“What is that?” Mom said. We smelled it before we got indoors, and when we were indoors, the stench was so terrible that we were laughing as we stood in the house. “Oh my God, what is that?”

Frick walked around the house in his boots, looking for the smell. “Holy Jesus,” he said.

“Smells like chagook,” Mom said, and she looked in the garbage, took a big whiff, and shook her head. “David,” she said. “Did the house smell this morning?”

“Not really,” I said, covering my nose. “It smelled like it always does.”

“Christ,” Frick said, and he looked at us in the kitchen. Then he squatted, put his nose to the floor, and smelled.

I laughed, and so did Mom.

“What’s funny?” Frick said. He smelled another part of the floor, following something.

“You’re smelling the floor,” Mom said. She had her hand over her nose.

“And?” Frick said.

“And you look ridiculous,” Mom said.

Frick wasn’t laughing. He was smelling the floor, and Mom and I watched him crawl up the hallway on all fours, sniffing like a dog. He made it down the hall and sniffed the closet. Then he opened the door and kept sniffing, stuck his head between hanging clothes.

Mom was cracking up, and in between laughs she started to gag, and when she gagged I gagged and then Frick said, “Don’t,” and he started gagging. He got up off the floor and dry-heaved in the bathroom.

“The hell’s a matter with you two?” he said. We were still laughing, and for a second he looked to smile, but then he gagged again.

He took a deep breath. “I’ll be back,” he said. He grabbed a flashlight from under the sink, and he went out the door and around back of the house.

Mom and I stopped laughing when we heard him under the house, crawling about, cursing. When he stopped moving, we listened, and the silence was broken by one giant gag, and Mom and I started up again, banging our hands on the table.

“Listen to him!” Mom said.

I was laughing hard, but not at Frick: Mom was hysterical, tears coming down her face, and she was hyperventilating, trying to catch her breath, and her laughter made me laugh.

“And to think—” Mom laughed so hard she wasn’t making noise, was shaking in the chair. The phone rang and she hung it up. “And to think I clean this place every day! What’s the point! Shit just creeps right in! Tend a nice house, my mother always said. What does she know! Oh God, it stinks.” She stood. “It stinks so bad.”

The phone rang again, and Mom let it go to voice mail.

“Shh, shh,” Mom said, a finger to her mouth, stifling her laughter. We listened as the voice mail spoke the caller’s message.

“Yeah, it would be nice if someone WOULD CALL ME BACK!” Click.

“Your poor father!” Mom said, and she exploded with laughter. “If only he could smell it!”