Notes from One Brentwood Wife By, Janna Angelis
Blogging at: www.OneAmericanWife.com
Email: wife@OneAmericanWife.com
Notes from One Brentwood Wife
It’s not easy living with someone who was born “perfect.†The kind of perfect whereby accidents are averted, spills don’t happen, bruises never just appear on your thigh and you ask yourself how the hell did I get that?
My Brentwood husband, Dr. Sami, on the upside, is that kind of perfect. He greets me with a fluffy cappuccino every morning. He’s always proper, neat, organized. He handles everything; I have never called the little gecko for car insurance rates, never killed a spider in the shower or replaced a smoke-alarm battery. He’s flawless, and I love him, but there’s a downside. Dr. Sami is hyperactive.
Today is Sunday, the day, I thought, reserved for lounging on the couch, warm coffee cup in hand, covered in newspapers like an earthworm under autumn leaves. No schedules, no mascara, just slippers and my terry cloth bathrobe with a blob of apricot jam on the front, oops. Oh bother, I’ll clean it off later.
Dr. HyperHubby sees it differently. It’s 6:20am: He’s shaved and dressed, scurrying around as if he just took an espresso enema. He has shined the car tires so they look like they’re wearing lip gloss. He has Windexed the TV remotes and disassembled the entire Dustbuster to scour all the parts in sudsy water. Why would anyone sanitize a vacuum cleaner? That’s like shoveling the sidewalk before it’s stopped snowing.
Right this second he is washing the light bulbs in the bathroom. Really.
••••
According to the Discovery Channel, anthropologically speaking, we once lived in what’s called a hunter/gatherer society whereby the males hunted and the women gathered. It occurred to me today that men, the hunters, are displaced, making for an unhealthful imbalance in our society. By that, I mean our men can’t be the hunters they were genetically engineered to be – the grrrr I think I’ll bite the meat off the leg kind of grrrr men – that I watch on National Geographic. The thin, African men who hurl long spears into gazelles and drag them heroically home to the tent: authentic hunters living off the terrain. Real hunters go in for the kill to feed their families. It’s do or die. American men do the dishes or die. I can’t imagine that’s very fulfilling.
I am certain Dr. Sami feels that urge to brave the outback, the terra firma where men sharpen their spears, naked, around a campfire. But, here, we live in a controlled, campfire-free zone – a well-groomed neighborhood here in Brentwood. O.J. Simpson, you may recall, made it a pretty famous place a few years back. Before his famous murder trial, Brentwood was unknown, and we liked it that way. It has a substantial percentage of movie stars, sure, but they are the more relaxed ones, the ones like Steven Spielberg, Jessica Alba, Tom Hanks, Reese Witherspoon, Jim Carrey. It’s a cool place to live.
Three weeks ago, here in Brentwood, it rained an impressive eleven inches in one night. We had started to watch a James Bond marathon, but were interrupted by the surprisingly big noise made by tiny raindrops on the roof.
Very early the next morning, still in a downpour, the phone rang. I was, as usual, hoping for a morning full of lazing around in my bathrobe. Dr. Sami was polishing the stainless steel Sub Zero. On the line was Iano, our lovable Japanese neighbor. Iano’s husband passed away a few years ago and we look after her a bit.
“Jayna! So much rain! But nothing coming out my drains, ees Dr. Samison home? I need ah help.â€
“Don’t worry Iano, I’ll send him over right now,†I said, digging the sleep out of my eye.
I pointed Sami in the direction of the garage to pull on his thigh-high, green, dorky water boots with wide suspenders. Dr. Sami doesn’t fish. He bought his thigh-high wading boots just in case. In case of what? We live on Mulholland Drive, the highest point in the city. If anything, we should erect one of those forty-foot radio towers with an array of flashing red lights in our backyard to alert any airplanes that might stray into our mountainside enclave. That’s at least how my mind works. If you live on the crest of a city, you worry about airplanes. If you live in the bayou, you dread hurricanes. Not Sami, he lives on the top of the hill and buys wading boots, just in case.
