Me & Sal, and the Young People

By Cecilia Mavrow

Me & Sal, and the Young People is a humorous look at the life of two aged widows. Three young men move in across the street, - a generation gap of megaproportions - and their contrasting interests provide a thought-provoking read and some good laughs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: eBookIt.com
• Release date: Apr 8, 2020
• ISBN: 9780987928375

Book preview

Me & Sal,

and the Young People

Fiction

by

Cecilia Mavrow

This is a work of fiction.

NOTE:

Will Ferrell is a famous actor comedian and producer in the USA. However, every action and dialogue attributed to Mr. Ferrell in this story is fictitious.

Copyright © 2020 Cecilia Mavrow

All rights reserved

Keywords: Fiction, humour, aging

Print edition ISBN 978-0-9879283-6-8

eBook edition ISBN 978-0-9879283-5-7

Ruksak Books

Delta, BC

[e-mail]

Previously in the series, Me & Sal, & the Joy of Aging.



Contents

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About the author:

1.

Passing my front windows, I noticed an older black Ford 150 pickup truck parking across the street. Everywhere there are black Ford 150 trucks but they don’t usually park on our street.

I phoned Sal next door. I think the boys have arrived, Sal.

Sal, You better get over here, Deedee. I’ll need backup.

I hustled over through the back doors and we watched out Sal’s front window as right on the tailpipe of the pickup, a U-haul truck arrived and backed into the driveway. One young guy jumped out of the pickup and another jumped out of the U-haul, slamming the doors shut as they hit the ground.

Sal, They look really young, Deedee.

Me, They do. Technically, these boys are young men, but looking at the world from an 80 year old viewpoint, they are boys.

Sal, They’ll wreck the place. Young renters always wreck the place.

Me, I hope not. If they do, are we responsible for the cost of damage since we are supposed to be looking after the place?

Sal, Surely not. Elana won’t expect us to cover stuff like that.

Me, Right. We didn’t sign anything.

Me & Chris always owned our own house but Sal has rented a lot of houses and apartments until she bought the patio home next door 12 years ago when her brother left her some money. So she is hip to renters. She tells me stories of the pot growing in the crawl space in one 4-plex she lived in, but now that pot is legal it’s not such a big crime. And she told me about a call girl in one place and the woman’s pimp shot up the place one Saturday night.

I had no idea these things go on in rental places. And here we were renting out the house across the street for Sal’s son, Dennis, and Elana, who owns the house now that our dear Arthur died and left it to her. Elana and Dennis have just moved to Montreal where Elana got a position with the Philharmonic playing her French horn. They rented the house to three young men before they left.

Now that the tenants were arriving, I realized we didn’t really think about what being landladies entailed. Unlike me, Sal has obviously been thinking about it.

Me, It won’t be a problem, will it, Sal? just collecting rents and keeping an eye on the place.

Sal, The part that worries me is the part about keeping an eye on the place.

Me, We’ll just collect the rent.

Sal, And keep an eye on the place! Dennis said that. How do we really keep an eye on the place if we can’t see what’s going on inside?

And what did we know about 20 somethings? Sal’s son Dennis is 47 and he was an absolute alien when he was living with Sal. He lived so far outside the box that he probably couldn’t even see the box. These young guys, now, will be a whole new generation. We have no idea how they behave.

After they jumped out of their vehicles, one of them pulled his ear, the other one tapped his nose with his forefinger, then the first slapped one shoulder then the other shoulder, and the other one wiggled his fingers in front of the first one’s face, and then they did another variation on this nutty stuff and burst out laughing.

Sal, What are they doing, Deedee?

Me, I think they are making baseball signals. Sal looked puzzled. I explained that the coaches make these series of signals to the catchers and pitchers that tell the pitcher what to pitch.

The two guys talked for a while, standing around looking at the brick paving on the driveway and checking out the garage. Then one of them hurtled over the picket fence. Wow, the agility of these young people. The other one unlocked the doors to the box of the U-haul. Then the fence-hurtler hurtled back to the U-haul and they both looked up as they heard a noisy van advertising a glass company – ClassyGlass.com - pull up in front of the house. Once parked behind the U-haul, a large dark-skinned boy jumped down out of the van.

The pickup driver called to the van driver, Toddy-boy, you found the place, and Toddy-boy slammed the door to the van and the three of them set to whooping and hollering and bumping chests and slapping backs which was different than the baseball signals, obviously glad to see each other.

Toddy, I did. Have you got the keys?

Just getting them, and the U-haul boy turned and came over and knocked at Sal’s door.

Sal opened the door to a very good-looking, sort of Asian-looking, fellow. Hello, ladies. I’m Cal. I think you have keys for us.

