Call me crazy, but the minute I moved into my new house in Santa Fe I knew that it contained at least one fairy, and I’m not talking about my husband who regularly flits around the living room doing tai chi maneuvers. To have a fairy in a house means that objects mysteriously disappear and strange things happen.  Hmmm – maybe I am talking about my husband.  But I certainly couldn’t blame him for the weirdness that occurred in the first few months we moved into our house because he worked and lived elsewhere for a while, leaving me to battle the fairies alone – with the aid of various day workers. 

First of all, all of my appliances were infested with fairies – or maybe poltergeists.  I’m not kidding.  It all started when I tried to open my refrigerator for the first time.  I managed to get food into the freezer all right but when I went to put my other groceries away, the door refused to open.  I tugged at it for a while and then started to look for child locks.  There were none.  The door finally opened on its own – mysteriously.  I could just hear the fairies giggling away. At least, they didn’t hide my lamb chops.  Yet.

I went through this exercise for a couple of weeks before calling Larry the appliance man.  He came with his little toolkit.  I explained my problem.  He sneered at me and suggested that maybe I wasn’t strong enough to open the fridge door.  I sneered back and invited him to give it a shot.  I had secretly opened the freezer door just before Larry arrived. He yanked the fridge around the kitchen for a while and the door stayed glued shut – until it opened on its own.  I told him I thought it had something to do with the freezer.  But, secretly, I knew it was fairies we were dealing with.

Larry asked if I would mind if he inserted a narrow tube into a small hole at the base of the refrigerator and I told him to have at it.  He seemed to think this action would break some kind of vapor seal.  I stepped back and let Larry violate my fridge, after which he shut the door.  I challenged him to try to reopen it, but try as he might,  it stayed shut until it opened on its own.  Larry took a new approach.

“Do you mind if I take this power tool and drill behind your gasket?” he asked.  He held his tool up for me to see.  It was impressive.

“Isn’t that going to render my refrigerator as energy efficient as a grass hut in the Yukon?” I asked.

Larry didn’t know, but I told him to drill away.  I held my ears.  When he was finished, he shut the door and attempted to reopen it.  Once again, the fridge thwarted Larry – at which time he said, “Ma’am, you’ve got the tightest gasket I’ve ever seen.”  Now that’s a remark every woman over 18 wants to hear.  Nevertheless, I knew at that juncture that Larry wasn’t going to be able to handle my problem with the refrigerator.  I would deal with the fridge on its own terms: open the freezer, close the freezer, wait one minute, open the fridge door.  Voila.  I’m a refrigerator psychologist.  And I’m onto how those fairies operate.

Two weeks later, I had to call Larry again.  This time, there was something screwy going on with the oven.  There didn’t seem to be a light in there.  I called a friend who I knew had the same appliance and asked, “Is it possible that this oven doesn’t come with a light?”  “No, you idiot,” she replied.  Damn it.  I was going to have to have another service call.  Good thing all the appliances were under warranty.

So, Larry came back with his toolkit and peered into the oven.  “The light’s not coming on,” he said.

“That’s correct.  That’s why I called you.”

Larry proceeded to yank the oven out of the wall, at which time there was a loud explosion and Larry lay on the floor gyrating like he’d been tasered.  Once he stopped quivering, he said, “The electricity isn’t connected properly.  Where’s your circuit breaker?”  Gee – he probably should have asked that question before he yanked the oven out of the wall.  Nevertheless, he did manage to get a light on in the oven without killing himself. 

The next call wasn’t to Larry.  It was to the builder because only he knew why the phone wires didn’t extend to the exterior of the house and where they might be hidden.  The builder sent over a man who said, “I can fix it but I don’t have my tool.  Plus, it’s Friday and I only work until noon.”  I block out what I had to do to get him to find his tool and fix my problem that day because more perils lay ahead.

