Free The Idiot Girl and the Flaming Tantrum of Death by Laurie Notaro Page B

I’m not moving. This is my house. My HUD house, my 1927 blond-brick bungalow that took almost a decade and every penny I had to make into Veronica’s house. And in a move fed by emotion, I ran to the nearest doorway and put my arms on either side of the wall and my head against the inside of the doorjamb.
    “What are you doing?” my husband said when he came home.
    “Shut up!”
    “Are you…” He lowered his tone. “Honey, are you hugging the house?”
    “You’re an asshole,” I said, choking. “So what if I’m hugging the house!”
    “I—” he started.
    “It’s my house! I can hug it if I want to!” I bellowed.
    “You’re crying,” he replied gently. “What happened?”
    “When I found this house it was brown on a dirt lot,” I spewed. “And bums had been living in it and the kitchen counter had that awful brown tile and the floor had that asbestos flooring that I’m sure we both got cancer from when we took it up and there was no air-conditioning and it was so hot. It was so hot. And then I took eight layers of paint off the fireplace mantel and realized that was the only thing holding it together and I rebuilt it. And one night when you were late coming home I took a screwdriver and a hammer and chiseled away that brown tile in the kitchen and found soapstone. And under the asbestos was that tar-covered wood floor that you sanded for a month until it turned a honey color and it was just beautiful. And I found the swinging kitchen door in the barn and took eight layers of paint off that, too, but it took me six years to find the right piece of hardware for us to put it up with; I found it in that salvage place in Seattle. And I wrote three hundred product reviews about spatulas for Amazon to buy our air conditioner, and I was so sick of salad spinners and vegetable peelers and slotted spoons that I wanted to die, but we finally got air-conditioning and it was cool in the house for the first time ever, remember?”
    As the tears rolled down my face, my husband looked at me, took my hand off the wall, and gave me a hug.
    “I do remember,” he said. “I remember when we thought it would be a good idea to sandblast the fireplace and within two seconds, the living room looked like a playground and the corner brick looked like it had a bullet hole in it.”
    I smiled. I nodded. “You’re supposed to move the sandblaster around and not hold it in one place like you’re peeing,” I reminded him.
    “I remember when you thought it would be a good idea to hire a homeless man to remove the dead trees in the front yard,” he continued. “And I came home to a delusional, scabby schizophrenic running across my yard and then kung fu kicking the tree, like he was some sort of zombie Bruce Lee.”
    “I got in trouble for that.”
    “Yes, you did,” he agreed. “And I remember a girl who wanted to save her house so bad she went out and fought a fire in her underwear, the ones that looked like a hula skirt. You could have and should have been arrested for indecent exposure, but that’s how much you love this house. You risked being naked, outside, to protect it. I was in my underwear, too, so I just watched you from the bedroom window.”
    A laugh burst out of my throat.
    “I knew I saw you in there,” I said, breaking the hug. “I have to go out and look at the sign. I need to get this over with.”
    My husband followed me outside, and we stood together for a long time, just looking at the Realty Executives sign spiked in the middle of our front yard.
    “I just can’t believe we’re doing this,” I admitted. “I can’t believe we’re moving. I love this house.”
    “I love this house, too,” my husband replied. “We’ll get a great house in Oregon, I promise, but this will always be our first house. It will always be a special place for both of us.”
    “I forgot to tell you!” I suddenly said, remembering the police helicopter that had swooped in over my house at lunchtime. “A