Killjoy

A short story from my collection: Underbelly

I had the lady figured out.

A killjoy.

The kind of woman who irons her sheets, who uses tissue liners on toilet seats in public restrooms.

The first time I saw her she was spraying citronella on the rusted screens of her cabin. (No small squat candle for her.)

I lifted a canvas tent-flap in my cabin and gave a whiff. She was trudging around the outside of her one-room Sherman cabin aiming and spraying like she was watering houseplants. Even in the Labor Day heat and humidity, she wore blue jeans, a flannel shirt, and work boots.

I had her pegged.

This was a woman who began packing weeks ahead, who tacked the camp’s List of Things to Bring under a Things to Do Today magnet on her refrigerator, who wouldn’t leave home without a hot water bottle, umbrella, extra toilet paper, and suppositories.

She caught me looking and came over, her finger still on the trigger of her plastic spray bottle.

“I take it you’re not worried about the mosquitoes?” she smiled, eyeing first my open-air cabin, and then the New York license plate on my pickup.

I shrugged.

“You are familiar with the encephalitis problem?” she continued.

“Problem?” I laughed, throwing overstuffed green garbage bags carrying sleeping bags and clothing off the back of my truck.

“It’s quite serious,” she said, raising her bottle to spray a gnat. “The authorities have trapped sixty mosquitoes from the next town over. Four carried the Eastern equine encephalitis virus.”

“No kidding?” I said, enjoying the impact the flying bags were having.

She waved away a cloud of dust.

“You might want to pick up some Cutter’s,” she said. “Make sure it contains twenty-percent DEET.” When she said DEET, her lips parted and stretched and she looked like Howdy Doody. I had the feeling she had a case of Cutter’s and yards of mosquito netting stowed in the back of her minivan.

“Isn’t that the stuff they banned a few years ago?” I asked. “High toxicity?”

She shot me a look that said, “What are you stupid?”

“Would you rather have a rash or be dead from Triple E?” she snorted as if it were an open and shut case.

I raised my eyebrows as I lifted my daughter’s pink bicycle out.

“Children?” she asked, somewhat more conciliatory.

When I told her I had two girls, four and ten, she volunteered that hers were four, six, and ten.

“Two girls and a boy,” she said, sounding pleased that we had something in common. “I’ll send them over when we get settled.”

She turned to stomp across the gravel road. I imagined here kids, three little carbon copies of her in blue jeans, flannel, leather, folding their clothes, neatly stacking them in the open pine bookshelves, in a cloud of citronella. I bet she wrote their names in indelible black ink inside all their clothes.

“Great,” I said without much enthusiasm. “They should be back soon.”

“Back?” she stopped in the middle of the road and spun around.

“They’re exploring.”

“I take it your wife is with them,” she said.

Choosing my words carefully, I said, “Their mother’s not with us, Ms…?”

“Mrs. Sampson, but you can call me Marie.”

I had no intention of calling her Marie. Ever.

“You are aware, Mr?….”

“Harris,” I said. “Mr. Harris.” I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of saying, “Rob. You can call me Rob.”

“You are aware, Mr. Harris, that there is no lifeguard at the waterfront until tomorrow?”

I wasn’t, but I wasn’t going to tell her that.

“Far be it from me to give advice,” she said, shaking her head. “But you might want to keep an eye on them..”

I wasn’t sure why I disliked her at that moment, but when I looked up again she was perched on a stepladder, spraying the eaves of her cabin. Maybe she reminded me of my ex-wife. Or an aunt. I thought of asking the camp organizers for a cabin change, but I was bound to run into her in the dining hall or down by the dock.

By the time I unloaded the truck and plopped all our gear on the wood floor inside, my girls were running up the road.

“Guess what we found?” Jesse asked breathless.

Mandy didn’t wait for my response. “A climbing tower!”

“Can I try it, Dad?” Jesse asked, grabbing my hand and leading me down the road.

When I looked back I saw Marie pulling a six-gallon, two-horsepower shop vacuum from the back of her van.

“Hey,” I yelled.

I dug out the camp brochure from a back pocket of my khaki shorts and read it to her. “Says here, ‘Forget your cares, your cars, kitchens and cleaning.’ Are you here to have fun or clean house?”

She lugged the contraption up one stair at a time. “The dust,” she mumbled, wiping her forehead on her sleeve.

I suspected the shop vac was just one tool in the arsenal of cleaning supplies she had brought along. I wouldn’t be surprised to find her hunched and kneeling, scrubbing the showers and tile floors in the bathhouse before the week was out. Her poor kids. They still hadn’t made an appearance. She couldn’t hold them hostage for too long. Eventually they’d have to come up for food.

I wondered where Mr. Marie was.