Sal, I’m Mrs. Popovich and this is Mrs. Potts who lives next door, pointing to her right.

Sally surrendered the three keys.

Cal, Glad to meet you ladies, and he swung around waving the keys back over his shoulder, We’ll talk soon, and skipped back across the street with a spring in his step.

I can barely remember the days when we had a spring in our step. The spring has sprung over the years.

After Cal left, Sally shut the door and leaned against it. She was getting really worried, What if it turns out like a teen-age party and more and more people keep arriving in rec vehicles & campers with tents, and vans with graffiti, and sleeping bags and just keep moving in? spilling out along the street?

Me, We’d have to evict them.

Sal, How do we do that? I mean if they don’t want to be evicted when we tell them to?

Me, There must be rules about it, Sal; there’s rules for everything.

Sal, Well, I do know people can be evicted if they don’t pay their rent or if a relative needs to live on the premises.

We went back to the window and through the sheer curtain watched as the boys stood around talking and laughing. Then they started unloading bikes, a Vespa, and boxes and computers and TVs.

Sal fired up the kettle.

Seeing the boys with all their energy, I got restless. I should be out doing something useful, maybe even making some money. But doing what?

Me, Sal, I think we should try selling something door to door. We’d get exercise, we’d talk to new people, and we might make some money. What would you want to buy at the door?

Sal, Nothing. I don’t want to answer the door or sell anything or talk to new people – they are called strangers, Deedee. I sold cookies in the Cookie House for decades as you will remember.

Me, Well there you are. We could sell cookies. Timely sales at 3 in the afternoon in time for tea.

Sal, You’re on your own there, Sister. We’d look like two old lady evangelists and get doors slammed in our faces before we got the cookie spiel even started. Even the Von Schtenks would have shut the door in our faces.

I can tell an idea is going nowhere with Sally when she calls me Sister.

I noticed the dusk is earlier again, and would be every day until after the winter solstice. Then after the solstice, living here in White Rock in the Pacific Northwest we will gain just about one hour of daylight every month until the summer solstice in June. We sat down with our cups of tea in the china cups Sal kept when she moved in.

Me, One hour a month, Sal.

Sal, One hour of what?

One hour of daylight after December. So we just have to put up with four more months of these increasingly dark days until glorious daylight increasingly brightens our days again.

Sal smiled, taking a sip of hot tea, with her hands wrapped around her Royal Albert tea mug.

***

By 7pm, the tenants had unpacked the U-haul, the pickup, and the van, all stuff easily acquired and easily gotten rid of in their highly flexible lives. Two of the boys collapsed on the couch in the living room. They turned on the TV and lay back with bottles of pep juice. Todd was banging around in the kitchen and then came into the living room with a metal pot of food.

What’s that? Simon asked.

Todd shovelled a large spoon of canned chili into his mouth, It’s a Pot o’ Supper.

Simon took a look in the pot as Todd sat down, It’s trough food, Toddy lad.

Cal, Food. Definitely. I think I need a snack.

Todd, A snackarino?

Simon, A snackypoo?

Cal, A big snackalicious.

The only fast snacks Cal could find were some pop tarts in the kitchen groceries and with some disgust, he opened a box, unwrapped the paper pastry and settled down on the couch.

Simon turned on the TV and went to get himself a pop tart. Suddenly Cal jumped up looking around for the TV control, Turn this off, I can’t stand another minute of this shit. Really. The other two looked at Cal in alarm as he turned off the sound. This was not the Cal they thought they knew.

Simon, What? What?

Cal, It’s Will Ferrell in one of his stupid movies where he acts like a nincompoop, damaging, damaging the male image. We can’t take these attacks on the male image.

Simon, with his proper English accent coming through on certain words, Now that you have pointed this out, mate, I do agree.

Cal, "How can Will Ferrell, a grown man, stoop to this level of stupidity? Remember Elf? He’s a grown man!"

Simon: Maybe not. Maybe he is really a three-year-old giant mutant, a Hollywood mutant. He’s been denatured like chicken soup powder. He has no more chicken left in him.

Cal, They have no shame in that celluloid hellhole with their spray-tanned jello women and spray-tanned hairless men. Do you notice all the faces on the news and shows are all heavily spray-tanned with no contours or lines on their faces, just thick beigish color with no skin? And Will Ferrell is out there without any maleness left on him.

Todd, Next thing they will have him dressed up as a pink Easter Bunny in pink fleece mincing around phony-grass covered yards in Hollywood hiding chocolate eggs that will melt in the California sunshine. That’s what they will do.

Simon, It’s been a conspiracy to make fools of the big Hollywood actors for years now.

Todd, "That’s true isn’t it? Sooner or later they make these A-list stars put on a dress and...

