The Trouble with Oliver

by Holly Jahangiri

A frumpy woman, clad only in a flowered housecoat and cheap bedroom slippers, lugged a sack of garbage to the curb. As she dropped it onto the ground, she straightened her spine and stretched, one callused hand idly rubbing her hip as her head swiveled, owl-like, to survey the morning activity on the cul-de-sac. She sniffed at the dew-scented air and hmmphed loudly before turning on her heel and disappearing into the garage, as if offended by the chittering of squirrels and the warmth of the rising sun on her face.

I watched from the living room window. “I think it’s safe, Jake,” I whispered.

“Do you see Carter?” he asked. I’m not sure why we’d taken to whispering in the mornings, as if we were both afraid the noxious little beast across the street could hear us.

“No, I think he’s running late. Maybe you’d better head on without him.” And hurry, I thought, nervously watching for signs of life from across the street.

My son, just ten years old at the time, grabbed his backpack; gave me an awkward, one-armed hug; and slipped out the front door. He glanced around furtively, then ran full tilt to the intersection around the corner, just in time to catch the school bus. Only then did I let out the breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding.

“This is stupid,” I grumbled. I swirled the coffee in my cup and peered into my muddy reflection. “Enough is enough.” I set the mug down and opened the door. Just then, I saw a streak of licorice-black hair, red cotton, and dark denim crossed my front yard - ducking, dodging, running like a star quarterback - all the while screaming like a banshee. I felt something warm and thick, like sun-baked mud, hit my arm. A second later, the stench hit me as a second blob came flying at my head. I ducked back into the house and slammed the door, just in time to hear three more blobs land on the front door.

I counted to ten, listening to my heart throbbing in my ears. Poor Carter.

I could see through the leaded glass pane in the door- Mrs. Rumsinger stood across the street, grinning maniacally, with her precious Oliver perched upon her hip. Oliver reached out one long arm and held up his grubby middle finger in my direction.

I returned the favor. Mrs. Rumsinger caught me and glared back at me with a disapproving frown. If pressed to account, she would swear that Ollie was slow-witted and incapable of such blatant rudeness. “Lily imagines thing,” she would say. “She never did like my Ollie. In fact, only yesterday she threatened to run him over with her car.”

I wouldn’t even have the good grace to deny it.

We’d all made allowances for Mrs. Rumsinger. Ever since her eighteen-year-old son and batty husband Harold died in that wreck, it was obvious to all of us in the neighborhood that the woman had lost her mind. Oliver was all she had left. Somehow, she had convinced herself that he was reason enough to go on living. I had my doubts. Our morning encounters with the little terror had convinced me he was reason enough for old Mrs. Rumsinger to stick her head in the oven, turn on the gas, and light it. I didn’t care if he was her “baby,” he was a shit-slinging brat, and I was tired of letting Jake be bullied and terrorized by him.

And yet here I was, stripping off my filthy clothes and showering under a scalding, stinging stream of water, trying to figure out how to get from my house to the car without the two of them seeing me. We had all become prisoners of this daily farce.

Mr. Potter, three doors down, no longer stopped to pick up the newspapers from his front lawn; there was a pile of paper and plastic dating back several weeks – soaked in the rain, baked in the sun, and left to rot. Mrs. Jantzen, to my right, no longer tended to the rose bushes that lined her front sidewalk. Where the Pepperidges once wheeled little Kate around the cul-de-sac in her stroller, now they simply raced out of their garage and drove to the park five miles away. Poor Jake and Carter had to run – literally – to catch the school bus each morning, or risk arriving at school looking and smelling like they’d just crawled out of a septic tank.

Oliver had been cute, once. Endearingly funny. Now, at ten or twelve, without a man about the house to give him firmer guidance, he had turned into a knuckle-dragging tyrant. There was no one but Mrs. Rumsinger to ooh and ahh over him, or to give him treats, and he became sullen over the years. He was small for his age; otherwise, Mrs. R could not have managed him at all. I suspect he wasn’t quite stupid enough to realize that he wouldn’t ever be allowed to join the boys at school, and harbored some resentment as they laughed and walked to the bus each morning. And so he had taken to assaulting us all.

That night, Carter and his mother sneaked over to our house for dinner. “That thing is an abomination,” said Shirley, Carter’s mother.

“Which thing? Oliver or Mrs. R?” I couldn’t help it. I hadn’t a modicum of Christian charity left in me, where either of them was concerned.

We pulled out the Monopoly board and chose our favorite pieces. “I’ll be banker!” Carter volunteered.

“I’ll be Donald Trump!” my son boasted.

“I’ll be the slumlord down here on Baltic,” said Shirley, with a wry grin.

