Tax Evasion

A woman just brought a smelly, rotten, fish into the airport, as her luggage. How disgusting! I began typing to Sherman while waiting in the airport lobby. This isn’t exactly Trudeau Airport. The lobby is about the size of an average person’s kitchen. Basically, too close for comfort when people are carting around fish that could challenge a mid-sized German shepherd in a fighter-class.

“19.6 kilograms” said the airport attendant. I was waiting for him to speak more critically, the way he had when I had loaded my quite average 4.4 kilogram suitcase onto the conveyor belt. That reaction wasn’t coming anytime soon though. Instead, “Good catch Claudia!” is all I heard.

It wasn’t that Claudia had taken the precautionary measure of wearing latex gloves to crate the fish around that bothered me. I was kind of jealous actually. She had found gloves with a hint of blue and had taken the time to bejewel them herself.

It wasn’t even that the airport staff had no apparent qualms with such unacceptable luggage as a forty-five pound Arctic Char that is draped in nothing other than an untied, translucent, orange garbage bag that allowed the dead fish’s head to poke through the end with what I am sure was a forced How’d Ya Do! expression pinned across its traumatized face. No. While perhaps shocking a year ago, such a sight paled in comparison to the bootlegged two-four of Molson Canadian that had been shipped up by the man after me in line when I moved up here in the fall. When I retrieved my cat from the cargo dock upon the arrival at our half-way point in Wasilla, I was greeted by a soaking, stinking, Ms. Richard Hatch who was pissed to no end.

No. What bothered me about the sight of this fish is that it reminded me so completely of my grandmother, Sheryl. She had recently been upgraded to “Two Finger Sheryl” after her most recent physical and her boyfriend’s investment in Viagra, but, in her youth, this was totally the kind of shit Sheryl was likely to have pulled.

When I was young Sheryl used to make me ketchup and toast sandwiches while insisting she was a witch, not because she knew how to use a broom or could turn the mayor’s wife’s hair blue on a dime during her brief “professional years”; but, because she had long fingernails. Delusions run rampant in our family the way an addiction to glitter does in Cher’s house, but Sheryl was entirely self-possessed when making the claim that she is a witch. She is also a grade-A bitch, but that’s only an allegation.

Like any good witch—since she was the only admitted witch I had met at that point, I had assumed she must be of a higher integrity than I might now—she didn’t care about lecturing me too harshly on traditional religions like Christianity, or, as she put it, “what boring people call a good time.” I think she tried to read me a picture-bible book before bed once, but only until I pointed out that her true people had been lit-up like kindling back in Salem.

“Only after they got bored of burning the fags,” she quickly pointed-out.

“Touché,” I chuckled.

Getting the point and moving on, Sheryl began defining herself more as a gypsy after investing in a moo-moo with pockets large enough to hide some dangly earrings once she found a pair to steal from the GT Boutique. Next she tossed her bible in a drawer and has been regaling me with the best kind of legend—her true stories of sin and carnage--ever since.

Sheryl captivated me with her failed tales of deception and espionage. There was the time she, with my uncle, tried to steal a Christmas tree from the “back forty” of a tree farmer's run-down lot, only to get their car stuck and need to ask the farmer to tow them out, which he did, but only after charging them double the regular cost for the tree. Then there was the time that Sheryl had been excommunicated from her church for calling her parishioner a thief.

“That never happened, Granny!” I challenged.

“Twice, bitch!” Sheryl cackled, as she blended each of us some ice for our vodka martinis. A tradition we started when I was six and Sheryl drew the smallest straw, resulting in her having to play babysitter for the day. “The life of a rogue Gypsy—you have no idea!”

But none of these stories held a candle to her current scheme—defrauding the government. This was sure to be the jewel in the crown that was her lifetime of conniving. The fact that this crown had obviously been purchased from Wal-Mart was nobody’s business but her own.

Sheryl would have liked to have tried a Ponzi scheme instead, but she isn’t that bright. She had also  thought about burning a flag, but it doesn’t carry the same criminality that it does in southern Alabama. Besides, she realized that she would have to purchase both the flag and the match, and, as she put it, “Tryin’ to teach the scum suckers a lesson, not keep em’ in business!”

Ultimately, more out of boredom than any decision-making on Sheryl's part, she settled on not paying her taxes. “I’m eighty fucking years old. What the hell are they going to do?”

“They are going to throw your crotchety ass in jail, where it belongs,” my lesbian-father pointed out. “You aren’t pretty enough to handle OZ the way I could.”

Not that my father had ever been to prison, but he did own all six seasons of Boston Legal, which he watched religiously. This made him something of an expert on all legal matters, he figured.

“How are they even going to know?” Sheryl asked, smacking the empty bottle of tequila that she had been nursing down on the soft sofa she was loafing on.

“You made your income working for the government,” my father challenged. “You don’t think they will check into the filing habits of their direct employees?”

“They don’t check-up on your dress purchases,” she snarled, more aggressively than if she had stuck to vodka. “Why should they root through my business?”

“It’s a little easier when you are their employee,” challenged Ellen’s wannabe.

“Whatever, I don’t even care,” Sheryl moaned. “I bet the liquor is better in the slammer anyway.”

As I sat in the airport, trying desperately to under-romanticize my witch-Gypsy-criminal grandmother, another whiff of that over-sized Arctic Char found its way into my nasal passage. Being a vegetarian, and the fish being at least a little rotten, I wanted to vomit. This reminded me of Sheryl even more. The same Sheryl who had nursed me back to health when I was sick. The same Sheryl who had embraced Sherman, my polar bear lover, so unflinchingly when I found what I was looking for in this world. “Don’t lose this one Scott," she had beamed that first night, like he was her own pride and joy. "He’s a keeper.”

“Thanks, Sheryl.”

“Also Scott, don’t give each other the HIV,” she warned condescendingly. “It isn’t a Snickers bar.”

Should Sherman and I get married one day, Sheryl might even preside over the ceremony. Well, at least if we wait eight years or if she gets out for good behaviour being old.

As the scent of that grimy Arctic Char swelled inside my nostrils and set my tear-ducts into over-drive, I reconsidered my email to Sherman. A woman just brought a smelly, rotten, fish into the airport, as her luggage. How disgusting! I miss Sheryl now that she’s in prison. Let's send her something shiny to play with. Call you in the morning. Love, Scott