes hurt him as much as it annoyed me. Mac’s sending Charlie down here for the old stuff tells me everything I need to know about Charlie’s plumbing prowess and the status of the sink installation.
“The toolbox is over there,” I say, pointing to the corner nearest the door.
“Got it!” Charlie grabs something off the top of the box and then trots out the door, shutting it behind him.
I get to a thirty count and then turn the router back on. I wait as each little green light lights up, and when I have a row of them, I know our Internet connection
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has been restored.
Before I go back up, I poke around the few supplies Mac has stashed. We’ve got a couple of army MREs,
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a three-day supply of bottled water, a few first-aid products, and an Army Ranger survival guide. Apparently in the case of home invasion or nuclear holocaust, Mac might like to get in a bit of light reading.
I walk over to the door and open it.
Rather, I try to pull it open, but it’s really heavy. I put both hands on the knob and give it a good yank.
Nothing happens.
I jimmy the handle and then, using both hands, I pull on it while bracing myself against the doorjamb with one of my feet. The handle gives way, but unfortunately not in the manner I’d hoped. It takes me a couple of seconds to process that the knob has come off in my hand.
Uh-oh.
If nothing else, living in this house has made me resourceful. Instead of panicking, I root around in Mac’s tool bag and come up with an old pair of pliers. I use them to manipulate the pin of the door handle, simultaneously pulling and bracing again.
This time the pin comes off in my hand.
So I resort to my second option.
Yelling.
I shout with all my might and bang on the inside of the door with the pliers.
What I quickly find out is that bombproof rooms are also soundproof rooms.
I whip out my cell phone and attempt to call Mac, but I’m not getting a signal. Awesome.
I start going over every inch of this room, because surely there’s some sort of two-way communication device in here. I mean, no one would put this much effort into a room and then ... And then I remember where I am. I am in the middle of the House Where Shit Goes Horribly Awry, and there is no fail-safe in this room.
If I were to disconnect the Internet, Mac would know to come down here, but he’s not at his computer right now and probably won’t be for a while. The best that I can hope for is that he comes looking for me sooner rather than later.
For lack of anything else to do, I settle on a metal cot covered in a scratchy army blanket and begin to read the survival guide.
According to the manual, I should remain calm. Noted. I don’t think remaining calm while I’m in here is my problem. I imagine needing to remain calm will come into play
after
I’m out of here.
As I peruse the chapter on planning and survival packs, I make a note that Mac’s kit contains neither a snare nor solar blanket nor water purification tablets. Also, Mac hasn’t stored pudding cups down here. The guide doesn’t say specifically that we need them, but I feel this is a serious omission.

 

I wish I’d run across the chapter on contact dermatitis before now. That bit of knowledge might have gone a long way in educating me in why one should wear long pants to mow the lawn. In related news, poison oak leaves actually look an awful lot like regular oak leaves and should be retrieved while wearing gloves or with a rake.
Ask me how I learned this.

 

The guide provides excellent advice in regard to starting a fire. Good thing I’m not cold down here, because there seems to be a dearth of flint, convex lenses, spongy threads of dead puffball, or birch shavings.

 

I’m greatly enjoying the “dangerous lizard” chapter. I can’t imagine I’ll ever need to put this learning to use, but if I ever get a lizard question in Trivial Pursuit, I’ll be all over it.
Oh, Mexican beaded lizard,
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I’ve got my eye on you.

 

