3.1 – Detached Suburban Blues

The winter of 1974-1975 was wet and dreary.  Marty couldn’t ride his bike anywhere, and the house was cold and empty.  His mom disconnected the heater to save money, saying they could wear extra clothes to keep warm, and so they did.  To Marty, it seemed as though they were homeless people squatting in the shell of a vacant model home.  The novelty of helping out at the pet store soon wore off, so he and Susie trudged home after school, even though it was sometimes a challenge due to the weather.  Once in a while they got a ride from a friend’s mom, but most days they had to straggle across the muddy hills like peasant farmers, arriving home just before dark.  Their mom worked late, and often stayed out with friends afterward, leaving them more and more to their own devices.

Meals usually consisted of leftovers from large quantities of casserole or chili that Marge prepared on her days off.  Marty learned to cook simple meals to relieve the monotony, and managed not to cut off any fingers or start any fires.  Julie was usually with her boyfriend (because he could drive), while the younger siblings stayed home and watched TV or played with their castoff pets.  Susie had a white rabbit with half an ear missing from a lost argument with a dog.  Marty wound up with a young, female cat of mixed breed, who was already pregnant although she was barely a year old.  He called her Krishna because she had Himalayan blood.  That was a name he’d read somewhere, but was ignorant at the time of its religious significance.  Heidi didn’t know what to make of this strange new creature: the first ever feline member of the White family.  She was very possessive of her turf, and followed the cat all over the house, until it whirled in a flash and cuffed her twice on the nose before she could even yelp!  Ow-wow-wow!  That thing is sharp!!  They made a deal that Krishna would get to go wherever she wanted, and Heidi got to keep her good looks.
 
One day Marty came home from school and Krishna was meowing in that nervous way of hers, “Meh-meh-meh-meh.”  She paced the floor while he took off his muddy boots, and got between his ankles when he walked to make him stop and see what she wanted.  He followed her into the formerly forbidden zone of the house, where a bloody mess had been discreetly deposited on the white throw rug.  It was a single stillborn kitten, hairless and no bigger than a chicken egg.  Many would have considered it a disgusting sight, but Marty felt sorry for Krishna (who was clearly upset), and for the tiny little kitten that never was.  He tried to remove the evidence, but the stains would not wash out of the shag white carpet, no matter how hard he scrubbed.  He didn’t think he’d get in trouble for such a natural, tragic event, so he called and asked his mom to bring home some stain remover.
 
It had been raining steadily all week, and that night a load of raindrops got dumped on the asphalt shingles of their hollow house.  From upstairs, it sounded like they were being buried beneath an avalanche.  The next morning Marty smelled something odd when he came down the stairs, and was horrified to see mud oozing all over the hardwood floor in the living room!  “Mom!  Mom!!”  He called ever more urgently until she came downstairs, probably wondering if his cat had died.  She stared, open-mouthed at the incredible mess.  It looked as if the fireplace had vomited mud all over the floor.  The hardwood tiles were buckling, and the room was filled with a wet, earthy stench.  The white rug Marty had worked so hard to clean was completely obliterated.  “I don’t think the stain remover will work on this one,” he ventured, while Marge cussed with a sincerity that would have made Captain Hook proud.
 
At his mom’s behest, Marty went to inspect the outside of the house with an umbrella, and was astonished to see the entire dirt slope on the uphill side had slid down the way frosting melts off a cupcake on a hot day, and was now pushing 3 feet high against the wall of the house.  He could see where the exterior wall appeared buckled and cracked next to the fireplace.  He called his mom plaintively, and she came out in the rain to assess the situation.  More colorful language filled the air, and then she started to cry.  “This is going to be expensive,” she said in between sobs.  “I don’t know if the insurance will cover it.”
 