Now this is what makes me insane; he’s had those boots less than six months and he’s using them. That’s the kind of “perfect†human I was referring to – buying wading boots in Brentwood – and needing them! He’s a mystery, a freak of nature. If I had demanded we build that airplane tower, we’d never, ever get a direct hit. Not even a near miss. That’s just how disappointing my luck is.
It was still pouring outside. Dr. Sami adjusted his green suspenders and wiggled his protective eyewear in place like a SWAT team guy readying for a standoff. I tried not to giggle. He unscrewed the broom handle from my Swiffer to use as a tool and waddled away in the direction of Iano’s house. To the outside world, he looked like a fly-flisherman wearing goggles and carrying a stick, but inside, I’m sure, he was Bond. James Bond. As he left, I thought I heard him humming the theme music to Mission Impossible. Dun, dun duhn dun.. du du du dun dun…
Iano’s house is a one-story architectural beauty with a flat roof surrounded by tall Cageput trees. Yet, due to the rain, her entire flat roof had become covered in about a foot of water because the screens that cover the drains were clogged with leaves. Left unchecked, the roof could have caved in from the weight of the water.
Dr. Samison ventured in to save the day. On a stealth mission, he climbed up the ladder, onto the roof and, of course, wearing gloves, plunged down and extracted the leaves off the screens. Rainwater rushed down the drains. It was fantastic. Iano cheered from inside her living room. She has nine such drains on her roof and Dr. Sami thoroughly rid them all of debris. It took him almost an hour. Then he checked all the spouts around the house – 15 minutes – flowed up by Iano giving him some specialty teas from Tokyo as a thank you – 5 minutes. In all, Dr. Sami was deployed for one hour and 15 minutes.
He returned home, safely. Dr. Sami was everyone’s hero that day. The day Dr. Sami braved the dangerous rainstorm in Brentwood, fighting the treacherous elements, javelin broomstick in hand, to save the village and return to his dry tent for a hot shower feeling like a real man. The day my son, Spencer and I, lazed on the sofa; me diddling on my computer and Spencer, ecstatic to sit in front of the TV watching basketball, waving his empty orange juice cup in the air waiting for someone to refill it.
•••••
“Let’s get going, we can’t sit at home all day,†Dr. Sami says, hands on his hips. “We’re leaving in thirty.â€
That means in twenty-four minutes he will be honking the horn waiting for us in the car.
Today, there are no heros, no bums on the couch. We are ON, full tilt. After Coffee Tea & Bean on San Vicente, Sami will stop at OSH for provisions like sprinkler supplies and batteries. Then he will call the hospital to check up on his patients, order tests and schedule surgeries. Next, we will head for a trip to the Getty Museum, not because he enjoys art, he doesn’t, he just needs a place to go. Racing from exhibit to exhibit, he can scour the entire Pre-Raphaelite period in like an hour, Spencer and I, scampering behind him, resembling panting poodles. We will view no masterpieces, just the back of Daddy’s head, weaving through the crowds, as we rush to keep from getting separated from the alpha dog.
The guilt of just sitting on the sofa all day, resembling a pile of dirty laundry wearing a ponytail, would have gotten the better of me. Plus, Spence would have eventually said, “Mom what are we going to do today?†Thus, busy-ness beats laziness. Our hours will be better spent dashing from store to warehouse, Picasso to Chagall, café to car. Additionally, I’ll pick up those pansies for the yard I want, and Spencer will partake of a world bigger than his computer screen. We’ll stop by Dutton’s bookstore, browse the farmer’s market for organic vegetables and run into some friends at the post office on Barrington. Maybe Dr. Sami is right: It’s good to get out and enjoy our fair city.
Yet after a long day of errands and exhibits, exhausted and sticky, I will remember Iano’s roof escapade and the morning we lazed on the couch. I’ll think of this morning – my neglected and unfinished cappuccino, cold, and growing a thick ring of gunk around the edges, sitting on that stack of unread newspapers.
From the front seat, I’ll gaze longingly out the window up toward the sky and say, “Hey, Spencer, do those look like rain clouds to you?â€
— This is Janna, just one Brentwood wife, watching the Weather Channel.
