Someone—anyone—should have given Timmy and Beth Blank a few pointers on how to effectively decorate a home so that it feels welcoming and inviting, as opposed to ghastly and horrifying.
Walking into the downstairs living room felt like walking out onto a stage in front of an enormous audience. There were so many eyes looking at me—maybe hundreds of them—and they were all unblinking, pointed into the center of the room, black and frozen in expressions of rage, astonishment, and fear.
And they were all dead.
I saw a wild pig with a pipe in his mouth wearing an old German hiking hat, standing on the hearth of the stone fireplace, over which hung an enormous wooden plaque with the snarling head of a bear and his two disembodied front feet with claws unnaturally spread open like he was making “jazz hands” at us; a grinning alligator that had been turned into a glass-topped coffee table; a python with its mouth open in some kind of gruesome, frozen, hissing bite, that was coiled around the bottom of a potted plant;66 a mother skunk, out for a stroll along the baseboards, followed by three tiny baby skunks that looked like photocopies of each other; a couple of decapitated deer and elk; a smiling Siamese house cat with a starched ball of yarn unraveling between its claws; a large snapping turtle standing up on its hind legs,67 eyes and mouth wide, front arms arched like a boxer’s, in some kind of bizarre fight with a koala bear, like in one of those cheesy old dinosaur movies where a brontosaurus and a stegosaurus square off at the edge of a cliff; hawks, vultures, owls, blue jays, ducks, pheasants hanging in petrified flight; and in one corner, standing on a round end table next to an old wingback chair upholstered in zebra skin, was the notorious raccoon lamp, even more hideous up close than I might have ever dreamed, and yes, one of its hind legs had lost all its fur.
The raccoon lamp was also wearing little wire-framed glasses and a miniature sailor’s cap, and it was posed with both of its arms up in the air, like it was in the process of being arrested or something.
It was all so terrifying, and so incredibly weird.
After spending one night there babysitting, Bahar must have already gotten used to the decor inside the Purdy House, but Brenden looked at me, his eyes wide and the corners of his mouth turned down as though he was considering that we had been transported into an actual horror show.
There were just so many unmoving eyes, and so many rows of exposed teeth. I never realized animals could snarl as much as the ones inside the Purdy House did.
“Sorry about all the clutter,” Mr. Blank said. “We plan on moving most of our babies into the shop, once we find one, that is!”
And I thought, Did he just call them his babies?
Mrs. Blank took us into the dining room (more eyes and teeth) and the kitchen, which seemed to be the designated room for housing mounted and lacquered dead fish (so you usually only saw one eye at a time),68 and left us on our own to assemble the evening meal.
Naturally Boris, who was both fascinated and challenged by the nonspeaking Brenden, never stayed more than a few inches away from him.
“Hey, kid.” Boris tugged on Brenden Saltarello’s perfectly white, creased shirtsleeve. “Hey, you. Kid. Hey. Hey.”
“He doesn’t talk,” I reminded Boris. “Just think of him as something you’d have mounted on your wall.”
But that was no deterrent to Boris, who continued his tugging and pestering, while Brenden gave me an I don’t want to be a thing on their wall look.
“Hey. Hey, kid. Hey. What’s your name again?”
“Brenden. His name is Brenden,” I said. “But he doesn’t talk.”
Brenden Saltarello unpacked the place settings and carried them out into the dining room, Boris practically attached to his elbow. It was pretty impressive, because not only did Brenden refuse to break under Boris’s relentless pestering, but he knew exactly how to set a proper table too.
“Hey. Hey, kid. Hey, Brenden. After dinner, do you want to go play down in the basement?” Boris said.
Horrifying.
I said, “No, he does not.”
I had all the food out, and began putting the final touches on the presentation. It was almost time to serve. Bahar lit candles in the dining room. Everything was as perfect as it would have been if we were being photographed for one of those fancy food magazines, except for how badly my chef’s uniform fit, and all the horrible dead creatures that were everywhere in the house. There was even a small bobcat in the centerpiece of the dining table that was missing an eye and had its mouth forever stretched back in a ridiculously wide yawn, or maybe it was trying really hard to cough up an uncooperative hair ball. The bobcat’s front paws had little brackets on them that held salt and pepper shakers.
Who would ever eat salt and pepper from the paws of a one-eyed choking dead bobcat?
I continued, “Brenden doesn’t talk, and he doesn’t play in basements, either.”
Boris was un-swayed.
“Hey. Hey, Brenden, have you ever had to hide inside a dumpster in order to get away from a hungry mountain lion?”
Brenden Saltarello didn’t need to say anything. He just gave me a look that said, Please make this kid go away.
“Hey. Hey, kid. Hey, kid named Brenden who doesn’t talk. If you tell me just one thing, I promise I’ll leave you alone for a little while,” Boris said.
And even Bahar tried running interference on Boris, but it didn’t work. She said, “Oh, Boris. Why don’t you go tell your parents they can sit at the table now? Sam’s just about ready to serve dinner.”
“You’re the babysitter,” Boris said. “And that Brenden guy who doesn’t talk is the helper boy. Do you all think it’s fair for the two of you to make me do your work like that? Are you trying to trick me into leaving or something? You hate me, don’t you? You probably hate all children—except for that kid boyfriend of yours who wears a skirt sometimes when he’s not dressed in giant man clothes that don’t fit and cooks disgusting stuff that nobody would ever eat and then tries to call it food.”
Now Boris had gone too far on multiple levels.
It’s not a skirt; it’s a kilt.
And I was not Bahar’s boyfriend.
Also, Boris was still pinching the sleeve of Brenden’s shirt between his thumb and index finger.
Bahar nervously ahem-ed and then said, “I’ll go call Mr. and Mrs. Blank.”
“Let go of Brenden, and I’ll tell you what we’re having for dinner,” I said, with no intention at all of telling Boris what I had actually prepared. And Brenden looked like a fish who’d just spit out a hook and jumped off the line when Boris released his sleeve.
“Okay. I did it. What are we having?” Boris asked.
I pulled a chair out. “Here. Have a seat.”
Boris sat, and I wondered if there was any duct tape or rope lying around, but then I thought that things like tying up kids would probably be bad for Bahar’s future business.
So I said, “Tonight I’ve prepared a pappardelle with duck breast, mustard, and juniper berries.”69
Boris’s face mimicked the hair-ball-coughing one-eyed bobcat’s.70
Then he said this: “That sounds really great!”
What an awful child. What a horrible thing to say.
“Well, of course it does,” I said.
“I thought you said it was chicken potpie,” said Brenden, who’d obviously forgotten that he didn’t talk.
“Does that have chicken in it?” Boris asked. “I hate chicken. I hate pie.”
If there was a portal to the underworld in the Purdy House, Brenden Saltarello had just opened it, I thought.
Thankfully, before all the demons of Hades could escape, Bahar came in, followed by Mr. and Mrs. Blank.
66. There was a taxidermied rat with a distinctive Oh my! expression on his little rat face stretched across the snake’s tongue.
67. And turtles do NOT stand like that.
68. Think about it—fish have an eye on each side of their head, so you usually only see one eye. The exception was a lone gar fish that was mounted (just its head and about one third of its body) coming straight out of the wall, mouth wide open and filled with dozens of glistening needlelike teeth.
69. As far as I know, this dish does not exist. But I thought it sounded like something I might try.
70. Except for the fact that Boris had both of his eyes.