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Novels by Mary Marcus
New on the Blog
Happy Birthday Dear Henry!
Today is Henry’s fourth birthday. I wish I could buy him a steak or a hamburger or a hot dog or something meaty he would adore, but Henry is one of those persnickety allergic white dogs who has to eat a very strict and limited diet, otherwise he scratches down to the skin and looks like hamburger meat himself. God, it’s awful if he goes off his pitiful little diet. I used to cook for Henry: fresh meat, veggies, and I’d give him flax seed oil. Now, he just eats this canned single ingredient crap that he just loves and the espresso cup full of the dog cereal that he also just loves and with which I bribe him. And he’s perfect. Thank God for the vet who told me to take him off the healthy and nutritious diet I was giving him and convinced me to put him on the canned crap. I got Henry because I always wanted a dog, my whole life, and never had one, other than the dogs my mother would bring home once in a while for my brother because he had no father and would promptly give away once the dog did something unseemly in the house as dogs are want to do. Neiman, the cocker spaniel, Flipper, the boxer, Count JoJo, the miniature poodle, Coleen, the dachshund (whom my sister called dog do), they all made brief tenures chez nous and they all departed not very long after they arrived. I loved them all. My son and I longed for a dog when he was growing up, and when he was punished in school for skipping (which happened more than I care to discuss) he would always opt for working...Waiting For Mumbai
Maybe my washing machine was just fed up with all the loads it has been churning out during the recent rodent crises—maybe (and this really freaks me out) the mice ate something vital—I shimmied myself between the shelf above the washing machine and the machine itself, poked my head behind and saw, yes, more mouse shit. I’ve yet to figure out how to get behind there. I guess I’ll drop a trap there, perhaps with a fishing pole. This morning when I was running the first load of the day, at 7 a.m. right after I came in from walking Henry, a terrible noise erupted from the machine. Think of the biggest imbalance noise with ten pairs of sneakers and multiply that by ten and you’ll have an idea of the noise that I heard coming from the machine. Like the invasion of Afghanistan. I turned it off, opened the door and smoke was billowing out, and the terrible stench of burnt rubber filled my nostrils. That was the good part. The bad part is Sears Customer Service. And the home repair phone queue, where a computer has just told me that they now have a brand new computer that understands full sentences. Naturally, the sophisticated computer did not understand my carefully modulated sentence. So, now I’m in the all too familiar hell of being in line with the call volume “unusually high.” And the computer voice telling me over and over that if I visit them online I’ll have better results. Why oh why am I in every phone queue with unusually high call volume? I’ll tell you why… Because there are not enough outsourced phone representatives, even in Mumbai or Manila where that’s a good job...Musophobia
I left the back door open a couple of weeks ago and now much to my disgust and horror, we have a mouse, or two mice, or God forbid, a pregnant mouse who will hatch more little mice behind the sofa or in one of the closets, or behind the washer dryer, or up on the ledge above the kitchen sink. I’ve found those revolting little half moons of rodent shit in all of the aforementioned places in the past few days. Also, he/she/they have torn through one of my little cloth bags with their horrible little teeth. Now all the fruit has to go in the fridge. Because I found little teeth-marks in the apples. My husband and I both hate cold fruit. We can’t put out those hideous traps because Henry could get himself hurt or traumatized though not as traumatized as I feel even thinking about those little critters. And speaking of Henry, why isn’t he doing something about this? Isn’t he supposed to take care of this situation? I certainly can’t, I don’t have the nerves, the sang froid, the lack of squeamishness it takes to deal with this. My husband who is only appearing late at night, due to the TV show he is working on, can do the manly thing, if he were around more. In fact, the last time he went mouse hunting, I think he rather enjoyed himself. I hovered in the other room when, with rubber gloves and in his underpants and wearing his eyeglasses he’d go first thing in the morning to check the trap he’d set out. And...
The New Me
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