Love Street - Little Chad

By Liz Zuercher

Little Chad and his family live across the cul de sac from Eddie Petrocelli.

Eight year old Little Chad Grissom, who had pretended to be sick to get out of going to school, stuffed a pillow under his bed covers, tiptoed down the stairs and slipped out the back door.  He crept across the back yard dirt and climbed over the wrought iron fence that separated his yard from the slope behind.  His mother, Jessie, was busy yelling at his baby sister Sukie for spilling her apple juice and didn’t notice that he had left the house.  He liked to go out exploring like Indiana Jones and he carried his snake whip and wore a floppy camouflage hat to shield his eyes from the sun. 

Today, he wanted to make it all the way along the back of the houses to the end of the far cul de sac and down the slope behind to the dry creek bed below.  Beyond that was a clump of oak trees that looked like it would be good for a fort.  Maybe he’d have to fight a coyote or a mountain lion along the way or maybe he’d come across a pit of snakes and there would be a treasure there or a stacked naked woman tied up that he could free. 

That’s what his dad, Big Chad, called women with big boobies – stacked – and Little Chad had noticed his dad taking long looks at stacked women.  Little Chad liked to look, too.  They had that in common, along with their name.  Chad Michael Grissom.  Big Chad and Little Chad.  Two chips off the same block.  There was no doubting they were father and son, with the same broad face, blond crew cut and stocky build.  Sometimes people called them Big Chunk and Little Chunk or Double Chunk.  Little Chad hated that, but he liked that he was named after his father and he tried to be like him every chance he got.  Still, he wasn’t so little any more and he was thinking of dropping the Little Chad and insisting on being called something else.  He just hadn’t figured out what he wanted his new name to be yet.

Little Chad sneaked along the concrete drainage ditch behind the houses, keeping alert for signs of people who might notice him.  He wanted to go undetected.  He was pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to be back here, but that hadn’t stopped him from his explorations before.  He got to the end of the houses and crouched down at the top of the slope, trying to decide the best way to make it to the bottom.  He could have zigzagged along the drains, but thought it would be a lot more fun to run headlong down the hill.  With a flourish of his whip, he catapulted himself over the edge.  Geronimo! He yelled to himself.  Halfway down the hill his foot caught on a sprinkler head, tripping him up and sending him rolling and bouncing to the bottom.  Man, that was awesome, he thought, as he stood up and brushed himself off.  His hat was gone and his whip hadn’t made it down the hill but he was in one piece.  Awesome!  That called for a piss, so he unzipped his pants and peed on a dry bush before continuing on his adventure.

* * * * *

Jessie Grissom cleaned the apple juice from the vinyl kitchen floor, wiped Sukie’s face and hands and lifted her out of the high chair.  Sukie’s legs straddled Jessie’s pregnant belly and her little foot bounced back and forth against the six month tummy as Jessie walked across the room to the playpen and dumped Sukie down inside it.  The playpen was full of little rubber toys that Sukie proceeded to examine and squeeze and methodically throw out of the pen into the family room.  One of them hit Jessie square in the back, and she turned to glare at the baby.  For a moment Sukie glared back, then stooped to pick up another toy, a grotesque shocking pink Michelin Man creature with a clown face and a big red smile.  Sukie scowled at her mother and sent the pink man flying across the room toward her.  Jessie ducked to avoid the toy, but she misjudged and it hit her anyway, right in the middle of her pregnant belly.  She doubled over and the baby inside kicked furiously.

“You little bitch,” Jessie yelled at her daughter, who had found another round of ammunition to launch at her mother, this time a purple dog with a tuft of bright yellow hair.  Jessie grabbed Sukie from the playpen and carried her upstairs to her bedroom and threw her down into the crib.  “See how you like that,” she said and slammed the door on her way out. 

