Mr. D’s wife Jane was not an easy woman to please. She almost never spoke to me, and I was very much okay with that. On several occasions I would be working with Mr. D and his wife would let loose with a blood-curdling “HENNN-RRYYY!!!” that made me think of how Dame Van Winkle died when she burst a blood-vessel yelling at a New England peddler. Some years earlier my family went to a circus in Kansas City, and during a bathroom break I witnessed a couple of performers having a screaming breakdown argument out in the service ring. Whatever venom and invective they hurled at each other was 10x worse in Spanish. I have no idea what it was about but it was one of the loudest and most terrifying things I’d ever witnessed. That is, up until Mrs. D let loose in a solo performance that equaled and even surpassed the heat and Latin fury of a husband-wife trapeze act from South America.
Mr. D always responded with a meek “Yes, dear?” which contained no trace of irony - Henry was a genuinely nice guy. I was many years older before I really understood just how abnormal Jane D’s aggressive vocalization was: they’d been married 20+ years, and it’s rare for husband-wife communication to devolve to the raw, wallpaper-scorching level of sulphur and disdain of Mrs. D’s displeasure. I witnessed these displays on several occasions. And again I was many years older before I began to appreciate that maybe Henry wanted me around for more than just odd-jobs: God only knows what kind of terror and nightmare fury Jane unleashed upon him when I wasn’t there.
Mr. D was, as I said, a genuinely nice guy. He had designed and built this wonderful house with the aforementioned indoor pool and a beautiful 3-level deck right on the edge of a picturesque lake. It probably took 10 years to go from the first daydreams to actual construction. It was his dream home, where he and Jane would live happily ever after. At least, that’s how it began.
And one day he walked away from it all to go live with his secretary Norma in a non-descript apartment in St. Louis. I stopped in to visit them once, and it still makes me smile to remember just how *happy* they were together.
Mrs. D got the house, and I was still called upon occasionally to house-sit. It’s strange, but I don’t remember ever speaking to her. I believe these house-sitting arrangements may well have been set up through my parents. I was 17 years old with lots of free time, if Mom said “Jane D wants you to watch her house next week” I was like “Okay!”
Now, this may or may not make sense, but as a teenager who was occasionally given sole private access to a beautiful home, I did not go snooping through the house looking for money or smut or personal secrets. I liked Henry (and, later, feared Jane) enough that it just seemed wrong (or unwise) to do such a thing. My worst transgressions consisted of skinny-dipping in the indoor pool and playing with the Wurlitzer electric organ in the living room.
But I still found myself going through various drawers and cabinets looking for cleaning supplies and whatnot because the cats invariably made some kind of horrible cat-mess at least twice a week, using ancient and venerable cat-mess materials such as cat hair, cat vomit, cat piss, and (of course) the ever popular cat feces. They were sneaky about it, too: it once took me a week to track down a foul odor emanating from about a pound of cat turds piled in a plant that was hanging 10 feet above the floor. I have no idea how the loathsome creatures managed to place them there.
And so, in a manner that I believe is common to almost all house-sitters, I innocently became aware of any number of trivial “private” things like: what’s under the kitchen sink? Where are the knives and forks and spoons? Scotch tape? Glasses? Paper and scissors? Pliers? And so on.
Thinking back on it all, it surprises and amazes me how little I knew about the Adult Universe surrounding me. I mostly wanted adults to leave me alone so I could read or hang out with my few friends. In retrospect it is obvious that I was completely unaware of the broad spectrum of social interactions happening all around me.
But one day I walked in on my parents having a very tense discussion.
*Very* tense.
I skedaddled, but later I asked my father what was going on. It seems my Mom had received a letter that informed her that my Dad was cheating on her.
I was puzzled. “Can I see the letter?” I asked. He gave it to me. It was very simple. Using a typewriter, someone had written
ShirleyNo date, signature, or anything else to hint at who the writer might be.
Your husband is cheating on you!
A friend
But there was one odd thing about it: the paper itself was thicker than usual, almost like construction paper. And it was an unusual mauve color.
I handed it back to Dad, looked him in the eye, and told him “Jane D wrote this.”
He didn’t expect that. “What?”
“The D’s - I don’t know if they bought it all at a close-out sale and figured they’d never have to buy stationery again, or what - but they’ve got reams and reams and reams of this purple paper.” And it was the truth: I don’t know why, but the D’s had boxes and boxes full of this funky purple paper, they used it for notes, there’d be lists tacked to the refrigerator with a magnet, I’d seen Henry sketch stuff on it. The color was odd, but not so odd that I’d ever asked Mr. D “so what’s up with the purple paper?” But the color, texture, and apparent lifetime supply was just so slightly unusual as to be unmistakable and unforgettable.
Dad called my Mom, she came in and we had a short talk that I think mostly went “I swear to God, this letter came from Mrs. D. I know because it’s purple.”
I had noticed that adults did not always believe what I told them, even on those occasions when I was speaking the absolute truth. This was probably because as a teenager, I was a horrible and unapologetic lying liar. All those times my father asked me about unusual dents in the car, what’s that funny smell, why was I taking so long in the bathroom - they all came back to haunt me when I became a parent.
But on this occasion, I really was speaking the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. It probably helped. I said what I said, and left them alone, and never heard a word about the incident ever again.
So what’s the point?
Recently, through the miracle of advanced technology that we call Facebook, I discovered that a couple of my neighbors had received some rather hateful letters in the mail. The content was hurtful but largely stupid political crap - the 2020 elections being something of a low-point in the last century or so of American Democracy - but two items have stuck with me. One is that the two letters look to have been posted from the same location, and both bear the same kind of postage stamp. The other is that it seems like the same person is responsible for both letters, and furthermore it’s been claimed that this person has been writing hateful letters for at least a couple of years.
So it tickles me to wonder if someday a neighborhood kid will sit down to dinner and tell Mom and Dad “I mowed Mr ___’s lawn and wow he sure likes to write letters!” and Karma will slowly, majestically expose this anonymous letter-writing dipshit for the sad and stunted person he is.