The Grass Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank Read Online Free PDF

of Suburbian Gems face to face.
    Then one day we opened our newspaper and saw where Edward C. Phlegg had died. His funeral was one of the biggest the city had ever known. Mourners from Suburbian Gems alone filled the church. (Contractors who hadn't been paid couldn't even get inside.)
    There wasn't a dry eye in the church.
    We were saying good-bye to the only man who knew where in Hong Kong our furnace was made. Who alone knew the secret ingredients of our patios that bubbled when the sun hit them. Who would take with him his reasons for slanting the roof toward the center of the house and burying the septic tank under the living room floor.
    As we stood in the cemetery mourning our loss, there was a flash of lightning and a rumble of thunder as before our very eyes, the large stone bearing the name Edward C.
    Phlegg sunk to one side and remained at a 40-degree angle.
    There was no doubt in any of our minds. God was trying to tell us that Mr. Phlegg had gone to that big Escrow in the sky.
    The Second-Car Ten-Day War
    We had talked about the isolation of the suburbs and the expense of a second car before moving there and I thought I had made my position very clear.
    I did not want a car. Did not need a car. And would not take a car if it were offered me.
    1 lied.
    “I've got to have wheels,” 1 said to my husband one night after dinner.
    “We've talked about this before,” he said, “and we agreed that the reason we migrated was to explore all the adventures the suburbs has to offer.”
    “I've explored both of them. Now I need a car. A car will put me in touch with the outside world. It will be my link with another culture, another civilization, another world of trade.”
    “Aren't you being a little dramatic?” he suggested.
    “Let me lay it on you, Cleavie, the high spot in my day is taking knots out of shoestrings—with my teeth—that a kid has wet on all day long. I'm beginning to have feelings for my shower-massage pik. Yesterday, I etched a dirty word on the leaf of my philodendron.”
    “And you think a car is going to help you?”
    “Of course it will help. I'll be able to go to the store, join a bowling league, have lunch downtown with the girls, volunteer, go to the dentist, take long drives in the country. I want to see the big, outside world from atop a lube rack. I want to whirl dizzily in a cloud of exhaust, rotate my tires with the rest of the girls. Don't you understand? I want to honk if I love Jesus!”
    For a reason I was soon to understand, all of us went to the showroom to pick out my car. Within minutes, I saw it. It was a bright, yellow sports number—a one-seater that puts you three inches off the ground and sounds like a volcano when the motor turns over. Near to ecstasy, I closed my eyes and imagined myself at a traffic light, my large sunglasses on top of my head like Marlo Thomas, and as I quickly brushed lip gloss on my lips from a small pot, a dark stranger from the car next to me shouted, “Could we meet and talk?” And I laughed cruelly, “Don't be a fool! I'm a homeroom mother!” and sped off.
    The rest of the family was gathered around a four-wheel-drive station wagon with a spare tire on top, space for extra gas cans along the back and fold-down scats giving you room to transport the Cleveland Symphony and all tlieir instruments.
    “Hey, is this a car?” asked my husband, his eyes shining. “That was my next question,” I said. “Look, I don't want transportation to a war, I just want a car to take me to the store and back.”
    “Of course you do,” he said, “and this is the no-nonsense car that can get the job done.”
    Oh, I tried all right to hide my disappointment. I put glasses on top of my head, touched up my lip gloss at traffic lights, and even occasionally ran my tongue over my lips like Jennifer O'Neill, but I never climbed behind the wheel of that orthopedic vehicle without feeling like I was following General Patton into Belgium.
    Besides, I was the only