Sukie started screaming at the top of her lungs, but Jessie ignored her.   She stopped at the door to Little Chad’s room and called into him.  “You gonna sleep the whole damned day, Little Chad?”  She was sure he’d been faking this morning – she’d been pretty good at that herself when she was a kid – but she gave in to him anyway.  One less thing she had to worry about this morning, getting the kid to school.  Why he couldn’t walk to school like she had was a mystery.  Kids were such marshmallows these days.  Usually Big Chad took him to school, but he was out of town on a business trip and she was on her own again.

“Little Chad, you awake?” she asked.  When he didn’t reply she opened the door and looked in to see the lump of his body under the covers.  Well, at least one of her kids was being quiet, she thought, and closed the door.  She decided to let him sleep a little more while she had her morning coffee and watched The View.  She loved when those women started arguing with each other, all of them talking at the same time.

Back down in the kitchen, she poured herself a cup of coffee and doctored it a little bit with some whiskey she kept in the pantry.  Lighting up a cigarette, she clicked on the television, sat down on the family room sofa and propped her feet on the coffee table.  Now she could watch her show in peace.

* * * * *

Little Chad struggled to climb back up the big hill, then sat down in the middle of the drainage culvert to rest.  A man was walking around on the hill behind Little Chad’s house, so he decided to lay low here until the guy finished whatever it was he was doing.  He watched the guy digging around on the hill and thought that would be a fun job and that maybe later he’d go see where the man had been digging.  Maybe there was some hidden treasure there that the man missed.  Little Chad felt a little sleepy after his big climb, so he closed his eyes for just a minute.

He woke up with a start to the sound of a man’s voice.

“Hey kid, what are you doing here?” The man’s voice was very deep and sounded angry.

“Nothin’,” said Little Chad.

     

“Well, you shouldn’t be out here.  It’s not a playground.  You could hurt yourself, and you could damage something here,” the man scolded.  “Where do you live?”

    

      “Just down there,” Little Chad pointed away from his own house.

      “Why aren’t you in school?” the man asked.

       “Holiday,” Little Chad lied.

“Sure,” the man said, like he didn’t believe Little Chad.  “Well, I should report you to the cops, but I’ll let you go this time.  You’d better get on home now, and don’t let me catch you out here again.”

“Okay,” Little Chad said, getting to his feet and brushing himself off.  “What are you doing out here anyway?”

“Testing the hillside to make sure it doesn’t fall down,” the man said.

“Is it okay?” Little Chad asked.  “It isn’t gonna fall on me is it?”

“Not today,” the man said.

“Tomorrow?” Little Chad asked.

“Probably not.”

“Good,” Little Chad said.  He wanted to get off the hillside now.  He was getting a little nervous about getting buried by all that dirt.  “I gotta go.  Bye.”

“So long,” the man said.  “Remember – this isn’t a playground.”

“Okay,” Little Chad said and took off running down the culvert.

When he got to his yard, Little Chad peeked between the fence posts to see if his mother was still in the family room.  He couldn’t tell, so he climbed over the fence and crept along the side block wall until he got to the French door that opened into the family room.  He could see that the television was on and his mother’s feet were propped up on the coffee table.  She was slouched down in the sofa cushions, so he couldn’t tell if she was awake or if she’d fallen asleep like usual in front of the television.  He eased the door open and heard his mother’s snore.  He quickly slipped inside, closed the door behind him and tiptoed upstairs to his room.  Taking the pillows out from under the covers, he climbed into bed. 

He was pretty tired after his adventure and he closed his eyes, meaning to take a little nap.  But sleep wouldn’t come.  Instead he kept seeing the hillside behind his house crumble and big clods of dirt and boulders and plants were rushing down the hill into his back yard, burying his house.  And the houses up above fell down the hill and he was running and running as fast as he could, but he couldn’t get away.  Little Chad wasn’t afraid of much, but he was afraid of that hillside now. 

He should tell his mom, he thought.  But that would mean admitting he had sneaked out of the house and wasn’t sick at all and she would tell his dad and Dad would take the paddle to him and he didn’t want that.  Maybe he’d just wait a few days.

