I thought my obsession was licked, but circumstances this summer drove me back to Bingo Palace after ten years on the wagon. Mike had taken a job in San Francisco, and I’d have been alone were it not for the mammoth ants that defiled my countertops. I begged Mrs. M., my landlady, to investigate.
She referred to the wild cherry branches that had been in our kitchen the previous summer, home to several finger-sized caterpillars that ate the cherry leaves. Mrs. M. would never understand the joy of watching cecropia caterpillars spinning their silk or adult cecropia moths hatching from their cocoons. But each year Mike was obsessed, stealing branches daily from neighborhood “city property” trees just to feed his caterpillars.
I placated Mrs. M. by suggesting that perhaps only my apartment would need to be sprayed–a fraction of the initial estimate. This worked until the following morning, when she discovered a trail of carpenter ants marching through her pantry.
I have always had a special affection for Mrs. M., who, like my grandmother, is a hardworking woman obsessed with cleanliness. She gave us homemade cookies and wine each Christmas, invited me in for coffee klatches, and brought us leftover stuffed cabbages. I’d listen sympathetically as she’d complain about kids who cut down her calla lilies, cats who reproduced on her back porch, a basement tenant (now gone) who beat his wife and, worse, brought roaches. But now, for the first time, Mrs. M. was raging at me. Worse, I was angry too. A suppressed womanly conditioning in me that took pride in sanitary living habits was deeply offended.
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I had just enough time to run home and search through ten years of junk for my bingo chips and dabber. On my way back out, I saw Mrs. M. in the front yard, conversing in German with another matronly frau.
“I haven’t been here in ten years,” I said. “What do I do?”