Just like that shifting, sodden earth that now filled the side yard, the mudslide set into motion a chain of events that would forever change the course of their lives.  Marjorie spent all that week on the phone, calling the insurance company, the town of Terra Linda, the uphill neighbors, and Good Ol’ Dad, whom she tacitly deemed responsible for the disaster.  “That asshole forced you guys to weed that hillside over and over until it was bare earth,” she complained, alluding to the lack of grass roots to hold the hillside together.  Predictably, nobody offered to pay for the mishap, so her trusty carpenter friends Jimbo and Jack saved the day.  (And this time they wore clothes.)  Marty helped them shovel the worst of the muck away from the outside wall so they could inspect the damage, while his mom and sisters did the best they could to muck out the inside of the house.
 
Susie was using the little fireplace shovel to try and fill a bucket with brown sludge that slid off before she could get it in the bucket.  “Just imagine you’re cleaning out the rabbit cages at the pet store,” offered Marge brightly, but her disgusting metaphor failed to cheer the cleanup crew.  Julie wore bright yellow rain boots and rubber dish gloves, and tried not to get any mud on her clothes.
 

When they finished, it revealed a thoroughly sodden mess.  The wall was cracked and pressed in a few inches, and Jimbo thought a couple of studs had buckled under the weight of the mud.  Jack tore up the ruined parquet floor inside, and took it and the soggy carpet away in his brother’s battered old pickup truck.  Over the days that followed, new materials magically appeared, and repairs were somehow made by a team of smiling hippies, under the capable direction of Jimbo.  Marge bought lots of beer, and it was like one of those Amish barn-raising events where everybody helped (except for the strange smells and loud rock n’ roll that blasted from a boom box).

“Smoke on the water… fire in the sky…”

The parquet floor was being rapidly patched with recycled materials by a couple of friendly Mexican guys who smiled a lot but spoke no English.  Their beer drinking skills were just as proficient as their flooring, and they worked in time with the music.  Frank and Frodo were laying a secondhand gray carpet in the dining area, the remnants of a job where someone was getting a new one.  Jack was applying a white paste to the area of the wall that had cracked, and Marty snickered when he called it “mud.”  When they were finished there was still a damp and earthy aroma, but now it looked much better than the sludge of diarrhea that was formerly decorating the living room.

That disaster turned out to be the last straw for Marge, as she announced one day at breakfast, “This house is too expensive, we can’t keep it.”  Her three kids just stared dumbfounded at each other, with their pancakes growing cold.  “I just can’t keep up with the payments.  We’ll have to move.”  She started to cry.

“Where – where are we going to live?” whimpered Susie between sniffles.

“What about my horse?” Julie demanded indignantly, as she had been paying for its boarding herself.

“Where will we go to school?” Marty wondered aloud, already knowing he would lose another group of friends… especially that cute girl in algebra class.

“I don’t know!” Marjorie burst out in exasperation.  “I’m doing the best I can!”  Predictably, she started to cry.  Susie was crying too, and then Julie went upstairs to call her boyfriend.  The female majority of the family had given up.

Marty assumed a false bravado under the circumstances, and stood up to clear the table.  “Don’t worry, mom, it will be all right.  We still have each other.”  She smiled wanly through her tears, and he took care to slowly load the dishwasher, when he really wanted to smash all the plates instead.

The Whites had been living an artificial, sheltered life for so long, it was hard to think of what it would be like to live differently.  Their two-story home with its four bedrooms, swimming pool, a piano, and a wet bar was a capitalistic illusion of security, but it was all they had ever known.  Marty hearkened back to the days when they pretended to be a “normal” family: Good Ol’ Dad would drag them to country club dinners, Giants games at Candlestick Park (which he liked), or the stamp and coin shows (which he hated).  Although it was all a masquerade, they had grown accustomed to a life of luxury where everything was provided for them, and things like clothes, food, books, and toys were never lacking.  What will our lives be like if we can no longer afford those things? Marty mused miserably.  Marge still sobbed silently at the plastic kitchen table, and he went out to the backyard to clear his head.  The pool was covered with floating leaves and debris from the storm.  I won’t miss having to clean this stupid thing, he grumbled to himself as he used a net to skim off the worst of it.  If only his own life could be cleaned so easily.