Shock the monkey
Every once in a thousand blue moons you're handed a story on a silver beauty platter, a story straight from the mind of Salvador Dali's Avon Lady. You know you should never repeat it. No one will believe it. They'll call you the crazy Avon Lady, and roll their fingers by their ears when you reach into your bag to produce a brochure. But six long weeks have passed since I walked through a short mahogany door and into the kitchen of a short gangly woman, like walking out of a paintbrush, covered in burnt sienna, onto a canvas covered in disconnected breasts and smiles. I can't hold it in any longer.
The woman invited me to step into her home when I held out the latest Avon brochure. She didn't speak her name, but pointed to a framed needlepoint sampler when I told her my name was Birdie. The needlepoint hung in a golden Victorian frame over the gas stove. The name "Melva Cionavitch" filled the top third, in block letters made from red x's and o's, over a bronze threaded saying: "Only a Genealogist regards a step backwards as progress." Specks of dust and grease clung to the glass over the fabric.
"So, Melva! Nice to meet you!"
I placed my backpack on the floor and took a seat on a floral loveseat. The cushions whooshed and I felt my butt nearly touching the floor. Who puts a loveseat in the kitchen?
"Do you chart your own family's anscestory? Or are you a professional?"
I glanced around the room, and reached into my bag for my tub of wrinkle cream. Aside from the needlepoint, nothing adorned the cedar walls of the cottage. Everything came from a tree. The floor, the walls, the chairs, the long table, a lone piece of driftwood standing sentry in a corner, everything but the appliances and the saggy loveseat.
"Yes," Melva said.
Yes? Which yes? I didn't ask, just smiled and opened the jar and went into my spiel.
"Well, I'm getting to know new people in the neighborhood by demonstrating our new Anew Clinical Line and Wrinkle Corrector."
I rubbed the lotion into my hand and told her how the cream fades lines and wrinkles and zits and, after getting a good look at Melva's face, age spots. She stood in front of me while I spoke. She didn't sit in the loveseat with me or offer me a glass of water. She didn't even look at my hands, at the lotion, or even the brochure I set on the table before I sat down. She stared at my face, but not my eyes, someplace south of that, perhaps my nose or mouth.
"I'm not new."
Melva said the words with hesitation, so quietly I almost didn't hear them.
"Huh? Sorry? What was that?"
"I'm not new. You said you were showing this to new people. I've lived here thirty-six years."
Her black hair was piled in a loose bun on the top of her head. The bun swayed back and forth, and I could see grey roots at her temples.
"Wow, that's a long time. I only meant that I'm the new neighborhood Avon Lady and I'm out knocking on doors and meeting people and showing them this new wrinkle cream."
I held out the jar but she didn't lift it from my palm. I felt foolish, disjointed, like I walked into the wrong house selling the wrong stuff saying the wrong things.
"Wrinkle cream."
Melva repeated the words and gave the jar a thoughtful look.
"You say it works on all kinds of skin conditions?"
"Sure! It does! Just about anything! One of my customers uses it on stretch marks and swears they are disappearing."
I heard my words echo across the cedar room, but they were not alone. A low rumbling noise accompanied them, a sound like grunting or strange coughing. Melva didn't seem to notice.
"Will this work on dry skin?"
"Yes, it sure will. It increases the collagen output of your skin and makes it firmer, smoother, and more hydrated."
At this point I was beginning to make up stuff to say. I wasn't sure that hydration was a by-product of the wrinkle cream but the wiggling bun and the growling and the way everything I said came out the wrong way discombobulated me, and I just wanted to leave the cream and run out the door.
"Can we try it right now to see if it works?"
"Oh yes! I can rub some into your hand and you can see the difference right away!"
Melva turned and walked toward a closed door next to the garbage pail. Her rubber flip flops made a twack twack twack sound against the floor.
"No, not on my hand. On Hubert."
In that instant I knew that Hubert was not a reclining husband or a delinquent son. Hubert was the thing that made those animal noises, and I put one hand down, grabbed one backpack strap, ready to leap off the loveseat - if my butt could actually pry itself out of the damn thing - and run out the door if Hubert were a pit bull with mange.
Melva reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out a key. I stared in perverse fascination. Who keeps a Hubert locked away? Who lets a Hubert out when the Avon Lady arrives? What the h-e-double-toothpicks was a Hubert?? Rotweiller? Lizard? Bobcat? She slipped the key inside the lock and I heard the latch turn. Something grunted at the door, something scratched and hit the doorknob on the other side.
The door swung open and a monkey flew out the door, screeching and hollering and swinging both arms. I don't know much about primates, but he looked evil and childlike and brown ike a movie monkey, the sort of mischievous small creature sent to Mars in a B flick or the sidekick to a down and out comic. I gripped the backpack strap tighter. I was afraid.
"Hubert!"
Melva grabbed one monkey hand and Hubert laughed, at least I think it was a laugh, a Whee Hee Hee Grunt of a laugh, and she led him across the kitchen, speaking at she stepped.
"I've had Hubert eleven years. He's a good boy. You're sitting in his favorite seat and he might want to sit in your lap. He loves company."
I tried to stand up but couldn't move. My smile was plastered on my face, like a wax statue, and I knew my eyes held a crazy and frightened look. I tried to say something soothing to Hubert but I only mananged a squeak.
Melva let go of Hubert's hand and he jumped into my lap. He put long arms around my neck and made kissy noises. His breath was fire rotten tomatoes and diapers and monkey drool started to roll down my neck. I heard someone hyperventilating and realized it was me.
"Ha ha ha," I pretended to laugh, pretended to be delighted that the pet monkey from Hades was molesting me. "Melva, he's sweet but can you pull him off? Please?"
I couldn't see Melva, just short course brown hair and mottled skin, but felt her gently grab Hubert and set him down next to me on the loveseat.
"Now put that cream on his left arm."
I didn't bother to wipe the drool from my neck. My arms shook as I opened the wrinkle cream and scooped out a generous dollop. I spread the cream on Hubert and he sat in place, Melva's arm around his middle, while I rubbed white lotion into brown wrinkled skin.
"Yes. That's it. Good boy." Melva nodded with approval.
"I'll call you in a week if his skin improves. He likes you."
I planted my feet firmly on the floor and heaved my butt out of the loveseat, backpack in hand. I didn't want to ask why Hubert needed wrinkle cream, why she thought one application might do something, why she lived in a brown home full of brown things with a brown creepy friend.
"Now I'm not new!"
I startled and turned around to see Melva grinning from ear to ear, bun wiggling down the left side of her head.
"I tried the cream. I'm not new anymore!"
I grinned back at her, waved at Hubert and ran all the way home.
9:21:05 PM 
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