Golden Boots

Golden Boots

by Nancy Grossman-Samuel

I have a pair of golden boots. They are not boots I would have bought myself, but when Pat said she wanted them I was tickled. Someone should have those golden boots. And they’re mine now. And I am both sad and happy at the same time because it would be nice if Pat could still wear her golden boots. She’s done with them. She’s done with it all. She decided, at seventy something that she’d had it here and was ready to move on.

I met Pat because I was her hospice volunteer. We became good friends. She told me her stories. Some common, some exciting, like about when she won a modeling contest even before finishing high school, and how she went all over the country and the world to model clothes. She showed me her picture in a magazine. She was adorable. She was wearing a cute blue dress, white gloves (I think), and a white belt that accentuated her teeny tiny waist. She was naive and young, and the money would be a great help to her hard working mother who she loved as much as life itself.

Though barely conscious, I sat with Pat a few days before she passed, and there were times she’d get a smile on her face that I knew meant she must be seeing that very mother.

While modeling in New York, she met a young man who was a friend of her employer. Sometime later she was invited down south where he lived with his parents for a holiday visit. He was Jewish and she was Christian and his mother would have none of it. He was wealthy and she was poor, and he adored her and she him. But he could not defy his parents, and they parted forever. Not a happy event for either of them.

The next time Pat heard from him was the day of her wedding. He decided he’d made a terrible mistake and went to her house; she was out; her mother told the young man that Pat was to be married that day. He left, I assume heartbroken. I tried to find him through Google and various social media sites, but I was never successful. I didn’t tell her that I was going to try, or that I did try. Neither of her two marriages worked and I had fantasies about them meeting and that meeting creating a healing for her.

Pat was very self-sufficient, but when I met her she was very ill and living at her daughter’s house. Right before Christmas she went back to her own apartment where I visited her for nearly a year. As she declined, she moved to a private care home. Before we knew it, she was off hospice for failure to decline. Being fed three meals a day, and assisted daily with her general care was probably the key though she often missed her independent living.

No longer my hospice patient, I kept visiting, and eventually we decided it would be okay, since I was now just her friend, to leave the house together. I would drive her. She loved my Prius plug-in. She loved the car, its light blue color, and the drive. She loved to get out and go places. We went to movies, lunch, and shopping. Pat loved to shop. It made her happy.

When I originally saw those golden boots my eyes widened, but it was more a “who would wear those?” wide. When Pat saw them she said “Oh my. I think I have to have those.”

She tried them on and asked me if she was silly to get them. I asked her if she really liked them, and when she said ‘yes’ I said, ‘no, you are not silly to get them.’

The following week we went out, and she was wearing the golden boots. She looked like a kid in a candy shop. “Will you be embarrassed to be seen with me wearing these?” she asked, a grin on her face.

“Are you kidding?” I asked, “I want to get a pair of my own!”

Rest in Peace Pat – you are missed

A post script to this story: I was working on a number of different possible stories to read at the open mic for which this was written. I spent hours and came up with lots of things that weren't working for a variety of reasons. None of them were about Pat. I took a shower to get ready to go figuring I would not read, just enjoy others’ stories. I sat down one more time with not very much time left before I had to go, the golden boots on my feet, and this story poured out of me. I’m sure it was Pat at my shoulder dictating. She would have loved the open mic evenings. I’m sorry I never thought to invite her.

Heading Into Old Age Rant

By Susan Cameron

I ripped into my husband a couple of days ago, and this is all I feel like writing tonight.  We patched it up, but time will tell if the patch holds...


My dear friend will turn 61 next week. I've known her since she was 18. I'm sending her a funny birthday card that teases about age and forgetfulness, though I am no longer sure if forgetfulness is a laughable curse or a blessing in disguise.  

I pulled out my address book to look up her latest address -- the third one for her in this particular book, though there are many other defunct entries for her in many other long-gone books. Her list of former homes is short compared to the one I compiled for myself in my chaotic youth.  