The builder had to send over a spelunking expert because I couldn’t locate wiring for the TV.  Turns out, the TV wires were buried in our beautiful diamond plaster walls.  And the radiant heating system wasn’t working in the family room.  One service guy came over and told me he would need to use a stick of dynamite to fix that problem – fortunately, a brighter fellow who didn’t speak any English had a much easier solution that didn’t require blowing up the house.  He switched out two wires in the utility room and our problem was solved. 

One night, I thought I would relax with a little music but one of the stereo speakers was making a frightening sound.  So, the builder sent over Chris the electrician.  Chris took one look into the offending speaker and started nodding sagely.

“What is it, a crimped wire?” I asked.

“No,” he said.  “A mouse ate your woofer.”

“Say what?”

“A mouse ate your woofer.”

“What do you mean, a mouse ate my woofer?  Who are you, Dr. Seuss?”

“All of these houses are riddled with rodents,” he said.  “Would you like me to put a bull snake in your wall?”

“Say what?” I squeaked again, probably sounding like the mouse who ate my woofer.

“If I put a bull snake in your wall,” Chris explained, “it will keep your rodent population under control.”

“What if it runs out of food?”

“Don’t worry.  He won’t.”

“Holy shit.  No, I don’t want a bull snake in my wall.  What I want is a plane ticket back to civilization.  Is there any other solution?”

“I can put some steel wool in there.”

“Do that.”

As I walked him out, he started nodding again.

“Now what?” I asked.

‘You’ve got goat heads.”

“Oh, for the love of Mike.  I know I’m not as young as I used to be but surely I don’t have a goat head yet.”

“Goat heads are toxic weeds,” he explained.  “You need a flame thrower to get rid of them.”

“Oh, that’s just fucking terrific.” 

Where was my husband when I needed him?  He was back in civilization, that’s where – if you consider Atlanta civilization (and I do).  I was going to kill him when he got home.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t finished with Larry the appliance man yet.  I should have just rented him a room.  I would have rented Chris the electrician a room but he told me he was a former violent felon, recently released from prison, where he found Jesus.  I assume he wasn’t talking about his cellmate.

This time, it was the wine cooler.  It was rusting in front of my eyes.  I don’t know what Larry did to it, but it’s still rusting – and still working, miraculously.  He did agree to replace our outdoor gas grill, however, because someone had turned it on without removing the packaging and the packaging had become one with the stainless steel it was housed in.

How did that happen?  Either the grill was turned on when a realtor threw a party at the house during a home show, complete with mariachi band, before we bought it, or the fucking fairies turned the grill on. I haven’t ruled them out. Either way, the appliance was toast.

You don’t want to get me started on the leaky roof, the disintegrating stucco, the fragile flagstone, the crumbling asphalt driveway, the poorly-engineered shower stall, the glacially-slow Internet service, the ever-shifting desert sands that crack your walls and floors, the pinholes in the copper piping, the perpetually rolling carpets or the closets that go sproinging off their hinges. 

And how can I possibly forget the time I came into the kitchen and watched what I thought was my husband having an epiphany.  He stood looking upward toward the skylight, his arms outstretched.  It was a beautiful sight until I realized it was snowing on his face. 

One more thing – isn’t there always one more thing? - once a year I go berserk from Miller moths who come in swarms to set themselves aflame in the lighting fixtures for a few weeks.  My husband should probably videotape me battling them in my nightgown.  I make every effort to keep them from self-immolating because once they set themselves (and the fixtures) on fire, the whole house smells like burnt broccoli.  But they insist on playing Buddhist monk anyway.  I would say they, too, are fucking fairies but would fucking fairies set themselves aflame and become flaming fucking fairies?  No – they’re too smart for that.

Okay, I’ve stopped hyperventilating.  By now, we’ve been here for a while.  Everything’s been repaired or replaced and we’ve made our peace with the fairies and poltergeists and even the building inspector who didn’t bother to actually inspect our house before we moved into it.  In fact, we love the house, quirks and all.  We’ve been told by several people who are in a position to know that we have one of the best built houses in this town and certainly one of the most peaceful.

I think it’s finally safe to say, “Y’all come.  Welcome to Guatemala.”