Sometimes I Feel Like a Nut Read Online Free

your sitter.”
    He looked concerned.
    “Excuse me for one moment,” he said apologetically, rising to take the call outside.
    “ Mr. Kopelman! ” Ann screamed into the phone in her English accent.
    “Ann, what’s wrong? Are the kids okay?”
    “The children are fine—” she sputtered between gasps.
    “Okay, what’s wrong?!” he asked.
    “THE PAINTER IS TRYING TO RAPE ME!”
    “What?!”
    “The painter! He’s trying to rape me .”
    Gulp. Holy shit.
    “Where are you now?” my dad asked, trying to remain calm.
    “I’ve locked myself in your bathroom with a carving knife!” she wailed, her voice quivering.

     
    My dad swallowed hard. Fuck.
    “I’m on my way.”
    As he grabbed his coat, he went sheepishly to face his client.
    “I-I’m terribly sorry,” he stammered. “But I have an emergency.”
    “Everything okay?” the midwesterner from Purina Cat Chow inquired.
    “No, unfortunately. I’m afraid I have to go,” my dad replied. “My painter is raping my babysitter.”
    The client shook his head. “Only in New York.”
    After sprinting home fifteen blocks, my dad busted open the door to find the painter had bailed and Ann was crouched and sobbing with a hunter-green handprint on her boob and the thigh of her jeans. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibits A and B. She was a mess. Bawling. My mom and I came home to complete chaos and my parents called the painting company, freaking out.
    “She’s lyin’,” the owner said to my mother. “You should see what goes down with my guys. You should see ! I got ladies up and down Park Avenue callin’ for painters. They open the door in the nude. Buck nekkid.”
    Ew. My mom tried to shake the image of some rich matron trying to toss a Benjamin Moore–covered roller aside and throwing the Polish painter on her Léron linens, untying her Pratesi robe, and unhooking his overalls.
    “Perhaps, but that’s not what happened here,” my mother asserted. “She had green paw prints all over her clothes.”
    “She prolly came on to him. They always do.”
    No apologies, nothing.
    The next day came the wrath of Ann’s six-foot-five Rasta boyfriend pacing our living room like a caged panther, gripping his dreadlock-covered head as if he had a migraine that would make his whole noggin explode onto our carpet, covering our shellacked walls with his brain’s bloody mist.
    “I’M GONNA FOOKIN’ KEEL HEEM! HE IS A DEAD MON! I’M GONNA FOOKIN KEEL HEEM!” he screamed. “GEEVE ME HEEZ NAME! HE IS A DEAD MON. HE. IS. A. DEAD. MON.”
    “Okay, calm down . . . ,” my dad begged, attempting to soothe the sheer unbridled ire that was the nuclear mushroom cloud erupting in the living room. “Killing him does what? Then you go to jail and you can’t see Ann anymore. Then your life is ruined. What good does that do?”
    Her boyfriend channeled his extreme rage into deep breaths that morphed into hyperventilation.
    “ Geeve me his name! ” he yelled. For the record, it was Rudy.
    “It’s not worth it,” my dad continued. This went on for another hour until my parents had a promise from Ann’s boyfriend he’d drop it and not track this guy’s ass down and machete him to Polish pieces.
    “What a day,” my mom said with a sigh after the mollified couple had left. “How is this our life? We spent the whole afternoon talking this Rastafarian out of committing murder.”
    Shortly after her near-ravaging, Ann’s studies ended. It was time for a clean start.
    Enter Sue. Her hair was blond, her sweet home Alabama. With huge blue eyes and a virginal demeanor, my parents were thrilled when she smiled in the doorway for the interview. They spoke with her twang-talkin’ warm, kind parents, who sent them homemade jams, and she happily installed herself in Ann’s old room.
    It started out okay. She was very sweet, and seemed to be happy in potentially overwhelming New York and not longing too much for the calmer pace of the Deep South. But there was one