Anyhow, after I addressed her card, I grabbed a pencil, started on the A's and went through the Z's, drawing lines through entries that were no longer valid -- my late mother's, my late father's, a few dead friends and acquaintances, closed businesses, doctors I no longer see, people I have not seen for a long time and do not wish to see, people I'd like to see again, but they're somewhere in the wind.

I closed the book and knew there was some kind of lesson in this, but what? Nothing stands still, time moves on, change is inevitable, all things must pass, blah banal blah?  Well, yes; but I think the reminder is that there's a bigger pencil than mine that does the final crossing out.  

Two-thirds of the sand in my personal hourglass has slid through to the bottom. This is fine, and I accept it, but I refuse to spend the final third of my life seething and furious over a spouse's stupidity and disrespect. Change is indeed inevitable, and many, many times I have been the agent of major changes in my own life and in other people's as well, and I can absolutely, fearlessly do it again.

If I have to choose between being angry and being alone, I will choose solitude and hope over fury and despair.  

I've dug my old flamethrower out of the closet and polished it up. If I have to use it, I will. See the smile on my face? Right now, I feel better than James Brown!

copyright 2013, Susan (by-God) Cameron

Introducing Love Street

By Liz Zuercher

Over the next few months here on Tasty Sauce I'd like to introduce you to some of the people who live on one street in a coastal Southern California new home community.  You've already gotten to know Cassie, who sold them all their homes.  Now it's time to meet some of her customers, starting with Eddie Petrocelli.

Imagine barbells or a baby’s rattle – two orbs connected by a metal rod or a silver cylinder - and you will know what Camino Dos Cortes looks like.  Two cul de sacs connected by a straight line of a street, fourteen new houses sidled up next to each other as closely as the city code will allow until they must curve around the cul de sac.  There the lots fall into pie shapes, with the point of the pie slice at the street flaring back into a large wide back yard. 

One cul de sac is missing the two end homes and instead has a grassy hill up to an adjoining street with a walkway down to Dos Cortes.  The other cul de sac borders California wild land that glows green and yellow in the spring after the winter rains.  That’s the way it was when everyone put down their deposits and signed their contracts.  Now, though, in late September, the hills are gray with brush gone dry from lack of rain. 

One row of houses backs up to a hill with a network of concrete drainage culverts and newly installed landscaping intended to hold and beautify the slope.  So far it has done neither.  The houses here were less expensive than the ones across the street that have expansive views toward the ocean.  You can’t always see the ocean in the distance, but the owners of these homes have paid dearly for the possibility of an ocean view.

It’s been almost a year since the homes on Dos Cortes were completed, people moved in and the neighborhood began to take shape.  Over a period of two months moving vans came and went, sometimes three or four at a time jockeying for position on the street.  Workers’ trucks buzzed around like gnats as last minute adjustments were made to the homes, utilities were connected and buyers turned into homeowners and met their neighbors.  Even though some of them had paid vastly different amounts for their homes, they all had a sense of equality and expansiveness for their new neighbors, people they expected would become fast friends.  It was like the beginning of a marriage, the honeymoon period, where love blinds spouses to their annoying habits and greater failings.

Neighbors met each other for the first time at the mailbox or in the street, shaking hands and making introductions as they unloaded boxes or took out the trash.  Someone organized an open house to get acquainted. The couples with children clustered together as the kids sized each other up.  The moms talked about forming a playgroup.  The dads talked about their jobs, their golf games and surfing Trestles.  There were also two single men and one single woman, one set of grandparents and two newlywed couples who mingled and introduced themselves over guacamole, chips and beer.  Everyone was full of promise for their new neighborhood, expectations high.

The street that led to Camino Dos Cortes was named Via Amor and that prompted Kristen Weber, one of the moms, to suggest that they all lived at the end of Love Street, that this bit of California real estate was where Love Street emptied out, pouring all the love onto their street.  That made their street full of love, she said, and before long they were all saying they lived on Love Street, ignoring the actual name of their street.