A few hours into my captivity, I find myself sizing up the electrical panel. Possibly it’s because I’m so rife with new survival skills, or perhaps because I’m too much of a dumb ass to have thought of it sooner, but I’ve just discerned my means of egress.
I pocket a flashlight from Mac’s supplies and walk over to the electrical panel. I open the metal box and systematically begin to flip every switch. The last tab I flip bathes the room in darkness, but I’m confident it won’t be for long. I switch on my flashlight and return to the cot.
Less than two minutes later, Mac opens the door with his own flashlight in hand and he’s greeted by my bellowing,“
Do not shut the door!
” Mac prides himself on his inability to be spooked, yet odds are good my ethereally lit presence causes him to shart himself.
“What were you doing in here?” he demands.
I reach the junction box first and turn all the switches back. “Boning up on my survival skills.”
After I fully explain the whats and the hows of my imprisonment, that son of a bitch has the audacity to laugh.
“Yes, yuk it up. This is hilarious,” I snap.
Mac wipes his eyes and tries to stop smiling. “Listen, I’m sorry, but it’s funny. You should call the Guinness book people, because you have to have set some kind of record for ‘number of times trapped’ by now.” He then goes on to list every time and place I’ve been stuck in the past five years and he starts to snicker again.
I say nothing in response, instead just crossing my arms and tapping my foot, waiting for him to finish.
“Are you done yet?”
“Yes. No! The tub! I forgot about the tub. Now I’m done.”
“Good.”
I turn to leave, and Mac, who’s staying behind to fix the door, calls after me, “Where are you going now?”
“I have to call Ann Marie back and I want to eat some pudding. But first, I need to punch Charlie in the head.”
“I got the call. I got the call and I haven’t any idea how to proceed. What do I do? Where do I go from here?”
I’m not on my usual cement bench today. Instead, I’m up and pacing back and forth, because I’ve got too much nervous energy coursing though me. “I mean, I’m thrilled and I’m excited, because this is everything I’ve worked for, but at the same time I’m scared, because now what? I mean, this is a life changer. This is big-time. Hollywood, baby!”
Although we’re in late summer and the sun is high and bright, I feel chilled and I wrap my arms around myself. “I’m afraid; I guess that’s what it is. I’m afraid if I leave, then whatever’s unsaid, whatever isn’t working between Mac and me, is going to fester and decay and we’ll never be able to get back to where we were once upon a time.
“Funny, I always thought that if we were ever going to break up, there’d be some huge incident, clear and unarguable. We’d suffer the marital equivalent of thermonuclear war, and
bang!
Mutually assured destruction. There’d be no question as to whether we should proceed in life together. But this? This isn’t one mass detonation; it’s a million tiny explosions, but we’re at the same crossroads.
“I don’t know what to do. Persiflage Films wants me to hop on a plane tonight, right now, in fact, and be ready to start taking meetings tomorrow. But there’s so much to be said, so much to resolve . . . . Do I just go and hope we can work it out over the phone? Honestly, that seems like running away, and I already do that far too much. Or, like lately, I completely lose my shit and start yelling and throwing small, breakable objects. We’ve always been so good about talking things out, but now I’m so frustrated that I can’t seem to stop going from completely passive to overly aggressive. I’ve lost the ability to find middle ground.”
I collapse onto the bench, suddenly exhausted by all the adrenaline dumped in my body after I found out that Persiflage actually agreed to meet my asking price for my books’ rights. My agents are currently hammering out the last few specifics on gross and net points and production credits and such, but the bottom line is, I’m about to be wealthy.
The big catch is that the film company wants me to be an active participant in the process from start to finish. They’re buying not only my words, but also my “artistic vision.”
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They need me in LA as soon as possible and for an undetermined amount of time.
“Mac wasn’t home when I got the call, and I couldn’t reach him by cell, so he doesn’t even know. Last thing he said was that he was going to the plumbing specialty store, so I imagine he’ll be off the radar for a while. I talked to Ann Marie, who doesn’t want me to do anything without her reading my contract—go figure—and to my family. Jessica and Claire are beside themselves, especially as Claire’s going to be the coolest girl in eighth grade when the film comes out. My mom was totally psyched, and Babcia, well . . . Babcia is Babcia.”
No matter what the situation, Babcia’s reaction is totally unpredictable, and I find that charming. “Babcia’s exact words were, ‘Life not movie. Good guy lose, everybody die, love not cocoa all.’ I had no idea what that was supposed to mean, but Jessica said Babcia signed up for a Netflix membership and she’s been watching a bunch of Kevin Spacey movies lately. Apparently she thinks he looks like her dead husband. Anyway, Jessica suspects this is some bastardization of a quote from
Swimming with Sharks
. Oh, boy, I can’t wait until she starts grilling me about who Keyser Söze is.”
The truth is, I’ve been avoiding Babcia a little bit ever since Vlad ran off.The rest of my family knows about our current housing pre-dicament, but we didn’t want to tell Babcia because we don’t want her to worry.
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