If You Were Here

Seriously, I’ve kind of got a reputation for being a bit of a peacemaker, and I do my best to be polite. In fact, my sorority wanted me to join so badly they actually gave me a scholarship for all my dues. I guess when you stuff eighty girls who are all on their period at the same time into a single house, you’re willing to pay a premium to have a calm, collected presence there to defuse situations.

So to be clear, I like everyone.

Except hipsters.

And hooligans.

And Stephenie Meyer. (Because everyone knows zombies are cooler than vampires.)

Anyway, I’ve all but forgotten about the tagging until I get home a few hours later. Upon my return, I see that Mac didn’t opt to call 311 to request the city’s Graffiti Blasters team, nor did he drag out soapy water and a Brillo pad to scrub off the offending moniker. He didn’t buy a bucket of taupe paint and a brush, either.

No, my beloved opted for a less conventional solution. Now beneath the small, silver ORNESTEGA tag are much larger, thicker, blacker letters spelling out, IS GAY.

Yeah, this plan is foolproof.

Chapter Two. ONE SHEET TO THE WIND

We’re in the wine department at Costco when we receive the news.

Normally I feel a little queasy in this section, because I always think of the time I paired a nice four-year-old bottle of Costco merlot with a bag of three-year-old microwave popcorn. Did you know microwave popcorn has an expiration date? Because it does. And you should never ignore it. I spent three days living in my bathroom after that and now microwave popcorn’s on my permanent Do Not Fly list.

As Mac scrolls through the pages of our appraisal’s supporting documentation, my stomach is in knots. I feel like I swallowed a fist or a hockey puck or a steak that Mac cooked. I’m dying to find out what our house is worth. When we moved in, the astronomical asking price was way outside of our budget, which was another reason we opted to rent.

But over the past two years, our income exponentially increased after my novel It’s Raining Mennonites unexpectedly hit the New York Times bestseller list, which meant my next book, Rumspringa-ding-ding, recently sold for a tidy sum. Like I said, teenage zombies in love are fairly lucrative. I mean, they’re not teenage-vampires-in-love lucrative,¹² but I’m satisfied. Between the two of our incomes, we can afford any asking price.

“Holy cats,” Mac says succinctly. He holds out his iPhone for me to examine. I squint at the screen but can’t make out what I’m supposed to be seeing, because I refuse to admit I need reading glasses.¹³ “Here.” Mac taps the number in the middle of the screen. “Look here.”

I engage in more squinting and blinking and alternately bringing the phone closer and farther from my face. I finally see what he wants me to see and I’m confused. “But that number is way too low. Like, hundreds of thousands of dollars less than we expected.”

His grin is best described as being of the shit-eating variety. “Uh-huh.”

“What does that mean?”

Mac reaches across me to grab a couple of orange-labeled bottles from the Veuve Clicquot display. “That means we celebrate.”

But I’m not ready to cheer yet, so I press for more answers. “Our house dropped about forty percent in value? In a year? Don’t get me wrong; I’d love to snap it up at that price, but I can’t see how that’s possible. I mean, Vienna still owes more than that on her mortgage.”

Vienna Hyatt owns our house, and she’s the most unlikely landlord you’ve ever seen. She’s a twenty-five- year-old trust-fund kid who pissed away the bulk of her inheritance on blow and Manolos.¹⁴ Her real-estate-mogul parents decided to teach her a lesson,¹⁵ so she’s recently been forced into the family business, and now she’s our problem.

Apparently part of their tough-love policy requires that she take a hands-on approach with her properties. When we blew a fuse on one of our dual-zoned air-conditioning units last summer, Vienna showed up in five-inch heels with a screwdriver tucked into her Louis Vuitton dog carrier, right next to Versace, her teacup terrier. She insisted she could fix the unit, but when Mac went out to check her progress, he found her disassembling our gas grill. I can’t help but wonder if this is what her family had intended.

Mac narrows his eyes at me. “How would you know what Vienna owes on her mortgage?”

Okay, let me just say this and then we’ll never speak of it again. Any mail that comes to my house is automatically considered mine. If you don’t want me knowing how much you owe the bank, I urge you to fill out a change-of-address form.

“Um, it’s just a wild guess.” (Certain members of this household care not to be complicit in federal crimes.)

“The appraiser said that nothing on our side of the square has sold in over three months, and he had a bitch of a time finding comps because everything’s in foreclosure. Home prices around here dropped an average of thirty- four percent this year.”

Mac has a spring in his step as we cruise the meat counters, but I’m a little more conflicted. On the one hand, I’m delighted that our house has become so much more affordable, but on the other, when I think of the hardworking people who poured all of their savings into losing investments, I feel like I ate that stupid popcorn all over again. Somehow this doesn’t strike me as a victory.

When we get home from Costco, we find our garbage knocked over and trash strewn everywhere. Our cans are covered in ORNESTEGA tags.

Oh, kid. . that was probably a mistake.

“So that’s new,” Tracey says, all deadpan, pointing to the top half of my house.

The sheet sign was not my idea. I hadn’t even thought about them since college. In the early nineties, sheet signs were a big deal in my campus Greek system. We used them to express all kinds of emotions, like how totally awesome our new pledge class was or the extent to which we were excited for team games played with various balls.¹⁶ During homecoming weekends, rival fraternities would wage war against one another, dishing out zingers such as, THETA CHI, DON’T EVEN TRY, and PHI PSI — WHERE MEN ARE MEN AND SHEEP ARE SCARED, and, of course, the ubiquitous DELTS SUCK.

Now I suppose college students simply design a logo on their MacBooks and FTP the file to FedEx Office¹⁷ to be printed on a professional banner. They’ve probably never messed up their manicures by dipping their fingers into cans of Kiwi shoe polish. Mock us if you will now, kids, but I guarantee that smelling like a pair of driving moccasins was an aphrodisiac in my day.

Anyway, Mac urged me to help him take this fight to the sheetsign level. I resisted until I found a half-eaten lump of hamburger studded with oblong pink pills in our backyard.

Fortunately, we’re security-conscious enough to always keep the second gate between the alley and our garage locked, so the dogs never got near it. What’s ironic is that the pink pills were antihistamines, and appeared to be the exact same brand and strength we give Daisy for her hay fever. (The unfortunate side note here is that the neighborhood rats are all emboldened and strong, since they’re no longer troubled by seasonal allergies.)

Here’s the thing — I can handle an aspiring gangbanger’s halfassed attempts to mess with us. I wouldn’t say I welcome it,¹⁸ but I will say that I’m up for the challenge. I mean, I defy you to grow up in a steel town and not have it make you a little bit tough. Plus, those kickboxing classes I’ve taken have not been in vain.

Okay, fine.

All that time I’ve logged strolling along on the treadmill has not been in vain.

Okay, okay.

All the time I’ve spent watching Tae Bo infomercials has not been in vain. But, seriously, when someone threatens even one piece of fur on my precious doggies’ backs, even if it’s just with Benadryl, it is