“It doesn’t matter what the street is really called,” Kristen told Cassie in the sales office. “We all love each other, so we live on Love Street.  It’s so perfect.”

For a while it was true – all was beautiful on Love Street, except maybe for Eddie Petrocelli.

* * * * *

Eddie Petrocelli stirred things up from the day he moved in, when he put a life-sized plastic alligator in his front yard.  Well, you couldn’t exactly call it a yard yet.  To be honest, it was raked dirt like everyone else’s lot. 

If you came up Via Amor and turned right into the cul de sac, Eddie’s house was the third house on the right, next to the grassy hill.  If you turned left from Via Amor you’d miss seeing Eddie’s house altogether, but when you drove out of the neighborhood you couldn’t miss the house or the alligator.  If you walked the dog or chased the kids or just strolled at dawn or dusk, the alligator seemed to snarl at you as you went by.  Dogs growled at it, then peed on it when it didn’t move.  Babies cried when they saw it, but a few adventurous kids used it as a climbing toy, much to their mothers’ dismay.

Eddie Petrocelli was one of the single men on the block, but no one considered him a “catch”, except maybe Eddie himself.  He was a big boisterous fellow in his late thirties with thick black hair and a barrel chest, who enjoyed telling everyone he encountered how successful he was as a sub prime mortgage broker.

“I make $50,000 a month, man,” he told Dan Christiansen across the street, who hadn’t asked and didn’t care how much Eddie made a month or a year or in his lifetime.  “You should try it.  I can get you a job.  I have my own company and I can hire whoever I want.  You’d make a bundle,” Eddie boasted.  But Dan was happy as a civil engineer and had no desire to work for Eddie, so he said no thanks.  Eddie slapped Dan on the back and said to keep it in mind.

“What I really want to talk to you about is the alligator,” Dan said.

“Isn’t it a hoot?” Eddie said, letting out a guffaw.  “It’s just temporary.  I’ll take it down when I start my landscaping.”

That was another bone of contention the neighbors discussed.  Almost everyone else had done their landscaping, but Eddie still had a dirt yard.  Dan decided to stick to the alligator issue.

“Well, it’s been ten months now and the neighbors aren’t that crazy about it.  Could you maybe move it to the back yard?” Dan had the dubious honor of being the spokesperson for several of the neighbors who’d been talking about this eyesore.  Since Dan was such a mild-mannered guy, they all decided he would be best suited to approach Eddie.

Eddie’s brow furrowed and a dark cloud seemed to cover his face for just a moment before a smile returned to his lips.  “I don’t think so,” he said.  “I like it there.”

Dan thought he’d heard Eddie wrong.  Was the guy really making an issue of this?  “We were hoping to resolve this in a friendly fashion.  No one wants to get pissy about this, but the CC&R’s are pretty clear about lawn ornaments,” Dan said.

“I like the alligator.  The alligator stays.” Eddie said with an intensity that surprised Dan. 

“Oh,” said Dan, shocked by Eddie’s lack of Love Street cooperative spirit.  “I guess we’ll see about that.” 

“I guess we will,” said Eddie.  He stood straight as a sentinel in front of the alligator.

Dan shook his head as he walked back to his house.  That hadn’t gone well, not well at all.

* * * * * 

The next morning when Dan went out to pick up his newspaper, he saw that Eddie had been busy overnight.  Three plastic bunnies and two plastic squirrels cavorted around the alligator, and a wire coat hanger hung from the alligator’s snout.  A foot high redwood picket fence edged the sidewalk in front of Eddie’s house and a wooden picnic table with attached benches sat in the middle of the dirt yard.  On the Juliet balcony above the garage a full-sized carousel horse looked like it was about to leap over the railing.  Dan thought he saw Eddie peeking out from behind the curtain and could swear he was laughing.  

Just like that the honeymoon was over on Love Street.