Sh*tshow by Richard Russo

Author:Richard Russo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2019-11-04T16:00:00+00:00

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The pleasant weather lasted for several more days, no need to even turn on the cooler. Ellie’s mood seemed to improve. Instead of spending hours on Zillow, she busied herself with projects around the house. Even if we weren’t moving, she said, it was time we started culling our stuff. What did we really need? What could we do without? Later in the month we would have a yard sale. I went along because she did have a point. Even if our stuff wasn’t “crap,” we’d accumulated more of it than we needed. I even promised to do a cull of my own closet and den, though, in truth, compared to hers my own life was monastic.

One afternoon, after taking a load of stuff to Goodwill, Ellie returned home and upon entering the house immediately wrinkled her nose. “What’s that smell?” she wanted to know.

“What smell?” I asked, the way a man will in response to that particular feminine query. With the screen door open, what I was actually smelling was honeysuckle and other desert blooms.

The next morning she smelled it again, and this time I wasn’t so sure. Was there a hint of something fecal on the air? “Fine,” she said, exasperated, when I repeated that I didn’t smell anything. Be that way was what she seemed to be saying.

Since we’d gotten off on the wrong foot, I was glad we both had busy days planned. Ellie was meeting a friend for a midmorning coffee, after which they were attending a lecture at the university. I was playing in an over-sixty round-robin indoor tennis tournament that would probably last until around three. The temperature had already climbed into the eighties, so I turned on the swamp cooler when I left. That way the house would be cool when we returned.

Later, getting dressed in the locker room after my shower, I took out my phone and saw there was a text from Betsy Schuulman. ELLIE IS WITH ME, it said, BUT YOU NEED TO GO STRAIGHT HOME. Not liking the sound of this, I called my wife’s cell, but it was Betsy who answered. “Have you been home?” she said.

“I’m heading there now. What’s going on?”

“Ellie is very upset.”

“Put her on.”

“She doesn’t want to talk to you until you’ve been home.”

“I don’t understand.”

“David?” she said. “I don’t know how else to say this. Go home.”

Pulling into the drive, I just sat there a moment, feeling a sense of dread I couldn’t really account for. The house looked just as it had when I left five hours earlier, just as it had for thirty years. Oh, sure, it needed some work. The trim was flaking and some weeds had come up in the gravel yard, but there was no reason for alarm that I could see. Rather than going in the front, I unlocked the gate and went around back, but nothing seemed to be amiss there, either.

Okay, I admit it: I checked the Jacuzzi. The

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