Simon, shaking his head in disapproval …right, and make girlie-boys out of them. If the actors want success, they have to dress up like women or something equally denaturing. Not that there is anything wrong with being a woman and dressing like a woman when you are a woman, definitely a right thing to be – but not if you are a man who likes being a man.

Cal, That’s right. We saw Robin Williams as Doubtfire, and Dustin Hoffman as Tootsie , and Eddie Murphy in 2 movies as a woman, and John Travolta in Hairspray, and Adam Sandler in Jack & Jill, for f-sake. It’s the Hollywood rite of passage.

Todd, I was watching the tennis last month and Nike makes their male team players wear hot-pink on court, hot-pink shirts and shoes.

Simon, The shame is spreading like sticky treacle.

Cal, Babydog is wearing pink.

Simon, Because she’s a girl. There is a difference between the male and the female genders.

Cal looked at the screen again. Right. We have to rescue this guy and stop the shame.

Simon, Okay. We’ve been needing a cause. Some people save starving kids but we are gonna save the planet from any more Will Ferrell movies. That is the least we can do for humanity.

Todd stopped his spoon in mid-flight, I agree. How are we going to do this?

Cal turned off the TV and threw the control on the couch, We could write letters or something to the production companies for one.

Todd, The three of us could plan our holidays at the same time and go to Los Angeles, track him down and stop him.

Simon, Righto, we will do an intervention, chaps. We will save him from himself. He’s a yoyo with a broken string. We gotta save him from this humiliation.

Pointing at each other.

Todd, We gotta squash ‘im like a bug.

Cal, A big fat squishy juicy green bug.

Todd, We’ll dangle him over hot coals.

Simon: We’re gonna roll him up like a donut and dunk him in some hot tea.

Todd: Yup, the world has had enough Will Ferrell movies.

Cal: Okay, first off, we gotta find out where he lives.

Simon looked him up on his iPhone. Look at this, mates, he grew up in Irvine, California, - this big nut grew up in the big California nut farm.

2.

Sal and I usually take a plate of cookies or a plate of some other treat to new neighbours on the street. We want them to feel at home and part of the block family. We also feel they will be less likely to be bad neighbours and destroy the tone of the neighbourhood if we get off on the right foot.

So we took a plate of oatmeal raisin cookies across the street. We knocked on the door.

Come in, come in, the big guy with a mouthful of food told us as he swept his hand across in a Hollywood rake gesture, right this way.

The other two boys were sitting at the dining room table, and we all introduced ourselves.

Me, We met Cal already, but this is Sally Popovich, your landlady and I’m Deanna Potts, her neighbour.

I didn’t really like the title landladies. It smacks of beaten down abandoned harried women in the 1800s trying to eke out a living from tacky rooms in a broken down building. And landlords smacks of feudal times. We could be landgrannies.

Good to meet you. I’m Simon. Simon was medium build, maybe five foot nine, a detectable British accent and definitely waspish-pale looking, pale blue eyes, gingery hair cut very short on the sides and gelled in a little teepee on the top in the front, well dressed. Most of the time I can’t tell the British accent from the Australian or the South African accent, but I was pretty sure this was somewhere in England.

And we did meet, Cal said getting up to step over to shake our hands. Cal was another medium build, maybe an inch shorter than Simon, at close quarters even better looking, beautiful skin and bone structure and friendly dark eyes. He was almost uncomfortable to look at he was so beautiful. Women must be all over him. I wanted to ask his nationality but you can’t do that anymore. It’s a racist thing as we aren’t supposed to see color. Really, I can’t tell what anyone is anymore. We can identify as species specific but not race specific, us being human animals unlike animal animals. Well not so different actually, those human animals and the animal animals.

And I’m Todd, said the big guy who just swallowed the mouthful of food, waving a spoon at us. He eats with a large spoon. He is pudgy, not short and pudgy but tall and pudgy. He is a big faded black or brown person or black & white combo, could be a diluted East Indian, or American black or native indian with something else tossed in there, something exotic like Ethiopian or Somalian, Goan, or Ghanian and a soupcon of white. It is amazing how many darker races there are in the world. If they ganged up, us palefaces would have a fight on our hands. Made me smile how a couple of generations – maybe only one generation - has changed the whole idea of race and nationality.

After Todd sat down after ushering us in and without a mouthful of food, his face in repose looked like a nothing personality, bland pudgy face, but when he smiled the whole persona changed into a bright shiny tanned person. It was a startling transformation from granite to diamond (charcoal to diamond?)

The three of them together looked like a wee united nations meeting, maybe a Today’s Youth meeting for better opportunities.

I could see Sal was not wanting to stick around with the boys. She is basically shy and doesn’t reach out to strangers. She has to be introduced and even then she is shy. She