The Last Time I Was Me. Cathy Lamb

      Each time I ventured into the river for my daily multihour crying/drinking walk, I noticed a two-story white house across the way from Rosvita’s. The paint was cracking and chipped like dead skin; the floorboards of the front and back decks rotted through and sagging; and the siding was falling off strip by strip like a house stripper. The house looked like it was sagging into itself as a deflating silicon fake boob might. It looked like it felt done for.

      I related to that house like no one’s business simply because it looked like me. Only it was a house, I am a person and, I assumed, it did not have half the shoe collection that I had.

      A few days later, on the way back from my crying/drinking walk along the river, with a bottle of wine, I stopped and stared. No one lived in the house, Rosvita had told me. The old man and his wife who had lived there died six months apart years ago and there were no relatives. A Realtor had tried to sell it for a while, but no one was interested. The sign lay flat on the grass.

      I gingerly tiptoed up the sinking front steps and tried to open the door. At first, it wouldn’t budge. I pushed against it and it crashed to the floor. Dust and dirt billowed up in great clouds.

      While I waited for the dust to clear, I took another gulp of wine straight out of the bottle. It was only 2:00 in the afternoon, so I was restraining myself.

      I stepped on the door and invited myself in. The largish living room was to my left, the dining room to my right. Stairs climbed to the second story. It was dark and dreary inside, like an oversize cave, and the floor creaked beneath trodden-down green carpet. I smelled the expected must and mold.

      The floor in the little hallway to the kitchen wobbled and I wondered if it would give out under my weight. The mice scrambled to hide, thoroughly put out, I’m sure, that a human had invaded their home. The kitchen cabinets, dark brown like poop, hung at odd angles and the laminate counters were chewed up and stained.

      The kitchen opened up to a large family room and eating nook, but it had only one window over the sink and a cracked sliding glass door.

      I decided to do some miniremodeling and pulled at the blinds. They came unhinged and crashed to the floor. Sunlight flooded in, making even that damp and dark room seem a thousand times more cheerful. I pulled the blinds off the sliding glass door, opened it, and let in clean mountain air. I could almost feel the house exhaling around me with relief.

      I peered out at the river sparkling beyond the trees. The house had a great view, at least. I heard birds chirping, leaves rustling in the breeze and, right beneath my feet, the sound of an animal moving. I guessed it was a possum or a raccoon. I also heard a munching sound in the wall near me. I guessed it was termites. A spider crawled over my shoe. I guessed there were probably millions of them here.

      I took another swig of wine, and studied the ceiling. It had a multitude of water stains. The wood paneling over the walls, also the color of poop, was peeling off, and the carpet was alternately wet, crunchy, or almost nonexistent. The putrid diseases Rosvita could find!

      There was one bathroom. The tub was filled with mouse shit. The shower curtain was covered in yuck and, again, the ceiling was stained. The faucets on the sink were rusted through.

      Feeling adventurous, I climbed the stairs up to the second floor, stepping carefully, much like a tightrope walker.

      Upstairs, all the windows were covered with dark blinds. I yanked those blinds off again and the sun did its work. The landing was quite large, more like an upstairs loft, and there were three bedrooms. The mattresses were still in all of the rooms and smelled like urine, so I figured a few homeless people had been here in the past. There was also a collection of sick and tired furniture, including a rocking chair. Outside of the master bedroom, there was a small deck. I did not dare step on that deck. Falling through the air is not my idea of fun.

      In the distance, about 100 yards beyond the house, I could see a smaller white structure nestled in a few pine trees. It was one level, but it looked like it might have a basement. I figured it had been used as a guest house.

      I poked around again downstairs. The whole house smelled like a nursing home for old people without the disinfectant. I knew the stains on the ceiling indicated terrible water problems. The roof reminded me of the caved in part of a diaphragm. A rat scurried across the floor as my eyes located a pile of ants in another corner.

      The house that looked like me was in ruins. It should be bulldozed.

      Demolished and hauled away.

      I loved it.

      I ran back to Rosvita’s with my wine and called the Realtor.

      I asked the price.

      He told me.

      I laughed, choked a bit on my wine, offered him half that.

      He refused.

      I laughed again, as if he had told a smashingly good joke. “If you can get someone to pay that price for that mouse-infested, urine-stained, mold-growing dump, I will eat my left arm off while wearing fake vampire teeth, buddy. Have a nice day.” I put the receiver down and waited.

      The phone rang two minutes later and he agreed to the price.

      I thanked him for his time.

      When we were done with our little chat, I went back to my new house and listened to the music of the river, the high notes and low notes and all the notes in between.

      CHAPTER 8

      In my anger management class there are four other people besides me and Emmaline Hallwyler, the woman dressed in white, who yells and tells people not to be pathetic.

      There is Bradon King who is African-American, about six-feet-six inches tall, bald, and a man who favored pink, lavender, or sky blue dress shirts. When you look that macho you can wear any darn color you want, you know. After talking to him for several minutes at the beginning of the first class, where I found out he plays the piano because his grandmother insisted he do so for two hours every day so he stayed out of trouble, I could not for a minute think that he would have the slightest bit of a temper, let alone hurt anyone. He is forty-five years old, has been married to the same woman for twenty-five years, and they have five children.

      Bradon was there because he is rather unhappy with the way the city’s school system treats minorities, particularly African-American students, and at a recent school board meeting he felt compelled to stand on top of the table, where the all-white school board sat glaring at an almost all African-American audience, and refused to get down. He informed the board that they obviously didn’t care about black kids, didn’t care about their futures, didn’t care that they weren’t getting a decent education, didn’t care, didn’t care, didn’t care. He smashed two chairs. He smashed the chairs to show what would happen to black kids’ future if they weren’t educated.

      “Their futures are smashed. Splintered. Broken. Gone. Their futures are gone. We need to educate these kids!” he yelled to the raucous, supportive cheers of everyone in the room, except the all white board.

      The police were called. Bradon refused to apologize for not apologizing when he yelled that the people on the school board were a bunch of lazy-ass, racist, rich, white people, living in their own tight little boxes, and completely out of touch with the troubles that minority kids face every single day. The paper wrote about it-ya-dee-da-deeah and wham. Bradon King, owner of a very successful local construction company, King Construction, landed in anger management class.

      “Every