“I’ll make coffee,” said I, ducking into the kitchen. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught movement outside the dining room window. Peering into the darkness, I was startled to see two gray, thoughtful eyes staring back at me. He made no effort to hide, or to be furtive. Instinctively, I opened the knife drawer and wrapped my hand around the hilt of a sharp blade. “Shirl…”

“Yes, I see him.”

“Who?” asked Jake, looking up from his pile of paper money just in time to see Ollie bare his teeth on the other side of the glass.

“Holy crap!” Carter stood up and knocked over a chair. That startled Oliver, and he disappeared into the darkness.

I called Mrs. Rumsinger. “Oliver’s running wild again. I suggest you lock him in the basement, or I will have to call the police.” I pulled the phone away from my ear and all could hear the hysterical string of epithets that ensued.

A week later, the scene repeated itself.

“Ignore him,” I said. We continued to play Monopoly, though we were awkwardly aware that we were being watched. This time, Ollie had brought a snack. He sat just outside the window, openly watching us, quietly munching on an orange.

“Hey, give me my $200!” Jake protested as Carter reached for the dice to begin his turn.

Carter laughed. “Wondered when you’d mention that.”

Jake smacked his friend lightly on the side of the head. “Cheater.”

Ollie’s eyes went back and forth between the boys. It was a little eerie, watching him watch us, but he remained calm and thoughtful. As our eyes met, I felt a faint whisper of pity in my chest. With no one but old Mrs. Rumsinger for company, no friends his age to play with, how would Jake behave?

“You’re not thinking of letting him in, are you?” asked Shirley, rousing me from my thoughts.

“No! But I do feel a bit sorry for him, don’t you?” Ollie stared at the boys, studying their easy camaraderie and their playful bickering. His lips curled in a sneer, and he backed away from the window.

“Have you lost your mind, Lily?”

“I suppose you’re right,” I said, sparing one last glance at the spot where Oliver had stood just a moment before. There was nothing, now but vacant darkness. “Come on,” I said, “let’s play.”

The mornings were just as bad, if not worse. Ollie’s aggression towards the boys had turned into all-out war. They were now the prime targets of Ollie’s wrath. Shirley and I could no longer let them walk to the bus stop; the school would not let them in the front door, smelling of stale coffee grounds, egg shells, and feces.

Returning from the bus stop, I found Oliver standing in the middle of the road. His expression was menacing, a mix of sullen belligerence and anger. I slowed the car. He wouldn’t budge. I honked. He jumped up on the hood of the car, and in a moment of panic, I stepped on the gas. Startled, the little brute rolled off and slammed into the asphalt. I didn’t stop to see if he was hurt – I drove up into the driveway at an angle, threw it in park, and ran for the house.

It’s a good thing I didn’t own a gun.

Get a grip, Lily, said the calm voice in my mind. What would you do if this were Jake, or Carter?

Of course Jake and Carter could never have behaved like Oliver. Unless maybe they’d been whacked in the head, repeatedly. Or had to put up with Mrs. Rumsinger for a mother.

There was that pity thing, again.

A few nights later, he was back at the dining room window, his nose just inches from the glass. This time, he didn’t look angry or scary, but merely sad. He watched as we chatted and passed the salad around the table. “God, Lily, he gives me the creeps. Why don’t you close the blinds? Call the police? Hell, call animal control.”

“Shirley, no.” I shook my head. I dished up a fifth plate and walked to the back door.

“Lily, are you nuts?”

I had a fleeting mental image of Ollie ripping my arm off, but I opened the door and quickly set the plate on the ground. Moments later, it vanished. So did Ollie.

Hours later, I woke to screams and the sound of someone throwing things – big, heavy, breakable things – across the street. It wasn’t unusual to hear Mrs. Rumsinger yelling, usually at no one in particular. I couldn’t remember her ever yelling at her beloved Oliver. Something inside her mind had finally broken when Howard died, and knowing this, I merely pulled the comforter over my head and tried to go back to sleep.

In the morning, we all gathered in horror to watch as EMS brought out the stretcher. A white sheet covered the lumps from head to toe, but judging by the size, I guessed it must have been Mrs. Rumsinger. The first responders all wore protective face masks and gloves, and one stood by the bushes, retching. “What’s going on, Shirley?” I asked, pulling Jake close to me.

“They think it was Ollie,” she whispered. “She’s been keeping him chained up in the cellar, but he’s gotten too big for her to handle. I guess he just snapped. Someone said that there was poop all over the walls, and all over her. She’s dead, Lily,” Shirley added, quite unnecessarily.

“Mom, look—“ said Jake.

The men from animal control were leading Oliver from the house. He was calm – just like the Ollie that had watched through our window at night. Though they had him on a thick leash, he slipped his big, hairy hand into the official’s and looked up to the man like a lost and trusting child.

That was the last we ever saw of Oliver.

There was only one way to deal with a murderous, poop-flinging chimpanzee, but mercifully it did not involve long years of incarceration. Ollie had already served his time.